For a series as storied as Star Wars – one brimming with more spacecraft and speeders than George Lucas has beard bristles – it borders on baffling that developer Fuse Games’ Star Wars: Galactic Racer can arrive in 2026 as the first new game of its kind in over two decades. I blame Super Bombad Racing, if only because Gungan isn’t a real language and using a portmanteau of bomb and bad in the title was probably never the perfect pathway to sales success. Galactic Racer, on the other hand, has a range of impressively customisable vehicle classes that expands the hangar well beyond classic podracers, gorgeous course design, and an impressively credible and explorable world outside the on-track action. It’s an eye-catching and rich resurrection of Star Wars racing that’s as fast as it can be surprisingly unforgiving.

Galactic Racer’s main hook is its run-based, roguelite-inspired campaign, which comes with a strict philosophy of no mid-race restarts. It is an interesting and genuinely fresh approach that bakes a very real and logical feeling of risk and danger into the action – a feeling that is admittedly absent in racing games with any sort of rewind functionality or unlimited restarts. Yes, you can still pause and, yes, you can still save and come back later – but you otherwise need to live with the consequences of what happens out on the track. It’s a structure that makes the racing tense and meaningful, even if racing over the same landscapes over and over does grow repetitive.

Now This Isn’t Pod Racing

Whether by intent or not, the huge time gap between Galactic Racer and classic Star Wars games like Episode I: Racer and Racer Revenge feels almost mirrored in Fuse Games’ original story. That is, where those games were set in the prequel period, Galactic Racer is set in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi, where the art of podracing is a distant relic of a bygone era. Unsurprisingly, podracing does still feature here, and it’s represented incredibly; lightning quick, and with impeccably authentic sound design. However, I’m hesitant to describe specifically how or when it pops up outside of the quickplay modes. Just know that I feel like the Fuse Games crew were paying close attention when Maverick found an F-14 in the heart of enemy territory during the Top Gun sequel, or when Bond retrieved his DB5 in Skyfall. I may be a pretty casual Star Wars fan by most metrics, but I do love stuff that imbues vehicles with a sense of old soul – even fantasy ones. That’s my jam.

For clarity, the bulk of the Galactic Racing League garage consists of landspeeders, speeder bikes, and a new vehicle type called skim speeders. Bikes are fast but fragile, and skim speeders have a podracer-esque ability to bank completely vertically to slice through gaps and turn harder, but landspeeders have proven to be my favourite class. They’re essentially floating cars, and I enjoy their more predictable handling and added durability.

As the mysterious and faceless human racer called Shade, our ultimate goal is to beat the Galactic Racing League’s moaning, arrogant, and entitled heel Kestar Bool in the final head-to-head race. However, for that to happen, we need a suitably fast vehicle. In simple terms, building and piloting a quick one requires a combination of general stat upgrades, performance parts, and various additional perks – from gadgets that can be activated during races to specific bonuses granted to you by allies you accumulate over the course of the story. These are rationed out randomly, or earned, as we progress (and re-progress) through the championship “tours.” I’ve grown to be a particular fan of the autopilot gadget, which is regularly a lifesaver to tackle particularly treacherous stretches of track. The fact that these gadgets are primed just prior to race starts with a series of specific button presses, like pre-flight checks, is a very clever touch that gives waiting on the grid a tangible sense of occasion. The sequence always ends with the final go-ahead to fire your engines, which cough to life and glow harder as you squirt the throttle. It was important to somebody at Fuse Games that we should be able to rev our speeders like hotrodders at a red light, because it looks cool. I love little flourishes like that.

Now, speeders are scrapped between tours, so you’ll need to choose and set-up a new one each time. It’s not a solution I find I’m loving, considering I was never able to establish any real sense of ownership or attachment to a vehicle. Theoretically, you can build a replica of the same-looking vehicle every time – with the same add-on cosmetic parts and the same livery – but you will need to wave goodbye to specific upgrades you might’ve really enjoyed. The more heavily upgraded your previous speeder, the more points you’ll have to spend on pumping up its general stats before you start – but it won’t behave the same as your last one. Not unless you can pick up the same upgrades in your next run, whether by chance reward or spotting them in your mechanic Hibi’s randomised selection. As a roguelite rookie and a traditional racing game meathead, I have to admit I didn’t much like losing powerful upgrades that really suited my racing style to what’s essentially a dice roll, but I do appreciate the novelty of needing to come to grips with something not typical of the usual racers I play.

Tours unfold over three (and later five) planets before culminating in a final knockout event. Failing at any point means you’ll have to start a whole new one over again. This is quite elegantly and thoughtfully implemented, thanks to the racing paddock at each event you can fully explore in third-person. Not only does this build an authentic world around the Galactic Racing League – which in turn crafts a world I feel like I’m inhabiting, rather than just shuffling through menu screens – it lets Fuse Games fill it with characters that can acknowledge your previous failures as you return for another crack at the title. That is, you’re not actually restarting, or simply being scrubbed back in time until you get it right – time keeps moving forward and you just need to keep racing until you emerge victorious. The story is split into three distinct acts, so note that messing up in the third act means you’ll just need to take another run at the third act. That is, it doesn’t send us all the way back to the initial League qualification phase, and for that I’m grateful.

However, Galactic Racer’s core weakness is that it unfortunately doesn’t feature enough planets to avoid feeling overly repetitive. While I’m conscious a roguelite structure brings with it an expectation of a certain level of repetition, it does become fairly tedious slogging through its small list of repeating planets over successive attempts. The specific circuits used, the order of event types, and how they branch over the span of a championship are shuffled from tour to tour. There are reverse layouts for the tracks, too. However, the backdrops are nonetheless always the same. Having a couple more planets that could’ve been swapped in and out would’ve gone a long way in reducing the fatigue that quickly sets in after several runs through the same locations.

Intergalactic Planetary

It is a fantastically realised array of planets, though, and the details of the track environments are as excellent as they are varied. Jakku, for instance, has routes traced through its immense graveyard of war wreckage – swinging from wide open blasts across debris-covered dunes one moment, to cramped sections of makeshift tunnels formed by half-destroyed spacecraft the next. Crait is characterised by sprawling caves and its flat, salt-covered surface – which speeders whip up to expose the red mineral beneath. Lantaana is covered in dense forest linked by lava tubes, and Sentinel I is a toxic wasteland where racers must negotiate narrow causeways over acidic pools.

Each planet and track has its own set of properties that can help you or harm you, depending on how you race and the upgrades you’ve applied. Perhaps my favourite example of this dynamic is Ando Prime, an entirely frozen planet, where heating tubes have been dropped sporadically around the circuits. Passing through these will thaw out the frozen control surfaces that numb your steering inputs, but staying out of these hot boxes allows you to run your delicate ramjet for much longer before it catastrophically burns out. It’s a racer that essentially never stops asking you questions.

On the topic of burning out, it’d be massively remiss of me not to mention how much I adore the Burnout-inspired takedowns that Galactic Racer actively encourages, with speeders on the wrong side of a hefty slam being speared into trackside obstacles and splintering into thousands of shards. Not only are they incentivised with a slow-motion takedown camera, which swings back to soak in the spectacle, but they can be factored into the upgrade system. Any time I spot it on a run, I always opt to grab the upgrade that replenishes my speeder’s battery for each successful takedown – since doing so gives me more bursts of my autopilot ability.

But while the Burnout connection is strong (and hardly surprising considering the roots of Fuse Games’ founders reach back to Burnout creator Criterion Games), perhaps what I love most of all is how much Galactic Racer surprisingly reminded me of a sci-fi MotorStorm. That is, the often wide tracks full of natural obstacles and multiple routes, the multi-class nature of the grid, and the fact that holding onto that ramjet boost a fraction too long results in a fiery and rapid unscheduled disassembly. Funnily enough, just like the original MotorStorm, Galactic Racer also has no splitscreen multiplayer. 12-player online racing (or eight, for podracers) has a six-event championship structure that works a little like a shortened version of the singleplayer tours (where your upgraded vehicle is discarded after the finale) – but that’s for a different sort of player than me.

Editor's Note: This review currently only covers Gears of War: E-Day's story campaign, as that’s all reviewers were given access to ahead of release. It will be updated with a finalized score and multiplayer impressions once we spend some time with the Versus and Horde Siege modes.

To the casual observer, Gears of War has always been a heavy-metal third-person cover shooter about a bunch of meatheads with chainsaws attached to their guns fighting aliens. But what Gears fans know all too well is that the real secret to the series’s two decades of success isn’t the killer graphics, the smart cover mechanics, or the gloriously gratuitous gore – although those things are all certainly significant parts of the recipe. It’s the heart. Marcus and Dom’s brotherhood. JD or Del’s sacrifice (depending on what you chose to do in Gears 5). Dom’s relentless love for Maria. And so my biggest question heading into Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to the first game set 14 years prior on the day the Locust emerged from underneath the planet Sera, was how it would hang onto that heart when we already knew our armor-clad bros would definitely be alive by the end. I’m thrilled to say that E-Day carries its own satisfying emotional weight, with additional welcomed backstory for Marcus and Dom leading the way – oh, and the action is pretty top-notch, too.

E-Day begins with our Coalition of Ordered Government (COG) heroes, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, completing a ceremonial tour to honor their service in the finally-ended 79-year Pendulum Wars. We get glimpses of how each of them is reckoning with the end of the only thing they’ve ever known: Marcus is ready to re-enlist and hoping Dom will join him, while Dom is ready to go home to his wife Maria and their two young children, who are growing up without him. Of course, things quickly go to Hell – or rather, Hell comes up to them. Gears of War: E-Day does an excellent job of conveying both the uncertainty and the horror of what’s happening to these characters, even when we as players know exactly what’s going on.

By happenstance, Marcus and Dom get unofficially paired up with ex-Gear Mags Carter and rookie Gear Lucas Reyes, who happen to be at the same bar when the Locust tremors begin, before the quartet officially becomes Bravo Squad once the COG starts organizing its defenses. E-Day deserves a lot of credit here: In a prequel like this where you’re already attached to the leads, it would be easy for Carter and Reyes to be throwaway side characters who exist only to further the stories of our two well-known heroes. But E-Day makes time for your lesser-known Bravo squadmates, dedicating entire meaningful and enjoyable sections to establishing them in this world and getting you to care about them.

The unfolding nightmare of E-Day is reflected in both the types of Locust monsters you face as the campaign progresses as well as the sorts of weapons you’ll need to put them back in the ground. Easily-dispatched Wretches and run-of-the-mill, Hammerburst-wielding Drones are on the front lines as Bravo Squad wonders what the hell it’s up against in the invasion’s opening hours. You’ll take them down with Gears of War staples like the Gnasher shotgun and Lancer, both the bayonet-clad original version and the prototype of the chainsaw-equipped revision. Yes, you’ll get your hands on Gears’s most famous firearm pretty early, and you even get to witness its fun little origin story.

But as you move through the first hours of the Locust invasion, Bravo Squad is continually confused and terrified at the increasingly deadly horrors trying to kill them. The monster menagerie is, naturally, a mix of foes you have and haven’t seen before in other Gears of War games, and the battles get steadily more white-knuckle as you make your way through the five-act story. Giant, frog-like hopping freaks that arc multi-gallon acidic loogies at you. Heavies that come in multiple varieties, most menacingly the one that fires a medium-range Gorehook – a hook on a chain that will typically down you in one hit.

On that note, one of my few complaints about Gears of War: E-Day is related to the down-but-not-out situations you’ll find yourself in throughout the campaign. When, not if, you get downed, your allies will occasionally be standing right next to you and not revive you. In fairness, it wasn’t a constant occurrence, but there were numerous times throughout my 15-18 hour first playthrough when I got stomped to death by a Locust heavy because one of my buddies either stood next to me and didn’t get me up, ran off and left me for dead, or never even got over to me as I mashed the X button to cling to life for a while. The immediate solution for this is to play through E-Day in four-player online co-op (two-player split-screen is the limit on a single Xbox), but I sure hope a patch resolves this inconsistent AI behavior sooner rather than later as well.

Guns Aplenty

As with the Locust enemies, E-Day’s weapons are a mix of old and new, and my goodness do I love them. Every weapon has a unique purpose to suit a particular combat strategy. And man, it still feels awesome to blast a Locust Heavy to bits with the Gnasher shotgun, cut a Drone into pieces with the Lancer Prototype’s chainsaw attachment, or explode a Locust sniper’s head with a scoped-Longshot kill. But there’s so much more in there beyond those Gears classics. The Breechshot, first introduced in the often-forgotten Gears of War: Judgment, ended up being one of my go-tos the longer the campaign went on, as it offered solid range and stopping power without being as cumbersome as something like the Longshot sniper rifle.

But there are a lot of weapons I’d give shoutouts to as well, like the Incinerator, which shotgun-blasts a burst of flesh-melting Imulsion; the Ripper, which is basically the Gears-universe equivalent of a SAW; and the ol’ favorite Torque Bow, which has a hell of a windup but then unleashes an explosive arrow at your target. I loved the weapon complement here, as well as the options that deep roster of firearms afforded me in some of the campaign’s later battles.

And it’s not just that all of these weapons are fun to use in the right situation. They can also all be modified and upgraded through E-Day’s new Weapon Mod and Tactical Gear system. You’ll encounter dozens of yellow Hard Cases lightly hidden throughout the world for you to find. Each contains a mod for one weapon or another, such as accuracy enhancers, scopes, or clip extenders. Completing optional secondary objectives around the major industrial city of Kalona where E-Day takes place also grants these same rewards. Each weapon has four mod slots, which you’ll unlock as you go, and I found myself constantly tweaking each weapon to find the right mix of add-ons that suited my playstyle. As such, I was plenty motivated to find every Hard Case I could and complete every secondary objective possible.

In addition to this is the Tactical Gear that modifies your armor, giving you your choice of a few squad-affecting special abilities that recharge on a cooldown timer after you use them. Again, you’ll unlock more as you progress, but once I got my hands on the Stim that allowed me to heal myself and any teammates within its radius for a short time, I was never tempted by any of the other choices. All of these customization options evolve the classic Gears of War combat in a welcome but not radical way that I appreciate, while liberally placed Supply Caches let you cycle weapons and mods rather frequently if you so choose.

And you’ll be glad for the ability to rearrange your weapon loadout often in E-Day’s mini-boss fights and full-blown boss battles. Almost all of them are memorable in a good way. With, again, a mix of old and new “faces,” these were often barely-scrape-by bouts during my playthrough and ones I welcomed both when they arrived and when I emerged victorious.

E-Day is packed with beautiful locations. The destroyed downtown of Kalona; the pitch-black, Locust-dug caves underneath it; the almost sinister-looking Imulsion refinery; the peaceful mountaintops outside the city. Although the entire campaign doesn’t take place there, you’ll spend a healthy amount of time in Kalona, and the massive but dense battle spaces there are an excellent evolution of the mostly empty open-world areas from Gears 5. The freedom feels far more organic and meaningful here, as there are so many interesting things around almost every corner.

In addition to the aforementioned secondary objectives that grant meaningful Weapon Mod upgrades, there are hidden objects with optionally-viewed details that add a bit of color to a world in the process of recovering from a 79-year civil war, only to be invaded and destroyed by the Locust in a few days. The gorgeous visuals are brought down only by infrequent but noticeable framerate hitches, even while playing in Performance Mode on the Xbox Series X. As such, I can’t recommend playing on the 30fps Quality Mode – at least not before a patch or two.

On a side note, I appreciate that E-Day doesn’t do the all-too-common “make the player run the gauntlet of everything they’ve already fought, but multiply it” endgame sequence. Instead, your mettle is tested plenty of times along the way, with ample quiet moments to punctuate the loud action. And the ending is, I’ll say without spoiling anything, satisfying, which isn’t an easy thing to pull off when, as I mentioned, we already know that Marcus and Dom make it out of E-Day alive. And thank goodness, because I need more quippy Marcus Fenix one-liners in my life; I can’t get enough of them.

Campaign Verdict:

By going back to the beginning, Gears of War: E-Day returns to the heart of this series: Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago, and a Locust horde that’s as terrifying as it is dangerous. E-Day pulls off the tightrope act of giving us a heartfelt prequel with strong characters even when we know how it ends. On a more mechanical level, it also evolves the enemies, weapons, and combat you’d expect to deliver a Gears of War campaign that stands toe-to-toe with any of the others. It wraps up with 10 years still left to go before Marcus gets tossed in prison ahead of the events of the first Gears of War, so here’s hoping the next one stays in the past for a while longer – and that we don’t have to wait another seven years for it to arrive.

As the fantasy RPG GOAT, it really doesn’t take a whole lot for me to replay The Witcher 3. I’ve happily done so the numerous other times developer CD Projekt Red has revamped this masterpiece, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered seems to be the biggest overhaul to the beloved tale yet. A free update for anyone who owns the original, so many different parts of this already excellent game have been improved – from combat to movement to skill progression (not to mention the modernized graphics). After about 10 hours working my way through White Orchard and beyond, it’s already extremely clear that this is the best The Witcher 3 has ever been.

Combat is less floaty and enemies are (slightly) less stupid

It’s probably not controversial to say that one of the worst parts of this otherwise amazing adventure was the combat. Even after at least a few updates to it over the years, it still mostly felt floaty, a bit on the sloppy side, and enemies were a huge fan of just standing there and waiting for their turn to get decapitated. The modernizations made to combat in this remaster are its biggest step forward, as a whole bevy of tweaks have been made to address various sticking points. Geralt attacks faster and enemies are quicker to match your pace, which makes the process of chopping through your ninth pack of wolves much less irritating.

The camera and lock-on functionality have been the highlight so far, as you can now toggle between large groups of enemies with ease, and without the camera losing its mind. I didn’t even use the lock-on system in the original specifically because it was so unreliable, so being able to do so now has taken some serious getting used to. In general, the camera feels much better – less tightly locked to your back so you can handle groups of enemies more reliably (though those darn Neckers still like to sneak up on ya), and so far I’ve encountered far fewer situations where I felt like I was fighting my view as much as I was the monsters.

I’ve also noticed some new enemy behaviors that make swordplay more interesting, specifically how they’ll now retreat instead of letting you trounce them with steel, launch less telegraphed counterattacks, and disappear and reappear behind you (in the case of ghost monsters). All that did a much better job of making me feel like I was fighting intelligent creatures. Of course, compared to some of the stuff we see in action games today, I still do feel like the enemy behavior shows its age, and it was never all that great to begin with. Still, this is enough of an improvement to make combat feel much more engaging than it once did, significantly upgrading one of this adventure’s weakest points.

Geralt moves so much faster and Roach is less of a cretin

Movement is one of those small details that can grate the heck out of you in a massive RPG like The Witcher 3, slowly filling you with rage over the course of hundreds of hours. In the original, Geralt was often slow and had a lot of trouble getting over things. His rigid animations sometimes made me avoid ladders altogether because I just didn’t have the patience for it. In the remaster, Geralt absolutely flies over fences and navigates vertical obstacles with relative ease, to the point where it actually felt weird to see him be so nimble. I recall losing over an hour of progress in the 1.0 version when Geralt fell off a ledge no taller than a barstool and managed to break every bone in his body. This was reduced already in the next-gen update from 2022, but combined with the other speed and mobility improvements here, it almost feels like a completely different game – to the point where I’ve begun to wonder if it’ll make the map feel smaller than before as I get deeper in.

Similarly, Roach is no longer the annoying idiot she once was, now sporting much more intuitive controls that make her less likely to get caught on trees (which she now passes through if she’s just brushing against them while galloping), or end up on top of a barn. Most importantly, you can now loot herbs and whatnot without getting off your horse, which is maybe the single best improvement this remaster offers (dismounting every 10 seconds to pick a flower drove me to the brink of madness in 2015).

