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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Konami has revealed the performance targets for Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 2, and 4K 60fps Metal Gear Solid 4 is finally within reach, even if Switch 1 users are getting shortchanged again.

Konami released details about both Metal Gear Solid 4 and Peace Walker's performance on its website. It's mostly as you would expect based on the previous game: Xbox Series X, PS5, and PC will be running at 4K 60fps; Switch 2 and Xbox Series S will be 1440/60 – with 1080/60fps in MGS4's handheld mode and for both on Peace Walker for Switch 2.

Once again, the original Nintendo Switch is stuck with 1080/30fps in docked and 720/30fps in handheld. That includes Peace Walker – a 2010 PSP game that ran at 60fps when its HD edition was released on 2005's Xbox 360.

Metal Gear Solid 4 at 60fps was already revealed a few months back with the first gameplay of the re-release. On Switch 2, the game has selectable image modes between "Adjusted and Original," with the handheld mode only getting Original. Presumably, one of these matches the other platforms, with a slightly more inconsistent framerate.

Funnily enough, Metal Gear Solid 4 was always capable of 60fps, but getting it to run as such on PS3 was only possible in really specific circumstances, and most of the time you'd be dealing with sub-30fps in action scenes. But having the game run at a stable 60fps will be a game-changer.

Peace Walker, on the other hand, has a number of different resolution and upscaling options. Konami also released a video showing off the "High Resolution" mode for the game's hand-drawn cutscenes, with the new version having a much clearer image compared to the somewhat blurry original.

While Metal Gear Solid 4's big return is the clear star of the show here, I'm hoping to see Peace Walker's stock rise with this re-release, so people can finally see it for being one of the best Metal Gear Solid games… perhaps even better than MGS4 some may say.

After almost 25 years, Metal Gear Solid 2 players are still finding secrets: "This is the kind of stuff somebody posts on an online forum in 2005 and no one believes it"

A modder has made Grey Fox playable in the original Metal Gear Solid, and it's way more impressive than it sounds.

Despite Snake (and Snake, and Snake, and Snake, and…) being a contender for the greatest video game character of all time, Metal Gear has a variety of side characters that all absolutely rule, and many hope for the chance to play as them. And while there's been the odd opportunity to play as whoever isn't the main protagonist of a given game (Tanker and Snake Tales in MGS2, Ocelot in Metal Gear Online), Metal Gear is pretty strict about having you play as the main character.

One such legendary side character is Grey Fox, who – after appearances in the MSX2 originals – appeared in Metal Gear Solid 1 as the series' first Cyborg Ninja. The character was so popular that he was the selling point and cover star of Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, where he was briefly playable for a couple of missions. And while Hideo Kojima wanted the character to get his own game as a sequel to Metal Gear Rising, it never materialized.

However, Grey Fox is finally getting his day in the cold alaska moon, as YouTube user Perfect Pizza has released a first look at the final version of their "Playable Grey Fox mod" for Metal Gear Solid. On first read this may not sound that impressive, perhaps the thought of "oh they just moved the VR Missions character into the main game," crossed your mind? Well this mod is not nearly that simple.

Watching the trailer, right away you'll notice you have access to Grey Fox's arm cannon, which saw use throughout Metal Gear Solid, but never actually got used in his previous playable appearance. The High Frequency Blade has gotten a buff too with a new trailing effect and the ability to ricochet bullets back at enemies, and there's new movement options with crouch walking introduced. The mod promises a ton of changes, like "automatic open and close face visor upon alert,""custom animations," and "custom codec calls".

On the mods Discord, Perfect Pizza explains "This mod uses the PSX decompilation project’s ability to modify the game’s C code and build a new executable using the developer version of Metal Gear Solid." Adding "At the time of creation, neither the AI Grey Fox boss nor the playable VR Ninja have been fully decompiled. As a result, everything shown so far has been recreated through reverse engineering, existing game code, experimentation, and educated guesses."

They explain, "The goal is to let players experience an expanded version of Grey Fox vs what was given to us in VR missions with as many of his signature abilities and some new ones as the game’s limitations allow, while preserving core gameplay features such as crawling, elevators, weapons, and environmental interaction." and that "This project also lays the groundwork for a future version that could allow players to experience the entire game as Grey Fox."

Perfect Pizza also says "This is not a complete story-mode conversion" but that "A separate project, which I am not affiliated with, is working toward making the full campaign playable by rebuilding all the stage overlays and making the compiled exe shiftable. The future of a complete Grey Fox playthrough depends heavily on that effort."

Regardless it's an impressive mod that actually allows playable Grey Fox found in VR Missions to live up to the version we hoped he would be all along, and even if a full version doesn't show up, it'll be fun to play about with.

After almost 25 years, Metal Gear Solid 2 players are still finding secrets: "This is the kind of stuff somebody posts on an online forum in 2005 and no one believes it"

David Hayter, the striking voice behind the Metal Gear series' various Snake roles, isn't a fan of Sony's decision to end physical disc production for new games on PlayStation consoles in 2028 – and he's certainly not afraid to show it.

The end of physical media as we know it is dominating online discussions following Sony's announcement, which cited how "general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs" – a statement that plenty of folks definitely cannot get behind.

One of them is none other than David Hayter, the iconic voice actor known for his work on Metal Gear Solid games as Solid Snake, Old Snake, Naked Snake… you name it.

In a new online post, Hayter makes this as clear as he possibly can, sharing a picture of all his consoles and games (physical, of course, mind you). Between the Xbox and PlayStation 5 – and various controllers – I see a plethora of gems, including everything from GTA 5 to Red Dead Redemption 2.

As for his caption? "No disc, no buy." And, yes, he tags the official PlayStation account on Twitter, too, so as to catch Sony's attention.

Unsurprisingly, fans are largely in agreement with the actor, who admits in the comments that "this is a fraction of my game collection" as well. Not to mention, "I also have 2500+ DVDs." Physical media, you say? Hayter's no hater in that department.

He's not alone, either, as big developers in the industry themselves have spoken out against the move toward digital-only. Take former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra, for example.

He says "we can't live in a world of fear if our games will work in the future or not," and game preservation experts share in that sentiment, explaining how this will all lead to more piracy.

Just yesterday, CEO of Lords of the Fallen 2 publisher CI Games, Marek Tyminski, also stated that Sony's choice to axe discs and the fact that GTA 6 is going disc-free itself "feels unfair to studios still backing physical" – so, yeah.

There's no telling what the future will bring for physical media enthusiasts, but I'm choosing to remain hopeful that game discs won't do a DVD on us and all but disappear. Something tells me Hayter is, too.

Here's why we think PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not.

If you're looking for some Meccha Chameleon tips to get better at hiding or seeking, then you've come to the right place. There are now millions of players trying out this viral hit and it can be hard at first to figure out what's going on, while learning the best ways to avoid detection or track down your opponents. Having played quite a few rounds myself, I'm here to help with tips for Meccha Chameleon, whether you're hiding or a hunter.

Wondering if you can play Meccha Chameleon on Mac, consoles, or mobile? We've got the latest information about releases on other formats.

1. Practice in a private server first

They say that practice makes perfect, and it's hard to git gud when you're running around in a panic before the hunters are released. So, if you jump into a private server with just you in it, you can take all the time you need to fully explore each stage to look for the best hiding spots and work on your painting skills.

To set this up, hit the Create Server option from the main menu and then configure the Meccha Chameleon max players count to 1 so you won't be disturbed. Create your server, select the desired map from the lobby, then feel free to wander round and experiment at your own pace.

2. Hiding in plain sight will get you more points

One of the big appeals with Meccha Chameleon is being able to disguise yourself well enough to hide in plain sight, and as you earn points for the time you spend in any hunters' sightline that's also the best scoring strategy. Look for objects you can naturally blend in with and are easy to mimic – I've had huge success in the past curling up next to balloons and matching their color, with whole squads of hunters walking past without spotting me!

Of course, as your skills improve you can start trying to make your hiding in plain sight more audacious, by painting yourself to blend in with increasingly complex surfaces and patterns. You can even try attaching yourself to objects and expanding them – if you look like you're part of the existing structure then you're much less likely to stand out to a hunter.

3. Use the 3D Eyedropper to match your surroundings effectively

If you want to paint yourself to match your surroundings, then you need to get the color(s) you're using as close as possible to the originals so you can blend in. The general Eyedropper tool in the menu will help with this, but the best approach is to use the 3D Eyedropper.

Hold down Space to activate the 3D Eyedropper tool, then hover the mouse over a surface to display a cross that will follow the contours, before using Left click to select the currently targeted color. Make sure you also hold the Right mouse button and move left or right to change the size of your brush – go big for the initial coloring, then shrink it down for detail work, and check the angles to confirm you've painted every part of you that's visible.

4. Hiding out of sight is also a solid option

While it's perhaps not a tactic that's in the 'spirit' of Meccha Chameleon, you can also choose to hide out of sight rather than blending in. While this approach probably won't score you as many points, the trade off is that you're more likely to survive the round if you find a good spot.

If you find a good place to tuck away, you should still give yourself a basic paint coat to match your surroundings so you don't stand out if a hunter starts investigating around you. However, watch out for a warning that "Your body is buried too much!" if you clip too far into the scenery, as if you don't adjust your position to rectify this you'll start flashing red for all hunters to easily find you.

5. Stay where you are unless you're sure your cover is blown

Sometimes while hiding in Meccha Chameleon you just have to hold your nerve when the hunters are near, and have faith that your disguise will keep you safe. I've had times when a hunter was literally crawling on top of me, but I persevered and eventually they moved elsewhere on their search.

Running around the level will make you instantly recognizable as a moving target, so only change position if you absolutely have to and try to stay out of sight if you do. If you end up being chased by a hunter, remember that they have to pause between shots, so keep moving and erratically change direction as you try to break their sightline.

6. Download new maps to keep things interesting

There are a handful of original maps supplied with Meccha Chameleon and new ones are being added, but the solo dev is never going to be able to keep up with the voracious appetites of millions of players. However, there are already a huge number of user created maps in the Steam Workshop, all of which can be downloaded for free.

If the lobby you are in selects a custom map you don't already have, you can easily follow the prompt to add it from the Workshop and jump straight in. My personal favorites so far are The Village, Art Gallery, and Where's Wally?/Waldo?

7. If you're hunting, don't overlook the obvious

As a hunter, you'll be tempted to comb areas of the map in minute detail to see if you can spot something slightly out of place that will give away a hider. However, this means you may overlook something completely obvious when an opponent is hiding in plain sight. When you start hunting, do a quick overall sweep around to see if anything stands out as unusual – especially if you're familiar with the map – before going on to examine areas in more detail.

8. Paint yourself as a hunter

This is more for fun than anything else, but don't forget that it's not just the hiders who can paint themselves. As a hunter you can still bring up all the same tools and give yourself a makeover, whether you want to make yourself look menacing or plain ridiculous! Just don't spend too long on your new look, as you'll be eating in to your hunting time...

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Metal Gear and Death Stranding mastermind Hideo Kojima is "really sad" about Sony's decision to stop producing physical copies of new PlayStation games in 2028, calling the idea of not being able to access the media we want in the future "frightening."

I'm not sure I can think of a single person who's happy about PlayStation's move to soon kill off its new physical games – it's devastating news for collectors, worrying for game preservationists, and raises concerns about all sorts of things from ownership to the second-hand game market, sharing with friends, and more. Kojima is understandably also upset, as he reveals in comments at the Il Cinema in Piazza film festival (translated by @Genki_JPN on Twitter).

"Since production is ending in 2028, this is about video games, but I grew up with physical media, so I find it really sad," he begins. "Currently, I've been buying up a lot of Blu-rays, such as various movies, and CDs too.

"The situation is different for games, as they are downloaded to the hard drive, that means the game data remains on your own hardware. However, if things shift to streaming in the future, that won't be the case anymore."

He looks to streaming services like Netflix as he notes that "there is a server somewhere, and you essentially just have the right to turn the tap, and when you do, the data flows out." However, he continues, because you don't download the data of those movies and shows, but rather gain access to them via your subscription, "the consequence of that is that you don't actually possess the data yourself."

And there lies a bigger problem – while the "companies that own these servers" will "let you 'turn the tap' for a monthly fee," things might not stay the same forever. "With nations, politics and various ways of thinking, one naturally has to consider the possibility that if there is a change, the data inside will stop being distributed," Kojima says. "And if that happens you won't be able to watch or play the movies and games you like. That is what is frightening."

As a huge fan of movies, Kojima clearly has concerns that this same issue approaching PlayStation could end up impacting the film industry, too. "So, what is happening to video games in 2028, might also happen to movies," he adds. "I'd like everyone to keep that in mind."

Kojima is far from the only developer worried about the death of physical media – last week's news saw many devs and publishers speak out against Sony's decision, with Larian Studios publishing director Michael Douse calling the situation "heartbreaking." Sony apparently already has another use for its disc factory in the form of microlenses, and has reportedly recently invested €30 million into the technology for manufacturing them. Needless to say, it doesn't seem likely that the company could backtrack on the idea, despite the mass backlash.

PlayStation's disc-less future could "heavily influence" Xbox and Nintendo's approach to physical games, former Sony boss says, calling the decision "dramatic."

