Amid a deep sale and the biggest news drop for Kingdom Hearts 4 to date, the series collection became the top-selling paid game on Steam.

At last weekend's D23 event, Kingdom Hearts 4 got its biggest batch of new info to date with a new trailer that confirmed the first Disney world for the upcoming Square Enix RPG will be none other than The Land of the Dead from Pixar's Coco, with Miguel and Hector joining Sora's party. Alongside that, we got confirmation that we'll be able to play as Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in the game. Not to mention, there's a Kingdom Hearts anime series coming to Disney+.

Clearly, the hype from the series' massive fanbase was somewhat contagious, as the series' first collection, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5+2.5 Remix (which collects four games and two games turned into movies), has been tearing it up on Steam. Helped along by a huge discount which brings the 1.5+2.5 collection down to $14.99 / £11.99, as well as a discount on Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece, which features fellow collection Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts 3 + Re Mind DLC for $29.99 | £25.49, giving you (almost) the entire franchise for under $30.

The hype and the sale have done wonders, as the series has skyrocketed over on Steam, as Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5+2.5 Remix has become the top-selling game on Steam (not counting free-to-play titles like Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, and Dota 2). And now begins the race to play every single one of those games before late 2027, because they all matter to the lore, and don't bank on a delay either, as Tetsuya Nomura says one is "not happening"

As Kingdom Hearts 4 fans await an update at D23, Disney says the JRPG series is now a $1 billion franchise

Footage of a canceled Star Wars action RPG has surfaced online just over a year after the studio that was making it closed.

The internal name for the game was reportedly Star Wars: Magellan, and it was in development at the formerly Zynga-owned Echtra Games until the studio was shut down last June. After Zynga acquired the studio in 2021, it was announced that the devs were working on "a new, yet to be announced role-playing game (RPG) for cross-platform play, in partnership with Zynga's NaturalMotion studio," and it appears that this latest find is likely the game in question.

MP1st has reportedly uncovered footage of the RPG via a former Echtra developer's portfolio of work. The report keeps the dev anonymous, so it's not clear what role they held on the game, but the footage includes a mix of third-person action gameplay and a showcase of different character animations and models.

The gameplay footage shows off playable Mandalorian and Jedi characters fighting off hordes of enemies, while on-screen text describes the experience as a "multiplayer ARPG" that'd see you "shoot & loot." As you'd expect, the two different playable characters we see both have distinct combat abilities and skills – we see the Jedi pull off a number of fancy Lightsaber moves as well as use the Force, for example, while the Mandalorian primarily uses their jetpack and guns.

Otherwise, the outlet reports that the game was supposed to include a feature that'd see you bond with NPCs, presumably seeing you build relationships with the characters as part of the story.

It's claimed that the game was in development for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S before the closure of Echtra saw it scrapped, in what now feels like even more of a shame, as there are some promising ideas here, and fans are as disappointed as you'd expect.

"I swear to god the coolest Star Wars projects always seem to get cancelled. 1313 and Mandalorian by Respawn will always live rent free in my head, and now this too," one responds on Reddit. "Such a shame that it's cancelled, it's always weird/interesting watching gameplay clips for cancelled games like this," says another.

Unfortunately, we're just left with the thoughts of what could have been, and cool as it is to have had a glimpse at what it was supposed to become, it makes the reality feel even more disappointing.

While you're here, be sure to check out our list of all the known upcoming Star Wars games on the horizon.

It appears Sony has unilaterally cut ties with Ukrainian developer Ternox Games. The company, most notable for anime stock market sim Stonks-9800, claims there's been no explanation from the PlayStation manufacturer over the decision, which will result in its games being delisted and at least one port being canceled.

Ternox Games made the announcement on August 17, saying its deal with Sony had been unceremoniously canceled. "Sony PlayStation unilaterally terminated my PlayStation developer and publisher agreement without giving me any reason," the dev writes on Twitter.

"PlayStation Support refuses to listen to my arguments or even respond to my emails in any way," it adds.

Stonks-9800 was slated for a PlayStation 5 version, but that's off the table. A shame, because it's a fun, inventive game that could attract a whole other audience on Sony's system. Essentially, you play as a Japanese salary man who's trying to use stocks to make his way up in the world.

The visuals are heavily influenced by '80s anime, and it's largely text-based. It has over 1,380 reviews on Steam, and 97% of those are positive. Getting on the PS Store would've widened Ternox's potential audience considerably, while offering more fascinating games for the users there.

The plan was to do a PS5 disc version in 2027, just ahead of Sony ceasing production on physical games. Since that's no longer feasible, Ternox promises to "do my best" to do physical releases on PC and Nintendo Switch.

A total of 13 earlier releases from Ternox are already available on the PS Store, but you only have until August 23 to get them. These are a mix of in-house releases and from outside developers.

Sony ending PlayStation discs "was always going to happen," says analyst, as the PS6 costing $1,000 would "limit your audience quite significantly"

After a new gameplay reveal, internet sleuths think Resident Evil Requiem actor Angela Sant'Albano has taken on the lead role in Tides of Annihilation after Baldur's Gate 3 actor Jennifer English stepped down from the role.

Earlier this year, the Tides of Annihilation Twitter account confirmed that the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 star would be stepping away from the role of its main character Gwendolyn for health reasons, while confirming that she would continue to be a part of the project in an advisory role. The developers confirmed that English – and the rest of the game's voice cast – helped pick a successor, with the post saying "her recent work in video games left a strong impression on both Jennifer and our team."

Ahead of the game being at Gamescom next week, gameplay footage emerged online of a new build for the game featuring this new actor, and fans quickly noticed a similarity of Sant'Albano – who made waves earlier this year for her performance as Grace Ashcroft. That, mixed with the devs' word about her recent work in video games definitely made the connection work too, given she's been a frontrunner for best-performance awards since Resident Evil Requiem was released.

This was seemingly also confirmed by Gwendolyn's mocap actor Jennifer Prime (via Need4games), who responds to a user saying "Grace Ashcroft is her new VA," by saying "Yep!!! but this time, no more screaming 'LEON!'"

The latest gameplay also features some visual changes, including a new face model for Gwendolyn, and users on the game's subreddit are wondering if the game has been downgraded somewhat since its 2025 reveal trailers, with changes to the lighting, textures, and models. As of right now, Tides of Annihilation doesn't have a release date, but it's set to appear at Gamescom 2026, so perhaps we'll know more and get a confirmation of Sant'Albano's role in the game next week.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Clea actor finds it "fascinating" that RPG fans give her character "more grace" than Baldur's Gate 3's Lae'zel.

In a promise that could fill ravenous Kingdom Hearts 4 fans with hope or simply age very poorly, the RPG's lead says the game will definitely not be delayed and will meet its late 2027 launch window.

Over the weekend, Kingdom Hearts 4 hopefuls were finally rewarded for their years of patience with a new trailer as well as the confirmation that the RPG is set to launch at the end of next year. Until recently, news on the game had been almost nonexistent since its reveal over four years ago, so you can understand why some folks think that the end now being in sight is a bit too good to be true.

However, series director Tetsuya Nomura and Kingdom Hearts 4 co-director Tai Yasue want to squash any of those worries right now. Speaking at D23, Nomura acknowledges the immediate speculation from fans that "the release date might still get pushed back" before launch, saying: "I want to set the record straight: That is not happening."

Nomura reiterates the plan to release Kingdom Hearts 4 in late 2027, adding that "a lot of the marketing for the game has only just started, and so I do hope that people also look forward to hearing more news as well." In other words, it seems, Square Enix isn't just going to go radio silent until launch, either, so we can get excited for more trailers and the like.

Yasue doubles down on Nomura's statement as he proclaims, "I can confidently say and promise that it will launch in 2027," adding: "Schedule-wise, the development is very smooth. It's not like an 80%, 90% – it's a 100% thing. We'll be there in 2027 for sure."

Obviously, no game developer is ever going to follow their big release window announcement with comments suggesting that things are looking a bit shaky behind the scenes, and the team might not actually make the deadline they just publicly announced, but to so boldly promise no delays like this certainly suggests a high level of confidence. With that said, we've seen similar things said before and fans have still been burned – just look at GTA 6, and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick saying in early 2025 that "we feel really good" about it launching that year… before it was delayed. …Twice.

Kingdom Hearts 4's Goofy and Donald are playable for the first time ever, and Mickey's Paper Mario-style sections are "very different from Sora's adventure."

Former Rockstar Games producer Leslie Benzies apparently wanted all of GTA 4's population to have their own schedules and believable lives, but implementing a feature like that turned out to be both a massive headache for the devs and not that important for players.

The tidbit comes courtesy of Rockstar Game's ever-chatty, former technical lead Obbe Vermeij, who spoke to Edge Magazine about the open-world game's development: "Leslie Benzies wanted all the [GTA 4] NPCs to have their own lives. A place to live. A schedule. Every morning, they would drive to work. We worked towards it for a bit, but it ended up being so problematic."

Rockstar might have been transitioning to a whole new console generation with the PS3 and Xbox 360, but making sure each civilian in its open world had their own inner lives proved to be too much of a hurdle for the then-next-gen hardware.

"There were so many bugs," Vermeij said of the NPCs' schedules. The other problem came down to the fact that it didn't add much to the game, anyway. "I didn't like the idea [of fully simulated NPCs] because it felt like it didn't really matter that much," Vermeij says. "It wasn't really important that everyone had their own schedule and their own life."

In fact, the opposite might have been true to Vermeij. "I actually think that, psychologically, players are fine with NPCs being a little fake and shallow," he explains. "I think what it comes down to is that realism is just not necessarily something to aim for in a game."

Grand Theft Autos have, historically, been at their most fun when they're focused on being chaotic sandboxes, rather than realistic city simulations, though I, too, enjoy the thrills of driving responsibly in GTA 5. We'll if GTA 6 leans one way or the other later this year.

Ahead of GTA 6, Rockstar ramps up GTA Online roleplay as nopixel V prepares for exclusive Closed Beta launch in September

PATCH NOTES v08.16.2026 – Generative AI's controversial presence in the gaming industry is under more scrutiny than ever, thanks to the players who call it out when they see it.

What's going on this week in gaming?

• A video games lawyer has commented on the presence of anti-AI clauses in publishing contracts that forbid use of AI technologies in development.

Why is this happening now?

• Concerns over generative AI use in games have been mounting for some time as players question ethics and copyright.
• Games like Arc Raiders, 1666 Amsterdam, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have received backlash from fans after gen AI assets were found in-game.

Meta Shift

• The gaming community's staunch anti-generative AI stance is affecting how games are made from the inside.

2026 has been a difficult time for smaller game developers whose use of generative AI has come under fire. While some studios like Panache Digital Games offer explanations alongside apologies before removing gen AI assets, others have claimed the software a "necessity" for a small, independent team or solodev.

But as my colleagues found out through interviewing games lawyer Haley MacClean, public opinion is affecting whether publishers are permitting developers to use generative AI. MacClean cites restrictive clauses being placed into legal documents, forbidding developers from playing around with the software in the first place, because "it's not worth the legal liability". This is because generative AI uses existing content, art, and other works to create an image or asset like voice dialogue from pre-existing creations. It's a risky move, even if done as a placeholder, since "AI regulations and precedents could come in the future and wreak havoc retroactively."

If not for gamers being so outspoken about their intolerance of generative AI, with games getting review-bombed on Steam or players outright refusing to purchase games with known generative AI use, these contractual obligations between publisher and developer might not have come into play. There is a pervasive mindset of "I don't want to use gen AI because my community would hate it," MacClean says. That same mindset is warding publishers off greenlighting work with studios who are intent on using the software despite how negatively it can impact sales and reputation should these assets be discovered.

Patch Notes summary

MacClean's comments prove that publishers are taking notice of the gaming community's anti-AI stance. It's a relief for anyone who has been concerned about the increasing number of games being revealed to have had some element of generative AI use in the development pipeline, showing that loud and decisive backlash in the face of problematic game development does, in fact, seem to be working.

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Between our love for angry Logan himself and how solid Insomniac Games' Spider-Man series has been, Marvel's Wolverine has been high on our new games wishlist for a while even before we saw any gameplay. I know, I know, that's a bit naughty of us – but sometimes our comic book loving brains are just waiting to be scratched just right. Thankfully, Wolverine's claws are reaching all the right places now we've visited the development studio and played the game for ourselves.

In our Marvel's Wolverine hands-on, we've been overjoyed that Logan's adventure doesn't just feel like a Spider-Man reskin, but something that really celebrates the character. Spending two hours with the game through its first act, across two sections, we've had plenty of time to sink our claws into Wolverine's rage-fuelled combat, play with stealth, get a little too invested in its story, and even hang out with Team X.

But what are the best bits? Why get excited? Luckily for you I'll lead you right to the 'X' marking my superhero fandom spot across eight highlights I've pulled together below! Excited? Let us know which features you're looking forward to trying for yourself in the comments.

8. "This is uniquely Logan"

Make no mistake, we love Marvel's Spider-Man, but with three web-slinging games under its belt, we had some reservations about how distinct Insomniac Games' take on Wolverine would be. Thankfully, the studio seems to have been conscious about that themselves. Director Jess Reiner-Reed tells us that "any decision we're making, we're trying to go: 'Is this right for Wolverine? Is this telling a Logan-centric story?" Having played the game ourselves, we agree – this really does feel like a game that could only exist for Wolverine.

7. Feeling the Rage

Claws out, Marvel's Wolverine was always going to need combat that feels excellent – and Insomniac Games have hit on something special with Logan's Rage. A meter that builds up while fighting, it can be unleashed to enable instant kills, and lasts longer the more violence you dish out. It gives scraps an excellent sense of momentum that really highlights the berserker fighter that Wolverine is. It even loops back into his health system, where his Rage will allow him to get back up again, supercharging his regenerative capabilities so he won't stay down. Again – this is a fighting system that would only make sense for Wolverine.

6. PS5 Power

Few PlayStation first-party studios have had the output of Insomanic Games in recent years – Marvel's Wolverine is the team's fifth release on PS5. Both Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 are exclusive to the console, while the cross-gen Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales was one of the console's best PS5 games in its launch window. Quantity hasn't hampered quality either – they've all been excellent. "One thing we're really proud about at the studio is shipping games," says head of technology Mike Fitzgerald. Likewise, Marvel's Wolverine feels like a real technical achievement so far. Stunning to play, this studio really knows how to get the most out of the system this many years deep into the generation.

5. Violence for a reason

Wolverine is an angry man, but he's no caricature in this PS5 game. Respecting the character we know and love from the comics, he has plenty of legitimate reasons fuelling his rage. Marvel's Wolverine tells a dark story from its early hours (we'll avoid spoilers!), and there's some nasty moments of injustice that have Logan rightfully fired up, ready to rail at powerful authority that relishes doing the wrong thing. He might be the best there is at what he does, but, in a way, what he does is nice – just, not if you're on the receiving end of his bloody wrath.

4. Team X gon' give it to us

There's no X-Men in the world of Marvel's Wolverine (at least, not yet), but there is a Team X, Insomniac's own twist on the unit formed as part of the Weapon X programme in the comics. Here, it appears to be assembled by the sinister Nathaniel Essex, and the game's opening revolves around freeing mutants from Trask Industries' clutches while fighting alongside Sabretooth, Mystique, and Jean Grey. Later moments feature downtime where Logan can learn more about his allies-for-the-moment, including a 'never have I ever' drinking game with Mystique at a bar.