Skill trees are less restrictive

A pet peeve of mine in RPGs is when skill trees prevent you from playing around with different builds until you get deep into the progression. This is something The Witcher 3 suffered from quite a bit in the early hours, as so many of the impactful abilities were locked behind walls you couldn’t remove until late in the journey. The revised trees in the remaster take a page out of Cyberpunk 2077’s book by making perks more readily available earlier on, so you can customize how you’d like Geralt to get his Witchering done. I’m still early in my journey on this run, but I’m already happy to see that I won’t have to wait until I’ve invested a whole 12 points in a branch before I can unlock any good skills – so long as I’ve purchased a skill along the route I’m focusing on, I can now progress down a certain skill path with fewer obstructions.

Oh, yeah, this remaster looks pretty great too

Maybe this goes without saying for a remaster, but this is a pretty massive graphical upgrade, even over the one The Witcher 3 got for the current generation of consoles just four years ago. The lighting is much more dramatic, environmental textures are way more detailed, shadows and reflections are much more consistent across the board (especially on PC), and Geralt’s hair looks way less like a blurry mess than it once did. Again, this is all stuff that you’d hope would be the bare minimum when remastering a 12-year-old game, but it still warrants a shoutout. There’s even a new photo mode for those of you who want to take glamor shots of Geralt in all his new, high definition glory.

The one thing caveat here is that performance is still not perfect, and I still ran into a dropped frame or two on both console and PC. It’s a small price to pay for how much better things look, though, especially with the incredibly short load times I saw. And considering that the original had some framerate issues of its own, it’s not like anything has gotten worse here.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered’s greatest asset isn’t that it adds anything the original sorely lacked, but rather that it removes some of the biggest roadblocks to fun the 1.0 version was saddled with. Combat is more challenging but also easier to enjoy, movement is quicker and less irritating, and revised skill trees allow for more freedom. Even if it doesn’t manage to fix some of the technical issues (plus I’m sure there are some bugs waiting for me to encounter them that haven’t reared their ugly heads yet), it manages to make this classic RPG more enjoyable in 2026, and that’s worth yet another ride down its well-trodded roads.

The satisfaction of the metroidvania genre comes from a sensation of mastery – taking a place I'm unfamiliar with and slowly unraveling its complexities until I command dominance over its spaces and the threats that perpetually lurk within. For its debut game, End of Abyss, developer Section 9 Interactive tries to apply that format to an atmospheric horror adventure with twin-stick controls and instills a striking sense of dread inside a gargantuan labyrinthian facility. Its atmosphere only carries it so far, though; End of Abyss's exploration and combat slowly descend into a slog, and it never fully recovers from feeling like a routine procedure.

End of Abyss is centered around a young combat technician named Cel, who isn't given much in the way of personality. Cel is a silent observer who's trained to interact with the world through the scope of a gun. They skulk around this massive, desolate complex with only a few other soldiers four times their size, slowly attempting to discern what happened here. The place is abandoned, seemingly run by a series of AI boxes known as Security Control Units, which are trying to keep the facility from falling into total disarray. A mysterious voice calls out to Cel through these boxes, hoping they will help free this place from the zombified station workers who turned into enemy Husks.

Without much else explained, Cel is thrust into the cold concrete corridors and expected to survive. As I walked through dimly lit hallways and parasitic flea-infested tunnels, it was clear Section 9 was built of former Little Nightmares developers. The clay-doll aesthetic and isometric perspective is immediately recognizable. Atmosphere is the most captivating thing End of Abyss has to offer.

The grotesque detritus of vacant bedrooms litters the Habitation Sector, crafting a harrowing and bone-chilling opening section. I walked through every doorway with my thumb trembling on the right stick. Even with Cel's pistol drawn to keep my guard up, I was still terrified of what could be on the other side. The way a light flickers above an exit or how an enemy body encased in parasitic fungus is positioned all constantly feed into the uneasiness you want from a horror experience. These tricks work for the first few hours, but as End of Abyss dragged on, I began to see the seams of it all, and it eventually became too familiar.

What were once terrifying jump scares became predictable – corpses with important items conveniently placed in large open arenas consistently led to combat encounters I knew were coming. The supposedly dead enemies I used to fear waking up to chase me down always would, and thus it became routine to start shooting them before I even approached.

The mystery surrounding End of Abyss unsatisfyingly relied on the absence of information. Characters trade in vague uncertainties, often offering up little to no useful information about how or why we are in this facility. A few notes and documents are found scattered around its hallowed halls, but even slowly learning about what life was like here before our protagonist Cel touched down does little to actually paint a compelling picture. I pushed forward, turning on little AI boxes around this compound to activate an elevator, I searched for power cells to switch on a beacon, and I eventually descended into the dreaded lower levels to see what lurked below.

It wasn't until the back third of End of Abyss’ roughly 10-hour campaign that the plot started to gain momentum. The story suddenly took a front seat as characters began to explain the reason for our deadly trek through the compound. But because the buildup lacked tangible stakes, it was mystery for mystery's sake, and rarely did it feel of any consequence.

That's not to say that End of Abyss doesn't have its moments. Particularly in the last act when tiptoeing around the lower levels, I found note after note that brought me closer into the horrors of this world. Rooms filled with strange new oddities and remnants of experimentations piqued my curiosity and illustrated an underlying terror.

Atmospheric Pressure

A few new weapons to add to my parasite killing arsenal also kept me invested in the search-action. Your options range from the Pulse Gun, a trusty and reliable pistol with unlimited ammo, to a flamethrower that lights up entire rooms in a wall of fire. The twin-stick shooter part of End of Abyss is no joke, either. Combat encounters can swing drastically if you roll the wrong way or get caught in a corner. I always felt in control of the situation even as I dipped and dodged through large hordes of enemies. So when I would slip up and lose that control, it became a struggle to regain my footing. That's where the combat thrives: walking on the razor's edge between confidence and hubris with a little uncertainty.

Enemy variety pushed me to do some experimentation in the action. Grenades were a staple in large group encounters, learning to manipulate aggressive enemy behavior to my advantage became a small game on its own, and grouping up mobs to maximize a red barrel explosion was a key tactic. More challenging enemies, like the long-necked Husk Latcher, made keeping a safe distance difficult; it perpetually charged forward and swung its long-reaching, claw-like head in my direction.

While I found the moment-to-moment combat mostly strong, the boss fights feel rote by comparison. Circular arenas with large creatures played out largely the same – roll away from the boss, pop a few shots into them, rinse and repeat. Some bosses, like the Centipede Husk, mixed things up a bit by leaving the arena and popping out of different corners to try and catch me off guard. Other fights are more focused on dumping large amounts of ammunition into the boss, and that's disappointing for a game with flashes of brilliance.

With the exception of the pistol, you'll need to manage your ammo and craft more at workbenches found around the different save points throughout the facility. Early on, managing my Riot Breaker shotgun ammo and choosing to save my limited supply for the moments that mattered felt reminiscent of other survival horror games like Resident Evil. However, after only a couple of hours, I rarely thought about my ammo counts, since the materials required to craft more bullets at a workbench felt like drops in a bucket. This trend continued as I acquired the Security Rifle – an armor-piercing long-range gun – and that minimized a potentially interesting dynamic.

Fragments are found around every corner, and they're a plentiful currency throughout. I found them on dead enemies, stashed away in lockers and treasure chests, and just laying in optional rooms. It was so abundant that I eventually felt nothing every time I saw that blue glow in the distance.

Dazed & Confused

This resource problem began to seep into the cracks of the foundation and expose a larger problem: exploration is not truly rewarding. The interconnected hallways and twisting systems that make understanding how all of the locations fit together are part of the puzzle in a metroidvania. But here, the further I dove into the depths of it all, the more frustrating navigating this dilapidated station became. The lack of visual variety and identity across different areas made everything look the same, and it was difficult to pinpoint points of interest in an area to help anchor myself. End of Abyss became more about looking at the map every few seconds to ensure I wasn't going the wrong way than soaking in the foreboding atmosphere that surrounded me.

Unlocking shortcuts with keycards or opening a door from the opposite side didn't bring revelation or satisfaction. It often brought confusion about how or why these rooms were tied together and what use this shortcut would have. When every zone is the same gray-and-blue hue, it becomes a tired cycle to open up another cold steel door for the sake of it, or for a handful of Fragments I didn't really need. For every new weapon or piece of equipment I found, there were five rooms full of just Fragments.

And then there was the Containment Sector. This section of the map leaks radiation and would slowly tick away at my health if I stayed in the area. I quickly shifted gears and locked in, moving with surgical precision as I couldn't waste any time getting lost. Every few minutes my health would tick to zero, I would die, and I would respawn at a nearby checkpoint. It felt obvious that there was something I was missing, some sort of protection from the radiation, since the further into the sector I went, the stronger the radiation became.

Eventually I discovered a radiation suit mod that protected me from the constant damage. Instead of elation, all I felt was relief that I was done having to poke and prod random corners of this world for something that may or may not have existed. This entire scavenger hunt felt so detached from the Containment Sector and what I was trying to accomplish there, and it's a disconnect that even metroidvanias of yore didn't have.

Backtracking in End of Abyss is rough, even with a transit system that can take you to most zones. Cel does not move very quickly while sprinting, and the constant aimless roaming really pads out the overall runtime. These problems are exacerbated by multiple bugs that prevented me from progressing – random invisible walls that would stop me dead in my tracks on a ladder or prevent me from doubling back to a section I was just in. This caused me to have to restart at a previous checkpoint, losing 10-15 minutes of progress each time.

Despite the frustrations with exploration, the tone-setting audio design from Section 9 is some of the best I've heard recently. Pulsating reverberations of loud clangs and distorted gurgles rang through my headphones, sending shivers down my spine. The wet squelching of enemies as they scurried toward me made me want to crawl out of my skin. The audio gives End of Abyss a sense of scope that outsized its dark and tight corridors, making it feel like this facility goes far beyond the bounds of the screen.

One of the reasons Minecraft is my favorite game of all time is how alluring its world of endless possibilities is, so it’s a little strange that the Minecraft Dungeons series seems to represent the exact opposite. Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a brief, forgettable ARPG that’s as thin as they come, from its barebones story to its shallow gameplay, and you can see almost all it has to offer in the span of an afternoon. Simple, easygoing action is kinda the whole point here, but while there’s nothing actively offensive about this humdrum adventure, there’s also very little worth getting excited about either. The good news is that the minor improvements this sequel makes over the original are quite welcome, including more customizable characters and the added ability to jump, plus the new realm of the Sift adds some fresh color and creatures to the Minecraft universe – so if you’re looking to spend a mindless night or two swinging swords with your friends, you could do a lot worse than this.

If you didn’t play the first one, Minecraft Dungeons 2 takes the pixelated items and goofy mobs from Minecraft and throws them into an extremely light (and noticeably less gory) version of Diablo. You’ll delve into dungeons, smack around swarms of monsters, and tackle big ol’ slobbery bosses while hoovering up as much loot as you can along the way. But where most ARPGs lean hard into dizzying skill trees and loot with so many different stats you need a degree in mathematics to comprehend them, Minecraft Dungeons strips away most of that in favor of a much simpler framework. That makes it both more approachable and, almost equally, less interesting. While this sequel expands on the ideas from the first in modest ways, like by increasing the armor slots you’ve got from one to four, it mostly maintains that stripped down buildcrafting philosophy.

The roughly seven-hour story has your unnamed hero squaring off against an evil cabal of Illagers who gain access to a new dimension, called the Sift, and… actually, look at that, I’ve just about covered it all. The cutscenes and conversations to be found here are basically just a vague outline of a story that sends you to and fro to kill things and save the world, and that’s about as deep as it ever gets. It’s not like I was expecting some kind of emotional drama from my “Minecraft meets Diablo” game, but like most things in this adventure, there’s still very little to it.

The action is thankfully more developed than the story, adding some key features to the mix that make battling through the blocky world more enjoyable. I had completely forgotten, for example, that the original didn’t have a jump button, and having one here adds some needed platforming and light puzzles to solve – plus it gives you access to a new jump attack so you can drop a ‘bow on these filthy adds. You also have more options for enchanting your weapons and armor with special effects (which you unlock by conquering dungeons and completing quests throughout the world) as well as new artifacts that offer passive buffs, like increased damage with ranged weapons. All of these things are a decent step up from the original, but the vast majority of the moment-to-moment gameplay remains largely unchanged, and smacking samey zombies and Illagers tends to run thin quite quickly.

The fact that buildcrafting is mostly left up to whichever odd equipment you happen to stumble upon, rather than a class-based system, also means you and your co-op teammates all play exactly the same way, and you rarely have control over how your build feels (at least until you near the endgame), since you’re largely at the mercy of the RNG gods. For example, I wanted to play a rogue-type class, but kept finding big ass swords and tank-like items, so I ended up serving as our crew’s defacto melee fighter despite my best efforts. Not that there’s much of a difference anyway, since every player has access to the exact same dodge skill, base speed, weapon options, etc. and you won’t find a shield to add blocking to your arsenal or anything like that.

The handful of equipment slots you’re given offer a few perks each, like increased DPS or added benefits from using healing items, or the ability to shoot fireworks that explode and deal damage to everything in the vicinity (which are good for ringing in the new year, too). You’ll also find a small arsenal of melee and ranged weapons with which to thwack creepers and skeletons, each with just a single attack pattern for you to spam. As you progress, you’ll be able to add some neat enchantments to give weapons and armor a new perk, like one that makes you move faster after you score a kill, or another that lets your ranged attacks penetrate through a target, but none of them do much to shake up the hollow hacking and slashing.

The best part of Minecraft Dungeons 2 is the new area called the Sift, a magical, soul-powered realm filled with goat things, poisonous water, and more teal landscapes than was previously thought possible with the science of our day. This isn’t a game with a whole lot of personality, and it often feels like it merely wears a thin Minecraft skin – but this new dimension is one of the few ways in which it branches out to do its own thing, and it mostly succeeds at being an interesting place to explore. It’s got some new creatures and a super distinct vibe, with souls floating everywhere and dancing automatons roaming about. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best showcase of the new realm, since you’re mostly just plowing through areas killing things, so it really just made me wish I could wander around it in regular Minecraft. But in a game with not a whole lot of exciting stuff going on, getting to explore this new slice of the Minecraft universe was definitely a highlight.

Once you’ve completed the story, you’ll unlock the equally thin endgame, which adds a new activity called Soul Storms. These events summon more deadly enemies for a chance at better loot, but there aren’t really any other activities to pursue where you’ll really need this better gear – at least not yet. Mojang has said it has plans to roll out additional endgame content after launch, which could make this activity worth grinding some day, but for now it feels mostly like more of the same monotonous chopping and dodging I’d already had enough of by the end of the story. The new equipment, which adds an additional perk to all the weapons and armor you find within this elite tier, is a decent prize at least, so even though I immediately felt like there wasn’t much for me to do with my new kit, there’s something about obtaining cool stuff that’s a worthy end in itself.

Beyond the Soul Storms, you’ll mostly roam around, complete any side quests you hadn’t gotten to yet, replay boss fights from the story, and conquer the numerous optional dungeons that can unlock some new enchantment options for your gear. That’s all fine, but it’s all the same button mashing that will have worn out its welcome by that point. My friends and I tried to find reasons to stick around, curious if the story was just a primer for a more deep, compelling endgame (as is often the case with ARPGs), but it seems like that just hasn’t been built yet.

I find myself in a weird place with EA Sports FC 27. On one hand, worthwhile strategic elements have finally been added that reflect real-world tactics in a concise, intuitive way. On the other hand, the promised improvements to the behavior and pathing of computer-controlled players on the field still ring hollow, carrying over many of the same issues the series has had for over a decade. Couple this with the dreaded introduction of open-world elements via The Grounds, and the result is yet another year where nearly positive change is balanced out by a negative one.Ever since NBA 2K14 introduced MyPark, which eventually evolved into The Neighborhood in NBA 2K18 and The City in NBA 2K21, I figured it was only a matter of time before EA brought a similar open world full of activities to its other sports franchises. While The Grounds isn't without merit, it often feels like EA is trying to solve a problem that didn't really exist.

After hours of exploring The Grounds, it’s clear FC 27 didn’t need to have an open-world environment to deliver a more communal online mode. I don’t need to run through a visually saturated, low-resolution city populated by lifeless NPCs just to find a game mode to start up when simple menus devoted to the same function can do that in a more efficient manner. Sure, it works well as an active lobby for matchmaking and makes it easier to find other players and move between activities, but between the framerate drops and unnatural character animations, nothing is immersiveness enough about this hub to justify its existence.

The issues above are only compounded by the myriad of unskippable cutscenes and NBA 2K15-level voice acting that make up The Grounds. The irony is that I was initially excited by the new hub world because it brings back one of my favorite FIFA characters from The Journey story mode: Alex Hunter, who first appeared in FIFA 17 and FIFA 18, once again voiced by Adetomiwa Edun. That enthusiasm disappeared quickly once Hunter began speaking, as his delivery feels noticeably more rigid and detached than it did during his original story.

Edun's performance nearly a decade ago was passionate and natural, whereas The Grounds' version of Hunter sounds like he would rather be anywhere else. Things get even more painful when Kylian Mbappe appears shortly afterward, delivering his lines with such a stiff, mechanical cadence that it was clear he read them directly from the script all in one take. I honestly found myself grateful that my created character doesn't speak to avoid adding even more uncomfortable interactions.

The frustration is only compounded by the constant connection issues and errors that still plague the multiplayer community. From disconnects to server lag, I got kicked from or had to leave more games than I can count in my first full week with FC 27. At one point, I even had a match where my opponent had a goal kick, but instead of kicking the ball, his keeper started floating up the pitch with it. This didn’t end until the poor player was sent back to his home planet like Poochie in The Simpsons. After a few hilarious, confusing seconds, the netminder was able to take his place back between the posts, but I was given a corner kick as a result.

I also played every new minigame, from Mario Kart-like Balloon Ball to Football Tennis. While I had some fun, it wasn’t enough to buck the notion that these elements belong in FIFA Street more than they do FC 27. Combine that with the fact that progression in The Ground is tied to coins and XP that can also be purchased with real money, and it only compounds my worry that the series keeps moving away from the beautiful game I know and love to further push microtransactions.

When it comes to gameplay, FC 27's expanded Tactics system and its effect on gameplay is easily the best addition, wonderfully complementing the playstyles and roles introduced over the past few years by improving strategy, movement, passing, and crossing in numerous ways. Now more than ever, you have more control over how teams behave in different phases of play, going beyond basic formations and instructions by explaining the purpose, strengths, and weaknesses of different tactical approaches.

This becomes particularly useful when building around individual player attributes. As a Manchester United fan, I found that a deeper defensive approach worked especially well for Noussair Mazraoui, whose patient style lets him maintain his position and disrupt attacks without constantly stepping out of shape, while a short-passing buildup gives him chances to use his technical ability without abandoning that defensive structure.

That flexibility became even more apparent when I switched formations on the fly mid-match while playing against Crystal Palace – I found that they were leaving space along the wings, so I moved into a 4-2-2-2, letting Bruno Fernandes operate between the lines and thread passes to a striker such as Benjamin Sesko, creating opportunities for quick combinations and finishes through the middle. Alternatively, when I faced Manchester City, they controlled the wings more successfully. To counter this, I switched to a 4-2-3-1 wide formation, moving Fernandes more centrally so he dictated play and combined with holding midfielders such as Kobbie Mainoo through quick one-two passes.

Separating tactical instructions for possession and defensive phases adds another useful layer, while Player Roles give individual players more specific responsibilities within a formation. Instead of simply placing someone in a position and expecting them to behave a certain way, I could build their role around the specific contribution I wanted from them. For example, if I move into a 4-2-3-1 wide and place Benjamin Šeško on the right side, I can adjust his role depending on the circumstances. As an inside forward, he can cut inward to create shooting opportunities or provide another passing option for Fernandes, while a wider role allows him to stretch the defense and open space through the middle.That same flexibility can be useful defensively, particularly when protecting a lead. If an opponent repeatedly targets his side of the pitch, giving Šeško more defensive responsibility lets him drop back and support the right back, providing another way to protect that flank without abandoning the attacking structure.

What makes the system particularly valuable is that it teaches the strategy behind soccer formations without overwhelming players with unnecessary information. FC 27 does a good job explaining why different shapes work, which players suit them, and how to adjust them against different opponents, making the tactical aspect of the sport approachable while still leaving experienced players plenty of room to experiment.

