I couldn't properly use an Xbox console until one particular controller came out this generation, and ever since I've held a special place for it in my gaming heart.

Even as a gaming hardware reviewer for years, prior to the Thrustmaster eSwap X Pro controller that released a little after the Series X and S launched, I really struggled with any Xbox controller due to having slightly different hands. A controller that could be turned into the layout I need, symmetrical, was a revolution. You can't get that original one anymore, but the eSwap X2 and eSwap X2 H.E. variants are excellent new iterations.

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Since then, I've had hands-on with a whole load of other controllers that are absolutely brilliant for a multitude of reasons.

From ol' reliables like the standard DualSense, to another modular belter in the Victrix Pro BFG range, and from premium first-party pads like the excellent DualSense Edge, to Pro-focused controllers like the SCUF Omega there's more choice than ever — and I've rounded up some of my absolute favorites below for your perusal ahead of the Amazon Prime Day deals this week.

Some of my favorite controllers for PS5, Xbox, and PC available right now

More Prime Day deals in the US

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• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
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• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders are starting this week, and it's the perfect time to have a look at your console gaming setup, be it PS5 or Xbox Series X or S, and think about any upgrades you might want to make. It'll be the perfect way to ensure your setup is up to date with new gear that you're used to by the time the game arrives on your doorstep.

Be it upgrading your console to get the best performance, embracing a new display to make Vice City shine, getting a premium controller to ensure you have every action at your fingertips, or taking a step up audibly to ensure you get can hear all the sounds, there's likely to be something worth mulling over before GTA 6 comes in November.

As a result, I've taken it upon myself to suggest some brilliant products in key console setup areas that will make a difference to your GTA 6 experience, while also fielding some suggestions from the rest of our TechRadar experts. You'll find US and UK prices for each below, and if you're not in those regions, you can head to the bottom and find a list of the best prices available in your region as presented by our price-finding tech. If you're looking for an early retailer page to sit on for the game itself, then the below ones are worth bookmarking, too.

• US GTA 6 pre-order retailer search links: Amazon | Walmart | Best Buy | Target | GameStop
• UK GTA 6 pre-order retailer search links: Amazon | Currys | Argos | Very | EE | ShopTo | The Game Collection | John Lewis

Consider a beefy console

Yep, it'll be a big purchase to consider at any time of the year, but if you're going to be a GTA 6 player who wants the best possible experience with the game and be able to have all the bells and whistles it can offer, then it might be time to consider some more horsepower.

In terms of those rocking a last-gen console still (a PS4 or Xbox One) then this should be of great interest, and if you're already a regular PS5 owner or a Series S owner, then making the jump up to the PS5 Pro or Series X, respectively, might ensure you get the most out of GTA 6's likely graphical and technical prowess.

This is even more the case if you own a 120Hz-capable TV or monitor, as that'll help you get even more out of such a machine, especially the PS5 Pro.

Let the game shine

GTA 6 is likely to be a visual marvel of the video game medium, trumping almost all other video game worlds, environments, and aesthetics (well, nearly all, surely) and what better way to make sure you catch every detail and enjoy every colour, stripe, and crack in the sidewalk than by upgrading to a new and superior display.

The LG C5 is our single pick for those looking to go big for a Grand Theft Auto 6 big screen experience, as it has the best feature set, image processing, and picture detail for the price right now. It offers extraordinary bang-for-buck value, especially in the face of the newer C6 being out now.

For those looking for a monitor, the Alienware AW32255QF is a 4K curved beauty that is perfect for both PS5 and Xbox players, offering all the connectivity and specs you need, while also giving you a brilliant QD-OLED panel with a gorgeous curve to pull you into games.

Feel the burn

If you want to have all the tools and weapons available to you at all times in GTA 6 and want the utmost level of versatility and 'at your fingertips' control for GTA 6, then going for a better controller, one that offers more than the standard offerings, is a brilliant move.

It's an easy choice for both consoles for me, here, with Sony's DualSense Edge, especially when on offer, giving PS5 players a familiar and effortless way to upgrade their controller, while those on Xbox should definitely go for the Asus ROG Raikiri II, which is perhaps the very best third-party Xbox controller going.

Hear every detail of Vice City

Upgrading your audio by going with a fantastic set of quality earcups from a trusted brand is one of the most tangible ways to improve your gaming experience in one fell swoop — and without having to do any huge sweeping changes to a set up.

The Audeze Maxwell 2, with its fantastic planar-magnetic drivers, is my favorite gaming headset for pure audio quality right now, and it will be perfect for anyone looking to hear every detail in Vice City.

It also comes in PlayStation and Xbox-facing variants so it's a cross-platform recommendation, and you'll find links for both below.

Give it room to breath on console

Rumors have abounded about the potential file size of Rockstar's next behemoth, and if even some of them come partially close, some extra storage space is likely to be very welcome indeed! However, we've all seen the price rises happening, so it's a bit of a struggle finding great value for money in any kind of memory right now. I've picked out the best prices on some great value offerings below though.

By far the best solution on PS5 — and perhaps even more acutely for those rocking a launch PS5 with its smaller hard drive — is an internal SSD. As for Xbox, there's only really one storage device to recommend, and that's the bespoke model for Series X or S that's made by Seagate or WD_Black — I've recommended the WD_Black variant below as it's always better value for money.

• Sonic the Hedgehog is officially 35 years old this year
• Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka thinks he might not make it to the franchise's 70th anniversary, but will "definitely be wanting to play" future games if possible
• Iizuka also says he is "really proud" of the series

Sonic the Hedgehog is officially 35 years old, with anniversary celebrations kicking off in January of this year, and to mark the occasion I sat down with Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka to discuss all things blue and spiky in a new interview at Summer Game Fest 2026.

The veteran developer explained that he "of course" considers it almost like his own child and revealed that he has "been with Sonic longer than I've been with my own children" in real life. "I'm really proud," he said.

Right now the franchise is undeniably in a strong position, with fans impressed by the recent Sonic x Shadow Generations remake and the support for the ongoing racing title Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, so I was interested to find out where he thinks it will be in another 35 years.

The Japanese-speaking staff sat in the interview room immediately began to chuckle as he replied, the translator barely containing his laughter as he revealed that "Iizuka-san does not think he's going to be alive" to see it.

My suggestion that his spirit "will continue to live on in Sonic" did not help get proceedings back on track.

"The Sonic Team in Japan is a great group of people," Iizuka added after a few more titters.

"It's really because of all of the great people who are making content for Sonic that we get things like Sonic X Shadow Generations, we get things like Frontiers, we get all these great, new experiences," he continued.

"They're constantly challenging themselves, they're constantly trying to make new fun game experiences, and so 35 years from now, even if I do not believe I'm still going to be working at Sega making games, as a gamer, I'll definitely be wanting to play their experiences."

If you're looking to pick up a Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-order once they go live later this week, then you'll need a console to play it on. If you're currently sticking with a last-generation system like the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, then you'll need to upgrade in order to play.

• Shop more early Prime Day deals at Amazon US

With no word of a port yet, PC gamers will also need to get their hands on a system if they want to play day one. Luckily, the Amazon Prime Day deals and other retailer sales events make now a fantastic time to pick up a console.

In the US, for example, you can buy a PlayStation 5 Slim with some exclusive Fortnite content for lower than its regular price, while UK shoppers can net a free copy of Ghost of Yotei with a discounted limited edition bundle.

US console deals and bundles

UK console deals and bundles

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

Upgrading any area of one's gaming setup is something I can always get behind, and regardless of budget, need, desire, or platform, I'm often able to find recommendations across all kinds of gear.

Shop more early Prime Day deals at Amazon US

However, audiophile or high-end gaming headsets is one of my favourite areas in which to delve and recommend. We've seen a surge of new products in recent years either targeting the audiophile market directly or at least the audiophile-adjacent, premium and high-end part of the spectrum. As such, there's now a good few products to choose from nowadays.

But there's only a few I recommend over the others. Each offers something slightly different, but all are excellent and are my personal picks for the best audiophile gaming headsets going right now. They're so good, they justify their price tag even when at full price, I believe, too. So if you're looking to enhance your gaming audio ahead of GTA 6 pre-orders starting this Thursday, then check out my recommendations below.

Planar-magnetic drivers FTW

For me, the Audeze Maxwell 2 is the greatest-sounding gaming headset money can buy right now. It is now my default go-to set of cups for all gaming, no matter the genre or type of game I'm playing, and I absolutely love it.

At the core of the headset are its 90mm planar magnetic drivers, which are frankly absurd. I am a big fan of a lot of brands' default audio quality, but I have never had better audio out of the box than the Maxwell 2's. It's the best going right now, and literally can't speak highly enough about it.

The science and philosophy of Audeze really make it exquisite for those looking to get better audio for single-player games, stemming from the company's history in making premium headphones for music and media. The reality is that it is still brilliant for multiplayer games, and you also get some flexibility via the Audeze app for tweaking your own EQ settings if you need to.

There are very few chinks in the armor, but some things to be aware of might be its good but unspectacular mic, and its overall bulkiness — though I think we are all a bit too scared of headsets that are big and that weigh more than others; it's genuinely OK if a headset weighs a few more ounces or grams, don't worry! I really like the chunky feel and slightly heavier feel of the set myself, and find the set incredibly comfortable.

Otherwise, I simply cannot reiterate this again: if you really want to get the best gaming audio, and something that'll make GTA 6 sing beautifully no matter the scenario, then this is the audiophile gaming headset to buy right now.

An Elite experience

While the Maxwell 2 rules on the driver and audio quality front, if you're looking for an audiophile-level, premium headset that offers a complete solution and all the bells and whistles — along with some excellent audio, of course — that you need from a headset on any platform, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite is worth considering.

It's pricey, I know, but as I said in my review, it really is the best gaming headset I've ever tested. It simply offers it all in one truly excellent package, from audio quality and versatility — you can use it across every platform, simultaneously — to feature set, build quality, comfort, and microphone performance — literally everything.

If you really want one high-grade headset to rule them all while offering audiophile-level gaming audio, then this is the upgrade to make this year, ahead of GTA 6.

It's an old one, but a great one

The PC38X is a wonderful wired audiophile-level headset which I have loved using on both PC and PS5. It sounds fantastic, and is a pretty no-nonsense gaming headset with genuine pedigree behind it.

You might see it styled as Drop + Epos PC38X or just a Drop PC38X, but whichever title you see it under, I really recommend this as a wired set for anyone who wants to keep things simple and get a brilliant-sounding open-backed set of audio givers.

It is a bit old now, but you know what they say: class and quality endures (or something like that. Now, there is one caveat with this headset, and one that is directly related to it being a slightly older model: its availability is a bit spotty. Our automatic price-finding tool below should surface the headset, however, and I have seen it with my own eyes at Amazon US and Amazon UK this week.

However, if you are looking for some wired audiophile gaming headset alternatives to the PC38X if it's not available in your region, then I have some picks for you too.

The Audeze LCD-GX is an open-back premium set of headphones that have been built for gaming. Channeling all that planar magnetic goodness that the brand is known for, these are a seriously high-end set of cups. The massive 106mm drivers pack an almighty punch and offer immense detail, while it comes with a mic, so it's a genuine wired headset option.

The Sennheiser HD 550s are one of my favorite sets of headphones from recent years, and while they may appear as another headphone offering from Sennheiser, these are definitely targeted at gamers who want higher quality audio. You'll need to buy a mic attachment separately to elevate it to a full gaming headset offering.

The Asus ROG Kithara is another option, and is a recent release into the audiophile market. Developed with HiFiMan, this headset has huge 100mm planar-magnetic drivers (not too dissimilar to the Maxwell 2), an open-backed design, and sounds wonderful.

And while not an audiophile gaming headset in the truest sense, per se, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro wired gaming headset is an excellent option for those looking for a complete wired gaming headset experience, with brilliant audio and all the features to boot.

After just a few minutes, Alien: Isolation 2 had me feeling that very particular sense of tension and stress that only the first game could create — and I’m, perhaps strangely, incredibly excited for more.

Horror games aren’t usually my bag, but my love for franchises and series like Alien or Dead Space will always trump my fear of scares and fuel my interest in soaking up everything that games have to offer in such universes.

And that’s the case with Alien: Isolation 2. It’s shaping up to be an absolutely belting sequel, channeling all that Creative Assembly executed supremely well with the first game, as well as offering evolutions sure to enhance the experience. But there is still one thing that I really wish I’d seen in my preview that will transform this game in comparison to the last.

Familiar foe, familiar feeling

Taking place right at the beginning of the game, my preview saw me take control of a new protagonist, Blake, travelling in a rover on a dark and dingy planet right on the cusp of a storm.

The weather does indeed turn, and we step out of our buggy to investigate a crashed ship that fans of the first game will instantly recognise. Ignoring the advice of our pals, our character climbs aboard the small ship and proceeds to investigate and enter.

From here, we’ve all seen this movie before. Power needs to be booted back on, but, of course, it allows something to escape containment. Soon after, we get a familiar, but fantastic and hold-your-breath moment as the Xenomorph is introduced. I’m immediately transported back into the shoes of Ripley from the first game, and return to form, looking for maintenance hatches, crawling between desks, and trying to pick up anything of use, while my heart rate climbs, thundering on my chest, and I put all the effort I can into my peripheral vision.

It's here that the very particular, almost unique mix of tension, stress, and fear that the first Alien: Isolation game oozes becomes tangible to me. It’s one of the most interesting and impactful feelings a game has ever had on me, and it’s back by the bucketload as I try and consider all the routes open to me to slowly and stealthily make my way back to the exit hatch while avoiding the perfect predator. Spoilers: my go-to approach of relying on maintenance tunnels, vents, and desks did not work.

While working my way through the demo, the retro-futuristic aesthetic is once again right at the forefront of the game, and there’s been a colossal leap forward in terms of fidelity and detail and execution. Combine this with some excellent atmospheric and environmental design in the exterior environment, as we say in the Summer Game Fest 2026 trailer, and this is going to be a visual treat.

However, as exceptional as all this is — and it really is — it’s still somewhat familiar territory to the first game, and has me almost wishing to see something brand new.

Inside out

It turns out that brand new element is the great outdoors. Alien: Isolation 2 is promising outdoor environments for the Xenomorph to now hunt players down in. It’s new territory for the franchise, as far as I can remember, and as such, is an extremely exciting (and terrifying) prospect.

How will the Xeno traverse the landscape? You have to assume that climbing and shooting through tunnels or caves isn’t going to be a problem, but how will it also decide where to go? How will it learn and develop from our actions in the open environment? Can the Xeno do it on a rainy Tuesday night in the dark in an unfamiliar place? (To somewhat use a UK football phrase.)

There’s just so much unknown here for Alien: Isolation 2, and with it being such a key evolution of the formula, I’m almost annoyed at Creative Assembly for not letting me get a look at it…

Equally, I’m dead keen to know how we might turn the open areas to our advantage. Are we going to be able to turn the tide at all given the scale of space the Xeno has to cover, or are we going to be in just as much trouble?

I can’t imagine there being a load of resources available in the landscape, and a human obviously has no chance in a foot race across a field or through a forest. My gut instinct is that it will feel relentlessly one-sided again — and I can’t wait to dive back in.

Alien: Isolation 2 doesn't yet have a release date but will be coming to PS5, Xbox Series X and Series, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 game director Chris Cross says the game will have "massive amounts of customization"
• The new Specialist class can be customized to become almost like a multiclass
• Cross says players can build a team that is just four medics

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 will feature "massive amounts of customization" across all available classes, including the brand-new endgame Specialist class.

That's according to game director Chris Cross, who told TechRadar Gaming in an interview at Summer Game Fest 2026 that besides the new addition of four-player co-op, "there are so many different ways to put together" the highly customizable Specialist class, which also has its own progression system.