Wanting to play Meccha Chameleon on Mac, consoles, or mobile is understandable if you don't have access to a PC, and have been watching the viral sensation take off over recent weeks. The frantic hide-and-seek action leads to hilarious moments, and there are already millions of players painting themselves while trying to blend into the background and avoid detection. If you want to get involved, then here's what you need to know about Meccha Chameleon on PS5, Xbox, Switch, and other formats.

If you have PC access, our Meccha Chameleon tips will give you some pointers and we explain what is the Meccha Chameleon max players count.

Is Meccha Chameleon available on formats other than PC?

No, at the time of writing Meccha Chameleon is only available on PC, so you currently cannot play it on any other formats including Mac, PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, or mobile. Be wary if you see it available on any other format, as fake versions have already started appearing on various storefronts which are scams and will take your money without giving you the appropriate gameplay experience.

Will Meccha Chameleon release on other formats in the future?

While it's not out of the question, there have been no plans announced so far to bring Meccha Chameleon to any other formats. The game itself was created by just two indie developers, so there isn't a big studio behind it who could get to work on porting it to different devices, and they may not even have the technical resources required to develop it for other formats. The painting element of the game relies heavily on mouse control, so it may also be difficult to accurately transfer that to consoles or mobile.

One potential positive is that the multiplayer connectivity for Meccha Chameleon is built on Epic Games' Epic Online Services, which offers online services "on any combination of stores and platforms" and should mean that if the game does get ported to other formats then the online component is taken care of, perhaps even offering cross-platform connectivity between versions.

If any firm plans for other releases are announced by the developers, then I'll update this guide accordingly.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is now approaching 25 years old, and players are still discovering things about the classic game.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is one of the PS2 titles that truly felt 'next-gen' when it came out, or so I'm told since I was five at the time and only cared about Crash Bandicoot. But all of the little details that make that game's world so special are well known now – things like how the ice cubes would melt slowly if you shot the bucket at the bar, or Snake getting a cold if he stays out in the cold too long.

And yet, multiple playthroughs later (including one about a month ago), and I never knew about one hidden detail, and it looks like almost no one else did, either. "After more than 2 decades of playing MGS2, I thought I'd seen everything, then this happened", a user on Reddit writes, sharing an extremely specific interaction that can happen towards the end of the Tanker chapter.

When Snake is making his way to the room where Metal Gear Ray is housed, there are multiple open areas you can hide in off to the side, but as has now been discovered, peeking round the corner at the approaching enemy will cause a metal pipe to fall, alerting them.

After more than 2 decades of playing MGS2, I thought I'd seen everything, then this happened. from r/metalgearsolid

The comments are just as shocked as me to find this out, with the top response saying: "Holy shit, what? Same here. This game is legendary, man." A response adds: "I think the insane level of detail on these games, particularly MGS2 and MGS3 is often overlooked. I was absolutely blown away by MGS2 when I was a teenager playing it for the first time, and even now I think the graphics and overall environment design are unbelievable." Meanwhile, another puts it perfectly, "This is the kind of stuff somebody posts on an online forum in 2005 and no one believes it to be real."

And sure, a pipe falling over isn't exactly mind-blowing stuff, but it's just one of the myriad details that makes Metal Gear Solid as a series so beloved.

Metal Gear Solid Snake actor David Hayter didn't understand all of Hideo Kojima's story while recording, but says he didn't need to: "That's what makes Metal Gear, Metal Gear."

If you know the Meccha Chameleon max players count then you can plan a session of painting hide-and-seek that involves your entire group of friends, as long as there's not too many of them. The game has been taking the internet by storm with over a million copies sold already, which means there are currently lots of players looking to get involved. To find out how many of them can be accommodated on each server, here's the lowdown on the max players for Meccha Chameleon.

Improve your skills with some Meccha Chameleon tips, or if you're wondering can you play Meccha Chameleon on Mac, consoles, or mobile then we've got the lowdown on other formats.

What is the maximum number of players for Meccha Chameleon?

Currently the Meccha Chameleon max players count is 24, as this is the highest number the host can set it to when creating a server, however this does come with some caveats. The developers recommend selecting 2-10 players for an optimal experience, and while they say that anything up to 13 players should run stably, if you choose to set the max player count between 14 and 24 then there's no guarantee it will work – the experience everyone gets at those higher player counts will depend largely on the host's CPU and connection speed.

I therefore recommend you stay within the developers' suggestion of 2-10 player, initially at least, then if you want to experiment with a higher max player count then increase it gradually until you either reach your target or the game stops functioning correctly. It's worth noting that however many players you have in a server, only one will be the initial hunter who will then infect others to join them as they're caught, until the time runs out or all chameleons are turned into hunters.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Metal Gear and Death Stranding mastermind Hideo Kojima has stated that he's "not interested" in AI-generated art, despite his recent appearance in an AI-generated short film created by Pusher and Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn (who also did the motion capture for Heartman in Death Stranding and its sequel).

Late last month, many Kojima fans weren't exactly pleased to see the game director – or rather, an AI-generated version of him – show up in an AI-generated video promoting Satellites 2, a new Prada Mode art exhibition that's been open to the public in New York over the last few days. The video sent Kojima's AI lookalike on a journey through space alongside AI Refn, before landing on Earth and seemingly checking into the Hotel Chelsea, where the exhibition was being held.

Now, though, at the exhibition itself, Kojima has expressed disinterest in the technology. Speaking to The Washington Post, he explains that he thinks real people need to be present when art is created.

"Art is life," he begins. "But in 50 years, 100 years, I don't know. Maybe AI could create art, but while I live, I don't think I'll see it. I'm not interested in it."

Kojima continues: "We'll find a good way, a good path to how we use technology, and it's really up to young people on how we use it."

The Metal Gear creator has shared his take on AI numerous times over the last year or so – he previously said that instead of using AI to come up with ideas, he would personally "lead the creative part and use AI to boost efficiency" and "handle the tedious tasks." He also once spoke about the "trend" of AI "coming into game creation" and likened it to an evolution like games becoming 3D and using online connectivity.

I can't help but wonder if Kojima's now clearly stated disinterest in AI art could partially come in response to the negativity that followed his appearance in the Satellites 2 video. To be clear, he didn't personally create it, but his association with it didn't go down very well, to put it lightly. Even so, he doesn't acknowledge this backlash at all when speaking to The Washington Post, so it remains somewhat unclear exactly where he stands on that specific video.

Hideo Kojima learns that Higgs is the world's favorite Death Stranding 2 character, but he's just glad all his children have fans.

Thief: The Dark Project is getting a remaster this year from the retro revival specialists at Nightdive Studios, over 27 years since its initial release

Announced today during the PC Gaming Show, Thief: The Dark Project Remastered is set to launch at some point this winter across PC, PS4 and PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and Switch 2.

The new trailer has showcased our first look at gameplay, and as you'd hope, the visuals look distinctly smoother and far less blocky than they did in 1998, but still while preserving the retro charm of the original. Obviously, it remains to be seen what changes – if any – might have been made to the gameplay experience, but you'd hope that this could become a new entry point for fans who missed out on the original.

After all, if you're not into VR games, Thief has been out of action for over 12 years now. Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow broke the series' silence last year, and reached 77% Mostly Positive reviews on Steam, but alas, VR just isn't for everyone. Before that, the last new Thief game (simply called Thief) came out in 2014, so it's been a long wait.

Obviously, while a remaster might not scratch the itch for a whole new Thief game like veteran fans might have been hoping for, it's just good news to see the series get some attention again. Regardless of whether you were into Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow, having two new games within around a year of each other is a great sign for the franchise – let's hope we can expect to see more from it in the future.

Be sure to keep up with our roundup of new games coming this year and beyond.

The Hitman Classic Trilogy is getting a full remaster from IO Interactive and Saber Interactive. It's a very interactive situation out here.

Hitman Classic Trilogy Remastered abruptly appeared on Steam tonight following a Summer Game Fest presentation from IO Interactive, attended by GamesRadar+. Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, and Hitman: Contracts are back and – arguably – looking better than ever. A release date is not listed on Steam, but the collection is apparently "coming soon," and by soon Saber and Io mean in 2027. It's also coming to PS5 and Xbox.

The trailer blurb reads: "The legendary trilogy that forged the HITMAN legacy, painstakingly rebuilt from the ground up. Whether returning to the field or taking on your first assignment, HITMAN Classic Trilogy Remastered will provide the ultimate entry into Agent 47’s early career"

The side-by-side screenshots included in the Steam page are pretty impressive at first blush. Remasters for this era of games can be quite hit-and-miss, but this looks like a hit so far. Objects, textures, and lighting effects are noticeably improved, and so far I haven't seen any personality, art direction, or essential details sanded off and sacrificed at the altar of HD. Here's the announcement trailer:

If you do want to play with the old look, you'll enjoy the "instant graphics toggle" included in the collection. "Switch seamlessly between the original presentation and the enhanced visuals. Play the games as you remember them or rediscover them in a modern light," the devs say.

Broadly, the remastered trilogy promises "upgraded character models, enhanced environments, and high-resolution textures." There's also a new photo mode, although taking pictures of yourself actively assassinating folks doesn't seem like a wise thing to do.

A speaker for Saber said, "For us, remastering isn't just about taking visuals. It's about finding the original vision while embracing the possibilities of today's technology. Every project is a bridge between generations of gamers, and our goal is to make these worlds accessible, exciting, and unforgettable once again."

007 First Light dev IO Interactive won't publish future James Bond games despite its success, as Amazon gaming boss reminds everyone who owns the IP now.

Some people worry they peaked in high school – but Ubisoft veteran Clint Hocking thinks he reached a summit with the adored 2005 stealth game Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and he's OK with that. He never wants to make another Splinter Cell game again.

Hocking tells FRVR in a new interview, "I'm just happy to have made a really, really amazing game that's probably the best – I don't think it's my best game –" that title belongs to Far Cry 2, he says, "but I definitely feel like it’s the best Splinter Cell that I could make. And I don't think I could ever do better."

The developer spent a total of nearly 15 years at Ubisoft working on Splinter Cell, Far Cry 2, and, most recently, Assassin's Creed Hexe as its creative director before leaving in February and starting his current studio, Build Machine Games. The developer's quitting in winter was the second time he'd ditched Ubisoft, and he isn't involved in the Splinter Cell remake the publisher is apparently still working on despite too many layoffs this year. Nonetheless, he gives the studio his blessing.

Hocking says about Splinter Cell, "It can live on its own and other people can do what they want." He adds, "It's not my brand. I don't own it. I don't want to own it."

He explains, "I had my fill of Splinter Cell by making it." Hocking says he elected to bleed out 12, 14, 16-hour work days while making Chaos Theory over 20 years ago, telling FRVR, "I was always there because it's what I love to do and it was super engaging."

But all those hours add up. The tally equals enough Splinter Cell for one lifetime. So Hocking concludes, "To me, Splinter Cell is Chaos Theory. It's the best Splinter Cell I can make. It's the last Splinter Cell I ever hope to make." And that's all there is to it.

Valve reportedly threatened Ubisoft with a total delisting of Rainbow Six Siege "by end of day tomorrow" when it tried selling it cheaper on Uplay.

David Hayter, the iconic voice behind Metal Gear's Solid Snake, has teamed up with Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight star Shai Matheson in an adorable video response to claims that the two characters sound alike.

Sometimes the best way to answer to your critics is by laughing along with them. I know I laugh through tears every time I read another comment about the so-called "skill issue" preventing me from enjoying Souls games, and Matheson is taking a similar approach to critiques of his Lego Batman voice, which many compare to a stuffy-nosed Solid Snake. Instead of pushing back on those accusations, Matheson made a tongue-in-cheek video with Hayter in which he receives the actor's blessing.

"So, apparently a lot of you think my Batman sounds like Solid Snake from Metal Gear if he had a cold," Matheson says in the video. "I'm not sure I understand that. Do you?" he asks, before the camera pans toward Hayter, who's blowing his nose with a tissue.

"I'm sorry, I've got a bit of a cold," Hayter says.

"Oh, I get it now," Matheson admits.

Lego Batman's Shai Matheson responds to a common criticism of his portrayal of the character from r/metalgearsolid

Despite the wholesome, diplomatic nature of the video, I actually think the actors do a better job of dispelling comparisons than anything else. Hearing the two voices side-by-side, I genuinely don't hear it. Sure, they both speak in deep, raspy baritones, but otherwise they sound like distinct characters to me. Regardless, it couldn't be more clear that Hayter is perfectly happy for people to think Lego Batman sounds just like his Solid Snake performance.

"But hey, I just wanna say: Batman, I admire you work. You're stealthy as hell," Hayter says in his signature Solid Snake voice, shortly before the two actors bust out in laughter and the video ends.

Whatever you think of Matheson's performance, it did little to hamper our impressions of Lego Batman, with GR+ US managing editor Rollin Bishop awarding the game a commendable 4/5 stars and saying it "remixes classic stories and games to provide a single straightforward explanation for who Batman is, how he came to be, and where he and his extended found family has ultimately found themselves – without taking itself too seriously."

Metal Gear Solid Snake actor David Hayter didn't understand all of Hideo Kojima's story while recording, but says he didn't need to: "That's what makes Metal Gear, Metal Gear"

Konami has revealed the first gameplay of Metal Gear Solid 4 in Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 2, and fans have noticed subtle changes and the return of the iPod.