3. Moments of wander

Continuing on from those moments of downtime, while Marvel's Wolverine definitely isn't an open world game like Peter Parker's New York adventures, it's not completely linear, either. Getting some time to explore Madripoor before a mission kicks off, we get to have Wolverine sniff around a fairly wide space for optional but engaging conversations, nab collectibles, and take on challenges. All-out, non-stop action could get exhausting across a long journey, so we're glad for some moments to get some time with Logan off the clock. Here's hoping the final balance feels right.

2. Rising to the challenge

Speaking of optional content, we've had time to play some of Wolverine's side challenges and we're impressed so far. Similar in some ways to Spider-Man's challenges in his games, they put Logan through the paces across combat and traversal challenges, dialing up the pressure to ensure we really get familiar with his controls which – while easy to get to grips with – do have a lot of nuance in the right hands. Even the latter has more to it than we expected, and by the time we master them Logan is dashing about with perfect grace, which almost reminds us of Mirror's Edge (really!).

1. Silent, but deadly

Almost like The Last of Us Part 2, Wolverine is full of rage and violence but doesn't need to unleash it all at once in big, straightforward fights. Instead, he can dip in and out of stealth to strike decisively from the shadows. It makes wide sections particularly delicious to play, as we control Logan's angle of approach and can tear groups of guards apart in a sudden ambush in seconds, before moving on to the next. It really helps us feel like Wolverine, who is a scrappy, brutal fighter, not a hack and slash warrior.

Check out our best Marvel games ranking for more comic adventures!

After a decade of solid updates and player numbers that would make most games blush, No Man's Sky lead Sean Murray says the best part of the journey has actually been watching the team work together.

We caught up with Hello Games' Sean Murray to talk about 10 years of No Man's Sky, a journey that's included some low lows and spacey highs. Asked about the best moments of that decade, Murray says the easy answer would be "when we hit the highest plater numbers since launch with [the Voyagers update]" or when the team won awards at BAFTA and The Game Awards.

But, really, player numbers and gold trophies pale next to the "more boring, slightly difficult answer." Murray recalls moments where the team would play the Voyagers update together for the first time before its release, or the pretty transformative third-person camera option, or the player hub of The Space Anomaly, or... you get the gist. Coming together as a team to play something really exciting that "no one's seen" before is "the real sort of development high." (Just don't ruin it by telling him how much No Man's Sky DLC would've made.)

"Those have been a buzz," Murray explains. "That's when I'm going home and I'm just buzzing about it. And you're like, 'People are gonna love this.'"

Another example came when Hello Games put put the Beyond update, which was plagued with all sorts of bugs and problems. "We just worked really, really hard and I think we put out something ridiculous like 27 hot fixes in a week or something crazy." Being able to work together so quickly was only possible thanks to "systems that we'd been building for years", but the highlight was simply "the team just meshing together" and "solving problems just really quickly."

"You know, so those moments are a real buzz," he adds.

Sean Murray says a "weight had lifted" when No Man's Sky players were finally talking more about its new content than its controversial launch

Sony's plans to end support for new PlayStation discs has caused huge volumes of uproar in the gaming world, but one analyst thinks the situation was inevitable, especially with an incoming PS6 that could cost somewhere around $1000.

"I think this was always going to happen," games analyst Piers Harding-Rolls says in a chat with Edge Magazine, arguing that the costs involved in manufacturing physical games are eating into Sony's bottom line. "Sales of physical games are pushing more revenue out of the ecosystem of Sony and its publishing partners, and they're the ones that are bearing the costs. No fee for printing the disc and shipping it out means there's more share for Sony and publishers."

Keep in mind Sony also receives a 30% of any digital purchase made on the PlayStation store, and the company can more carefully control its game prices in a world where it operates the only storefront selling PlayStation games.

Making the situation worse are the ever-increasing console costs, fuelled by AI data centres and a global RAM shortage. "The console market is facing a serious situation, because this unprecedented increase in component costs is potentially undermining the viability of the whole sector," Harding-Rolls adds. "If you come to market with a device that is $1000, you are starting to limit your audience quite significantly. So it's about: 'How can we viably get to market at a reasonable price point? How can we maintain the console market's scale in the next generation?'"

Ending disc support in early 2028, around the timeframe of the PS6, is simply a "generational timing thing," according to Harding-Rolls, since the company "might think it's wise to have a kind of clean cut for the beginning of the next cycle."

Essentially, Sony's probably looking at ways to keep its profits in check and squeeze as much juice from each game sale as possible. But while the numbers may add up for the company, PlayStation owners are getting nothing from being forced into an all-digital world.

As PlayStation declares nobody wants physical discs anymore, Gen Z is helping fuel a 16% surge in US music CD sales

Kingdom Hearts 4 fans wished for rain and got a flood at this weekend's D23 event with a release window trailer, the announcement of a Disney Plus anime, and now, new details about the game's playable King Mickey sections that heavily echo Paper Mario. Oh, and we'll also get to control Donald Duck and Goofy for the first time ever in a mainline game.

People who exist in the venn diagram centre of Disney movie fanatic and JRPG connoisseur will be pleased to know that publisher Square Enix released an extended trailer last night, showing off more from Kingdom Heart 4's Coco world and beyond. Sora has a phone now. City guards who resemble Final Fantasy 15's are here for some reason. Mickey's trying to solve a mystery while exploring the pages of a magical book. And 13 games later, we can finally force Donald to heal, damn it, by playing as him and Goofy directly.

In a deep dive panel, Kingdom Hearts 4 co-director Tai Yasue elaborated on Mickey's sections a little further. We see the Disney icon transform into a 2D paper cut out and a hulking origami to move around, and Yasue says the developers employed a "sort of puzzle-based game design that's very different from Sora's adventure, and I think it's really refreshing and interesting."

"So in this world you get to play with Mickey and you jump into a book [that's] like a paper world," Yasue explains. "And so Mickey in this paper world recreates origami paper copies of himself, and you could create paper-thin Mickeys, giant Mickeys, a tiny Mickey, box Mickeys. When you're a paper thin Mickey, [you can] go through the cracks on the walls, for example. If you throw him he becomes a paper airplane [and] you fly around. And by utilizing these special abilities of these copies of origami Mickeys, you can solve puzzles."

Contorting yourself into different papery forms definitely reminds me of the type of puzzles present in Nintendo's Paper Mario games, but it oddly seems to fit Kingdom Hearts' whole vibe too - the first game was, at least partially, inspired by Super Mario 64, after all.

Kingdom Hearts 4 is set to come out late 2027 for PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S.

"Please let your imaginations run wild" - The Kingdom Hearts 4 team and Tetsuya Nomura are involved in the new Disney Plus anime

No Man's Sky had one of the most controversial game launches and high-profile comebacks of the decade - you likely don't need me to remind you - but lead developer Sean Murray says the weight of its botched launch didn't lift until about three years later.

"We used to have a little running joke in the studio," Murray says in an interview with GamesRadar+ to mark the space exploration sim's 10th anniversary. Hello Games' inside joke was that the team would put out one of their famously transformative updates, and each time, online coverage "would always [mention] the disastrous launch of No Man's Sky" first. "Like that would be their opener, and then talk about the update."

Rain or shine, Hello Games kept pumping out huge, free updates that added everything from new features (base-building, a proper narrative, multiplayer, etc) to general improvements to the game's graphics or procedural generation, say. (Although, Murray still has fun playing No Man's Sky's original version.)

"I think it was about three years in and we had one article, and it never mentioned the launch. It just talked about the update, and honestly, I felt like a weight had lifted," Murray continues. "Until that point, it felt like we were really trying to like, you know, update the game and maybe no one really wanted it or something like that."

Before then, Hello Games felt like it was "fighting this real uphill battle" and releasing updates to an audience that sometimes received them with hostility. Things only became much clearer when the studio realized "that there's a community who really loves the game."

"But there was two or three years where it was a battle, where every time you posted about the game, every reply was laced with some slightly mean things and stuff like that," he adds. "You felt like you were doing it almost against some people's wishes or something… But over time, that changes, and… you learn who your community is and who your player base is."

"There is probably some end" to No Man's Sky, says Hello Games boss, but he'll probably come back 10 years later for a surprise update anyway

CD Projekt Red developers almost painted themselves into a corner early on in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's production since the team were more focused on giving NPCs believable schedules instead of making sure they reacted to the player appropriately, which led to situations where mothers would chuck their babies on the floor at the first sign of trouble.

CD Projekt Red quest designer Philipp Weber described the earlier parts of the open-world game's development in the latest issue of Edge Magazine. "Because we were focused on the countryside, it was easier for players to become curious," he explains. "If a village only has eight houses, people will want to see if the people truly exist in the world or if it's just fakery. Lots of people nowadays are interested in those kinds of details, and it really came to haunt us."

Creating the framework for how NPCs should convincingly behave and react is now much easier for CDPR, but in and around 2012, that was a different story. "Today, if you said 'give me a Witcher 3 village that has eight houses', I could give you that in two hours," Weber says.

At the time, The Witcher 3 studio was "more focused on simulating their proper day and night cycle" and "when it came to actually reacting to the player there wasn't that much detail."

A big is example was NPC's fear reactions. In most open-world games, if you start swinging a sword in a docile village or shooting a gun in the air in Night City, civilians normally drop whatever mundane task they're carrying out and understandably run for their lives. The Witcher 3's villagers were programmed to do the same thing, but that also meant mothers in the game would let their newborns fend for themselves: "For a few weeks, women were just dropping their babies, left and right."

"Most NPCs in villages, we don't give them specific paths," Weber adds. "We give them spots of interest that are available and then they're the ones doing the pathfinding: 'Once I'm done with woodcutting, I'll choose another point, and maybe do carpentry in front of my house'. For the 50 sailors at Novigrad harbour, for example, we made 200 possible spots, so even if all 50 were active at the same time, they would have options."

The Witcher 3's Geralt actor wishes he could "sue every single AI platform" for stealing his voice

After the announcement of Marvel's Wolverine, I wondered how much had changed from Insomniac's excellent Spider-Man games. The best part of those previous titles was swinging down digital New York streets, exploring the open world at my own pace. My hands-on time with Marvel's Wolverine put those fears to rest. While the foundations built for those Spider-Man games are clearly present here, the action takes a bloody new form that helps Logan's story sing.

"Central to the Wolverine player fantasy is claw combat, in much the same way that web swinging is the central element of Spider-Man player fantasy," creative director Marcus Smith says. "So we developed a lot of systems for our combat that supply the fast, fluid, and lethal combat system that you would expect from Wolverine."

So Insomniac has traded a web-swinging open-world for a mostly linear roller coaster that takes Wolverine on a globe-trotting adventure. It's a game design decision, yes, but one built on the idea of being true to Logan's character – something the developers repeatedly emphasized to me in my interviews with them.

Not-so-friendly neighborhood

"We're telling a Logan story," senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed says when I ask about the decision to ditch the open world. "He's so different from Spider-Man in so many different ways. One of the ways is that Logan is not somebody who stays in the same spot for a while. He's not somebody who has a friendly neighborhood. He's not settling down in one location. He's a loner guy in a lot of ways."

"It took us a while to say 'traversal is not an important part of Wolverine as a character,'" director of technology Mike Fitzgerald says. "As we talk about those key things, it's about his claws, his healing factor, his rage and anger, his past and dealing with that. These are some of the core things. The game doesn't have to be everything and have everything. At the same time, you don't want to be frustrating or slow."

While Wolverine isn't about movement, I never found the game to be slow. In fact, in some open-ended areas, I was astounded by how fast I could move. There's a part early in the game where you have to take out some anti-mutant alarms spread out across a bunch of half-constructed buildings, and Wolverine's ability to get around, claw his way up walls, and leap between rooftops is plenty of fun in its own right.

"Some of it's subtle, though, in fun ways," Fitzgerald tells me. "Like, he can climb trees. I mean, he's a wolverine with claws that you go up. But if you walk out on the branch, the branch bends, because he's a very heavy guy. That's a whole system we had to build [...] But Spider-Man walks out on stuff and doesn't affect those things at all. He's very light and nimble. As soon as we put it so the branch was bending under the weight and the leaves were all moving the right way, it's like, 'Oh yeah, this feels like this character and not that other character,' even because of that subtle bit."

Lone wolverine

Even Logan's personality provided its own challenges to the team. As it turns out, it's a lot easier to depict somebody like Peter Parker as a character than it is to make Logan's brooding solitude compelling. "Wolverine's a very internal character," Fitzgerald explains. "Spider-Man is an external character. He quips. He talks. He says what he thinks. Logan [is] quiet, and needs to express with his face and his eyes, and interact with characters. Oftentimes, saying one thing but feeling another. How do we express that through the game? It took a lot of work and effort."

These sorts of considerations permeated the game's development from top to bottom, as the devs repeatedly emphasized in our interview. "For making Wolverine," Reiner-Reed says, "we were constantly asking the question, like, 'Okay, what would Logan do here?' Doesn't matter what another character would do. 'What would our guy do? How would he react to this situation?' I think development-wise, that was what we were always focused on."

It's paid off, at least in the two hours I've played so far. Building Wolverine on the foundation of Spider-Man makes sense, since there's a core of biff-boom-bang action at the heart of every superhero adventure. But Insomniac has smartly torn down and rethought just about every element in a way that makes sense for this new hero.

As we await the launch of Marvel's Wolverine, here are the other upcoming PS5 game you need to know about.

Ending a years-long wait between games, Kingdom Hearts 4 is set to come out in late 2027 and we finally have a glimpse at its first official Disney world: Pixar's Coco.

During yesterday's Disney Entertainment Showcase panel during D23, the company surprise dropped a brand new trailer for the long-awaited Square Enix JRPG. We see grown-up Sora defeating Heartless monsters in a gorgeous recreation of The Land of the Dead, with full-on makeup and a themed Keyblade to match. Take a look below.

The D23 trailer is surprisingly hefty with new looks at combat, team-up attacks, and our first proper in-game look at his short highness King Mickey. Donald Duck and Goofy are still in the same place we saw them last time, more or less - pestering Hades (the Hercules baddie) in an effort to find Sora, who seems to be relegated to his own land of the dead in the more modern city of Quadratum.

And then there's the kicker at the end: coming "late 2027" to PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S. Eight years since the last mainline game and five years after Kingdom Hearts 4's reveal. Phew.

Should the multiversal Disney romp stick to the release window, it'll be a huge year for publisher Square Enix with Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, Final Fantasy 14 Evercold, and, fingers crossed, this.

A Kingdom Hearts 4 storefront page is also now available on every platform the game is, in case you wanted to wishlist it. New details are light but we do have a brief blurb about the game's combat, per Steam: "The dynamic, fast-paced battle system allows you to effortlessly combine attacks and magic, as well as build combos with a brand-new battle feature. Change the Keyblade Sora wields to unleash unique attacks, matching the flow of battle to your own strategies and play style."

Kingdom Hearts anime series in the works at Disney Plus

It's easy to see why there's The Witcher 3 DNA in Rebel Wolves' Vampire RPG, The Blood of Dawnwalker. After all, the two games share a director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, not to mention a number of principal developers who previously worked at CD Projekt Red. Environmental artist Adap Payet has said Anne Rice's formative novel Interview with the Vampire was another inspiration, and again, that's no surprise given its influence on the genre. Possibly the last game in the world I expected to hear have any relation to Blood of Dawnwalker is Guitar Hero, but according to Tomaszkiweicz himself, there's a distinct parallel between your finger movements on a guitar peripheral and Dawnwalker's optional directional combat.

"[The parry system is a bit like Guitar Hero] where at first you cannot hit the right button and later you're playing these really difficult songs," Tomaszkiweicz tells Edge Magazine for issue #427.

