• Hitman World of Assassination senior level designer Martin Ansdal shares the process of getting YouTuber Jacksepticeye on board for his Elusive Target mission
• Ansdal says Jacksepticeye "immediately gave us carte blanche to make him as evil as we wanted"
• He adds that "I’d like to think we matched his energy and went all in"

Hitman World of Assassination's latest Elusive Target mission stars YouTuber Jacksepticeye, and he allowed IO Interactive to make his character, Finn Colton, "as evil as we wanted."

That's according to senior level designer Martin Ansdal, who discussed the behind-the-scenes creation of the Elusive Target missions in an interview with TechRadar Gaming. The developer said Seán William McLoughlin, aka Jacksepticeye, "seemed genuinely excited" about starring in 'The Host,' since it's a franchise he grew up with, and permitted the team to go as wild as possible with his character.

Jacksepticeye "immediately gave us carte blanche to make him as evil as we wanted and complete freedom in designing the signature eliminations," Ansdal said. "Some celebrities are understandably a little concerned when they see themselves in the context of the game, but Seán was asking us specifically to push it further. I’d like to think we matched his energy and went all in."

For this Elusive Target mission, Ansdal revealed that the team flew to the Brighton office to meet with Séan "very early in development," which also meant "he had a lot more input on the mission design."

"He added a lot of small touches, including the beeping sound the content creator cameras make when they’re remotely activated," the developer said. "There is a very dark scene in the mission where Finn Colton 'looksmaxxes' while watching his old audition tapes. For this we had to get Seán to voice act as a child, which was a lot funnier behind the scenes than the horror of the in-game moment suggests."

For these specific missions, the senior level designer explained that this is a collaboration between him and the writer, as each Hitman mission has a branching narrative and several creative elimination opportunities, as well as "a vast ambient script to make sure the mission supports player freedom and replay."

"Usually we only do one recording session with the celebrity, so we optimize their script heavily and let the supporting cast fill out any gaps," he said.

Ansdal continued, saying he was "incredibly impressed with Seán’s performance given that he is not a traditional actor," and he is "incredibly affable and charming," as he is used to "projecting that through the screen in his videos, which is a kind of performance in itself."

"We tried to empathize that quality in his script cause we felt that would give the best result," he added.

• Secretlab announces the ErgoArch Monitor Light Bar Add-On, launching today
• The desk light is designed to pair with the Secretlab Magnus Monitor Arm
• The light bar offers a three-point adjustment arm that unlocks a wider and more precise range of adjustments for "unmatched versatility"

Secretlab has announced the ErgoArch Monitor Light Bar Add-On, a new ergonomic, elevated overhead desk light "designed for unmatched versatility."

"Good desk lighting helps reduce monitor glare and eye strain over long hours," Secretlab said. "But the amount of light you need and its positioning changes with what you’re doing. Yet, conventional monitor light bars offer limited control over both. They also sit on top of your monitor, restricting their range of adjustments."

Designed to attach magnetically to the Secretlab Magnus Monitor Arm, the new Secretlab ErgoArch Monitor Light Bar solves this issue by offering a flexible three-point adjustment arm, unlocking a wider and more precise range of adjustments for "unmatched versatility."

Compatible with any VESA-mounted screen, the desk light also features a full spectrum of brightness and temperature options and "delivers the right light setting for every position, activity, and mood."

The light bar's elevated position and asymmetrical optical design deliver light across your entire workspace by directing it downward and away from the screen, which minimizes reflections and glare while balancing brightness contrast between your display and workspace for more comfortable viewing.

Alongside Magnus Monitor Arm compatibility, the light bar includes a magnetic webcam mount attachment that keeps your display unobstructed, as well as immersive RGB ambient lighting powered by Nanoleaf, with access to 16.8 million color combinations. Lighting can be fine-tuned via a dedicated wireless controller and the Nanoleaf Smart App for quick access or the Nanoleaf Smart App.

The Secretlab ErgoArch Monitor Light Bar Add-On launches today, November 10, and is available at Secretlab.

• Original Mass Effect composer Jack Wall shares how orchestral and synth music influenced the first two games
• Wall says 70s and 80s music were a big inspiration and explains how Mass Effect was "less orchestra" and "more synthetic," while Mass Effect 2 had more orchestra
• He reveals that BioWare made 'Vigil' the main music track right before shipping the game

Original Mass Effect composer Jack Wall has revealed how orchestral and synth music influenced the series and how the iconic 'Vigil' track changed the game for the better.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Wall discussed the inspirations for Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2's core sound and themes, explaining that game director Casey Hudson "wanted to play with 80s synth mixed with quasi-orchestra" music, which was the basis for the series' memorable vibe.

"He [Hudson] imagined a synthesizer and amp on stage with the orchestra. That was the idea, " Wall said, adding that Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and other pieces from the 70s and 80s also influenced the soundtrack of the original Mass Effect.

"It was super cool and unique, as that idea hadn’t really been done before to my knowledge," he said. "At least not on this scale."

Wall explained Mass Effect was "less orchestra" and "more synthetic," while Mass Effect 2 added more orchestra, because "the design of the game changed."

He refers to the team compositions, explaining that each member of Shepard's team in Mass Effect 2 had their own missions and levels where they had to gather important assets for the final battle.

"We wanted to make sure that each level had its own sound," Wall said. "It was a good way for me to assign levels to my own composing team and be sort of the creative director of the score, write all of the main themes, and share with the team to sprinkle throughout to bring it all together. ME1 had more of the traditional leitmotif scoring, where places and/or people had their own themes."

The composition process, he said, was done by "writing to a picture," meaning gameplay, and formulating ideas from there. Mass Effect was the first game where Wall was able to see video capture to write to, and it "ensured that my vision for the score was closer to the actual game."

"When I hit something I like, I focus on that and just hone it until I feel that it’s ready to present to the client," he said. "My instincts are pretty good and I generally only get minor notes once we have an overall direction we can agree on, and we’re all rowing in the same direction. I had worked on Jade Empire with BioWare before ME1, and with that game all I had was artwork."

The composer went on to discuss Mass Effect's 'Vigil', which was a "particularly important track" that he wrote for the archives of the Protheans on the planet Ilos and that the team decided last minute to use for the menu music instead of the classic 'Mass Effect Theme' fans now know and love. Wall recalled booting up the game for the first time and hearing the music, saying it was worth it.

"It is in fact used there as you descend into the vaults where the Prothean crypt, giving a sense of wonder at what happened to the seemingly extinct race," he said. "But at the last moment before ship, instead of using the Mass Effect Theme on the load screen, the dev team swapped in Vigil and made the game so much more compelling with that one simple choice!

He added, "When I got the game and popped it into my Xbox, I was blown away to hear that track as the menu screen came up. The game instantly had a vibe."

• Original Mass Effect composer Jack Wall explains why the cinematic music was one of his "favourite" parts to write
• He says cinematic moments help "propel the story forward"
• Wall adds that cinematic music is "our opportunity to give the player goosebumps"

Jack Wall, the composer for Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, has explained how the game's cinematic music acted as an integral part of each narrative.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where the composer discussed BioWare's closure and how orchestral and synth music influenced the series, Wall said, "One of my favorite parts of being a composer for any game is the cinematic moments that propel the story forward."

He explained that cinematic moments accompanied by tracks are vital to the story, and "This is our opportunity to give the player goosebumps."

Wall explained that he wrote the music to be specifically connected to "both to places/environments and characters — always driving the story forward."

"The music won’t change in those moments depending on the gameplay as they are baked into the visuals," Wall added. "They are wonderful pauses for the player to just take it all in. Especially for a game like Mass Effect where those cinematics are generally rewards for getting to the next phase of gameplay."

Interestingly, Wall revealed that after he was hired for Mass Effect, BioWare divulged the entire story to him "along with the full arch of time, the Reapers, etc," providing him with a creative direction for the soundtrack.

"It was one of the most exciting sci-fi stories I’d ever heard," he said.

In the same interview, Wall also shared his favorite memories from working at BioWare and revealed that he considers Mass Effect 2's infamous final quest, Suicide Mission, to be "one of the 10 best endings for a video game ever."

• The Golden Joystick Awards 2026 will air on November 11 at 10AM PT / 1PM ET / 6PM GMT / 7PM CEST
• Fans can tune in and watch the event live, which will be hosted by Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis actor Alix Wilton Regan
• The ceremony will announce winners for 25 categories, including Ultimate Game of the Year

The winners of the Golden Joystick Awards 2026, one of the biggest ceremonies of the year that celebrates the best games of this year, will be revealed this week - here's when you can tune in.

The show is scheduled to begin on November 11 at 10AM PT / 1PM ET / 6PM GMT / 7PM CEST and can be watched live via YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, X, Future Games, and more.

Hosted by Dragon Age: Inquisition and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis actor Alix Wilton Regan, the event will also feature guest presenters from the industry, including Rare composer Chloe Kwok, art and creative director Rex Crowle, Paddle Paddle Paddle developer Mateo Covic, and interviewer, actor, and presenter AlicesPixels.

More guest presenters include Resident Evil Requiem actor Nick Apostolides, Star Wars: Galactic Racer actor and Wrestling’s Mr. Charles Crowley, Richard Summers-Calvert, CD Projekt Red production director Malgorzata Mitrega, composer Richard Jacques, and Control Resonant actor, Frankie Kevich.

"I’m absolutely thrilled to be your host for this year’s Golden Joystick Awards on November 11th," said Wilton Regan. "We’re celebrating the greatest games of the past 12 months - and, more importantly, the incredibly talented teams who made them happen. The people who put in thousands of hours creating virtual worlds for us to get hopelessly lost in. Get ready for an evening of special guests, spectacular games, and plenty of silly jokes. See you on November 11th when we will unveil your winners!'"

Games like 007 First Light, Resident Evil Requiem, Dispatch, Forza Horizon 6, Big Walk, Crimson Desert, and more are leading this year's nominations across 25 categories, including Ultimate Game of the Year, 22 of which are voted for by the public.

"This year’s shortlist offers a fascinating cross-section of our industry in 2026, with the work of small teams of indie developers sitting shoulder to shoulder with titanic gaming franchises like Pokémon and Resident Evil, as well as huge IPs like Star Wars and James Bond," said content director Daniel Dawkins.

"The Golden Joystick Awards are the only games awards show chosen by the players - and we can’t wait to see who the public have voted for. Tune in on November 11 to find out the winners and honor the hard work of our industry’s supremely talented developers - in a dazzling ceremony hosted by the wonderful Alix Wilton Regan."

• Original Mass Effect 1 and 2 composer Jack Wall shares his favorite memories from working on the games at BioWare
• Wall says director Casey Hudson was "so passionate about the story," and they worked together on Mass Effect 2's Suicide Mission
• He considers it "one of the 10 best endings for a video game ever"

Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 composer Jack Wall has shared his favorite memories from working at BioWare and on the series, and revealed which he considers one of the "best" of all time.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where the original Mass Effect composer also discussed the closure of BioWare, Wall said he last worked at BioWare in 2010 on Mass Effect 2, but has fond memories of beginning his work there alongside the team

"My absolute favorite memory of working with BioWare was flying up to Edmonton to kick off both ME1 and ME2," Wall said. "I really liked the people there. They were so kind to me. [Game director] Casey [Hudson] was always so passionate about the story."

The composer went on to discuss specific missions he recalled making music for, revealing that Mass Effect 2's infamous final quest, Suicide Mission, was one of the first things he and Casey Hudson worked on together.

"Probably to date one of the 10 best endings for a video game ever," Wall said. "It was super important to him to have something musically memorable for that, and so we went back and forth until we got something we could both be proud of."

The editing process for Suicide Mission was much more complicated than any other mission, he explained, and so it ended up being a bigger and more challenging task because of the number of endings associated with the quest.

"Then MUCH later, cutting the ending together (in the very last hours before shipping), that ending, as it branched off this way or that way depending on how you played the game, was very satisfying," Wall added.

"It was a technically challenging score in that way. Getting the timings to work with premixed music stems was a major obstacle. But the results speak for themselves."

• Rockstar Games announces Grand Theft Auto 6: The Festival for November 21
• The special live concert will feature music from artists in the game and on the official soundtrack
• A pre-sale lottery for tickets will be available on November 11

Rockstar Games has announced Grand Theft Auto 6: The Festival, a special live concert scheduled for after GTA 6's launch and featuring music from the game.

The Festival is set for November 21 at Mana Wynwood in Miami and will feature a star-studded lineup of artists from the game and the official soundtrack across two stages.

Those performances include: Cactus Jack presents Travis Scott, Don Toliver, Kodak Black, and Sofaygo; Cardi B; Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso; Justice (DJ set); Metro Boomin; Nick León B2B DJ Python; Prospa B2B Skream; Rauw & Friends; Suero; Tainy; The Dare B2B Fcukers (DJ set).

Rockstar has confirmed that a pre-sale lottery will be available for a chance to purchase tickets, beginning on Wednesday, November 11.

Tickets are limited to two per pre-sale lottery code, and the lottery closes at 4PM ET / 9PM GMT on Tuesday, November 10.

Fans can sign up for the GTA 6: The Festival lottery here, with entries limited to a maximum of one entry per person. Entries must also be from people aged 17+.

"Winners will be drawn at random from eligible entries and contacted by SMS with a code on Tuesday, November 10 by 7 P.M. ET," Rockstar said. "Odds of being selected will depend on the number of eligible entries received."