While Metal Gear Solid 4 was in PS3 jail, many speculated that it was just a game that would be impossible to bring back, thanks to all its dumb little details and licensed content. But in a stream on the WasayaganaTV YouTube channel – hosted by Jujutsu Kaisen actor Yuichi Nakamura and radio personality Mafia Kajita – we got our first look at Guns of the Patriots running on new platforms. And within the steam it was shown that the Apple iPod is back in the game, signaling the return of its licensed content.

We didn't see them in the stream, but elsewhere in Metal Gear Solid 4, Otacon uses an Apple Mac computer, so it's probably safe to assume that sticks. There's also a crossover with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series, which allows Snake to don Altaïr's robes while sneaking around – this was confirmed to be returning in an interview around the time Solid Snake was added to Rainbow Six Siege. Also, fans spotted that the "No place for Hideo" box is still in the game; however, the link to the now-defunct Hideoblog was removed.

Naturally, however, fans are speculating about how some of the PS3-specific parts will translate. Notably, there's an iconic scene during the game's Shadow Moses segment, in which Otacon pushes Snake to swap to disk 2 before realizing "we're on PlayStation 3" before talking about how good Blu-ray discs are. The question is whether this scene will remain in the game as is, be replaced with new voice lines about the specific consoles, or be nixed entirely.

The rest of the stream also showed some of the improvements coming to this version. Notably, Metal Gear Solid 4 running at 60fps is witchcraft we could've only dreamed of, and as one Twitter user pointed out, the loading times are way shorter when transitioning between areas. Although if you aren't stuck on a loading screen between chapters staring at Snake smoking for 15 minutes, are you really playing Metal Gear Solid 4?

I replayed Metal Gear Solid 4 last year for the first time in about a decade after beating Metal Gear Solid Delta, but I may just find myself returning to it sooner than expected to experience the upgrades on show.

Metal Gear Solid Snake actor David Hayter didn't understand all of Hideo Kojima's story while recording, but says he didn't need to: "That's what makes Metal Gear, Metal Gear"

Dishonored is now a stone cold immersive sim classic, but there's a world in which its rat-infested city streets and creative stealth options never saw the light of day because Bethesda originally had the game's developers work on Thief 4 and a Bladerunner adaptation.

Arkane Studios alum and Dishonored co-directors Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith were recently playing through their beloved imsim in a new YouTube video, where the duo took a second to remember how the project came together in the first place.

"Before we did Dishonored, we were supposed to either do Thief or Bladeunner," Colantonio recalls. As he remembers, Bethesda approached the studio to work on a Thief pitch that it was trying to secure the rights to, with a Bladerunner proposition coming soon after.

"Which is basically like coming to two cats and saying, 'We have a big bag of catnip here on the one side. We have another bag of catnip here. Which one do you want? You want both?' We were both so excited," Smith says. "Bladerunner and Thief, like two of our favorite things of all time."

Smith teases that the studio "had an amazing pitch for Thief, which would have been Thief 4," a sequel to one of the most influential stealth series ever made.

"We were in a in a such a dire situation business-wise and they came up not only to save us, but also to bring, frankly, the IP that I would have liked to work on the most," Colantonio adds. In the end, both deals fell through and the directors feared Bethesda wouldn't be interested in working with the team without a big IP attached. "Eventually they said, 'Ah, it's okay - keep what you're doing and, uh, and call it Dishonored.'" The rest is history.

Smith continued to work at Arkane Austin until its closure a few years back. Colantonio founded another developer, WolfEye Studios, that's currently making an unannounced first-person imsim. Meanwhile, Arkane Lyon is developing Marvel's Blade.

Arkane Studios founder says he could see himself "working on Dishonored 3 right now," though creating a sequel was "the last thing I wanted to do" after making the first game

A modder is fixing an issue that has persisted with Metal Gear Solid 3 since 2011's HD Collection release – one that most people didn't really notice.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is the greatest game ever made – this was the subject of the first thing I ever wrote for GamesRadar+, about a game I've inhaled as many times as Kirby inhales a Waddle Dee. And yet, somehow, I never noticed that the 2011 HD collection version of the game, which was then ported over to Master Collection in 2023, actually had a broken camera in it the whole time.

As spotted by PC Gamer, Afevis Solmunko, one of the developers behind the MGSFix mod – who also found a hidden third-person mode in Metal Gear Solid 2's HD port – is working on a fix for the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection to fix the framing of cutscenes so that they match how they appeared in the PS2 original.

"In both 2011 [HD Collection] & 2023 [Master Collection], the camera in ALL of MGS3's cutscenes is ~10% higher than PS2's framing, cutting off the bottom of the screen," he explains. "Now fully corrected/properly centered by MGSHDFix."

Turns out, Metal Gear Solid 2 has the same issue, with Solmunko also speaking about potentially fixing that one, too, in a message on the Metal Gear Network Discord server.

Granted, there aren't massive things being missed in the HD version's framing, as in, there's nothing as bad as The Simpsons was on Disney+ at launch. Clearly so, since most of us never actually noticed the difference for 15 years.

Metal Gear Solid's Snake actor didn't want to sound like the character Hideo Kojima took so much inspiration from it reportedly nearly got him sued.

After 15 years, Metal Gear Solid 2's unfinished third-person camera mode has finally been found in the Master Collection version of the stealth classic.

Afevis Solmunko – one of the developers behind the MGSFix mod, which spruces up the PC version of Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1 – posts on Twitter (spotted by PC Gamer), "accidentally found third person view in MGS2MC" while sharing videos of it in action. They note "it locks the camera to overhead view when in super-tight corridors so you don't clip through walls, but otherwise... yeah, it been there for 15 years."

15 years in this case refers to the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, released by Bluepoint Games in 2011, and the basis for the versions of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 in Master Collection.

As a user in the responses points out, series creator Hideo Kojima mentioned in an interview around the release of HD Collection that "we experimented with putting a 3D camera in there" and turns out the experiments were hidden in there the whole time. This change effectively gives Metal Gear Solid 2 the same treatment as Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence, where you can turn it into a more traditional third-person shooter style of play.

It's definitely going to be fun to return to Metal Gear Solid 2 to check this out, but I can also see it being a Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes situation. The GameCube remake of the original Metal Gear Solid added in the first-person aiming from its sequel, which in turn absolutely killed the balance of the game, since the world wasn't planned for you being able to properly aim (the most notable being the Revolver Ocelot fight, which becomes a total joke). So, a third-person MGS2 could definitely see the same balance issues, but as a fun way to replay the game, I'd have loved to see an official version of this emerge for the HD Collection.

Metal Gear Solid's Snake actor didn't want to sound like the character Hideo Kojima took so much inspiration from it reportedly nearly got him sued.

Hideo Kojima wants to go to space. He's made this very known, and frankly, I'm not sure the world would be ready for whatever game he'd come up with after escaping the planet for a while. But Valve boss Gabe Newell was clearly eager to help the Metal Gear mastermind make the right connections, as emails have now been released showing Newell asking Elon Musk to give Kojima a tour of SpaceX.

As spotted by PC Gamer, the newly revealed emails have appeared as part of the Musk v Altman lawsuit, listed in the "amended joint exhibit list" filed on April 24. For some background, Musk is suing the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman (who's also one of the co-founders alongside Musk), and the company itself, with the first complaint filed in August 2024 alleging that "Altman assured Musk that the non-profit structure" of OpenAI "guaranteed neutrality and a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value. But as it turns out, this was all hot-air philanthropy – the hook for Altman's long con."

Anyway, this email from Newell dates back to October 2018, and he gets right to the point. Kojima - "Metal Gear series, a real visionary in our field" - had just visited Valve, "talking about his new game," he says – which we can infer was the first Death Stranding, given the timing of his visit (and resulted in a delightful photo of the pair). Newell says Kojima "mentioned the importance he places on future work in AI."

This part isn't too surprising – more recently, the Death Stranding mastermind has stated that he'd "like AI to handle the tedious tasks that would lower cost and cut down on time," but "would lead the creative part" himself. However, while he can see uses for the technology, he's also expressed concerns that "humans would become spoiled" if they became too reliant on it.

Emailing Musk, Newell says he told Kojima that he'd be "happy to introduce him to the people at OpenAI," but that's not all. "The second thing is he was talking about how much he wants to go into space, and I offered to introduce him to you," Newell writes. "He'd love to get a SpaceX tour."

Responding to Newell's email, Musk seems enthusiastic about the idea. "Sure, it would be great to meet Hideo Kojima and he's welcome to see the rocket factory," Musk writes, telling the Valve boss to "send him my email."

Sadly, this plan still hadn't come to fruition by 2020, when Kojima seemingly made reference to some of these details in an interview with The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley. Mentioning that he visited Valve "maybe four, five years ago" (which would place this well before Newell's 2018 email, so the timeline isn't entirely clear here), Kojima explains: "Gabe said, 'Since we love space so much, let's go visit SpaceX because I know Elon Musk, and I'll contact him, and let's go.'" Poor Kojima seemed slightly disappointed, however, when he added: "Actually, I was really anticipating really going together, but we haven't done that yet."

That didn't lead to Kojima giving up on his dream, though. In 2023, he explained that "I want to go to outer space and create a game you can play in space," pleading: "Please someone send me up to space." Then, last year, he told The Guardian that he wants to "go to the International Space Station and stay there for a few months," adding: "I could probably make games in space. I want to be the first."

At the very least, an image of Kojima appears in the night sky in Death Stranding 2, so he's made it up there in some form. But who knows, perhaps one day we'll see him and Newell set off to the moon together.

Valve chief Gabe Newell saw today's consoles coming a long time ago: "All the consoles are using PC graphics hardware now."

Despite being the star of the series, Metal Gear Solid actor David Hayter says he doesn't fully understand the story of the series either.

Speaking to Fall Damage, Hayter is asked about the series' storyline, responding, "Do I understand the story of Metal Gear Solid? Uh, basically I do; Do I understand all of it? Absolutely not," adding, "I didn't understand all of it while we were recording it."

"I'd be like, 'What does this mean?' and they'd say, 'just say it. And I'd be like, 'Okay.'" Hayter recalls. But he doesn't begrudge the series for it, as he adds, "again, that's what makes Metal Gear, Metal Gear." Hayter explains, "There's more information. There's more character development. There's more detail to the story than you can ever possibly absorb, no matter how many times you play it." He adds, "that's what makes the world feel real and rich and lovable."

Metal Gear is one of those series that gets hit with the 'nonsensical story' stick often, and while it does venture into some wild territory, the core storyline has always been pretty easy to follow. Not to mention it takes place across seven canon games, so we're hardly talking about Kingdom Hearts or Persona, where a golf spinoff would somehow be canon.

Although even the most hardcore of Metal Gear fans like myself will admit that it got a touch convoluted around Metal Gear Solid 4, with elements like a possessed character actually just brainwashing themselves to think they were possessed for two games, a character who was immune to the villain's greatest weapon because he has chronic IBS, and some frankly dumb retcons to tie things into other games.

Metal Gear Solid's Snake actor didn't want to sound like the character Hideo Kojima took so much inspiration from it reportedly nearly got him sued

Metal Gear Solid lead actor David Hayter says he intentionally didn't try to mimic Snake's inspiration when creating the voice for the character.

Speaking to Fall Damage, Hayter says, "When we started Metal Gear and I started taking on Snake, I didn't want him to sound like Kurt Russell from Escape from New York." He explains: "I knew that there were similarities there and I felt like he needed to sound more weathered, you know, that he had been through a lot more than I had been through at that point in my life."

Russell played the character Snake Plissken in the film, a mullet-donning, cigarette-smoking, eyepatch-wearing badass, to which Hideo Kojima was clearly inspired for both Solid Snake and Big Boss. He even acknowledged this, with Metal Gear Solid 2 introducing Iroquois Pliskin a character who looks suspiciously like Solid Snake (but it couldn't be, he died on that tanker two years ago).

Before Hayter was replaced as Big Boss – with Kiefer Sutherland playing the role in Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes – Kojima actually tried to get Kurt Russell himself to play the character in Metal Gear Solid 3. Escape from New York director John Carpenter also revealed that the studio wanted to go after the game for ripping off the film, but "I told them not to do that. I know the director of those games, and he's a nice guy, or at least he's nice to me."

Hayter has a point, though, while Metal Gear Solid was many people's entry point to the franchise, Solid Snake was already in retirement by the time that game took place, with the original MSX2 games taking place 10 and six years before the PS1 title (where he would get a voice for the first time). So, the weathered take on the character was probably the right one, and would prove to be one of the most iconic voices in gaming.

Hideo Kojima and Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki's games have something other AAA titles don't, former PlayStation boss says: "You can tell it's their visions."

It's been 13 years since the last mainline Splinter Cell game, 2013's Blacklist, and although Ubisoft insists the Splinter Cell remake is still happening despite its ongoing "major reset" and downsizings, one indie developer isn't holding his breath.

Lizard State is a new stealth action game from solo developer Benjamin Rose "inspired by the classics." Nothing in any of the game's official press materials mentions Splinter Cell by name, but one look at the game's reveal trailer is all you need to see to know Lizard State is a spiritual successor. See for yourself:

Even the game's Steam description makes it very clear which games Rose was inspired by making Lizard State.

The game has a "short, focused stealth campaign," "visuals inspired by classic PS2-era games," "levels that open up with interconnected paths, different routes and shortcuts," an "advanced light/shadow system" that forces you to stay in the shadows to avoid being seen, and an "advanced hearing system" where you have to be mindful of your footsteps so you don't trigger enemy AI. There's also a hacking system, "reactive AI," and multiple difficulty levels and optional objectives. Yup, sounds like Splinter Cell.