Guitar Hero actually does sound like a weirdly accurate analog for Blood of Dawnwalker's direction-based combat, which flashes on-screen markers on screen that you have to match with correlated thumbstick movements at the right time. That'll ensure you block attacks without spending stamina, and if you time it perfectly, you'll parry the attack too. This is totally optional, and if you want you can turn off the system's UI and just observe your enemy's movements to know how to counter attacks, but Tomaszkiweicz is confident that you'll love how it works.

"When you start to get used to the directional combat, it's so cool that we believe most people will play this way," he says.

Keeping 'em honest, this parrying system doesn't sound terribly unique from directional inputs required in games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Chivalry, and For Honor. It sounds like the key difference here is that the game explicitly signals the exact direction you're supposed to flick the thumbstick, provided you have that option toggled on. That said, Blood of Dawnwalker's combat seems a lost more fast-paced and chaotic than those games, which could make the on-screen markers crucial for people like me without super quick virtual reflexes. We'll find out on September 3 when Blood of Dawnwalker releases.

Blood of Dawnwalker dev says you can beat the final boss right after the prologue, but it "will be a feat worthy of legends"

Palworld publishing lead John "Bucky" Buckley should've known better when he asked his Twitter followers for suggestions on new content following the game's 1.0 release last month. Specifically, he should've known they would all lay out their wildest hopes and dreams on virtual paper instead of submitting reasonable requests, and now he's paying the price.

On Thursday, Buckley took to Twitter to thank players for a successful Palworld 1.0 launch, which is a lovely gesture. But where he went wrong was teasing future content and asking players for "suggestions" as the devs get back to work on whatever's next for the game.

"Shot myself in the foot here, 1.7k comments later," reads a follow-up tweet from Buckley sent out the next day. "Things like 'add a new continent', 'add 20 more levels' and similarly massive undertakings are not really what we want to do with v1.1.

"Open to ideas but, we're not planning to spend a year making a massive update for 1.1."

For those wondering about the scope of feedback Buckley and Pocketpair are requesting, I'll point you to a recent Palworld patch that made building bases over water a lot easier and let you earn World Tree Holy Water through expeditions rather than just farming. That's probably a much more realistic idea of the types of additions Pocketpair is planning for 1.1. If and when something like a Palworld 2.0 comes out, that's when you'll see much bigger adds like new continents and levels.

In the meantime, it's not unreasonable to hold out hope for a new Palworld collab, although Buckley himself recently made it very clear just how selective Pocketpair is about who is collaborates with.

Palworld TCG devs "sincerely apologize" as unprecedented demand and scalpers make enjoying the Pokemon rival next to impossible

The scariest noises in Hell Let Loose: Vietnam are the quietest. The dry-rattle of gunfire is too constant, and helicopters' telltale thwup-thwup gives plenty of warning before dropping fresh troops. Maps are big, so sound is one of the best tools for gauging the flow and geography of a match. When the fighting isn't as loud – if you're separated from the capture point or creeping through the jungle behind enemy lines – rustling leaves and snapping twigs may as well be fireworks.

My reaction speeds are slow, so when that crunch is a half-second warning, I'm often the first to die. But that's a fair price to pay for atmosphere. The best FPS games don't underestimate immersion: Marathon sparked my imagination earlier this year, and now Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is doing the same; pairing Battlefield-style 50v50 matches with gritty realism and more emphasis on teamwork.

"From day one, we wanted to be immersive and intense," says game director Paul 'Rushy' Rustchynksy. "We're trying to capture moments of 'If you put yourself in the boots of this conflict, how would you feel?' You would feel like you're exposed at all times, at any moment you could die."

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam doesn't hone in on the human cost of the Vietnam War, as many games and films have done before. Instead, its source material funnels directly into how the game is experienced as a shooter. "Stress can really affect how you play. It's not the sort of thing where you're running around on maps at 20 miles an hour, dashing between gaps," Rustchynksy explains. "You're thinking about every move you make. You're leaning around corners. You're talking to your squadmates about where [enemy] infantry are, and you're never running headfirst into things."

"Well… Maybe some players do. Initially."

(Don't) run through the jungle

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam's setting creates a different dynamic to Hell Let Loose. More weapons are fully-automatic, sightlines are shorter, and factions have unique tactics to reflect their real-world counterparts. The North Vietnamese Army can dig tunnels to cross areas undetected, while the US Armed Forces use helicopters for similar utility.

"The pacing of the game is generally faster because there's more modes of transport," says Rustchynksy, "and [there's] generally much more close-quarters combat this time around, whereas World War 2 was much further away."

But the "heart" of Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, Rustchynsky argues, is its asymmetric design. I agree: having two functionally unique factions brings out the character of both sides, whether it's pulling off the perfect flank as the NVA or being flown over the jungle and dropped into the frontline in a U.S. chopper. It's part of a broader tactical layer (each team is led by a commander, who gives orders through squad leaders) and feeling like a small cog in the machine lends itself well to immersion.

At times, merely being part of something bigger is enough to get the heart racing. I recently played as a crewman, operating an unwieldy tank turret while my friend managed the armor's gears to drive us to the frontline and support infantry. We won, and it was even sweeter because I could point exactly to how our contributions helped. Sometimes those moments are more dramatic: in the final throes of that match I fired a frag round into a descending helicopter's cockpit, taking out a full flight of troops who would have reinforced the capture point's defenders. The game after, I was a sniper separated from my spotter, and spent 15 minutes picking off marching troops – at one point lying in a bush to hide from a passing tank – before we could link up in friendly territory.

"It's these little things that really stand out," says Rustchynksy, speaking to my favorite part of the game: the stories you get from playing. "It's not something you can overly engineer. It's just making sure that the tools and things we allow the player to do inside the game [create a] free-form, sandbox-like experience [...] Where these emergent moments can happen."

"It's also really rewarding to see when some of the strategic plans come together," agrees Sam Warren, development director on Hell Let Loose: Vietnam. "Bits like that are magic."

The original Hell Let Loose brought in many players from beyond the usual military-sim crowd, and in the years since, the likes of Arc Raiders and Marathon have pushed punishing shooter mechanics to the mainstream. There's more interest in traditionally 'hardcore' experiences, especially as many players jump in and find there's a lot more to the experience than shaky aim and quick deaths.

Put simply: more people are trying games they aren't immediately good at. I ask Rustchynksy whether that's good for Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, and while he believes it is, he seems more enthused by the prospect of generally harder games. "I think this is a fantastic trend in general, because if you take away too much friction from games, it removes so much of the enjoyment. You need that little bit of friction so that when something satisfying happens, it feels really good. And also typically with games that have a bit of friction, the ceiling for mastery is often a lot higher."

In some ways, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is harder than conventional multiplayer shooters. A hidden sniper or mortar team can send you back to HQ without ever being seen, and it takes confidence to jump into a random squad and follow orders. But when you take a step back, its chewier features are in service to an immersive and more deliberate experience, rather than simply making a tough shooter. Wits and vigilance pay off more than being quicker on the trigger – though on many occasions I've wished I was faster – and if you slow down to meet Hell Let Loose: Vietnam at its own cautious pace, you'll find there's oceans more to discuss beyond difficulty.

We've ranked the best FPS games to play in 2026 - how many have you cleared?

GTA 5 roleplay server nopixel is nearly ready to show off its big GTA Online refresh, nopixel V, which was made in collaboration with Rockstar.

Nopixel creator Koil announced on August 13 in the server's official Discord, "Surprise! We are excited to show you what we've been working on, the hours poured into this project, and the journey that's about to start."

The lead developer shares that nopixel V's Closed Beta period begins for an exclusive group of players on September 8, so you'll soon have another distraction from the slow crescendo of GTA 6 paranoia as its November 19 launch date approaches.

Well… if you're eligible. Nopixel currently has a list of nearly 450 content creators and normal people with roleplay characters invited to nopixel V, which Koil calls "a full rebuild" in his Discord message. The creator goes on to explain nopixel V's refreshed "allowlist," in which "invites to nopixel V will roll out in phases. While the first phase of invites is nearly complete, it's just the first group. If you haven't received an invite yet, you haven't been ruled out."

"Over time, access will expand, including more phases of invites," Koil assures aspiring roleplayers. Previous versions of nopixel have stirred up ill will for charging server applicants for priority boosts, costing up to $500 for only 15 days of potential access, and offering extra roleplay character slots for a fee.

Koil doesn't mention the state of paid priority boosts in nopixel V, but it seems at least some things about nopixel's allow list are changing to be more inclusive. Koil says, "We're using this moment as a genuine reset and a fresh start for the nopixel whitelist. And for everyone on nopixel Public and nopixel 4.0, nothing changes. Both servers will remain active and supported. Everyone has a chance at a path in."

Meanwhile, Rockstar might be preparing a bigger renovation of GTA Online, or its online services in general. It acquired the mod team behind FiveM – the GTA 5 multiplayer mod that powers nopixel – back in 2023, and then it elected to collaborate on nopixel V after years of the server being just a fan project. Plus, nopixel V is coming to the proprietary Rockstar Games Launcher, which I think further indicates Rockstar wants you to think of its most popular mods as extensions of The Official Brand, rather than as unconfined experiments. It's trying to claim ownership over the online aspect of its own games.

I don't know whether that impulse comes from a need to stomp out fan-made competition, or as an easy way to invest in the longterm growth of the GTA brand outside of the firecracker release that will be GTA 6. Realistically, it's both, and simply by making me report the verifiable fact that nopixel V is "made alongside Rockstar," it's working.

With Grand Theft Auto 6 on the way, it's down to the community to bring back the best (and stupidest) thing about GTA Online.

A short while back, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed that the Ultimate Edition of GTA 6 has sold more copies (despite the $100 price tag and all) than the cheaper version… and boy, has it.

Now, we know exactly how much, thanks to new reports from digital intelligence firm Sensor Tower (as per GamesIndustry.biz).

Apparently, a whopping 89% of pre-orders so far have been for the Ultimate Edition rather than the Standard Edition, which costs $80 – $20 less. The percentages are comparable across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, too: 88.5% on the former and 90% on the latter.

Those… are quite big figures, all things considered – even when you take into account what Zelnick said, that it "might be a reflection of the fact that the most avid consumers are the ones who are pre-ordering."

Karl Kontus, senior vice president and general manager of video game insights at Sensor Tower, finds it surprising, too, even though special editions "always tend to perform well during the preorder period."

According to Kontus, he's "never seen a 90% premium share before." He has seen 50% – but "typical premium shares for games tend to be at around 10–20%." While he sees the figure dropping over time for GTA 6, "it's likely it'll stay significantly above the industry standard" still.

Rockstar's long-awaited game is "very hard to forecast," though, "given it lives in a league of its own." That, it very much so does. "There is no benchmark for how this game will perform from here," as Kontus concludes.

But why is the Ultimate Edition doing so well now? There is, of course, the very reason that Zelnick gave – but Kontus also proposes another very simple one: the fact that the difference between $100 and $80 isn't all that much, considering all of the digital goodies you get if you opt for the pricier version of GTA 6… and, yeah, I suppose that makes sense.

I'm curious to see how GTA 6 does come its November 19 release, personally – and also to find out whether the split between the Ultimate Edition and Standard Edition's popularity stays the same or balances out by quite a bit.

GTA 6 fans don't "go around buying nerdy niche" games, indie says, so fellow devs don't really need to get out of Rockstar's way

While I usually don't like to date reviews too much, I'd be hard-pressed not to mention that we're experiencing a time when just about every aspect of gaming is getting more expensive. Consoles continue to get price hikes, and finding SSDs and storage for a reasonable amount of cash is almost unheard of, so it makes sense that anyone after one of the best gaming headsets may not want to spend a fortune. If that sounds like a familiar scenario, then the Corsair HS35 V3 might be up your street.

The wireless version I've reviewed today is just $79.99 / £69.99, and provides more than enough to warrant its MSRP. You've got wired, Bluetooth, and 2.4GHz wireless support, compatibility with a range of platforms including the PC and PS5, and it's an absolute joy to have on the head. The pair doesn't do quite enough to knock my favorite sub-$100 pick out of my gaming accessory rotation, but it's easily become one of my new go-to budget recommendations to date.

Key specs

Design

This is the third iteration of the HS35 (if you didn't already surmise from the 'V3' tacked on to its name), and Corsair chose to model it more after the second release. I'm pretty glad they did, as I much prefer the pill-shaped earcups over what came before.

For this over-ear, closed pair, the exterior of each cup features the Corsair logo printed on a recessed and textured circular pad. It's a purely aesthetic choice, as the design isn't textured enough to form a good grip, but it looks pretty swell all things considered. But then again, I'm always pretty privy to the look of the brand's headsets - the Corsair Virtuoso Max wireless and its space-age metal look is still up there amongst my favorites in the brand's repertoire.

For this review, I was provided with the White version, but the pair is also available in Carbon black, and there's a cheaper £39.99 / $49.99 wired version available in the same two-color combos. The white version contrasts nicely with the grey soft fabric ear pads and matching floating headband. When it comes to color, that's pretty much all she wrote, as there's no RGB lighting to be found on this new Corsair release.

Features

As far as features go, the HS35 V3 keeps things pretty simple. There are 50mm neodymium audio drivers powering these cups, with a sound that can be personalized with Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio (via the PC Dolby Atmos app). There's no iCue connectivity here, which is ideal for those who aren't big fans of Corsair's proprietary software and want to keep software bloat to a minimum.

Besides the sound, Corsair has included a detachable omnidirectional microphone, up to 30 hours of battery life, and Tri-mode connectivity. The cups come packaged with a USB-C cable for charging and wired connectivity, along with a two-part wireless dongle. The dongle is a USB-A adapter and USB-C port in one, and the USB-C part neatly attaches to the side to form one of the handiest and most compact wireless transmitters I've ever used. And trust me, I've used a lot.

Performance

Before I started testing, I made sure to toggle off any 'Audio Enhancements' via Windows 11's sound settings. By default, these can render the Dolby Atmos app entirely useless. If you just bought the HS35 V3, or have any other headsets that rely on Dolby Atmos, I highly recommend you check that you haven't got any silly Windows settings interfering with your personalization. Ah, the joys of Windows.

The existence of the Dolby Atmos app is why I chose to start with PC testing; that and the fact that it was incredibly handy for GamesRadar+ purposes. Its plug-and-play attitude made it my go-to choice when chatting to the rest of the hardware team about what we were getting up to, and it's likely going to make appearances in many more Google Team meetings to come. For gaming, it doesn't provide a sound mighty enough to knock the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Omni off my desk, but it was still pretty marvelous.

By default, there's a lot of power going on. The HS35 V3 can get plenty loud, and it was a relief after testing the unfathomably quiet Glorious GHS Wireless InfinitePlay. From the get-go, there's a pretty evenly levelled sound to low, mid, and high frequencies too. The Counter-Strike 2 title screen jingle sounded pretty fantastic for one, though it did feel like it was missing that oomph I always strive for when it comes to headsets or headphones of any calibre. Equipping the 'Warm' Game setting in Dolby Atmos helped rectify that pretty fast, and it even made bullets feel just that much more impactful.

Luckily for me, a lot of those were being fired into the enemy and not at me, as the spatial audio tech helped me flank down folk pretty fast. Additionally, I made sure to load up Marvel Rivals on Steam to see how it meshed with the Corsair cups. Ensuring the 'Warm' setting was on to boost the bass and lower frequencies equally helped even out the soundscape with NetEase Games' hero shooter. When it came to playing the PS5 version of the game, I did noticeably miss its more rounded-off sound, particularly as it helped the backing music and sound effects of my pulsating Invisible Woman attacks mesh together in a more cohesive way.