GTA 6 finally launches in just 10 days on November 19. Digital pre-loading will begin on November 10.

• Original Mass Effect composer Jack Wall hopes BioWare can be saved one day
• Wall says, "It’s sort of bananas to think of BioWare as just…gone"
• He adds, "I hope that someone else can come in and take it from here"

Original Mass Effect composer Jack Wall has reacted to EA shutting down BioWare and hopes the legendary studio can be saved one day.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming following the devastating news and cancelation of the next Mass Effect game, Mass Effect Universe, Wall said, "Frankly, it’s sort of bananas to think of BioWare as just…gone."

Wall worked on Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 and agreed that the series is important enough to warrant saving, saying, "Mass Effect is such a wonderfully original universe. It feels like it should live on not only in games but TV and Film as well. The stories are so compelling."

The composer added, "Not sure where the Prime TV series sits at this time, but it would be really cool to see a show of this universe."

Following its closure, the studio released a statement saying that the "generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember." The shutdown came as part of EA's first major restructuring plan that led to 400 layoffs across the publisher's studios, including around 50 for the people remaining at BioWare.

Many creatives across the industry are urging someone, like another publisher, to save the developer before it's too late. Fans have also created a petition called "#SaveMassEffect" and wish to see BioWare's vision for the Mass Effect series continue.

Wall shared a similar sentiment about the studio, saying, "In short, I’m sad to see BioWare go. I hope that someone else can come in and take it from here."

• Several industry analysts say Sony and Microsoft may need to scale back their "relentless push for higher-end performance" to avoid $1000 consoles
• Piers Harding-Rolls at Ampere Analysis says ambitions will need to be "moderated" to avoid breaching the hefty price point
• Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics anticipates that the PS5 will stick around well after the PS6 launches due to rising costs

Several industry analysts have suggested console manufacturers will need to temper their ambitions for next-generation hardware to avoid breaching the $1000 console launch mark.

Unlike last-generation, current-gen console prices only seem to be getting more expensive years after launch. Whether it's the ongoing DRAM crisis or the AI boom that's made components even more costly, the games industry is at a point where the future of affordable hardware is looking pretty grim.

There have been conversations over the past few years about what this could mean for next-gen consoles — namely the PS6 and Xbox's Project Helix — and whether manufacturers could ever reach a point where their hardware could breach $1000.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming about rising costs, Piers Harding-Rolls at Ampere Analysis suggested Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo may have to scale back their ambitions for realistic graphics and higher performance if they ever want to avoid that huge price point.

"The relentless push for higher-end performance will need to be moderated," Harding-Rolls said.

Omdia's James McWhirter also suggested hardware stratification across tiers may be in the cards, including a cheaper Nintendo Switch 2 with more bundles that offer more value, and manufacturers may delay new hardware launches for the foreseeable future in a bid to wait out the rising cost of components.

However, this could also mean longer console generations. Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics anticipates the PS5 will stick around well after the PS6 launches, and cross-generation games may allow players the opportunity to delay their hardware upgrades.

"The next generation won’t replace this one so much as sit on top of it," Elliott claimed.

• IO Interactive shares how it creates accurate Hitman World of Assassination Elusive Targets
• Senior level designer Martin Ansdal says there is no scanning involved and everything is "bespoke craftsmanship"
• Junior concept and character artist Lovisa Österman says it takes "hours" of studying before beginning the design process

IO Interactive has revealed that it hand-crafts all of its Hitman World of Assassination Elusive Targets rather than relying on traditional scanning.

With the release of World of Assassination's new Elusive Target mission, The Host, starring YouTuber JackSepticEye, TechRadar Gaming chatted with IOI about the ins and outs of designing these special updates, including how it constructs the most creative eliminations.

When asked how the studio achieves the likeness of celebrities and public figures, senior level designer Martin Ansdal said every character is created from scratch, and no motion-capture or scanning is involved in the process.

"Like many things in Hitman, it’s down to bespoke craftsmanship – we do not rely on scans at all," Ansdal said. "Instead, the character receives a hand-drawn concept and is modelled and textured by a character artist."

He added, "Oftentimes a great likeness is knowing when to supplement realism with caricature. This is a balance a real character artist can strike in a way that a scan just can’t."

Junior concept and character artist Lovisa Österman also explained how she begins the design process, revealing that it takes "hours" simply looking at references to ensure accuracy before the stages of creating the Elusive Target models.

"I spend hours pouring over videos and photos of the talent to really understand what their face looks like from every angle. And a heavy lifter is getting the textures right," Österman said.

"You can have the 3d mesh completely right and still not feel like it looks like the person. Because you really need the textures, the person's freckles and spots and flaws to really recognize them."

The studio also offered insight into its process for selecting the game's targets, confirming that the level designer and writer take over once a celebrity or public figure is on board.

Ok, I'll come out and say it. Modern World of Warcraft, or Midnight, in all of its convoluted story-driven glory, with its systems on systems, its currencies on currencies, and high-octane pacing, isn't an MMO. It's just not. At least not to me.

I know that's a big ol' bold statement, and I get it; you're probably sat there thinking: "Zak, what the hell are you on about? Stop being an overly dramatic journalist trying to clickbait us all into reading your long-winded waffling diatribe". But hear me out before you reach for the Dirge.

If you boiled down the current iteration of the game in a pot, and stripped away the marketing hype, and the hyper-attentive gameplay, Midnight, retail, it's not actually that different from something like Call of Duty, or Overwatch. Not at its heart. It's seasonal; it's mostly queue-based, with as much commitment as I have to that chilli I cooked up three months back that's still sitting in my freezer.

Where it all began

I've been playing World of Warcraft since 2006. Over 20 years, stuck with the same video game, handing Blizzard my hard-earned cash for a monthly sub.

I've done it all. I was a Priest Class Leader at the age of 14, raiding in Molten Core, BWL and AQ40 (mad respect to Fracture Bloodfeather EU). I then main tanked through The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions on a Dwarf Warrior. After that, a Guild Leader and Raid Leader in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, healing on my Priest. Finally, ending as a Retribution Paladin in Warlords of Draenor and beyond.

The game got me into UI development; it got me into PC building. I studied how to create textures and TGA files in Photoshop, built rudimentary addons with Lua, and created a reasonably successful UI series. It taught me about design, about triage, about optimization. I owe my career to this game in many ways.

But during the Legion expansion, going into Battle for Azeroth, something flipped. I'd gotten used to the pace, the tempo. I tolerated the timed high-end Mythic+ 5-man dungeons, the constant weekly epic treadmill, and how impatient the community had become.

And of course I managed to continually decode the never-ending slew of multiplying vertical progression systems and catch-up mechanics with ever more convoluted naming schemes, to stay at the top of my game.

But it wasn't long before I came to the realisation that I had no close community anymore. I wasn't making new acquaintances or friends in the same way I had through previous expansions; I didn't feel tied to any one guild, or server, or faction, or anything. And slowly, my love for the game faded.

The sub was paused on and off sporadically. I'd jump back in every expansion launch, trying to get into it, trying to convince myself that this was the one, but it was a constant struggle to stay committed, to enjoy it. In a world that felt so empty, so devoid of life. It turned into a lonely chore, rather than a fun pastime to rid myself of the day's stress, and I couldn't pinpoint why I was getting so burnt out by it. At least not until very recently.

The key concept: Time

The last few months I've been playing World of Warcraft: Classic, (of course on the run-up to the WoW Forever launch), and that, that has provided me with clarity on what it was I didn't understand was missing from Retail.

Vanilla Classic, even today, is still ridiculously popular. More so than Mists of Pandaria, or any other version of the rebooted game. It's odd, right? It launched in 2019, and yet the servers are still bristling with people running 40-man raids, doing PvP, and are home to thriving economies, guilds, events, and more. You can barely move in Stormwind on some servers. And that's despite the game being well and truly "worked out" years ago. But why?

Simply put, it's time. The game in its modern state, maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose, gave up what made it so special. What made it an MMO to begin with. All in an attempt to try and attract more people to the player base, and bring more subs in. And it did so by, conversely, becoming more accessible.

Because everything is so fast, and there's a constant treadmill with extensive catch-up mechanics, there's no commitment. You lose attachment to what it is you're doing, and as a result, nothing matters. On average, to go from level 1 to the max cap of 90 in Midnight, it can take anywhere between 12 and 18 hours. For an established player, it can be less than eight.

As a result, people hop about constantly. Is your class not performing well? Is another now at the top of the Mythic+ logs? Just create a new character, and in less than half a day you can be gearing up for high-end Mythic raiding.

Even worse still, if you're low on cash, you can get some from Blizzard's in-game store with three mouse clicks and a healthy chunk of your own cash. That will allow you to buy a slew of gear from the latest content directly on the game's player Auction House.

The modern games' profession systems are also a mess, and it takes a degree in data analytics to understand half of it at a glance. Hell, you can even skip the bulk of the levelling entirely if you want and just pay for a character boost if need be, no matter what state your account is in.

If you do decide to skip the boost, then even the levelling journey itself feels disconnected from the community. Most just spam dungeons and get pooled up with players from all over the continent, never to see them again, running them as fast as possible with mass AOE pulls.

Or if that's not to your taste, you pick a specific past expansion from the game's lengthy list to level through instead. In this case, you'll see no max-level players at all, only the select few that have chosen to also level in that specific piece of content.

This is all as you barrel through levels a mile a minute, learning new skills faster than you can acclimatise, and watch as your gear becomes redundant in less than 15 minutes.

What WoW: Forever & Classic get right

And this is what Classic and Forever get right. It takes an age to level; it really does. I have a 32 Hunter currently, a 21 Warrior, and a 21 Priest on Classic. I'm halfway to 60 (in number only) on that Hunter. It's one of the fastest classes to level in Vanilla WoW, and my playtime is 2 days and 1 hour to get that far. I could've levelled five classes in Retail in that time. And still, I've got another 4 to 6 days to get to max level, if I don't mill about.

And here's the thing: because it takes so long, I've done an incredible amount of extra content outside of levelling when I've got bored of it. I've spent time doing my professions to make money, because I'm prepping to get my mount at lvl 40. I've gone to Darkshore and explored various areas to get a special ghost nightsaber pet. I've grouped and travelled to dungeons like Deadmines and Stockades. All the while making some incredibly memorable runs with good people, with wipes, close calls, and quest lines that have taken an age to finish.

My gear matters too, and if I get something from a dungeon, or a particularly long quest line, it feels momentous; the power increase is tangible. I've even treated myself to an Epic level 37 bow, ready for later on, and it's just sat in my bank waiting. And then, of course, new spells, new talents, I've got my pet to look after; all of it feels that much more potent.

Socially too, I see people about when I'm levelling, high levels, low levels, you name it. And we help each other; we chat about gear, about specs, buff each other as we pass, talk nonsense.

I had a group of four players jump in to save me from dying to a difficult quest mob in Duskwood, for no other reason than to help. They gained nothing from it. That's just one example where I've made new friends in-game.

Because it takes so long to do anything in classic — to travel, to learn — and because the world is so dangerous, because it's not easily accessible (there aren't even any summoning stones in Forever), your decisions and commitments matter.

If I were to re-roll, it would take me another two days, maybe more, to get that character to 30. As a result, I've become attached to the people I've met, my gear, my character as a whole. Even my server. If I see a level 40 to 60, there's a sense of almost awe, like "yeah, one day I'll be that level, that kitted out; I wonder what that'll be like?"

It's aspirational, and the lack of catch-up mechanics contributes to that; it doesn't impede it. It's not that there's no vertical progression here either; there is certainly in Classic, and in fact arguably that's what makes it more interesting, not less.

Get to max level, and you gear up via dungeons. Then you're set for the 10-man raids. After that, you move into Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair, and Blackwing Lair. Finally, you're set for high-end content like Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas. It's a long journey upwards.

If you don't have good enough gear on your character, you'll underperform or be unable to compete on the next level of content. But all of that content from day one is still relevant. Catch a glimpse of those players running around the capital cities, and you're struck by it.

It's visually impressive; they've committed that time to the game, that character, that class, and they're powerful as a result. You can see it, certainly with no transmog.

Imperfection makes it more, not less, sociable

By all accounts, Classic World of Warcraft, and subsequently Forever, are flawed games. Certainly, from a shareholder perspective. You have this massive time investment from developers building content that only a select few will see. It takes an age to get to max level compared to modern WoW, and its slower pace can feel like drudgery in direct comparison to the live button-masher mode we have in Midnight.

But it's that lack of accessibility, that need for time, that gives Forever and Classic their sense of sociability. It makes you feel attached to the world, your class, your character, your race; it feels inhabited, and it's that that makes it feel like a true MMO.

World of Warcraft Forever is heavily based on Classic. Blizzard has stated that many, many times over. The entire game is built on or forged from the idea of what Classic might have looked like in an alternate timeline, where the developers added new content but stayed true to the original design principles.

They have arguably deviated in certain examples already, of course. For example, the game already features a number of quality-of-life improvements to classes, a group finder, and cosmetics.

From what I've seen, however, Forever is already on a good path. It'll be less vertical gear treadmill and more slight horizontal incline. From what we've seen so far, general levelling and gearing is almost on par with Classic, albeit mildly quicker.