"Basically, you can end up with like really awesome multiclass," he said, adding as an example, "It's like a Marauder and a Gunslinger."

The game will also introduce four new elemental damage types, fire, cyro, electric, and piercing, as well as interchangeable weapon attachments, which can be used to combat the three "expanded" enemy factions, Xenomorphs, Pathogen horrors, and Security Synths, which will all have their own "weaknesses and strengths versus the different damage types."

Players can also build their fireteam however they like, with Cross confirming that squads can "take four medics in and they're not going to be the same."

"There's enough customization that you can take four medics in, and they'll all be different," he said, "It's mostly weapon synergy, damage synergy, ability synergy. It's funny, you would think that four medics are not as offensively capable, but actually, you can take a poison medic and drop off a med station that puts poison out; it's almost a cheat code, because almost everybody's running at overclocked help. It's totally awesome."

Cross added, "Basically, there's almost an infinite amount of ways to coordinate with your buds, on how you want to kit up as a group...You could customize to your heart's content."

Managing your loadout will also become more important as players reach greater difficulties because friendly fire will be turned on, which in turn makes coordination with their squad vital.

For this reason, Cross explained that the crouch ability "becomes very important in the higher difficulties."

"Crouch seems so trivial, but it's actually one of the more important things," he said. The director also hinted at Horde mode, which has been "revamped" since the first game, but is keeping some additional features secret for the time being.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

• Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 director Chris Cross confirms that the sequel won't be a continuation of the first game
• He says the sequel is a "self-contained" story
• Cross reveals that Cold Iron worked closely with 20th Century Studios to ensure it matched the Alien lore

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 creators Cold Iron Studios worked closely with 20th Century Studios to ensure the game respected the Alien franchise lore.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, where we went hands-on with the upcoming co-operative shooter, game director Chris Cross discussed the game's story and confirmed that it won't be a continuation of its predecessor.

"It's its own story. It's self-contained," he said, but revealed that it "does feature return characters."

Cross went on to say that Cold Iron actually worked closely with 20th Century Studios to make sure that Fireteam Elite 2's story followed the Alien lore correctly.

"There's a linear mystery that you're uncovering as you're going here," he said, "and I will say that it is all like we worked very close[ly] with 20th Century to make sure that we were hitting the lore correctly and doing things in our story that are exciting for Alien fanatics."

The director also hinted at what players can expect, including a prologue mission that will introduce new and returning fans to the game, then four locations that the studio is calling "biomes" with different environmental features, such as a planet-side surface colony and a ship.

The game will also feature an underground area beneath the colony, where players will encounter something Cross wanted to simply describe as "Alien-esque"... which sounds creepy.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC. It will also feature four-player co-op, which Cross explained was added because it was "highly-requested" and it "works better in a PVE game."

• Gears of War: E-Day creative director Matt Searcy says the game "makes a lot of sense" as an Xbox exclusive
• He confirms that The Coalition "never talked about this coming to PS5"
• Meanwhile, two developers for Halo: Campaign Evolved and Fable are "excited" about branching out to multiple platforms

Xbox games coming to other platforms has been an intriguing concept and process to witness from the outside. There have been ebbs and flows, reports of this and that, and recently an interesting move back to console exclusivity for two titles, as per that recent Xbox Games Showcase earlier in June.

We had the chance to speak to multiple Xbox Game Studios teams at an event adjacent to this year's Summer Game Fest 2026 after the showcase had streamed and found that there was a stark difference of opinion between some of the developers on being an Xbox exclusive or embracing being on multiple rival platforms.

For example, the Coalition creative director Matt Searcy believes making Gears of War: E-Day an Xbox exclusive was the best decision — something not all Xbox Game Studios teams are aligned on.

According to Searcy, it feels right in the case of Gears of War, and the studio never talked about it going to other platforms. "Well, we never talked about it going to PS5; it was announced as an [Xbox] exclusive," Searcy said. "I would say that Gears as an exclusive makes a ton of sense to me, thinking about how tightly [...] Gears has been tied to the Xbox brand [for] its entire life."

He went on to say that, "It's kind of an honor, and I think excitement to be like one of the best Xbox flagship titles. As a developer, of course, it's awesome to have people play our games, but we're Xbox fans."

When asked about missing out on a potential player base and the effect it might have had on hypothetical multiplayer numbers, he went on to say that "we're not too concerned about the size of the audience."

While it's admirable, in a way, that such confidence and sense of ease was exuded by the devs in the face of a smaller player base than some of their contemporary Xbox studios are hoping to get, it does seem a bit of a shame when those other studios will get the games in front of millions more players.

This was clear when we spoke to two other Xbox Game Studio developers in Halo: Campaign Evolved executive producer Damon Conn, and Ralph Fulton, founder and GM of Fable studio, Playground Games. Unlike Searcy, both developers are eager to branch to multiple platforms and are truly excited by it, because it will allow them to reach a wider audience.

"We're excited to put the game [out] and to play it with as many different people as we can," Conn said. "With Halo Campaign Evolved, we have it coming out on more platforms than ever before, and we're going to meet the player where they are."

The executive producer is also looking forward to players trying out cross-play, which he calls "a win for us, just sharing the experience with as many people as possible."

"Halo has always been about coming together and shared experiences and socialising, and this is something that we're really excited about," Conn added.

Meanwhile, Fulton confirmed that he and the team at Playground Games are still committed to bringing Fable to PlayStation 5, alongside Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC, like Halo, and are incredibly excited at the prospect of reaching a larger number of people.

"For us, we look at this as an opportunity to get this game - [in a series] that has been out of circulation for some 15 years - in front of as many fans who want to play it as possible," Fulton said. "We're really excited with the number of people we can bring this game to."

Each game can of course be treated in isolation to some extent, but it is intriguing to see such a contrast and witness such opposing views within the Xbox Game Studios group itself.

Fable has been in development for a very long time, but will officially launch on February 23, 2027, while Halo: Campaign Evolved releases globally on July 28. Gears of War: E-Day arrives on October 6.

• Brand new GTA 6 footage has been released
• The footage shows Vice City at sunset, and fans think it looks "glorious"
• One fan says it "almost looks like real footage"

Rockstar Games has released a brand new look at Vice City in Grand Theft Auto 6.

In case you weren't around when the internet exploded yesterday, the studio finally announced that GTA 6 pre-orders will officially begin on June 25, although we still don't have a price.

The news arrived alongside the official cover art reveal trailer and an updated website featuring new artwork of GTA 6 protagonists Lucia and Jason, as well as a dynamic image on the landing page showcasing Vice City at sunset.

It looks pretty impressive, and the sprawling city looks highly detailed, with helicopters flying overhead and boats sailing across the waterfront.

While the footage is quite literally seconds long, it offers a sneak peek at what players will be able to freely explore when the game arrives later this year, and fans are eating up every single crumb.

"IT LOOKS GLORIOUS!!" said one fan on Reddit. "This is the most realistic and beautiful night shot of VC we have gotten so far. I swear it didn't look this good in previous media."

"Holy s***, this almost looks like real footage," another said.

The new video on the website from r/GTA6

Meanwhile, some fans are suggesting that the footage doesn't look "polished", with one user pointing out the missing ferris wheel reflection in the background.

"Damnit OP JUST DELAYED THE GAME," one fan joked in response, while another said, "Yep game is unplayable."

"It just shows the limitations still with this generation," a fan suggested, "maybe the next gen version will be able to have the reflections in the distance as well."

Others are concerned about how the game will perform on current-gen consoles, considering the graphical fidelity.

"Looks like the raytraced water cuts off at a distance. The pop will be disgusting," one user said.

Following the pre-order and cover reveal announcements, Rockstar also updated its icon and banner on social media to match the game's theme. Now it's pink and purple, instead of the classic yellow fans are familiar with.

GTA 6 will officially launch on November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Series S. A PC release has not yet been announced.

• Upcoming crossover puzzle game Sonic Pico Park is intended to bring Sonic to a wider audience
• It's intended to be "very easy to pick up and play"
• "A lot of people are aware of Sonic the Hedgehog, and it's interesting because not a lot of those people are actually gamers," the head of Sonic Team explained

Announced at Summer Game Fest 2026, Sonic Pico Park is an upcoming crossover game that combines the casual puzzling of Pico Park with the platforming chaos of Sonic the Hedgehog.

A few days after the reveal, I chatted to Pico Park president Shintarou Shimazu and Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka about the unlikely pairing, which the developers hope will help bring the character to a wider audience.

"We said, 'Hey, we're really popular in China, but a lot of people in the West don't really know Pico Park. How can we make a game format that's going to really reach out to a broader audience of people?'" Shimazu reveals.

He explains that the original designer of Pico Park, Shunsuke Miyake, used to work at Sega. "Let's see if we can collaborate with Sonic, who's really strong in the West, and put them together and make something that everyone around the world is going to be really interested in playing," he said.

Iizuka went on to say that, in addition to appealing to complete Sonic newcomers, he hopes that Sonic Pico Park will resonate with fans of the character that might not enjoy the traditional platformer games.

"We have Sonic in movies, we have Sonic in Netflix animated shows, we have games coming out. There's lots of different ways that people can experience and enjoy Sonic," he explains.

"A lot of people are aware of Sonic the Hedgehog, and it's interesting because not a lot of those people are actually gamers, but they're experiencing Sonic. Sonic Pico Park is one of these games that we think is perfect for those non-gamers.

"It's going to be very easy to pick up and play, and have a lot of fun with, and it's good to get them to experience Sonic if they just watched the movies, but haven't played the games."

"You don't need to be super hardcore to be good at this one," Shimazu says. "A lot of people can play and enjoy the experience. They designed the game for even up to eight people to be playing all at the same time, whether you have eight people in the room, or you're going online."

Sonic Pico Park is expected to release later this year.

• Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 game director Chris Cross says the sequel will have four-player co-op because it was "highly requested" and it "just feels better"
• Cross says four players also comes with "challenges"
• Balancing the "attention economy" is "basically a constant challenge for us"

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 game director Chris Cross has explained why Cold Iron Studios decided to make the sequel four-player co-op, but acknowledged that it came with some obstacles during development.

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, Cross said one of the "challenges" of making the jump to four-player was balancing the "attention economy" and the multitude of assets and effects on screen at the same time.

"There's four times the amount of things that you need to put on screen," he said, "like more enemies and such, because if everybody focuses fires on something, it'll melt, [so] managing enough targets and distractions for the team is basically a constant challenge for us."

Fireteam Elite was two-player, but when asked why the team decided on making the successor four-player instead of three-player, as you would typically find in other online co-op shooters, Cross revealed that it was for two reasons. One, it was "highly requested" by fans, and two, "four works better in a PVE game because you can do two and two."

"You can have even more combinatory-like abilities, mixing and matching, but also it kind of harkens back to like four-player split screen, right? Like it feels good to have co-op before."

Cross continued, saying, "The thing for us, though, is if you go three and one person splits off, they would end up being a liability. Whereas, [with four players] you can do two and two now. But another thing, though, is the three-person sort of convention I kind of felt like came from battle royale games, like trios [in] Apex Legends, Fortnite, etc.

"It feels like a good, a good mix for a solitary unit, but I just like four, [it] just feels better... A four-person rifle team feels good having four slots with five classes and a possible six. The opportunities that mix and match are so much greater than just three."

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 doesn't have a release date yet, but it will launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

• 007 First Light game director Hakan Abrak says the game was always planned as an origin story
• He says the team pitched to MGM and had ideas for a young Bond story that was a "non-negotiable"
• He adds that there were weekly feedback meetings, but IO was always in charge of the story

IO Interactive has confirmed that 007 First Light was always intended to be a young James Bond story, and it collaborated frequently with the franchise owner, Amazon MGM Studios.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at an event adjacent to Summer Game Fest 2026, game director Hakan Abrak discussed the conceptual phase of the game and confirmed that First Light was "always supposed to be a young Bond story," and the pitching process to MGM and Bond IP co-owners Barbara Broccolo and Michael G. Wilson was "massively intimidating."

Abrak recalled the pitching process being in a room decked in old books from James Bond novelist Ian Fleming, a grand piano, and "the atmosphere of history was so thick you could just cut through it."

When he and other IO team members went in to pitch, he remembered the MGM heads came into the room and were "completely silent" before telling the developers to go ahead and pitch.

"We pitch the story, we pitch our approach, and why this would be different from other Bond games," Abrak said. "[They were] very silent, and then Barbara just says, after a while, stonefaced just says, 'I quite like it,' and then the room just erupted right after; [they said] 'These guys are so cool, like they didn't really get it, I was like keeping my cool and whatnot, but deep inside I was like 'phew' that was something."

The game director did note that he thought IO's initial pitch was "a bit ballsy" and the team had lots of ideas of introducing aspects from Ian Fleming novels, like James Bond's scar, and create a young coming-of-age story "where it's not like he has figured everything out."

Abrak said the team didn't want to recreate a "perfect digital version of Daniel Craig, I love Daniel Craig, but it just wanted to make something that feels original."

"More importantly, what we also told them was that we want to go for the gamers, we want to create a Bond for the gamers," he said, explaining that some young gamers might not have a familiar attachment to Bond like the older generation.

"We [wanted] to take that risk and introduce a fresh Bond for the gamers," he said, "We want to make a Bond for the gamers, not the gamification of a movie. It's difficult [to go there] with non-negotiables, but this was a non-negotiable for us. If we did this, we needed to get this freedom for this approach. So, this was very, very clear from the get-go."

While IO had creative control over the story, Abrak said there was input from MGM, as well as several sessions of casting before Patrick Gibson was cast as Bond. The team also had weekly meetings with Eon Productions, the British film production company that primarily produced the Bond film series.

"Although the story was written by IO and delivered by us, we got a lot of feedback," he said. "I think we had some affinity, and we had something to start with, like with the Danish dark humor, dry humor, but getting the British humor right, there [was] still some way to go.

"It's been massively helpful, and we're really into it, and I think for the younger generation of Eon creators that we had meetings with, and the artwork from the movies, which [was] attached to it as well, it was very, very exciting for them to get to do, because they were actually making a new one [Bond] from the ground up.

"It was a collaboration; they were very much involved, but it was always IO, doing the story, doing the characters and things, and then getting feedback and working closely."

007 First Light is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is slated to launch sometime this year.

• Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka says that working on the franchise is "a lot of pressure"
• He thinks he is "going to continue to enjoy making Sonic games" for the foreseeable future
• The comments come as the franchise celebrates its 35th anniversary

At Summer Game Fest 2026, I had the chance to chat with Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka in a wide-ranging interview that touches on everything from the newly revealed Sonic Pico Park to his thoughts on the current position of the franchise as a whole.

Right now the blue blur is celebrating its 35th anniversary, which kicked off in January this year, and the series is in a very good spot. The most recent games, racing spinoff Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and the Sonic X Shadow Generations remake, were very well received, and Iizuka seems driven to keep the quality up for the sake of the series' most devoted fans.

"When I started making Sonic games over 30-plus years ago, I didn't really think about [the community]. We were just making games, but the longer I was working on Sonic, and the more games we made, the more we heard from fans who really appreciated the content, who really wanted to know what's coming next," he said.

"We had games like Sonic Generations, which was a game that parents and children could play together, because we had that early group of Sonic fans who were now grown up, and they had children of their own," he added.

"Even now we have a wide range of not only adults playing Sonic games, but we also have children playing Sonic games. We have a huge audience of people who are enjoying the content, which I really appreciate, but it's also a lot of pressure because I don't want to betray them. I don't want to make something that people are not going to feel is true to Sonic."

A big milestone

Iizuka has been working on Sonic games for decades, so I ask how spending such a long time with one series has shaped him and whether he sees himself moving on to anything else.