Story-wise, the whole thing takes place over the course of a single night, in which you're tasked with saving a hostage held up by a renegade-occupied island. I'm not sure what that has to do with lizards, but it sounds cool.

Right now, Lizard State is slated to release "soon," and in the meantime, you can add it to your Steam wishlist if you like what you see.

Here are the best stealth games you can play right now.

Thick as Thieves, the new stealth game from OtherSide Entertainment, a studio founded by immersive sim legend Warren Spector, is dropping the previously confirmed PvPvE elements in favor of single-player and co-op gameplay.

I've been cautiously optimistic - heavy on the cautiously - about Thick as Thieves since it was announced back in December 2024. Spector is a titan of the industry largely credited as one of the pioneers of the immersive sim genre, having produced the foundational 1992 action-RPG Ultima Underworld, created the original Deus Ex, and coined the term immersive sim.

As chief creative officer of OtherSide Entertainment, Spector looked at today's immersive sims and thought, "we could do better," and that's why we have Thick as Thieves. It's a compelling hook, but I don't need PvPvE shenanigans in my immersive sims, especially not as a core component, and thankfully, that part of the game has been scrapped entirely.

"When we first revealed Thick as Thieves we intended to focus on PvPvE gameplay," reads a Steam update from OtherSide. "However, as development progressed and the world of Kilcairn has come to life, we found that we were having more fun with solo and co-op play."

For that reason, the studio is ditching PvPvE to focus "on two-player co-op and single player." Heck yeah.

"This sharpened focus has allowed us to double down on what makes Thick as Thieves truly special – dynamic stealth gameplay," OtherSide says, adding that the switch-over has already "strengthened the moment-to-moment action, whether you’re playing solo or with a partner in co-op."

I'm not surprised. Immersive sims should be big, complex, interconnected webs of systems vying for my attention, and I'm too competitive to focus on all of that on top of PvP. Co-op actually sounds like an interesting system as, if it's implemented right, it could compliment the systems-driven gameplay in fun ways. We'll have to see how it all shakes out when Thick as Thieves releases on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC sometime this year.

Sneak through the kingdom performing daring heists in retro immersive sim Project Shadowglass

Who doesn't love a good vampire? But, the fanged creatures can be notoriously difficult to get right when it comes to video games, let alone playing one yourself. Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong doesn't get everything right, but in adapting the '90s tabletop RPG's penchant for intrigue and politicking rather than combat (the flipside being an issue in our Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 review), it nails a juicy, claret-running formula that my fangs are itching for a second taste of. Swansong, at times, plays like a Vampire Hitman.

Of the game's three playable characters, Galeb Bazory has a few things in common with Hitman's Agent 47. Both are the strong silent type, men of action who get the job done even against seemingly impossible odds, and even have mysterious pasts throughout which they have both carried out a huge number of assassinations. While all three characters in Swansong are sent by the vampire Prince into some pretty dangerous situations to deal with an attack from the Second Inquisition, Galeb's missions are the most deadly, and he just has to roll up his sleeves, then roll his eyes, and roll with the circumstances to doggedly dismantle the vampire hunter threat. How? By getting a bit Hitman with it.

Tactical vampire action

The Second Inquisition branch you deal with through Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong comes from the Society of St. Leopold, who are leading a religious crusade to burn out the vampire presence in Boston. With the location of the Inquisition operating base found, Galeb is sent in to infiltrate it during Scene Six. It's the most sprawling and ambitious mission in the game, and one where I really get a taste for how Vampire: The Masquerade could handle a greater focus on espionage.

On the backfoot, with some of his vampiric skills negated by mysterious Second Inquisition technology, Galeb must infiltrate slowly and carefully – getting his claws on security passes to open up more sections of the underground base to locate its leader, while burning through his limited blood powers to convincingly blend in as a fellow agent. An option to try to brute force your way through this level can even result in an early failure, skipping the section entirely but with some less than ideal consequences.

The branch's leader can only be located with one of three commander's special identity chips, each presiding over a wing of the base. There's an archivist of ancient tomes, a surgeon who cuts up supernatural bodies to try to better understand them, and a soldier who tests out vicious weapons in a shooting range. Worming your way between each, you get a better idea of the relationships between the base's elites, what each department is doing, and get to explore a bit deeper. You can, of course, inflict several ironic deaths and punishments in the process. It's extremely satisfying to quietly use vampire wiles to work through the base, feeding in quiet corners, unravelling hidden plans, and being a master of darkness.

Don't get me wrong, there's no way Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong's best level feels as slick as Hitman proper. It's all a bit too mechanical, a bit too fixed, but it is a wonderful showpiece for how quiet vampire infiltration could conceivably flourish, and it still manages to evoke a terrific sense of social (albeit superpowered) stealth. It's not the only time the Swansong plays in this space, either.

Galeb's opening mission is also electric, having him infiltrate an active crime scene to extract an asset too rich in vampire society knowledge to fall into human hands (lest the titular masquerade be broken). Calmly strutting in and using his Ventrue vampire clan powers to dominate the wills of the police force and pass himself off as an FBI investigator, he's able to run rings around the cops while commanding his way through the crime scene.

Similarly, one of Leysha's earlier missions has her infiltrating a crime scene as well, instead using her Malkavian vampire clan powers of deception to create illusory uniforms or fully duplicate identities to move through levels of security, from simple police officers to forensics. Also target-based, she has to discover where a fellow vampire went and ideally escape with her, meaning she has to stealthily follow threads of visions to unravel the events that happened. Swansong is mostly focused on putting together a delightfully compelling narrative RPG experience, but the bones are definitely in place for more social stealthing as well – I'd love to see this format revisited and expanded upon.

As a tabletop roleplaying game, there's a lot of different ways to play Vampire: The Masquerade, but with one of the core principles being upholding the secrecy of vampire society, it's always felt best to me when operating from the shadows. There's a lot of different ways to do that, of course – especially when it comes to adapting the setting for video games.

Personally, I've spent many hours crouch-walking through air ducts or silvertonguing my way through whatever I can in the classic Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, before suffering my way through its combat-heavy final hours. Likewise, the excellent text RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Night Road was a thrill when I was using my wits to complete each courier job, and in Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice, in VR, stalking the Venetian rooftops before my Dishonored-like stealth kills is incredibly satisfying when my glasses aren't fogging up.

Which does mean that purely action approaches just don't fit the bill as far as I'm concerned, and can result in some pretty rough experiences. I've got a soft spot for Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, but bashing through legions of foes in Diablo-like dungeons is as bizarre a choice now as it was then. So too am I baffled by Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 ridding itself of the original's admittedly clunky immersive sim DNA to go for a more linear combat-centric adventure (meaning you'd even stealth through some areas just to be told you can't progress until enemies in the area have been defeated).

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong definitely isn't perfect, but its real dedication to translating the TTRPG's rules, tone, and objective variety into a video game is admirable, and creates some seriously great social stealth scenarios in the process. VTM is a rich world that still has a lot of possibilities, but that doesn't mean devs working with the series need to go completely back to the drawing board. As far as I'm concerned, the blueprints for making the Vampire Hitman of my dreams are already there – I just hope they don't remain relegated to the shadows.

After 15 hours of Bloodlines 2 disappointment, the embrace of Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong has healed my bloodied heart

Whether they're adding tank controls to Resident Evil 2 Remake or making dragon marriage legal in Skyrim, mods are capable of beautiful things. The latest example lets Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain players experience the game the way Hideo Kojima originally envisioned: with Ground Zeroes serving as a prologue at the beginning.

Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes was originally being developed as the opening mission and prologue to The Phantom Pain, but it was split off and released as a separate game because Kojima wanted fans to have something to play when the new generation of consoles, then the PS4 and Xbox One, released. However, Kojima reiterated in a 2023 social media post that the original plan was for Ground Zeroes to simply be a prologue quest in The Phantom Pain.

It only took 11 years, but you can finally play the two games as if they were one, as Kojima originally envisioned. Created by RLC and uploaded to NexusMods by CapLagRobin, the mod fully integrates Ground Zeroes' campaign, which takes place a few months after Peace Walker, to the beginning of The Phantom Pain, bridging the two games into a cohesive whole that theoretically is more true to Kojima's original vision.

The modder admits "many issues persist" and there are some "features not implemented," but if you follow the instructions (which require you to own a copy of Ground Zeroes), the Ground Zeroes mission will be added to The Phantom Pain's mission list on the iDroid. By default, the game will transition into the Ground Zeroes mission automatically after you beat Episode 1: Phantom Limbs, but there are options to let you turn off automatic transitions.

Of course, this also means Ground Zeroes' Camp Omega map is now fully explorable in The Phantom Pain's free roam system, allowing you to run around as Venom, do fun stuff like Fulton extractions, and even do side ops. There's no way of knowing if these elements were added in a way that's entirely faithful to Kojima's original plans, but until we get an official re-release bridging the two games together, this is by far the closest we've got to the developer's original vision.

10 years later, Metal Gear Solid 5 remains a masterpiece that was never going to live up to its own hype

Solid Snake is finally back on the right path once again as Rainbow Six Siege gives him bigger cheeks than his most recent appearances.

Snake had a hard life. Not only has Metal Gear Solid's star player not had an appearance in the games since 2008, but since then his crossover appearances have committed crimes against him. In Metal Gear Solid 2, 4, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Solid Snake is caked up, Kojima insisted that he has a better ass than Raiden, and boy did the team deliver which led to the iconic "the clap of my ass cheeks keeps alerting the guards" meme that even David Hayter himself got in on.

But Snake's first appearance in 10 years for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was the start of a worrying trend, yes it was nice to see Snake again, and some signs of life for the then-dormant Metal Gear series, but his cake was heavily nerfed, he had a flat ass. Then years later when he appeared in Fortnite, it got even worse, it was gone, he was so flat he made Hank Hill look like Aunt Fanny from the 2005 film Robots.

However, there is a spark of hope. As Twitter user HEITAIs points out (via machine translation) that with his upcoming appearance in Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft is trying to right one of the most horrific wrongs bestowed upon Snake, as he appears to be a bit more thick than his Fortnite and Smash days. Granted, he's still not the whole bakery as he was in his heyday, but it's a good first step in the return of Metal Gear.

Hayter even commented on the shrinkage, calling it "concerning if true", so with Snake himself alerted of some of the wrongdoings bestowed upon him, hopefully Metal Gear Solid 6 will have him as caked up as Kojima intended.

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2's included games disappear from storefronts without warning

As Ubisoft continues to undergo the "major reset" the publisher's leadership announced last month, 40 developers at the company's Toronto studio have hit the chopping block. Ubisoft Toronto is the studio behind the long-promised Splinter Cell remake, and somehow, the company insists the project is still happening, even with all the layoffs.

"This decision was not taken lightly and does not in any way reflect the talent, dedication, or contributions of the individuals affected," a Ubisoft spokesperson tells Canadian tech outlet MobileSyrup. "Our priority now is to support them through this transition with comprehensive severance packages and robust career placement assistance." GamesRadar+ has reached out for comment.

Ubisoft additionally confirmed that it's still working on the Splinter Cell remake it first announced way back in 2021. I'd certainly forgive you for doubting Ubisoft's word here given that we haven't seen a single second of Sam Fisher's return even now, but hey, this is one game publisher that moves in mysterious ways. If Skull and Bones can make it to market after a decade in development hell, who knows what else is possible?

But equally, the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake is officially dead, and Ubisoft's similar assurances that Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still happening continue to ring pretty hollow. No game at a major publisher ever seems to be more than one mediocre financial quarter away from cancellation these days, and that remains true no matter how storied the franchise is.

More important than any individual game, of course, are the developers making them. We don't know the scale of the layoffs that will happen at Ubisoft overall in the months to come, but the company has ominously promised investors that it will "rightsize the new organization." A "voluntary" layoff plan that would cut 200 jobs is on the table at Ubisoft's Paris headquarters, and even with 40 more jobs lost in Toronto, I doubt we've seen the end of the cuts just yet.

Hideo Kojima is reminiscing over the Metal Gear Solid 3 Premium Package, and the impressive list of contributors for its included book.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is the best game ever made if you ask me (which you should, because it's true). Over 20 years later, there's a reason the game that was the worst-selling Metal Gear Solid game of the original four entries is one people still talk about to this day, and the one Konami elected to remake with 2025's Metal Gear Solid Delta. And even though he's no longer involved with the series, series creator Hideo Kojima has been reminiscing over his magnum opus.

Over on Twitter, Kojima posts images of one of the books included in the Japanese-exclusive Metal Gear Solid 3 Premium Package, recounting the wild list of contributors included. Names like future Kojima collaborator Guillermo del Toro, filmmaker John Woo, Parasite Eve author Hideaki Sena, and Polish author Stanisław Lem were included in the book. Kojima notes, "The lineup of contributors has now become legendary."

Kojima recalls, "At the time, neither the contributors nor I had any fear. The energy we had was incredible." He also includes photos of messages left by some of the contributors, with del Toro saying "all of a sudden, Pain, Fear, and Sorrow are things I look forward to" in reference to the game's boss fights, adding: "Konami has nailed the mood, the moves, the fights. Awesome!"