What Blizzard needs to do, in this humble journo's opinion, is to keep the pace the same. Instead of rushing to deploy new content, or forbidding themselves from adding something on arbitrary, subjective "staying true to the Vanilla World of Warcraft experience" guidelines, they instead need to be asking, "does this reduce the time commitment, or make the game more accessible?"

If either answer is yes, then there's room for discussion.

Can Retail World of Warcraft be saved?

But what of the ailing beast? What of Midnight and its rapid-paced, cartoonish Mythic+ dominated landscape, filled with timers, rewards, and catch-up mechanics galore? What could be pulled from Forever beyond better shaders and volumetric fog? It's a challenging question to answer. Midnight has an active player base, people who love it. Those who live for the high-intensity and flip-flopping nature of chasing the meta. To change that game and make it more Classic, could be intrinsically unpopular.

And yet, we'll have to see exactly how well World of Warcraft: Forever does. If it is what we expect it to be and it dwarfs Midnight's player base by a considerable margin, it's not likely Blizzard will ignore that.

I genuinely believe slower-paced levelling, a lack of catch-up mechanics, and a simplified gearing system would dramatically improve Midnight, and in fact would've improved everything from the Battle of Azeroth expansion onwards. Whether that comes to pass, well, we'll have to wait and see. For now, you can find me buried headfirst in what World of Warcraft should have been, and probably should've stuck to, all those years ago.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves says there's a big difference between how music "functions" in multiplayer mode and in the campaign
• Graves says a campaign usually has narrative beats and "dramatic moments" to follow, while "multiplayer is completely unpredictable"
• He adds that "It's less about following a story and more about supporting the player's experience"

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves has explained the biggest differences between scoring a multiplayer mode and a campaign because of how the music "functions."

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where the composer discussed his creative process for the game's multiplayer music and what inspired him most when writing the score, Graves said writing tracks for an online gameplay experience is much different from a story mode with certain narrative beats, because you have to factor in the unknown.

"The biggest difference is how the music functions within the game," Graves said. "In a single-player campaign, you're usually following a narrative with specific characters, locations, and dramatic moments. You have a much better idea of what the player is experiencing and when."

The composer continued, saying, "Multiplayer is completely unpredictable," and suggested that it requires you to think outside of the constraints of a standard narrative score.

"You have no idea how any given match is going to unfold, so the music needs to work within a much more flexible framework," Graves added. "It's less about following a story and more about supporting the player's experience without getting in the way of the gameplay."

Elsewhere in the discussion, Graves said multiplayer mode has "a completely different vibe from the campaign" and "the music needs to make you feel like anything could happen at any point in time."

"A lot of what I was trying to capture was forward momentum and pure adrenaline," he said. "I always thought of myself as the musical equivalent of Master Sergeant Apone in Aliens, pumping up all the troops beforehand, keeping them in line and focused in combat, and rewarding them when they come back home. 'Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck's a fortune! Every formation a parade!'"

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves shares his secret tool he used on the soundtrack
• He reveals that it's "an aluminum garbage can lid that I save for special occasions"
• Graves also used it for 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves has revealed the unusual, secret tool he used for creating the game's soundtrack.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Graves discussed his creative process for writing the game's multiplayer music, which he said is usually "an afterthought," and even offered some insight into the coolest technology he used for recording the tracks.

"It's definitely not considered any kind of tech, but it's definitely entertaining," Graves replied when asked what his secret weapon was.

But if you expected something along the lines of interesting studio equipment or fancy tools to capture the multiplayer's tone, you'd be dead wrong.

"I have an aluminum garbage can lid that I save for special occasions," the composer revealed, "and the last time I used it was in 2022's Modern Warfare [2]. So naturally, I had to bring it out again and play it for Modern Warfare 4."

Graves also discussed how the multiplayer music is "completely different" from the campaign, which has more story beats and dramatic moments, saying "you play a lot of multiplayer" to truly understand its tone.

"It's a completely different vibe from the campaign, and the music needs to make you feel like anything could happen at any point in time," Graves said. "A lot of what I was trying to capture was forward momentum and pure adrenaline."

"There's definitely a lot of aggressive percussion, distorted electronics, and organic textures that help give the music its identity," Graves added. "I love combining real-world sounds with electronic processing, especially when you end up with something that's difficult to identify.

"It creates a sense of energy and unpredictability that fits perfectly with multiplayer."

Rising console prices are by now a fact of life for gamers, no matter which platform they prefer. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X — consoles that are now six years old — cost $150 and $300 more than at launch, respectively; the Nintendo Switch 2, released in 2025, already costs $50 more.

Things haven't always been this way: back in 2013, the PS4 launched for $400, and the PS4 Slim arrived three years later for $300. Price cuts and cheaper versions were traditionally a part — a key part — of the console lifecycle.

In 2026, that pattern is reversed: consoles are getting more expensive rather than cheaper, at a time when everything else is also getting price hikes, and the trend is occurring all over the world, not just in the US and Europe.

To find out why prices keep rising — and whether they'll ever come down — I spoke to four industry analysts: Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics, James McWhirter at Omdia, Piers Harding-Rolls at Ampere Analysis, and Mat Piscatella at Circana.

Whatever happened to the price cut?

Traditionally, hardware makers have launched new consoles at relatively slim margins — even at times making a loss — and planned to make up the difference through games and other spending by players.

Manufacturing efficiencies combined with advances in hardware, including cheaper chips and memory, have helped to reduce production costs, further cementing the durability of this model.

Making use of these gains, manufacturers could then introduce slimmer versions of consoles or even reduce prices — therefore enticing more people to the platform and increasing game sales.

"The hardcore [gamers] paid full whack at launch," says Alinea's Elliott. "Families, kids, lapsed players, and more budget-conscious gamers came in later, at a lower price."

In 2026, the cost reductions that underpinned this model are much harder to achieve, with advanced chips becoming more expensive to manufacture and memory prices soaring.

At the same time, makers have become less willing to subsidise their hardware. "Sony and Microsoft have become more reticent to sink margin into subsidising consoles heavily this generation," says Ampere's Harding-Rolls.

The net result is that the traditional relationship between console age, manufacturing costs, and retail prices has completely broken down.

It's not just the RAM

The PS5 and Xbox Series X launched amid the turbulence of the COVID pandemic, and supply shortages lasted well into their lifecycles.

Now, we see myriad interrelated headwinds — from inflation and rising energy costs to currency fluctuations, particularly the weak yen, and US tariffs — that put even more pressure on manufacturing and retail prices.

"This console generation has been characterised by macroeconomic instability," says Omdia's McWhirter.

To top things off, the AI infrastructure boom is gobbling up enormous amounts of memory, encouraging chipmakers to prioritise more profitable server products and squeezing production capacity available for consumer electronics.

Consoles, which rely on DRAM for working memory and NAND flash for storage, are effectively caught in the crossfire. TrendForce estimates that memory now accounts for 23% to 42% of console component costs, compared with around 15% historically.

Elliott points out that console manufacturers negotiate memory prices and volumes months in advance, potentially delaying the impact of rising costs by two to four quarters. "A console on a shelf this Christmas contains memory that may have been priced the best part of a year ago," he says.

Same problem, different game plans

Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all facing these pressures, but each has its own priorities.

Sony's PS5 is a mature platform with an established audience, and so the company is increasingly focused on making money from existing customers, including through subscriptions like PlayStation Plus.

Its Q2 results, reported on November 5, illustrate this well: PS5 shipments fell from 4 million to 2.6 million year on year, while gaming division revenue increased 9%, helped considerably by a weaker yen. "These days, Sony treats hardware as a gateway it would rather not subsidise," says Elliott.

Microsoft is in a similar position with Xbox, but its games increasingly appear on PlayStation and PC alongside its own consoles — as Elliott puts it, "the console is one door among many."

Elliott argues that Microsoft's willingness to accept higher hardware prices reflects the console's changing importance within its wider gaming business, although falling hardware sales could make it harder to attract new players.

Nintendo, as is so often the case, has its own dilemma.

The Switch 2 is still early in its lifecycle, meaning Nintendo needs to build up its audience while keeping the console affordable enough to attract new buyers. McWhirter argues that Nintendo is accepting pressure on short-term profitability rather than passing the full increase in component costs to customers.

Omdia estimates that the market price of the Switch 2's 12GB memory and 256GB storage increased by $162 between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026, compared with a $50 increase in its US retail price. The figure doesn't necessarily reflect what Nintendo pays its suppliers, but illustrates the scale of the problem.

Nintendo says it has no plans for further price increases, but as McWhirter says, "The big question going forward is: how long will this be sustainable?"

For all their differences, the three console makers face the same question: how much can they charge before players start walking away?

“Elliott argues that manufacturers have also become more focused on protecting their margins, with established customers seemingly willing to absorb higher prices. “Every price rise this generation has been a test, and the core audience kept passing it – on PlayStation and Nintendo anyway,” he says.”

Are gamers getting priced out?

The new dynamics of console pricing give gamers some difficult choices. Circana's Piscatella has observed a consistent pattern around recent price increases: sales jump ahead of the new prices taking effect, then decline and eventually settle at a new baseline.

Piscatella says this pattern has emerged across PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch 2, and is distinct from the natural slowdown in sales as consoles get older.

Console price cuts later in the hardware's lifecycle have traditionally made them more affordable for families and younger gamers, a dynamic that Elliott points out is now quickly disappearing.

"Budget players have always come in through used consoles and 20 quid used discs," says Elliott. The shift towards digital distribution complicates matters, particularly when it comes to buying and reselling games cheaply.

The picture isn't totally bleak, however: Piscatella argues that younger and less affluent gamers do have options, particularly on mobile devices and lower-spec PCs, where free-to-play hits like Roblox and Fortnite are widely available.

Cloud gaming could also become a more attractive option as console prices continue to rise, and subscription services can offer access to a huge library of games for a monthly fee.

The risk, though, is that console gaming increasingly becomes the preserve of older, more affluent audiences, even as gaming itself remains hugely popular.

"Consoles gained popularity for their ease of use, convenience and affordability when compared to other gaming options," says Piscatella. "Anything that decreases these factors for consoles makes them a less appealing option."

The $1,000 question

The AI boom looks set to keep pressure on component prices — and therefore console prices — for some time yet. While memory prices might eventually stabilise, neither Elliott nor Harding-Rolls expects a return to the old pattern of steadily cheaper consoles.

Retail prices are likely to remain elevated due to expensive manufacturing processes and manufacturers' reluctance to absorb costs, and Elliott expects console makers to lean on temporary promotions, not wholesale price cuts.

But will console launch prices ever breach $1,000? Harding-Rolls believes Sony and Microsoft "will have to subsidise more heavily than they would like" to keep the next generation affordable.

Ampere's August research did the maths, modelling a scenario where an incrementally updated PS6 and Xbox launched in 2028 for $1,000, finding that combined sales over their first five years could be up to 38% lower than the equivalent period for the current generation.

In other words, Sony and Microsoft beware.

Faced with these interrelated dilemmas, manufacturers might turn in a new direction and rethink their approach to hardware.

Harding-Rolls suggests, for example, that manufacturers may have to scale back their ambitions for ever-more-realistic graphics and raw performance. "The relentless push for higher-end performance will need to be moderated," he says.

McWhirter posits that we might see more hardware stratification across tiers, potentially including a cheaper Switch 2, and a growth in bundles that offer value without actually cutting console prices.

Console makers may also delay new hardware launches for the foreseeable future to assess whether component costs improve — although the mood music from memory makers like SK Hynix is bleak, with much of its production capacity already committed through 2028.

Longer generations, then, seem increasingly likely. Elliott anticipates that the PS5 will stick around well after its successor launches, and cross-generation games may let gamers delay any hardware upgrades. "The next generation won’t replace this one so much as sit on top of it," he says.

Financing could spread the upfront cost of new consoles, while trade-ins and refurbished hardware might offer cheaper entry points for gamers — albeit without solving the underlying affordability dilemma.

A new era of pay-to-play?

As we head into 2027 and beyond, the danger for console makers is that their hardware becomes a product for wealthy enthusiasts, undermining the business model that made console gaming so successful.

Hardware that once became cheaper as it aged is now becoming more expensive, at a time when households are already facing higher living costs. Rising component costs might eventually ease, but changing business models could make permanent price cuts increasingly rare.

Piscatella worries that a shrinking pool of potential buyers could ultimately threaten the economics of the entire hardware model.

"Then the question becomes at what point does the addressable market for a new console become so small as to make it unviable," says Piscatella. "We're not there yet, but the risk of getting to that point certainly exists."

• Hitman World of Assassination senior level designer Martin Ansdal explains how IO Interactive designs the best Elusive Target elimination methods
• Ansdal says the elimination has to serve "the target poetic justice for their central character flaw"
• He adds that it also requires "intriguing toybox mechanics to set up the kill and a nice juicy payoff presentation"

IO Interactive has shared its recipe for constructing the most creative Elusive Target eliminations in Hitman World of Assassination.

The ongoing Hitman game just received another major update in the form of a new Elusive Target mission called The Host, which tasks Agent 47 with taking down YouTuber JackSepticEye’s in-game character, Finn Colton.

As with every new Elusive Target mission, players will be able to use their imagination to eliminate Colton with the many possibilities on offer, which is what the game is best known for, and according to senior level designer Martin Ansdal, IOI has a very specific way of designing these murder methods.

"For each mission we brainstorm a bunch of elimination ideas and choose the ones that hit the most of our success criteria," Ansdal told TechRadar Gaming following the mission's release.