This is emphasized even more with revamped passing, which now focuses more on manual controls for grounded and lobbed passing, giving more control over where to place the ball and take advantage of the new curved runs. These movements mirror the real-life game smoothly, as the dynamic movement lets a player burst forward into a curved supporting run around defenders rather than a rigid straight line.

While great in theory, these movements can sometimes feel like they work against FC 27’s own computer-controlled behavior. Pathing and defensive logic can still break down on higher difficulties, allowing a carefully constructed gameplan to be undermined by a CPU defender refusing to challenge for a 50/50 ball or making an inexplicable movement. Passing will still occasionally produce similarly frustrating results when a ball aimed toward an open teammate on the right is instead sent toward a covered player in the middle.

To confirm it wasn’t just my mind playing tricks on me, I loaded the skill trainer and was about to see firsthand where I was aiming, thanks to the visual aids it provides. It was beyond frustrating to see how many times I’d set up to pass the ball wide right, left, or center to open space, only for the directional bar on the Skill Trainer to snap back toward the nearest defender in the complete opposite direction of where the reticle should be aiming. Revamped defense had similar linger issues, as defensive backs were still getting fooled or pulled off their spot by opposing runners on counterattacks, resulting in far too many uneven counterattack goals. The series is over 30 annual entries deep at this point, yet it still can’t get vital features like passing down pat.

That said, I was impressed with the improvements to crossing and corner kicks. Both systems produce more convincing positioning battles and give the player greater control inside the box. I scored several successful headers with Harry Maguire from corners during my time with the game, which stood out because I could count on one hand the number of corner routines and headed goals I had scored in previous EA Sports FC entries.

Ultimate Team makes player upgrades much more flexible in FC 27, adding an option to choose between different paths at key stages instead of being locked into a predictable progression. I preferred being able to tailor a player’s PlayStyles and stats to better suit my preferred style of play, and the move toward smaller promo campaigns and a three-PlayStyle+ limit also helps keep special cards from becoming outdated too quickly. While the overall Ultimate Team gameplay and economy balance isn’t drastically different, there are some noticeable issues that clash with some of the revamped systems, specifically for manual goalkeeping and defending.

Manual goalkeeper movement is less responsive than in previous testing builds, especially when reacting to crosses and corners, making a hard position even less attractive to want to play. The move to manual skill from automated defending is great in theory, but defenders are easily exploited by pace-heavy attackers if a single player switch is mistimed. I like that matches yield more coins and higher baseline Season Points (SP), but the value improvement is offset by adjustments to base discard values for lower- and mid-tier gold, silver, and bronze cards that make them less valuable and eliminate helpful trading metas like the Bronze Pack Method.

Career Mode has also received several meaningful upgrades, especially in the transfer market. I felt much more involved, as the process now features staged negotiations, installments, performance bonuses, bidding wars, and rival clubs attempting to hijack deals. My attempt to sign Manu Koné for Manchester United highlighted this perfectly, as he ultimately chose Manchester City despite me agreeing to both the fee and contract.

Player development is also more dynamic in FC 27, with form, fitness, and morale affecting ratings throughout the season, while rivalries, origin stories, starting scenarios, and icon players like Gareth Bale add more variety to Player Career. Unexpected events add further depth through financial penalties, dressing-room conflicts, disciplinary issues, and training-ground incidents, while press conferences now carry greater consequences for morale and squad relationships.

I also appreciated that CPU-controlled clubs finally manage finances and recruitment around their tactical needs, making Career Mode substantially deeper overall. Despite these additions, menus are still slow, animations are recycled each season, and a lot of progression is still tied to the dreadful investment system introduced in EA Sports FC 24.

I’m taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.

Today it’s time to go home to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Whether you remember it or not – or were too preoccupied being spoon-fed puréed fruit from a jar at the time – it’s impossible to understate what a banner year 2004 was for now-legendary video games. Just look at the line up. World of Warcraft. Half-Life 2 and Halo 2. Burnout 3 and Metal Gear Solid 3. Gran Turismo 4 and more – much more. I could absolutely go on. To emerge as the bestselling game of what may well be the greatest year we’ve ever had – in an era where it felt like the rulebook was being torn up and rewritten every other month – you had to be remarkable. You had to be rich, surprising, innovative, and essential. Simply put, to be the bestselling game of 2004, you needed to be more than great. You needed to be Grand.

While GTA III defined the fundamentals of 3D open-world design, and Vice City layered that sandbox with vibrant ’80s style and a big dose of yacht rock and yayo, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas pushed the formula to the very limits of what was actually possible on the world’s then-favourite DVD player. Despite shipping just two years after Vice City, San Andreas expanded Rockstar’s formula exponentially by introducing three full-scale cities – all housed in what amounted to an entire fictional US state: the titular San Andreas. Best of all, it was still retro-tinged, set in 1992. A slightly less dramatic leap into the past than Vice City but, as someone whose adolescence was forged in the ’90s, an awesome period to revisit.

At the time, it was a mindblowing achievement. The state itself covers an area roughly six times larger than Vice City. Its three major metropolises – Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas – each have their own unique visual identity. Los Santos is draped in smog, giving the whole cityscape a distinct orange haze at certain times of day. On the hottest days, a shimmering heat rises from the asphalt – a fabulously effective flourish that gives the city a truly tangible sense of temperature. San Fierro, defined by its severe hills and stretches of tramline, features an entirely different sort of climate. It’s more akin to GTA III’s Liberty City, where the tall, dense skyscrapers of the CBD create quite a bit of shade below. Las Venturas, San Andreas’ gambling haven, is dry, flat, and is at its best at neon-lit night. Each city is connected by open stretches of rolling fields, redwood forests, and rocky desert. There’s even a selection of tiny towns, farms, and factories between the major hubs.

However, while the size of the map was one thing – the fact that you can travel all over it and move from one major city to another without a single loading screen is something else altogether. Coming from Vice City, where you couldn’t cross from one island to the other without being briefly stalled by a loading screen, it was a genuinely amazing advancement. Rockstar had concocted a way to constantly stream in the world immediately around us in real-time. For its debut on PS2 – the platform that accounted for more than 17 million of San Andreas’ 27.5 million sales – this meant a neverending juggling act with the system’s limited 32MB of RAM and a relentless assault on its disc drive. You probably could’ve forgiven the Rockstar North team for not adding a high-speed fighter jet to a game perpetually pulling data from its dual-layer DVD in a non-stop race against time to rapidly build the world in front of you before you reached it.

They added one anyway.

Some Kind of Wonderful

It’s arguable San Andreas’ greatest victory isn’t simply the immense geographical scale it boasted for its era. Rather, it’s the remarkable density of its various systems, ideas, and side activities.

I played an aggressive amount of San Andreas back in the mid 2000s. I tortured my PS2 until it started making weird noises, then I borrowed my sister’s and tortured it, too. Perhaps the ultimate testament to how supremely stuffed San Andreas is with things to do is just how many side modes I’ve encountered over the last week of playing that had honestly slipped my mind over the last 20 years. The valet activity? Forgot that. Trucking missions? Forgot those. Duelling lowriders? Oh, yeah! It’s like putting on an old pair of trousers and finding $20 notes in every pocket.

San Andreas almost never stops giving. Take its vehicles, for instance. Not only do they all handle with a genuine sense of heft that puts most GTA clones to shame – seriously, just watch as they subtly wiggle on their springs if you jerk them to a sudden halt – but there are also around 200 of them. From the minute it puts you on a bicycle, new vehicles are in virtually constant supply. Combine harvesters. Quad bikes. Articulated semi-trailers. Monster trucks. Functional forklifts. Hovercraft. A jump jet, and a jetpack. No, not one or the other. Both. It’s like someone took a bunch of scribbled brainstorm notes and executed on every suggestion, without trimming any of them.

To be honest, there are times playing San Andreas where it almost feels like no idea was trimmed. Rob a house, go dancing, and stop at a minimart to play an arcade machine. Hit the gym, then hit the casino. Run a triathlon, and run a business. Go parachuting, unwind with some pool, and… role play as a pimp. I guess, strictly speaking, there was at least one idea that was famously pulled out at the last minute: a sex minigame. It just wasn’t pulled out enough, so to speak. Ruled out so late in development it was impractical to completely remove it without jeopardising San Andreas’ vast, precarious, and otherwise interwoven code, Rockstar locked off the minigame beneath a non-interactive wrapper – keeping the camera entirely out of the room where the magic was happening. Modders discovered and re-enabled it in time for the PC version in 2005, triggering what became known as the Hot Coffee controversy.

The pearl clutching and hand wringing that followed was deeply embarrassing, even by mid 2000s standards. The US ESRB re-issued all versions of the game a commercially crippling Adults Only rating, and Australia temporarily banned it until the abandoned content was removed. It didn’t matter that it literally wasn’t even accessible for the majority of players on console – the matter had become politicised and the subject of massive media attention. The concept of two blocky PS2 characters goofily grinding against each other was apparently too much for adult gamers to bear. We would have to be content with wanton vehicular homicide and burning cops to a crisp. I’m hopeful that things would go a little differently more than two decades on, but I guess we have our own problems. These days I don’t know if I’m still killing people in video games, or if I’m only unaliving them.

Killing in the Name

The explosion of side activities is still only part of the San Andreas equation, as Rockstar also introduced a number of light RPG mechanics. This goes beyond the ability to customise leading man Carl Johnson’s appearance, via outfits, haircuts, tattoos, or munching down too many burgers. CJ also has a large number of improveable skills, and the more you do something, the better and more efficient he’ll get at it. Flying, fighting, driving, diving – you name it. Have a weapon you prefer? Use it as much as possible to level CJ up to ‘Hitman’ proficiency, where you can move and strafe while shooting, your lock-on range will extend, and (in the case of the four specific weapons) even dual wield them.

The improvements to the third-person shooter component in San Andreas are significant, with most of the clumsiness that tended to characterise GTA III and Vice City ironed out. A bulk of that is thanks to the ability to finally use the right analogue stick to control the camera at will – as opposed to the previous games, where the right stick was only used to look around in a stationary first-person camera. It’s the first GTA game to feel akin to a modern third-person shooter in this regard, which makes it a breeze to get accustomed to in 2026. You can also aim all weapons freely now, rather than just a select few – and the auto lock-on is otherwise intelligent enough to automatically prioritise and target threats rather than random civilians or, worse, your own gang members. Light stealth was even introduced, on the back of Rockstar’s own experimentation with the controversial Manhunt earlier the same year. CJ is able to crouch to reduce noise, a suppressed pistol has been added to the arsenal, and there’s a simple stealth kill you can perform on the unaware, indicated by the same raised-arm trigger used in Manhunt.

Express Yourself

With more cities, more cars, and more depth than ever, you might have been wondering just how much more more San Andreas could possibly have in store.

Well, I haven’t even touched on the radio stations yet, which are neck and neck with Vice City as the best they’ve ever been in the 30-year history of the series. It’s an impeccably curated soundtrack that’s one part perfect ’90s time capsule, and one part historical hip hop odyssey. That is, it didn’t just feature some of the most iconic rap tracks to emerge from the early ’90s, but it made sure to include stations dedicated to the entire ecosystem of complementary music hip hop found itself drawing inspiration from. Funk and soul. R&B and New Jack Swing. There’s perhaps no better example of that than the fact San Andreas didn’t make a choice between Charles Wright’s signature hit Express Yourself, or the 1988 reimaging from N.W.A. It simply included both. Eleven stations and over 150 songs is the bullet point, but there’s so much more to it than that. It’s the fact that they now air dynamically, meaning the song order changes and you won’t always hear the same slice of DJ banter introducing them.

Want more? Well, how about arguably the greatest arsenal of cheats codes ever assembled? Cheats to make the game easier. Cheats to make the game harder. Cheats to spawn all the greatest vehicles. Cheats to arm civilians with rocket launchers. Cheats to trigger a map-wide riot. Cheats to turn off the gravity!

Still want more? How about a same screen co-op mode that allows you to bring a friend into the world to wreak havoc alongside you. Is it slightly janky? Yes. Did that stop my friends and I from messing around with it constantly? Absolutely not.

Interestingly, about the only thing San Andreas seems to have fewer of is major Hollywood celebrities in the main roles. Following Vice City, San Andreas moved away from having a big-shot celebrity on deck to star as the lead character. Instead, CJ was capably and memorably played by an LA-based rapper named Young Maylay, with no previous acting experience. There are a number of recognisable names here as side characters, though, including James Woods, Peter Fonda, Charlie Murphy, Ice-T, Chris Penn, and the inimitable Sam Jackson as the iconically slimy Officer Frank Tenpenny. Is there a better GTA villain than Jackson’s Tenpenny? I don’t think there is.

Verdict

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the single bestselling game on the most successful console in the history of the business. That’s not an accolade you can just earn by accident. Its unprecedented scope and astonishing depth were nothing short of witchcraft, and the incredible attention to detail was staggeringly impressive for something of its size. Its ability to support endless experimentation kept my friends and I busy for years, fooling around with its industry-leading list of cheats and its same-screen co-op chaos long after we’d all finished the story mode several times. Its soundtrack is the stuff of legend; so one-of-a-kind that not even Rockstar itself could quite reassemble the complete thing for subsequent re-releases. In 2004, GTA San Andreas was one of the most extraordinary games I’d ever played. In 2026, the hood done took me under all over again. Sure, the technical limitations of the mid 2000s are always obvious through a modern lens, but you can’t measure ambition in polygons – and GTA San Andreas is overflowing with it.

For more reflections on the incredible Grand Theft Auto series, you can read our new Legacy Reviews of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, Grand Theft Auto III, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, with more to follow before November.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.

I was a bit stunned to hear there's a new single-player story campaign for Warcraft 3 in 2026 – 23 years after its last expansion, The Frozen Throne. And after the uneven Warcraft 3 Reforged, I was even more surprised at how much I ended up enjoying Forsaken Kingdom and its accompanying changes. It's honestly great to be back looking down at Azeroth's moody champions and impressive cities from a raven's eye view considering Blizzard hasn't given single-player RTS fans anything new to chew on since 2016's Starcraft II: Nova Covert Ops. This expansion maintains the feel of classic Warcraft 3 while mixing in some new ideas, and while it doesn’t hit the highs of Reign of Chaos or The Frozen Throne, that's something I might never run out of appetite for.

This review will cover three main additions to Reforged that all arrived together: the Forsaken Kingdom single-player campaign expansion itself, the Forsaken Paladin multiplayer hero, and the "Definitive Edition" graphics update that was made to address criticisms of 2020's redone art style. Let's start with the campaign.

Forsaken Kingdom kicks off with the four-mission Last Days of Lordaeron prologue campaign, which is quite juicy and ambitious on its own. It picks up on the day Arthas returned from Northrend to kill his father, perhaps one of the most pivotal moments in all of Warcraft lore, and follows the new hero, guard lieutenant Garek Bandarion, as he fights his way through a besieged Andorhal and a devastated Strathholme in a doomed attempt to save his homeland from the Scourge. This chapter culminates with a confrontation against none other than Baron Rivendare, and contains numerous clever little references to both Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft.

I enjoyed the design of these missions for the most part, as they take after the classic RTS formula of Warcraft 3. The Siege of Andorhal, especially, puts a little bit of a MOBA-inspired twist on the typical Warcraft 3 routine by having you capture towers that spawn waves of CPU-controlled friendly soldiers at regular intervals to help you push across the map. Another segment of the same mission required me to hold specific objectives to be able to recruit certain kinds of units, rather than simply needing their associated structure in my base.

Stratholme, post-purge at this point, is built like a winding dungeon crawl that requires you to coordinate one group led by Garek and a second led by the elven priest Ilastar Songbreeze – 500 bonus points if you recognize that deep cut, because I definitely had to look up who the heck he was and I practically eat, sleep, and breathe Warcraft. They remain separated for the first half of the mission, which created some interesting opportunities to use one group to complete an objective that helped the other progress. They then unite at the end for the final, dramatic push, which ties the whole scenario together nicely.

In an extremely heavily-telegraphed twist, Garek doesn't fare well in his confrontation with Rivendare, and ends up raised as one of the free-willed Forsaken in the main campaign. Taking his orders directly from Sylvanas and accompanied by her lieutenant, the Dark Ranger Anya, this free-roaming, quest-driven adventure revolves around establishing the Forsaken in the Undercity beneath the capital ruins. If you played the Founding of Durotar epilogue campaign in the original, you kind of know what to expect.

Across three chapters, you focus mainly on Garek and Anya, completing quests across multiple areas of the Undercity and the surrounding countryside. There's quite a bit of progression to chew on, with the level cap extending all the way up to 20 by the end and a brand new system that allows you to equip tons of new gear in specific slots like in WoW or Diablo. Still, I longed for a little bit more variety. This is basically an RPG. There's really only one mission that makes use of RTS mechanics after the prologue.

And since regular troops can only be bought at mercenary camps with the same money you could otherwise spend on gear, I found I was mostly just rolling with my two heroes. New units like the Forsaken Deathguard are too squishy to stick around for long, and feel like a waste of money when I could get a permanent upgrade like a new sword instead. Garek and Anya can also respawn for free at altars placed around the map (outside of a few scripted segments), which encouraged me to simply throw them at a challenge until it broke rather than try to return with backup.

While I wouldn't say the writing in the campaign is groundbreaking, it does have that old school Blizzard touch. It's a little bit grittier and a little bit edgier than modern WoW. Getting to see the Undercity from a new angle and some major lore events like the rise of the Scarlet Crusade were neat. And Garek's journey to becoming the first Forsaken paladin had a worthwhile emotional payoff.

Forsaken Kingdom also comes with a third, entirely new graphical style for Warcraft 3, the aforementioned "Definitive Edition" option. At first, I wasn't super impressed with this direction. It doesn't look great zoomed in during cutscenes, to be honest. A lot of the textures are extremely flat, matte, and almost unfinished-looking. You can see visible pixels on some of the armor where it transitions from the faction blue to the metallic edging. This is more apparent on some units than others, especially in the campaign.

But when I loaded into a custom skirmish match against AI, I suddenly saw what Blizzard was going for. Playing zoomed out at a fast pace, I almost forgot I wasn't using the original 2003 graphics. It's like a magic trick. All the units and buildings look like how I remember them, just with higher fidelity. I suspect this will become the preferred way to play multiplayer and custom games for all but the most die-hard, low-polygon grognards.

It's a bit unfortunate to me, then, that these visual goodies are so unevenly distributed. The Forsaken Kingdom campaign can only be played with the Definitive Edition graphics. (And, you know, that seems fair enough.) Multiplayer and skirmish let you pick between Classic, Reforged, or Definitive Edition. But if you want to revisit the still frankly superb Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne campaigns – and you really should! – they only support Classic or Reforged, not Definitive. That's probably the most disappointing part of this whole package.

The other significant addition, and the one with a big impact on multiplayer, is Warcraft 3's first new tavern hero since the Alchemist and Firelord were added in 2004. This is the Forsaken Paladin, based on Garek, of course. He's in a bit of a strange thematic spot. After all, there's already the Human Paladin hero, and the Death Knight was originally designed as sort of a negative mirror image of that. So where does that leave the Forsaken Paladin?
Well, he is an undea d neutral hero who can only heal the living, so he might be the least useful to Undead faction players, ironically. His Q ability is a dash that slows enemies it passes through, so he's quite mobile. As a strength hero, he is deadly in melee. His W is familiar to anyone who has played a WoW paladin with Consecration, which damages undead enemies and heals friendly living units in a small circle at his feet.

He also has a passive aura that reduces magic damage taken and increases healing received. And his ult is an AoE purge/stun that heals nearby friendly units, with bonus healing and a short damage buff if the purge removed a debuff from them. This could definitely have some strong counterplay against certain builds, and I'm interested to see what pro players think of him. I like the way he brings a playstyle we've seen in spin-offs like Dota to the mix, though I think he might be a touch overpowered at the moment.

I should also mention that the number of units in a control group has been doubled across all game modes. It's an ambitious change for a legacy game like this, and one I'm sure the old guard will groan about. But I think it's a positive one overall, from my spot down here in the tryhard seats.