That's not to say the HS35 V3 sounded bad with its default audio on the Sony console. It was just audibly missing that extra creamy sound, which, when you factor in that Dolby Atmos is only available on PC platforms, leads me to recommend it for PC players above all else. I ended up using the cups for music the most out of everything, as its super lightweight 250g form factor and easy setup made it easy to pop on and off. Any time I wanted to have a little alt-rock disco to myself at my desk while listening to Garbage's self-titled 1995 album, or head-bop to the pop, bassy stylings of Troye Sivan's 'One Of Your Girls', the HS35 V3 got the job done. Of course, having Dolby Atmos's app in my corner helped just as much as it did for gaming.

I made sure to toggle on the 'Warm' setting under the 'Music' subheading to crank up the bass, and that made them a dream for pretty much all of my most liked tracks on Spotify. Regrettably, I didn't have the app at my disposal for listening to music on the go, so I left these at home. But I've been seriously considering swapping out my SteelSeries Arctis Game Buds for this headset for my weekend music-filled train journeys regardless.

Of course, if I were, I'd have to make sure to leave the microphone at home. Thankfully, that's an easy feat as it's detachable, which is how I personally like my microphones to be. I also like them to be easily adjustable, and Corsair has that down pat, as the boom arm is made from a bendy metal arm, which actually stays in place. There's nothing more infuriating than a headset microphone that flails around in your peripheral vision.

As you can hear from the sample above, the microphone in question sounds pretty great. It was louder than I had hoped, so you may want to tweak your audio settings before joining in on a game of Big Walk, or, in my case, Marvel Rivals, with your mates. However, just like the Corsair Void Wireless V2 review, I was yet again impressed by the brand's mic quality.

Should you buy the Corsair HS35 V3 wireless gaming headset?

The Corsair HS25 V3 is not the most revolutionary new headset, but it's a less-than-$100 pair that's super comfortable, looks great, sounds pretty fabulous, and just does the job. If you're specifically looking at options below that price mark, it's definitely one I'd recommend picking up, particularly if you're a PC die-hard and aren't too fussed about its minimal EQ options.

Is it my favorite sub-$100 option out there? Technically no, if you can find the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless on sale. The 3 Wireless retails for $109.99, but is prone to discounts that mark its price down to below that sweet $100 spot. Much like the HS35 V3, it's a no-fuss pair that's compatible with the PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and more, but it has the benefit of having SteelSeries' app to back it up.

With no iCue support and the Dolby Atmos app on Windows being your only source of audio customization, console players are not going to be able to take full advantage of the HS35 V3. Meanwhile, you can use the SteelSeries phone app to tailor the Arctis Nova 3 Wireless's sound to your liking and select from hundreds of game audio presets. That's why it remains my top value headset pick, but should you not dig SteelSeries' vibes, Corsair's HS35 V3 is a valid alternative.

Plus, the built-in "headset connected" voice is one of the nicest I've heard on a piece of tech, if you should care about those things.

How I tested the Corsair HS35 V3 wireless gaming headset

To get the full lay of the land of what the Corsair HS35 V3 had to offer, I used the headset for a little over two weeks. Whether I was chatting to co-workers in meetings, catching up with friends on Discord, or playing on my PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2, the headset was with me. On PC, this meant using it get good at Counter-Strike 2, Marvel Rivals, and Dispatch. Meanwhile, on the PS5, I used the pair to see how it compared with the console version of Marvel Rivals, Doom Eternal, and Lego Batman Legacy of The Dark Knight.

When it came to the Switch 2, I tested it alongside the usual testing games of choice, from Mario Kart World to Donkey Kong Bananza, as well as Splatoon Raiders and Final Fantasy 14. When not gaming, I turned up the volume and blasted out bands like Garage, Biffy Clyro, and Boards of Canada on Spotify. I also used the headset to catch up on new additions to Netflix, including the documentary A Toxic Love Story. For more information on how we test gaming headsets, check out the full GamesRadar+ Hardware Policy.

Check out our best PS5 headset, best PC headset for gaming, and best Nintendo Switch headset guides to see how we rank the Corsair HS35 V3 against the best cups on the market today.

Somehow, it's been ten years since No Man's Sky launched. 2016 was certainly a simpler time, and looking back on the space exploration sim, Hello Games managing director Sean Murray has some sage words for his younger self.

"I would tell that guy, don't do all the press and stuff like that that you're doing," he tells GamesRadar+. "Guess what? You never wanted to do press and be a sort of frontman. You don't enjoy it, you won't enjoy it, and you also won't be very good at it."

He points out this is going back further than 12 years, to 2014, when the press for No Man's Sky started to ramp up. The game was a regular at showcases and trade shows, usually with Murray in tow, who did plenty of interviews across print, online, and television.

Hello Games enjoyed the double-edged sword of producing a game that captured people's imaginations, and then having to go out and publicly represent it. Promotion can be exhausting, and Murray believes he was always better served at his desk.

"Just avoid that whole thing and stick to just making games and coding," he says. Coming back to the present, he points out that Hello Games has become a much more mysterious entity. Very little is actually known about upcoming release Light No Fire, and that's a result of lessons learned from No Man's Sky

"We've lived that over the ten years since, right? That has been a big change in my life, right? Where I haven't chatted to any press in like four, four or five years or something," he says. "The most communication we do now is the occasional emoji or whatever, and that suits me just fine. I'm much better at just sticking to development.

Don't expect those vague teases to end any time soon. To be fair, when your game is the second most-wishlisted on Steam, you can take a chill pill.

"There is probably some end" to No Man's Sky, says Hello Games boss, but he'll probably come back 10 years later for a surprise update anyway

In the leadup to GTA 6, I've got just one person on my mind: Lucia, the film noir protagonist. Anyone who has even casually played Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series will recognize the debt it owes to Hollywood. From Vice City's nods to Scarface, to the '90s urban crime dramas echoed in San Andreas and numerous Back to the Future references in GTA 5, the games' magnetic style has always felt cinematic.

The series' women also belong to a particular big‑screen lineage shaped by film noir: mysterious, morally grey, and narratively intriguing, embracing the qualities that made classic movie stars immortal. Yet they also inherit the genre's limitations, often functioning as accessories in male‑focused stories with little agency of their own.

As Lucia Caminos becomes the first substantial female lead in a main GTA instalment, the historic parallels between celluloid and console offer clues to where her journey might lead.

Light, camera, action

Mid‑20th‑century noir specialized in categorizing women. There's the femme fatale, a seductive catalyst who lures men into danger; the hustler living on the fringes whose autonomy was framed as threatening; and the good girl who represents a path out of the shadows.

These archetypes produced icons — the lethal calculation of Double Indemnity's Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth's charismatic Gilda, and Lauren Bacall's graceful edge in The Big Sleep — but they were also bound by the era's constraints. Made largely by men and shaped by strict censorship, noir demanded that female transgression be punished, limiting how complex these characters could truly become. Historically, noir women operate on the sidelines, and GTA has been no exception.

The series' 3D titles absorbed noir's gender patterns wholesale. GTA 3 frames Misty and Maria as stylish side characters: seductive silhouettes or kidnapped catalysts who motivate Claude without shaping the plot themselves.

Vice City exaggerates the femme fatale through Mercedes, a glamorous presence reminiscent of Kathleen Turner in 1981's Body Heat, albeit with less control. San Andreas' date choices offer a variety of different women, each of whom symbolise CJ's choices rather than drive their own arcs. They weren't bad by any means – these are characters who can be funny, thrilling, and ultimately memorable – GTA 3's Misty, thought to be named after the 1971 Clint Eastwood neo-noir Play Misty for Me, became an icon of the game through its advertising. However, as the series grew in scale, these character boundaries became more obvious.

The HD era unlocked the true potential of the GTA formula: vast cities buzzing with businesses, characters, and missions all ready to explore. There were never more possibilities for the player, but the women in the lives of the playable characters were slower to evolve. GTA 4's Mallorie and Kate show glimpses of depth and drive the plot forward significantly, but are ultimately there as foils or moral leverage for Niko. The fifth instalment has a significantly larger cast, but still fits in those broader archetypes.

Amanda and Tanisha are variations on the good girl, while Tracey's fame-hungry exploits are the catalyst for Michael's interventions. There was more personality, but still, these characters were part of the greater architecture rather than standing out on their own.

Not-so shaken or stirred

It's here that it becomes clear that the role of women in noir hasn't evolved as much in the games as it has in its cinematic inspiration. Femme fatales, hustlers, and good girl archetypes served the earlier games well, as they were immediately identifiable in games where graphical limitations meant broader storytelling beats. In a sense, they were historically accurate, given cinema's own issue with female characters. However, there have been evolutions on the big screen that could inspire the route ahead.

In recent decades, the femme fatale in particular has evolved – Kill Bill's blood-spattered bride needed no male assistance in taking out her revenge, while in the world of superhero movies you could argue Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow and the various depictions of Selina Kyle aka Catwoman showed female characters who assisted the male lead while also have backstories and motivations of their own. The mystery, seduction, and strength of female noir characters doesn't preclude depth and independence, which is what makes Lucia's potential so exciting.

As a co‑protagonist, she can retain the charisma of crime movie heroines, but become a driving force for the narrative in a way no female character has done before in the series. The Florida setting evokes neo-noir hits like Out of Sight, Spring Breakers, and Zola, signalling a shift toward crime stories where women possess agency, humour, and substance. Lucia's presence forces Rockstar to rethink its long‑standing male perspective, opening space for a female character who isn't defined by how she destabilises men but by how she influences her own journey.

Empowered doesn't mean virtuous – this is still GTA. Lucia can be as messy, complex, and morally layered as her predecessors, showing female ambition that isn't punished and a character intriguing enough for players of every background. The walls of movie lovers the world over are adorned with posters of women who broke the mould and changed the way we saw things. If GTA 6 seeks to confirm itself as the world's biggest media franchise, offering a similar icon could be part of that masterplan.

GTA 6 fans don't "go around buying nerdy niche" games, indie says, so fellow devs don't really need to get out of Rockstar's way

Almost every video game under the sun is running away from GTA 6's November release date, but indie developer Tomas Sala doesn't think that should necessarily be the case because the main audience for GTA 6 probably isn't rushing to buy the latest buzzy visual novel or management sim about running a movie rental store, let's say.

The acclaimed developer behind aerial combat sim The Falconeer and its city-building sandbox spin-off Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is gearing up to release another game in the gorgeous series: ShipShaper, a game about designing your own ships that's hitting early access on September 2.

Speaking to GamesIndustry, Sala explains that when it came time to settle on a launch window for ShipShaper, he "saw all this stress about, 'Oh my God, GTA [6] is coming, you have to pack it before September.'" But despite squeezing into the crowd of new games seeking refuge from Rockstar Games' blockbuster, Sala doesn't think it was strictly necessary.

"I don't see why people are scared of it," he tells the outlet. "It [GTA] has its own f***ing audience that doesn't go around buying nerdy niche sailing games or nerdy puzzle games or tiny story-driven emotional deckbuilders. They just want to play GTA."

Sala notes that purchasing habits don't support developers' fears that everything will be buried by GTA since most players don't actually buy games all that often, as odd as that might sound.

As GamesIndustry notes, a 2025 Circana survey found that only 4% of US players buy a game more than once a month, and 33% of the US gaming audience buys a game less than once a year: "I'm pretty sure that's not the GTA audience." Some of the biggest games on PS5, Xbox, and Steam are often ones that came out years ago, too.

Another big reason why GTA 6 is being treated like an incoming meteor is because it'll inevitably suck up a lot of air in the room - social media algorithms and the front page of websites will surely be full of GTA 6 stories come launch - but Sala also doesn't see that as a problem for most indie games that struggle to get coverage with or without a GTA on the horizon.

But successful indies can break out without influencers or traditional media "because they find their audience." The 'nerdy niche' crowd will find their 'nerdy niche' games, regardless. "We can talk about the industry as if it's in a downturn – and for many people it is – but if you look at what gets made and put out, it's a golden age," he says.

Take-Two boss says GTA 6's $100 Ultimate Edition is outselling its cheaper alternative thanks to "avid consumers."

My Baldur's Gate 3 no weapons challenge is well and truly underway. Having finally inched my way into Act 2, things are starting to get spicy – and oh boy, am I suffering.

If you're new to the RPG Club, welcome. You might want to start with my first entry in this four-part series if this is your first time joining us. For returning adventurers, you'll know the score. I'm going back through one of my favorite games of all time and applying a strict new set of rules: no weapons, ever. The consequences of this restriction are starting to rear their ugly heads in the most unexpected ways – including impacting the areas I choose to explore versus ignoring entirely.

In a regular playthrough, my path of choice to the Shadow-cursed Lands would take me through the Underdark. There are a few cool tools to pick up in the gloomy depths, from sussur bark needed to craft a masterwork weapon to the Phalar Aluve longsword. But weaponry is the farthest thing from my mind this time around.

Quest Log

Monastic crimes in hands-free times

Instead of powerful blades, glaives, and crossbows, I'm opting for scrolls, grease, and tavern brawling. Which means I've made the executive decision to skip the Underdark completely and take the mountain pass shortcut into Act 2, even though it means losing out on more opportunities to level-up.

Since my last post, I've successfully cleared Act 1. The goblin camp was a doozy (dropped Minthara down a hole with a trusty firebolt, poisoned the goblins' beer supply) and I made my way to Rosymorn Trail shortly after. There, I killed Lady Esther for The Graceful Cloth monk robes, successfully broke the zaith'isk at Crèche Y'llek, and managed to slip out of the monastery without succumbing to the siren song of the Blood of Lathander mace lurking beneath it.

I know, I know. It feels close to sacrilege to skip one of the coolest dungeons in the game – if not the coolest. But this is just one of many moments that is rendered completely superfluous when weapons are out of the question.

Instead, I'm all about speed and efficiency. I hit Level 5 right as my party heads up the Mountain Pass toward the Shadow-cursed Lands, and I already know what to expect. Two Death Shepherds will be roaming ahead, alongside a handful of ghast minions, so I have Shadowheart with me to take Spirit Guardians out for a spin. I'm already regretting not doubling back to grab the Luminous Armor from the Selunite temple beneath the goblin camp, but truthfully, I hadn't trusted myself to be able to turn back once making it that far – the entrance to the Underdark is close by after all.

Luckily, a cleric's spells are incredibly powerful with or without that one piece of kit. Spirit Guardians is the kind of spell I refuse to do without in Baldur's Gate 3. Who needs a weapon when I can just have Shadowheart dash into the battlefield while the undead charge dumbly into her personal space, bursting into holy flames one by one? Between being well-prepared with Shadowheart at the ready and pelting any stragglers with Fireball, I manage to decimate these Level 6 nemeses with relative ease.

It reminds me just how simple it is to get to Act 2 when you skip the Underdark and all its fascinating distractions, opting instead for a practical approach I'd usually shy away from.

Dark and dangerous

Contrary to many, Act 2 is my favorite part of Baldur's Gate 3. I love the menacing darkness of The Shadow-cursed Lands, especially when I have a cleric in tow. However, my challenge difficulty goes up quite a few notches very quickly.

Well, the FOMO side of it does. Reaching Last Light Inn and seeing all of Quartermaster Tali's delightful swords and axes on display is just the beginning – Act 2 is going to be hard without the reliable tools I'd ordinarily depend upon.