Ansdal explained that the Elusive Target's characterisation and mission story factor into what makes a good elimination as much as the mechanics, despite the player being given free rein to get creative.

"A great signature elimination is a combination of serving the target poetic justice for their central character flaw, intriguing toybox mechanics to set up the kill, and a nice juicy payoff presentation," he said.

"For example, JackSepticEye’s character Finn Colton is obsessed with generating online content and has no concern for safety or ethics. So we designed a kill where you overheat and burn down his generative AI server farm with him inside. Then his employees film him on their phones as he dies."

Hitman World of Assassination's new The Host Elusive Target mission is free-to-play now until November 25.

Ansdal also shared IOI's process for selecting the game's targets, confirming that the level designer and writer take over once a celebrity or public figure is on board, and "We try to find a location which thematically suits the talent and craft a story that synergizes with the talent in tone and genre."

• A gamer took the GTA 6 'extended look' trailer and fudged it to work with DLSS 5 and Frame Generation
• The results posted on YouTube look impressive, albeit with some notable glitches
• It'll actually be possible to run the game on console, piped through a PC with an Nvidia GPU to add DLSS 5 and other visual trickery, at the cost of some input lag
• …and some believe that trade-off might be worth it

Will the best way to play GTA 6 at launch be to pipe it from your PS5 to your PC with an Nvidia GPU and then back out to your TV?

No, it absolutely won't, but a convoluted setup along these lines could be the optimal way to experience the game visually (with some major caveats) — before the PC version arrives — given that you can fudge the addition of DLSS 5 this way.

How does this work? Wccftech picked up the story of the Redditor who proposed this experiment, and actually applied DLSS 5 to the GTA 6 'extended look' trailer that Rockstar brought out a couple of months ago.

To be specific, this gamer gave the trailer a DLSS 5 makeover with 3x Frame Generation tripling the frame rate from 30 fps to 90 fps, via an app called Veyra, which is a GPU video enhancement tool for Windows on GitHub.

The Redditor explains: "I used Veyra 2.1.1, a tool that can take a video source (video files, capture cards, Remote Play) and apply Neural Rendering [DLSS 5], upscaling, and Frame Generation in real time. I also integrated MFG Unlocker into it so I can unlock Multi Frame Generation on my RTX 4080 and experiment with 3x/4x FG on 40-series cards."

MFG Unlocker is an experimental tool (again on GitHub) which the Redditor is using for getting Multi Frame Generation on their RTX 4080, in case you were wondering. (As ever, download any third-party software entirely at your own risk).

As you can see in the YouTube clip below, the results of this polishing of the official trailer are very impressive in some ways. That said, there are clear issues with artifacts and glitching in terms of the characters and lighting, with the best results seen in the background environment details.

It's pretty remarkable given that this is a fairly aggressive implementation of DLSS 5 by all accounts, fudged on top of a video with no relevant game data (the likes of vector and geometry data) to guide the neural rendering.

The Redditor's plan is to use a console-to-PC pipeline to play GTA 6 on the PS5, with the PC effectively sitting between the console and final output on the TV, adding DLSS 5 and jazzing up the visuals.

This means taking the PS5 and hooking it up to a 4K HDR capture card in the PC, running it through Veyra with the RTX 4080, then outputting to the 4K TV. It's a roundabout way of using the Nvidia GPU as an external graphics card for the console, except all the GeForce GPU is doing is applying DLSS and/or MFG to the image the PS5 has rendered — although there is a price to pay in terms of input lag, of course.

Analysis: capture capers

The Redditor doesn't actually have their PS5 yet (although they've ordered it) to try out this setup fully, but others on Reddit have run such a setup, and in fact it's not that uncommon (albeit still far from a mainstream concept).

One gamer says that they've played GTA 5 using an Elgato capture card with NitLink software, and "the gameplay was 100 times better", and while "there is a noticeable input lag" they claim that "it's completely acceptable — around 1-2 milliseconds."

That little input lag seems a stretch (to say the least), and overall, there's some dispute on whether this way of gaming is viable. Some gamers say that such a setup is just too laggy, while others claim it provides a decently playable experience. Of course, it will depend on what type of game you're playing — a fast-reaction shooter, for example, isn't going to do well with any extra lag being introduced, and you're certainly going to get some.

Really, the success of this kind of console to PC capture card to TV setup is going to heavily depend on a number of factors. The quality of the capture card (a PCIe board would be best, rather than one connected via USB) and the related software are the primary factors, and by all accounts, a higher-end Elgato with NitLink gives you a good chance of enjoying your PS5 games with an Nvidia GPU souping them up using DLSS 5 and Frame Generation.

I'm betting there will also be an element of subjectivity here, too, with some people likely to feel any latency more keenly than others.

Some gamers use this setup to play PS5 games on their PC monitor (in other words, without piping the image back out of the PC to the living room TV, which would cut down on some of the input lag), and there are guides to running this kind of setup on YouTube, like this one. Others recommend Zanit's tutorials on YouTube, but those videos are in Portuguese, so you'll need to translate them if you're not a native speaker. It's pretty cool stuff, if rather convoluted — and a good capture card doesn't come cheap (neither does a high-end RTX 5000 GPU).

Meanwhile, as far as GTA 6 on the PC goes, we may see this happen a lot sooner than expected, due to the way the emulation scene is going right now (in turbo mode thanks to AI). In other words, Rockstar may want to get the PC port on sale before PC gamers start playing it via emulation.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves shares his stance on AI being used as a creative tool for video games
• Graves says, "Nothing will ever replace the emotional depth and creative inspiration of human beings as artists and creators"
• He says music creation is based on "personal experiences" and "creative instincts

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves has spoken out against AI taking over human creativity in video games and believes technology should only help artists work more efficiently.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where Graves also discussed what it was like to create a full score for a Modern Warfare multiplayer mode for the first time, the composer shared his stance on the rise of AI in music creation, especially in entertainment and video games.

"Nothing will ever replace the emotional depth and creative inspiration of human beings as artists and creators," Graves said. "Music is not just a bunch of notes strung together."

He added that human music creation is based on "personal experiences" and "creative instincts forged by emotion and all the little decisions that give a piece of art its own unique personality."

While against AI as a creative tool, Graves said he's "all for technology that supports artists and helps them work more efficiently." However, he added, "There's a big difference between supporting human creativity and replacing that creative process completely with digital ones and zeros."

In the same interview, the composer shared his process for designing the game's multiplayer music, which he described as wholly different from the campaign and explained what inspired him most when writing the score.

"Fortunately, I have no lack of inspiration from the amazing gameplay itself," Graves said. "The incredible team at Infinity Ward, led by audio director Stephen Miller, was also such a huge creative influence."

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves says Modern Warfare multiplayer music is usually "an afterthought"
• He says it's typically "cobbled together" from "existing campaign music," and he did the same thing for Modern Warfare 2
• Graves adds that "the best soundtrack of any game is one that inspires and elevates the core ideas of the gameplay"

According to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves, this is the first time a Modern Warfare multiplayer mode has received a full score, as they are typically "an afterthought."

"As far as I know, this is the first time we've specifically composed a score of this scale for multiplayer for Modern Warfare," Graves revealed in an interview with TechRadar Gaming. "It's the first time the multiplayer gameplay itself has received so much love and attention. Normally, it's usually a bit of an afterthought, cobbled together from existing music from the campaign, maybe getting some original lobby music."

Graves, who has worked on numerous video game projects, including Dead Space, said that was what he did for Modern Warfare 2 in 2022, but for Modern Warfare 4, "we have discrete tracks for lobbies, countdowns, streaks, and after-action reports amongst other things."

The composer mentioned how multiplayer has a "completely different vibe from the campaign," and made sure to capture the "forward momentum and pure adrenaline," but believes first-person shooter (FPS) games don't have a "specific list of characteristics" versus a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) in terms of music.

"A lot of my job is simply motivation and excitement, either before, during, or after a multiplayer match," he said. "So I'm here to get you pumped up and ready for action, motivate you towards the finish line, and slap you on the back with a big swaggering beat when you complete your objective."

When discussing his intentions for composing a soundtrack and what defines Modern Warfare in particular, Graves explained that music should always enhance the gameplay.

"There's definitely an incredible history that lives in the Modern Warfare soundtracks," Graves said, "And I'm honored to have contributed my small part to two of them. I think the best soundtrack of any game is one that inspires and elevates the core ideas of the gameplay.

He added, "For Modern Warfare specifically, it should turn everything in the game that the player is experiencing up to eleven."

• Hitman World of Assassination senior level designer Martin Ansdal says Elusive Target celebrities are chosen before the level design and writing phase
• Ansdal says it's IO Interactive's "goal" to "bring talent that will bring more eyes to Hitman World of Assassination"
• Ansdal adds that the Elusive Target mission location always needs to "thematically" suit the main talent

IO Interactive has revealed the behind-the-scenes process for selecting Hitman World of Assassination's Elusive Targets and how it designs their special missions.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming following the release of the game's new 'The Host feat. JackSepticEye' - Elusive Target mission, senior level designer Martin Ansdal explained that IOI's marketing department is in charge of the talent selection and outreach process, and the level isn't designed until after they're signed.

"Their goal is to bring talent that will bring more eyes to Hitman World of Assassination as well as serve the core audience to create special missions that will make use of the talent’s persona, and adapt it to the setting of Hitman World of Assassination," Ansdal said.

Ansdal continued, explaining that the level designer and writer take over once a celebrity or public figure is on board, and "We try to find a location which thematically suits the talent and craft a story that synergizes with the talent in tone and genre."

World of Assassination has featured a variety of guests over the years, including Snoop Dogg, Sean Bean, Eminem, Milla Jovovich, and more, and IOI considers how Agent 47 can slip into these uniquely designed missions.

"47's preference for disguises allows him to jump into a wide range of genres," Ansdal said. "For example, when we worked with Jean-Claude Van Damme, we built a kitchy science fiction narrative about a super-soldier cloning facility which would fit straight into the direct to video bin in the 90s.

"And when we worked with Mads Mikkelsen, we essentially brought 47 into the iconic plot of a Bond storyline."

With the latest Elusive Target starring YouTuber and streamer JackSepticEye, the developer explained that "we crafted a psychological thriller about the darkness of internet celebrity," which "is much more contemporary in comparison to the other two examples."

Hitman World of Assassination's new The Host Elusive Target mission is free-to-play now until November 25.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves says to capture the tone of multiplayer maps, "you have to play a lot of multiplayer"
• Graves says the mode's vibe is "completely different" from the campaign, and he tried to capture "forward momentum and pure adrenaline"
• He adds that he has to be flexible when composing tracks, "especially considering updates and expansions in the future"

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves has shared his process for designing the game's multiplayer music, which he described as wholly different from the campaign.

When asked in an interview with TechRadar Gaming how he captured the multiplayer mode's specific tone, Graves said, "Number one, you play a lot of multiplayer!" and explained that it has a very different atmosphere from the steady-paced campaign.

"It's a completely different vibe from the campaign, and the music needs to make you feel like anything could happen at any point in time," Graves said. "A lot of what I was trying to capture was forward momentum and pure adrenaline."

The composer joked that "I always thought of myself as the musical equivalent of Master Sergeant Apone in Aliens, pumping up all the troops beforehand, keeping them in line and focused in combat and rewarding them when they come back home. 'Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck's a fortune! Every formation a parade!'"

As for how each multiplayer map differentiates within the score, Graves said there's plenty of ground to cover considering the number of maps the mode offers "especially considering updates and expansions in the future."

"Instead of being too granular and assigning music to a specific map, we planned things out in terms of emotional intensity and timing," he explained. "Things are a lot more flexible that way."

There isn't one strict way to compose these maps either, as Graves explained, "it's more about the overall combination of sounds" he uses that showcase the fast-paced vibe by using a combination of real-world and electronic sound effects.

"There's definitely a lot of aggressive percussion, distorted electronics, and organic textures that help give the music its identity," Graves added. "I love combining real-world sounds with electronic processing, especially when you end up with something that's difficult to identify.

"It creates a sense of energy and unpredictability that fits perfectly with multiplayer."

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves has revealed some inspirations behind the game's soundtrack
• He attributes much of it to the gameplay and Infinity Ward's sound team
• He confirmed that he didn't reference previous Modern Warfare soundtracks, but there is "a little bit of vibe inspiration from the OG Modern Warfare 2"

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves has attributed the gameplay and the Infinity Ward sound team for helping to inspire the game's multiplayer score.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Graves said, "Fortunately, I have no lack of inspiration from the amazing gameplay itself," when asked where he begins when composing a soundtrack for such an iconic franchise.

"The incredible team at Infinity Ward, led by audio director Stephen Miller, was also such a huge creative influence," he continued. "And the music team, led by Jonathan Mayer, were integral in shaping the overall vibe and giving me everything I needed to be as creative as possible."

Graves, who has also composed for Warzone, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, 2013's Tomb Raider, and a host of other projects spanning video games and movies, added that it was important that the work was a collaborative effort, as scores can be years in the making.

"I can't stress how important cooperation with other creative human beings makes a difference when it comes to working on a project as big as this," Graves said. "This is the kind of thing that slowly comes together over years of work."

As for finding the basis for a Modern Warfare score, Graves explained that he doesn't listen to previous works, but admitted that "there was a little bit of vibe inspiration from the OG Modern Warfare 2."