If there are two things to know about Garfield, it’s that he loves lasagne and he hates Mondays. So, it should come as no surprise that developer OSome Studio’s rendition of Jim Davis’s beloved cartoon series, Garfield - Escape from Monday, is heavily bound to those two themes. Set across a series of foodie nightmare worlds, this 3D platformer sees the famous tabby kicking veggies and chomping processed snacks to awaken from a fibre-fuelled fugue state. Sadly, like other disappointing cartoon adaptations (such as SpongeBob SquarePants: The Patrick Star Game), this exploration of the food-obsessed feline’s psyche is actually rather dull. Its overly familiar platforming and excessively camera-winking writing make it little more than a dazzling but sarcasm-laden slog.

Escape from Monday kicks off with a toon-shaded Garfield haphazardly shoveling a slice of what he thinks is Jon’s lasagne into his gullet. Once he realizes the meal is actually laden with veggies, he quickly passes out and is transported to an inner world called the Dreamland, which conveniently takes the form of a board-game course reminiscent of Super Mario Galaxy 2. Here, a vegetarian TV chef, knowingly named Monday, has transformed his cheese-and-meat fantasies into approachable, obstacle-filled levels, stocking them with aggressive snacks to boot. With a kick, a jump, and a forward boost in your arsenal, plus a forgiving health bar, you run Garfield through these stages to eventually wake him up.

The story rarely dives deeper than this initial premise, and leaves you with little more to chew on than "bad food is yummy" and "veggies are gross." I’m not looking for Shakespeare, but it does feel like a wasted opportunity considering how much personality Garfield has in other incarnations (heck, even Bill Murray’s 2004 interpretation had a heart), and how much room there is to have fun with that here. Alas, instead of a sarcastic hero you can root for, Escape from Monday orbits something much worse: an unlikeable cat who delivers a stream of constant complaints until you hit the credits 40-plus levels later.

This one-dimensional attitude grows increasingly grating throughout the roughly 9-hour runtime. Garfield is relentlessly grumbling. When he’s not lamenting his situation, he’s waxing lyrical about the developers, pointing out how certain obstacles or puzzles are repetitive and uninteresting. When his friends appear like expository force ghosts, he continues to disparage them, too. Parading as a PG-13 Deadpool, the meta-humour gradually begins to feel like an excuse, his hypercritical lens intending to lower my own expectations rather than make me laugh.

As you work your way through the zany levels, you’ll also collect hunks of lasagna that fuel a metagame where you furnish a surreal version of Jon Arbuckle’s apartment. To unlock physical versions of sofas and lampshades, you need to find slices hidden in each level, whilst simultaneously gathering enough snacks to fill an on-screen pressure gauge called the Yum-o-meter. While this technically provides extra goals beyond simply reaching the end, the system ultimately feels like an afterthought, so disconnected from the main game it’s easy to forget about his fantasy apartment altogether – I know I did.

Thankfully, the art style provides a much-needed distraction. Escape from Monday’s aesthetics are delightful, evoking the blocky simplicity of PS1 platformers like Rugrats: Royal Ransom. The Dreamland is split into three themed overworlds – Veggie Nightmare, Sweet Kingdom, and the Barbecue Desert – with each featuring a basic, bullet-hell-lite miniboss to defeat as you bounce toward an edible point of interest. By fusing confectionery with familiar adventure tropes like pirates, farmers, and the western frontier, Escape from Monday cleverly conjures the tone of the classic comic strips. Particular standouts include spinning radish stepping stones, Twizzler grind rails, and ketchup-dressed french fries poking out of rocky mountainscapes.

As you wade deeper into each level, the obstacles also evolve nicely, moving beyond basic wooden platforms and bouncy pillow blocks. Suddenly you have to contend with floating panels of meat that flip with your jumps while angry cobs of corn hurl kernels at your head, as well as giant metal graters that launch you into the air as fire-breathing chilli peppers shower you with flames. The combinations were never enough to make me break a sweat, particularly as one hit will take out nearly any enemy, but you can at least feel the deliberate care behind their placement, and I enjoyed the spectacle nonetheless.

Unfortunately, where the levels steadily build, the tools you're given to tackle them aren’t quite as compelling. You eventually uncover thematic outfits that grant you unique powers: There’s a Turkey costume that lets you fly temporarily, beachwear that equips you with a surfboard to ride over bodies of water and skate over obstacles, and cowboy garb that supplies you with a lasso to grapple onto horseshoes to swing over ravines. These additions are far from imaginative, and instead of letting you experiment, Escape from Monday is more keen to explicitly tell you when and where to use them. As such, you’re left mindlessly moving towards the finish line for the sake of… completing the level. The only difference now is that you’re wearing a funny hat.

Still, beyond that lack of any real room for experimentation, the most disappointing aspect of Escape from Monday is the platforming itself. Unlike the grounded movement of It Takes Two or Astrobot, the process of getting Garfield to jump between ledges or kick a rogue zucchini feels more like wading through honey. Sure, the ginger cat is infamous for his overt laziness, but the sluggish action here is at odds with the puzzles around him, and as a result I frequently overshot ledges or prematurely course-corrected due to delayed actions. In early levels, where movement is little more than riding wind gusts or jumping between slowly rotating windmills, it's easy to overlook. But as the obstacles expand, those unearned mistakes started to get under my skin, particularly as I pushed toward the end.

It’s an issue made worse by the erratic camera, with Escape from Monday frequently leaving it unclear who’s in control of your field of view. During the tutorial, you’re given the impression you’ll have the freedom to rotate its position, but during the actual levels after that, the view snaps and twists at random – frequently right in the middle of tricky maneuvers. On many occasions, while planning my next steps, I encountered an irritating camera icon trapped inside a block, indicating that (for whatever reason) I couldn't look around the area. With no alternative, the only option was to ignore my inner explorer and continue down the main path.

The saving grace here is that Escape from Monday is at least extremely generous with its checkpoints. Every few steps, your spot will be saved, allowing you to pop back into place ready to try again if you slip off the map. As with the collectibles, the checkpoints feel more like a band-aid, intended to make the experience is totally frictionless rather than actually solving the platforming issues this game so clearly has. They certainly kept me from getting too frustrated, but in doing so, they also distanced me from the actual joy of progress or success.

Plenty of things are terrifying about a man in a boiler suit creeping up behind you, but it's hard to be scared of Halloween: The Game's Michael Myers when he strolls around the neighborhood with all the urgency of a retiree on a golf course. Now, having gone through the solo campaign twice and spent many an hour watching a rando Michael Myers intentionally delay killing everyone in the lobby just to torture his spectators, my thoughts have shifted very little from my initial impressions. One of horror's most iconic villains deserves so much more than this.

Ahead of its public release and a day-one patch, the asymmetrical horror of Halloween: The Game – buggy, broken, and hilariously unpolished – initially fell well short of expectations. In its defense, though, it's improved by almost every available measure since the day-one patch. Some, if not all, animations have been smoothed out. There has been a marked decrease in game-breaking bugs and crashes. The mini-game QTEs are much more responsive… even if I still have to watch a weapon occasionally phase through an enemy for no discernible reason. The limited maps, cookie-cutter roster with very little differentiation between civilian characters, and repetitive gameplay loop, however, are just too rough and restrictive, and I find myself hemorrhaging enthusiasm within an hour or so.

Developer Illfonic is, of course, almost synonymous with asymmetrical horror at this point, if not quite able to break the stranglehold Behaviour Interactive has with Dead by Daylight. In keeping with the traditions of the genre, you either play on your own as the killer, Michael Myers, and rampage through the town, or you work with up to three other players and a handful of AI companions to loot items and keep yourself alive long enough to find and open the route to escape the streets of Haddonfield on Halloween night in 1978.

Because of Illfonic's back catalog, I came in with high expectations, and knowing Halloween creator John Carpenter was also involved sent them soaring even further. You'd think, with the best part of a decade's learning and all that asym experience behind it, Halloween: The Game would be the most polished of all Illfonic's games. But that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Spend just ten minutes with the solo campaign, for instance, and you'll see immediately what I mean. It's a great idea to drop a brief single-player mode into an asym game, offering not only a chance to explore Myers' abilities and skillset outside a populated map, but also something to do while you wait for your squad to get online. The problem is, like much the rest of Halloween: The Game, it feels shallow, rushed, and, at times, unfinished. The six levels take 15-20 minutes each if you're thorough (under ten if you're not) and ostensibly give you a little context into who Michael is as a person, how he became what he is, and what the town of Haddonfield endured that Halloween night in 1978. But it's clumsy, tedious, and doesn't even offer much in a change of scenery. In fact, you're exploring the same homes and maps you do in the multiplayer mode for most of these missions, making this more of a tutorial rather than a true single-player component.

In both modes, you'll encounter the same issues, too. Characters are sometimes shown walking three feet off the ground, death animations can occur two feet away from where a body actually is, and sometimes you can open a door, step through it, lock it, and then glitch out to the front of the door again, unable to get back in.

The NPC behavior is hysterically stupid, too. Once, playing as Myers before the day-one patch, I (loudly) busted through a front door and found all three remaining NPCs in the same room, still standing at the same window. I had executed two before the remaining one decided it was time to make a run for it, and that's the kind of thing you can expect to see over and over again, even playing the patched version.

It's galling because there are some excellent ideas here. I had a great time with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's spin on asymmetrical horror back in 2023 (developed by Sumo Digital, not Illfonic), but within days it was clear no one wanted to play as Leatherface because it was so much easier – and considerably more fun – to clock up XP and escape as a survivor.

In Halloween: The Game, however, Illfonic seems to have really taken the time to balance the odds between killer and civilian, and Myers is a blast to play. Even though he (quite rightly) never, ever runs, making it next to impossible to take someone out if they've seen you, his special abilities help mitigate that deeply unsatisfactory walking speed. Especially if you nail the timing and capitalize on using the shadows in your favor, actions like snuffing out all the lights in the immediate area, jumping from shadow to shadow, and detecting nearby civilians all work really well. Plus, the execution mechanic is a neat shortcut if you manage to get close enough to… well, execute it. The death animations, if often out of sync, are brilliantly brutal, particularly if you manage to catch a civilian by a window, next to an electric oven or, I'm delighted to report, next to a lawn flamingo.

Best of all, this isn't just four humans against one killer. As Myers, your job is to wipe the map clean of all survivors, human and NPC alike. As a civilian, you need to creep around the deliciously 70s-inspired maps with the familiar piano keys thudding in time alongside you, quietly warning NPCs and instructing them to either hide, follow you, or escape. Everything, from the cars to the decor to the rotary phones, is on point here; not to mention the fashion. Platform heels, bellbottom jeans, tank tops, and huge, winged bangs – plenty of things aren't quite right in Halloween: The Game, but trust me: the style is not one of them!

There are plenty of items to gather as you creep through residential homes, including offensive weapons, defensive tools, and a host of goodies to bolster the odds of getting out unscathed, such as keys, bolt cutters, and intoxicants for… reasons. You'll never be able to take Myers out completely; just like the movies, this is a dude who does not know how to take the hint and die. But you can temporarily immobilize him with the right timing and the right equipment. But why do we have to sit and watch Myers torture idiot NPCs if all the human characters are already dead?

You're given QTEs every few seconds to drop to survivors when spectating, and I hate them — they're too boring and happen too frequently. However, hanging around waiting for someone else to either complete the mission or run out the clock is particularly irritating if you're one of the first civilians to fall. Unless you fancy losing the scant XP earned, you're forced to stay in and spectate a match for the next fifteen or so minutes (and I am absolutely convinced some of the Mikes I've encountered intentionally drag this out almost until the dying seconds).

Illfonic has tried to mitigate this by allowing fallen civilians to return as police officers, which adds a lovely wrinkle that's admittedly better than spectating. But given Myers is unkillable and his Shape Jump is overpowered and essentially limitless, at times it feels like all the odds are stacked against the poor townsfolk of Haddonfield.

I spent so much of my time stalking through Silent Hill: Townfall tensed in a cautious crouchwalk, that by the end of the story I was just as worried about the damage to my character’s fraying mental state as I was about the wear and tear on his knees. Taking an about-face from the action-heavy adventure in last year’s Silent Hill f, this latest survival horror spin-off instead embraces the sustained tension of slow-paced stealth, handing you a motion-sensing gadget and tasking you with sneaking past a series of sound-sensitive beasts that have descended on its abandoned seaside village in mid-nineties Scotland. What unfolds is a gripping investigation through an increasingly unsettling world witnessed from a fresh, first-person perspective. Silent Hill: Townfall is riddled with tremendously satisfying puzzles to solve, and peppered with the most disturbing scenes to come out of mid-nineties Scotland since that baby crawled along the ceiling in the original Trainspotting.

Silent Hill: Townfall’s story begins with a cold open in more ways than one. American Simon Ordell washes up on the chilly shores of the fictional St. Amelia with a hospital ID bracelet on one wrist and an IV drip still stuck in the other, seemingly seeking redemption for an unknown sin from his past. It quickly becomes apparent that things have gone very wrong in the deserted Scottish town – market stalls are abandoned, ‘for sale’ signs are pegged out the front of almost every house, and the streets are littered with picket signs protesting an unknown organisation dubbed the ‘CEG’. Oh, and the first local you encounter is a mysterious man in the town square getting disgusting black goop pumped into his lungs through an intubation tube descending from the skies above.

Things only get more alarming from there, but Townfall dragged me through its increasingly squeamish scenes with the powerful allure of its central mystery, which gradually brings to light the tragic events that have impacted the town, the main players at fault, and exactly where poor Simon stands in all of it. It’s a story that deals with familiar themes of trauma and guilt that we’ve come to expect from Silent Hill, but it also tackles previously unexplored shades of evil like corporate greed and environmental mismanagement that help to make it feel like a refreshingly new twist on the series’ formula.

Although he comes across as fairly monotone at first, I grew to appreciate the understated earnestness of Simon as the events of Townfall mine the full depths of his despair, especially compared to some of the overly dramatic heroes of the earlier Silent Hill games. At certain junctions, the story also switches the perspective to a couple of other playable characters that further flesh out the details of what’s really going on, but I’d rather not spoil exactly who they are other than to say that they provide crucial roles in unravelling St. Amelia’s secrets.

Of course, a lot of its story themes are revealed in the form of nightmarish visual metaphors, as St. Amelia shifts into an ominous altered state with tangles of industrial pipes strangling its streets and the tentacles of a towering monster that drag along its rooftops. Sure, some sections feel like echoes of earlier Silent Hill settings, like apartment blocks in a heavy state of decay and creepy hospital wards to explore, but there are some really striking new sights to see throughout the 13 hours of Townfall’s tragic tale too, from alleys cloaked in a crimson haze to suburban streets lined with horribly bloated corpses that have freshly fallen from the sky.

The fact that developer Screen Burn Games has opted to break from the series’ predominately third-person style by telling its story entirely in first-person also does wonders for enhancing Townfall’s overall sense of dread. As proven by Resident Evil’s modern instalments, it’s considerably more intimidating to lean around a corner and come face to gaping maw with a menacing manifestation of pure malevolence than it is to witness it from a comparatively safe distance peering over your character’s shoulder. However, Townfall further enhances its first-person view by defaulting its presentation to a letterboxed widescreen format, and the benefits are twofold; aside from lending it a welcome cinematic touch, its narrowed anamorphic perspective also makes moving through confined spaces feel all the more claustrophobic and uncomfortable.

Silent Thrill

Whereas last year’s Silent Hill f demanded that you master an aggressive, action RPG-style melee and parry system, Townfall encourages a slow and steady approach to its enemy encounters that feels more inline with the survival horror systems of the series’ mainline entries. Simon can get his hands on wooden two-by-fours and lead pipes in order to beat the black pudding out of his frenzied assailants, but the actual melee combat is intentionally sluggish and weapons can degrade and break. More often than not, that meant I opted to sneak past the snarling skinbags patrolling the path to my next objective, only ever choosing violence when I found myself backed into a corner.

Even when you eventually do get your hands on some more powerful weapons like the revolver and shotgun, ammunition remains scarce, reload times are realistically slow, and the booming echo of gunfire tends to attract attention from other enemies. This makes them primarily last resort options when you find yourself overwhelmed by fleshmonsters with axe-blades for faces that are frantically trying to give you a Glasgow kiss.

Thankfully the environment provides you with enough tools to allow for a passive approach. As was the case in The Last of Us series, house bricks and empty bottles can be lobbed to create distractions away from your position, or thrown directly at an enemy to momentarily stun them and allow you to scurry past. Devices like radios can also be switched on to lure shuffling sentries away from their stations, and should you get spotted, there’s usually a conveniently placed wardrobe somewhere close by for you to run and hide in. Just be sure to break the line of sight before you do – if one of the unkillable stalker enemy types spots you cowering in a cupboard, it’s liable to rip you right out of there like the xenomorph from Alien: Isolation and send you straight back to your last save point.

Speaking of Alien: Isolation, Townfall reimagines the iconic motion tracker device from Creative Assembly’s sci-fi scarefest in the form of a portable TV that Simon clutches in his left hand. Bursts of static alert you to the presence of any nasties that might lurk in the murk ahead, and by tuning the little frequency band on his CRTV-branded device you can dial in a slightly glitchy, sonar-style view of their position on its tiny LCD screen, allowing you to plan your next steps through each area accordingly. You can’t keep a bead on every enemy at the same time, however, since each of Townfall’s monsters occupy their own space on the CRTV’s band. Anytime I found myself in more densely populated areas, I was forced to constantly flick through the frequencies in order to identify the nearest threat, which further ratcheted up my stress levels.

That said, although the CRTV is a vital piece of kit for surviving the increasingly mean streets of St. Amelia, its ability to effectively see through walls and allow you to anticipate any monsters waiting to ambush you means that Townfall is pretty light on any substantial scares in its opening hours. It eventually found a way to jolt me with a few excellent jump scares later on, especially during the prolonged section that removes the CRTV from your inventory and forces you to contend with an office block full of ghouls that stand statue-like in the shadows before surprising you when you turn away. Yet even though Townfall might not ever come close to the underwear-changing chills of the Silent Hill 2 remake or the heart-stopping horrors of Grace’s levels in Resident Evil Requiem, it does use its consistently unsettling atmosphere to maintain a strong feeling of unease throughout.

Dot Matrix Reloaded

The CRTV isn’t just a handy way to keep tabs on Townfall’s terrors, it’s also a valuable tool for uncovering clues to your next objective. Cryptic looping videos will often pierce through the static and offer brief glimpses of a specific location, forcing you to carefully scan your surroundings rather than blindly following a simple map marker to reach it. However, the CRTV isn’t the only relic from the ‘90s that you get your hands on in Townfall, since so many of the story’s puzzles involve operating all sorts of other obsolete technologies from the decade like cream-coloured desktop computers and slide projectors, each recreated with convincing effect right down to the rhythmic mechanical screeches of a dot matrix printer.

Anyone who played this developer’s 2017 debut Stories Untold (released under the studio’s previous name, No Code) will be familiar with the team’s ability to accurately replicate the look and feel of such bygone gadgets and gizmos – and as someone nostalgic for the era, I got a kick out of methodically loading floppy disks into a drive in order to unzip important documents, or the tactile experience of manually punching a series of digits into the metal keypad of a public payphone to save my game. This may well sound a bit mundane to you if you’re not old enough to remember monochrome monitors, but don’t worry because these primitive pieces of tech are occasionally used to trigger some seriously surreal sequences. For example, a microcassette recorder I found in one abandoned residence could be used to shuffle the contents of the house back and forward through time, opening up slightly altered areas to scour for a specific puzzle solution and briefly bending my mind into a pretzel.

I respect that for the most part the clues you need to solve each of Townfall’s brainteasers are there to find in your immediate surroundings as long as you’re prepared to search for them, and also the fact that in some instances there are countermeasures for any attempts to brute force your way to a solution. For example, in one level where you’re guided through the process of prepping a patient for surgery by a condescending doctor on the other end of an intercom, it soon turns into a sadistic game of Operation when identifying the wrong readout on a life support system triggers a health bar-sapping buzz. That really forced me to focus on finding the right solution, and when I applied myself I discovered Townfall’s puzzles to be regularly challenging but rarely too obtuse.