Woo says the series has "played an important part in the history of the video game industry," and adds, "The classic battles between Liquid Snake and Solid Snake definitely belong on the big screen."

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2's included games disappear from storefronts without warning

Without warning, Konami has delisted the games featured in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2.

Delisted games are nothing new – it feels like every other week there's a new story of a classic being removed, leaving no way to purchase them. Typically, these are due to rights issues, with Marvel vs. Capcom, The Simpsons Arcade Game, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game all being ripped from stores over the years. But other times, delistings happen to push you to the new version of the game, like we saw with Rockstar, which delisted GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas in favor of the anything but definitive Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition.

Metal Gear games have been delisted in the past, with historical footage used in Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 causing those games to be delisted in 2021. However, this time around it seems like Konami might have pulled a Rockstar.

After the announcement of Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2 last week, fans noticed that the PS3's Metal Gear Solid 4, PSP's Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, and its console version Peace Walker HD have been removed from the PS3, PSP, and Xbox stores, meaning the upcoming release will be the only way to get both games digitally. I've personally checked on the PS3, Vita, and Xbox Stores, and can confirm the removal of these titles.

While this sucks anyway, it's especially bad for anyone still on Xbox One, as Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2 won't be releasing on the last-gen console. So now there's simply no way – outside of tracking down a physical copy – of playing Peace Walker on the platform. Plus, it's a bit unfortunate considering the collection is still six months away, meaning no one will be able to pick them up in the meantime.

As weird as it is to say, however, I really hope it simply is a case of wanting to push players to the new edition, because Monster Hunter content and The Carpenters' music are integral parts to the Peace Walker experience, and them missing from a future re-release would be a huge shame.

Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker co-op, inspired by the Monster Hunter craze, lives on in Master Collection Volume 2

Crouching like the little goblin thief I am in the rafters in Styx: Blades of Greed, I'm watching a group of guards circle below me, lit by a crackling fire. Too many to take out all at once and there's one beefy chappy in armor, but some tantalizing loot nearby – trinkets I'm keen to pour into my pockets – means I can't resist not bypassing this room entirely. I'm not stumped by how to maneuver Styx, the self-titled master of shadows – I simply have so many options. This stealth series, now a semi open-world, encompasses three maps of interlocking and expansive structures, teeming with open-ended main objectives and a bevy of booty to get my green mitts on.

A plate of food nearby that the bulky armored chap can't help but snack on is one option, but even then I could choose to either crawl along below the table, unnoticed, timing just when I pop out from the shadows to vomit my lethal poison bile across his munchies, or I could pop some of my limited amber magic to become temporarily invisible, more directly plonking across the surface with silenced footsteps. Instead, I go low-magic, classic, choosing to palm an empty bottle nearby, chuck it into the corner of the room to grab their attention, jump onto some carpet to keep my landing quiet, collect my goodies, and desperately vomit up bile so I can douse the fireplace, literally scuttling inside to clamber out the chimney, working my way up one of the massive fortresses that make up The Wall – one of the huge dense and dingy maps Styx intends to rob blind.

Quartz-a horizon

For once, though Styx is – sort of – on a selfless quest. Finding it hard to kick his amber habit, he's gotten wind of a new magical juice, Quartz, the power of which is increasing at such a dangerous rate the harsh world he inhabits could be destroyed. Now, with two games beneath his cloak, that unfortunately includes at least a couple of people this grumpy, gruff goblin cares about in addition to his own gnarly skin. Plus, thanks to his uniquely amber-soaked body, he's one of the few creatures who can absorb and neutralize that Quartz energy and use it as power up. Waste not, want not.

Styx: Blades of Greed's foundations will be familiar to series fans, but a lot has changed in the nine years since the second game. Many of Styx's usual thief tricks are present and accounted for, such as the ability to clamber up to a lit torch to turn it off, or mix spit and sand for a glob projectile that does much the same. He can still hide in this world's many empty trunks and closets to pull a guard inside to meet a swift death. Or silently skitter below small tables. I love how much Styx being a goblin factors into the play and sense of space.

Yet, Styx can now do so much more – which is quite funny considering the plot kicks off mere seconds after the second game's cliffhanger ending. Within moments our goblin antihero is double jumping across a huge rock giant in a God of War 3 flavored opening, speed-sidling across large gaps, and wall running – all new moves. It can make the opening hours of Styx: Blades of Greed a bit disorienting, Styx working his way through small tutorial areas with his suite of abilities clearly suited to mastering much bigger spaces. There's the fear that it's all become a bit too easy. Even being able to move with a grabbed guard to silently slit their throat rather than being locked in place completely changes the pace of play compared to the older Styx games.

But then, you're unleashed upon the open world, each 'act' of the game giving you a new range of Quartz to find and collect, and the slicker movement makes a lot more sense. Many little buildings are simply stop-offs across one of many possible routes through each dense environment, and each Quartz is usually housed in huge sprawling structures you can see far off in the distance. Styx's new mobility options allow you to worm your way to and through them effortlessly, instead shifting the focus on how you tackle situations, or even how you approach and enter an area. Do I shift and shimmy around to look for an open window? Or, run full pelt down the steps, past the guards, but then use a clone decoy ability to make them think they've slain the threat while I've slipped into the shadows?

Styx: Blades of Greed has a well-tuned difficulty curve that dials up the challenge just enough as you grow your powers and get familiar with their situational uses. Major story beats that dish out vital, additional traversal options, such as the grapple hook and paraglider (I won't spoil the others), don't just expand each open world, allowing Styx to push into further areas, but recontextualize older spaces, many of which hide goodies for a hefty number of sidequests. That massive garrison built into the cliff-side might have been tough to sneak up the first time, but return later and Styx's new powers make breaking and entering into a joke – though new, stronger guards and placement will still make you scratch your goblin noggin if you want to nab that relic you've been tipped off about.

Main quests can hold your hand a bit more, especially early on – but the deeper you get the vaguer objectives become, often just giving you a location and leaving you to follow the very obvious signs of Quartz use (huge, glowing blue energy chains for the most part), and how to deactivate security. Often, Styx can eavesdrop or find spying locations to learn more (which is never, I think, mandatory – I skipped more than a few thanks to my goblin wits), though sidequests rarely give you more than basic information. I never really cared about rewards from these bonus activities, but the sheer joy of the crime is all the satisfaction I need.

Not dissimilar to Metal Gear Solid 5, each mission has Styx deploy at unlockable balloon-travel points across each map. The Wall is a dense urban sprawl of fantasy shacks and huge stone zeppelin docks where you sneak through alleys, along rooftops, and hide under market stalls. The Akenash Ruins, meanwhile, recontextualize a number of spaces from the very first game – which is neat to see – and often revolve around more linear evasion challenges as you explore deeper within them for forgotten treasure. Turquoise Dawn meanwhile is another dense sprawl, though a mix of swamp and jungle, with hastily constructed wooden forts and halls built into huge trees, where human forces and the dreaded Inquisition are warring with the peaceful orcs, here dense brush providing just as much cover as shadow.

Metal gear goblin

These open worlds in Styx: Blades of Greed feel like they take the ambition of Styx: Master of Shadows' large maps, and combine it with the increased density of Styx: Shards of Darkness' smaller zones to create a culmination of the dark fantasy stealth the games have been aiming for across many years. At times, taking stock of enemy patrols and unravelling the inner workings of large buildings reminds me of playing some of Hitman's best levels, while the subterfuge and the way each location is connected together in one big map nods to Metal Gear Solid 5. Except, here in Styx: Blades of Greed, the density means there's not much dead space at all. I was hugely sceptical about Styx going open world, but I'm massively impressed by how well it's pulled off – not that there's much competition in the pure open world stealth game space.

It's not perfect, though. Even as the complexity increases as the game goes on, you do reach a point where guard reactions can be a bit predictable and you know a bit too well what to expect when they become suspicious and start poking into cupboards or looking under tables. A bit more reactivity from enemies would be nice – though the unpredictability offered by a handful of areas in which sound-based and even smell-based hunters live do keep this from becoming too much of a problem. I also have to say that enemy AI is a big step up compared to the previous Styx games, though those are almost a decade old so I would expect so. Technically, too, Styx: Blades of Greed can be rough on PC – I experienced multiple crashes (though you can save so frequently it wasn't a big set back), and while the visual design is great there was a constant fuzziness to the image in some locations that I struggled to diminish no matter the settings I changed or tweaked.

All of the spaces here are as intriguing to sneak around for their narrative as much as they are their construction. It's been a while since the last Styx game, but Styx: Blades of Greed neatly builds on what came before (even tying into the Of Orcs and Men RPG from which Styx is a spin-off). There are dark fantasy tropes aplenty, but Styx has its own flavor and twists that remain intriguing. Humanity and its fantasy religion are pretty nefarious, the elves are mostly effed up, and then there's Styx himself.

At first a goblin in a world where they don't exist, he's now the only goblin who can speak in a world infested by a plague of them, considered non-sentient by everyone else – he's utterly alone even among his own. Styx: Blades of Greed's story is light touch, but slowly building a band of outcasts, from the delightfully devilish elf Djarak to dwarven, human, and orc companions makes for a nice vibe that reminds me of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's tone.

Sometimes, I felt like I could use Styx's powers to break progression a bit – sneak too hard, too fast, too deviously. But I could never be sure. Styx: Blades of Greed is filled with so many ways to sneak through areas (or fight in a pinch, but thankfully the goblin is so bad in combat it's never a good idea) that you really do feel like you're crafting your approach to each thieving challenge, and that the game allows or even expects you to push at its edges. You can even jump off the real-time fast-travel balloons partway through flight to leap at areas from fresh angles.

Styx: Blades of Greed is a huge adventure full of opportunities to sneak through a dense and dark fantasy open world and I'll give this goblin one thing – I certainly didn't see him coming.

Styx: Blades of Greed was reviewed on PC, with code provided by the publisher.

Want to stay goblin mode? Check out the best stealth games for more!

Hitman developer IO Interactive has always seemed like an ideal studio for a 007 adaptation, for reasons that probably don't need specifying here. That said, IO has long been transparent about not wanting 007: First Light to simply be a Hitman game starring James Bond. The studio has also made clear its next game won't be an Uncharted-style action game, either - even if it really looks like one - making it something of an open question exactly what style of gameplay is to be expected.

Talking to Game Informer, Gameplay director Andreas Krogh compared 007: First Light's approach to stealth with how stealth is handled in the Hitman series.

"Hitman was a game where we thought about [stealth] as puzzle design. We're taking that same type of stealth into Bond," said Krogh. "But I will say an important difference is that in Bond, we are striving to do forward momentum gameplay all the time, both in combat and in stealth.

"Where in Hitman, we had some setups where we wanted you to use some time to stake out the situation and maybe poke a little bit at it to see what happens. In Bond, you can use time to observe a situation, but it's very evident there are options you can use right away, and you can just use them and see what happens and come forward. We want to reduce that decision-making time to always keep moving forward and be a little bit faster."

That checks out. While it's easy to draw parallels between Agent 47 and James Bond, the 007 IP in general is known for fast-paced chase sequences and explosive action whereas Hitman games are generally much slower paced. It sounds like IO is just trying to do justice to the respective IP.

007 First Light will do something no Bond game has done before – slow down: "Players might be surprised at how much they enjoy those quieter experiences"

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 2 was revealed at yesterday's Sony State of Play presentation, confirming that Metal Gear Solid 4 is finally being freed from its long-standing PS3 jail. The collection also includes the 2000 Game Boy Color game Ghost Babel and the 2010 PSP title Peace Walker, but there are plenty more Metal Gear entries not present here – including Portable Ops.

Portable Ops, released in 2006 for PSP, is something of a black sheep in the series. It's set after Metal Gear Solid 3, telling the story of how Big Boss first built the military unit that he'd lead in Peace Walker and MGS5. It'd make perfect sense for inclusion in Volume 2, since it bridges the gap between MGS3 in the previous collection and Peace Walker here.

But series lead Hideo Kojima only had minor involvement in the development of Portable Ops, and specific events from the game are only tangentially referenced in later titles. Its status as a semi-canon title might account for its exclusion here – but Ghost Babel, an entirely non-canon game, is still part of the package.

"Such an underrated game," one fan laments on Reddit. "Legitimately I think the story is the best sequel to 3 we ever got, and the gameplay is way overhated. Imo this game should be considered an integral part of the saga. Legitimately it’s story has more impact than V’s somehow."

It's not impossible that Portable Ops might sneak into the collection – after all, Konami did only reveal the NES games included in Volume 1 some time after the original announcement. "It'll either be a bonus game, Vol 3, or it's never happening," another commenter suggests, and yeah, that does seem to cover all the bases.

Likely the biggest reason we're not getting Portable Ops is that it's never previously been ported. The version of Peace Walker included in Volume 2 is based on the one included in the old HD Collection, which likely lessened the development load here. Portable Ops would need a whole new port, and given the resources Konami's already putting in to finally get Metal Gear Solid 4 off the PS3, well, maybe it figures that another bigger port project is better saved for a possible Volume 3.

There's still plenty of Metal Gear left to fill out future collections, too. There are the Acid games, PSP deckbuilders with big cult followings, and Platinum's excellent, over-the-top action title Metal Gear Rising: Reveangance. Plus, of course, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and its premium-priced preview, Ground Zeroes. Heck, there's even Metal Gear Survive if you really need to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Maybe it's premature to talk about all this when Volume 2 was only just announced, but there's more than enough material left to fill Volumes 3 and 4.