"But nothing too granular or specific," he added, "I'm very intentional about not listening to music from previous projects in a franchise unless specifically directed by the developer. I think that's especially important here because Infinity Ward has been so supportive of trying new things and creating a soundtrack that's every bit as epic and bespoke as the gameplay itself."

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is one of the best games of 2026, with "the best campaign in years and an incredible multiplayer offering," and you can play it now.

• The next game in the Elder Scrolls series is officially titled: The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel
• Bethesda Game Studios has also shared a teaser trailer hinting at the game's location, which appears to be Hammerfell
• The studio says, "It’ll be some time before we’re ready to share more" about Sentinel

Bethesda Game Studios has finally announced the name of the next game in its long-running Elder Scrolls series: The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel.

The news comes from a video celebrating the studio's 40th anniversary, which highlighted its many achievements and ended with Bethesda creative director Todd Howard offering a new look at the game.

"Everybody’s always asking about Elder Scrolls 6," said Howard. "And we thought, hey, given the moment, what a perfect time to tell you what The Elder Scrolls 6 is actually called."

The teaser trailer is short and doesn't showcase gameplay, but the camera pans over sand before a magic-looking scroll emerges. Then the game's title, as fans theorized, "The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel," was revealed.

The trailer description also provides an additional hint to the game, which reads, "The scroll offered only a shimmer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes. A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate," which is written in game lore by "Yazar, Moth Priest to High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell (4E 206)."

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel has been in development for a very long time. Announced all the way back in 2018, today's teaser trailer and name drop are the first new pieces of information we've received about the game since.

In a follow-up post on X, Bethesda seemingly confirmed the game's location is set in Hammerfell, but it will be "some time" before more details

about the role-playing game (RPG) can be shared.

"Thank you for 40 years of shared memories," the studio said. "We can’t wait to make even more together with The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel. Development continues, and while it’ll be some time before we’re ready to share more, it feels great to finally reveal the name and location with you."

• Rockstar Games has confirmed players can pre-load the digital version of Grand Theft Auto 6 on November 10
• Code-in-box editions should be available in stores starting November 12
• The pre-load file will be "up to 212GB depending on your device"

Rockstar Games has announced the file size for Grand Theft Auto 6 and the dates for when players can pre-load the game depending on their edition.

In a new blog post, the studio confirmed that digital pre-loading on PlayStation 5 will begin nine days before the game's November 19 launch, on Tuesday, November 10 at midnight local time "in your respective time zone."

For Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, pre-loading begins globally on Tuesday, November 10 at 12AM GMT / 7PM EST / 6PM CST.

Meanwhile, code-in-box versions for both consoles should be available from retailers beginning November 12.

GTA 6 was speculated to be a massive game already due to its ambitious scale and impressive features, but Rockstar has officially confirmed that the pre-load file will be "up to 212 GB depending on your device."

"So make sure you've got ample space to begin pre-loading as soon as possible," the studio cautioned. Say goodbye to a fair few of your games if you want to install GTA 6.

In addition to the new details, Rockstar said it will be adding an official printable Grand Theft Auto 6 cover art poster and map of Leonida as a free digital download to the official site on November 19 for fans.

"A double-sided physical version of this poster will also be made available shortly after launch from the Rockstar Store — for $0.99 on its own or as a free gift with any purchase from the Rockstar Store," it added.

Rockstar recently released the cinematic GTA 6 launch trailer, which offers a deeper look into the game's story. Elsewhere, a new report claims the PC version could launch in early 2027.

• The Razer Raiju V3 Pro Signature Edition launches November 10 for $349.99 / €368.99
• The licensed PS5 controller features a magnesium alloy exoskeleton and an open polygonal top and back plate design with chamfered edges
• The controller is also optimized for PC and boasts "reliable precision, exceptional control, and blazing-fast speed"

Razer has announced the Raiju V3 Pro Signature Edition, a new version of its officially licensed PlayStation 5 controller built on a decade of experience for "the highest level of performance and craftsmanship."

Launching exclusively at Razer on November 10 for $349.99 / €368.99 in an initial limited release supply of 1,337 serialized units, the Raiju V3 Pro Signature Edition is Razer's "most ambitious" PS5 controller to date and combines materials chosen for "strength, durability, and finish."

The jet-black controller features a strong magnesium alloy exoskeleton, and the handles are wrapped in matte black textured TPU grip that resists oils and abrasion for a pristine finish for extended play sessions.

Layered over the touchpad, the Razer logo is laser-etched on a semi-transparent, tinted glass panel, which offers a subtle view of the open-air polygonal design underneath.

The Raiju V3 Pro Signature Edition also has an open polygonal top and back plate design with chamfered edges, and its nano coating leaves the internal elements exposed beneath the shell, keeping them safe from debris.

On top of that, the Razer controller boasts "reliable precision, exceptional control, and blazing-fast speed," which is achieved through its symmetrical thumbstick layout and contactless TMR thumbstick sensors for high-precision aim.

Built for PS5 consoles and optimized for PC with a 2,000Hz polling rate thanks to Razer HyperPolling Wireless for sharper movement and tracking, the controller also offers six mappable multi-function buttons, two claw-grip bumpers, and four mouse-click back buttons.

"With the Raiju V3 Pro Signature Edition, we set out to illustrate what happens when Razer’s engineering and design capabilities are pushed to their absolute limits," said Charlie Bolton, Razer's global head of design. "It draws on years of experience in high-performance controllers, delivering tournament-grade responsiveness in a design that feels like a statement piece in hand."

Each Razer Raiju V3 Pro Signature Edition offers a suite of premium accessories for customization, including a premium leather carrying case, alternative thumbstick caps, four swappable back button covers, an anodized aluminium back button replacement tool, a Razer HyperSpeed Wireless Dongle, and a USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable.

Back in 2000, Bandai Namco published the third game in the beloved Tales series, Tales of Eternia. It was received very well at launch, being praised for its high-octane action combat, charming cast, and humorous script — though the Western versions on the original PlayStation and PSP were held back by their omission of skits (character-driven dialogue scenes) and slightly subpar voice acting. But now, Tales of Eternia Remastered — developed by TOSE Co. — is here, aiming to remedy these issues and refine the game for a modern audience.

I’ve spent just north of 30 hours with Tales of Eternia Remastered, playing through the main story, completing side quests, and exploring the realms of Inferia and Celestia.

So, how effectively does this remaster bring a JRPG classic into the modern era? And is it truly worth playing? Here’s my verdict.

Gimme a Boost!

I’ll speak about the core Tales of Eternia experience in good time, but it only seems right to discuss the new stuff that this remaster brings to the table first.

Arguably the main thing is the inclusion of Boost Function. This enables you to tailor your experience to your specific wants and needs, with highlights including a random encounter toggle, difficulty options, an increased item capacity setting, and an EXP gain adjuster.

My personal favorite feature was the option to restore TP (which you consume when using skills) when camping, which made grinding feel a lot more fluid and easier to manage.

The Boost Function suite is filled to the brim, and really helps to make the title more approachable for newcomers. My only real complaint here is that I would’ve loved the option to map a function — such as disabling enemy encounters — to one of the buttons on my Nintendo Switch 2. Having to open the main menu, go into the Customize Section, and then the Boost Function felt a touch clunky.

There’s a lot more to uncover, though. For instance, you can switch between remastered and original graphics and sound effects, which is sure to satisfy newcomers and long-time fans.

The visual enhancements are relatively light overall. This isn’t a transformative overhaul, and some environments still look a little rough around the edges. But still, the remaster does illuminate some previously obscured details. As you can see in the images below, detailing on the statues is far more intricate, and foliage looks sharper in the remastered graphics mode. And while some may prefer the original pixel sprites, I think the remaster does a good job of cleaning them up a bit while keeping them faithful to the original artwork.

While we’re on the topic of visuals, I unfortunately have a complaint to make: the cutscenes look pretty poor. They’ve been placed into widescreen, and it looks as if a filter has been applied; the results are underwhelming — characters and backgrounds lack clarity and definition, laying bare the limitations of the original material.

That’s a nitpick, of course, and most elements of this remaster still hit the spot. For example, the newly recorded English voice acting is great, and each character’s personality shines through perfectly. Skits are finally here in the West, too, providing plenty of humorous and emotional moments when camping or resting.

Objective icons are also introduced, which point you in the direction of the main story objective or side quests. I really appreciated this, especially as I didn’t want to miss out on side content, but if you want to figure everything out for yourself, you can swiftly switch it off in the Customize menu.

An underrated classic, reborn

So, while it’s not flawless, the remaster of this title is solid overall and successfully makes this classic more palatable for modern audiences. But just how fun is the core game in the big 2026?

I’ll lay my cards on the table: I had a spectacular time with Tales of Eternia Remastered. This was actually my first time playing the game — after all, I wasn’t even born when it was initially released. In spite of that, there was something so nostalgic about it, the warm, charming world and excellent cast totally captured my attention, and I found myself pouring countless hours into the game every single day.

Something that stood out for me was the writing. Yes, the main narrative is nothing special — the world is in danger, and a group of young heroes needs to defy the odds to save everybody. But it’s the characters that make this experience so special.

For the most part, you'll spend your time with four key heroes. Reid is a reluctant protagonist who seems to be dragged into the chaos at every turn, Farah is a contemplative, complex young woman learning herself as the story unfolds, Keele is a stuck-up academic type who delivers some hilarious moments, and Meredy is a caring and curious foreign stranger who the crew slowly begins to understand in their quest to prevent disaster.

The cast isn’t weighed down by the tired tropes and lazy writing that a lot of JRPGs faced at the time, and each party member is highly memorable.

But how about the actual gameplay? Well, the combat is pretty unique. It manifests in the form of a fighter-RPG hybrid, with a large focus on reactive action-based commands. While the combat certainly takes some getting used to and the movement can feel a little janky at times, battling your foes feels incredibly addictive. Chaining Artes together to deliver devastating combos and tinkering with formations or skills to get past tough boss battles is highly rewarding, and even random encounters gave me huge satisfaction.

The game is undoubtedly challenging, but delivering a finishing blow makes your struggle feel worth it. And if you do fall to your foes, a retry battle option is at hand to dive right back into the action.

There’s not too much grinding required, either. I kept random encounters on for the vast majority of my playthrough, and that gave me plenty of experience for big boss fights. If you do want to grab some extra experience, though, you can switch Auto mode on and have your team fight for you, helping you avoid same-y skirmishes.

Outside of battle, things are decent too. You can explore the world for items and treasure to bolster your stats, venture into shops to grab stronger gear, and even take on a few minigames. Exploration is highly gratifying as well, and you’ll often find weapons that come in handy for specific areas or recipes that restore your HP or TP when you’re running low.

A small complaint I have, though, is that movement feels clunky in the overworld. You need to be very precise if you want to move diagonally, and dragging items like statues could feel a bit awkward at times. This is still a relatively minor issue overall, but in tighter areas, the old-school movement did cause me some minor frustration.

I also have to say that the minigames, in general, are pretty bad. They typically control fine, but don’t feel very fun to play at all. Luckily, you can skip these if you’d prefer, which I often did. It was cool to see mouse mode integration for minigames on Nintendo Switch 2, though, which worked a treat in my experience.

Speaking of my experience on Switch 2, let’s take a moment to talk about performance. Tales of Eternia Remastered runs in 4K when playing docked and 1080p in handheld, with smooth 60fps across both modes — perhaps to be expected for a less demanding title like this. I didn’t notice any technical hiccups or frame drops during my whole playthrough, so Switch 2 is certainly a top-tier destination for this remaster.

So let’s address those questions I posed in the intro. Is Tales of Eternia Remastered a worthy modern take on this classic entry? For me, the answer is yes.

Some things could’ve been better: the visual enhancements are relatively light, cutscenes look a bit underwhelming, and I would’ve liked a shortcut button for disabling enemy encounters. But the Boost Function provides so much flexibility, the new English dub is great, and the ability to retry battles in an instant keeps the game's pace feeling fast and fluid.

And at a core level, this is a great game with a lot to offer, in spite of a few dated elements. The combat, while very much of its time, remains fun and surprisingly strategic; the cast is highly memorable, with skits adding some welcome depth, and exploration is rewarding too.

All in all, I had a blast with Tales of Eternia Remastered, and JRPG fanatics are sure to find a lot to love here.

Should you play Tales of Eternia Remastered?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

There are a number of ways to customize your experience in Tales of Eternia Remastered. You can turn subtitles on or off, choose to auto-advance text, remap buttons to suit your preferences, and alter difficulty. While there’s no colorblind mode, in-game elements that previously required color-based identification have been redesigned around visual elements unrelated to color.

How I reviewed Tales of Eternia Remastered

I spent just over 30 hours with Tales of Eternia Remastered, during which time I played through the main story, completed a handful of side quests, and tried out all of the various Boost Function features.

For the most part, I played the game in docked mode, with my Nintendo Switch 2 hooked up to the Sky Glass Gen 2 TV and Marshall Heston 120 soundbar. However, I did dip into handheld mode from time to time, and used the Sennheiser CX 80U wired earbuds to enjoy in-game audio.

More generally, I’ve covered a huge array of games here at TechRadar, where I serve as a Senior Reviews Writer. I’ve reviewed a number of JRPGs, including Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter and Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, as well as Switch 2 exclusives such as Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave and Nintendo Switch Sports Resort.