I regretfully sell a powerful helmet found in the Mason's Guild basement since it buffs weapon attacks I don't have access to. I can't buy a piece of Barbarian armor for Karlach at Moonrise Towers since its main perk is buffing melee weapon damage, so I'm glad I took time to check the tooltip before purchasing. I even hesitate for a moment before letting Shadowheart cut herself with a dagger in the secret Sharran sanctuary, but since she never actually equips it in more than a cutscene, I let it slide.

While there are some things I am missing by skipping the Underdark, there are plenty of workarounds. I take extra care to be thorough in Act 2, seeking out opportunities I'd usually skim past in order to speed things up. The one that stands out the most in the Selunite Resistance.

For the first time ever, I discovered Selunite outposts dotted across the map, from the basement of the Last Light to a forgotten chest nearby those pesky Meazels that ambush you outside the bridge towards the Towers. This side quest leads me to find the Luminous Gauntlets and Coruscation Ring, each applying stacks of damage output-reducing Radiating Orb to all enemies hit by radiant spells.

It immediately makes all the fights against shadow-cursed enemies much snappier – especially the one against Flaming Fist Marcus, where I successfully protect Isobel thanks to the Turn Undead spell, Guiding Bolt, and Karlach throwing the traitor at his Winged Horror minions.

Later, I manage to find the Ring of Spiteful Thunder to pair with the Gloves of Belligerent Skies, creating an excellent Reverberation build for my draconic lightning sorcerer. I've never been so specific in my build-crafting before, and now I don't even feel bad about missing the Boots of Stormy Clamour down in the Underdark.

Throwing down the gauntlet (of Shar)

The finish line is well in sight, folks – at least as far as finishing up in the Shadow-cursed lands. I didn't expect a no weapons run to change up my approach to the story path itself, but taking stock of my journey so far, it's affected far more than just combat encounters.

While I'm feeling good about my choice to take the Mountain Pass to Act 2, I know that the journey to Baldur's Gate itself will be much more straightforward. I don't have to choose my path as wisely this time (there's just the one after all), but I've learned some valuable lessons about choosing my side quests and party makeup more carefully.

I try to keep to the usual structure of balancing spellcasters with melee fighters, and I'm delighted to report that watching Karlach and Lae'zel throw Shadow-cursed Harpers at one another is just as effective as hitting them with a giant hammer. I do, however, find myself wanting to respec my party yet again from time to time, though I've only done so once in Act 2 so far, as per my ruleset.

Gale's our new Necromancer, for no other reason than I was finding very little use for his talents when a sorcerer is so powerful, and as I inch toward the RPG's biggest maps, I'm planning some fairly sweeping respecs for my team very soon. But we'll save that for next time, after my battle against Ketheric.

A good soulslike hits like no other game. From Hollow Knight to Lies of P, the combination of demanding combat and a haunting-yet-gorgeous game world is a winning formula.

But sometimes a game can struggle to find the balance, leaving me masochistically forging on while not quite having fun, like 2025's Hollow Knight Silksong. Lucky for me, then, that Beast of Reincarnation has taken another approach to deliver an action-RPG that challenges without feeling cruel.

(Game) Freak off a leash

As a fan of Pokémon since playing Yellow as a child, I've lamented Game Freak's decline in recent years. Sure it still sells plenty of games, but as someone who hasn't bought Legends: Z-A or Pokopia due to being disappointed by Shield and Violet, I've long-believed the developer could impress again by adding more RPG depth, straying from its usual story beats, and escaping the confines of Nintendo hardware. Beast of Reincarnation delivers precisely that.

Playing on PS5, the lush foliage within Beast of Reincarnation is a far cry from the limited pixels of Pokémon Legends: Arceus - the last Game Freak title I really enjoyed. Large vine-entangled animals suffering from Blight roam the environment, serving up a realistic aesthetic paired with a sprinkling of fantasy, almost as if to demonstrate an alternate reality where the Nintendo's series embraced higher-fidelity graphics. This thought is quickly dashed when I plunge my sword clean into the back of a deer-like creature with lurid red eyes, before clashing with robots in the area.

These mechanical, humanoid enemies feel the most soulslike of all the foes within Beast of Reincarnation. They amble towards you with the grace of Dark Souls' skeletons, similarly pathetic when one-on-one, but a hazard in a pack. Some of them are larger and more capable in a fight, but patience will see you triumph, be it by parrying and dodging as required, or relying on a ranged weapon.

The biggest skill checks are the game's bosses. Often presented as enormous monsters infected by Blight - a corrupting growth that's infecting the world - these encounters can feel borderline Monster Hunter at times, given the immense scale of your opponents and the fact you've got your trusty dog sidekick fighting by your side. Similarly, you can draw parallels to Elden Ring's Elden Beast, or Dark Souls 3's Midra, with the arenas being large, relatively simple spaces designed purely to accommodate the boss housed within, although Beast of Reincarnation's fights feel more engaging and satisfying than the two FromSoftware critters.

Nothing to lose

The soulslikes comparisons are plentiful in Beast of Reincarnation, from its enemy types to the bonfire-esque rest points that let you upgrade your character and refill your healing items. But the key distinction is how little you lose when a fight goes against you.

From progenitor Demon's Souls to spiritual cousin Lies of P, soulslikes usually equate losing a battle with losing your currency, be it souls, ergo or whatever the game uses as a volatile currency. It's an accepted feature of the format to lose more than the encounter offers, but Beast of Reincarnation bucks the trend by letting you keep your wallet's inventory intact. Instead, you wake up with your canine companion at the last checkpoint you activated.

This change is huge for Beast of Reincarnation, as it allows the player to continuously explore and fight without any meaningful downside. No more worry of recovering your souls – just excitement of knowing you can charge right back into the fray.

Naturally you won't want to keep losing fights - at least I don't, unless it's the best boss in Silksong - but if the only drawback to trying is to try again, as you were, then the fear is gone. All that remains is a game to be played, and that's precisely what I come to Game Freak for in the first place.

As for what prompted this defiant stand against the soulslike structure, I honestly can't say. Maybe the developer learned from all the players who resent their dropped money after losing Pokémon battles? Or maybe it simply felt off in the world of Beast of Reincarnation? All I know is this: I don't want to turn Beast of Reincarnation off when I lose.

Check out these games like Elden Ring for a soulslike slaughterfest in another fantasy realm.

Fans of Middle-earth got a lovely surprise this week when The Lord of the Rings: War in the North was suddenly available again thanks to publisher Aspyr. A bit of a hidden gem among video games based on JRR Tolkien's work, one of the devs overseeing the original game is glad it's getting another shot after living in The Elder Scrolls' shadow when it launched.

Christian Allen, design director for WB Games during War in the North's development, commented on social media about the circumstances surrounding the action-RPG's release. "Wow, this is cool," he says, sharing the game's trailer. "15 years ago I argued vociferously not to release this up against Skyrim, as it wouldn't get a fair shake. I got overruled."

When you look at the release schedules, it's plain to see he had a point. War in the North arrived November 1, 2011, in the US, while Skyrim followed on November 11. There are a lot of The Lord of the Rings fans in the world, but it would've been hard for anything to compete against the sequel to Oblivion - especially since this one had dragons.

Sure enough, War in the North became an immediate casualty of Bethesda's vacuum, and pretty much died on the vine at launch. Middling reviews didn't help, pushing it further into relative obscurity.

In the replies, Allen clarifies that he was only part of the leadership team, since his role included managing IP-related pitches and releases, and that all actual credit for the game goes to the devs at Snowblind Studios. This would be their last release before becoming part of Monolith Productions in 2012.

Jump forward a decade-and-a-half, and people can give War in the North a fairer shake. Oblivion Remastered came out last year, as did Clair Obscur, and Baldur's Gate 3 was three years ago. The field is clear of major rivals, letting anyone who fancies the quest therein, where a number of heroes help in the battle against Sauron parallel to the Fellowship, enjoy it at their leisure.

Aspyr's teased more releases from the franchise's history are coming too. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - The Third Age is overdue a re-evaluation. But for now, War in the North has earned its time.

One Lord of the Rings fan is fighting back after Google removed the extended edition from their digital library

• Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is perfect if you want to throw hands across a gorgeous celebration of Marvel comic characters in an excellent fighting system

Here's the 60-second pitch for why you should play Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls this weekend: The developer behind the excellent Dragon Ball FighterZ and Guilty Gear Strive have turned its hand to Marvel to create a 4v4 tag-fighter that's a love letter to the comics, and feels like a fresh take on the beloved combo action in Marvel vs Capcom (without the Capcom, of course). No reskin, this uses the Marvel theming to its fullest, and with a fun story to follow, great training modes, and simple controls, this is one of the easiest big budget fighters to get into without sacrificing depth.

Why play it today?

• Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls feels like the next evolution of some great gaming branches, serving as both a Marvel must-play and a next-level expression of the genre. Like Marvel or not, Tokon is simply an excellent fighting game.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is the fighting game equivalent of hero shooter Marvel Rivals. It's the next big budget Marvel game before Marvel's Wolverine. It's a fresh take on the superhero tag fighting of Marvel vs Capcom 3, and the developer's follow-up to Dragon Ball FighterZ.

Visually, Marvel Tokon is a stunner, continuing to build on Arc System Works' anime style that almost looks 2D until the camera whips around to highlight the impact of attacks. A Japanese studio, this take on Marvel is infused with nods to the culture, such as vampire hunter Blade having trained as a samurai, or Iron Man's armor looking almost Kamen Rider-like. But, it's heaving with nods towards Marvel comics as well, feeling like a love letter to the medium right the way down to deep cut references, and menus designed to look like comic book drafts.

As ever, the best time to check out a new fighting game is always as soon as possible. There's just something special about learning a new system alongside a community as everyone figures out how it all works. Knowing Marvel Tokon may appeal to comic or film fans first and foremost, great effort has gone into making the fighting controls easy to use and learn. Though, there's still some wild combos you can pull off once you get used to Tokon in action.

Time commitment:

Marvel Tokon is a great game to fit into your schedule with a low time commitment that's flexible to what you're looking to get out of it. But, don't be surprised if evenings disappear in a blur of superhero clashes.

Single-player episode content is split into separate chapters, so story content will take six or so hours to beat, with plenty of challenges and arcade modes on top. But, there's no need to play solo at all. Through online or with friends, matches themselves can take only a couple of minutes (or seconds if you're unlucky). This is a 4v4 fighter, but all your characters share a health bar, so few matches will feel like wars of attrition like you can get in Dragon Ball FighterZ.

This is an online game you'll want to keep coming back to, especially as new content is added over time through DLC fighters.

Play Marvel Tokon if you love:

Skip Marvel Tokon if you want:

One thing to know:

While Marvel Tokon has solid solo content for a fighting game, this is a genre that often lives or dies on multiplayer staying power. Whether that's matchmaking online through ranking queues, exploring room lobbies, or playing party modes; or beating up your pals locally or connected, you'll get the most out of this with other people. Don't forget that it's all good to play against players matched to your level and have fun that way. You don't need to be top of the leader boards to have a good time.

A moment you'll remember:

Batting away your opponent with the tag-based counter system and then managing to respond with a proper combo for the first time. Fighting games have a weird bell-shaped learning curve where the more you learn the worse you can feel, but nothing beats when it all comes together and you realize the squad of characters you love to play actually kind of works.

The final verdict:

In the words of Alan Wen, who penned our Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls review, this is "a stunning comeback for superhero fighters, essential for Marvel and genre fans alike". Superhero fans will find plenty to love in this gorgeous but fresh take on familiar faces, the fighting game curious will find Arc System Works' friendliest combat system to date, and fighting game veterans will cackle as they air-combo opponents into oblivion with Goblin Glider cancel combos.

So, where can you play it?

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is developed by Arc System Works but published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, so you'll currently only find it on PC and PS5. It is not part of any PS Plus subscription tiers at the moment.

How to get started with Marvel Tokon:

On launch, Marvel Tokon pulls you into a well-designed tutorial that will show you the basics, giving you the option to continue with more advanced training once completed. After that, you can continue to practice in the story or arcade modes, or hop online where you'll have to complete 10 casual matches before you can join Ranked matchmaking. For the most part, though, grab a controller and dive into matches! There's no better way to learn.

Have your say:

Just want more comic fun? Check out our best Marvel games ranking!

While it hasn't quite reached Overwatch's pre-relaunch numbers, Marvel Rivals has managed to court a still very impressive 40 million players around the world.

Perhaps no game has lit quite so big a fire under Overwatch's heels as Marvel Rivals, a superhero shooter that remixes that same team-based formula with a third-person perspective. Since Marvel Rivals' 2024 launch, the two games have been compared endlessly and have arguably pushed each other in the right directions, and now, we finally have some solid stats.

Disney today revealed that Marvel Rivals "has attracted 40 million players worldwide" since its release. The company's executive vice president of video games, Sean Shoptaw, says the game is "a really good example of just how powerful and meaningful these worlds can be."

A whopping 60% of those 40 million players are also under the age of 24, according to Disney. "These are platforms where Gen Z [and] Gen Alpha primarily are spending a lot of their time, hanging out with their friends," Shoptaw adds.

A huge success, for sure, and definitely an indication of how important the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies have been in giving younger audiences an attachment to these comic book characters. But Blizzard Entertainment likely isn't sweating since, even before it made a free-to-play pivot, the original paid release of Overwatch sold upwards of 50 million copies. The lively game's population has probably grown in the years since it was made freely available to anyone with a modern console or PC, as well.

Blizzard hasn't given an update on Overwatch's player figures in years, but the candy-colored hero shooter did knock out a major comeback in January with a huge update that overhauled many parts of the game, added five new characters at once, and won back fans that fallen off since the first heydays of Overwatch. Blizzard also apparently became Xbox's top studio after Overwatch's overperformance.

Marvel Rivals devs respond to Storm summer skin controversy, promise to do better but say harassment "is not acceptable"

Story-driven action-adventure games have a special place in my gaming time, because my wife and I have been bonding over them for years. What started as a desire to show her why I was so obsessed with Metal Gear Solid eventually became a couples' tradition, where she'd sit in and we'd enjoy the twists and turns of games like Uncharted and Yakuza together. When Insomniac announced Marvel's Wolverine, I instantly figured it'd be perfect for our gaming time together.

That thought was instantly wiped away when I saw how violent Wolverine is going to be. I can't blame Insomniac for wanting to be true to the character's violent lore, but my partner has an intense blood phobia. Even a quick glimpse of the goopy gore that permeates the game's trailers would likely be enough to push her to the edge of a panic attack.

So when Insomniac announced that it was introducing a new accessibility option for Wolverine which will allow you to toggle off blood and gore, my interest was more than academic. Alongside my hands-on time with Marvel's Wolverine, I had to get the developers' insights into implementing this option and finding new ways to cater to players – and watchers – with diverse needs.

What I do isn't very nice

While I don't have direct access to the violence options in my hands-on, creative director Marcus Smith demonstrates them ahead of my demo. "Yes, we are making a Wolverine game," he says. "Yes, it is extremely bloody. But we also understand that not everybody has the same level of squeamishness where it comes to blood. So we have settings where you can disable blood, disable gore, disable [dismemberment]."

He shows a screenshot of a character on the wrong end of Wolverine's claws. This enemy soldier is spattered with blood, with gore shooting absurdly from the spots where you'd expect. In the next screenshot, everything's the same – all the visual and emotional content is there – but the red stuff is gone. It's not a haphazard edit. It genuinely looks like a version of the game that was targeting a T for Teen rating from the start. There are other content toggles, too, like an option to turn off profanity if you simply want to make the game's dialog a bit more family friendly.