Metal Gear gave us some of the best PSP games ever released.

Konami has confirmed that despite online modes being stripped from Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4's Master Collection editions, Peace Walker will keep its online functions in Master Collection Volume 2.

Metal Gear Solid 4 finally escaping PS3 jail was the headline of last night's PlayStation State of Play for Metal Gear fans. But as an elderly person – aka someone who still has his PS3 hooked up – the biggest deal for me was that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is back, and I'll be able to play it on Nintendo Switch 2. Not only is it the most underrated of the series canon entries, but having a portable version that doesn't require the dreaded claw hand technique for camera control is a big deal.

When it was confirmed that Metal Gear Online 2 won't be back with Metal Gear Solid 4 I did get a bit fearful, but the PlayStation Blog post about the collection spoke some beautiful words to me: "This title can be played online in CO-OPS, a cooperative mode for 2 to 4 players, as well as in VERSUS OPS, a competitive mode for up to 6 players."

Now I'm a big single-player guy but Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker's co-op is one of the best things about the game. You see, Peace Walker isn't really much of a Metal Gear at all – at least in terms of the games that came before it. No, Peace Walker was Monster Hunter all along.

The game introduced the mission-based structure later found in Metal Gear Solid 5, along with lengthy boss battles akin to Capcom's flagship series – which in turn, encouraged you to play co-op to take down them together. There was even three missions where you actually took down monsters from the series with a Tigrex, Rathalos, and Gear REX – an original monster based on Metal Gear Rex who I desperately want Capcom to add to Monster Hunter Wilds.

This is why, I suspect, it's often not liked as much as the other main entries, hell, even I didn't like it the first time I played it; it took a second playthrough for me to really get that it's a banger, and stands alongside the rest of the numbered entries. And keeping the co-op that makes that experience even better will hopefully give Peace Walker a chance to stick out once more.

Death Stranding 2 PC port out in March with “unlocked framerates” and ultra widescreen support, Kojima truthers rejoice

I know 007: First Light developer IO Interactive has been trying to distance itself from all of those Uncharted comparisons, but man, the game's new trailer really isn't doing it any favors in that regard. This thing looks like Uncharted, but with Hitman-style stealth, which sounds like a bangin' pitch to be fair.

Debuted during today's PlayStation State of Play, 007: First Light's new trailer shows Nathan Drake - I mean, James Bond - hang from perilous cliffs, jump from exploding vehicles, beat the crap out of people, and charm the heck out of everyone while doing it. You know, like Nathan Drake does. We've already heard the developers say they're "leaning into" what IO does best, and this being a James Bond game, it's fair to say there will be stealth. So, basically, Uncharted action and cinematics combined with Hitman stealth? Count me the heck in.

Here's the new trailer:

This being a story trailer, I feel some responsibility to tell you what's going on in this game. You play as a young secret agent out on his first mission to prove himself and earn his 00 status in an origin story that sees Bond tangling with dangerous criminals like main antagonist Bawma the pirate, played by none other than Lenny Kravitz.

The trailer shows Bond getting into all sorts of trouble in Iceland, narrowly escaping death on multiple occasions but catching the eyes of a former 00 agent and training instructor for the program, who takes the young Bong under his wing as they team up against the rogue British operative 009. Naturally, you're whisked off to some of the most dangerous places in the world, and you'll have to rely on more than Nate Drake's - ugh, I mean James Bond's - charm to survive.

The game is out May 27 on PS5, Xbox Series X, PC, and Switch 2.

007 First Light will do something no Bond game has done before – slow down: "Players might be surprised at how much they enjoy those quieter experiences"

Fans of stealth action and over-the-top cutscenes can both finally let their PS3s rest, as Konami has finally announced Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 2. After a long, long wait, the collection was announced at today's PlayStation State of Play broadcast.

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 2 will launch on August 27, 2026 across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, Switch, and PC. The headline addition here is, of course Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which was one of the last big PlayStation 3 exclusives still unavailable on modern platforms.

In a PlayStation Blog post, Konami confirms that this version of MGS4 will feature "improvement in the internal resolution, increase of the maximum frame rate and customizable button control settings." A stable frame rate alone would make this the definitive version of the game, so here's hoping the port is a good one in all respects.

The other big game in this collection is Peace Walker, which is based on the "the PS3 HD Collection version of the PSP original." I remember that as a solid port, and all the original game's co-op and versus multiplayer modes will remain available here. Sadly, it doesn't seem that Portable Ops, the other MGS PSP game, has made the cut.

The most surprising addition is Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, released in the US as simply "Metal Gear Solid." This Game Boy Color title is a surprisingly robust adaptation of the stealth-action series, one that punches well above the weight you'd attribute to a GBC adaptation of a big console title.

For more upcoming PS5 games, you know where to click.

Although Metal Gear Solid spin-offs have tended to be more good than bad, most of them are pretty forgettable. A possible collaboration between series creator Hideo Kojima and Respawn, however, would likely have been a standout if it came to pass.

During a tribute to Vince Zampella at DICE 2026, Kojima revealed that conversations about such a game had taken place between him and the Call of Duty co-creator after the release of Metal Gear Solid 4. As reported by VGC, Kojima stated the notion was a first-person shooter set in the world of Solid Snake, and it was one of the potential ideas for a then-nascent Respawn Entertainment.

Zampella co-founded Respawn with Jason West in 2010, following them being fired from Activision after a period of tension between the publisher and Infinity Ward. A Metal Gear FPS was among the avenues considered to help the fledgling team get off the ground.

No reason is given for why it didn't happen, but ultimately, the devs went with an original idea, eventually making Titanfall. Zampella and Kojima maintained a relationship, as the Death Stranding creator says he sought advice when going independent himself, after parting ways with Konami to form Kojima Productions.

"Without him, the gaming industry wouldn't be what it is today," Kojima added. Zampella passed away late last year. As one of the central architects behind the Call of Duty series and Respawn, that description is more than apt. More recently, Zampella led DICE through the development and launch of Battlefield 6, breaking multiple records with the blockbuster sequel.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is "often mistaken for a story about AI," Hideo Kojima says, but it's actually about "what human life would become" in the digital age.

IO Interactive says it was in danger of having to close down before the decision to focus on Hitman for its 2016 release.

Speaking to Game Informer, IO recalled facing trouble in the early 2010's after a string of original titles like Mini Ninjas and the Kane & Lynch duology. These were followed by 2012's Hitman: Absolution which was successful – but failed to meet Square Enix's expectations (stop me if you've heard that before). The studio went through substantial layoffs in 2010 and 2013 which saw it go from roughly 200 employees to just 70.

"We were in a really, really bad spot. We only had three months to survive," explains IO Interactive CEO, Hakan Abrak. This led to the studio "making some tough decisions," but Abrak explains that despite the hardship, the studio was "sticking to and believing in Hitman 2016 - that vision that we had already laid out in 2013 - we believed in that direction."

"I think Hitman, as a franchise, and our fan base and community, has never been in a better place than we are today, and we are so proud of that." Abrak says. He adds that the studio is proud of its journey, saying, "being independent and financing your own game, publishing your own game, standing on your own feet, especially today, in these times in the industry, being one of the Last Mohicans left: a triple-A, independent studio where we're not public, we're not owned by a big corporation. We are privately owned, and it's almost like you can count us on one hand."

And as we know now as IO Interactive is thriving as an independent developer – outside of the MindsEye debacle – the gamble paid off, as Hitman World of Assassination trilogy stands as one of the greatest games of all time and the studio works on one of the most exciting-looking James Bond titles ever with 007 First Light.

GoldenEye 007 is "a fantastic game," but 007 First Light has "a far wider and more expansive offering" says IO dev

Hideo Kojima has decided to flex on everyone by saying creating things isn't actually all that special, but rather just a simple part of day-to-day life.

Kojima has a massive resume by creating a series that is almost entirely composed of masterpieces with Metal Gear, Death Stranding and its sequel, and has been involved with a ton of cult classics like Snatcher and Policenauts. It's not a stretch to call him one of the most creative game directors due to how wholly unique each of his games is, but as it turns out, being creative isn't a big thing to him.

During an interview with Wired (below) where Kojima is asked questions by fans, he's asked, "What does creativity mean to you, not as a creator, but as a person? And from your perspective, what is the true essence of creativity?" Kojima specifically notes the final question saying, "I'd like someone to tell me that."

He explains, "To me, creating isn't special. It's simply a part of my daily life," which is a flex on the likes of me who has missed deadlines simply because I needed to read the Wikipedia synopsis of WWE SummerSlam 2006. Kojima likens creativity to "sleeping, eating, walking, or bathing" as just something you do day to day. "It's built into my body. It's not unique to me."

Kojima continues, "From waking to sleeping, I'm always thinking. When inspired, I instantly visualize and conceptualize. Then I just go to the office and bring those ideas to life." He reckons that most creatives are the same as him, and says: "If creativity were taken out of my daily life, I probably wouldn't survive."

Hideo Kojima calls Death Stranding 2 his "masterpiece," but that's only because his "latest work" is always his best.

Hideo Kojima has shot down a common Metal Gear Solid 2 interpretation that reads into the game as a story about AI. To the famed auteur, his sequel is more about what happens to society in the digital age.

"MGS2 is often mistaken for a story about AI, but it's about digital society," Kojima said in an interview with Wired Japan. "MGS1 was about DNA. That's when I thought about the shift from analog to digital. In digital society, everything is preserved. Like social media today. Even graffiti remains without deteriorating. The internet connects everything, and opinions are exchanged directly everywhere. MGS2 explored what human life would become then."

He goes on to emphasize that the stealth sequel "wasn't about AI" - it was instead about "interweaving digital data gaining a will of its own." Unfortunately, his fictional future is inching closer to our reality.

"24 years have passed," he added. "It has become somewhat of a reality. I didn't predict it. [It's] rather a future I didn't desire, but unfortunately we're heading there."

The video game auteur also offered thoughts on generative AI, more specifically. in recent weeks, explaining that he thinks of the tech "as more of a friend" to be used to "boost efficiency" while he handles all the creative work. "I'd like AI to handle the tedious tasks that would lower cost and cut down on time," he said.

Death Stranding's Hideo Kojima wants to "pioneer a new genre," not "focus much on existing ones," but he'd still like to make a Western or space game

Behind the scenes at GamesRadar+, we have a pretty affectionate relationship with the term "sicko." If you've spent any time in online communities, you've probably seen the faux-political comic from The Onion with the guy in the shirt marked "sickos" proclaiming "yes… ha ha ha… yes!" In meme form, this sicko is usually obsessed with some innocuous special interest that sits outside the mainstream. Among the GamesRadar+ staff, we have our retro gaming sickos, our strategy sickos, and even a fair few cozy gaming sickos – people whose knowledge and passion for a given genre go far beyond the average gamer's.

"Someone described our game as being an immersive sim for sickos," Skin Deep designer Brendon Chung tells me, and I immediately know exactly what he means. "I really thought that was very funny, because I'm glad it found this audience of people who want a first-person game that has interactions that you don't often see, and is playful. We're really glad it found its peoples."

The tenets of the immersive sim have always been a bit hard to define. They're usually first-person (but not always), and they're usually focused on stealth (but not always). Semi-modern classics like BioShock, Dishonored, and the later Deus Ex games probably best define the format for today's players. You have a set of tools and are dropped into an intricately designed level with a multitude of pathways to achieving your end goal. It can feel as if a game designer is handing you the keys to their work and simply saying, "Here you go. Go wild."

Die Hard in space

Skin Deep has the distilled essence of the immersive sim flowing through its veins. You, as the impeccably named insurance commando Nina Pasadena (a leftover moniker from an old film school project, Chung says), take on space bandits with little more than a John McClane-style can-do attitude. Toss a can of hairspray at an enemy and they'll be engulfed in a cloud of flammable gas, which you can ignite to explosive effect by throwing a lighter in after it – but you risk destroying essential equipment in the resulting blast.

Maybe this is the best way to sum up the gnarly appeal: if you step through broken glass, the shards will get embedded in Nina's poor, bare feet. Another Die Hard callback, yes, but John McClane never thought to pull out one of those shards to use as a shiv against the bad guys, an option which Skin Deep offers to you.

Chung says Die Hard "absolutely" was a direct inspiration for Skin Deep, because the concept of an underequipped lone hero fighting a well-armed group of bad guys is "so juicy" for a video game. "One thing we really wanted to explore was the idea that John McClane is just a guy, and he gets pretty messed up during the movie," Chung explains. "It was fun, for Skin Deep, to [be like], 'Oh, how can we explore ways for the player to be affected by the world?' You're not just like some walking pile of guns that just shoots down everything, you are this fragile bag of meat."

Banana peels

Chung also cites an absolute who's who of sickos games as further inspiration. There's Far Cry 2, a 2008 systemic playground of an FPS famous for out-of-control fires and grenades rolling down hills. There's Mark of the Ninja, an outstanding 2012 indie stealth game from the eventual Don't Starve devs that gives you all the tools you need to be a master ninja. Finally, there's No One Lives Forever, a cult classic duology of stealth-FPS hybrids that parody '60s-era spy thrillers. Skin Deep is "kind of a mashup of all these things and Die Hard," Chung says.