"It's strange when you say things like that, because when you think about it, I've been making Sonic games and been with Sonic longer than I've been with my own children," he replies.

"I really enjoy getting to be creative for such a great character, and bringing this content to so many great people. And moving forward, I'm going to continue to enjoy making Sonic games."

He added that he 'of course' sees Sonic almost like his own child as well. "Please imagine your child on the screen," he jokes. "I'm really proud."

For the latest on the 35th anniversary celebrations, you can tune in to a special birthday livestream on June 23, 2026 at 9:30 AM PT via the official Sonic the Hedgehog YouTube channel.

• The last-gen version of Grand Theft Auto 5 can now be upgraded to the current-gen for free
• Players on PS4 and Xbox One can now upgrade their game to the PS5 and Xbox Series X and Series S versions
• The upgrade has been made free ahead of the next GTA Online update

Grand Theft Auto 5 fans still playing the last-gen version can now upgrade to current-gen, free of charge.

Rockstar Games announced the upgrade in a new blog post, confirming that those with a copy of the PlayStation 4 or digital Xbox One version of GTA 5 can upgrade to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S versions for free, ahead of the next GTA Online update.

This means players will save roughly $40 compared to if they were to purchase the game for the first time on current-gen.

"Beginning tomorrow, those who own any PS4 version or the digital Xbox One version of Grand Theft Auto 5 will be able to upgrade to the PS5 or Xbox Series X|S versions at no additional cost, and experience the best versions of GTA 5 and GTA Online ahead of the launch of The Kortz Center Heist," the studio said.

"GTA 5 and GTA Online on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S feature vast technical improvements, easy migration of your Story Mode and Online progress, and new features including Hao’s Special Works high-performance vehicles and upgrades, Career Progress rewards, and much more."

These features have already been available for PC for some time, along with additional PC-only features like ambient occlusion, global illumination, ray-traced shadows and reflections, as well as Nvidia DLSS 3, AMD FSR1, and FSR3 support.

In case you missed it, Rockstar has also officially confirmed that pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6 will begin later this month on June 25.

The long-awaited announcement comes from a new trailer, where the studio revealed the game's official cover art and shared new artwork fans can use as their desktop wallpaper.

While we finally know when fans can secure their copies ahead of the game's November 19 launch, there's still no word on how much GTA 6 will cost. However, we'll know within the next seven days.

GTA 6 will be available for PS5 and Xbox Series X and Series S at launch, with no PC version announced just yet.

• Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders will begin later this month
• Rockstar Games shared the game's cover art and confirmed that preorders begin on June 25
• There are still no price details yet

Rockstar Games has officially confirmed that preorders for Grand Theft Auto 6 will begin later this month.

The long-awaited announcement comes from the official cover art reveal trailer, in which the studio said that GTA 6 preorders will begin on June 25 on digital storefronts and at other select retailers.

"Add Grand Theft Auto 6 to your wishlist today on the PlayStation Store or Microsoft Store to get alerted when pre-orders are live," Rockstar said in a blog post.

This also means Rockstar has confirmed that the game won't be coming to PC at launch, and will only be available for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S.

While we finally know when fans can secure their copies ahead of the game's November 19 launch, there's still no word on how much GTA 6 will cost.

Prices are sure to be revealed within the next seven days. Many believe the game could cost as much as $100, but analysts have suggested that a $70 price would generate more money for Rockstar.

Following a six-month delay, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick suggested that GTA 6 is more than a year behind schedule.

He was also recently asked why the game has taken so long to come out, he explained: "The team at Rockstar really does seek to do something that’s never been done before. That’s really hard, and it takes a long time."

• IO Interactive says 007 First Light's upcoming story expansion is "awesome"
• The principal level designer Mattias Engström says fans are "starting to expect" post-launch content from IO Interactive games
• Lead environment artist Hilde Sunde says the positive reception has "been amazing"

IO Interactive has teased 007 First Light's upcoming post-launch content following the game's "unreal" reception.

Speaking with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026 following the announcement of a brand-new story expansion, principal level designer Mattias Engström and lead environment artist Hilde Sunde discussed working on IO games long after their release, such as Hitman 3 and, in this case, First Light.

According to Engström, getting to create new content for players is "very cool because it's very rewarding for our players," and is something IO is now well known for, unlike other studios that ship their game with no further content updates.

"It doesn't just stop," he said, "it's not the one and done, right? So, adding more content for our fans is very cool. I think it's also something you're starting to expect from IOI, right?"

"It's kind of in our DNA to do that type of stuff and also keeping the players happy," Sunde added. "In Bond, we also have a lot of replayability. So, if you play through it one time, you could do it very differently the next time and try different ways and play it again."

"Also, IO is a pretty big company," continued Engström. "We can have people moving around and going to other projects, and some people who may not have worked on Bond before can get going and bring in fresh new ideas and whatnot."

Engström went on to tease the post-launch content, saying it will be "awesome" and "we want the players to come back, and we want to create more content."

007 First Light was a success with critics and players alike, selling 1.5 million within its first 24 hours before hitting 2.7 million copies worldwide in its first week across all platforms.

Sunde recalled the emotional response she and the team had when the reviews came in, touching on what it was like to hear the reception after working on First Light for six years out of the game's seven-year development cycle.

"A lot of blood, sweat, and tears have gone into this," the developer said. "We really wanted to nail the Bond fantasy and get everything right, and right up until release, when you have worked on a game for that long ride, and you're gonna ship something that is very dear to I think [Bond] fans, you really want to get it right.

"And then when we got the reviews in, there people were crying, we were hugging each other, we were like it was unreal. I was in shock. I'm still in shock. I mean, I knew the game was good, but you're not prepared for it. It just feels so good for everybody who has worked so hard on this at IOI and all the other people we have collaborated with on this.

"It's just been amazing. I still don't believe it. I'm pitching my arm."

007 First Light is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is slated to launch sometime this year.

• Actor Alastair Mackenzie says the scene in which his character, Q, teaches Bond to tie a bow tie was a "key moment"
• He says it was a "very little special relationship moment"
• Mackenzie adds that the stories like that of 007 First Light are all about "humanity"

The actors behind 007 First Light's supporting cast have revealed the most memorable moments between their characters and James Bond.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at an event adjacent to Summer Game Fest 2026, the cast of IO Interactive's Bond game, including Alastair Mackenzie, Priyanga Burford, Lennie James, and Noémie Nakai, sat down to discuss the filming process and how they brought their characters to life.

First Light is a cinematic action-adventure game and a prequel origin story for Bond, so there are plenty of moments where he interacts and grows his relationships with the cast.

Mackenzie, who plays Q, recalls the scene in Vietnam where Bond is struggling to tie his own bow tie before heading off on his mission, and Q helps him in an almost paternal way. It's a lovely moment, and one the actor himself found the most memorable.

"I had to teach him how to tie a bow tie, which I mean, I don't know if you ever tried, but it's impossible," Mackenzie said. "It's a really nice moment between Bond and Q, where he presents him with his tie, and he doesn't know what the f*** to do, so he teaches him how to tie [it]. So that was a little key for me; that's very, very little special relationship moment."

Burford, who plays M, also touched on a "beautiful" moment with reluctant allies Bond and John Greenway early on in the story that demonstrated Bond's character development.

"For me, there was one [scene] where Bond is really angry with Greenway, and he wants to kick the whole thing down and finish it," she said. "And there's a beautiful bit where it's sort of teaching someone how to handle their emotions and how to regulate and step out of an emotional state as a young person might do; someone impulsive who gives in to their anger and looks at the situation from a bit of a wider perspective.

"Instead of getting angry, what can this guy teach you? What do you want them to pick and try and think about it that way. And that, for me, was a good clue about what this dynamic was, and [what] M's approach was."

Mackenzie added that these stories are all about "humanity" and something he believes isn't shown very often in gaming.

"These are all human interactions that make this game," he said. "There's a sort of visceral nature to it, where you're connecting on a human level, which I think doesn't happen in every game, does it? I mean, it's not something that is normal in gaming stories."

007 First Light is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is expected to launch later this year.

• The 007 First Light cast have shared their Bond movie recommendations
• Lennie James picked On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and thinks George Lazenby "nailed Bond"
• Priyanga Burford thinks players should watch Skyfall after finishing the game because "You get the beginning and the beginning of the end"

The cast of 007 First Light has shared their personal picks for which Bond movies players should watch as a companion to the game.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at an event adjacent to Summer Game Fest 2026, where actors Alastair Mackenzie, Priyanga Burford, Lennie James, and Noémie Nakai, along with game director Martin Emborg, discussed IO Interactive's newest release, they were asked to recommend what Bond movies they'd recommend to players to watch before, after, or alongside First Light.

"That's kind of like saying, what's your favorite Bond movie, isn't it?" joked Q actor Mackenzie, before James, who plays John Greenway, decided on the 1969 flick starring George Lazenby, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

"It's old school, but weirdly, even though he only did it once, I think Lazenby nailed Bond in that, until Daniel [Craig], actually, it was a unique telling of a Bond adventure."

Burford, the actress behind M, went with Skyfall, one of the most popular films in Craig's 007 series.

"I'm going to go really obvious and say play the game, and then watch Skyfall. You get the beginning and the beginning of the end," she said.

Emborg agreed with Burford's recommendation, but said, "There's something really interesting in watching No Time to Die, and then playing this game."

"I really like the contrast of [what] he says in Skyfall: 'Well, everyone needs a hobby. Well, what's yours? Resurrection.' And so there's something meeting Bond at the very end, and then seeing him step out of the ocean, a young man. I think there's something quite moving."

Mackenzie added that he "loved every Bond movie" growing up, "even the ones that we look back on now, say they aren't great." However, he loves The Man with the Golden Gun for its locations.

"All of that kind of affected my entire life, really," he said. "I'm thinking, I sort of identify that as being paradise."

Emborg continued, saying it's a difficult question because there are 25 movies and compared it to deciding one's favorite type of music or deciding how you feel depending on the occasion.

"It is really like, what do you feel like today? It's like, what's your favorite type of music? It's like that depends. Did I just break up with someone? That's going to change it."

007 First Light is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version will launch later this year.

This article contains descriptions of sexual themes and graphic violence. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival received ESRB Mature and PEGI 18 ratings, and is intended for adult audiences.

I spent roughly twenty minutes with upcoming survival horror game Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival and in that brief time managed to witness a graphic sex scene (that the demo cold-opens on, no less), the protagonist piercing some nipples, and the deaths of legions of leather-clad enemies that seemed to enjoy being fatally bludgeoned a little too much.

In other words, it’s an unapologetically freaky game that relishes in extreme violence, something you’ll already know if you’ve glimpsed the brutal new release date trailer.

Set 20 years after the start of the equally bloody cult classic Hellraiser horror film series, Revival is an all-new story that was written in collaboration with original franchise creator Clive Barker that seems to capture its essence perfectly.

Welcome to the club

It follows protagonist Aiden Lynch, a gang member who stumbles upon the Genesis Configuration. This is a mysterious puzzle box that’s, unbeknownst to him, somehow connected to the sinister dimension of the Cenobites — towering demonic creatures that relish inflicting otherworldly pain (or pleasure) on unsuspecting humans.

Naturally, his girlfriend Sunny’s first instinct seems to have been to take it to the bedroom, where she accidentally summons the Cenobites into the real world while the pair were getting down and dirty. Following a cutscene that lays out some of the premise, my preview begins with Aiden carefully exploring the interior of a labyrinthine BDSM club, its winding corridors filled with red velvet curtains and sofas that you simply couldn’t pay me to touch.

It’s not long before I start running into traditional genre staples: elaborate doors that require specific keys to unlock, safes that have me scouring for codes hidden nearby, and puzzles that have me fishing around my backpack to pick out the right objects in order to progress.

Although my time at the club was brief, there was a surprising amount of combat in what I played — at least more than I initially expected from a survival horror game. I took on rooms full of rabid cultists all decked out in spiky fetish wear, predominantly switching between a pistol and blunt melee weapons.

The gunplay is decent, as you would expect from a seasoned shooter developer like Saber Interactive, and every swing of my bat had a good feeling of weight to it, something that’s rather uncomfortably emphasized by the moans that occasionally escape from foes’ lips just as a dull thud connects.

The Genesis Configuration also has some powerful tricks up its sleeve, including letting you grab flames from open torches so you can toss them for a lethal scorching blast. I soon find a shotgun and submachine gun as well, and realise that Aiden can pull off an impressively nimble slide with a tap of the crouch button that helps you dart around incoming gunfire.

Just as I was really starting to rack up the kills, I was thrust into a brisk walk through a nightmarish vision of Aiden’s home, interspersed with cutscenes showing him doing the deed with Sunny and dosing up on drugs before everything hit the fan.

After a few laps, I’m walking in on what looks like the girlfriend’s twisted corpse, gagged and impaled on spikes as blood runs from her closed eyes like tears and her organs spill onto the floor. Delightful.

Throw in my brief diversion to a more puzzle-focused section set in the Cenobyte’s twisted world, which had me further manipulating the magic cube in one hand in order to rotate rooms full of platforms, and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how the whole game will unfold.

It all feels very Hellraiser, and this little taste of depravity certainly left me eager to see just how far Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival will go when it comes to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC on October 8, 2026.

• Xbox Game Studios CEO Craig Duncan and chief of staff Louise O'Connor are stepping down from their roles
• Their departures come amid reports of mass job cuts at Xbox
• The news also follows reports of several studio closures, including Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Double Fine

Xbox Game Studios CEO Craig Duncan is reportedly stepping down from his position this week after less than two years in the role.

That's according to The Game Business, which claims that Duncan's chief of staff, Louise O'Connor, is also leaving the company, less than a year after joining.

Duncan accepted the role in 2024 after the previous boss, Alan Hartman, retired, but has been part of Xbox since 2011 and was the head of Microsoft's Sea of Thieves studio, Rare, for 14 years.

His role as CEO meant he oversaw many Xbox-owned studios, such as Rare, as well as Halo Studios, The Coalition, Flight Sim, Turn 10, Playground Games, Obsidian, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, The Initiative, Double Fine, InXile, Undead Labs, and more.

Meanwhile, O'Connor joined Rare in 1999 as an animator of the Nintendo 64 game Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but left the studio in 2025 after the cancellation of Everwild, before becoming the chief of staff in September last year.

The pair's departure from Xbox comes after Bloomberg reported that CEO Asha Sharma is considering mass job cuts after she and chief content officer Matt Booty outline a new "Xbox reset."

The news also follows new reports that Microsoft is shuttering several award-winning studios, including Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, the maker of South of Midnight, and Psychonauts studio, Double Fine.

Employees at Ninja Theory, which just announced its new game Senua at the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, were reportedly told about the closure on June 15 and told The Verge that they're hoping to find a new buyer.

Bloomberg and Kotaku first reported the closures of Compulsion Games and Double Fine, which are in "active negotiations" about spinning off.

Sharma has been CEO for just over 100 days, and in that time has reformed "Microsoft Gaming" back into "Xbox" and reiterated her plan to "return to Xbox" by taking the brand back to its roots.

At the Xbox Games Showcase, Sharma announced that Gears of War: E-Day will be an Xbox console exclusive, along with Clockwork Revolution.

• Lara Croft's new actress, Alix Wilton Regan, says her version of the character isn't "overtly sexualized"
• Wilton Regan says Lara is "objectively gorgeous" without it being "dependent on a man's gaze"
• She says modernized Lara Croft "unapologetic" and "completely self-possessed"

Alix Wilton Regan, the actress behind the new Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, has explained how her "modernized" version of the beloved character differs from iterations that have come before.