First reviewed October 2026

• PS5 Bazzite Deck is a new spin on this gaming-focused version of Linux
• It allows you to boot your PS5 to a Steam Deck interface and play PC games
• You need to jailbreak your Sony console to run it (via the PS5 Linux loader), and that's a risky path to take for a number of reasons

Don't want to fork out all that cash for a Steam Machine? If you've got a PS5, you could turn it into a spin on Valve's gaming PC thanks to a custom version of a Linux distro — although the major catch is you'll need to jailbreak your console.

TechPowerUp noticed the PS5 Bazzite Deck project on GitHub, which takes this flavor of the gaming-focused Bazzite distro and adapts it for Sony's console. (Bazzite Deck is different from vanilla Bazzite, as it was built specifically for handhelds to offer an experience similar to SteamOS for the likes of the Asus ROG Ally — but without some of the headaches of running Valve's OS on that portable).

When PS5 Bazzite Deck is run on a jailbroken console, it'll boot straight into the Steam Deck interface (Steam Gaming Mode), and you can play your PC games from there.

You don't need to install the PS5 Bazzite Deck OS, either; you can just run it from a USB stick (via the PS5 Linux loader). As the developer VivaLaVent explains, when you next restart the PS5, it'll boot its own operating system again, and you'll be back at Sony's welcome hub.

So the PS5 isn't modified by running this OS as such, except for the fact that you have to jailbreak the console (then run the PS5 Linux Loader).

This project is compatible with the base PS5 and PS5 Pro consoles, and you can also switch to a desktop mode running KDE Plasma on your PS5, should you wish.

Of course, game compatibility is going to be hit-and-miss, although a gamer on Reddit observed that they've successfully run Horizon Zero Dawn, Palworld, Genshin Impact, and Rimworld — although Marvel Rivals was a non-starter.

Analysis: interesting times

I should make it very clear up front that I wouldn't recommend jailbreaking your console even as an experiment. There are potential legal ramifications (depending on where you live) with doing so, the possibility of Sony banning your account, and a whole raft of risks (including the third-party software involved, of course). So, if you do want to turn your PS5 into a take on a Steam Machine in this way, proceed at your own risk.

That said, there's an increasing amount of activity around getting the PS5 to run PC games, as you might have seen, so clearly this is something that quite a few gamers are interested in. Most notably, we've seen Playden, which is a very different way of running PC titles on a PS5, by using a compatibility layer (a custom port of Wine) to pull this off. PS5 Bazzite Deck differs in that it replaces the entire OS with a new one, as opposed to running on top of Sony's system.

By all accounts, PS5 Bazzite Deck is pretty slick. One Redditor shares their experience: "I've been using this distro for 4 days, and WOW! Seriously, it's way better than the others. There are constant updates that bring bug fixes."

The DualSense controller support is also niftily implemented by all accounts, as you can pair to both Linux and the PS5 system (saving you from unpairing when switching between the two). The controller's touchpad works like a mouse on the PS5 Bazzite Deck, and seemingly waking from sleep takes only two seconds (much faster than the PS5's normal wake time).

Another gamer on Reddit declares: "If the PS5 turns out to have been the perfect Steam Machine all along, it would be so funny."

But I refer you back to my previous advice on jailbreaking (and game compatibility). Still, this kind of modding is attention-grabbing, to say the least, and we're also seeing it in reverse, with a breakneck pace of development for PS5 emulation on the PC (very much accelerated by the use of AI, it's worth noting).

That effort is, of course, generating a ton of interest given that GTA 6 is nearly here, and indeed there are theories floating around that the work on that PS5 emulator could force Rockstar to launch the PC port much earlier than intended (before an emulated version is up and running). The rumor mill reckons we could see the PC version of GTA 6 early in 2027 as a result.

I’ve been playing Final Fantasy Resonance for the past few weeks, and it is a delightful love letter to the Final Fantasy series — a beautiful turn-based role-playing game (RPG) that blends new and old across its gameplay and aesthetics to create an adventure I have adored every second of.

While it might have its roots in a now defunct mobile gacha game — Brave Exvius — don’t hold that against it. The only holdover is the core story. Everything else, from the gameplay to the wide world map to explore to the visual style, has been overhauled — the pay-to-play elements are gone too; all unlocks are completely free

The end result of this total rebuild is a classic-feeling RPG that is somehow just as at home among 2026’s gaming lineup as it would have been among one from decades ago.

There are some tweaks I’d make here and there: mostly to Visions, and to the story that’s a little predictable, but neither of these issues has sapped the joy from what is easily among the best Nintendo Switch 2 games I’ve played this year (it’s also releasing on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PS5 and PC).

Back to basics

After spending decades finding ways to mix up the turn-based action it popularized, Final Fantasy Resonance returns the series to a much more classic interpretation of it. When it’s their turn to act your party and enemies get to make a basic Attack, spend MP to perform some kind of special Skill action like casting a spell, Summon a powerful esper to fight by their side, or use an item from the party’s bag — with the order characters go determined by their speed.

It facilitates a slower and more tactical approach to engaging enemies than the action-focused gameplay of more modern Final Fantasy entries, which pairs nicely with Resonance’s less traditional combat mechanic: Stagger.

Dealing enough damage to your foes that’s a flavour they’re weak to will fill their meter and Stagger them — they’ll lose their go that turn if they haven’t acted yet, will take more damage until the next round, and whoever staggered them will get a second action.

If you Stagger every enemy at once, you enter a Sweeping Stagger — your whole party will get a second action, and you’ll be able to deliver a powerful Resonance attack. This sees one of your equipped Visions rush forward to deliver a cinematic finishing blow — showcased by a 3D cinematic that briefly takes you out of the game’s HD-2D style.

Resonance isn't just Final Fantasy meets Octopath Traveler. It might seem that way based on my description so far — seeing as it borrows Octopath’s visual identity and a core aspect of the series’ Break and Boost system

But besides the nuances of Resonance’s Stagger system, which make it different from what Octopath offers, you’ll also find this game’s plot is quintessential Final Fantasy — more on that in a moment — and it takes a different approach with its Job / Class system through Visions. They feel more like weapons you swap in and out than a Class you’ll want to perfect and stick with.

Visions are (mostly) manifestations of the core Final Fantasy games’ protagonists which aid your party in combat: performing the Resonance attacks I mentioned earlier, but also unlocking a separate list of actions and abilities for the party member they’re equipped to. Most skills you’ll only have access to while the Vision is actively deployed, but there are also permanent unlocks to earn by mastering a Vision — letting you mix and match aspects of Visions on a single party member to craft your ideal champion.

As I mentioned, this will feel a lot like Jobs from other Square Enix titles, but because so much of a Vision’s identity is lost from your character when you unequip it — most permanent Mastery unlocks are more generic, yet still useful, abilities like improving stats — I’ve found it better to see Visions as Equipment. Before entering a tough fight, you might want to swap out your loadout to best suit the challenge ahead — such as equipping your party with water attack dealers when facing off against a fiery foe.

A medley or overstuffed buffet?

Taking everything I’ve said so far, you might fear Final Fantasy Resonance would turn out to be a mess.

It combines aspects of several games (Octopath Traveler, Brave Exvius, and classic Final Fantasy). It jumps between 3D and HD-2D visuals across different cinematics. There’s just over two dozen Visions to master, each their own skills to augment the base abilities your party develops. You can call forth powerful Summons to deal even more damage to your foes. There’s a giant map to explore, bursting with secrets to discover in every corner. There are main quests and side missions to complete over tens of hours, as well as secret boss fights and a coliseum to become the champion of.

It’s a lot, yet Final Fantasy Resonance never felt like a mess.

Square Enix shows a mastery of the HD-2D art style. The world's environments are stunning, character sprites are expressive, and there are some amazing 2D spectacle across the game’s cutscenes and attack animations. The animatics feel fan-made in a good way — full of expression, and getting as much as possible from the medium.

The flashes of 3D work surprisingly well to augment special moments. Rather than feeling incongruous, the 3D Vision Resonance attack and Esper Summon cinematics give these abilities an appropriately otherworldly aspect.

Games which let you throw everything and the kitchen sink at your enemies have a habit of feeling too easy. However, playing on Expert difficulty, I found fights (especially boss fights) were a challenge — one I could overcome, but not without playing tactically. Button mashing and praying won’t save you here.

These different abilities also built up gradually over time. This let me get to grips with systems before some new aspect was thrown into the mix.

And when the gameplay is so engaging, and the visuals so beautiful, I had no problem adventuring back and forth to complete side quests and seek out every secret hiding in the world.

Close to perfection

If I must find fault with Final Fantasy Resonance, it would be in two areas.

The first is that while I love a lot of the Visions system, it struggles for much of the mid-game because it focuses too much on the main Final Fantasy protagonists who are (let’s face it) pretty samey. This is showcased by the fact that the majority of them are classified as Commando or Breaker types.

The precise builds and abilities do change, but for example there aren’t many supportive Healers amongst them — meaning building out a dedicated support character in your party is a little tough at times as you’ll either need to stick with a Vision you’ve mastered, or accept your party will be multi-classing early on.

Given how useful some Mastery abilities are, you’ll want to multiclass to some extent (Tronn’s ability to halve MP costs is one you need to unlock for as many characters as possible as soon as possible), but given the game says the Vision system offers you the freedom to customize the party however you want, I was a little disappointed that the reality doesn’t quite match this.

Secondly, I’d say the plot is Final Fantasy in its purest form. There are crystals, war between ancient mystical powers and new age technology, sacrifice for the greater good, twists and turns that reveal secrets about the characters’ and the world’s past, and an awful lot else that is a little cliché.

The story is certainly good enough to keep me engaged; it's just nothing special.

Though as I’ve said, neither of these gripes kept me from adoring Final Fantasy Resonance. Every time I sat down to write this review I had to force myself to not reach over for my Nintendo Switch 2 to play another five minutes — and like any good game my attempts to set time limits on myself never succeeded in keeping my play sessions shorter than a few hours at a time.

While it is available on several consoles and PC, my Nintendo Switch 2 has been superb. If you have a choice, this is where I’d recommend playing, as it runs so smoothly, it’s easy to chip away at quests while on the go, and you can still enjoy a beautiful big-picture experience when the handheld is docked.

Should you play Final Fantasy Resonance?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

Besides the features built into your console of choice, Final Fantasy Resonance has no accessibility features baked into it.

However, as a turn-based RPG, gameplay can be as slow as you need. It doesn't matter if you take five seconds, five minutes, or five hours to lock in an action, and unlike games such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, there are no active parry or dodge mechanics that require precise timing on the player's part.

How I reviewed Final Fantasy Resonance

I reviewed Final Fantasy Resonance for around 30 hours on my Nintendo Switch 2. Predominantly, this was with base system hardware in handheld mode — plugging away on trips, my commute, and while relaxing on the couch — but I did experience the big-screen docked mode for several hours on my 4K Fire TV (relying on an 8BitDo Ultimate 2 controller for inputs).

In all modes, the game ran smoothly, and I never regretted my decision to play the game on the least powerful system it’s launching on.

First reviewed October 2026

• The next Hitman Elusive Target has been revealed
• The limited-time mission will see Agent 47 taking down an annoying podcaster
• The target will be played by real-world content creator Seán McLoughlin

The next Hitman Elusive Target has been revealed, and it's something that could happen in 2026.

As of October 29, players will be able to take out Finn Colton – a controversial millionaire content creator who goes by the online handle 'Finnvictus'. The mission will see the flashy mansion of the existing Hawke's Bay map turned into an even more elaborate space for content creation, with its own underground studio and cameras that live-stream everything 24/7.

Bald assassin protagonist Agent 47 has managed to gain entry thanks to an invite to appear on the content creator's flagship podcast and will have to contend with an environment that has eyes almost everywhere.

That's not all, however, as Colton is played by Seán McLoughlin, better known as 'Jacksepticeye', with the popular streamer lending both his likeness and voice to the character.

"I’ve been playing Hitman with my community for years, so getting to actually step into the World of Assassination is unreal," shared McLoughlin.

"Finn is loud, paranoid, and completely obsessed with content, and playing him was an absolute blast. I can’t wait to see all the creative ways you take him down."

The mission will be available for free for a limited time, though die-hard Hitman fans can pick up a themed DLC pack as well. It costs $7.99 / £6.99 and includes permanent access to the mission via the Elusive Target Arcade mode plus a new suit and some unique equipment to try.

Hitman: World of Assassination is available now for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, and PC, or as Hitman World of Assassination – Signature Edition for Nintendo Switch 2.

• Sony has announced a new range of PS5 controllers and console covers
• They come in three translucent finishes, including orange, green, and gray
• They play upon the transparent look that was popular in the 1990s

Translucent gaming hardware is having a moment right now, with the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 and Microsoft’s see-through Xbox Series X leading the charge. Now, Sony is getting in on the act with a new range of PlayStation 5 covers and controllers that take you back to a time when seemingly everything had a touch of transparency about it.

Dubbed the Prism range, the new accessories are available in three translucent forms: Flare Orange, Emerald Green, and Graphite Gray. They come with a “premium glossy sheen for a sleek and elevated design,” Sony says, and those finishes “give players a closer look into the design and craftsmanship behind our DualSense controllers and PlayStation 5 consoles.”

As Sony alluded to, it’s not just the DualSense controller that gets the Prism treatment. The PS5 console itself can take on one of the collection’s looks thanks to three dedicated console covers that can be fixed to your PS5 to overhaul its appearance.