That is, aside from one particular late game contraption that confounded me so much that it seemed as though Silent Hill’s signature fog had seeped into my own brain. Seriously, it made me feel like I was Homer Simpson sitting at his keyboard and searching for the ‘ANY’ key. (It’s worth pointing out, though, that if you prefer to have your brain gently tickled rather than outright teased, you can activate hints in the options menu.)

Lastly, I was happy to find that Silent Hill: Townfall wasn’t ever dragged down by the same inventory management issues I encountered in Silent Hill f. Unlike the miserly nature of the item slots in last year’s spin-off, Townfall doesn’t really place restrictions on what you can carry besides limiting you to two throwable items and one melee weapon at any one time. You can otherwise hold as much ammunition and medkits as you like, although given how scarce these resources are it’s typically only ever a handful at any one time anyway.

There’s a light amount of crafting, too, since you can sterilise regular bandages with bottles of alcohol in order to make them more effective healing options. Meanwhile, the ability to fill an IV bag with revitalising fluid and keep it constantly equipped proved essential (especially as enemy numbers swelled in the story’s final hours) since it brings you back to life with a partially refilled health bar anytime you’re downed. Aside from some rare exceptions when I was killed by an enemy, brought back to life on the spot, and then instantly killed by the same enemy again before I had a chance to flee or fight back, I appreciated having the safety net of the IV drip since it gave me the courage to spend longer excursions exploring each area. That’s opposed to painstakingly tiptoeing back and forth to the nearest save point in order to bank each small amount of story progress I made, which is the cowardly path I often take in spooky stories like this.

Paranatural phenomena, Objects of Power, and interdimensional threats all defying the laws of physics – developer Remedy has built its reputation on these kinds of concepts, and none more intriguing than the fantastic Control in 2019. The subtleties in its SCP-adjacent mysteries are what left a lasting impact, so in many regards, Control Resonant is an antithesis. Not only has the series moved from metroidvania-esque shooter to open-world stylish-action, it also goes for a more straightforward story focused on the lives of its characters. It's not always elegant in its action, and can even range from frustrating to somewhat dull in certain stretches. Still, I came away impressed by how conceptually consistent it is with Control while also being radically different. Remedy could've played it safe, but Control Resonant dares to be bold where it counts, with swings that land alongside some of this studio's best.

Control Resonant is centered around Dylan Faden, the brother of the first game's lead Jesse Faden, who backflipped into becoming the director of the Federal Bureau of Control, and it uses his perspective to fill in a lot blanks from the jump. He goes from being Jesse's tortured brother who was the subject of abusive FBC experiments gone awry to a fully formed character with thoughts, feelings, and dark memories he confronts as he tries to salvage whatever life he has left. He's treated as subhuman and initially seen as dangerous with superpowers he can't always control, but still volunteers to be a tool of the FBC with what's effectively a shock collar bolted onto the back of his head.

With this as the foundation, Control Resonant treats much of its paranatural conspiracy as a matter of fact. The Oldest House couldn't contain the Hiss outbreak as it spills into a New York City that's been folded in on itself in interdimensional isolation, which turns out to be a swift and effective setup as Dylan tries to find Jesse, who's been lost over the last seven years. And while this story does expand on what we know about things like the Hiss and AWEs, it resonates more as an exploration about what you would do in the aftermath of a life and world fallen apart.

Your search mostly comes in the form of physically dismantling paranormal entities and the monsters they spawn, which have filled the streets, with up-close and personal combat. Dylan himself contrasts with Jesse in that he plays fast and nimble with a suite of melee combos and abilities that he was specifically built for. Similar to Jesse's shapeshifting gun, Dylan's melee weapon called the Aberrant transforms into whatever form you either assign to it or combo into. The Aberrant can be a sword, scythe, hammer, or even a drill, but instead of equipping these as individual pieces of gear, it automatically swaps forms depending on whether you're doing a light combo chain, heavy attack, or a combo finisher. All of this can be customized to suit your preferred playstyle as you expand in power and capability through upgrade trees, giving a level of variability I appreciate.

The action is slick and responsive like a Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, with some of the platforming and momentum I miss from Gravity Rush or NieR: Automata. If I'm mid-combo but need to dodge immediately, I can cancel out of the animation with a dash/airdash and pick the combo back up so long as I don't get hit. Grasping this cadence of character-action is paramount because you will die a lot in the early hours. The kid gloves come off very quickly, and part of the difficulty is a consequence of not having many tools to pull from initially, but enemies hit hard and are oftentimes relentless with just how much they throw at you. It can be frustrating when you're on the verge of conquering a combat encounter, so there's an element of chaos management to consider.

Control Resonant's RPG edge is the equalizer here, offering progression and some build crafting through both Dylan's own skill tree and weapon upgrades paths. Some of my favorite powers were as satisfying as they were effective, like summoning a minion that I can throw like a massive bomb to inflict significant Falter damage (this game's stagger meter) and clear mobs of pesky Hiss. Once I unlocked the Ignite power that let me set weapons ablaze to quickly inflict Burn status and melt enemies into piles of Faltered targets to execute, the action changed significantly. Instead of feeling vulnerable and picking my windows of opportunity to strike, Dylan became the real threat as my Spin Edge combo and Hammer charge scorched anything that was once deadly. (It also helped that Ignite sheds off mold poison, which gave me so much trouble early on.)

There are status effects that are important to account for, but it did feel a bit like I had found the "correct" build. Even though that took away some of the need to be incisive in combat, I can't deny that it was pretty sweet to play things more like a hack-and-slash just by virtue of understanding how to wield its systems. So, the RPG aspect isn't quite as deep as it looks at first glance since your approach won't drastically evolve at a certain point and the combo system doesn't change much, but the fundamentals are there.

Combat is designed to encourage and reward aggression, with every killed enemy dropping health and each melee attack feeding back into the power meter you use for special abilities. That philosophy is also seen in the design of most encounters, which are primarily built around killing heavy enemies since they continuously spawn minions in the combat arenas that form as you explore. Trying to whittle down mobs is sometimes wasted effort, you just have to go for the big ones and treat the rest like obstacles or a way to replenish health if you can wedge a combo in there unscathed.

The handful of bosses you'll find in story quests, are quite striking and most of them play extremely well into the otherworldlyness of Control's phasing realities. Their attack patterns and movesets aren't anything out of the ordinary for action games of this style, but their unsettling and imposing presence is certainly seen and felt. However, encounter design is where Control Resonant falters most. Roughly half the bosses are spongy slogs that are less about testing your mastery and more about grinding out a war of attrition. Once you see their handful of tricks, you just have to rinse and repeat as you chip away at their health bar and hope you don't trip up in the repetitive cycle that it demands from you. A few later bosses also leaned heavily into aerial combat against faster moving targets, which was curious as its systems weren't exactly built for this type of encounter. Dylan can glide like using a hookshot, airdash, hover temporarily, and hit an air combo, but when you combine this with floating platforms and a targeting system that doesn't reliably agree with the camera, it chipped at my enthusiasm.

I kept pace with progression, which revolves around levelling up your status in each zone afforded by main missions and side activities alike. And I upgraded the Aberrant accordingly to raise its overall power level while seeking out optional health and power capacity upgrades judiciously. So, I didn't exactly feel noticeably underpowered for most of the 30-hour journey, and that makes hitting walls like these so jarring. I've loved the challenge that came with games like Sekiro or Devil May Cry V on Dante Must Die difficulty, and those deftly demand precise execution and sharp focus – Control Resonant doesn't always define challenge in interesting ways. It's undercooked in spots, but that doesn't sour everything around it. So frustrations aside, Remedy's first crack at this style of action combat is admirable because its foundationally sound and does have satisfying moments that the genre greats pull off.

Where Control Resonant really shines is in the mind-bending, gravity-defying world Remedy built for it. You're not going to find your local bodega in the Lower East Side or the 4-train to Harlem in this version of Manhattan. However, the way the design language of The Oldest House has spilled into the streets gives it a personality that's so distinctly Control. The environment seamlessly guides you on what's what and where to go, so even in the absence of a more detailed map, I was rarely ever lost as long as I paid attention to my surroundings. This strikes a delicate balance, letting the world itself take the lead rather than waypointing every little thing.

Deeper in, you'll be able to shift Dylan's gravitational center in parts of the map, and it quite literally adds an extra dimension that is both visually brain-breaking and a marvel in level design. Those strange areas where city streets shoot upward or solid ground is oddly above you – yeah, those are other planes waiting to be explored. Sometimes combat shifts between these planes in the same encounter, which occasionally had my head spinning (mostly complimentary). The Gravity Rush of it all plays a major role in how you move through late-game zones as the feeling of falling through the sky creates a unique thrill outside of combat. And when you start to understand how these various planes converge and break from each other, I can only envy the genius of how it was designed and the headache it must have been to create, especially at this scope and scale. It's not just for show; even when it gets unwieldy, it adds depth and texture to what would've felt like a fairly standard world.

There are more than just checklist objectives to find as you explore these spaces as well, though I don't mind a sprinkling of typical open-world activities when navigation itself is part of the joy. While side content and the rewards it provides aren’t always particularly interesting, there's usually something enticing to glean about the psychological toll AWEs have had on survivors. For example, strange taxi cabs found in each zone take you to an alternate realm for a sidequest series to help a woman stuck between dimensions. Here, you essentially play multiple sequences of minigames that are as silly as they are unsettling. There are nice moments where Dylan cleans up a hangout spot people once had and sketches the scene to show his artistic side. Requiring you to physically go to fast travel points to use them(as opposed to just pulling up the map and selecting a point), you're more likely to stumble upon neat things like this and Resonant is better for it. Sometimes these moments are super goofy, sometimes they're pretty dark, and often they are both – such is the tonal contrast that is Remedy's signature.

Along with the studio's strong Lynchian vibe, what I always remember about Remedy's games are the unconventional ways they tell their stories. With this in mind, Control Resonant is interesting in how it follows more typical storytelling conventions, brushing up against tropes we've seen time and again, but still remembering why we're drawn to the Control universe. Even in Jesse's absence, her presence lingers over the story to drive Dylan's convictions and remind us of how powerful a figure she's become. Dylan is a real sad sack who feels sorry for himself, and it's quite tragic as you unpack what really happened to him as an FBC experiment. And that's what makes Dylan so compelling and easy to root for; he's not a complex character, but he is a good guy and a clear lens to demystify a lot of the esoteric concepts of Control's world.

Control Resonant's story isn't as heavily shrouded in mystery, but the things that happen within it are potentially more fascinating than ever. The way this bizzaro-world manifests during a few specific parts makes for some of its best moments – particularly in how Resonant also works seamlessly as a sort of prequel that tidies up a lot of what was either left to implication or collectible documents in Control. And man, I wish I could tell you tricks it has up its sleeve, because Resonant has some of my favorite twists in all of Remedy's work – and definitely one of the most memorable moments I've had in a game, period. Part of Dylan and Jesse's past is rooted in having video games as kids, and where this goes hit me hard as someone whose childhood was shaped by the very references made here. You'll often see games, movies, or shows make references as a gimmick that don't really go beyond “hey, look at this thing you remember!” (Take a look at the Verconn building in-game; clearly Remedy has some Evangelion fans in the building, but that's cool.) For Control Resonant to transcend that in such an effective way further speaks to Remedy's storytelling prowess.

One specific quest arc delves into alternate realities and timelines; it gets progressively more fascinating as you unravel both the science/lore behind this and how it contrasts with the human cost on its researchers. Audio tapes and documents left behind complement the Inception-like phenomenon happening in the quest, giving you enough pieces to explain things while not being overbearing, trusting that you can make sense of it all. More than being a fascinating spin on the concept, it made me feel for characters I barely got to know. It's a microcosm of how the various mechanisms and anomalies of Control's world are couched in a tight consistency.

In the process of the FBC trying to clean up the outbreak and solve its interdimensional crisis, Dylan develops a dynamic with his quippy handler named Zoe. She plays an important and persistent role as Dylan's foil, but the shifts in their dynamic don't always feel earned, as if it just needed to accelerate to match the pace of the campaign itself. Similarly, the main story relies on a few easy logical leaps to tidy things up, which means it may not be quite as moving in the grand scheme of the Remedyverse. That leaves Control Resonant feeling like a collection of incredible moments – cohesive when strung together and powerful in what they say about characters who exist in such a deranged world, but not necessarily as effective when it comes to its central, overarching tale. Still, the humanizing element and the paranormal it is embedded within bolster each other, which helps this sequel come out the other end as a fitting part of the universe Remedy has built all the same.

Giving the modern Hot Wheels racing series a radical, Burnout Paradise-inspired overhaul sounds like a pretty fabulous idea when you say it aloud. That Criterion Games classic is, after all, one of the most revered arcade racers in the business – even if it was ultimately the last proper Burnout we ever got. Unfortunately, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush has sacrificed far, far too much of what makes developer Milestone’s initial pair of Hot Wheels Unleashed games so eye-catching, zany, and special. Infinite Rush’s four modestly sized maps weave familiar bits and pieces of plastic track through otherwise unmemorable slabs of landscape and basic city blocks, and they totally lack the scope and spectacle of the Unleashed series’ life-sized skate parks, construction sites, and neon arcades. The racing may be fine and functional, but Infinite Rush is disappointingly basic and bland compared to its existing brethren, so it’s difficult to recommend over either of them.

Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is instantly recognisable as a Milestone Hot Wheels game thanks to its unmatched ability to present these car models in an uncannily photorealistic way. The cars still broadly look fantastic. From zinc to plastic, the surfaces of every model gleam with authenticity and – despite the fact it’s been this way since the first one arrived in 2021 – it still remains thoroughly impressive to me how terrific they look on screen. They just look real.

Unfortunately, they no longer appear to accumulate wear and tear like they did in the Milestone’s earlier games. Upon reaching the end of a race, my cars now look just as factory fresh as they did when I started. The scratches, rubs, scuffed plastic, and kerb rash that builds up on cars in the Unleashed games is a big part of what pumps up their credibility; that is, making the cars look and feel like they’ve just tumbled down the driveway a dozen times really seats them into the maps and makes them look like actual play-worn toys. In contrast, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush feels glossy and consequence-free. Am I missing something here? A hidden setting? Was this an intentional change for Infinite Rush for some unknown reason, or a licensor change-of-heart? Whatever it was, it’s a really weird step back and I’m not a fan.

Sister from Another Blister

It appears about one-third of the options that make up the roughly 150-car roster are new, rather than recycled. This is welcome, as it certainly doesn’t make much sense to keep wheeling out the same cars when there are almost 60 years of Hot Wheels castings to choose from. That said, the garage is still weighted very heavily towards new and recent models. There’s a decent smattering of early to mid-2000s castings, including AcceleRacers, but there’s really nothing here for Gen X parents or grandparents to share with younger players. The ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s remain woefully underrepresented. I get that older players aren’t really the primary audience of a licensed Hot Wheels game, but I know that my sons’ Hot Wheels collection is like a core sample of Hot Wheels history. It’s got recent cars, my childhood cars, and old cars from their uncles – and even great uncle. I get the feeling that’s probably a pretty common occurrence. The balance in Infinite Rush is just… off. There are definitely times it feels like it was more important for this to be a catalogue of cars kids can still see at the shops rather than a rummage through the toyline’s past.

Infinite Rush is also missing the pop culture cars that were fixtures in the Unleashed games. The fact that it features Ferrari is neat enough, considering the Prancing Horse’s decade-long absence from the real-life Hot Wheels line-up from 2015 to 2025, but the lack of any movie or TV cars feels a bit cheap.

Infinite Rush uses a similar class system for the cars as Unleashed 2, although it dials it back to four distinct classes rather than six: Versatile, Speeder, Drifter, and Titan. Each has nuances you need to cater for as you drive. For instance, Titans are strong but bulky – and they have extra long boost meters to compensate. However, run your boost all the way down to zero and your default speed will be strangled momentarily as your engine coughs back to life. Versatile racers have a drift bar that’s consumed in chunks, meaning you can’t stop a boost once you’ve started. It means they’re not a great fit for navigating the urban, grid-like portions of the maps, because it can be hard to force them into the right direction when in the middle of a briefly unstoppable boost.

Drifters are my preferred class, since they’re the easiest to sling sideways and therefore the best fit for an arcade racing game. The other classes are less satisfying to drift, and there sometimes seems as if there’s even a bit of a speed penalty for doing so. There were definitely occasions it was overtly faster to Hail Melon around a corner, Ross Chastain-style, than it was to slide into it properly. This shouldn’t really be the case in any arcade racer.

Toyz N the Hood

The biggest problem with Infinite Rush is how surprisingly generic the open-world approach makes it feel. It doesn’t have a single, large open map to explore like, say, Burnout Paradise or Forza Horizon 6. Instead, there are four separate, modestly sized islands – each themed in slightly different ways. There’s Wheelswood, a commercial-style, downtown-inspired map; Tentacle Bay, another city-oriented environment, only with a little more open countryside; Gearville, a desert-themed, industrial zone; and Drifty Temples, an East Asian-inspired island. I just find myself blazing through them, smashing through bushes and benches. There’s some decent imagination on display – and I do think the huge Hot Wheels Mount Rushmore on Gearville is pretty cute – but broadly speaking there’s just not much that grabs my attention. Not even the big, plastic animals.

In the Unleashed games, you find yourself racing through half-built skyscrapers above the clouds – or staring up at enormous arcade cabinets, which might as well be skyscrapers themselves with the way they loom over your tiny toy cars, from down on the sticky carpet. Infinite Rush has absolutely none of this scale, and it’s all the worse for it. They’re not quite believable dioramas, even if they’re filled with moulded plastic props. But they’re not quite real places either – even if the default measure of distance to my next waypoint is metres. 800 metres away, in a car that’s ostensibly three inches long? Something’s not adding up.

In a word, these maps are bland. You just drive back and forth across them, competing in a genre-typical range of event types. The racing is still fine, although the tracks are nowhere near as interesting anymore because they simply can’t use their surroundings in the same way as the Unleashed games can. There you can race on the floors, across the furniture, up in the air vents – you name it. Infinite Rush has none of that. Worse, a lot of the side activities that appear to be here to justify these open-world maps are just busywork – like photograph challenges that tell you exactly where to take them, or checkpoint collections that’d be a lot less trivial to complete if you actually had to dodge traffic (which you don’t; smashing through them doesn’t even really slow you down).

There was probably a way to experiment and take the series to an open world without sacrificing the sense of scale Unleashed got so right. Could the desert map have been built on a beach, or one of the other maps laid out in the foyer of a toy store? Anything like this would’ve given the backdrops the scale Infinite Rush lacks. Could more of the architecture have been household objects, with cereal box buildings standing side by side with Hot Wheels garage playsets, and painted roads filling the gaps between the iconic orange track pieces? I just feel like there was a more imaginative way to tackle this shift. 2023’s LEGO 2K Drive did this approach better overall, but unfortunately that game is already completely delisted in digital stores.

The profound shift in map philosophy is doubly disappointing considering the improvements Infinite Rush makes elsewhere. For instance, it now comes with four-player splitscreen, which would’ve been amazing fun in the massively more imaginative Unleashed maps. It also now features the ability for AI to race on your custom tracks, which would’ve been another huge boost to longevity for the older games. I would’ve loved to have seen how the AI handled the wild leaps of the crazy routes I’ve created in the past (especially since Infinite Rush is way, way more restrictive in terms of the height limit than the Unleashed games – which feature multi-level maps with a ton of vertical space). Infinite Rush also features the new ability to change out wheels as part of the customisation suite, which speaks to me as a 40-odd-year-old diorama-building dork who loves swapping out wheels on his Hot Wheels cars. Okay, they’re not always mine, but my boys aren’t using them anymore; just don’t tell them I’ve been attacking their collection with a power drill.