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, Wilton Regan talked at length about her portrayal of the beloved character in Crystal Dynamics' upcoming title, calling her version of Lara someone who is not "overtly sexualized" for the sake of the male gaze, but beautiful because that's who she is.

"Our version of Lara, what I love about this version of Lara, is she is sassy, charismatic, stunning, objectively gorgeous, and completely self-possessed as a woman without being overtly sexualized, and that's something that myself and a lot of the animation team have talked about at length," she began.

"She is attractive simply because that is who she is as a woman, without apology, without it being dependent on a man's gaze, and I actually think that's a really attractive thing to play as a male player and a female player, and everyone else in between.

"That's the feedback that we have gotten from people on the animation team, and so on and so forth. And, you know, her proportions are still remarkable. They just look more realistic now."

Wilton Regan touched on what her version of a "modernized" Lara Croft looks like in Legacy Atlantis, likening her to an evolved version of the character that has existed previously.

"Modernized Lara Croft is cool, charismatic, confident, unapologetic, completely self-possessed, rises to a challenge without her emotions rising at the same time, which is quite an interesting differentiation, I would say," she said.

"Supremely physically capable, of course, that has to be stated," the actress added. "She is supremely physically capable and highly intelligent."

In the same interview, Wilton Regan revealed that her favorite "favorite" movie in the franchise is the original 2001 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie, and that Crystal Dynamics used a lot of Jolie's scenes for her auditions.

"They used a lot of those scenes for my callbacks when I was auditioning, because Angelina Jolie encapsulates Lara's charisma, confidence, sassiness, and that was something that the creators at Crystal Dynamics really wanted to capture as we move forward into a new era of Tomb Raider," Wilton Regan said.

You'll be able to play Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis when it launches on February 27, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has reaffirmed Grand Theft Auto 6's release date
• He says the game will launch on November 19
• He adds that Rockstar is seeking to "do something that’s never been done before,"

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has once again confirmed Grand Theft Auto 6's release date, so it seems like fans shouldn't worry about further delays.

Speaking in a street interview with the popular TikTok account The School of Hard Knocks (via GameSpot), Zelnick was asked about his business before touching on GTA 6.

When asked when the highly anticipated game will come out, the CEO reaffirmed that GTA 6 will launch on November 19 this year. But why is it taking so long to come out, 13 years after GTA 5 to be exact?

According to Zelnick, "The team at Rockstar really does seek to do something that’s never been done before. That’s really hard, and it takes a long time."

The CEO added that Take-Two earned $6.7 billion in revenue last year alone, and this year it's expected to hit $8 billion, likely due to GTA 6's upcoming release and its estimated sales of 25 million copies on day one.

He then offered some business advice, saying that people should "never compromise your integrity. It's the only thing you have," and they have to stick to their word "unquestionably."

"I have flaws. There was a time I acted in a way that wasn’t consistent with my views about integrity in business. It hurt me really badly, and I learned a powerful lesson. Never do that," Zelnick said.

He added, "I think everyone is looking for an overnight success. My experience is that the only overnight successes are someone else’s. Everything worth doing is hard and takes a long time," before offering some career advice.

"People should chase the intersection of what they’re good at and what they like to do with emphasis on what you’re good at," he said. "Do that thing and the world will probably open up to you."

Despite holding firm to the game's new release date following a six-month delay, Zelnick recently suggested that GTA 6 is more than a year behind schedule.

He also said marketing for the game will kick off soon, which could mean the long-awaited third trailer could finally drop sometime this summer.

The Remedy universe is something special. So special that it feels like it has its own laws of physics; its own weirdness and strangeness; its own outrageous enemies and weapons; and definitely its own level of cool.

After three hours or so with Control Resonant earlier this month at a Summer Games Fest 2026-adjacent preview event, I can safely say that all of the above is back in extremely large quantities.

Control Resonant is shaping up to be one heck of a sequel, and all the layers from Remedy’s first stab at melee combat, the positively weird vibes, the expanded story of The Hiss and Jess and Dylan — all in much-larger open-ended environments — have me incredibly excited for its release later this year.

The perfect setting

My preview put me straight in the boots of Dylan Faden (brother of original Control protagonist Jess) inside The Oldest House, where (in shock news) something Hiss-y and terrible has happened again.

However, this time, rather than entering The Oldest House from the exterior as in the first Control game, Dylan needs to find his way out to the streets of Manhattan to pursue The Hiss, who are now on the loose. The inversion of the siblings’ journeys feels intentional, and thrusts Dylan out into the much more open-ended city streets, which is a nice step up from the strictly interior environments of its predecessor.

Hearing some familiar names on the airwaves and while in conversation with others, and exploring the paranatural streets, trying to find out what’s going on and why the Hiss are flooding through the city is a premise which already has its hooks in me, and anyone who found the weirdness of Jesse’s narrative will be intrigued from the off. Jesse herself is present, but communication between the two characters isn’t as clear as it can be, almost like it's taking place across different planes…

What makes the premise even more gripping, though, is, indeed, this embracing of more open areas and bigger, more expansive spaces. These demand to be explored and make for a satisfying contrast from The Older House and its more linear spatial structure.

I only saw one open area as part of my preview, but it already proved to me that such areas are superb for exploration — you’ll find extra missions, bounties, towers to hack into to reveal map areas, and more.

They also provide the opportunity to really get to grips and experiment with all of Dylan’s moves, tools, weapons, abilities and more, while mastering his movement and the game’s exquisite set of physics.

Transformative tools

Mastering Dylan in this manner is the key to getting the utmost out of the excellent combat, and it feels fantastic when it all comes together.

Once you’ve got used to the way Dylan moves, the game’s physics, the options open to him in terms of traversal and going airborne, and all the weapons and abilities available, you can put together some absolutely unreal, otherworldly, and unbelievably stylish combos to stick it to your foes. There’s definitely been a real emphasis on fluidity and movement in Dylan’s combat, and it’s very successful.

Not only do Dylan’s weapons literally transform between, broadly speaking, heavy and light variants (not unlike the three options available to you at the beginning of Bloodborne, for example), they also completely change the combat on show. This is a huge step up compared to Jesse’s more singular shooting in the first game.

These transformations come in a variety of scales too: the difference between heavy and light attacks, or if you just keep using the light attack, it’ll eventually alter into something different, are at the small end of the spectrum; while breaking down enemies’ guard means you can transform Dylan’s combat moves to become executions or finishers, brutalising The Hiss back to whence they came.

Layer on top of the weapon choices and transformations a host of skills and abilities — such as shielding yourself with a rock wall, throwing rocks telekinetically, a very satisfying ground slam, and a push effect that can inflict a burn status — and even passive effects that can be engaged in combat, and everything is leveled up.

You can also have two sets of three abilities equipped at any given time to mix things up and keep different builds at your fingertips. It really feels like a huge amount to manage, but also a very exciting smorgasbord of delicious Hiss-destroying tools at your disposal.

Mass Hiss-teria

Encounters generally take on a bit of a different structure or hierarchy too when it comes to The Hiss you’ll be facing. First, there’ll be more of them: both in terms of number and variants. Secondly, the small potato enemies will keep on coming until you defeat the elites or leaders in any one encounter — this allows you to both manage the endless smaller enemies so they can drop resources and health, or prioritise each individual fight in an encounter as you see fit.

This even applied to a single funky enemy in the form of a single possessed bus — yes, a transit bus — which had several smaller foes poking out the side of it which needed to be dealt with before Dylan could deal a hammer blow to the top of this weird walking bus to kill it off. Strange but fantastic.

The only minor gripe I had, particularly in one boss fight, was that there is sometimes too much emphasis on airborne combat here. One boss fight, who was always off the ground, and by a distance, could only be attacked if Dylan was airborne, which paved the way for some repetitive moves up and down scenery to get to the required height, do as much damage as one could before falling, and the rinsing and repeating. When the enemy has a large health bar to whittle down, I can imagine that this would get tiresome.

However, aside from the minor gripe, what it all combines into is relentless and often exhilarating. You’re not controlling Dylan; you’re unleashing him.

Going deeper underground

The most memorable experience from my session was in some classic Remedy level design which allowed me to put all the combat excellence to use, while absorbing some brilliant worldbuilding and environment craft in one of the game’s dungeons — a new feature for the series.

This area was accessed at one end of an open area, so after you’ve been slicing and dicing your way through the streets and possibly upgrading yourself and your gear. Heading down a big hole in the ground on a tethered bell to place some receivers at the bottom, I was treated to some grin-inducing Remedy-level design combined with some combat encounters that really made me think and have me utilise all tools and moves available to me.

In one encounter or level within the larger dungeon level, I could traverse every physical plane of what used to be a hotel or residential building; with a tap of my DualSense’s L1, I could change the wall to be my floor, then the ceiling, and so on, constantly rotating to navigate my way towards foes — and to escape them. If this is even a small glimpse into what Control Resonant’s levels might offer, then fans of the first game’s Ashtray Maze are in for a treat.

It’s things like this which make me confident that the world is going to be one of the biggest characters in the game, and, combined with Dylan’s slick and stylish combat and a really cool setting and intriguing story, Control Resonant has all the makings of a hit.

Control Resonant releases on PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC on September 24, 2026.

• Lara Croft's new actress, Alix Wilton Regan, says the first Tomb Raider movie starring Angelina Jolie is her "favorite"
• She reveals that "a lot of those scenes" from the movie were used for her Legacy of Atlantis auditions
• The actress says Crystal Dynamics wanted to capture Angelina Jolie's "charisma, confidence, and sassiness"

The actress behind Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis's new Lara Croft, Alix Wilton Regan, has revealed that her auditions were based on scenes from the first Tomb Raider movie.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, Wilton Regan, who discussed the process of bringing the character to life for the new "reimagining" of the 1996 game, shared that her "favorite" movie in the franchise is the original 2001 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie.

Besides loving Jolie's portrayal of the iconic video game character, the actress also said developer Crystal Dynamics "used a lot of those scenes" for her auditions.

"They used a lot of those scenes for my callbacks when I was auditioning, because Angelina Jolie encapsulates Lara's charisma, confidence, sassiness, and that was something that the creators at Crystal Dynamics really wanted to capture as we move forward into a new era of Tomb Raider," Wilton Regan said.

When asked if players will be able to recognize some of Jolie's vibe from her performance, the actress joked, "I mean, I would never compare myself to Angelina Jolie, but I would love for someone else to compare me to Angeline Jolie."

She went on to outline the audition process, which began in a hot, mountain villa in Italy (very Lara Croft) where she shot three scenes, with two takes each. Afterward, she took a moped down the mountain to a tiny cafe and begged for the Wi-Fi password, then sat for "literally, not figuratively, five hours" getting steadily drunk on Aperol spritz. "Which I love, by the way," she added.

"So it was no chore as I watched these six auditions upload and get sent back to LA to my agents there, and all those were auditions from the game, but they were dummy scenes," Wilton Regan continued.

"Dummy scenes are when they're fake scenes with fake character names, the essence of what the creative team are looking for, and then the next few rounds were a combination of some of the scenes from the Angelina Jolie movies, and also a combination of actual scenes from the video game, where I could see that it said Lara Croft. However, all of the other characters in the scene still had dummy names, so I couldn't work out who Lara was actually talking to."

When she eventually received the news that she got the role, Wilton Regan said she "screamed and burst into tears."

"It was remarkably undignified, but it was very true to what I was feeling emotionally in the moment," she said.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis will launch on February 27, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked has just launched on Nintendo Switch 2
• The port arrives alongside an update that adds a new playable character
• The game is a Dungeons & Dragons themed version of the digital board game Demeo

The smash hit Baldur’s Gate 3 might not be coming to Nintendo Switch 2, but that doesn't mean that you should sleep on some of the other brilliant Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying games (RPGs) out on the platform. In fact, one just launched today in Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked.

As the name would suggest, it's a distinctly D&D take on the existing digital board game Demeo, which has players exploring dungeons and fighting monsters with tactical card-based combat. If you have fond memories of the physical board game HeroQuest, then you’ll feel right at home in Demeo, as it’s almost like a modernised version with a unique deck-builder twist.

Battlemarked adds a whole heap of D&D goodness into the mix, and it’s a match made in heaven. There are eight playable heroes to choose from, including one that’s just been added in time for the Nintendo Switch 2 port, all based on classic D&D classes. There’s a paladin, of course, alongside the expected sorcerer, ranger, fighter, bard, and rogue, all with their own weapons and unique abilities. I’m usually drawn towards playing a versatile bard character, but I’m very keen to unlock the newest addition to the roster: an orc druid who can literally turn into a giant bear.

D&D features like skill checks are present and accounted for throughout the two available story campaigns (more are set to be added in future), but this is by no means a proper adaptation of the ruleset. This is a more casual experience that can be enjoyed with up to three friends regardless of their individual levels of experience with the wider D&D universe.

You don't need to worry if nobody in your friend group has played Demeo before either. There's no prior knowledge of that game needed, as a detailed tutorial explains everything you need to know right when you first start.

The art direction is strong as well, with a presentation that makes it really feel like a board game come to life. The different classes are represented by little miniatures with a set design, though I do appreciate the fact that you can mix up their color schemes or change their in-game names if you’re eager for a little more role-play.

I rarely use the touchscreen on Nintendo Switch 2 in handheld mode, but the support for it in Battlemarked is superb. Dragging your pieces around the board feels totally natural and flicking the die every time you need to roll it is so satisfying that it's become my favorite way to play.

Joy-Con 2 mouse controls are similarly well implemented, with an on-screen cursor appearing automatically and letting you have a similarly enjoyable experience even if you're playing in docked mode on a TV.

This is definitely good thing, as I had one major complaint from my time so far: the regular thumbstick and button controls can be a little fiddly.

You can pick up Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons via the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop for $29.99 / £24.99 / AU$41.99.

It’s also out on PlayStation 5, PC, and Meta Quest with full support for cross-platform multiplayer. If you already own it, there’s no need to worry about missing out on the new content added to the Switch 2 release — it’s coming to other platforms as a free update today.

• Crystal Dynamics confirms Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is connected to its Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy
• Game director Raul Siqueira says the Survivor trilogy is Lara Croft's past
• He adds that Lara is in "her prime" in Legacy of Atlantis

Crystal Dynamics has said that Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is connected to its Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy in terms of both gameplay and narrative.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, game director Raul Siqueira and experience director Jeff Adams discussed what the studio is calling a "reimagining" of the original 1996 game.

While Legacy of Atlantis may look different, featuring a new actress for Lara Croft in Alix Wilton Regan, and even though the story was released 30 years ago, Siqueira confirmed that the Survivor trilogy is linked to the upcoming game.

"Absolutely," Siqueira replied when asked if they're connected, "but I think [because] we've worked on the modern trilogy, it helps that a lot of people working on this game actually did the previous one.

"Jeff [Adams] has a really nice way of saying it, that it kind of connects the two of them together, that Survivor was Lara's past, right?"

Siqueira said the studio planned Legacy of Atlantis "as Lara's future," where she is in "her prime" and has learned lessons from the events of the Survivor trilogy.

"Everything that you saw in the Survivor trilogy helped shape who she is," he explained. "When she was just starting, she was beginning her career; she didn't have the confidence to pull acrobatics or anything like that. Lara, in the future, does — so when you go from a narrative perspective, there's a lot that we pull from [the Survivor trilogy], but even on the gameplay side of things: you probably saw that the T-Rex has a lot of flavor from [those] high-intensity cinematic moments [in the Survivor trilogy].

"I think that there is quite a bit that we go from jumping from the Survivor trilogy in terms of gameplay, but also from the narrative side of it."

Adams added that they've been asked a similar question before, and if Survivor "counts" within the canon story Crystal Dynamics is telling. He reiterated that "Survivor is absolutely Lara's past, but she is not beholden to that now."