Sony says that the Prism PS5 controllers cost $84.99 / £74.99 / €84.99, which pushes the price a little higher than the standard PS5 controller but is in line with other special editions.

The console covers, meanwhile, will set you back $74.99 / £64.99 / €74.99. You’ll be able to pre-order the products on November 10, 2026, and they’ll officially launch on February 4, 2027.

We'll be covering the pre-orders of these products live and predict that the combination of their slick finishes and the appeal to retro and long-term PlayStation fans means they will be in hot demand!

Retro revival

Many tech companies have brought out translucent devices in recent years as they seek to capitalize on the nostalgic hit the look provides for fans of ‘90s design and throwback gaming culture.

Sony is no different, with company designer Leo Cardoso saying: “We know how much our fans have been looking forward to the return of transparent controllers. We wanted to bring back the iconic see-through trend of the late ‘90s in a fresh, modern way that complements the PS5’s industrial design.”

With Sony’s main console rival Microsoft launching a translucent green Xbox Series X alongside an “OG Green” see-through controller, PlayStation bosses might not have wanted to feel left behind — or for their fans to cast envious sideways glances at their Xbox-toting friends and family members.

Now, they might not have to worry about that. And if you’re a fan of the retro aesthetic and want to bring a touch of the 1990s to your PlayStation 5, this could be one way to do it.

Planet Zoo 2 is the sequel to 2020’s zoo-building management sim. And it’s crammed with more animals, scenery items, and game modes than ever, so you can really let your creativity run wild.

Building zoos is my happy place. Life is stressful, the cost of living is shocking, and politics is so absurd I often feel like I’m being doped with increasing levels of satire to make the world’s first irony-immune man. Playing games like Planet Zoo 2 lets me spend time in a simpler world, where I can spend five hours tweaking the placement of ferns and rocks to make simulated siamangs happy.

As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time playing the original Planet Zoo. More than a lot, actually. Over 1,100 hours. That’s more than 45 days straight — a fact that makes me feel slightly queasy about my priorities in life. I’ve spent more time experiencing its highs and dealing with its limitations than I’ve spent with my extended family. So, naturally, as soon as I heard Planet Zoo 2 was in development, I knew I had to be the person to put it through its paces.

With the addition of aquariums, aviaries, wildlife reserves and more besides, I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into the new game and see what it was capable of. Even if it meant jettisoning a thousand hours of work, binning my old zoo and starting building from scratch, I was eager to see how all the new tools and content upgraded play. So are the two games birds of a feather, or is Planet Zoo 2 of a different stripe entirely?

Wings, fins and fur

As a bit (okay, a lot) of a Planet Zoo nerd, when Planet Zoo 2 was announced, I had plenty of things on my mental wishlist of upgrades I’d like to see. But top of my list were the addition of both flying birds and fish, two types of critters that felt conspicuous in their absence from the huge roster of DLCs released for the original game. So honestly, it was pretty pleasing to see both of these kinds of exhibits included when previews of the game dropped.

Flat out my favorite addition has been aquariums. These new piscine enclosures are as pretty as a picture. Aquariums feel really versatile, whether you want huge open-air tanks or to build a wall of fish into your restaurant. Walkthrough tunnels make creating immersive exhibits a breeze, and the need to filter habitats separately depending on whether they require fresh, brackish, or salty water adds an extra layer of — excuse the pun — depth.

Underwater decorations also look fantastic, allowing you to create really richly colored coral reefs and rafts of seaweed and grasses. But naturally, the animals in Planet Zoo are the stars of the show, and there’s a huge variety of sea life on offer to populate your tanks, whether you’re looking for sharks, rays, turtles or schools of fish. Wisely, Frontier has steered away from including many sea mammals like whales and dolphins — a sensible decision in light of the increasing attention that’s been paid to the ethics of keeping highly intelligent, social mammals in small tanks — but the game does include manatees, and there’s still huge potential here for semi-aquatic mammals like seals and walruses.

Leading up to Planet Zoo 2’s release, I was particularly excited about the addition of flying birds, as this adds a whole new dimension to your habitats compared to flightless fowl like ostriches and emus. While aviaries — essentially roof support poles and netting sitting over a classic habitat — don’t feel quite as fresh an experience as creating aquariums, I can still see how I’ll be able to use them to create stunning enclosures. And the variety of feathered friends already on offer is decent, adding everything from toucans to brightly colored long-tailed parakeets.

In fact, animals in general have had a definite glow-up in Planet Zoo 2. Not only have the earliest, lower-definition critters from the base game, like lions and African elephants, received new meshes to bring them in line with sleeker-looking critters from later expansion packs, but fauna in general looks stunning in this game.

There’s also a really solid variety of animals on offer at launch, from gila monsters to giant pandas. Don’t get me wrong: some of my personal favorites from the original game and expansions still aren’t here. Frankly, any zoo that doesn’t have fennec foxes in it is not a zoo I want to spend time in. But all the classics are here, with just enough funky additions — Goodfellow’s tree-kangaroo, anyone? — that I’m already pretty jazzed about additions that might be coming up with future updates.

All told, the variety offered by Planet Zoo 2 makes creating diverse, vibrant zoos feel easier than ever.

Management material

Given that Frontier Developments has launched two more park management games — Planet Coaster 2 and Jurassic World Evolution 3 — in the almost seven years since the OG Planet Zoo’s release, its core gameplay loop has inevitably evolved.

First off, career mode feels the most well-rounded it’s been in a Planet game to date. While you’ve always been able to dip in and out of individual missions on the map to complete objectives and pick up bronze, silver, and gold medals, the progression between them feels increasingly organic.

Functioning as an extended tutorial, career mode leads you through a variety of maps and scenarios throughout the world. As you complete bronze medals at each zoo, you’ll learn new mechanisms and unlock new accreditation tiers, in turn granting you access to higher tiers of animals. While this does mean your progression is somewhat locked to missions, the non-linear connection between maps made me feel much freer to pop in and out of maps than past games.

A big part of this is down to the addition of wildlife reserves. Releasing animals was a relatively shallow mechanic in Planet Zoo — enabling you to offload unneeded creatures in return for dollars or Conservation Points — in its sequel, this has been spun out into a sub-game in its own right.

Wildlife reserves’ core gameplay loop is pretty straightforward. When you arrive in a new reserve, you’ll create ecosystems for released animals by painting one in the landscape, clearing any invasive plant species, and balancing the terrain and plant requirements. Once it’s ready, you’ll be required to release animals from your zoos of the compatible type, balancing the ecosystem, and place research items like camera traps and acoustic monitors to unlock higher levels of research in your zoos.

I’ll be honest here: wildlife reserves are the area that I feel both sound like the most transformative on paper and yet haven’t fully clicked for me in practice. Part of this is because they rely heavily on my least favorite tool: the terrain painter — more on that shortly.

But it’s also just because these mechanics feel relatively shallow. These reserves don’t really require much ongoing management, and given there’s not much more detailed interplay among the flora and fauna once it’s placed, you can basically just set and forget these areas. As a result, I often found myself just rushing to establish ecosystems and dump the required animals in them so I could return to meatier zoo management. I’m hoping that the more I play with them, the more I’ll find to love about these freer locations, but so far they’ve stood out the least to me.

One other factor that's occasionally caused me slight discomfort is the presence of bugs. No, I'm not talking about those tarantula exhibits: at release, there have definitely been some odd issues creeping in.

I've encountered nothing game-breaking, just slightly hinky behavior here and there. At one point, items I was meticulously placing using the advanced move tools would randomly jump to a different position once I clicked place. Meanwhile, I've experienced several well-documented issues where animals ghost through their bars or get boxed up en masse inside their habitats for no clear reason. Fair play to Frontier Developments, though: they promised to patch these issues pretty quickly and, at the time of publishing, I think all of these issues have been fixed.

If you're wanting a freer experience than career mode can offer, Planet Zoo 2 still has all the other game modes you loved from the original. Franchise mode lets you focus on building your global zoo network from scratch as always, adding the ability to create your own wildlife reserves to help you feel like you’re really contributing to global conservation.

But hands-down my favorite gameplay mode is still Sandbox. I’m a bit prone to hyperfixating on small details — I know: the dude with 1,100 hours in the game is a bit obsessive. You don’t say. And that’s why I love this mode. Being able to concentrate on tweaking every last detail and focusing on building the most realistic zoo I can without needing to sweat about profitability or management just speaks to the creative part of my brain.

And, on that front, Planet Zoo 2 is better than ever.

Build baby, build

Given I’m talking about a game crammed with gorgeous wildlife, brand new habitats and new game modes, I’ll admit this makes me sound tiresomely dull. But honestly, what’s gotten me most excited about Planet Zoo 2 is the part that should be the most boring: logistics upgrades.

Rather than management sims, I’ve always felt like the Planet games are fantastically creative park design tools with a fun game on the side. And these tools have been refined across the board.

Let’s start with the placement tools. Not gonna lie, on release the placement tools in Planet Zoo were so rigid I can honestly understand if many people rarely dug into creating detailed scenery. Fortunately, these have been significantly improved — they feel more fluid, while the scale tools from Planet Coaster 2 and mirroring tools have been added, giving each decorative item significantly more versatility and making it much easier to create organic-looking areas like rockfaces.

Frustrating memories of trying to select scenery items in Planet Zoo — with their utterly random-seeming hitboxes — still haunt me to this day, particularly as deselecting items felt super awkward. In its sequel, these tools have been overhauled, not only making it easier to select and deselect items even on controller but also providing a range of toggles that allow you to restrict selection to certain types of objects, from nature objects to pathing.

While creating pathing used to involve an exasperating degree of trial and error in the original, pathing tools have had significant improvements here. Alongside the original’s straight and curved pathing options, upgrades from Planet Coaster 2 and the Jurassic World Evolution series have been introduced, like stamp and draw tools. This makes it trivial to introduce more organic-looking paths than ever and even super-precise circular courtyards and viewing areas.

All of these features contribute to making buildings and decorative items feel far easier and more fluid. But it’s not only placing man-made structures that has been improved. I’d argue that one of the hardest areas of creating your dream zoo in Planet Zoo used to be making natural scenery look organic. A significant proportion of that monumental playtime I clocked in the first game came from meticulously placing bushes piece by piece to make scenery look suitably wild.

Fortunately, Frontier has introduced the scenery brushes first created for Planet Coaster 2 into this game, enabling you to quickly paint scenery across your landscape. Not only does it come with a wide array of pre-created options, but you can also make up your own using any combination of scenery you’d like. While the end result can be slightly random-looking and the brushes still don’t get tight enough for creating really dense-looking foliage, this massively speeds up initial placement and allows you to then manually shift and complement the items for significantly faster decoration.

Similarly, terrain brushes have also had loads of new options added, with attract, repel, and curl brushes adding good variety to the existing toolset available. Terrain painting also comes with a significantly wider array of options, with not only lots of sub-terrain types — such as wild grass, long grass, forest floor or scree — but also brush presets that blend combos of the above.

Sadly, these terrain painting tools are the ones that I feel most lukewarm about. While they should add an enormous amount of extra variety to your landscapes, in practice I found them quite hard to blend subtly, with the intensity slider never quite going low enough to reduce hard borders between terrain types. You can achieve a similar effect by rapidly clicking to feather the brushes, but this is one of the few areas where I feel the tools at your disposal could do with some more refining.

Still, though, the impact of the tool and brush improvements has made the game feel far more fluid in action. They’re all tiny QoL upgrades in isolation, but they’re huge in aggregate. It takes Planet Zoo from a game that’s almost notoriously fiddly and rigid to something that feels more approachable for people who don’t have 1,000 hours to learn all of its tricks.

Should you play Planet Zoo 2?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

There’s a small range of accessibility features available here. For those with visual impairments, you can scale the in-game font from 60% to 100% and the UI from 70% to 100%. Meanwhile, Planet Zoo 2 caters to most forms of color blindness, allowing you to change the color of subtitles, as well as the positive, warning, and negative UI feedback colors.

How I reviewed Planet Zoo 2

Given its lengthy career mode and how long it can take to build custom enclosures, I wanted to make sure I had a broad experience of the game, so I played Planet Zoo 2 for over 75 hours. While I was reviewing the PC version, I made sure to try it out on a variety of devices, including my desktop gaming PC, the Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark, and my Steam Deck. I also tried playing it with the SteelSeries Aeon Pro controller to ensure it was as playable on controller as it is on mouse and keyboard.

When in-game, I tried to test out as wide a variety of content as possible. I played a significant chunk of the campaign, started several franchise zoos, and began building my own zoo in sandbox mode. I built aquariums, aviaries, and traditional habitats, as well as other scenery items. And I completed multiple research levels in different wildlife reserves.

As for my own experience, not only do I have that ludicrous 1,100-hour playtime in the original Planet Zoo game, but I’ve been playing management sim games ever since the OG, Theme Park, back in 1994. I’ve been gaming across a wide variety of platforms for at least 35 years and now play principally on my PC, Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X.

• First reviewed: October 2026

Surprises are rare in gaming. At first glance, Phantom Blade Zero had all the hallmarks of a solid, if middle-of-the-road, release. Now that I’ve sunk almost 20 hours into this wuxia- and martial arts-inspired roleplaying game (RPG), it’s clear S-Game has delivered one of the most thrilling action games in a long time.