Offering these kinds of options is a big technical challenge since the gore itself is built from "a very complex set of systems," according to head of technology Mike Fitzgerald. "The way it affects characters is one thing. The way it affects environments is another thing. The way it sprays out of the characters is another thing. A lot of cinematics have custom authored blood that's independent [to what] someone very carefully painted onto a character or object. Finding all those places, making them all relate into the accessibility system the right way, took quite a bit of work, effort, and testing."

No surprises

When I first heard about these sorts of accessibility options, my instant fear was that not every edge case would be accounted for. There are, after all, cutscenes where characters get beheaded, or we see Wolverine get shredded to the bone by gunfire. In cases like those, the game simply blurs out scenes with content you don't want to see.

People like my wife have "a real reaction to that stuff," Fitzgerald acknowledges. "We don't want to surprise anyone with it when they think they have it turned off."

A part of me does wonder if these gracious nods to accessibility might undercut something of the game's bite. "The tone of this game is a bit darker, more mature than recent Insomniac games," Smith says, "and the reason for that is because we need to stay true to these characters. They have lived long and complex lives, and the only way to represent them with authenticity is to do so unflinchingly." Is a blood toggle a flinch?

"Wolverine is a brutal character," senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed acknowledges. "That's a part of the DNA of Wolverine. It is rated mature as far as topics, and as you mentioned, as far as violence, but Logan is not somebody who is ever glorifying violence. He's not cutting up people for violence' sake. He's doing it because he got into some situation. He has to defend somebody who can't defend themselves. He has to fight [against] injustice."

That distinction, I think, is why letting people play a substantially less violent version of Wolverine makes sense, even within the themes of the character. This Logan lives in a brutal world, yes, but his own brutality exists as a shield to protect others from having to endure the same hardships. And personally? I'm just glad my time playing Wolverine won't be as lonely as I feared.

We'll keep you up to date with every upcoming PS5 game worth knowing about.

The current voice of Kratos, Christopher Judge, has thrown respect towards his predecessor, TC Carson, on the back of the original God of War trilogy being remade with the first voice of the titular character in tow. To him, it signifies just how much Sony Santa Monica cares about the legacy of the series, since Carson's a large part of the reason why anyone still cares.

Judge spoke on the subject during a panel at Fan Expo Boston, per Collider. "I'm glad it worked out," he says. "And the thing I'm glad, too, is that TC isn't forgotten because where we are now is because of TC Carson and how magnificent he is."

The God of War Trilogy Remake was announced back in February, giving the first three adventures starring Kratos top-down reworks. We don't have many other details beyond Carson's involvement and that it's happening, but it's exciting as is. The original God of War and its immediate sequels haven't gotten much attention since the days of the PS3, and given how big the property is now, it's high time newer fans got a history.

"I'm so happy that they're remastering the original games, and then that will find a new audience, and I just think it's wonderful," Judge adds. I'm somewhat curious both what creative liberties the devs take, and how the games themselves land overall. These are different games to the 2018 installment and Ragnarok.

Their worlds aren't as big, Kratos is more two-dimensional, he's got no little companion around him, and there are jokes and set-pieces that haven't aged well. If you know, you know. All I'm saying is I neither expect, nor necessarily want, these to be one-to-one updates.

To finish, Judge, who's been the voice of Kratos since the 2018 game and is now very much a face of the franchise, says Sony Santa Monica's reverence for the fanbase is what's keeping the series going strong after two decades. "That is a testament to not only Cory [Balrog, creative director at Santa Monica Studio], but all of Sony Santa Monica and their investment in this," he explains.

"They actually respect the fans," Judge continues. "Like, it's not that hard of a thing to do. You ask people to pay for your product, or people invite you into their homes, the least you can do is respect what they have to say, and Sony Santa Monica actually does that."

The next God of War game is Laufey, following Kratos's wife in her journey through the underworld. It's due out next year.

God of War star Christopher Judge criticizes The Last of Us and similar adaptations for excluding people who made the games: "What are you thinking?"

Disney has nine game franchises that have made over $1 billion, and Kingdom Hearts is one of them, which should hopefully raise the chances of seeing Kingdom Hearts 4 at this weekend's D23 panel.

Disney's executive vice president of global games, Sean Shoptaw, recently announced the firm holds "nine games that have grossed over $1 billion at retail" and emphasized the importance of "telling truly original stories that really are unique to this medium, specifically."

The Disney exec didn't list all nine of the company's $1 billion gaming franchises, but he did single out Kingdom Hearts and Marvel Strike Force as examples.

The Square Enix series has been putting clown-footed anime protagonists into the background of iconic Disney scenes for about 24 years and 13 games, so it's likely Kingdom Hearts grossed a modest $1 billion a while ago, but this is the first time the company has publicly given the series its flowers in this fashion.

And the timing couldn't be more perfect - especially if, like me, you've been patiently waiting for more Kingdom Hearts 4 news since its reveal 1,587 days ago... or something... not that I've been counting.

The long-awaited sequel finally reared its head with a new trailer earlier this summer, and fans are convinced that another look is right around the corner at this weekend's The Deep Dive into Kingdom Hearts D23 panel, owing to the fact that the game's co-director and cast are confirmed to be in attendance. We still haven't seen any actual Disney worlds in the Disney crossover project - now's a good a time as any to show Sora punching up with Peter Griffin, then.

Last we heard, Kingdom Hearts had sold over 38 million copies over its entire history. That was just before Square Enix put out a mammoth All-In-One Package full of re-releases last year, and then another re-release package with this year's Kingdom Hearts Collection.

Further proving Kingdom Hearts' existence is a miracle, ex-Disney CEO says he can't even remember why he greenlit the JRPG in the first place

Halo: Campaign Evolved's lack of PvP multiplayer is probably the remake's biggest drawback, a baffling letdown for fans of the original 2001 classic FPS with beloved memories playing against friends in the same room on the same TV. I'm having a great time playing through the campaign in co-op mode with a few pals, but what good is playing games with friends when you don't end up hating each other at the end?

Anyway, Halo: Campaign Evolved doesn't have PvP, and Halo Studios has provided zero indication that it'll be added at any point. One prominent analyst has suggested this fact is one of the key reasons the Halo remake isn't selling nearly as well as a pair of newly released Call of Duty ports, and now one of the progenitors of the Halo franchise is straight-up calling the game's lack of PvP a mistake.

"Split screen MP in Campaign Evolved should have been included. There's little excuse aside from lack of oversight and poor planning that led to this misstep," says Halo co-creator and OG Combat Evolved art director Marcus Lehto on Twitter. So sad this wasn't included."

Lehto confirms in a follow-up tweet that he's specifically referring to Halo: Campaign Evolved not having "PvP".

Of course, there's always the possibility that Halo Studio ends up adding PvP to Halo: Campaign Evolved, but honestly, even just considering the title of the remake, which clearly indicates the specific mode included in the package, it seems pretty unlikely. Still, Lehto adds that it would be "awesome" if that were to happen.

Lehto hasn't been shy to share his thoughts on the remake online, calling the campaign "simultaneously a blast from my own past and fresh re-envisioning of the game I helped create." However, in addition to the whole PvP thing, or lack thereof, Lehto also criticized the look of the new ring world.

"While Forerunner tech was metal (not stone) it was also ancient, vast, alive, and a tomb to the horrors that lurked within," he said. "It had seen hundreds of millennia of conflict. Yet the game shows it as shiny metal that looks like it was built a few years ago."

Be sure to check out our Halo: Campaign Evolved review to hear our full thoughts on the game.

Here are the best FPS games you can play in 2026.

10 long years since Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, all of us Naughty Dog fans are ready for more Nathan Drake, even as the studio presumably barrels full-steam ahead on Intergalactic: A Heretic Prophet. We still have the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection, which includes beautiful remasters of the first three games, as well as the excellent Uncharted 4, on modern platforms, but for people like me who've played those games so many times you could recite the scripts by memory, the itch for another adventure in that world is stronger than ever.

Original Uncharted: Drake's Fortune designer Benson Russell feels the same, and just in case Naughty Dog is taking its marching orders from me and him, we don't want another remaster or remake.

"Uncharted as a thing is still in the zeitgeist," Benson tells FRVR. "There's already a version you can play on modern consoles [to] get the experience. What's the point of remastering [or remaking] it? ... You'd have to rewrite the whole story to make it better which means you're going to change the spirit and you're going to change the scenes and what the first one was about, right?"

Having played the Drake's Fortune remaster not too long ago, I think it holds up pretty well considering it first released in 2007, almost 20 years ago now, but again, I might be biased due to the amount of times I've played through it over the years. Even if its gameplay is a little dated and it doesn't nail the cinematic beats like, say, Uncharted 4, I definitely agree that a full-blown remake feels unnecessary at this point.

From Benson's perspective, the Uncharted series is still a modern-enough IP that it won't attract a "new audience" with a remake of Drake's Fortune, and he'd rather see Naughty Dog "take the lessons of Uncharted 4 and make a new game that’s in the past or wherever you need it to be." Benson adds that he felt the same way about Naughty Dog's somewhat controversial remake of The Last of Us. "These are old games for a reason," he says.

Ultimately, an Uncharted remake would feel "more like a cash grab than it would feel like anything necessary at this point," argues Benson, which is what a lot of fans thought about The Last of Us Part 1 when it came out. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a good deal older than The Last of Us, and it does feel that way when you play it, but with Naughty Dog only able to take on so many projects at once, I think most would agree an Uncharted 5 or prequel is much more attractive than Uncharted: Part 1.

OG Last of Us designer is still "pissed" about Naughty Dog re-doing his work for the remake: "It is literally taking my scripts, pushing delete, and putting all new scripts in"

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has managed to sell a total of 485,000 copies across PS5 and Steam in the week since it launched, but Alinea's head of market analysis Rhys Elliott guesses the 4v4 tag team fighter could have done much better than that if Steam reviewers didn't hate its PC port so much.

The game itself is great. Guilty Gear Strive developer Arc System Works predictably infused Marvel Tokon with its characteristic, ostentatious combat style and vibrant art, leading writer Alan Wen to say in GamesRadar+'s four-and-a-half-star Marvel Tokon review that the game makes you "so convinced that it's 2D animation of the highest caliber until you launch an opponent or execute a screen-filling super skill." Notably, Wen played the game on PS5. Many of Marvel Tokon's Steam reviews, instead, fixate on the fact that the game requires a PSN account to play on PC, and then it crashes, and they bemoan missing Linux support, which makes Marvel Tokon incompatible with the Steam Deck.

Marvel Tokon's overall Mixed Steam rating is complicated in this sense – many of its 2,658 total negative reviews have no problem with Arc System Works's actual game. But they see Marvel Tokon as a representation of everything currently wrong with PlayStation, which is now experiencing the beginning of the three million years of bad karma it's earned for its decision to stop producing physical game discs.

A popular negative Marvel Tokon review with over 1,000 "helpful" ratings on Steam explains it this way: "As much as I adore this game, i will call out the blatant bullsh*t Sony pulled to make TOKON on PC the way that it is... My review will remain negative until the game is optimized enough for all users that can run the minimum reqs, as well as Linux support at some point…"

So, yeah, according to Alinea, Marvel Tokon moved 485,000 copies and made $33 million. It should be a full-fat comeback story for Marvel fighting games, a niche previously made boring by the underwhelming Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite in 2017, but Elliott emphasizes that 485,000 copies sold is a minimum.

He recognizes Marvel Tokon's Steam launch "was marred by performance issues, bugs, intrusive DRM, and no Linux support." And "the Steam review score is pretty telling," Elliott continues, "at under 50% positive as I write this. It's just 19% positive among those who played under an hour, suggesting a wave of bounce-and-refund players."

"Arc has been patching hard, and many issues are already fixed, but first impressions are sticky," he concludes. "Tokon might have sold closer to 1M if the Steam stuff hadn't been such an issue. Word of mouth was cut short." Huh, it sounds like prioritizing people over the mirage of fast, infinite growth is important. Who knew.

Sony killing PlayStation discs will make PS Store prices cheaper, former Square Enix financial exec says, and you only need to look at Steam to understand why.

Rebel Wolves has made a lot about Blood of Dawnwalker's open-ended campaign and completely non-linear narrative path, having previously said "everything is optional" in the vampiric open-world RPG. In a new video overview of the upcoming title, the developers take that design philosophy and frame it like a challenge, confirming that you can beat the final boss the moment you leave the tutorial section and preemptively handing out "legend" status to anyone capable enough to do so.

"You have one clear goal, but there's no single linear way to complete it," Rebel Wolves says in the below video. "Every activity and quest is optional and serves as a building block of your own crafted experience. The valley is a big place open for exploration. You can look for opportunities to learn new things and find allies, or you can even decide to storm [main antagonist] Brencis's castle as soon as you're out of the prologue.

"However, remember that defeating him as a freshly made Dawnwalker will be a feat worthy of legends."

I don't know how to respond to that besides saying: challenge accepted. I'll no doubt eat my words when the time comes, but damn it I'll try. Just like in 2017 when I confidently glided into Hyrule Castle to kill Ganon right after getting my paraglider only to get stomped by the first of the Blight Ganon bosses, I won't let hard-lost lessons get in the way of video game convention defiance where it's allowed.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is easily one of my most anticipated games this year, even amid other big September releases like Marvel's Wolverine, Control Resonant, and Halloween: The Game (that's right). I'm obsessed with vampire lore and have been desperately waiting for a good RPG adaptation, and with The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz at the helm of Blood of Dawnwalker, there's a lot of reason to think this might be The One.

Everything I've seen, as well as hands-on insights from Blood of Dawnwalker previews from GamesRadar+ and other outlets, has been highly encouraging. It's definitely too early for a verdict, but I know what I'll be drinking on September 3, and it ain't red wine.

The Witcher 3 director says solely aiming for high sales is a great way to make a game "fail," and he wants to measure his new RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker by the "opinions of fans."

When does Fortnite Season 4 of Chapter 7 start is a question we have the answer to now, as Override will get underway on August 20, 2026. The tagline for the fresh season is "Break the rules. Change the game." so you can expect things to get switched up, with new areas of the map to explore, familiar faces and new characters to meet, and no doubt some updated mechanics to get to grips with.

Epic aren't known for resting on their laurels and are always planning the next stage of development in Fortnite, so there will certainly be more changes brought in during the course of the upcoming season and beyond. If you're looking forward to Fortnite Season 4 of Chapter 7 and are wondering what changes it may bring us, then here's everything we know about it so far.

What will be the biggest changes made for Fortnite Season 4 in Chapter 7?

A significant change being introduced affects your collection of Fortnite Sprites, with all of those you've rounded up in Season 3 being immortalized in the new Sprite Garden. You can visit this island getaway to play with your Sprites, use it to showcase your collection, and also visit friends' sanctuaries to see theirs. Season 4 will feature a whole new generation of Sprites to collect, which will immediately be added to your Garden as you catch them.

In a leaked teaser trailer for Fortnite Season 4 in Chapter 7, we catch a glimpse of the Tetris crossover which is due to kick off the season. This is rumored to feature tetrimino-shaped clouds, a Junk Rift item that drops tetriminos from the sky, and a Tetris-themed POI or Landmark, with more additions likely. Eagle-eyed viewers have also spotted clouds in the shape of Dr Eggman and a Pac-Man Ghost, suggesting more gaming crossovers will be involved.

This is backed up by another leaked teaser for a Sonic the Hedgehog crossover, which should include a Sonic skin, a mythic item so you can run faster, and a themed POI on the map.