"The Lara that you find in Legacy of Atlantis is one who's unfettered by the past, I guess."

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis launches on February 27, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis experience director Jeff Adams has explained why the game is a "reimagining" instead of a remake
• Adams says it allows Crystal Dynamics to capture "iconic moments" and still make new creative decisions
• Some features will be familiar, while others will be brand new, like the new Focus Mode

Crystal Dynamics has explained why it is treating Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis as more of a "reimagining" than a remake or remaster of the classic 1996 game.

That's according to experience director Jeff Adams, who told TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026 that the approach it's taking allows the studio to stick to what fans are familiar with, whether that be story beats and recognizable puzzles, while also building on that groundwork.

"It allows us to still be able to capture these really iconic moments in the original experience and make sure that that feels recognizable and echoic," Adams said, "but it gives us also the creative leeway to say, 'Hey, can we potentially make a slightly different creative decision here and push the game further?'"

Some of those new creative decisions include a reimagined Lara Croft, played by Dragon Age: Inquisition's Alix Wilton Regan, but who will be just as acrobatic as she was 30 years ago, a gorgeous photorealistic world, and a Focus Mode that fills a combat gauge that can grant a slow-motion bullet time ability.

Crystal Dynamics has also applied ideas from its Tomb Raider Survivor Trilogy, like more intuitive traversal and deeper puzzles, while still keeping memorable moments like the T-Rex boss fight.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis was originally slated to launch this year, but will now launch on February 27, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

Wilton Regan also spoke to TechRadar Gaming at SGF as well about playing the iconic character in Legacy of Atlantis, saying she feels "incredibly lucky to be bringing Tomb Raider into this new era," and isn't "worried about having to differentiate, because I feel very confident in the choice that we are going back to core Lara."

"Within the context of classic Lara, my job as the actress portraying her is to leave no Laras behind," Wilton Regan said.

"I'm very keen to understand, acknowledge, and respect everything that's been before across the Tomb Raider franchise, take the most important bits, assimilate them, digest them, and then bring them up to speed for modern audiences."

• Blood Message was a surprising highlight of the Summer Game Fest 2026 live show
• It's a single-player, story-driven upcoming game set in Ancient China
• With tense stealth, brutal combat, and hectic chase sequences it feels like a cinematic as Uncharted

If you tuned into the Summer Game Fest 2026 live show, then you might have spotted a seriously cinematic trailer for a game called Blood Message. Set in Ancient China (the late Tang Dynasty in 848AD to be precise), it's billed as a strictly single-player, story-driven adventure, and so far it really reminds me of Uncharted.

I played a small slice of the game at the show, showcasing a blend of slick stealth and unapologetically brutal combat. The production value of everything that I saw was simply off the charts, with impressively dynamic and fluid animations that could have easily come from a new Naughty Dog release.

My session culminated in a hectic chase that had the protagonist sprinting down corridors as enemies closed in, leaping over collapsing floorboards, dodging incoming arrows, and even vaulting over a table carried by some merchants. It's the kind of antics that you would expect from Nathan Drake, and I very much mean that as a good thing.

I'm not the only one that's impressed either, as the reaction to the most recent trailer has been very positive so far. "The story and voice acting are fire, and the graphics are top-tier as well," wrote one commenter on YouTube. "This could be better than Ghost of Tsushima," another posted.

The story follows a nameless messenger who, alongside his son, is tasked with traveling through a tumultuous land in order to deliver that's key to the fate of his homeland.

The game is being developed by 24 Entertainment, a subsidiary of publishing giant Netease Games. You might recognize the 24 Entertainment name as it's the same studio that created the popular free-to-play martial arts battle royale Naraka: Bladepoint.

This is the first AAA single-player title from the developer and publisher, and looks promising indeed. There's no word on an official release date window, but we do know that it's being developed using Unreal Engine 5, in addition to some proprietary tech, and will launch for PC and consoles.

Summer Game Fest 2026 was jam-packed with exciting announcements, and we spent the whole event live on the ground in Los Angeles, going hands-on and conducting interviews for unparalleled insight into some of the biggest upcoming games and hardware products.

Keep your eyes peeled for a deluge of coverage based on the event in the coming days and weeks, but a few of the things we saw were just too exciting to wait. Our Best of Summer Game Fest 2026 awards gave us the opportunity to celebrate what we loved the most while we were at the show.

We had seven awards to give out at the sole discretion of our editorial team based on what we saw in our preview sessions. Given the breadth of things on show, we decided that there were no specific categories for awards (and the winners here are presented in no particular order), but each of the recipients below should be celebrated as some of the highlights of SGF 2026.

Dashiell Wood, Gaming Editor

Control Resonant

Making a sequel to the critically acclaimed Control was never going to be an easy job, but Remedy looks to have absolutely nailed it. I had an extended hands-on at an SGF-adjacent event and came away hugely impressed and desperate for more.

Playing as Dylan Faden — brother of Control protagonist Jesse Faden — you’re thrown into the paranatural world of Control’s Manhattan setting, but this time exit The Oldest House to fight The Hiss on the streets of a familiar-but-distorted New York. The atmosphere oozes even more cool than the first game, and Remedy’s embracing of larger, open areas, teamed with Dylan’s melee-focused combat and slick movement, are a match made in weird heaven.

There’s plenty of Remedy panache to the level design, with changes to gravity, orientation, and perspective on offer even in the small slither I played. With such flare in the more linear space offsetting the more open areas you can explore, there’s a neat balance to the spaces and places you’ll experience. It makes the perfect setting for another weird story too…

The real star of the show so far, though, is the combat. Much more multi-layered than Jesse’s in the first game, there are so many options, weapon variants, abilities and skills available to you. Team this with a focus on fluidity and dynamic movement in Dylan’s fighting style, and you can create some wild combos and movesets.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Seed

I’ve been writing about games professionally for more than half a decade now, and I can count on one hand the times that a hands-on session has truly blown me away. Unassuming life simulator Seed did exactly that with its incredible ambition and technical complexity. It’s basically The Sims crossed with an MMO on steroids, and has you dropping custom characters (or Seedlings as they’re known in-universe) into a vast shared world with seemingly endless possibilities.

Everything is player-driven. Even a simple object like a chair has to be built by players and is the result of a complex production line, with prices dictated by a fully simulated economy. The jobs that your Seedling can work are all created by others as well, with the chance to create your own if you have the cash and need something done. Want someone to clean up your (player-built) house every couple of days? Simply create a job listing with your requirements and wait for another player to apply.

You don’t have to watch your Seedling toil away at their workplace for hours, which is certainly a relief. If you do want to check in, an in-development companion app (which was also demoed at the show) will let you keep tabs on them while you’re out and about enjoying your own life.

Seed also features one of the best and most natural implementations of large language model (LLM) tech that I’ve seen in a game with its Seedling chat system, which lets you talk directly to your character to discuss how they’re feeling, give them tasks to accomplish, or even influence their social interactions. It feels seriously futuristic and is something that would have been simply impossible a few years ago, showing how AI can be used tastefully to deliver all-new experiences rather than in a misguided attempt to replace artists and developers.

Dashiell Wood, Gaming Editor

Alien: Isolation 2

I’ve never felt so conflicted going into a hands-on preview: I’m a pretty big fan of the Alien franchise and loved Alien: Isolation, but only got through the latter through sheer perseverance. The prospect of playing Alien Isolation 2 knowing I’d be in a high-stress situation wasn’t one I could truly say I was looking forward to.

However, increased heart rate aside, the wait for this follow-up has been worth it. Creative Assembly looks set to deliver a (often literally) breath-taking sequel to one of the best horror games of all time. Taking care to keep within the first game’s key successes but evolve them and adapt them to a new setting and story, Alien: Isolation 2 already looks to be an absolute thrill, and it's worthy of one of our awards this year.

The introduction of an exterior environment for you to play cat and mouse with the Xenomorph looks to be a stroke of genius. Contrasting this with some familiar but terrifying interior scenarios, the evolution of the world is going to go down very well with fans. On top of that, everything looks fantastic and incredibly detailed, showing a huge jump in graphical fidelity that true Alien heads will take great joy in soaking up. And yes, the Xenomorph looks even more terrifying this time around.

You can look forward to limited resources to juggle, fantastic environments to explore, a cleverer-than-ever Xeno to escape, and some of the best aesthetics in a horror game to marvel at, all while carrying on the story straight from the first game.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Fable

We’ve been waiting ages, but having now seen Fable in real life, it looks like it’ll absolutely be worth it.

Talking pigs, endless romance options, permanent-feeling actions, consequence-dealing behaviour, enjoyable dialog and fun humour, and a beautiful English-countryside-inspired setting? All are present, and it’s a game that’s undoubtedly going to be joyful to get stuck into.

With systems so deep and rich, and a cast of non-player characters (NPCs) so varied, real, and engaging, there’s so much fun to be had in the world of Fable no matter your intentions. But it’s very much not all good and bad choices: there are many shades of gray between, and every NPC’s perspective will be different, so you’ll have to deal with a variety of consequences no matter what decision you take.

A brief look at combat also proved exciting. It’s fluid, flashy, and downright fun-looking with flurries of fantastical movement and fighting actions combining beautifully on the hero I saw a glimpse of.

Fable is shaping up to be a hugely rewarding and interesting experience that you can lose yourself in, and could even become part economy-sim, life-sim, and settlement-builder, as well as RPG, all in one.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Sonic Pico Park

What happens when you take a popular indie party game and pair it with one of the biggest platformer franchises around? An incredible amount of charming fun — at least if Sonic Pico Park is anything to go by.

Gathered around a sofa with a group of strangers for my hands-on session, it wasn’t long before we were chatting and laughing together like old friends as we worked our way through a series of pixellated puzzles. Returning Pico Park fans will already know to expect smart level design, but I was particularly impressed by how well some core Sonic mechanics are incorporated into this new crossover.

Careful use of the blue blur’s shiny gold rings helps you get past deadly obstacles that would otherwise be game over, while springs send you shooting forward with enough momentum to conquer big loop-de-loops. Sonic, Tails, and Amy are all playable with some unique tricks between them. Everyone can spin dash (used in my demo to break the occasional destructible surface), but only Tails gets the ability to fly and even airlift others, while Knuckles has a little glide that makes it easier to get over big gaps.

It’s all rendered in a simplistic but cute art direction that conveys a great sense of playfulness, and I simply can’t wait to play more.

Dashiell Wood, Gaming Editor

TCL 2A Pro

I’ll take any opportunity to sit down and play a few matches of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, but demoing it on TCL’s newest gaming monitor line took the experience to a whole new level. The flagship TCL C2A Pro 4K might be the ultimate all-round package for those after a display that can take everything from cinematic story experiences such as The Last of Us Part 1 to fast-paced first-person shooters in a stride.

Its QD-Mini LED panel is seriously colorful, with a vibrancy that, to my eyes, rivals many OLED displays. It’s bright, achieving a peak brightness of up to 2,000 nits and featuring the desirable DisplayHDR 1400 certification. By default, it offers a cinematic 4K picture at a speedy 160Hz, but those with a more competitive side can use its dual mode feature to bump it down to 1080p at an incredibly smooth 320Hz, which is going to be simply invaluable in titles like Counter Strike 2 where high frame rates and split-second performance can mean the difference between a clutch win or devastating defeat.

The monitor’s design and build are impressive too. The sleek white chassis has an almost sci-fi aesthetic, complemented by streaks of attractive RGB lighting, and houses a generous selection of ports — the perfect blend of looks and practicality.

Dashiell Wood, Gaming Editor

And one more mystery winner...

We gave out seven Best of Summer Game Fest 2026 awards this year, but there's one more winner that we can't announce quite yet.

Stay tuned, as this article will be updated with the last entry when we're able to share it in the coming weeks.

• Two Tomb Raider games are set to launch in 2027
• Both will feature a new incarnation of Lara Croft portrayed by Alix Wilton Regan
• The actor has described the role as "exhilarating and daunting in equal measure"

2027 is shaping up to be a huge year for Tomb Raider fans, with not one but two games set to release: Legacy of Atlantis, a reimagining of the original 1996 Tomb Raider, and the all-new instalment Catalyst.

Both titles will introduce a new incarnation of protagonist Lara Croft, portrayed by actor Alix Wilton Regan. The portrayal is intended to bridge the gap between the classic series and the grittier trilogy kicked off by the 2013 reboot, creating one unified version of the character going forward.

I spoke to Wilton Regan in a wide-ranging interview at Summer Game Fest 2026, where she told me how pleased she is to be portraying the character. "I feel incredibly lucky to be bringing Tomb Raider into this new era," she began. "It's such an exciting time for the franchise when you think that they've got two games coming up and a TV show that's massive. I just feel very lucky to be a part of it."

She described the task of becoming such an iconic character as both "exhilarating and daunting in equal measure", likening it to "being on a rollercoaster that you're really happy to be on because it's thrilling, but you're also slightly s******g your pants at the same time."

She also revealed that she thought the role was her "biggest" yet: "I think taking on the role of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider would be the biggest role for any actress that works in the video game space. There is no bigger role. This is it. This is the pinnacle, and I'm just thrilled to be here."

She said that she wasn't feeling any pressure to try and differentiate her portrayal of the character from what fans have seen before. "I'm not worried about having to differentiate, because I feel very confident in the choice that we are going back to core Lara. Classic Lara, as she is called in the canon," she began.

"Within the context of classic Lara, my job as the actress portraying her is to leave no Laras behind. I'm very keen to understand, acknowledge, and respect everything that's been before across the Tomb Raider franchise, take the most important bits, assimilate them, digest them, and then bring them up to speed for modern audiences."

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is set to launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 12, 2027—a date Wilton Regan said she will "absolutely" be staying up until midnight for. Tomb Raider: Catalyst will follow later that year.

• Patrick Gibson's 007 First Light co-stars reveal what they think about the actor playing Bond in a movie
• Having seen him play and develop the role up front, they all think he's perfect for the role on the silver screen
• The game's narrative director lauded Gibson for "shouldering this thing"

With millions of players now enjoying and finishing 007 First Light, the dust has settled around one of the best James Bond videogames ever made. One of the greatest successes of the game is the performances by its actors, including none other than Patrick Gibson as James Bond himself.

At the IOI Access event in Los Angeles this month, I had the opportunity to grill his co-stars on all things 007 First Light. We spoke about Gibson's performance specifically, and now that he's done it in a video game, whether he could translate that to the silver screen.

Almost before I had finished posing the question, Lennie James (John Greenway) gave me a categorical "Absolutely."

This quickly rippled around the room too, with Noémie Nakai (Charlotte Roth / Isola Vale) adding, "How is that even question?", and Alastair Mackenzie (Q) remarking that, "He's done it."

It's emphatic support, and delivered without hesitation, from those who have seen Gibson's portrayal of Bond up close, and witnessed the development of this version of the iconic action film character.

Laying on some more praise and also analysis of Gibson's performance in the face of any pressure of taking on such an iconic role, cinematic and narrative director, Martin Emborg said that "he was shouldering this thing [being James Bond] and did an amazing job doing that."

Lennie James also spoke about how Patrick Gibson's portrayal of Bond was fuelled by the actor's preparation for a new, younger look at the character: "He researched the hell out of it. He watched everything, he read everything, he knew where his origin was going to take him, and he was trying to map something that lived with who the future Bond was going to be, [and] that you would believe this was a young Bond."

007 First Light is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version coming at some point later this year.

• Alien: Isolation 2 creative director Al Hope had ideas for a sequel while making the first game
• Hope says its "core" survival systems have been "evolved"
• He adds that the original divert, disrupt, and distract gameplay will remain the same

Alien: Isolation 2 creative director Al Hope has revealed that he and the team at Creative Assembly had ideas about making a sequel before finishing the first game.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest (SGF) 2026, Hope discussed creating a sequel following the massive success of 2014's Alien: Isolation, a game that many look back on as the best Alien game and one of the best horror games ever made.