One of the biggest hurdles of the Trails series was how to introduce its world to new players when almost every game is interconnected through multiple follow-up entries. After all, the original The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky subseries was only on PC and older handhelds like the PSP. Fortunately, developer Falcom remedied that with the excellent Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter remake last year – finally, an approachable way to start where the trail began with a slick 3D makeover and updated gameplay. Swiftly following up with a remake of Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, this RPG retains all of the best qualities of the original version, such as its story, side quests, and characters, while simultaneously giving it that visual and gameplay overhaul to fit modern standards.

Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter picks up right where its predecessor ends with our bubbly and confident heroine, Estelle Bright. Now that her adoptive brother and best friend Joshua Bright suddenly recalled his true origins and has disappeared, Estelle is dead set on finding him and bringing him home. It also digs deeper and fleshes out the cultish revelations that were unearthed towards the end of 1st Chapter. As a result, it gives 2nd Chapter heavier stakes from onset, but also with the emotionally resonant edge that keeps you invested.

The characters are equally zany too, and they’re brimming with personality. Estelle’s, ahem, bright, demeanor contrasts nicely with Joshua’s now brooding mood. The two theater nerds in Olivier and the villainous Blueblanc face off in a duel of overindulgent poetry to see who can out-cringe each other. It’s all entertaining to watch and the experience is bolstered thanks to the addition of full voice acting (whereas the original Trails in the Sky games only had voice acting for the combat). In these Sky remakes, the script and story are brought to life even more so with those original voice actors of Estelle and Joshua reprising their roles. It feels like a full-circle moment, especially for fans who’ve stuck with Trails since the beginning.

2nd Chapter is virtually a faithful 1:1 recreation of the original in terms of story structure and side quests, so you’ll be running around Liberl Kingdom going through the same cities and locations as you did in 1st Chapter. While that might seem like a rehash, the order in which you visit them in this sequel is rearranged. Along with a completely different slate of side quests to tackle from the previous adventure, it makes this journey feel much less like a retread and more like revisiting an old home.

There aren’t any multiple divergent storylines that cross together with later entries like Trails Beyond the Horizon and Trails Into Reverie, which also came with a roguelite dungeon where all the characters could interact outside of the story. It works in 2nd Chapter’s favor as it isn’t unnecessarily bogged down with extra story content simply for the sake of having something new. It’s a streamlined adventure that’s easy to follow without superfluous bloat that some later Trails entries would suffer from.

That being said, the pacing in the last chapter before heading into the finale is a bit stunted since you're required to backtrack through previous locations one final time due to story reasons. The issue is that almost all of your fast travel points that you unlocked before disappear, and you’ll have to activate them again, which makes this particular bump in the road a slog.

Leaning into a stylized anime-inspired art direction with these remakes brings bolder colors and a new vision for familiar worlds, however. The transition between combat phases are smoother, and the use of more camera angles and sharp cuts give attacks and crafts more cinematic flair. You can see close ups of every character’s fierce facial expressions as they shout out and execute their attacks in ways that you never could with the top-down sprites of the original. The new character models and animations give the story some extra life, whether it’s the party enjoying themselves while exploring the world or fighting for their lives against an all-powerful foe.

The character animations look a lot less awkward in both gameplay and cutscenes, and in critical junctures, they do a lot to add weight for its more serious, pivotal moments. Along with that, the political machinations and turmoil that dictate its world, and the origins of what you see further in the series, feel more fully realized. And the story here in Sky 2nd Chapter strikes a wonderful momentum for concluding Estelle's and Joshua’s character arcs cleanly and concisely without prolonging them – it’s something that other protagonists suffered a bit from in later Trails sagas.

Adjusting the Framework

This remake benefits from 13 games and over 20 years of iterations, taking the framework of existing gameplay systems from Trails games that came before. While the original version was purely turn-based, 2nd Chapter quite heavily borrows the real-time and turn-based hybrid system that the Trails into Daybreak entries started. You can attack enemies in-real time in the field (Quick Battles) to whittle them down and stun them to gain an advantage, then immediately transition to the main turn-based combat (Command Battles). Some Trails purists may not like the change to hybrid combat, but it’s the biggest change that makes it stand out from the original.

A significant difference in the Sky remakes is the addition of Brave Points (BP), which were introduced in the Cold Steel saga – you accumulate them by landing critical hits, stunning enemies, or hitting stunned enemies. Depending on how many BP you spend, you can initiate Brave Attacks which include follow-up hits from an ally, coordinated chain strikes, or an all-out group burst like that in Persona for additional damage. It makes 2nd Chapter’s combat much more engaging and explosive than the original’s.

2nd Chapter also cleverly merges and evolves the hybrid and BP mechanics together. In the Daybreak games, Van and his crew would just throw shards to deal extra damage if a Command battle started with an advantage. However, when you enter them with an advantage in Sky 2nd Chapter, you can launch a preemptive Brave Attack, letting you start off the fight with a powerful Brave Chain or Burst move. It’s impressive that 2nd Chapter doesn’t merely just copy and paste combat mechanics from previous Trails entries, but further refines them into something more satisfying.

BP can also be consumed during Quick battles in the form of a Brave Rush, which are powerful hits that deal exceedingly more stun damage, allowing you to enter into an advantage state faster. It’s helpful on larger enemies who are more resilient to stun, but there’s a strategic trade off. Since Brave Rush uses BP, you’ll enter the Command phase with fewer BP, meaning you might not have enough to initiate a preemptive Brave Attack. Give-and-take compromises like these ensure that the battle system remains relatively balanced and challenging.

Brave Rushes weren’t in Daybreak’s hybrid battles, and so the Sky remakes have a dedicated button for it. While it’s a welcome addition to the combat, it’s actually also the tipping point that makes the control scheme for Quick battles a bit unwieldy. In particular, all modern Trails games have a high-speed mode, which as its name suggests, accelerates overall game speed at any time. In previous games, this was a simple one-button toggle on the controller, but in these remakes, you have to press the left and right bumpers at the same time to toggle it. As a longtime Trails player, I’ve been conditioned to the one-button toggle for high-speed mode so it's a bit of an annoying change, but it’s a very miniscule problem in the grand scheme of things.

The Sacred Timeline

As with all other Trails games, the timeline mechanic makes its welcome return once again, clearly showing the turn order of allies and enemies. Randomized turn bonuses continue to add variability, augmenting the abilities of whomever’s turn icon is lined up with it, whether friend or foe. These can range from automatic HP recovery, guaranteed critical hits, to eliminating both casting time and cost (called Zero Arts). Sure, beating enemies is gratifying, but much of that feeling comes from manipulating the timeline order through different spells and special attacks (called Crafts) while making the most of their innate effects.

Is there a critical hit icon next to a monster casting a spell? Agate’s Draguna Blast can inflict Impede to interrupt spellcasting. The enemy will still be able to land a critical hit with whatever their next non-casting attack will be, but at least they won’t be able to fire off that devastating spell. You’ve postponed the inevitable, giving you a moment of reprieve in this volatile yet orderly battle system. But what if you don’t want to leave it to chance, you can use Zin’s True Heralding Fist to inflict Delay, which pushes down bonuses farther down the timeline so that it’ll land on someone else, preferably one of your allies. It’s instances like these where you have to balance dishing out as much damage as possible with managing the combat timeline for bonuses that could change the tide of battle.

Despite Daybreak 2 making it easier to steal bonuses compared to its predecessor, the Sky remakes simplify it further. For example, certain offensive Crafts like Estelle’s Comet have a “Steal Bonus” effect, which lets her do just that. While not every character has a regular Craft with that effect, all offensive S-Crafts (ultimate attacks) do, giving every character the ability to steal bonuses in some capacity. It’s a really useful change because it synergizes well with the fact that you can now stack multiple bonuses onto one character. You can have HP recovery, critical hit, and Zero Arts icons activate all in one turn if you play your cards right. Playing around with delay and stealing effects adds a fun twist, with trade-off being your house of cards potentially collapsing because enemies can also steal bonuses and undo all your hard work. Don’t get too greedy!

2nd Chapter uses Daybreak’s free roam during Command battles, so your team is able to move as much as they want around the battlefield without using up a turn. It’s crucial to position your characters properly because now everyone’s Crafts have been updated with new effects, including the aforementioned Steal Bonus effect. For example, Kloe’s Kämpfer in the original game only lowered enemies’ strength and defense stats, but in this remake, it now also does extra damage when striking an enemy from the side as opposed to the front or back. It’s small changes like these that help 2nd Chapter feel modern and up to date with recent Trails entries.

The Orbment system continues to be a great way to customize magic spells and perks for each character. These remakes surprisingly mirror the original’s system as it doesn’t have Cold Steel's broken buildcrafting or Daybreak’s multitude of passive Shard abilities. Here, where you place your elemental gems (called Quartz) determines which spells a certain character can use. Whereas in Daybreak everyone had the same four different lines in their Orbments to slot Quartz in, 2nd Chapter’s set up is more rigid

Magically-oriented characters can have their Quartz setup to unlock higher tier spells, as opposed to those who are physical-focused. This stricter system reflects a much more old-school RPG approach as if to have specialized character classes. It’s more straightforward to understand, and initially feels a little underdeveloped coming from the openness and flexibility of Orbment systems in other Trails entries. But in a field of revisions, it’s admirable to at least see one aspect of gameplay in these Sky remakes that staunchly sticks to its roots.

Over the next few months, I’m going to be taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.

Today it’s time to take these broken wings and learn to fly again in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is emblematic of a long-extinct era. I’m not actually talking about its famous 1980s setting, though; I’m talking about the games industry at large. While we’ve had to patiently wait more than 12 years between GTA V and GTA VI, 2002’s Vice City arrived first on PlayStation 2 a mere 12 months after the genre-defining GTA III. Nothing as good as Vice City happens this rapidly anymore. And make no mistake – it is very, very good.

Vice City introduces a pile of new vehicle types and weapons, and its missions are immediately more imaginative and varied than its predecessor. It also embraces a noticeably different approach to its storytelling, benching the mute protagonist concept for a fully voiced lead character, giving him the ability to have far more entertaining interactions with a considerably more memorable supporting cast of allies and antagonists. Above everything, however, it oozes unrivalled personality and style thanks to its ’80s backdrop, and is elevated to untouchable heights by its sonically unmistakable soundtrack. I love this game. It grabs me by the crotch and shakes me around until I am not sure if I am a man or a woman. Then I remember I am Luke Reilly – Mister Luke Reilly – and this is Rockstar North with GTA: Vice City.

Realistically, Vice City could have been little more than another serving of the formula that had just completely revolutionised open-world games and it still would’ve sold truckloads. Indeed, for a brief spell, it began life as exactly that. After finalising GTA III on PC, the first thing the team behind it did was begin thinking about what vehicles, weapons, and missions could potentially go into a mission pack for their blockbuster crime sandbox. However, after realising there was too much content to squeeze into an expansion, the next chapter in the GTA saga became a fully fledged sequel instead.

I guess, strictly speaking, the decision to brush aside the present day and place Vice City’s action in 1986 actually makes it a prequel. Whatever you want to call it, it was astounding – and it remains so today.

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’

While GTA III changed the trajectory of the GTA series forever – and set the stage for an entire ecosystem of open world action games to follow – Vice City is notable as the GTA that properly introduced the broader spectrum of vehicle variety we expect from the series today. Motorcycles made their first reappearance since the top-down era, and we could now effectively pilot aircraft – including choppers, and a seaplane with a complete set of wings. It also brought in outfit changes, property purchases, and even an in-game map (although it still came with a paper one, too).

Importantly, however, Vice City also introduced a protagonist with a voice of his own. In GTA III, dialogue typically consists of one-sided monologues – or characters simply barking a batch of mission instructions at you. Vice City is completely different. Thanks to leading man Tommy Vercetti having a voice of his own – provided by iconic Goodfellas star Ray Liotta himself – Vice City is far closer in tone and spirit to the classic crime movies and TV that inspired it in the first place. It’s funnier, snappier, and packed with so much more personality thanks to Tommy’s ability to bite back, express emotion, and give voice to his ambitions. Tommy’s ambition is actually a really important part of the equation, too, and something that further distinguishes Vice City from GTA III. That is, while GTA III is about survival as a little fish in a big pond, Tommy Vercetti is here to become Vice City’s great white shark. Vice City is not about scraping by; Tommy is here to take over this whole town.

Rockstar has since largely pivoted away from casting GTA characters with high-profile film actors, but during Vice City the practice was just about at its peak. Alongside Ray Liotta, Vice City features Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, William Fichtner, Robert Davi, Luis Guzmán, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, Danny Trejo, Danny Dyer, and even Philip Michael Thomas as Lance Vance. Yes, Miami Vice’s legendary Ricardo Tubbs was tapped for a key role in Vice City. Vice City is nothing if not hilariously unapologetic about its reverence for classic Miami crime dramas like Miami Vice and Scarface. It’s certainly no accident that Diaz’s mansion practically still has Al Pacino’s butt print in the office chair, or – if you get your wanted level up to three stars – you’ll be set upon by plain clothes Vice Squad detectives who show up in Cheetah sports cars.

Cum On Feel the Noize

In 2002, Vice City absorbed me immediately. I was obsessed and could not stop playing it. In 2026, I’m hooked all over again. I’d honestly forgotten how great it was to look at, certainly by PS2 standards. I actually don’t know what looks better: the evenings, or the sunrises. I also love all the little flourishes embedded in it – from the glinting ocean chop to the subtle way Tommy’s clothes flap as he whips through the air on a motorcycle. Bikes are such an excellent addition and feel great to ride, and I really dig the way they’re tuned to let you slide them aggressively into corners without abruptly gripping up and high-siding Tommy over the top of them. Cars handle more sharply than GTA III, too, and have a better sense of weight, which is such a crucial part of open-world action games for me.

The combat? Well, I’m still in a love/hate relationship with the general blasting. Yes, the auto targeting is effective in locking on and cutting down your opposition, but only when it’s locking onto your actual opposition – and not your literal allies who you drove to the shootout personally. I just wish it knew the cops directly in front of me are a bigger threat than the distant motorcyclist trying to flee the scene, and it remains an annoying idiosyncrasy of this era of GTA, particularly when it causes me to fail a mission. There are still no mid-mission checkpoints in Vice City, but it does introduce helpful, automated taxi rides back to the start of missions you were just wasted on. By cutting down on repetitive travel, Vice City is not only more respectful of our time, I also think it reduces the risk of players growing to resent particular stretches of the map they otherwise might’ve been forced to drive to and fro across one too many times.

That said, it’s hard for me to grow tired of being in a vehicle in Vice City thanks to the soundtrack, which weaponised licensed music so successfully it single handedly reinvented the etymology of many of these songs in my brain. Can you hear Mister Mister’s Broken Wings without thinking of Fernando Martinez? I can’t. Perhaps the most impressive side effect of having a soundtrack this vast, memorable, and expertly curated is the way it flavours the missions in different ways for different playthroughs. Almost a quarter of a century after playing it for the first time, I found myself in a dirtbike chase through the back alleys of Washington Beach to the pop strains of 99 Luftballons. Not a song I would’ve considered for a frantic, high-speed chase – and yet the uptempo pop jam worked a treat. The fact that you can Baby Driver yourself to an unexpectedly brilliant bit of backing music is one of the GTA series’ greatest strengths, and Vice City is arguably the absolute acme. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not just the best soundtrack of the GTA series – edging out San Andreas and Vice City Stories – it’s one of the best soundtracks in video games full stop.

Never Too Much

Vice City occupies a special spot in the history of the series as the first game out of its then-newly rechristened development team, Rockstar North – although it should be noted the studio did have somewhat of a running start. The operation had initially been established as the Edinburgh arm of original GTA creators DMA Design, but DMA’s original Dundee branch had been shuttered shortly after. In other words, the prehistory of Rockstar North stretches back to the founding of DMA in the ’80s – so it’s coincidentally quite fitting its first official project became gaming's most quintessential tribute to that decade.

To be fair to some of the GTA series’ most memorable genre peers, Vice City wasn’t the first open-world action and driving game to use the past as a backdrop. The funkadelic Driver and Driver 2, set in an undefined moment at some point in the late ’70s or early ’80s, rolled back their own clocks some years before Vice City. On top of that, the original Mafia took us on a journey back to the 1930s, during the closing chapter of the United States’ Prohibition era. However, there’s just something richer and more special about the way Vice City transports you back to the beachside, neon-drenched excess of 1986.

There are a combination of elements all working in concert with each other to crank up the atmosphere to irresistible heights. The large fleet of angular exotic supercars and boxy American land whales on the roads, glinting as the beaming sun catches their windscreens. The pedestrians strutting the sidewalks in leather jumpsuits that look like they’ve been peeled directly off Michael Jackson. A bright, sun-kissed cityscape that’s so different to the dense, grimy greys of Liberty City, and which sits atop a seedy underbelly of chainsaw carnage, cartel chaos, cocaine, and cheap porn. The pastel pants, the palm-lined streets, the pulsating soundtrack – all of this in unison made Vice City a magically immersive time capsule like no other game at the time, and like few others since.

I’ve seen it argued that the incredibly successful Vice City served as the primary catalyst for the tidal wave of ’80s nostalgia that followed – ground zero for an exploding obsession with this pastel-powered decade – but I’m not entirely sold on that theory. Don’t get me wrong, Vice City was a genuine cultural juggernaut – but I think it’s better viewed as one significant part of a much broader picture. After all, the back stretch of 1997’s Boogie Nights leaned heavily into the early ‘80s, and The Wedding Singer very famously and successfully transported us back to 1985 when it was released in 1998. 1999’s 200 Cigarettes, 2000’s American Psycho, and 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer also all wound things back to the ’80s prior to the arrival of Vice City. Nostalgia has been powerful and bankable for a long time. Back in the ’90s and 2000s, if we weren’t being whisked back to the ’80s, it was the ’70s, via The Wonder Years, Dazed and Confused, 54, That ‘70s Show, and Detroit Rock City.

No: Rockstar didn’t discover the retro lens with Vice City, nor did it invent ’80s nostalgia. However, all those examples above are movies or TV shows. Vice City is neither. Vice City is a video game, and I probably don’t need to explain to you why that sets it apart. Vice City wasn’t just a window into the past we were restricted to passively peering through for a predefined running time. Rather, it became a living, breathing portal to the past that let us actually explore, experience, and inhabit a long-ended era.

Verdict

To this day, the opening moments of GTA: Vice City remain one of my most memorable gaming experiences ever. After getting into your first car, you’ll immediately hear the unmistakable bass line of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. It’s a small but meaningful moment that instantly plunges you into the past and feels like a happy accident, but it wasn’t – it was engineered to always be Billie Jean. Everyone heard it. Or, at least, they did until later re-issues and remasters of the game unfortunately trimmed it from the soundtrack. Either way, I was completely enchanted by Vice City from that moment. In 2026? I still can’t get enough of it. With its wide variety of vehicles, weapons, and missions, its stacked cast of recognisable voices, and its unmatched atmosphere, Vice City may have gone backwards in time – but it was a huge stride forward for the series and one of my all-time favourites.

For more reflections on the incredible Grand Theft Auto series, you can read our new Legacy Reviews of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, and Grand Theft Auto III, with more to follow over the coming months.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.

Perhaps no movie was primed to be a video game more than Aliens. A bunch of marines with guns up against hordes of monstrous beasties? That’s a video game, baby. That was true for the first Aliens: Fireteam Elite, a game I enjoyed but didn’t stick with for too long because its three-person squads meant someone from my regular co-op group always had to sit out, but its sequel keeps that same appeal while freshening the concept up with an additional player and a new class. Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 isn’t going to make you leave a co-op shooter you already love at the altar, but it is a good time with friends. I don’t know how long my group will stick with it now that we’ve rolled credits, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the 30 hours it took to do so, even if it’s never as great as the film that inspired it.

Fireteam Elite 2 is a sequel, but you don’t have to be familiar with the original to understand what’s up here: the USS Endeavor received a transmission from a very sick-looking woman named Dr. Pearce based on LV-558, a Weyland-Yutani mining colony overrun by Xenomorphs. The marines sent in an elite squad called Fireteam Banshee to contain the situation. They’ve all gone missing. Your Marine has been transferred to the Endeavor to bring them home and figure out what the hell is going on.