It was also originally thought that there would be a crossover with either Minecraft or Five Nights At Freddy's as the phrase "Survive the night" had been discovered, but it turns out this is actually for a 99 Nights in the Forest collaboration.

Separately, a new "Recap" website has been discovered, which should be launching around the same time as Fortnite Season 4 in Chapter 7. This should let you view and share your stats from individual seasons, including hours played, matches played, XP points earned, eliminations, quests completed, and more!

How much will the Fortnite Season 4 in Chapter 7 Battle Pass cost?

Fortnite is free to play, but buying the Battle Pass will get you lots of additional rewards. The Fortnite Season 4 of Chapter 7 Battle Pass will be available for 800 V-Bucks, which means it will still be enough to purchase the smallest V-Bucks bundle in the Fortnite store, priced at $8.99 / £6.99 to get 800 V-Bucks. By completing the Battle Pass you can earn 800 V-Bucks back through unlocks, but you can no longer collect additional V-Bucks above that.

It's possible to get a head start by buying the Battle Bundle upgrade. This will get you to Tier 25 on the Battle Pass instantly. Doing so will cost you 2,600 V-Bucks, which you can get for $22.99 / £17.49. You can also sign up to the Fortnite Crew subscription service, which costs $11.99 / £9.99 per month but gives you access to all of the Fortnite Passes including the Battle Pass, as well as awarding a bonus 800 V-Bucks every month and other exclusive rewards.

If you don't want to spend any money, you can always try to get free Fortnite V-Bucks for the Fortnite Season 4 in Chapter 7 Battle Pass, but don't fall for online scams! If you choose to save up some V-Bucks, remember that you only need 800 of them to unlock the next Fortnite Battle Pass starting in August 2026.

And that's everything we know about Fortnite Season 4 in Chapter 7 for now, but keep checking back and we'll have more details as soon as they're revealed!

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Although The Sims 4 sadly doesn't feature an open-world map the way that The Sims 3 (my beloved) did, one talented modder has stepped up to the plate and is making it feel a lot more seamless and united.

How is he doing that, you might ask – and the answer is, well, by changing up the boring world selection screen and transforming it into a map that's almost reminiscent of The Sims 2 (minus all of the customization, but we can't win 'em all).

Aptly dubbed "The Immersive World Map" by creator SimMattically, the mod is rightfully making rounds online as it does what Simmers have hoped EA would do for years.

SimMattically describes it in a recent online post, calling the exciting new mod "a complete overhaul of the world selection screen, featuring a custom map design and a seamless layout that connects all Sims 4 worlds together."

He notes that it's available in early access over on Patreon, and you bet I'm running… not walking.

An attached video shows the map in action, too, and I'm all the more convinced I need it in my game.

It's downright stunning as well, combining all worlds into one unified map that just… well, makes sense. From Chestnut Ridge to San Myshuno, everything appears to fit perfectly, with bodies of water spacing out "continents."

Thematically, it all aligns, making navigation easier and less of an eyesore. I'm evidently not alone in thinking so, either, as comments show many already deem it one of the best Sims 4 mods to date.

"Beautiful and gorgeous," writes one Simmer. Another calls the mod "so sick." SimMattically confirms that it works with custom world map replacements, too – a dream come true.

He put a lot of effort in as well, stating he "did a ton of research" on every region "to see what real-world places they're based on." Then, he "tried to match them with the right culture, climate, and geography." EA could (or, perhaps more accurately, would) never.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Patreon to subscribe to and a brand-new world map to behold – borders be damned. Maybe one day we'll even see a worthy open world mod come to light, too… a girl can have hopes here, right?

EA finally admits adding autosaves to The Sims 4 is a good idea after 12 years, slapping a band-aid on over a decade of heartbreak from crashes and lost progress

A cult classic book that served as a major inspiration for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - you know, the game that won basically every GOTY award out there - is finally getting its first English translation.

Alain Damasio's Horde of the Counterwind, originally published as La Horde du Contrevent, became a beloved French novel more than two decades ago. It'll soon become available to the English-speaking world when a hardback copy of the book finally hits store shelves on October 13 in the US (you can find it on Abrams Books) or November 12 in the UK (and here's an Amazon link)

"Twenty-three adventurers––some trained since birth, some gathered up over the course of an interminable journey––climb endlessly against the wind that plagues their desert homeland. Their only purpose: to make it to the Upper Reaches and identify the wind’s mysterious source. Thirty-three hordes before them have tried and failed over the course of 800 years," the novel's blurb reads. "The brave warriors of this wildly imaginative universe must learn to coexist and fight to survive. Each Horde member has a unique personality and a precise duty, and collaborating as a unit is their only hope."

Alain Damasio's sci-fi cult classic deals with many of the same ideas as Sandfall Interactive's RPG. Grief and tragedy, an impending doom, a voyage to stop everyone's inevitable deaths.

For more than 20 years, the book's often been considered impossible to translate thanks to its unconventional wordplay - even the novel's English translator, Alexander Dickow, once called it "untranslatable." Much has changed in the decade since that proclamation, it seems, since he's now giving it his best shot.

Sandfall Interactive co-founder and lead programmer Tom Guillermin cited Horde of the Counterwind as an influence on Clair Obscur shortly before the game became a mammoth hit. "A story about venturing into the unknown on a dangerous adventure" fits both the book and the game, he noted in an interview with Unreal Engine at the time. That's on top of the inspirations that stemmed from Final Fantasy, Persona, Lost Odyssey, and Attack on Titan, of course.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on Switch 2 is a "big technical challenge" because many Unreal Engine features "don't work," leads say, but Sandfall is "interested" in pulling it off

Unfortunately, reactions to Game Freak's new action-RPG Beast of Reincarnation haven't been the strongest, with players complaining about performance issues and other problsm. The studio, most widely known for Pokemon, is aware of the problems, and the devs are hard at work rectifying whatever they can.

Kota Furushima, game director, spoke to 4Gamer about the response and how the team is handling it. "I honestly feel that there are still areas in the game that require our sincere attention," he says, as translated by Automaton. "I'm truly sorry that parts of the game haven’t provided a sufficiently enjoyable experience."

It's worth noting this was before the first big post-launch patch, meaning his position may have since softened. But it's still a solid reminder that developers are often more than aware of the same problems you're seeing; they're just playing whack-a-mole with everything.

That said, Beast of Reincarnation "needs polishing," according to Fukushima, and Game Freak is digging in to provide as much as possible in the coming weeks and months. On the flipside, he's confident in the flow with your canine companion, and he believes the atmosphere is especially distinctive for the genre.

"I feel the aspect of defeating enemies alongside your partner has been well-received, and we’ve also received positive reactions regarding the overall atmosphere of the game," he comments. "I think the unique post-apocalyptic vibe of the world is resonating with many players."

I'll definitely give Beast of Reincarnation that much; it has a sense of place I'd put up there with Nier: Automata. But then, I have a soft spot for overgrown cities where plants are gradually subsuming our concrete tombs. In any case, it seems like you can expect plenty more fixes and changes to the game soon.

Beast of Reincarnation's first update is here, and it aims to fix story issues and more as "Mixed" Steam reviews dub Game Freak's new action RPG "bad and laughable"

It took Hollywood decades to learn the truth about superheroes: the origin stories are usually the most boring part. Insomniac Games was clued into that fact from the start with the Marvel's Spider-Man games, which deliberately avoided showing us Peter Parker's fateful meeting with a radioactive Spider. It seems they're taking a similar approach with Marvel's Wolverine.

"During our story, Logan already has adamantium infused to his bones," creative director Marcus Smith explains at a preview event for Marvel's Wolverine. "He does not remember how that happened, why it happened, and we are not really covering it because we're not doing an origin story."

During my hands-on time with Marvel's Wolverine, I saw the very start of the game, which does open with a brief flashback. There, we see Logan in the woods, seemingly feral, when he meets Nathaniel Essex – a character whose name will ring a calamitous bell for X-Men fans. The scene is just a few moments, and we quickly fast-forward apparent years to the actual action.

There's a sense of history to the characters, as they regularly reference past events and conflicts, but it's all flavor that makes the world seem bigger. If you have history with Wolverine in the comics or other media, you'll have a pretty clear picture of what these events look like – if not, it'll just be there to make the characters seem richer.

It's the exact same approach we saw Insomniac take in Marvel's Spider-Man, which references Spidey's origins and history in ways that make sense and add to the story, but never explicitly spells out that story. Perhaps the most important part is that it lets players just start being a superhero from the second they load up the game – whether we're talking about Peter Parker or James Logan Howlett, there's no need to make people wait for the fun part.

These are the upcoming PS5 games you need to have on your radar.

There's a moment in the Marvel's Wolverine story trailer released toward the end of July where we see the camera pull back behind Jean Grey as she enters a dance hall. To my eye, it seemed like an obvious tease of a playable sequence featuring Jean, but looks can be deceiving – Insomniac tells me in no uncertain terms that Wolverine himself is the game's only playable character.

When I alluded to that moment with Jean Grey in the trailer in an interview with senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed and head of technology Mike Fitzgerald, they both registered a bit of genuine confusion, before they both told me, "Wolverine is our only playable character."

That'll likely be a relief to many players of Insomniac's previous superhero games. I never hated the Mary Jane stealth sections in the Spider-Man series as much as other people seemed to, but they're unequivocally the least exciting bits of those games. Insomniac going all in on the game's central hero sounds like a good thing to me.

My hands-on time with Marvel's Wolverine was still filled with loads of side characters, and many of them do have a role to play not just in the story, but the gameplay. In my demo, there were big combat sections where Wolverine is accompanied by Sabretooth or Mystique, who'll dynamically join in with your combos for little team-up moves to knock out the bad guys.

Some similar interactions with Jean were shown in the public gameplay reveal, and "there's more of that," Fitzgerald explains. "There's definitely the team vibe in that sense. But we were really focusing on Wolverine as a playable character and making sure we nailed that."

For more, check out all our Marvel's Wolverine Big Preview coverage.

Insomniac built the adamantium skeleton for Marvel's Wolverine with its Spider-Man games. The upcoming PS5 game clearly builds on the combat, the cinematic presentation, and even the progression systems of those previous titles. But after spending two hours playing Marvel's Wolverine, touring Insomniac's Los Angeles headquarters, and speaking to some of the developers bringing the game to life, it's clear that this is more than a simple reskin of Spider-Man. James Logan Howlett's burning heart beats at the center of it all.

"One thing we're really proud about at the studio is shipping games," head of technology Mike Fitzgerald tells me. "This is our fifth title on the PlayStation 5. We're really proud of that. Part of that is knowing how to build on prior games effectively. If we'd taken a Spider-Man game and put a Wolverine character model in, that wouldn't feel right. It wouldn't be right for the character. It wouldn't be fulfilling the player fantasy for the fans. So it's about building carefully on what we have and then rethinking a whole lot of the fundamentals."

So the flippy, acrobatic combat of Spider-Man – which, itself, echoes Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham series – has slowed down, with a closer camera perspective and more tightly-packed enemies. The violence is more extreme. The story is darker. And, most obviously, we're now following a linear, globe-trotting adventure rather than exploring a singular open world.

Rage against the killing machines

"Throughout development," senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed explains, "any decision we're making, we're trying to go: 'Is this right for Wolverine? Is this telling a Logan-centric story? Is this the best way we can do this to make the player feel like they're playing as Wolverine?'"

Nowhere is this intent more obvious than with the Rage system. As you fight, striking enemies and parrying their attacks, you build up a meter representing Wolverine's bestial anger. Once it's maxed out, the color drains from the scene, Wolverine powers up, and you can launch instant-kill takedowns by pulling both triggers at once. The meter quickly drains once you reach this state, but you can keep it going longer by continuing to kill.

This system really incentivizes you to be aggressive, constantly escalating the speed with which you're taking down the bad guys, perfectly in line with your character's own overflowing rage. It's introduced with a great little moment in the game, where Logan's anger at seeing his fellow mutants mistreated boils over, and you're given control with maximum Rage to rip the perpetrators to shreds. If you've seen any of the trailers for Wolverine, you'll know just how bloody this game can get. But, importantly, Logan's violence feels like an outpouring of his desire to protect others.

"He's not bloodthirsty," Fitzgerald says. "He's not a sadist. He's not reveling in the violence that he's doing. We want the game to reflect that as well. The game itself isn't like 'look at how bloody and gross we can be.' It's more like this is a natural consequence of who this character is and what he grapples with over the course of the game."

The Rage system also accounts for Wolverine's superhuman healing. You do have a traditional health meter, but as long as you've got some Rage in the tank, you can get back up and keep fighting. Die without any Rage to keep you going, though, and you'll have to restart from a checkpoint. It may not be 100% true to the specifics of Logan's mutant ability, but it does keep the spirit of those powers intact and faithfully represents the character's relentless nature.

"You wouldn't see another character with that set of abilities or mechanics," Reiner-Reed says. "This is uniquely Logan."

This is no origin story

The start of the game shows a brief flashback to when Logan was living a seemingly feral life in the wilderness, just as he meets a mysterious figure promising a home for mutants. But this isn't Professor X talking about a home for gifted youngsters. This is Nathaniel Essex, a character with a lengthy X-Men comic history as the villain Mister Sinister.

But if Essex is going to become the villain of this story, that's going to be a late game twist. Insomniac dragged out the ultimate heel turn of Otto Octavius as Doctor Octopus in the 2018 Spider-Man game, which could be the blueprint for what's happening here. For now, though, the game flashes forward, with Wolverine rejoining Mystique, Jean Grey, and Sabretooth as part of Team X to rescue Essex from the anti-mutant extremist Bolivar Trask.

What follows is something of a superpowered D-Day invasion, where I charge up a muddy hill toward a massive fort, slicing through Trask's minions as I go. While there's plenty of action and bombast, this is very much the game's tutorial, as I'm introduced to the basics of combat. The true depths of the Rage system haven't unlocked yet, but even here the combat feels meaty and rewarding.

My favorite move is pushing triangle to leap forward and quickly close the distance with an enemy. It's not entirely dissimilar to Spider-Man's Web Strike, but at this closer combat scale, it reminds me of how Batman would automatically leap between opponents in the Arkham games. Here, it's an active ingredient in the combat soup, something to stay engaged with as the rhythm of parry, dodge, slash slash slash carries on.

I find myself surprised by how quickly I can get around the game's bigger areas. Wolverine can't use web shooters to speed through these levels, but he can still move. Logan runs quickly, can climb up walls, and leap leg-shattering distances. There's an open-ended area early on where I have to take out a series of mutant-detecting alarms guarded by patrolling soldiers. It feels like an absolute playground, thanks largely to how quickly I can move through it, and how easy it is switch between brutal, stalking stealth and full-blown combat.

I'm also introduced to each of the game's major cast members, but notably, this isn't their first meeting. Nor do I hear much about Wolverine's backstory, and that's very much by design. "Logan already has adamantium infused to his bones," says creative director Marcus Smith. "He does not remember how that happened, why it happened, and we are not really covering it because we're not doing an origin story." There are already plenty of places where you can learn of Wolverine's origins, and having the specifics shrouded in mystery here helps build gravity and intrigue around his relationships.

Later in the demo, I'm whisked forward to a part near the end of the game's first act. Here, I get the culmination of all the combat tricks I've learned up to this point as I take on a massive Sentinel prototype. It's a multi-stage boss fight where I've got to wear down its various weak points to deal big damage.

It's familiar stuff if you've, uh, ever played a video game before, but it's a great little challenge. In fact, it's the only time I die outside of a later optional challenge room – and it sneaks in a few unique mechanics, like an ability to call in a sniper shot from Mystique with a tap of the R1 button, which stuns the giant machine so I can get a few extra licks in.