The creative director said he was "super proud of the first game and the reaction to it", even though it felt like the team was "taking a bit of a risk" because "there was nothing really quite like it," but he also said he had ideas for a sequel even during its development.

"I'd been thinking about creating a sequel before we even finished the first game, about what that could be," Hope said. "I suppose it was about once we saw the reception of that first game, and what really people really engaged in the nature of this experience, where it's not scripted, it's not choreographed."

Hope compared other survivor horror titles, such as Resident Evil, where "the dog would always jump out the window at the same point," and explained how having an experience where it was "systemic" and the systems that react and respond to the player was the "core" of the Isolation games.

"It felt that's our core," he added, explaining that the idea behind the sequel was "let's just evolve, take what we love, or what people love, and evolve with it", but in ways that feel "intuitive."

"So the first game is all about being in the tin can in space, in the space station, being claustrophobic and trapped, and that's super cool," Hope continued. "We love that. We felt like, what if we were on a planet's surface now, we're being hunted in the exterior, and we had that interior experience as well.

"We've had this kind of best of both worlds. And then it was thinking around, okay, well, let's tell a new story. We've got this new world. Let's tell a new story with a new protagonist, and so I suppose all these things kind of seem to fall into place naturally. I guess that was the, that was the starting point for us."

As Hope put it, in Isolation 2, players will be in a new, exterior environment, and the story will be a "continuation" that follows a new protagonist, Blake, but the core experience will still be "improvise to survive the systemic nature of the entities that you encounter" and using familiar tools to accomplish that.

"That real attention to detail in the fidelity of the world and immersion, the atmosphere that's our core," he said, "A lot of the same rules apply. It's about line of sight, about not being seen, about what tools you have at hand that can divert, disrupt, distract, so a lot of the gameplay remains the same. In the future, we'll be sharing more interesting ways to survive and evade the creature.

"I guess we saw it as an evolution."

Alien: Isolation 2 doesn't have a release date yet, but it will launch on PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

I had no idea what to expect when I accepted the invite to demo an unannounced Sonic crossover game at this year's Summer Game Fest (SGF), but the reveal that it would be Sonic Pico Park still took me by surprise.

I don't think anyone really saw this crossover coming: one of the biggest and most historic platforming franchises joining forces with a burgeoning indie puzzle series.

Slow down, Sonic

If you're not familiar with the original games, Pico Park was released for PC back in 2016 and challenged up to eight players with about two hours' worth of neat little co-op puzzles. It proved a surprise hit, racking up thousands of positive reviews on Steam and prompting the development of an expanded 2024 sequel in Pico Park 2.

Now we're getting Sonic Pico Park, which brings the blue blur, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy into the playable character roster (alongside some of the original Pico Park cats) and incorporates a load of key mechanics from the platformer series.

But how well does the fast-paced action of Sonic gel with the more considered puzzling of Pico Park?

After playing through a selection of eight levels while sprawled on a comfy sofa with a few other members of the press at Summer Game Fest 2026 Play Days, I can confirm that the two disparate properties have been blended together wonderfully.

Your objective in each level is simple: get to the end (represented, of course, as the trademark Sonic end signpost). Standing in your way are various challenges that require full cooperation, and the odd bit of strategy, to complete.

Sonic mechanics are smartly integrated into many of them. One stage, for example, needed everybody to hold on to a single gold ring so we could pass through a deadly laser without triggering a game over. Another featured spring pads to bounce off in order to navigate some big chasms and even a few loop-de-loops to sprint through.

Every character in the game can perform a spin dash, but Tails and Knuckles both get their own extra abilities to play around with. Tails can fly, obviously, and pick up fellow team members, while Knuckles get a little bit of a glide to extend his leaps.

Sonic fans will obviously love these references, but the mechanics are all simple enough to grasp to ensure that Sonic Pico Park can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of their level of experience with the franchise.

The minimalist art direction further enhances the approachability, with easily understandable visuals that are predominantly blue but with occasional splashes of red to highlight key objects. I also can't help but love the super cute renditions of the Sonic cast—especially Tails, just look at that face!

Although I was playing with a group of strangers, we soon found ourselves all chatting and laughing together like we'd been friends for years. It was a highlight of my SGF and, honestly, can you really want much more from a co-op puzzle game like this?

Sonic Pico Park is expected to release later this year, though there's no firm date quite yet. You can currently add it to your wishlist on Steam.

• Alien: Isolation 2 will be built using Unreal Engine 5
• Creative Assembly is developing its own custom lighting and audio technology
• Creative director Al Hope says modern game development allows for "real-time feedback"

Creative Assembly has confirmed that Alien: Isolation 2 will be built with Unreal Engine 5, but the team is also developing custom technology for lighting and audio.

That's according to Creative Director Al Hope, who, alongside Animation Director Simon Ridge, discussed the technological advancement of the upcoming sequel in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest (SGF) 2026.

Ridge remarked on how "incredibly proud" he is of how the first Alien: Isolation looked, but "Technology's advanced, and so it allows more opportunities."

"A big part of what we did last time was making sure we were providing an experience to really back up that whole immersion, I guess, on the stress, so the player never really comes out of those moments, and from our discipline, animation, that was around making sure that you were never really seeing points where you could tell it was a game," Ridge said.

"That was a huge goal, you were watching something that was almost like a sentient creature, it was Al [Hope] mentioned many a time, a systemic system.

"So I think now that time's moved on a little bit, it allows us to probably add more variety than what we could before, just due to technical advancement, and just up the quality of the assets themselves."

Hope added that one of the biggest advantages of contemporary game development is the "real-time feedback," with Ridge saying that working on something for a sequel and being able to see it in-engine, in context, straight away, allows the team to get "the quickest kind of representation of how it's going to feel."

The creative director continued, explaining that it "allows us to iterate much faster," unlike during the Alien: Isolation development period. This time, the team is using Unreal Engine 5, but it will also be creating its own custom technology, which Hope calls an "evolution" of what fans are familiar with.

"I think one of the interesting things for us is obviously lighting and audio parts of the experience, and so we're using Unreal [Engine], but for lighting and audio we're developing our own custom technology to really enable us to really fine-tune the experience and create exactly the best Alien experience we possibly can," Hope said.

"It's really interesting with our audio team; it's the same, more or less the same audio team that worked in the original, so it's really an extension of an evolution of both the tech and the kind of creative side that worked on the original.

"I'll blow their trumpet for them. I think they won more or less every audio award going that year for Alien: Isolation. I think that's absolutely fantastic, people recognize that it felt like it was such a big part of the experience, and it's just really exciting to have them working together again on this."

Alien: Isolation 2 is in active development and will launch on PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

Home entertainment brand TCL was out in force at Summer Game Fest 2026, with a big booth dedicated to its new line of gaming monitors right in the middle of the Play Days show floor.

Its flagship model, the TCL C2A Pro, was the big attraction and is intended to deliver "the ultimate AAA gameplay experience" no matter what you like to play.

Those that love immersing themselves in cinematic experiences like The Last of Us Part 1 or Red Dead Redemption 2 will appreciate its vibrant QD-Mini LED colors and high 2,000 nits peak brightness. It's DisplayHDR 1400 certified, denoting a high level of brightness paired with excellent contrast, too.

The crisp 4K resolution of its 27-inch panel offers a strong level of detail while the 160Hz refresh rate keeps the action butter-smooth (provided you have the hardware chops to support it, of course).

Smooth and stylish

I took the monitor for a spin and found it particularly impressive, noting its fluid motion and excellent picture clarity. That said, as a huge Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 player (with more than 370 hours clocked in-game since launch), the TCL C2A Pro has one secret weapon that makes it especially appealing — its 'Game Accelerator' dual mode.

This bumps the resolution down to 1080p and cranks the refresh rate up to 320Hz, which is perfect if you want to maximize responsiveness and your frame rate to give you the edge in such a fast-paced game. It's almost no surprise that the brand is the official partner of Call of Duty.

TCL has also nailed the monitor's aesthetics. The almost sci-fi, white panelled look is tastefully elevated by colorful RGB lighting for an overall design that's distinctly geared towards gamers without seeming overly garish. It means the monitor would also look right at home in a PS5 setup. Out of the box, it comes with a multi-function stand that's geared towards a variety of adjustments and seating positions.

With the TCL C2A Pro retailing at $799, it faces some stiff competition from cheaper alternatives with similar dual-mode features such as the Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG. Still, no competitors have TCL's proprietary QD-Mini LED tech, which the monitor shares with the brand's high-end TVs, and few can come close to offering the premium build here.

It arrives alongside the slightly cheaper TCL C2A gaming monitor. Retailing at $699, that $100 saving loses you some peak brightness (with the monitor capable of 1,200 nits rather than 2,000) and fewer local dimming zones.

There's also the budget-friendly $499 TCL P3A. It's 27 inches still, but at a more modest 1440p resolution and a 260Hz refresh rate.

If you're a gamer with a pulse, you may have noticed that a few new titles were announced at this year's Summer Game Fest. Of course, if you're a Bethesda Softworks stalwart who'd hoped the event would yield fresh intel on the game maker's next Fallout and Elder Scrolls entries, then, well, you may have been more disappointed than delighted by its many reveals.

While both Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls Online shared peeks of future updates – and a Doom: The Dark Ages expansion was announced – details on the studio's most anticipated, long-awaited games were sadly a no-show. All that said, one of Bethesda's biggest, most ambitious efforts has recently been released on PlayStation platforms.

Arriving two-plus years after its exclusive launch on PC and Xbox Series X and Series S, sprawling sci-fi role-playing game Starfield has finally landed on Sony's systems…but with little fanfare. That's a bit surprising, as the 2023 role-playing game (RPG) is not only one of Bethesda's best original efforts in recent years, but one that has reserved its most polished, content-packed version for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro owners.

A Bethesda RPG, evolved

If you're a new Constellation recruit, let's catch you up real quick. Starfield is a big, ambitious Bethesda RPG not unlike the studio's other staple series within the genre. While it's not exactly The Elder Scrolls in space, its systems-fueled gameplay, expansive open-world, and author-your-own-adventure formula will feel comfortably familiar to anyone who's sunk hours into the fantasy RPG series or the Fallout franchise.

Starfield essentially refines, polishes, and expands on those games' enduring formulas…then recruits you as a starship captain and hurtles you into the scary expanse of the cosmic frontier. As you might expect, there's plenty of enemies to eviscerate, massive progression paths to evolve, resources to gather, items to craft, factions to tangle with, mysteries to uncover, and so much more.

But as a galaxy-exploring, planet-hopping sci-fi RPG, you can also count on deep starship customization, crew member recruitment, dogfights among the stars, and ugly extraterrestrials looking to turn you to pulp. Starfield allows you to dig deep into all of these elements while also steering and shaping your journey, molding it to your playstyle and preference at every turn.

While you're certainly welcome to stick to the critical path and closely adhere to the game's narrative, it's at its best when you're fulfilling your own sci-fi fantasies – whether that's becoming a pistol-packing bounty hunter, peace-keeping diplomat, or just some dude who really digs collecting and customizing a fleet of cool starships.

A galaxy of updates and improvements

Despite giving players the keys to a lightspeed-capable craft and encouraging them to author their own sci-fi epic, Starfield wasn't without its share of flaws when it was originally released. From empty-feeling planets and a confusing economy to clunky combat, sometimes sluggish travel, and an overall lack of charm and personality, it left some players as cold as deep space.

But like any ambitious AAA game with two-plus years' worth of updates, patches, and expansions in its rearview, Starfield has benefited from a spaceport full of improvements and polish since releasing in the summer of 2023. On top of countless quality-of-life tweaks, it's also seen several significant updates, like the awesome planet-roving REV-8 vehicle that makes exploring even the most boring expanses a rubber-burning blast.

But Starfield's biggest update by far has nicely coincided with the game's PS5 release, leading to what Bethesda producer Tim Lamb called its "best version" in a recent interview with TechRadar. The substantial offering introduces a ton more tweaks, improvements, and even fresh content, from a powerful new resource that deepens customization to an adorable alien pet companion you can adopt.

The update's biggest game-changers, however, are its "Free Lanes" and "Cruise Mode" additions, which blow some of Starfield's more tedious elements out an airlock. Combined, these enhancements introduce seamless, smoother, and more satisfying space travel, allowing for easier planet-to-planet navigation, as well as the ability to manage many of the game's complex systems while casually cruising through the stars.

While this latest update will likely feel long overdue for existing fans, it's just an organic, out-of-the-box part of the experience for those earning their captain stripes in the PS5 version. Those same new recruits are also treated to the game's story-based expansions, Shattered Space and the more recent Terran Armada, which add hours of content and are included in the premium edition's $70 price.

Boldly going where previous versions have not

In addition to all previous patches and enhancements – as well as the new update – PS5 players are treated to some Sony platform-specific features when they strap into the cockpit. Starfield doesn't skimp on the extras that smartly leverage the consoles' unique elements and – in the PlayStation 5 Pro's case – considerable horsepower.

PS5 players can choose between a graphics-favoring Visual mode and a frame-rate-focused Performance option. The former delivers 4K resolution – with PSSR upscaling doing some of the heavy lifting – at 30fps, while the latter ups the frames to 60-per-second at the cost of dropping the resolution to 1080p. The Pro also gets its own Enhanced mode, which further optimizes specific visual features, like foliage and draw distances, at 30fps.

I primarily played on the Pro, and found the Visual mode to offer the best overall experience, delivering fantastic fidelity and a peppy framerate that never felt compromised. I also found that the Pro's performance mode actually offered a slight visual bump over the base PS5's graphics mode. All that said, the game ran smoothly and looked great on the standard system.

More impressive is what the game accomplishes with the DualSense across all PS5 platforms. While plenty of ports take advantage of the controller's adaptive trigger and haptic feedback tech, Starfield goes above and beyond, fully integrating these features, but also leveraging the peripheral's light bar and built-in speaker to significantly up the immersion. The game ultimately serves as a great showcase of what the controller's unique features can bring to an interactive entertainment experience when fully utilized.

Much like Bethesda Softworks' PS5 port of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the studio's latest looks and plays better than ever on Sony's systems. But Starfield's PlayStation debut actually shares more with Obsidian Entertainment's Avowed, which arrived on PS5 consoles not only with the usual graphical and performance bumps, but also with a host of welcome updates and new content that made it the definitive version of the game.

Thanks to two-plus years of tweaks and enhancements – as well as a recent, significant update adding even more polish, improvements, and content – that's exactly what fans are getting with Starfield's latest release, a definitive experience that makes an already fantastic game out of this world.

Should I play Starfield on PS5?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Starfield's accessibility features feel pretty bare bones, offering some standard options for adjusting audio settings, as well as different selections for subtitles, captions, and fonts.

There's plenty in the way of controller mapping options, but little depth in other areas. And some features that have become fairly standard, like color filter modes and other assists for visually-impaired players, are notably absent here.

How I reviewed Starfield on PS5

I spent 30-plus hours exploring, battling, and adventuring through Starfield's Settled Systems. During my time on planet surfaces and among the stars, I focused on the many updates the game has received since its launch, from its dozens of quality-of-life tweaks to its more significant inclusions and enhancements.

I also tested the various quality and performance modes on both my PS5 and PS5 Pro. Finally, I paid particular attention to how the game looked and played today – on Sony's consoles – versus how it felt when I first experienced it on my Xbox Series X. I played on my TCL 4K TV, with HDR enabled, using Sony's PlayStation Pulse Elite headset for audio.