The first game wasn’t huge on story, and it doesn’t bog down Fireteam Elite 2 either. Between missions, you’ll hang out on the Endeavor and chat with your squad. There’s Shipp, the Endeavor’s CO, previously of Fireteam Elite; Ko, your tough-as-nails, no-nonsense squad leader who also returns from the original; Piper, a very earnest and enthusiastic analyst who is new to boots-on-the-ground work and a little nervous as a result; Esther, the ship’s android, who was also in the first game; Raptor, your dropship pilot with terrible (and I do mean terrible) jokes; and Wrench, your mechanic/weapons specialist/shopkeeper who dispenses rad bird facts. I love Wrench.

Truth is, I enjoy the crew, even if you only really interact with them from the waist up in very “look at their face while they talk to you” scenes. My only qualm is that, because they’re mostly just voices in your ear on missions, there’s not much room for camaraderie – and when there is, everyone’s… too nice? One of the best parts of Aliens is that the characters don’t always get along, and while I think it’s great that Ko roasts Raptor (and you), I wish these characters razzed each other a bit more. It adds flavor, you know? You can only make fun of Raptor’s jokes so many times.

I want to be clear here: I don’t think Fireteam Elite 2 is badly written, but it is very light in tone for an Aliens game, everyone likes each other a lot, and the other characters rarely leave the ship, never directly fight alongside you, and you’ll never appear in cutscenes with them. It’s one of those “you’re allegedly the most important person here, but you could be replaced with a superpowered ham sandwich and things would probably be fine” kind of co-op games. That didn’t bother me too much (though the voice acting can occasionally be a bit… stilted?) since it’s not a game you’re playing for the plot, much of which is solidly constructed but also fairly predictable. Someone in the Alien universe always wants to play God. It never works out, of course, but they always figure it might for them. You hate to see it, but you expect to see it.

If there is one piece of storytelling Fireteam Elite 2 nails, it’s the mid-combat dialogue, which often directly quotes the film, especially Hudson and Vasquez. It does sometimes get repetitive (there are slightly fewer lines here than I’d like), but it never gets old hearing your Marine say ‘Sharp sticks, mother****er” after gunning down an acid-blooded H.R. Geiger nightmare.

Really, though, all that is just an excuse to get out there and shoot something. Like its predecessor, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is a class-based, co-op-focused shooter. (You can play it solo, but you’ll be teamed up with The Alphabet Boys: CPU-controlled androids named Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.) You’ve got six classes to choose from, many of which have their own Aliens analogue. Duelist is Hicks, complete with a shotgun for close encounters; the smartgun-toting Marauder is Vasquez; Medic is Dietrich (there’s a deep cut for you); and so on. They’re all fun, and I enjoyed fooling around with them all before ultimately settling on Machinist for the long haul. A turret is just too good to pass up, and my buddy was already playing Marauder. The things we do for co-op games. Thank God one of us was willing to play Medic.

The most intriguing is the all-new Specialist, which allows you to combine the features of multiple classes. Say, for instance, you want the special abilities of the Machinist (their turret and floating bodyguard drone) but also like the Marauder’s excellent smartgun. Well, you could max out the smartgun, which will allow you to equip it to any class, or you could just… play the Specialist. It’s rad. That’s not to say there’s no benefit to sticking with the traditional classes; they have modifiers and special abilities that you’ll only get by leveling that class, so getting the best stuff probably means rolling with one of the basic classes for a while. But if you want to mix and match abilities, guns, and everything else, Specialist is your guy (or gal).

The missions themselves are pretty standard fare for the genre, but they are fun. Drop into a Weyland-Yutani nightmare, hunt for intel/break stuff/complete other objectives, kill some monstrosities, hold out for a bit, and then get out. It’s a fun loop, especially with friends, and is set apart from other games like it by how many different kinds of Xenomorphs there are.

Runners go down quickly, so they’re probably not worth spending anything fancy or consumable on (like grenades or mines or special ammo) – but they come in big groups and they’re fast little buggers, so you can get overwhelmed fast. Spitters like to sit back and shoot acid from afar. Then you have the big dudes: the Warriors who will pick you up and try to get you with their second mouth; the hit-and-run Drones (think the Alien from the original Alien) who leap from the shadows and retreat from fire; large red Xenos called Prowlers that pounce on you, and so on. Figuring out the right answer for everything while managing your limited resources is a lot of fun, and Fireteam Elite 2 isn’t scared to throw everything at you in the big moments. And aside from one particularly notable difficulty spike in the game’s fifth act, it manages to be challenging without feeling overwhelming.

If that wasn’t enough, certain missions also ask you to deal with Wey-Yu synthetics. These require a more methodical “take cover, approach carefully” strategy, where the Xenos will just have you running for your lives. It’s a nice change of pace, and you’ll have to equip different weapons and ammo types to deal with them. The smartgun, for instance, is great against Xenos, especially the smaller ones, but it’s a lot less effective against synths, who come with a little more beef. So what’s an enterprising Colonial Marine to do? Why, switch to the railgun and blow their heads off from mad yonder, of course. They do pop so satisfyingly. There’s also a secret third faction (well, maybe not so secret if you’ve played the original, but let’s assume you haven’t) to test yourself against. They all feel unique, but none of the others are quite as much fun as the Xenomorphs. I mean, it does say Aliens on the box. It’s good to have your priorities straight.

It’s not just your weapons that make the difference. You’ve also got single-use items like turrets, mines, ammo bins, and so on to help you survive until the next “resupply or die, folks” ammo crate and health pack rest stops scattered throughout each level. Different elements work better against different factions. Electric ammo doesn’t bother Xenos, but they’re not keen on fire; synths, as you’d expect, are just the opposite, so getting the most bang for your buck means choosing the right ammo (free tip: cryo ammo works on everything), though you can still make do if you don’t. It also encourages you to experiment with builds and try out new guns. Why not take that flamethrower to a level where you know there will be Xenos, or that rifle that comes pre-equipped with a little zap to a showdown with Weyland-Yutani’s robotic security force?

Fireteam Elite 2 encourages you to experiment with both consumables and your build, and rewards you for doing so, and I really appreciated that. One of my friends armed his Marauder with a perk that fired a shoulder-mounted rocket every time he reloaded. Pretty good, right? Well, it’s even better when paired with a M41A1 Pulse Rifle used in the film (you start with a newer model, but it doesn’t make The Sound™ or have a grenade launcher) and its underbarrel grenade launcher, which you can reload after firing once. Many explosions ensued. And if you run out of grenades, why not switch to your pistol, fire once, reload, and get a shoulder rocket? Is that the most efficient way to play? Probably not. Is it a lot of fun? Absolutely.

I also have to give it up for the level design here. See, each of the six acts of Fireteam Elite 2 takes place in its own area, which means you’ll revisit those places multiple times. Some might poo-poo this as backtracking, but I think it adds to the whole thing. Yeah, man, I’m on the colony or in this ship or in the mines or wherever else. It makes sense that I’d visit the same places several times. What matters is how those return trips change my understanding of those areas, and that they feel different when you go back, and they largely do. Fireteam Elite 2 also has some great atmospheric moments: shafts of light cut by a rotating fan, pitch black cargo holds that are so dark you can barely see, all the more terrifying when aliens show up. It gets the vibe, and that matters.

If there’s one weird thing about missions, it’s that you usually end up holding out against a giant horde and then bugging out. But aside from the opening mission, you’re never really at a landing pad where a dropship can pick you up. In general, you’re… well, you could be a lot of places. You kill all the aliens, and then you just… leave. I get that it would be a bit repetitive to wait for the dropship every time, but it’s a little odd to be like “okay, all the aliens are dead! Time to walk to the dropship!” I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s polite of the Xenos to just let us leave and all, but it’s also a little weird for them to be all “don’t worry girls, we’ll get ‘em next time” and then say good game and walk off the field.

Back on the Endeavor, you can buy new weapons, upgrades, items, and all sorts of other goodies. My favorite are decals. See, you can customize your armor, which is already cool, but you can also add decals that you can move, rotate, and resize. I like the dropship I’ve attached to my Pulse Rifle and the heartbeat monitor that I’ve slapped on my breastplate, but I’m still searching for Vasquez’s Adios because I want to slap it on my smartgun. Feels right, you know? And it gives you something to hunt for in the levels themselves.

If you’re looking for more challenge, you can also equip Challenge Cards, which do things like spawn special enemies after so many kills or ask you to hit a point total in exchange for rewards (or buff you in exchange for fewer). They’re a neat feature that add replayability and encourage teamwork, though don’t be surprised if a random player you’ve been paired with picks one without asking when you’re matchmaking. Sometimes it works, and sometimes… yeah, you get the picture.

One larger complaint I have is progression. If you’re a few missions ahead, and your friend wants to help you out, they can’t really progress until they catch up. Oh, they’ll level and such, but they won’t get access to certain parts of the store until they complete earlier missions, so you’ll either have to go back and help them (which can be fun, but time consuming) or they’ll just have to grin and bear it. Is it a huge deal? No. But it is annoying.

Once you finish the campaign, you unlock Horde mode, which is exactly what it sounds like: multiple waves across three maps. Surviving gives you cash you can spend on turrets, special ammo, mines, and the like. It’s a good system, but I think what I liked the most was that ammo crates offer limited top offs here, unlike in the campaign, where they seem to be unlimited. I had to pick and choose which crates to use because they didn’t restock, and while using the ammo crates that were closer was definitely easier, it also meant I wouldn’t have them during harder waves. I think I ultimately prefer the campaign, but Horde mode is fun, and a little more low-key… provided you extract before you die and lose most of what you’ve earned.

I suppose I should talk about the bugs, and I don’t mean the Xenos. Fireteam Elite 2 has some, but none are gamebreaking. The worst were desyncs, which were mostly the fault of a player on our team who had internet problems. Occasionally, an alien’s foot will get stuck in the vents and the Xeno attached to it will dangle there limply and bounce around, but that’s funny and more than a little endearing. Now and then, the cutscenes will run into some serious slowdown when a bunch of stuff is exploding, or an item will de-equip for a mission. Annoying? A bit. But hardly a big deal. The thing about Fireteam Elite 2 that will stick with me is that I always enjoyed playing it, even when things weren’t going exactly right.

In the calming meadows where my journey in Valheim began almost six years ago, at the start of an Early Access expedition that has now finally come to an end, I came across a runestone in a lonely field bearing words I've been thinking about ever since:

A full belly
A full sail
The weight of a spear to your hand
And a song on your lips
Let all the mountains crumble
And the seas boil to salt
One day in the sun is a life well-lived

This is the essence of Valheim, the grim-eyed but warm-hearted Norse king of survival crafting games. For as harrowing as its dark dungeons and challenging bosses may be, and unforgiving as its extreme environments of fire and ice may seem, it's a saga about returning home with chips in your shield and blood on your face to sit around a roaring hearth fire – in contemplative solitude or with friends – and feel a bright stirring in your heart, knowing that you have conquered great foes and may now rest and revel. And in those slower moments I came to realize that this was truly the best the genre has ever been.

Valheim's art direction and world design give it a distinct identity from moment one. It has a deliberately lo-fi look with pixelated textures and not a lot of polygons to go around. But even so, it's truly a beautiful game. Every creature, sunbeam, and forested hillside is filled with a sort of fairy tale ambience that made me want to get lost in its procedurally-generated regions. And there's a lot to get lost in, from peaceful meadows to dreary swamps to snowy mountains. Every time I generated a new map, it impressed me with its scale and how it looked like it could’ve been hand-made. Because of the naturalistic, Northern European feel, it comes across as very cohesive and authentic.

The first time Valheim really made me go "Wow!" was when, after about 15 hours of preparing, I set sail on my own hand-built ship. Like a proper viking, your main method of long-distance travel is to take to the seas and riverways. The controls for steering are kind of clunky, and I love them for that very reason. Mastering the art of making tight turns and managing my speed was a satisfying skill-building exercise.

Realistic waves can bounce you up and down, and a sudden storm can even damage your vessel and force you to make for a safe harbor. The ever-changing direction of the wind is a constant consideration that may encourage you to go out of your way and discover something new rather than simply sail in a straight line. Having a ship makes it feel like a whole new world is opening up – and then it tries to eat you.

The improvements to Valheim since its Early Access launch are really too many to list, even if you gloss over the obvious stuff like nearly doubling the number of biomes and bosses. Perfect dodges, trinkets, and even a magic system have made combat so much deeper and richer. One of my biggest complaints back in 2021 was that certain elements of progression could feel a bit grindy. But even that's adjustable now with fine-tuned difficulty settings. I found that a 3x resource drop rate made the pacing incredibly smooth for me as a solo player (especially while I was retreading the early areas I had already seen on an entirely fresh 1.0 world), though it might be a bit too much for a big group.

Each of the eight biomes is extremely distinct in terms of vibes, enemies, and geography. The bug-infested Mistlands have taken the place of the Swamps as my least favorite, with obnoxious terrain made even harder to navigate by dense fog, but they are beautiful to look at when you're not being swarmed. The Ashlands represent a dramatic escalation that really sells the thrill of entering the endgame with a jump in difficulty and foreboding volcanic landscapes.

As for the Deep North, I don't want to spoil too much of what secrets lie beyond its icy shores, but it really puts the ambition of all the other biomes to shame and leads into a conclusion worthy of a viking hero. I already loved Valheim's Norse aesthetics, and the Deep North is the most Norse it ever gets, so it really leans into its strongest visual and mythological themes right at the end.

For a game that already felt fairly complete in terms of both size and polish half a decade ago, Valheim 1.0 seems more like an instant classic from years back that's gotten three big expansions already, not a saggy skeleton of something that had the potential to be great that is now finally fleshed out. I feel completely spoiled by its finished scope. They've even added some really well-animated 2D cutscenes that play after each boss and announce the biome you're about to explore, which definitely help flesh out and keep up the momentum of the unfolding story.

Valheim's action hacking and slashing (and shooting) was familiar and invigorating to me as a modern action RPG player. It's not just "good enough for a survival crafter," either, with the same care and attention paid to it as any other system. With a wide variety of weapons and enemy types, elemental damage and resistances, and timing-based dodges and parries, it kept challenging me to sharpen my skills and learn new enemy patterns right to the end.

The satisfying, hectic, dramatic boss fights really demonstrate the strengths of this combat, even though it's occasionally obvious that their AI can't quite cope with the varied arenas you fight them in. Not only do they serve as climactic capstones to each area and tier of technology, they have highly distinct mechanics and gradually raise the skill ceiling needed to progress, which I found very rewarding. I do wish fully half of them were not resistant to pierce damage, though, since it feels a bit like saying, "No archery allowed past this point," especially with how long it takes for bow-wielders like me to get any significant upgrades to elemental damage in the mid-to-late game.

The randomized dungeons are also a treat, from werewolf-infested frozen cave systems to gooey insect hives, with each featuring a unique layout, loot, and challenges to navigate. The Plains and the Ashlands replace underground lairs with large, complex outdoor structures, which even further helps to keep things feeling unique. Laying siege to a charred fortress made the whole exploring and looting routine feel brand new again, even 80 hours in.

Among Valheim's most clever tricks is how your hearty feasts tie directly into progression. While you can skill up in different weapons and abilities, like running and swimming, your health and stamina meters are completely tied to what's in your belly. This means that "leveling up" mostly involves finding new ingredients and learning new recipes to ensure you're always as well fed as you can be. Valheim also wants you to eat a balanced diet. You can benefit from up to three types of food at any time, but stacking more than one of the same thing gives you no benefit.

All of this also made my character feel more alive and connected to the world, and it set Valheim apart from the rote, old-fashioned RPG progression routines where experience translates to levels, which then translate into more hit points and energy. There's something deliciously thematic about heading out to battle evil with a full stomach, a good night's rest, and a flagon of invigorating mead to quaff. It's a truly cozy warrior's paradise.

Of course, a cozy warrior needs a cozy hall to settle down in. Valheim is voxel-based, but it's also much more limited in how you can alter the terrain than something like Minecraft. It took me a while to master the little tricks needed to make a structure that doesn't clip into the ground or look like it's slightly floating. But once you do, you can construct some very impressive-looking stuff, and the in-depth system for weight and support beams means your buildings generally end up looking and feeling realistic and in keeping with the world around them. Far from a restrictive annoyance, I loved how this became like a puzzle that made me think the way actual medieval Norsemen might have when figuring out how to hold up a towering roof.There are plenty of different styles of building pieces as well, but I still wish we could get triangular or rounded floor tiles so it wasn't so hard to build something with anything but a perfectly rectangular footprint.

The “hidden movement” genre of board games is one of my favorites and I still remember where I discovered this type of game. I was watching Wil Wheaton’s “Tabletop” series, when the game of the week was “Fury of Dracula”, a game where one person assumes the role of Dracula, spreading terror and attempting to grow his vampire forces around the globe, while the others are vampire hunters, try to track him down and drive a stake through his heart. Despite falling in love with what I saw, it was unfortunately at a time when Fury was out of print, and while eventually I would find myself a copy, it remained a rather sought after game for fellow hidden movement fans. Thankfully, at long last, the good folks at Avalon Hill have brought it back in a brand new 5th Edition, and fans around the world can once again hunt down dracula during their next board game night.

For those familiar with either the Fantasy Flight Games’ 3rd or WizKids’ 4th editions, the 5th edition is largely the same but for everyone else, Fury of Dracula is a one-versus-many with one person playing as the count and up to four other players controlling the hunters. As I mentioned a moment ago, this is a hidden movement game, where Dracula will be moving around the map, placing cards face down noting where he is and was, leaving dangers in his wake, while the hunters try to trap and kill the vampire lord. Each round, consisting of a Day and Night phase, begins with the hunters moving, supplying themselves with tools and special event cards, purchasing travel tickets, or searching for their target. During the day, these actions are generally safer, while attempting to resupply invites potentially hazardous events that may help Dracula instead.

Dracula’s turn is a bit less eventful, but debatably more important. Once all the hunters have taken their nighttime actions, Dracula is then able to move to a new location, placing face down a new location card on their growing trail and an encounter card. These encounters, secret much like the locations themselves until a hunter uncovers them, may spawn enemies, create diversions and delays for the hunters, or worse. Should one of these ever move off the board, “maturing” as it’s referred to, the despair track will increase, putting Dracula that much closer to securing his victory!

Despite the rather simplistic nature of these fights, it also has led to some of the tensest moments in board games I’ve ever had.

Unlike other hidden movement games, such as Whitehall Mystery (another personal favorite of mine) that is purely a game of cat and mouse, Fury of Dracula incorporates a combat mechanism. During situations where the hunters have cornered Dracula, both sides pick a card from their hands, composed of moves or helpful items like holy bullets and pistols on the side of the hunters, and then flip them, then resolve their effects. Despite the rather simplistic nature of these fights, it also has led to some of the tensest moments in board games I’ve ever had. Moments when misreading my opponent led them to safety, or one especially board-flipping time when I expected Dracula, who being only one hit away from death, to flee, only to have him decide to bite and knock me out instead. A defeat that pushed the despair track past its end, and handing the win to Dracula. Utterly infuriating, but also one of the aspects of Fury of Dracula that sets it above many other hidden movement games for me.

In addition to redone artwork (more on that in a bit), this new fifth edition does offer a couple of optional new elements that can shake up the formula a bit for those Fury vets out there. First is the addition of a fifth hunter to pick from, Jonathan Harker, who previously had been relegated to just an ally card. Mr. Harker now can be picked to replace one of the other hunters, and has some powerful abilities that should certainly help the good guys out. He’s able to not only deal additional damage when hitting Dracula but also, similar to his wife Mina, can force him to announce if Jonathan is in an adjacent spot. While a neat addition, it also feels like a bit of a halfbaked attempt too. Unlike the other hunters, Mr. Harker doesn’t get his own unique event card, and instead can simply use the one made for the hunter that he replaces. The balance of the game also doesn’t quite feel like it’s been balanced for him, and I found that when both Harkers were on the board, with their tracking talents, it made for a decently harder time for Dracula. He’s a fun “sometimes” change, but I plan to stick with my normal squad for most games.