The comedy influence of No One Lives Forever is especially notable in this genre, since many immersive sims are set in deadly serious worlds – which, of course, you immediately undercut by repeatedly forcing guards to endure the most slapstick humiliations. Skin Deep has a much more explicit comedy bend, with goofball one-liners from Nina, an extended cast made up mostly of talking cats, and even a few literal banana peels to make your opponents slip on, which makes the slapstick inherent to immersive sims feel a lot more natural.

"I think everything that we make steers gently in that direction," Chung explains when I ask about Skin Deep's comedy focus. "A lot of credit goes to Laura Michet, our narrative director, who wrote the entire game and came up with the entire story, and made the humor approach work for the game. I think something that we really value is when games run the spectrum of emotions. I think there's something special about kind of ping-ponging between something that makes you laugh, something that makes you scared, something that's kind of spooky or melancholy or sad. I think that when you have that full breadth of feelings, it kind of makes it feel like a full meal instead of a snack. That's something we always try to do in the work that we make."

"The story of every game"

Skin Deep has roots going back to some of Chung's earliest work, like the experimental narrative game Gravity Bone, which was essentially a Quake 2 mod. Chung is still using a version of the increasingly creaky id Tech engine to this day, even on games like Skin Deep, and it helps give the Blendo Games catalog a very distinct old-school flavor.

"I love it," Chung says of id Tech. "I got my start doing games as a hobby, doing mods in high school for Quake and Doom and things like that. So for me, it's just like I found a piece of tech that I really loved, and have been using – oh gosh – since the mid-'90s. It's tech that's built just for first-person games, so it's just laser-focused to do this one thing really well, and the tools are made to just do first-person levels. I think there's something nice about just finding a hot rod that does this one thing extremely well and just sticking with it."

Still, Skin Deep was clearly a challenge to build – there's a seven-year gap between the launch of Flotilla 2, Blendo's previous title, and Skin Deep, and it seems the genre itself is partly to blame. "A thing about a lot of interviews that I've read about other immersive sim developers is that the game kind of came together in the last few months," Chung says. "I was thinking like, 'Oh, I wonder if that's gonna happen.'"

As it turns out – yeah, it happened, but seeing a game start to come together only after a half-decade of development has got to be nerve-racking. "You just need so many different pieces to connect together and be in the game and to all coexist at the same time before the game actually works, and is interesting," Chung explains. "For a lot of our playtesting, we were watching players kind of fumble around, get stuck, and not quite have all the pieces that they need. But it wasn't until the very last leg of development where it's like, 'OK, the game's actually working. We didn't waste all of our time. I think this thing ended up working out.'"

But that feeling isn't unique to immersive sims, Chung says. "I think it's the story of every game," he notes, "that you just kind of play this broken build for the entire development phase, and then it starts to not be broken. But for immersive sims, there's so many pieces that are dependent on each other, and so it is kind of scary that, like, 'Oh God, this isn't gonna work. This is getting kind of down to the wire.' We're really happy how it turned out."

Don't miss any of the best games of 2025.

Metal Gear Solid series veterans – Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater director Yuji Korekado, and series producer Noriaki Okamura – felt pressure to create the third entry's remake for new fans while its original staff gets older.

In an interview with Real Sound translated by GamesRadar+, Korekado discusses the difficulties of creating a game for "modern players" while also pleasing long-time fans and staying true to series creator's Hideo Kojima's vision, given that he no longer works at Konami.

"Because the series has been around for a long time, we have a wide variety of fans," Korekado says. "And we are conscious of being respectful to the previous games in the series. With this remake, we thought about how it would be best to bring the game to modern players, while respecting the thoughts and concepts of the original creator. However, if you reproduce the original work exactly as it is, some aspects can be difficult to play [for today's gamers], so we adapted them."

If you've played Delta you'll know that one of the biggest updates is an over-the-shoulder camera option alongside the original fixed camera angles. The decision to allow players the choice between the original and new features was very intentional. "It's extremely difficult to balance honoring the original work with trying new things, so I'm always worrying about what we produce," he adds.

Konami has remained quiet about the circumstances surrounding Kojima's departure from the company almost a decade ago. It's even unclear which developers left with the legendary director, though you'll see more than a few familiar names in the credits for Kojima Productions' Death Stranding series, such as the art director on many Metal Gear games, Yoji Shinkawa.

"With losing the original staff, it was challenging figuring out how to continue the series," Okamura says. "We would start and stop talking about developing something new all the time. However, given our age, and how the number of developers with knowledge of the Metal Gear series was decreasing, we decided that if we didn't resurrect the series now, it would become difficult to do so. Because it's such an incredible series, I decided that now was the time."

Delta was a collaboration between series veterans and new developers, with the hopes that the young blood could capture the games' essence, and bring that into new entries. However, I'm not overly heartened, given that, when Korekado is asked what surprised him about the new staff, he says, "I was surprised that they told me, 'I don't know how to do close quarters combat.' In the original, The Boss teaches you how to use it over the transceiver, but modern players don't always listen to the transceiver messages all the way through" – even if he chuckles while saying it.

Metal Gear Solid 4 remake would be "pretty difficult" says series veteran, admitting the team used "quite unique solutions" when developing the stealth game's code

Ubisoft's remake of the original Splinter Cell is still in development, as a familiar face returns to the project. David Grivel, former game director on the upcoming release, is now back directing Splinter Cell: Remake, after leaving the same position over three years ago.

Grivel himself confirmed the move on LinkedIn, announcing he's back in familiar territory with Sam Fisher. "A very special team and project to me," he says in the post.

Previously, he held the director's position from November 2021 to October 2022, through Splinter Cell: Remake's announcement. Then, he exited Ubisoft Toronto to join another major publisher, EA, working on Battlefield 6 with Ridgeline Games until that outfit’s closure in March 2024.

Then comes an interesting wrinkle: Grivel rejoined Ubisoft Toronto, but for an unannounced game in summer 2024, only to step away again in December of that year for the since defunct studio Worlds Untold. And now, he's returned to where this cycle started, back guiding Sam Fisher's glorious return to our screens and controllers.

It's been 12 years since Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the last game in the stealth franchise thus far. Though Blacklist did well critically, it didn't sell as much as Ubisoft would've liked, leading to Sam being placed on the backburner until now.

His resurgence is underway, with Splinter Cell: Deathwatch having come out on Netflix in November, and now this remake. Though we haven't had any more substantial updates, Grivel's appointment suggests it's still a priority and moving ahead as planned, if largely in the shadows.

Ubisoft turned a new Splinter Cell game into the failed live-service shooter xDefiant in an effort to chase live service hits and Call of Duty, former devs say

Metal Gear series producer Noriaki Okamura, who has been working on the series since 2005, says that the next Metal Gear game "hasn't been decided yet," but that a MGS4 remake would be "pretty difficult" given the "unique solutions" the team came up with when developing the game's code.

In an interview with Real Sound, that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Okamura explains Konami's philosophy when creating new games for the stealth series. While the team is "currently exploring concrete plans for the next game," Okumura says that "there is both the possibility of a remake, or of trying something new."

"The next project hasn't been decided yet," Okamura says. "There is both the possibility of a remake, or of trying something new. The Metal Gear series is like a capsule of video game history, from pixel art to cinematic experiences, so the method we use for each remake needs to be tailored to the game. We don't expect to apply the same methodology we used for Metal Gear Solid Delta on other games, rather, we want to consider what the best approach for each game would be."

When asked about a remake for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of Patriots, Okamura admits that the project would be "pretty difficult" to produce. "At that time, quite unique solutions were required in order to get the desired 3D performance using the technological limitations of the hardware," Okamura says with a laugh. "So MGS4 used a very particular code. Bringing it up to date would be pretty difficult."

Game developers are known for their creativity when coming up with ways to get around hardware limitations. One of the classic examples of industry ingenuity is the subway car from Fallout 3, which is actually just a guy wearing a train as a hat.

Konami sounds pleased with Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater and Silent Hill f as it reports a jump in game sales: "Beautiful yet terrifying."

The first season of Dispatch recently ended, and given the reception and huge sales, it's safe to say the episodic release plan didn't hinder the game. The opposite proved true for 2016's Hitman, where IO Interactive gradually released levels, and now the studio is taking notes from AdHoc Studios' success.

Chatting to GamesIndustry.biz, Hakan Abrak, the CEO of IO Interactive, revealed he's been enjoying Dispatch. "I'm playing Dispatch myself, I think half of the globe is. It's freaking fantastic, it's a very, very nice game," he starts, before discussing the differences between AdHoc's project and what IO was trying to achieve.

"We were, for sure, too early with the concept, and there were many, many mistakes made," he says. "We were also banging on that one Hitman level can yield 50 hours plus of gameplay, whereas the Dispatch structure is a bit different. It's a much more episodic format, where yes, you can go back and kiss Mandy, or not kiss her – I actually went back and replayed that part – but when there's less replay opportunity, then you want to have the next episode coming sooner."

For Agent 47, IO essentially split the game into mini-sandboxes. The first game in the modern trilogy arrived stage by stage. A novel concept, but one players really didn’t enjoy a decade ago, leading to Hitman 2 and 3 coming out as more complete packages.

But the positivity around Dispatch suggests people are more ready for that kind of release situation, so long as the wait times are minimal and the devs maintain communication. Abrak believes there are conversations to be had around formatting and scale to match other mediums.

"What is the future of gaming? Do all games need to be 40 hours?" he muses. "One of the things I enjoy a lot is short TV series, just six episodes, especially the British ones. I love that, it's not too long."

He adds that IO is "thinking about these things for future installments," perhaps suggesting another experiment for Agent 47 is in the offing. First, though, we have 007 First Light, coming March 27, 2026.

"We actually did put Daniel Craig in there": Hitman developers secured the 007 First Light license by modelling James Bond's face onto Agent 47's body.

The developers behind narrative superhero adventure Dispatch have certainly proven that there's still a big audience for story-driven single-player games these days – it's just too bad they couldn't convince their bosses at Ubisoft of that fact a few years ago. Some of the founding members of developer AdHoc Studio were working on a new Splinter Cell game before higher-ups tried to push it down the live service route.

After working on Tales from the Borderlands, Telltale veterans Nick Herman, Dennis Lenart, and Pierre Shorette all joined Ubisoft in 2017 where, according to a new report from Bloomberg, the trio started work on a Splinter Cell game.

"I was so excited to be a part of this and help revitalize it, because it's been dormant for a while," Herman says. “And we thought we could tell a great story and do something the fans would love." But according to Bloomberg, the project pivoted under the whims of Ubisoft management, who wanted a games-as-a-service hit.

Herman says the team "tried" to make the pivot work while hanging onto their storytelling interests. "Let's make a narrative GAAS game," Herman says. "We were trying to make that make sense, and a lot of cool prototypes were made."

The report suggests that Ubisoft lost interest in that Splinter Cell game and was more interested in chasing Call of Duty's success. Ultimately, the project morphed into xDefiant, a game that seemed to spend forever in playtests before it eventually launched in 2024 – only to shut down barely a year later.

“It was exciting to go to work for the first six months because we thought we were going to be able to make something really great,” Herman concludes to Bloomberg. “And then you realize that all of the things you care about, they don’t anymore. It's a common thing in games.”

Herman, Lenart, and Shorette left Ubisoft in 2018, founding AdHoc along with another Telltale vet in Michael Choung. With 1 million sales in 10 days, AdHoc's Dispatch seems to be proving there really was an audience willing to pay for a good single-player experience. But I guess that's not a scale of success that registers for Ubisoft – after all, xDefiant itself shut down with over 15 million players on the books.

After 4 quiet years, Ubisoft keeps some hope alive for its Splinter Cell revival as it asks for some parts of the Netflix show to be cut because of "other plans" for the dormant stealth series.

Konami's had a banner year, with big releases from both Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill. With the former, we got the long-awaited remake of the third game in Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and a brand new installment in Silent Hill f for the latter.

Both have done well critically and, as a new financial report states, commercially. In a round-up for March through September of this year, the publisher notes that both games crossed the threshold of one million "initial sales" globally. In other words, they launched incredibly strongly.

Silent Hill f actually became a standard-bearer for the embattled horror series to sell one million copies, narrowly outdoing the Silent Hill 2 Remake's time of four days. This is the first wholly new entry in over a decade, signifying genuine investment and interest from Konami in after years of Pyramid Head and that mysterious and terrifying town languishing in limbo.

There’s a small note on f's conception, stating the idea was to make something "beautiful yet horrifying." The use of 1960s Japan and more plant-based monsters, the game lives up to that description. Even though it's a spin-off canonically, taking place decades before the mainline games and well removed from them geographically, it just goes to show what all that pent-up desire does for a franchise.

Solid Snake's return, then, actually enjoyed one million purchases around the world in just 24 hours. A beloved game, from an S-tier property, remade for modern hardware, is truly an equation for success. The only note given here is, "allows players to enjoy extreme survival stealth action in a jungle setting," and, yep, that is correct.

Coincidentally, Silent Hill f and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater both take place in the ‘60s. Does this matter? Probably not. But Konami, if you're wondering what to do with Zone of the Enders, maybe consider going retro-futuristic with it.

Silent Hill f's Hinako actor is playing her own game on stream and I feel bad for how hard I'm laughing at her terror

Hideo Kojima has revealed he was unaware of the pitch that he would make a game based on The Matrix, despite reports that the Wachowski sisters asked him to do so directly.