First reviewed June 2026

• Creative Assembly wants Alien: Isolation 2 to be as memorable as the first game
• Creative Director Al Hope says the new exterior setting "feels like a natural evolution of the experience"
• The alien will "adapt and behave" differently to hunt the player

Creative Assembly has said it was "absolutely the intention" for Alien: Isolation to feel "too scary" for players, and the goal is to make the sequel just as memorable.

Alien: Isolation is one of the best horror games of all time, and in the newly announced sequel, players will once again be stranded in space while a sentient creature hunts them down. How lovely!

Unlike the first game, where players are confined to a space station, Alien: Isolation 2 will have a new setting and feature both exterior and interior environments, which Creative Director Al Hope said "feels like a natural evolution of the experience."

"It's the best of both worlds," Hope said in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest (SGF) 2026, "it has those claustrophobic-type interior spaces and those now exposed and very vulnerable feeling exterior spaces. I think for us, that's the most exciting starting point."

In Isolation 2, these new open spaces also mean players will need to be on their guard more than before, because the creature will also be able to "adapt and behave in a different way in order to be able to hunt in the exterior."

"The alien is well known for, in Alien: Isolation, learning and adapting based on his encounters with the player," Hope said. "It will be doing that in the exterior as well. So, as you come up with strategies and tactics, it will start to learn about those and then be able to circumvent them. So, you have to think again, get really creative, get imaginative, you know, imaginative in order to be able to survive, progress, and survive."

He continued: "The experience is evolving to include the exterior, thus one of the big changes for the creature is being able to hunt the player effectively in the exterior. For us, right now, it feels like a really fantastic opportunity, and I think people can already imagine what that's going to be like."

Animation Director Simon Ridge knows that the first game was loved by fans, and that it also terrified them, adding that the team's goal with Isolation 2 is to "deliver something to the audience that hopefully makes them as happy, terrified as before."

"That's a really fantastic opportunity," Ridge said.

Hope continued, "I like to think that anyone who played Alien: Isolation probably remembers playing Alien Isolation. Even if they think, 'Oh man, that was too scary,' and that's absolutely the intention for the sequel to make something that's truly unforgettable, and I think that combination of interior and exterior will create these moments that really live long after the player puts down the controller (or mouse and keyboard).

"That's the intention: to create something that really stays."

Alien: Isolation 2 doesn't have a release date yet, but it's set to launch on PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Resident Evil Veronica producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi has explained why the remake isn't called 'Code Veronica'
• The producer says Code Veronica is just as important as the other mainline games
• Veronica's title follows the naming convention of the remake series

If you've been questioning why Resident Evil Veronica isn't called 'Code Veronica' like the original 2000 title, Capcom has explained its reasoning, and yeah, it sounds pretty logical.

During a press Q&A at Summer Game Fest (SGF) 2026, TechRadar Gaming asked Veronica producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi why the studio decided to rename the upcoming remake, considering the original game is a spin-off and not a mainline entry.

Hirabayashi explained that Capcom sees the original Code Veronica as just as "important" to the franchise as any other mainline game, like Resident Evil 2 or Resident Evil 4.

"For our development team, and everyone at Capcom, we consider the original Code Veronica to be just as important and relevant as any other mainline entry," Hirabayashi said, "so when we tackled this remake, the question we asked ourselves was, 'How do we communicate that to our audience?'"

The producer pointed to the naming convention for the remake entries, which are typically numbered or feature a word closely associated with the game's corresponding theme, such as the recently released Resident Evil Requiem.

"What we did is we looked at how we were handling naming titles for more recent and mainline numbered entries," Hirabayashi said. "If you look at the naming conventions that we've been using more recently for mainline titles, you'll notice a pattern.

"It's usually one word that is really iconic or connected to the concept of the game [...] We wanted to take a similar approach to the title of this remake as well. So we asked ourselves, what is that one iconic work that best represents the identity of the game? And we settled on Resident Evil Veronica."

Resident Evil Veronica is planned for a 2027 release for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC. Hirabayashi has confirmed that the game is being handled by the same team behind Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 remakes.

"When we approach a remake, it doesn't matter which remake it is, we do have a very similar approach that we take to that process," the producer said.

Veronica follows Claire Redfield three months after the events of Resident Evil 2. After travelling to Paris in search of her brother Chris, Claire is captured by Umbrella and transported to a remote island, where she must escape due to another biological disaster.

• Toys for Bob says Activision Blizzard didn't push back on the studio's decision to go independent again
• Studio head Paul Yan says, "Leadership on both sides was very open to the idea"
• Yan says the process was "complex" to navigate while also planning Spyro: A Realm Beyond

Spyro: A Realm Beyond developer Toys for Bob has said there was no "pushback" from Activision Blizzard when it chose to become independent, but the process was "complex."

In 2024, one year after Microsoft officially acquired Activision Blizzard and almost 20 years after being purchased by the latter, Toys for Bob announced that it would split from its parent company and return to its "roots" as an independent studio.

Now, during a press Q&A at Summer Game Fest 2026 while promoting Spyro: A Realm Beyond, Studio Head Paul Yan shared that the team didn't meet any resistance from Activision Blizzard or Microsoft and that "leadership on both sides was very open to the idea."

"It was just complex," Yan said, "because we were talking about navigating many things in a very compressed amount of time, so just the logistics and legality of how do you separate from a company in that way has never been done before."

"I've never done it before, so I'm asking for something that's going to need a ton of coordination across many teams, across two new organizations that don't even know each other," he added, referring to the company's acquisition by Microsoft, "or they've just got married for the most part.

"Meanwhile, we're also trying to navigate a pitch for this game [Spyro: A Realm Beyond], so we're trying to get all that happening at the same time."

Yan said this was "the biggest challenge" overall, reiterating that no one was against Toys for Bob becoming independent again, although the process was something "we've never seen done before."

Associate creative director Lou Studdard added that it was difficult to navigate the process while also "preserving the continuity of the team experience of the team," and making sure it wasn't "such a big culture shock for the studio."

"It's been a tremendous effort to make sure that around two years ago, and this happened when we really started, it was kind of like another day in the office in a good way, and that we are a continued development team that knows how to work with each other and focus on our projects," Studdard said.

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is Toys for Bob's first game since becoming an independent studio again, and it launches in Spring 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Toys for Bob says Spyro: A Realm Beyond is designed to be "accessible" and "approachable"
• The game won't be as "hardcore" as Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
• The studio says Spyro has always been more about "discovery and exploration"

Toys for Bob wants Spyro: A Realm Beyond to be an "approachable" new entry in the series, for both long-time fans and new players.

In a press Q&A at Summer Game Fest (SGF) that TechRadar Gaming attended, associate creative director Lou Studdard was asked about Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, designing a difficulty level that stayed true to the long-time series, and if the studio was also conscious of doing the same for A Realm Beyond.

In response, Studdard said that Toys for Bob was focused on designing the upcoming Spyro game as a more approachable entry for the broader audience, with less of the "hardcore" mechanics players would typically find in Crash Bandicoot.

"For Spyro: A Realm Beyond, we are very much focused on making it an accessible adventure, and so that means really focusing in on those difficulty levels, as well as just the general notion of how you play the game," Studdard said. "Spyro definitely is less of a hardcore, or precision-based game; Crash is definitely much more in that line of thing.

"For us, for Spyro, we have had a very focused effort on making sure that it is an accessible, approachable entry, and that goes, hand in hand with the audience that we want to serve, we want this to be something where this could be someone's first Spyro game, and fall in love with our favorite little purple dragon, and be along for the ride from there."

Toys for Bob Chief Creative Officer and Studio Head, Paul Yan, echoed the same sentiment, saying Spyro has always been a very approachable experience.

Both Yan and Studdard agreed that Crash Bandicoot is more about "hard checks" and executing perfectly timed jumps, with Studdard explaining that "precision execution based platforming" was what the team used to build, but not for the new Spyro game.

For the Spyro games, Yan added, it's more about "discovery and exploration" and is more "relaxing" to play, so the team wanted to "preserve its tonal core" for A Realm Beyond.

"I will say that taking flight and moving in a three-dimensional space, as opposed to on the ground, is just inherently more complex than running on the ground, right?" Yan said. "So we spend a lot of effort to make that as approachable as possible. It will be a little bit more complex, just navigating through the air, where we're doing everything that we can to make sure that it is an approachable experience, and that it is engaging and you're making interesting decisions while you're up in the sky."

Spyro: A Realm Beyond launches in Spring 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Alien: Isolation 2 will take place months after the events of the first game
• Creative Director Al Hope says the sequel is still inspired by the first Alien movie
• Hope adds, "Our goal is to stay really true in spirit to that first movie"

Creative Assembly has confirmed that Alien: Isolation 2 will take place months after the first game and is once again inspired by the first Alien movie.

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026 (SGF), Creative Director Al Hope and Animation Director Simon Ridge shared how the studio is expanding the world of Alien in the upcoming sequel, confirming the movies are still the "groundwork."

"We really love the Aliens universe, obviously," Hope said. "I think for us, the first game really was close to the first movie in look and feel, in [the protagonist] Amanda [to Ripley], but in Isolation 2, which takes place months after the events of the first game, we're still in that wonderful space that we absolutely adore.

"We feel the first movie is still a really rich vein for us to tap into and explore and expand. It felt like a really good opportunity to just keep pushing, going deep in that part of the IP."

Ridge added that the first Alien movie was "such an important way of guiding us" when the team made the first game, and was the "ground" for everything it built.

"Keeping that in mind again with the sequel to make sure that we're making something that offers a similar experience, because that's your groundwork, but then also with the new parts are added to it," Ridge said, which he and Hope mentioned included the new exterior environments, which the first movie doesn't feature.

"We're really very serious about creating something that feels very authentic," Hope continued, explaining how the team is still creating "new elements" to "expand" the world.

"Our goal is to stay really true in spirit to that first movie," he said. "Authenticity is the lens we do everything through."

Alien: Isolation 2 is now in development and will launch on PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

Back in 2022 I went to a preview event for The Callisto Protocol in London to write an article for the gaming magazine that I worked for at the time. Shortly after shaking hands with director Glen Schofield, he watched in stunned silence as I repeatedly died in the corner of an intense enemy encounter, awkwardly failing to swerve incoming swings with its incredibly unwieldy directional dodging system.

“Have you tried using the gravity gun?” he eventually suggested. “I literally can’t find the button for it,” I replied. I looked over my shoulder and saw his head in his hands. Back then I thought that I was struggling because I had been tossed late into the game with no tutorial. Of course, when the game finally released, I, along with tens of other players around the world, realized that, no, it's actually just hellish to control.

I bring this up because I couldn't help but recount the episode as I walked away from my brief hands-on time with some of Stranger Than Heaven’s combat encounters at Summer Game Fest 2026. To be clear, I don’t think its mechanics are quite that rough—but even when I fully understood its many idiosyncrasies, I wasn’t exactly having fun.

Heavenly? Not quite

Just like The Callisto Protocol, directionality is at the core of brawls in Stranger Than Heaven.

The left-hand side of your controller represents the left-hand side of the player character’s body, while the right-hand side is the right. It sounds simple enough. You tap the right bumper to swing with your right fist. Pull the left trigger, and you get a left kick. You’re meant to alternate between sides as you beat up thugs—rely on one too much and they’ll soon cotton on and block.

Fair enough: switching between mashing buttons on both sides sounds like it might have a good rhythm to it. Unfortunately, Stranger Than Heaven is far from a button masher. Encounters, especially those against large groups, play out at a snail’s pace. Swings are slower than you would expect, and you’re clearly meant to think about each move carefully. If you’re too aggressive, you’ll get knocked down and summarily beaten to a pulp.

Enemies deal a Dark Souls level of damage, and if one of them grabs you, they can easily whittle your health bar down to a slither in just a few hits. When you do find yourself in a baddie’s grip, your first instinct is probably to mash the dodge button to escape, but you actually need to work out which side they’re grabbing you on and send out some attacks from the opposite one in order to knock them off. It goes against basically everything that other action brawlers have ever taught you, and feels clumsy as a result.

Don’t even think about using a health item either. For some reason, the protagonist takes what feels like an hour to scoff a single rice ball in an animation that you can’t seem to interrupt, even in the face of imminent danger. You’ll barely have a chance to swallow before a foe unleashes a special katana attack that cleaves you in half.

You do at least get some melee weapons of your own to even the odds, and I got to try three. My favorite was comfortably the knife, finding it often hilariously unbalanced. Sprinting up to a goon while frantically mashing the attack button seemed to catch them totally off guard, causing them to freeze up and take a few hits before actually starting to fight back.

There was also a moment where I used my swings to push a powerful boss enemy, the supposed climax of my hands-on, into a doorway in the background of the combat arena—which he immediately became stuck on, giving me the opportunity to mince his torso into steak tartare. It felt like some well-deserved payback for the handful of times my own attacks inexplicably failed to connect throughout the encounter.

I was, of course, playing an early build, so a lack of polish is to be expected, but watching your fists simply pass through someone's chest with no visible reaction lent the fight a real sense of sloppiness that was hard to shake. It’s a shame that I wasn’t able to sample any of the activities outside of the fights as well, or even see any of the narrative beyond a few out-of-context voice lines before getting stuck in.

The idea of an epic story that spans five whole eras is certainly intriguing, and I hope it will be able to make up for any combat awkwardness that might remain when Stranger Than Heaven releases for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC on January 15, 2027.

• Control Resonant lead level designer Anne-Marie Grönroos and art director Elmeri Raitanen want players to engage in side content alongside the story
• Grönroos says, "We want the player to kind of get lost in the world in a good way"
• The game will also feature linear "dungeons", which Grönroos says are a "really nice contrast" to the overworld

Remedy Entertainment has placed a lot of emphasis on exploration in Control Resonant, and it wants players to discover and engage in side content in the game's open areas alongside the main story as much as possible.

That's according to lead level designer Anne-Marie Grönroos and art director Elmeri Raitanen, who discussed how Remedy went about creating the game's ambitious open world after Control's interior setting, in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at a preview event alongside this year's Summer Game Fest (SGF).

Raitanen explained that the team is "standing on the shoulders of an aesthetic giant," so moving past the award-winning Control's level design and striking concept was a challenge.

"From the design side, well, we did the first Control, [and] I think we were a bit naive back then, we didn't really realize how big of a jump it could be, [you] could go from Quantum Break, which was like a completely linear game, to something [Control] where you're actually supposed to backtrack, and it's more open, and it has a main mission, it has side missions, and so on," Grönroos said.

"So, there definitely was a lot of stuff in there we learned, but it was impressive what we did back then, but there were still a lot left out of out of there that we couldn't really get done in the first game, so this one, we are now outside [in] Manhattan, so the world is much bigger, the areas are more distinct from each other, they have more of this identity that has been thought of."

She added, "It turned out a lot of people actually just played the [Control] main mission and didn't even find the side content at all," but with Control Resonant, the team "really wanted to push more for in this game."

"We want the player to kind of get lost in the world in a good way," Grönroos said. "And force them to have fun," Raitanen added.

In Control, players were limited to the interior of the Oldest House, but in Resonant, the open world of a supernaturally warped Manhattan will be fully explorable.

This means many more visual landmarks to encounter that "can attract somebody's curiosity into some direction," which Raitanen explained "might not have been possible to do" in the first game "when we are going from like an interior space into another interior space."

"In the indoors we couldn't have those landmarks from very far away, and you couldn't have those visible from other sectors at all, but here now... the game is not fully open, it is separated in a disc, similar things to sectors, but the sectors themselves, the city zones, they are a lot more open than the sectors where the Oldest House, and in fact, like that big red building, for example, you can see that from three other zones over, you can see this big global landmarks from a lot of other zones," Grönroos said.