Madripoor me another

Eventually, Logan ends up in Madripoor, and here the game allows me a bit of a breather. The story slows down as I wander a small bar and nearby stretch of street while Logan meets up with his allies to discuss everything that's transpired. There are fun little Easter eggs to discover here – a playing card hinting at Gambit wandering around this universe, for example – but the real treat is the character interactions.

I'm impressed by just how convincing the storytelling and character performances are. There's a wonderful little moment between Logan and Mystique where they play a round of "never have I ever," as our hero is grilled on topics like lost loves. I get to choose what parts Logan drinks to, and relish the chance to get inside the character's head and imagine his past and what's brought him to this point.

There's a haunted sense of history to how Logan and the crew refer to their past adventures and the mistakes they've made along the way, and it works in part because the story is so well-delivered. The devs say getting this right was a monumental task. "Cinematics is something where there's not, 'Hey, this is just the cinematics department, and they take care [of it],'" Reiner-Reed explains. "It takes everybody. There's lighting, there's artists, there's performance and optimization, there's animation, mocap."

This Madripoor section is also my first opportunity to properly explore, finding collectables here and there that tie into the game's various upgrade systems. I'm able to unlock a few new abilities – both passive buffs and active attacks that run on a cooldown in combat – and check out some additional suits for Wolverine, but I don't have much space to actually dive into those systems before my time with the demo ends. For now, it feels more like a teaser for the fact that, yes, there will be reasons to explore and go off the beaten path in the full game.

There are also additional challenges to take on in a sort of dreamy cabin space that will apparently appear at various points across the story. Inside, Logan can interact with various totems to take on optional timed challenges, like fighting hordes of soldiers in a snowy battlefield or racing through an abstract, nearly psychedelic collection of parkour obstacles. I certainly wasn't expecting to be reminded of Mirror's Edge during Wolverine, but the abstracted arenas for the traversal challenges put me in a similar frame of mind. These time trials are fun enough, but those that I played were pretty simple and easy. I was able to get not just a gold rating, but platinum after just a couple of tries.

The combat challenge I took on, however, really put me through the ringer. Here, I had to manage an array of goons pelting me with fists and bullets while I whittle down a big, muscular brute with parries, dodges, and strikes – then I had to do it again, with a second wave of foes, all within a strict time limit. I failed this one over and over, but I had a great time doing it, and really learning the fight made my eventual success feel pretty sweet. The solution? Rage. Building up that rage is essential.

Before playing Marvel's Wolverine, I was afraid I would miss so much from Insomniac's previous Spider-Man games. Sure, the combat and missions in those games were fun enough, but the truly excellent part was swinging through the streets of New York City at breakneck speeds and digging for little odd jobs and side missions along the way.

Going hands-on with the game completely erased those fears. Insomniac has repurposed the fundamentals of its previous games here, yes, but it's done so in a way that feels appropriate for Logan. The turn from friendly neighborhood wall-crawler to this brooding new hero makes all the difference.

More from our interviews with the Marvel's Wolverine developers and further impressions from our hands-on time are still to come. For now, here are the upcoming PS5 games you need to have on your radar.

There are many, many downsides to Sony ending physical disc production in 2028. However, one small silver lining, according to a former higher-up at Square Enix, is that games will get cheaper.

On Twitter, Jacob Navok, director of business development at Square Enix from 2010 to 2015, commented on the nature of video game pricing. "Competition between publishers is what drives pricing pressure, not competition between digital stores," he says. "This is because publishers set pricing on digital stores."

The likes of Epic Games Store and Steam having to compete makes life better for developers, because their cuts improve - hypothetically, at least - and on digital storefronts, the basement continually lowers for many releases. "You can see how the floor moves downward," he says, showing a chart of Final Fantasy 16's pricing on Valve's platform as an example. "It moves downward because as the title competes with other titles, it gains a natural downward pressure."

His stance, then, is that Sony going fully digital through the PS Store adds another layer, because it'll force publishers to be more wary of their libraries and each other. "The more the PlayStation Store becomes digital only, the greater this trend will accelerate," Navok observes. "You will see more sales and dynamic pricing similar to Steam because publishers will compete among themselves to a greater extent."

Even before considering how publishers have more control over the end price for digital goods over physical, the mere fact that manufacturing and shipping costs won't be involved means we should see cheaper games. Throw on top of that the direct competition, and you have a climate where releases will likely become easier to afford, especially during sales, when more companies will vie for your attention and money.

But that doesn't change the erosion of consumer rights due to the precarities of digital ownership, nor does it negate the lack of a physical option for people who want one. Sure, Final Fantasy 16 might reach new lows price-wise quicker, but fans looking for a disc version are being cut off. It's give-and-take, and whether this is ultimately good for PlayStation users is a matter of perspective.

Square Enix doesn't promise to keep games playable forever, but it will "continue to create pathways" for fans to enjoy them "even after service has ended"

Marvel Rivals studio NetEase has now responded to hours of fan backlash aimed at a new costume for Storm, promising that the X-Men icon will receive more cosmetics in the future.

This week, Marvel Rivals announced a new set of Summer Special swimsuit cosmetics for a bunch of heroes, including beach-themed skins for Magik and Scarlet Witch, but it's Storm's summer costume in particular that spurred intense online backlash within the community.

A 'JusticeForStorm' hashtag went semi-viral, and all of Marvel Rivals' online posts were flooded with complaints accusing the game of neglecting the weather-controlling mutant, at best, and of racial bias against the game's limited roster of black heroes, at worst.

For context, Storm's Sacred Skies skin was the only swimsuit cosmetic for a female character to be Epic tier, rather than the Legendary skins that every other woman in the heroic lineup enjoyed. That also meant the cosmetic came without the modified visual effects that Legendary skins normally offer - plus, the bundle's very limited recolor options didn't help matters. Having the only black woman in the game excluded certainly didn't look good to many.

And while the subpar Storm skin may have been the catalyst, criticism of Marvel Rivals' (mis)management of black heroes has been bubbling for months now. One player noted that Black Panther hasn't gotten a store skin in well over a year, while Storm's one and only Legendary skin came almost two years ago.

Of course, Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play superhero shooter that lives or dies based on cosmetic sales, so you'd expect NetEase to put more resources into its best-selling characters. That's understandable, sure. But white heroes with similar pick rates often receive far more support than characters like Blade, Moon Girl, and Black Panther - and the concept of Elsa Bloodstone, of all people, getting more support than Storm, a frequent X-leader and comic book trailblazer, is pretty absurd even without the wider context.

"We've seen the community's feedback regarding today's announcement of Storm's most recent costume as well as the overall sentiment towards her cosmetic options," developer NetEase writes in a new social media post. "We hear your passion and want to share our plan going forward with the community."

For starters, the studio is upgrading the Sacred Skies swimsuit into a Legendary costume at no extra cost to buyers. "This upgrade will include an all-new lobby animation and an updated MVP animation" at its current price of $16.

Looking to the future, NetEase is also promising "there will be more Storm Legendary tier costumes coming, so please keep your eyes on the skies over the rest of the year."

All the discourse may have made NetEase reverse course on its plans, but the studio is still quite rightly urging players to keep things respectful: "While we understand that tensions run high, harassment of our staff, including the development team and moderators, is not acceptable. As the upgrades will take some time, please be patient, as we are already hard at work on the above. Get ready for the Mistress of the Elements to reign over the battlefield soon."

Marvel Rivals Season 9.5 update will shrink the game by up to 40GB thanks to a texture revamp from NetEase

Now that Resident Evil Requiem has been out in the wild for nearly half a year, we can look at how Capcom's latest survival horror has performed in the market – and whether folks have opted to go physical or digital with it.

The topic of physical game copies and companies' choice to lean more into digital versions has been in the limelight recently following Sony's decision to end disc production for new titles on PlayStation consoles in 2028.

It's safe to say it's quite the hot topic, with game preservation experts predicting it'll just lead to more piracy and folks in the industry speaking out against the move toward digital-only gaming.

How are physical copies performing in the market, though? Well, when it comes to new games like Resident Evil Requiem, it seems they're doing good enough… except for in the United States, apparently.

According to The Game Business co-founder Christopher Dring (as per statistics from Ampere Analysis), the split between physical and digital copies is far more significant in the US than it is elsewhere – and, I mean by a lot.

As per Dring's roundup post on the stats, the US market saw 22% of Resident Evil Requiem sales being physical, while a whopping 78% have been digital.

Overseas, it's quite a bit more even. In the United Kingdom, 60% of sales were digital and 40% physical. Over in Australia, 43% of copies sold have been physical, whereas 57% were digital. It's certainly balanced when compared to the US, anyway – but there's more.

France's Resident Evil Requiem sales have been 55% physical and 45% digital. The most balanced figures, however, come from Japan, where 51% were physical and 49% digital – that's nearly even, almost a 50/50 split.

It's an intriguing set of stats for sure, especially as it comes amid the huge physical versus digital debate. Will numbers like this affect companies' decisions moving forward? Maybe not, but it's all still informative.

I'm personally choosing to remain hopeful that we'll still see discs and other physical media prevail – even if it's on the way out. All we need to do is convince American consumers to opt for more physical copies, right? Right…?

Capcom hopes Resident Evil Veronica follows Requiem's lead in sparking interest in the wider horror series

Obsidian Entertainment has just put out an early access roadmap for Grounded 2's Year 2, promising everything from an expanded map to new weapons and bosses, but there are still a few secret things the developer's keeping a tight lid on.

Just a few days ago, Grounded 2 enjoyed its meaty new Into the Abyss update, which included a brand new area, overhauls to swimming and underwater exploration, plenty of new backyard critters to fend off, the surprise addition of fast travel, and much more.

But Obsidian wasted no time in letting folks know what else to expect from their shrunk-down survival game, via an updated roadmap. New SCA.B Flavor Schemes (colors for your HUD), a rotting wood pile area, and a new potato beetle mount are headlining an unnamed update due this fall.

More new buildings, building materials, buggies, bosses and creatures, and Tier 4 Omni-tools are due in the winter update. And then the ability to move your entire base is promised in the roadmap's more vague "future plans" section, alongside more of the things you'd expect.

The famed studio isn't revealing its full hand as the Year 2 roadmap has plenty of upcoming features spray-painted over. From what we can tell, the devs really don't want to ruin the surprise of one particular enemy type, two incoming areas, and a community-requested building feature. Alright then, Obsidian, keep your secrets.

Obsidian's silence hasn't stopped the community from crafting their own theories, however. "I'm guessing the next major area in the Winter update will be the Sandbox area," one fan writes over on Reddit. "The last update in the roadmap includes an expansion to the Abyss, so I'm assuming it'll be the Explosion area south of the Pond."

The other elephant (or wolf spider, in this instance) in the roadmap is Grounded 2's 1.0 release window, which isn't mentioned here at all. "We aren’t locking ourselves into a hard date just yet; it'll really depend on how things go and how much we add based on your feedback," the game's Steam page notes. "We'll keep you posted along the way!"

Fallout: New Vegas studio Obsidian reportedly working on a new Fallout RPG after forced pivot from Xbox kills Avowed 2 and other games

Hogwarts Legacy is officially getting a sequel – but that's about all we know, as Warner Bros. quietly unveiled the follow-up action RPG in a letter to shareholders.

Yes, that's right – Hogwarts Legacy 2 is happening, although it's unclear what shape or form it'll take just yet… or when it'll come.

Warner Bros. reveals the "second installment of Hogwarts Legacy," as it writes, casually in a recent letter to shareholders, first detailing how "games remain an important growth lever as we work toward our long-term Studios segment goals." That's where the Hogwarts Legacy sequel comes in.

The company mentions LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and mobile title Game of Thrones: Dragonfire, stating, "These releases marked the first launches under our refocused strategy centered around four key $1 billion+ franchises with disciplined investment behind fewer, higher conviction titles."

Although they don't mention what four franchises these are here, we do already know Harry Potter is one of them.

"We expect Games to more meaningfully contribute to segment profitability going forward as our pipeline expands, including the second installment of Hogwarts Legacy," Warner Bros. goes on to say – and, yes, that's sadly all we've got on Hogwarts Legacy 2 for now.

It's likely that we'll learn more about the Harry Potter-inspired game soon, though, seeing as this short mention of its existence will undeniably spur various discussions. Hogwarts Legacy's release three years ago was accompanied by debate due to the views of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. You can read our Hogwarts Legacy controversy explainer for the full story.

Until the game releases, wizarding fans have the Harry Potter TV series to look forward to, as it's bound to come sooner than Hogwarts Legacy 2 with its December 25 release date.

The next Kingdom Come game now has a big ol' release window, and you might be pleased to hear there won't be another seven-year gap between Warhorse Studios' massive open-world RPGs.

Publisher Embracer Group put a more concrete release window on the still mysterious new Kingdom Come game, which hasn't even been properly named yet, in its most recent financial report. According to Embracer CEO Phil Rogers, the company expects whatever the next Kingdom Come is to launch before the end of its fiscal year 2028.

In less business-y terms, that means Warhorse Studios should be releasing another entry in its historical series before April 2028. At least, that's what the developer's parent company is expecting - anything can happen in game dev land, of course, and corporate expectations aren't always strictly prophetic.

We don't know much about Kingdom Come: [Insert Epic Subtitle Here], but don't worry about your favorite series suddenly heel-turning to become a medieval shopkeeping game or a horseback jousting sim. Warhorse confirmed in no uncertain terms that the project is indeed both a video game and an open-world RPG. Phew.

What makes the game's new release window such a pleasant surprise is the fact that Warhorse took seven years to make the excellent Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Should Embracer's forecast rain true, the next game in the series will only have made fans wait for about three years - and that's without mentioning that Warhorse probably has its hands full on a The Lord of the Rings RPG that's also in development at the same time. My backlog is practically trembling from the fear of two, probably very big open-world games on the horizon, but hey, I can't complain too much about getting more adventures from the studio behind one of 2025's best games.

The next Kingdom Come game will seemingly drop the name of the Deliverance RPGs, based on a new trademark from Warhorse

Seven years after terrorizing the world (in a good way) with Untitled Goose Game, developer House House is back with another world-dominating indie game, as Big Walk has quickly become one of the highest rated games of 2026 so far. Usually, the developer behind a game launching to such unanimous praise is quick to reveal what's next, but in this case, you're just going to have to settle for what's already on offer for a while, as House House says it needs a Big Nap for more than anything.

In a Reddit AMA, the developers at House House take questions about the future of Big Walk and the studio itself, and while technically quite a few words are typed out, not a whole lot is actually said. Essentially, these guys are tired, and they are in mood to start thinking about plans beyond the game's initial launch.

"We're not really sure what Big Walk's future looks like - getting this far took heaps of work and a long time!" reads one of the developer's responses. "We need a good rest before we start thinking about what's next."

The developers add that there are currently "no content plans" for Big Walk in the works at House House, but the good news is that, in case you haven't played Big Walk, it's designed in such an "unrestricted" way that there's already a ton of interactivity to play around with as is. This is all my editorializing and not based on anything said by House House, but for a game that costs $20 (discounted to $15 right now), I'd say Big Walk is already a pretty fantastic value proposition.

House House's suggestion for anyone looking more to do is to try and come up with new, unintended interactions and games within the game, if you will. "We've had great success playing hide-and-seek amongst ourselves," reads another one of their answers. "We hope the game world is generous enough to make your own games within it."

Game of the Week – Big Walk is a brilliant co-op puzzler that's more than "friendslop"