Earlier this week, reports surfaced from an interview with former vice president of licensing at Konami Digital Entertainment, Christopher Bergstresser, that Lilly and Lana Wachowski pitched that Hideo Kojima make a game based on The Matrix, with a further anonymous source saying Kojima would continue to "show strong interest" despite working on Metal Gear Solid 2 at the time. However, the man himself has come out to say that he was utterly unaware that such a suggestion ever happened.

In a post on Twitter, Kojima says, "I was surprised to see on social media that the Wachowski sisters had 'offered me a Matrix game project!' back in 1999. In all these 26 years, no one ever told me such a conversation had taken place."

Kojima explains that he and the Wachowski sisters had exchanged emails as they were "mutual fans" and that they met three times when The Matrix was released in Japan.

One of those times was when "they were invited to the headquarters of Konami’s CS Division," where Kojima notes, "When I arrived at the headquarters, their meeting with Mr. Kitaue, the head of the CS Division, had just ended."

This meeting with Kitaue was where the Matrix game pitch supposedly took place, which Kitaue turned down, although the previous report said Kojima and Aki Saito were also present (Kojima said that "Aki wasn't even there").

So while the meeting to pitch a Kojima-led Matrix game may have happened, Kojima wasn't present for it (which, to be fair, this was 26 years ago, it's easy to mix up details, especially when Kojima was present directly afterward).

While Kojima being unaware of the project does conflict with the anonymous report he was still interested in the project after it was rejected, he does note "I was already extremely busy with MGS2 and probably couldn’t have accepted the offer right away. But if someone had told me, maybe there could’ve been a way to make it work."

Hideo Kojima's overlooked cyberpunk adventure game is one of the three games Atari's CEO would love to remaster: "I don’t know if it would do well, but I’d probably push it through."

It's no wonder Agent 47 is a master assassin. After 25 years of Hitman, he's had more than enough time to become a surefire murder professional, taking players through heaps of sandbox missions to creatively off a huge list of ne'er do well targets. The milestone anniversary, celebrating a quarter of a century since Hitman: Codename 47 released on PC on November 19, 2000, is the perfect excuse to chat with the series' current developers and nerd out about the series' fantastic history of clockwork-like, finely tuned levels.

"We're feeling good," says Christian Elverdam, IO Interactive CCO (and director of 2016's Hitman) when I ask about the studio's mood. It's been a journey. Not only has the studio released three full games from 2016 to 2021, but they've been collected together into a living game as Hitman: World of Assassination. Partway through, the studio went from being owned by Square Enix, to independent; shifted from an episodic release model; and has juggled fan expectations around the legendary classic games such as Hitman: Blood Money.

"I can just reflect that at least, I think part of the journey we were on from, at least from my time at IO, it feels like we're – in lack of a better word – we're home," says Elverdam. "For a long time, there were so many questions about, what's Hitman supposed to be? What is the future of Hitman? Who's the character, what's the universe, what's the flavor? I think the World of Assassination as it wrapped up, kind of landed in a really good spot. And so 25 years in I think it feels pretty strong."

Mister Worldwide

"25 years. It's quite impressive for a franchise, and to be at its peak," says Matthias Engstrøm, Hitman 3's game director who has worked as a level designer across the entire Hitman: World of Assassination. "When I started to work on Hitman 3, Hakan [Abrak], CEO of the company, said, 'I think you could work on Hitman forever'. And I was like: yes! It's true. It's part of the DNA, of the company, and, yeah, of me. It's such a fun thing to work on."

"In terms of being an old franchise – I don't think we've ever been more, in some ways, youthful, about what we are," reflects Elverdam on Hitman's evolution. "We have the World of Assassination and, actually, in 2013 that was the pitch. The pitch was called Hitman: The World of Assassination back then. The idea was to build an ever expanding game where all the blocks would fit together, so you didn't just replace one game after the other, which eventually leads to this massive body of levels."

It's been a long time in the making, but boot up the game today and that's exactly what it is – what started out as moving levels forward through Hitman (2016) through to Hitman 2 has now become entirely one singular hub. "That allowed us to do many things, like Freelancer mode as an example, right? Which is extremely popular, I can say. If you look at who plays Hitman, a lot of people come in and play Freelancer. Which is, in some ways, a small little roguelike mode on top of all that content, right?" says Elverdam.

Having those strong foundations has allowed for creativity and experimentation, which is also how the VR versions of Hitman: World of Assassination came about, and the time-limited elusive targets. It's been about being able to ask and answer those questions. "Hey, what happens if we get Jean Claude Van Damme into the game? What would that be like?" says Elverdam. "Or, even better, when we announced James Bond [007: First Light], we had the opportunity to put Le Chiffre into a level that was pretty basically written as an homage to James Bond." The base game being strong and thriving is almost like a safety net. "We did ghost mode. [...] We had sniper mode. We even had what if there's a virus outbreak in Hokkaido [with the] Patient Zero [DLC]."

But it's easy to talk about strong foundations now that the task is done – Hitman: World of Assassination, starting with Hitman (2016), had a monumental task ahead of it. 2006's Hitman: Blood Money was a landmark release on PS2, while the next-gen shift away from sandbox levels to authored, more linear missions like police chases and quiet infiltrations with 2012's Hitman: Absolution proved more divisive. IO Interactive had to combine both approaches – the sandbox freedom of Blood Money with the density of detail of Absolution.

Elverdam is quick to sing Jacob Mikkelsen's praises (who directed 2018's Hitman 2) when I bring up the undertaking of translating Blood Money's freedom to a whole new scale. "Jacob built Paris, and he was also part of Blood Money – so he built a lot of Blood Money, and even some Hitman before that. He was one of our master blacksmiths back then, discussing what is a proper setup, right?" ("He was truly the master of that," adds Engstrøm).

Levelling up

For Hitman, getting the levels right is beyond vital with the sandbox approach to completing missions in a variety of creative ways "Jacob [...] directed Hitman 2, Matthias obviously directed Hitman 3, all level designer backgrounds, because Hitman is very level design driven, right?" notes Elverdam. "There's level design, and then there's Hitman level design."

"It's so satisfying," says Engstrøm. "If you are a designer or level designer, Hitman is the game you want to work on. I've worked on quite a lot of different types of games, but, yeah, as a level designer, definitely Hitman is up there in terms of just being able to express [yourself], because you are the one who you're allowed to be creative and have that, you know, Swiss cheese."

"The way we do the Hitman games, every level has a 'track owner', we call it, but that's mainly a mini director. So you have a lot of freedom with that level, right? Because it's its own little ecosystem," says Elverdam. "That was surprisingly hard to figure out, in all honesty, that was why it took a little while to build Hitman 2016, because it sounds easy on paper. You take the gameplay from Blood Money – the complexity of Blood Money, the nonlinearity sandbox nature – but in Blood Money, you could get away with having more empty rooms and more lightweight ambience, and we set the bar extremely high in Absolution. So how do you square that? We spent a lot of time on that."

Hitman (2016) released across PC, PS4, and Xbox One – expectations from players had risen a lot beyond PS2 for what they expected from sandbox levels that boast a multitude of approaches. The goal was to make levels that felt alive and reactive, but that deeply embedded the player as Agent 47 into the "core patterns".

An early example of trying to prove the concept, Elverdamn tells me, was "How do we create this recurring event, like a fashion show? Models come in. Models walk on the catwalk. Models walk out again. This can be interrupted in different ways. Models disappear, and it still has to go on until, you know, there's not any models left, but still, for a long time you can take the stage. That was one upping everything we did before. That little system is extremely hard to script. And the auction is a little bit of the same test up in the attic."

Hitman: World of Assassination's levels need to feel lively, but not so much that Agent 47 really gets left behind. Iterating episodically, IO Interactive managed to make it work, and kept aiming higher from there. "Hitman 2 was like, OK, Hitman [2016] was great, how do we do everything bigger? The race event is the same thing. It's this clockwork mechanism just even more insane. Let's put the target in a race car – like, Jesus! [laughs] So, Miami and Paris are kind of siblings. But then Matthias, you did Mumbai, which was…"

"That was a big one!" chuckles Engstrøm. The Indian city is heaving with NPCs, and multiple targets split across distinct areas from buildings to markets and rooftops. "I think in retrospect, maybe we could have toned it down a little bit." The goal was to match up to the high expectations of the largest previous areas like Paris and Sapienaza. "It's still giving us trouble up to this day, actually! Because that's the one level that we always have trouble running on, like, different platforms, and VR... If it can run Mumbai, then we're fine, it's good!"

"I think it's interesting, right?" says Elverdam about the Mumbai level. "It's all about finding the design space. And here we [got to] basically – OK, that's big enough, right? Before that level, everyone was like, 'I want to build something bigger!' After that level people were like [shrugs] 'Yeah, yeah, OK!' [laughs]" It's an incredibly dense level, but Engstrøm notes that it can be difficult for players to want to replay it immediately because it's so large and asks so much.

Elverdam continues, "That's what you have to learn, right? Like, can we do a fashion show? Yes. What works, what doesn't? This is, very humbly, what we had to figure out with the new formula [for World of Assassination]. [Mumbai] answers the question: how big can you build a game scaled for jogging and pedestrian walking?" The team briefly considered having the taxi cabs you can use to exit the missions be used to fast travel, but "we ended up not doing it," says Engstrøm.

Travel plans

I feel cruel asking a level designer their favorite Hitman level, but I can't help myself. "Berlin for me, yeah, absolutely Berlin. Not only because it's a great Hitman level, but also [...] what we wanted it to be, how it should fit in the story – [Agent 47] being all alone," says Engstrøm. The mission, Apex Predator, has Agent 47 forced to go dark while evading and striking back at agents who are in turn hunting him. "Seeing it come alive and being even better [than planned]! And then a twist on the formula that our fans love as well. In a time where people couldn't go out and club because it was during corona[virus], right?"

"I can't pick a favorite. I really can't. But I have moments that I think will stick with me forever," says Elverdam. "Walking onto the catwalk in Paris the first time, and actually realizing we were about to do this, and the ramifications for what it meant for the rest of Hitman in the future was tremendous for me. And also just landing Paris. It's still today, the hardest level to work with, because it has so much learning built into it." The first full level of Hitman 2016, it's the map that had to do the heaviest lifting, and really prove itself.

"Sapienza for the vibe. Because one of the things I wanted was to make Hitman feel a little bit more aspirational, not dark all the time, [...] a game that you want to hang out in," says Elverdam. To this day, the sunny vibes are immaculate. "I was so amazed at that level when we had it in our hands and it started working. I loved The Constant in the [Isle of Sgai] level. [Like Matthias,] I go Berlin as well. I think it's a masterpiece in terms of: how efficient can you be? It's not too big, it's not too small. It has a spectacular build up going down to the dance floor. It's like, oh my god – it's insane. In that sense, I think it's probably objectively, the most well balanced of all the levels. But then obviously we have Diana [appearing at the end of Mendoza]. I think you can't really beat that. That's also cheating in a way, like, 'Hey, let's put one of the franchise characters in the game'. [...] Then you could go New York. I love the idea of a bank heist and a bank and all that. I love it!"

I agree that Sapienza, as the second episode of Hitman (2016), felt truly iconic – and a real statement of intent for what that first game in the new trilogy was aiming to be. "Oh, for IO Interactive as a company, that level holds a special place in our hearts," says Elverdam. "Paris came out, and we had a little bit of a rough launch, as everything you do – like servers, whatever, all that shit – and it was still like, 'what is this?'"

"But then Sapienza came out, and it became pretty clear to some people what we were doing. And it was like, Okay, you could just, [snaps fingers] you could sense the vibe changing around gaming and the sentiment about what Hitman is. Because you can't do Paris and Sapienza by mistake. And remember, we were still building the levels right? It was episodic. So for the team to get that feedback was just rocket fuel. The self confidence after that was night and day. [Sapizena] is, in terms of impact, it's the most impactful level we had."

Keep quiet with our best stealth games ranking!

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Deathwatch has officially been renewed for a second season. The Netflix animated series adapts the long running Splinter Cell espionage game franchise, in which the player takes on the role of special agent Sam Fisher, infiltrating and sneaking through enemy territory in service of a US black ops organization known as Third Echelon.

Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is created by Derek Kolstad, best known for the John Wick franchise, with game studio Ubisoft, and co-directed by Guillaume Dousse and Félicien Colmet-Daage. Actor Liev Schreiber returns in season 2 in the lead voice role of Sam Fisher, alongside actor Kirby Howell-Baptiste's Zinnia Mckenna.

"In this first-ever adaptation of the acclaimed stealth video game franchise Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, legendary agent Sam Fisher is drawn back into the field when a wounded young operative seeks out his help," reads Netflix's official description of Splinter Cell: Deathwatch. "Produced by Ubisoft, in partnership with Derek Kolstad (John Wick), Sun Creature and Fost."

The last Splinter Cell game was released in 2002, spawning seven spin-offs and sequels, along with a whole series of novels that are still being published. Though the series bears his name, novelist Tom Clancy is not the author of the books, and merely endorsed the game series following the success of the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games which also bear his name.

The last game in the series, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, was released in 2013. Still, Ubisoft has kept hope alive that the series will return in some form sooner rather than later, as the first season of Splinter Cell: Deathwatch had to change some plot points due to the developer having "other plans" for the franchise.

No release date for Splinter Cell: Deathwatch season 2 has been announced. While we wait, check out the 25 best shows on Netflix to watch right now.