Raitanen hinted at what players can expect when they explore Manhattan, and while the world may appear to be filled with supernatural threats, the team didn't want to "sprinkle paranatural things and weirdness a little bit everywhere."

Instead, Remedy has built the environments with the intention of being explored, and you never know what you'll find.

"One key thing has been that we want to make it like the city is not necessarily your enemy, it might actually feel like deceitfully pleasant," the art director said. "[It] occasionally invites you to explore, but then there might be this layer of paranatural threat and chaos that kind of is overlaid on top of the normal city, so that's definitely been one of them key tools to make the zones feel like they have identity, and if you take screenshots of different places of the game, you can immediately tell that, hey, that's from Evacuation Zone, and that's from the molding park, or an abundant part of the oldest house, something like this."

Beyond the main story, Grönroos also hinted at additional sequences and "linear levels" that Remedy called "dungeons", which she explained are a "really nice contrast" to the overworld that players see from the outset.

"These spaces, which are not in the part of the overworld, [are a] more content linear experience, and there's not a ton of other things distracting you there," she said. "It is all about the story [in this area], although when the story is done, then we might be doing something different than there.

"There might be a side quest that opens up that in the place where you are just about to go, and in fact, later on in the game," Grönroos added, but said Remedy wants the first-time experience playing Control Resonant "to be very graded in a very similar [way] to how we did the main quest in the first game."

Control Resonant launches on September 24 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Toys for Bob wanted to recapture the feeling from playing previous games when developing Spyro: A Realm Beyond
• It wanted to focus on "the feeling that we fell in love with" rather than worrying about a list of features
• Chief creative officer and Studio Head, Paul Yan, says, "If you stick too much to nostalgia, it feels like you're rehashing"

Toys for Bob focused on recapturing how the team felt from playing previous games when making Spyro: A Realm Beyond, rather than worrying about a list of features to include.

That's according to Studio Head, Paul Yan, who told TechRadar Gaming in an interview at Summer Game Fest (SGF) that the groundwork of the game was built on what the team loves about the series.

When asked if there are any core features from previous games that the team avoided or tried to modernize, Yan said "everything's going to get touched," but when it worked on a new title "one of the things that we try and do is really hunker down and try and isolate how that franchise makes us feel, not specific feature lists, not comparison of parts, but the feeling that we fell in love with."

"We also look into the fan community," he added, "we look to just outside communication, our own communication, and we start isolating and figuring what that means, like what are the fantasies we want, so when we say, you know, a zen-like kind of exploration with a fluidity of movement that is more important to us to identify that as essential to feeling like Spyro than saying, 'Oh, his charge moves x number of units over x number of time', or things that happen."

"So we build that kind of knowledge and ingrain and canonify those feelings, and that's where we build from, and then throughout development we will have those conversations of are we changing them or touching that, is that new, are we keeping, are we not.

"But at the same time, the tip of the spear is the feelings that we want to preserve, and we want to amplify more than any specific feature institute."

Yan also said that there is a challenge to balancing nostalgia when making a new game, "versus how much do you branch out," explaining that both can be bad in some cases.

"If you stick too much to nostalgia, it feels like you're rehashing," Yan said. "'Why did we even bother doing this?' [...] Then you go on the other extreme, and you change everything, and now it's like 'I don't even recognize this character'. So we're very proud of the fact that through the process of this, we've been very thoughtful about it, and trying to talk about the tone and the core, and making sure that we're referencing all the fan feedback, and all the feelings, and the insights that have come from the Reignited Trilogy, so we feel confident that that base has given us a lot of information informed our own gun instincts about what Spyro is, and then our vision for Spyro is that this is just one of many games for the future.

"We would love to see more in this franchise. Hopefully, you know, around Beyond sets him up on a really strong footing."

Spyro: A Realm Beyond launches in Spring 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• The Fable reboot will feature over 150,000 lines of dialogue
• Playground Games says multiple studios have recorded over 1000 hours of VO this year alone
• The studio says, "It takes a lot of work to balance all of the systems, but that's part of the challenge that we've been relishing"

Playground Games has said that more than 150,000 lines of dialogue have been recorded for its highly anticipated fantasy role-playing game (RPG), Fable, an impressive system that it "relished" making.

That's according to Playground founder and general manager Ralph Fulton, who shared some fun statistics about the game with the press during a Q&A at Summer Game Fest (SGF) and revealed that a good chunk of Fable's dialogue was also recorded across multiple studios just this year alone.

"There are over 150,000 lines of dialog about VO in this game, and the lion's share of that is in that system that you should be seeing today [in the demo]," Fulton said. "We've had multiple studios set up running in parallel for over 1000 hours just this year alone, just recording VO, so it's a huge machine, because the vision that the guys have for this part of the game just requires that way of writing."

While impressive, it raises the question of how this will be illustrated in-game without the RPG feeling too bloated. When asked if Playground sees a risk of this being "too systemic for a world that you want to feel immersed in," Associate Game Director Will Kennedy didn't think so, explaining that everything is "handcrafted" with a purpose.

"We've got 1000 handcrafted [non-player characters] NPCs, over 1000 handcrafted NPCs that you can interact with," Kennedy said. "We put a lot of time, dedication into thinking about all of these different systems that we have in the game, and that handcrafted part of something that's actually really beneficial in terms of the way you're talking about, because we have a game design team and other teams that care deeply about what we're building, and they can really grab hold of the work that's being done and apply that craft.

"Our game design team [made] sure that that [every] NPC made sense. It takes a lot of work to balance all of the systems, but that's part of the challenge that we've been relishing, and we think the game over the past half an hour that I've shown you really stands on its own two feet and shows how well everything you've been doing with that."

Fable has been in development for a very long time, but will officially launch on February 23, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

Secretlab is practically synonymous with the words ‘gaming chair’, with its flagship Titan Evo line the preferred choice of many esports athletes, professional streamers, and practically anyone looking for one of the best gaming chairs on the market. But the company doesn't want to stop at gaming — and its new Atlas chair is its first step in a different direction.

The Atlas is the company’s first dedicated task chair, a product that looks like spearheading a more aggressive expansion into the home office market where it will butt heads with the likes of Boulies and Herman Miller.

So, how will it make this transition? And how was the Atlas developed? Back in April I flew out to Secretab’s Singapore HQ for a very early hands-on, and to learn more about the development of some of its biggest features.

Built for just the right level of support

One thing that's always defined the Titan Evo is how nice it is to sit in. Our original reviewer called it "the most comfortable chair” they’ve ever used, lavishing praise on the high level of ergonomic support that it offers, and having tested countless gaming chairs over the years, it's the model that I most consistently recommend.

Whether you pick the fabric or leatherette finish, I know first hand that the quality of the materials on offer is excellent, too — and that the brand provides one of the most consistently smooth and approachable assembly processes on the market.

Throw in included extras like a comfortable magnetic neck pillow, plus the availability of optional accessories that range all the way from upgraded armrests to a full-on recliner, and it’s not hard to see why they’re so popular.

All of that helped the Titan Evo become a top home office pick, too. So how did the company approach the development of the Atlas?

According to head of product development and industrial design Vincent Sin the Atlas’ backrest was crafted using data from ergonomic studies and features a combination of the brand’s proprietary cold-cure foam and integrated springs that help it subtly adapt to your natural curve as you sit.

When I first sat in the Atlas I discovered that, much like the Titan Evo 2022, it feels quite firm at first — especially compared to super soft seats like the Corsair TC100 Relaxed — and noticed that it doesn’t press up against your lower back quite as aggressively as other chairs.

“People don’t know that having too much lumbar support is also a bad thing,” Sin explained, revealing that it can lead to hypertension and cause strain over time. Crafting the shape of the Atlas involved plenty of iteration, with pressure mapping used to identify where extra support was needed. The Secretlab Atlas doesn’t offer any dedicated lumbar adjustment controls, with all the fine-tuning occurring by itself as you sit.

“What we found is that often than not, with task chairs that have a lot of adjustments, it’s very confusing and people often will get it wrong,” Sin said. “And I would say that’s worse than having something that automatically adjusts for you.”

That’s not to say that the Atlas doesn’t offer plenty of other ways to tailor the seating experience. The chair’s height can be raised or lowered of course, the armrests can be pulled up or rotated, and even seat depth can be adjusted to cater to a range of leg lengths.

Business-ready colors

Secretlab has always opted for a more understated aesthetic than other gaming chair makers and that approach carries through to the Atlas. It definitely echoes the shape of the Titan Evo, giving it a distinct look compared to most office furniture, but it’s not overly flashy or garish.

The standard version of the Atlas starts at $499 / £399 and comes in either Hybrid Leatherette or SoftWeave Plus Fabric finishes in a selection of suitably business-appropriate colors. Those buying the leatherette can choose Classic Black or Moon (which is white with black accents). On the fabric side there’s a standard Black, grey Cookies & Cream, and the sandy Dune.

There’s also the option to upgrade to the premium Secretlab Atlas with Nanofoam Composite starting at $699 / £599. This adds a layer of microfoam for an even more supportive and, having sat on both side by side, noticeably softer experience and swaps the black armrests, hydraulic mechanic, and wheel based to color matched variants.

There are two NanoGen Edition models (which use Secretlab's latest super plush finish) on offer here, Pure White+ and Black+, in addition to the less flashy fabric Dune+ and Pure Black+.

The Secretlab Atlas is available now via the Secretlab website.

• Crazy Taxi: World Tour has been announced and it launches in 2027
• The game will feature multiplayer modes for the first time
• Series creator Kenji Kanno says some staff have experience with multiplayer games, and "with their knowledge, we were able to create a multiplayer mode"

Sega has officially announced Crazy Taxi: World Tour, an all-new installment in the classic driving action series, launching for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC in 2027.

Revealed during the Xbox Games Showcase 2026 adjacent to this year's Summer Game Fest (SGF), the game will be led by the original Crazy Taxi creator, Kenji Kanno, and take players on a story-driven campaign around the globe as longtime series protagonist Axel, who is chasing down mysterious masked villains who stole his beloved taxi.

The trailer, set to the iconic track 'All I Want' by The Offspring, showcased new game features such as brand-new maps and missions, vehicles and customization, and an Arcade mode that captures the thrills of the original games.

"This new title, Crazy Taxi: World Tour, is not just a recreation of the original Crazy Taxi gameplay," Kanno said in a Q&A after the reveal, "But there's a story mode that expands on the world and background of the characters within Crazy Taxi. Players can expect a lot of content."

The series creator added that while there are fans of the series who will be excited to get their hands on World Tour, the game will also appeal to the younger generation and those who aren't familiar with the series at all, revealing that many of the staff who developed the game are young, too.

"Our staff with the development of World Tour, there's actually a lot of very young staff in their twenties, and it's not just old people like me," Kanno said. "We basically all just sit on the same table and really work together to make a game that would appeal to all generations".

Unlike earlier entries in the Crazy Taxi series, World Tour will also be the first game to feature multiplayer modes, which Kanno knows has been highly requested from long-time fans.

"There will be multiplayer, and even when I created the original [Crazy] Taxi back in 1999, a lot of our players were like, 'Hey, I want to play this game with my friends', but you know, back then we were limited by the technology," he said.

"But now in 2026, even in our development team, there are a lot of our staff who have experience with multiplayer games. So with their knowledge, we were able to create a multiplayer mode for Taxi as well.

"We have the focus on the single player story mode part of the game, but we have a multiplayer mode for those who want to be more hardcore [...] But of course, both are very fun modes."

• Persona 6 has officially been announced
• The game is in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC
• A teaser trailer hints at a new "pulse-pounding, supernatural adventure"

Atlus just officially announced Persona 6 at the Xbox Games Showcase 2026 with an ominous teaser trailer.

While the trailer didn't give away too many details, it does seem like the renowned role-playing game (RPG) studio will be leaning into the horror elements a bit more than it has before.

"An entirely new story is about to unfold. The highly anticipated next chapter of the iconic RPG series delivers a bold, new standalone story blending heartfelt daily life and new characters with pulse-pounding, supernatural adventure," the trailer description reads.

"Whether it’s your first Persona game or you’ve been here since the beginning, this one’s for you."

A release date has not been shared at this time, but we do know that it will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

During the Xbox Games Showcase, Atlus also announced that Persona 4 Revival will launch on February 18, 2027, and shared a brand new gameplay for the remake of the 2008 game that boasts improved performance, modern graphics, and gorgeous cutscenes.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 looks like the ultimate first-person shooter package.

It combines a cinematic single-player campaign with innovative multiplayer and, as detailed in the latest Xbox Games Showcase, a practically standalone extraction shooter called DMZ.

Long time fans will recognize this upcoming mode as an evolution of the DMZ Beta that launched with 2022's Modern Warfare 2. It once again has players dropping into a hostile map and duking it out in a battle for scarce resources against both rival squads and roaming non-player character (NPC) enemies, but has been significantly expanded this time around.

At a recent visit to developer Infinity Ward's Los Angeles office, I was told be the team told me that it was built using all of the learnings from the original beta and a careful eye on the evolution of the wider extraction shooter genre.

It takes place in a whole new map: the sprawling Hajin exclusion zone — a huge swathe of land that encompasses parts of South Korea, North Korea, and Russia. It's been evacuated following a deadly nuclear meltdown depicted in the campaign, with players dropping in as part of an off the books CIA operation to recover abandoned military tech.

Danger close

DMZ will offer three distinct ways to play. You can pursue story missions, tackle highly replayable dynamic operations, or drop in with freedom to roam and explore the map.

Each deployment is designed to feel as distinct as possible, with a variety of factors affecting how events will unfold. Enemies move dynamically throughout the map, moving cargo in deadly convoys that can pose a serious threat to players. You can expect encounters with tanks, helicopters, armored juggernauts, and even drone swarms.

Luckily, an all-out fight is always a choice. DMZ has been built with a stealth system that sounds surprisingly in-depth for a Call of Duty title. An on-screen detection meter alerts you when you're about to be seen and killing enemies quietly will help you evade detection.

Players that do go in guns blazing will have to deal with an almost Grand Theft Auto-style wanted system with a star level raises every time you get into a big fight, prompting waves of more advanced enemies to deploy and hunt you down potentially forcing you to extract early.

An advanced weather system is an important part of the experience too. Conditions can vary from sunny days with the odd spell of drizzly rain to lashing thunderstorms and even snow. The devs are even working on a system that should cause the weather conditions to worsen as a match progresses, reflecting the increased danger the long you stay deployed and helping create a real sense of urgency.

DMZ comes with its own progression systems to master, with each of your operators having their own trait tree to work through. You can choose different operators to specialize in, all with distinct roles — for example, creating a dedicated character for stealthy looting and another more geared towards open combat.

If you die in the field you lose your loot, but you are given at least the opportunity to recover your operator by spending money that you've managed to scavenge on sending in an evac team.

It's not just your operators that you're building out either. The entire DMZ experience is centred around a Forward Operating Base (FOB) that you can upgrade with looted swag. It sounds a lot like the upgradeable hideout in Escape from Tarkov, and is complete with a 3D printer that lets you craft gear and a stash for storing your most valuable swag.

Everything that I've seen of DMZ so far suggests that it's a mammoth enough to be considered almost a game in its own right, a sentiment very much shared by the development team.

"I think with the combination of the changes to Core MP [...] and then combining that with DMZ being a game within a game with its own dedicated progression and persistent inventory and upgrading and all of that, I think [Modern Warfare 4] is the biggest, and I think for us even the most impressive Call of Duty that we've ever had a chance to work on," studio multiplayer creative director Joe Cecot told me in an interview during my studio visit.

The mode will be available from day one when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23, 2026, for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and Nintendo Switch 2.