Fury of Dracula is typically a game that can take a surprising amount of time, with some games I’ve played lasting past the four hour mark, and the second new addition with 5th edition is a faster game mode that can cut that in half or more. This new faster variant removes a couple of cards and blocks off a couple of the regions of the map (damn that Black Plague) while setting the board state roughly around where it would be after a “week” (about a third of the way through), granting hunters some items to start, Dracula with some damage, despair up a bit, and a few other tweaks. By-and-large I found this new variant to be a solid choice and makes Fury of Dracula a much more viable option on a weeknight. The smaller region and other adjustments (such as the instantaneous water movement and removing the single value train tickets) can make things far more swinging where getting away and staying hidden as Dracula can be more challenging. Again, just like with Harker, it works, but I’m curious how much balance testing went into it.

As one would expect from a new edition of a game, it isn’t usually just the gameplay or mechanics that get a refresh, but the artwork too, and it’s here where the 5th edition sees its biggest departure. Not because the map changes (though the town of Whitby, which plays an important role in the story of Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel, is finally included) but the aesthetic has changed. And it’s also here where I think the new edition takes a step backwards from the third and fourth editions.

With exception of Dracula’s location cards, the artwork for the event, encounter, item, and combat cards all have ditched the dramatic and detailed full color artwork of the earlier iterations in favor of what I would describe as drawings you may see in an old Victorian-era newspaper. These black-and-white illustrations work, but just don’t have the same impact, with some appearing, dare I say, even a bit corny? The “Dark Call” card for example, now features Dracula staring at the moon with a few bats in front of him, compared to earlier versions where he appears to be basking in the night with hordes of bats all around, against a stormy sky. Then there is the new “Misdirect” which basically makes him look like Batman from The Animated Series, as opposed to a mysterious man in a top hat, lurking in the fog. Hunter and Dracula character cards don’t fare much better either, with the portraits replaced with sepia-tinted photographs of the character. Which, now that I think about it, could you even take a picture of Dracula? I mean, vampires don’t have reflections in mirrors, so can you photograph them? Oh well, questions for another time.

Just like our favorite NBA teams, the NBA 2K series teases enough improvements every year to give us a sliver of hope; a renewed sense of faith that maybe things will be even better than last time. Although that faith was rewarded for NBA 2K26, that hasn’t been the case with NBA 2K27. While the on-court play does feel better thanks to smoother and more responsive defensive movements, some new additions, like MyCareer Eras and MyNBA Legacy, are the opposite. Instead, they act like magnifiers, placing a spotlight on issues that have consistently plagued this series, like an ever-growing emphasis on microtransactions and half-baked features. That can turn what should be an energizing session of hoops into a tiring exercise in scrutiny.

Let’s kick things off with the good stuff: the on-court experience. Offense, although it still feels largely the same, has a few new tricks up its sleeve that make it slightly more challenging than last year. For starters, Rhythm Shooting is much less forgiving than in 2K26 since you’ll have to actually hit the green part of your shot meter to make jumpers. Full disclosure: I religiously use the square button to shoot because it’s what I’ve been doing since 2K10. With this change, I've become even more partial to the classic hold-and-release method since there just doesn’t seem to be an incentive to master Rhythm Shooting’s more finicky timing and down-up motion. Of course, there may come a point when I’ll need to really dig into the latter, but today is not that day.

Then there’s the new logic-based Dunk Meter, which, instead of only showing up when you perform Skill Dunks like in 2K26, now appears whenever you drive to and attempt a shot at the rim. The goal, as always, is to hit the green, but it won’t always be that simple, because this feature takes the defender’s positioning into account. That means even if you get a near-perfect release on your way to a jam, a well-timed contest from a towering, highly-rated defender like Zach Edey or Victor Wembanyama could turn it into a miss.

I’ll admit, taking the Dunk Meter into account did take some getting used to, meaning I’ve missed more than a few slams in trying to master it. But I eventually came to appreciate the greater sense of realism it lends to 2K27. As much as I would want every poster dunk attempt to go in, even a strong and sure-handed player like Giannis can and should get stuffed at the rim every now and then.

This, of course, leads me to the side of the ball that flusters dribblers, causes turnovers, and wins championships. If last year’s defense was a benchwarmer who barely played any minutes, this year it’s the Most Improved Player. As soon as I hopped into a match, the change felt immediate; being near a defender and putting a hand up actually altered a shot! Gone are the dark days when every jumper, even contested ones, felt like they would go in; now that both sides of the ball are balanced, playing through an entire game in both online and offline modes feels better and more competitive than ever.

That includes contests in the newest space where all the cool kids in The City hangout: Casual Corner. This place has almost everything: 3v3, 5v5, PvE and PvP games, you name it. But fair warning; this is not a place to let your guard down. The more you play here (or in any other mode, for that matter), the more you’ll be matched with higher skill players. After all, the main purpose of this spot is to train beginners and ease them into high stakes match types like Ante Up or Proving Grounds.

Although the wins I racked up in Casual Corner didn’t feel as rewarding as those in, say, The Theater, it’s often a better and more relaxed alternative. I mean, there are only so many ballhogs and non-passers I can take before steam starts coming out my ears, making this a great place to reset or, at the very least, get some runs in without having to worry about losses.

Now, if you ever wonder why you just got crossed up by a flash of long lashes and a top bun, it’s because The City is now co-ed! That’s right; you can now create female players who can then represent you in the bustling hub as you roam around or play through online matches. Want to know what’s even better? There are no downsides to making female builds. On the court, it’s still all about skill, the way it should be, so excuse me while I take some scrubs to school with my sharpshooting Kayla McBride archetype.

It’s time to head on over to MyCareer’s neck of the woods, with its latest single-player journey, dramatically titled Fire and Concrete. Like always, this tale follows our recurring hero MP, showing his hoops growth in stages from humble high school roots all the way to a career in the pros. Unlike its predecessors, though, this one’s a doozy, spanning 11 chapters – and bigger always means better, right? Right? Oh, if only that were true.

As soon as I jumped into the thick of things, some flaws immediately stood out, beginning with the story itself. Early on, a key plot point is rushed through in an animated vignette instead of actually unfolding in a full cutscene – it was more like watching a commercial than a career-defining incident. It flashed by so fast that I almost missed it, and that makes the start of MP’s journey, arguably the most important part, feel like an afterthought.

Then, there’s MP himself, who is really hard to root for. Although he does become less of a diva as the story progresses, he’s still often outshined by the supporting characters throughout, like his funny cousin Cam, who is voiced and mocapped by Vince Staples. Even Cade Cunningham, who only had a bit part during the story’s G-League portion, had more presence than him. Overall, it’s like every drop of personality has been sucked out of this MP and given to those around him, which is a step back from the endearing (albeit overenthusiastic) version from 2K26.

The bad news doesn’t stop there, because as underwhelming as 2K27’s hoops tale is, one new MyCareer feature has been even more disappointing: the dynamic draft board. Unlike last year, which saw you get drafted at a fixed position to a team of your choice, you can actually move up and down the list this year based on your performance. This sounded great at first; I loved that it gave me a sense of progress after each match. But that only lasted until I reached the draft itself; once I did, I found out I could just choose which team I want to play for, and that made the whole thing feel pointless.

Luckily, it’s not all missed shots and Shaqtin-a-Fool blooper reels in this middling basketball tale. There is one bright spot I’ve saved for last: the new Running Mate co-op feature. As the name implies, this gives you a hoop partner who’ll always be there to provide screens and catch your badly timed alley-oops no matter what. It’s introduced during the story’s G-League portion, along with MP’s AI-controlled BFF, Trace Miller, and remains from then until the end of both of your NBA careers. Now, you don’t have to play with a CPU-handled companion if you don’t want to; you can have a friend hop in Trace’s shoes instead to get the full co-op experience.

As unrealistic as this feature is, I enjoyed having a teammate I could rely on throughout the story to make my job as a point guard easier. I mean, it is kind of a cheat code that I could model Trace Miller’s character after Giannis Antetokounmpo, meaning all I had to do was pass him the ball in the paint, let him work, and I would get a quick assist. So, no, I don’t mind if he follows me to every team I go to in the league even though it is very clingy. If Stephen Curry and Draymond Green somehow made it work, we can too.

Being the story nerd that I am, you’d think my biggest frustration would lie with Fire and Concrete. Well, it doesn't. Instead, what I’ve been most disappointed with is MyCareer Eras, a new mode that lets you drop a created player into one of the six significant time periods in the NBA. Sounds exciting, right? Sure, on paper. But then you realize you can’t swap you can’t swap your custom characters between eras, which means having to start fresh with a paltry 60 overall rating for each one. So, if you want to actually compete in these Eras, you’ll have to either grind out a crazy amount of matches in The City or spend real money to give your characters an immediate boost.

You might be asking, “Why don’t you just use your upgraded Fire and Concrete player in Eras?” Well, the answer is you can’t. Once you start a save file in the story mode, that player is essentially locked to the Modern Era. So, if you want to try out all of the time periods, you’ll need to make six separate characters. Do you see my problem now? I didn’t think it was possible, but with this mode, developer Visual Concepts has somehow made 2K microtransactions even more glaring and obnoxious than ever.

Thankfully, not all of the new additions are out for your hard-earned money like an IRS agent during tax season. Take MyNBA Legacy, for example; a newish addition, and I say newish because it’s sort of a call back to Create a Legend from 2K12 to 2K13. The biggest difference? Back then, you could pick from a wide list of legends and then-current players, while in 2K27 you can only select from active rosters and free agency. You can also begin a career as either a player’s rookie or current version, which means getting the full 20+ year experience if you choose to start over.

I’ll be honest; even though MyNBA Legacy’s addition is more than welcome, it’s disappointing that I can’t choose players from past eras. I would’ve loved to play as some of my favorite stars from history, like Derrick Rose or Steve Nash, so I could rewrite their stories – maybe help them win a championship or two. I’m also surprised that it doesn’t have a teammate grade feature for when you’re playing matches, especially since this is a player-locked mode. So although I can see myself enjoying it for a while, the exclusion of these two key components make it feel incomplete. Here’s hoping Visual Concepts buttons this option up in NBA 2K28.

Ever since I first got infected with Porphyric Hemophilia in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or ran amok in Los Angeles in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, I’ve been patiently waiting for an open-world vampire RPG that I could really sink my teeth into. Frustratingly, despite numerous attempts in all those years, I hadn’t found anything that quenched that long-standing thirst. With The Blood of Dawnwalker, an RPG that shares a ton of DNA with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt made by some of its former developers, my hunt is finally over. Not only does it take the vampire fantasy to the neck-xt level, it also smartly finds workarounds for some of the limitations that can be a bit annoying (like having to stay out of the light), and introduces other interesting and clever ideas along the way. The day/night cycle that has you switching between human and vampire consistently makes for compelling questing, the limited time you’re given to complete your adventure makes even minor decisions carry enormous stakes, and the numerous ways to make its bloody tale your own have motivated me to rise from the coffin and replay this journey more than any game has in quite a long time. This is the vampire RPG I’ve been waiting for and I find myself entirely under its spell.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is a third-person action RPG that puts you in the shoes of a no-longer-fully-human protagonist with long hair and facial scars who runs around using swords and magic to kill monsters in a gritty, dark fantasy setting. Perhaps not the most original premise from a bunch of former Witcher devs, but hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t pull it off the stuffed unicorn. You play as Coen of Laslea, whose town is taken over by vampires, then through a series of unfortunate events, is infected with vampirism and begins practicing the dark art of witchcraft on the same day. Tough break! Naturally, you set out on a roughly 40-hour quest for revenge against those evil bloodsuckers, using your unique abilities as a Dawnwalker (someone who has all the strengths and weaknesses of a vampire by night but a human by day) to save the valley of Vale Sangora from the clutches of evil.

While the premise is pretty basic, Dawnwalker excels in the telling, with a cast of extremely well-written characters across the board, a world that’s filled with more mysteries than you could ever hope to uncover during your time-constrained journey, and some weirdly impressive arguments for why maybe vampires should be in charge of the world that made me pause to wonder if I was, in fact, the baddie. I instantly found myself eagerly spending time with Anca, the kind witch with a tragic past who split her time between either teaching me latin and magic or shamelessly flirting with me. Meanwhile, Crake, the rebel leader with a tendency to be heinously cruel in service of the cause, and Lacra, an allied vampire who casually committed war crimes half the time I hung out with her, managed to win me over despite being huge pains in my ass. Even the primary villains, like Brencis, who envisions a world ruled by vampires, and Ambrus, the footsoldier who revels in the displacement of the hierarchy of nobility and fancies a gentleman’s duel, were all incredibly compelling figures.

Dawnwalker’s best and most unique feature, quite appropriately for a game all about vampires, is its day/night cycle and the time mechanics built around it. As a spell-slinging human by day who turns into a blood-sucking monster by night, just about everything you do changes depending on the time of day. For example, in your human form you’ll guzzle down food and medicine to heal yourself, battle with swords and a fistful of witchcraft spells, and move around the old fashioned way by running, jumping, climbing, and whatnot. As a vampire, all that food and medicine is completely useless to you and your health can only be restored by consuming blood, plus you’ll primarily fight with your bare claws and gain a whole bunch of neat movement options – that includes teleporting around as a cloud of smoke, walking on walls and ceilings like the creepy little creature you are, and even turning into a wolf.

That means instead of building one loadout of armor, weapons, consumables, and abilities you’re happy with, Dawnwalker requires you to maintain two separate builds, which gave my stat-obsessed brain twice as much to joyfully tinker with. My vampire build was an absolute terror on the battlefield, with all my abilities centered around feeding off enemies to continually restore my health, and I sought out as many items as possible that increased my claw damage to turn myself into an unkillable unarmed freak of nature. Meanwhile, my human build primarily relied on high risk/high reward spells that put a whole bunch of nasty status effects on my foes at the cost of draining my own life and making me quite squishy. These two extremely different ways to play meant I was almost sitting forward during combat. Best of all, each of these loadouts is kept separate and automatically toggled between when you switch forms, so you don’t have to manually swap out all your armor and weapons twice a day.

Speaking of fighting, you’ll be doing quite a bit of that, since you’ll primarily solve your problems in Vale Sangora with the pointy end of your blade. The combat is quite good, with the caveat that it has a bit of a steep learning curve I suspect will be equally divisive. The main way in which it sets itself apart from most RPGs of this kind is that it uses a directional parry system where you have to match the direction the enemy is swinging, which kinda reminded me of For Honor. You can also just block attacks like normal, but doing so is fairly impractical (at least on higher difficulties) since it drains your stamina and doesn’t provide the openings for counterattacks that are so vital to success.

It sounds simple, but it took me longer than I’d like to admit to feel comfortable with it. The first handful of hours were fairly frustrating, and I frequently found myself fumbling through most combat encounters while cursing my ancestors. But there was light at the end of that tunnel – once I got over the hump and this system clicked, I grew to not only like it, but also feel pretty damn good at it. Now I’m able to down even the most formidable hordes without breaking a sweat, and that mastery felt earned beyond my stats going up. (Granted, I insist on playing most games on the hardest difficulty, so it’s quite possible I was just making things especially hard on myself and you’ll have an easier time from the jump.)

Aside from parrying, though, you’ll be using a pretty familiar bag of tricks for an action game like this, with a combination of standard attacks, special maneuvers that are specific to whichever weapon you’ve got equipped, and a bunch of abilities you can activate on a cooldown. Naturally, all of this will differ depending on whether or not you’re in human or vampire form, which goes a long way toward keeping things from getting too repetitive. For example, as a human, I fancied status effect spells that drained health and stunned enemies at the cost of my own life force, but as a vampire, I’d pummel things mercilessly with my bare hands and banshee shriek in my enemy’s face if I was feeling cheeky.

That said, these bouts definitely have some relatively minor but pretty obvious places they could improve. For example, the lock-on function consistently gave me trouble when trying to target a specific enemy, and it stayed annoying no matter how long I practiced with it. The camera could also get caught in odd spots in a way that was similarly aggravating. And while the variety of enemies you encounter is pretty good overall, the more common beasts you run into in the wild, like wolves and boars, appear way too frequently – by the end of my time with Coen, I was fully pissed off at the mere sight of the overpopulated canines.

While adventuring out in the world, certain activities are only available at specific times of day. For example, you’ll need access to your vampire form’s superior movement capabilities in order to climb to the top of lookout towers and add nearby points of interest to your map, while rituals that require blood magic are only available in human form. But even activities available at any time, like most side quests, can have drastically different outcomes depending on which form you take. Some characters will be less likely to trust you if you interact with them in vampire form, while some areas might be inaccessible if you choose to tackle it while human. If you really muck things up, your character might just straight up murder a super important NPC because you stupidly interacted with them while in a state of overwhelming blood thirst. Not that I ever did that at all, because I’m super smart and very good at video games.

The most interesting aspect of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s day/night cycle is how it ties the passage of time to specific actions you take, giving you a finite amount of time to complete your overarching quest. After the story’s opening chapter, you’ll have exactly 30 days to bring Brencis’ rule to an end, and that deadline is stressfully enforced as almost every action you take costs a certain amount of time to complete. There isn’t a ticking timer or anything – in fact, you can freely explore the world or just stand around idly as long as you want without time passing. Instead, time is treated as a resource: want to buy the next level in a particular skill? Well, in addition to the skill points required, you’ll also have to pay the much more costly price of the hours it takes you to train in it. Want to help that old man with his minor problem because you’re roleplaying as a good person? Fine! Go right ahead… but that’s one fewer segment of time you’ve got to potentially complete a more substantial sidequest.

At first I thought I might find this limitation irritating, since I quite enjoy taking my time to smell the roses and mark every checkbox off my list in these kinds of open-worlds, but I quickly realized how treating time as a currency makes just about every aspect of Dawnwalker better. No matter how hard you try, you won’t have enough hours to complete every side quest, buy every skill, or tie up every loose end as well as you’d like, which means you’re forced to compromise, pick your battles, and make hard but impactful decisions almost constantly. For example, early on in my travels, I talked my way into a prison camp to get some intel from a prisoner there, one I would have gone out of my way to rescue under normal circumstances. But when I saw that it would cost me three pips of time to do so (each day has 16 total), I decided to leave him to rot instead. I was forced to make compromises like this every step of the way, all in service of ensuring I had enough time for the important stuff, and I regularly found myself surprised at my own decisions. Fittingly, it made me feel like I truly was letting the darkness of my new vampiric abilities compromise my humanity in my quest for revenge. It’s brutal, nerve-wracking, and completely awesome.

This harrowing time-crunch ultimately has a pretty enormous impact on how your journey ends as well. I won’t spoil anything, but alternate endings will only open up to you if you’ve met certain characters or taken specific actions. On my first playthrough, there were entire supporting characters and story components I completely missed out on, and I didn’t realize the scope of what I hadn’t seen until I took an entirely different approach on my second playthrough. In a third (much shorter) playthrough, I just went for a brute force approach to see what would happen if I rushed straight to the end without meeting anyone while leveling up as little as possible, and I was not disappointed by the hilarious result. This is one of those games where I not only wanted to play through multiple times, but it almost felt mandatory in order to see everything Vale Sangora had in store. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt that way about an RPG.

One thing I often worry about with open-world RPGs is just how bad their performance and technical bugs might be, and The Blood of Dawnwalker thankfully finds itself on the less egregious side of the spectrum. Sure, on a standard PlayStation 5 it’s got the occasional framerate wonkiness, the camera sometimes clips through stuff in awkward ways, and an enemy will occasionally go right through the floor when you kill it – but almost everything I saw like that was pretty minor and uncommon, and I never had a single hard crash, broken questline, or anything else frustrating like that. The worst thing I encountered with regularity were blurry textures on characters’ clothes (or sometimes detail in their faces), which would distractingly never smooth out from time to time. Importantly, the version I played did not include the 60fps performance mode that was recently announced, so I can’t say just how well it holds up on that front, but I wasn’t particularly bothered by the 30FPS quality mode since it usually looked and ran well enough anyway.