A blistering opening sets the tone, with bombastic battles, dramatic visuals, and gorgeous cinematics that introduce wandering warrior Soul and the reason he’s on a battle-filled journey across the corrupted land of Wulin. The 20+ hour adventure that lies ahead may not deliver everything narratively, but it excels with a stunning world to explore and combat that sings.

It’s clear that so much effort has gone into getting this combat spot on, with detailed weapon designs, satisfying sound effects, and some truly outstanding animations. Every time I saw a new weapon or secondary Phantom Art from the impressive variety in the game in action, I was dazzled by the string of attacks and finishing-move flourishes it offered.

Of course, not all of them were bangers or suited the way I wanted to play, but the better ones stand out way more than the bad, which gave me a lot of tough choices when deciding which two I wanted to upgrade and wield. Even though I stuck with a few favorites throughout the game, I rarely tired of stringing together the intricate combos each one offered.

Having flashy weapons is all well and good, but if you don’t have decent dance partners to put them to use against, it can get dull fast. Outside of a few exceptions, fodder enemies are fairly easy to cut your way through, but Phantom Blade Zero doesn’t miss a beat with its lineup of tough and inventive boss encounters that will put your skills and weapon choices to the test.

Stop trying to hit me and hit me

What I appreciated most is that, while these bouts are often a relentless barrage of attacks from either side, combat is actually quite forgiving.

That mainly comes from the option to hold block to deflect most attacks. This will drain your sha-chi (effectively a stamina resource that’s also used for certain skills and abilities), but it lasts a lot longer and can be refilled with a quick weapon switch to keep you in the fight longer.

You can also choose to try and parry attacks with perfect timing as they land, meaning you do not lose this resource and drain more from your opponent instead, leaving them open to a lot of attacks while it recharges.

Mix in attacks with blue flashes that can be parried with perfect timing to deliver a devastating counterattack, and red flash attacks that must be dodged to avoid significant damage, and combat becomes chaotic but not overwhelming.

Key moves you need to watch out for are very readable, while the ability to block almost everything else means you have time to study the opponent’s moves, find your own windows to attack, and survive any small slip-ups — rather than being repeatedly punished for imperfect play.

That’s not to say Phantom Blade Zero is without any degree of challenge. A good handful of bosses did flatten me repeatedly, including several dramatic fights that are hiding away off the main path or in side quests, so exploration can be very rewarding if you like to test yourself.

When facing these enemies, I was especially thankful that there’s no need to trudge back to collect your resources on death if you just want to move on. With the game’s much less punishing difficulty curve, this change of pace is a blessing if you’re not in the mood for yet another Souls-like.

Memory problems

Some of that genre’s obtuseness is kept in the narrative, however. A lot of the game’s story is told in bits and pieces, mainly through flashbacks, Soul’s memories, and memory flowers found in the world that reveal the stories of the people in the places you travel through.

It makes for some fascinating moments of discovery and some genuinely engaging asides when they come together, but breaking things up this way, especially with multiple story strands in play at once, can make it harder to follow exactly what’s going on all the time. It can kill the pacing at times, too, as sometimes you stop-and-start to listen to multiple of these audio-logs-as-flowers one after the other.

The problem is only emphasised in a game that’s packed with proper nouns, making it exhausting to keep track of the who, what, where, and when as you ping between different perspectives and time periods.

At least it’s easy to get swept up in the aura and atmosphere of it all. And when you get back into combat, unsheathing a sword that gets more powerful as you get more drunk, sending enemies flying with a giant tower shield, or chopping some poor soul in half with a two-handed claymore, any niggles fall away. The action at the core is so good and an awesome achievement from the debut developers.

Should you play Phantom Blade Zero?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

There are limited accessibility features in Phantom Blade Zero. You can choose to play the game with English VO or with the traditional Chinese VO with subtitles in many languages. Subtitles can be in normal or large, although a very large option would likely be useful for some. There are three controller presets, but no option to remap specific buttons. You can also adjust the intensity of camera shaking, turn off motion blur, and reduce the level of violence.

How I reviewed Phantom Blade Zero

I played Phantom Blade Zero for around 20 hours, taking my time to complete a handful of side quests while making significant progress on the main story — and I'm absolutely going to stick with it to the end.

Again, I played on a PlayStation 5 Pro on a Samsung S90C OLED TV and Samsung HW-Q930C soundbar while using a DualSense Wireless Controller. I did play briefly using the PlayStation Portal, and found it was a perfectly fine way to run the game, too.

Phantom Blade Zero has the option to play in Quality, Balanced, or Performance mode. I stuck with Balanced mode for my playthrough, which did a good job of running the game at 40 frames per second (fps) in dynamic 4K with ray tracing, as I experienced very few and very minor stutters. Performance mode targeting 60fps is likely a better option, though, if you prefer smoothness throughout.

First reviewed October 2026.

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: one-minute review

The Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC is simply a fantastic version of an already world-beating wireless gaming headset. While it shares an awful lot with the ‘original’ Audeze Maxwell 2 that launched earlier this year, the addition of genuinely excellent active noise cancellation (ANC) means that it offers an enhanced experience compared to its brethren.

The design and build remain very similar to that older model, with the big, weighty earcups sitting comfortably over your ears while the leather headstrap keeps things secure. Controls are also nearly identical, bar the addition of the ANC button on the front of the left cup. It’s a sturdy and robust build which gives great confidence, but if you’re in any way wary of weighty sets, then the Maxwell 2 ANC might be a bit much for you — it’s a chonker at 19.75oz / 560g.

However, the heft is unequivocally worth it in my opinion: when it comes to performance, the Maxwell 2 is absolutely fantastic. The non-ANC Maxwell 2 is my pick for the best-sounding gaming headset money can buy right now, and the ANC variant sounds just as brilliant in all scenarios across different platforms.

The ANC itself is a welcome addition and a genuinely impressive one, blocking out all exterior noise in my testing, as well as offering a transparency mode. The quality of the ANC makes it perfect for busy environments, or just achieving maximal immersion in your games.

This is up there with the absolute best in the premium ANC business — like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni and Nova Elite I tested in recent months — and I can’t recommend it more if it fits in your budget for PC, Xbox, or PS5.

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: Price and availability

• List price: $429 / £429 / AU$699
• Chunky increase in price over the non-ANC model
• Priced alongside competitors from the likes of SteelSeries, but above other wireless contenders

The Maxwell 2 ANC is more expensive than its ‘regular’ counterpart: it’s $100 / £90 / AU$130 more. With only a few features that are different from its non-ANC brother, its value proposition will be called into question.

For that price, it’s above the likes of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni (a direct competitor to the Maxwell 2), which is a headset with excellent ANC and one I really would recommend as well.

More broadly, you can still get models such as the brilliant Turtle Beach Stealth Pro 2 headset for comfortably less, and other planar magnetic driver gaming headsets like the wired Asus ROG Kithara are cheaper still (though aren’t quite like-for-like).

As a result, the Audeze Maxwell 2 is a premium headset package, and the combination of its awesome planar magnetic driver audio and the great ANC makes it a sizable investment in the gaming headset market — though still much less than the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite. If the best gaming audio and ANC are both must-have features for you, then the Maxwell 2 ANC will still offer what you want and earn its price tag.

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: Specs

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: Design & features

• Robust build with a great feature set that builds on predecessor
• A little heavier than the non-ANC headset
• Weaker battery life

Note: I've removed a small comment from this section that talked about the Maxwell 2 ANC's dongle being smaller than the non-ANC headset dongle. This was incorrect, and they are the same size; I have removed the comment to reflect that.

The Maxwell 2 ANC gives great confidence with its build. It feels robust, solid, and able to withstand a knock or a drop (something I can attest to), and a lot of that comes from its weightiness. Some folks might immediately associate ‘heavy gaming headset’ with ‘bad,’ but I really think that is a grave misconception and something drilled into us by the marketing of other brands.

In reality, the design and build are so nicely done that it offsets the weight, and the comfort too — largely down to its new memory foam cushions and ventilated leather head strap — means that I’ve never really noticed wearing the Maxwell 2 ANC for even the longest sessions.

In terms of on-board controls, the left cup houses the volume dial, the game-chat mix dial, an audio jack, a USB-C port, a mic port, and the new ANC button. The right cup has the mic mute switch and the power button, which also doubles up as the Bluetooth pairing button. Simple. The dual microphone is very welcome, and it means you can deploy the Maxwell 2 ANC for entertainment and music, and still rely on something for comms, without plugging in the detachable boom mic.

The head tracking features provided by Embody Immerse Gaming Hive and Dolby Atmos Rendered compatibility are fun and a novelty, though they still feel a little niche for me.

The most notable thing in the features of the Maxwell 2 ANC, however, sadly, is that the battery life has taken a dive compared to the regular Maxwell 2. While the non-ANC version could get you 80-odd hours of use, the ANC version is limited to about half of that with ANC off, and 35 hours with ANC on.

It’s perfectly serviceable and still provides you with comfortably more than a full day, but it is a shame the difference is so massive.

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: Performance

• Incredible audio quality across all games
• Excellent ANC performance that doesn’t kill bass
• Comfortable to wear, plus a really solid mic

The Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC is simply fantastic when put to the test. The gaming audio it provides is every bit as good as the audio I love from the regular Maxwell 2.

No matter what I’ve been playing, the Maxwell 2 ANC provides thumping combat sounds, beautifully crisp environmental audio, and rich, rounded soundtracks. It’s a joy to use as a media and entertainment pair of headphones too, with music singing clearly into my ears. Planar magnetic driver audio really is something else.

Backing this up is the microphone combo, which ensures I’m clear and crisp with my teammates even in the most frantic of online multiplayer battles.

Key to the audio sounding so good all the time is that the main USP of the headset, the ANC, doesn’t kill bass like almost every other ANC I’ve tried in my years of testing.

This means that you really are getting uncompromising audio, and some very effective ANC too; it’s excellent for immersion, and even in a busy household with a few people, I’ve been unbothered by external noise. This is undoubtedly aided by Audeze’s SLAM (Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modulator) tech, which is proven to assist in bass performance.

The weight of the headset doesn’t impact the performance of the Maxwell 2 ANC from a comfort perspective either. It might be heavier than other headsets, sure, but it’s never been uncomfortable on my head, even in the longest of sessions. I've almost come to prefer it over lightweight models you totally forget you’re wearing.

Elsewhere, I will say that by default the Maxwell 2 ANC can be quite quiet, which was a mild annoyance, though easily solved on PC or PS5 by manually adjusting the volume. The companion Audeze app on desktop and mobile has also been handy, facilitating firmware updates and allowing for EQ tinkering.

All in all, the Maxwell 2 ANC has all that is great about the non-ANC variant and adds excellent ANC. If you have to have the latter and are eyeing up the best version of the best-sounding headset, then this is the one to get.

Should I buy the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider...

If the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC doesn’t feel like it’s going to hit the mark for you, then these are the two alternatives I’d look to right now.

How I tested the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC

• Tested over the course of a few months
• Compared with other headsets, including the non-ANC version
• Used across PS5 and PC games, on mobile, and for music, work, and entertainment

I’ve used the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC as my go-to PS5 headset for a few months now, playing the likes of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, Marvel’s Wolverine, and Tom Clancy's The Division 2 and Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 with friends online, as well as regularly using it on my PC when not using my SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni headset — a competing headset that has been great for comparison.

On my Acer Predator Orion 5000 gaming PC (supplied by Acer), I’ve tested the Maxwell 2 ANC not only with everyday usage like work calls, music, and TV, but also with games like Cyberpunk 2077, Frostpunk 2, Crusader Kings 3, and a preview of a game or two under embargo.

First reviewed July-October 2026

Read more about how we test

There are few studios I respect more in the gaming world than Double Fine. Founded by industry legend Tim Schafer way back in July 2000, the mastermind behind adventure game classics like Grim Fandango and Full Throttle has spent the past 26 years making a range of games that have you doing everything from jumping into people’s brains to becoming a rock legend to using Russian dolls to solve puzzles.

Every single thing this developer creates is so unique, and none more so than Psychonauts 2.

And I love this delightfully unorthodox platformer not just because of its excellent characters and imaginative level design, but also because of the hard journey it went on to see the light of day after six long years of development. Now I consider most video games a miracle, but not all video games have a 23+ hour documentary showing exactly how they were made and all the things people sacrificed to make them so special.

You owe it to yourself to watch it, more so now that Double Fine has parted ways with Microsoft and is yet again stepping into the world as an independent studio with so much left to give. Enough about that for now, though; let us touch on everything that makes Psychonauts 2 such a masterpiece now that I’ve hit the credits for the first time.

Insane in the membrane

The concept of being able to read the minds of those around you and even jump into their brains to root around sounds thrilling at first, but I bet it doesn’t take long before you stumble across mountains of trauma and terrible opinions.

But what if you could change people by delving deep into their subconscious and pulling on a few strings? That’s exactly what our hero Razputin "Raz" Aquato must do as a newly minted member of the Psychonauts, who also happens to come from a family of eccentric circus performers who are horrendously allergic to water. That explains the gaudy green skin and penchant for 3D platforming.

Psychonauts 2 starts incredibly strong as you’re yeeted into the head of a paranoid dentist harbouring the location of a long-lost psychic supervillain. If you’re afraid of rotting teeth or the idea of someone rooting around in your chompers with sharp objects, this level totally isn’t for you, but goodness me, is it gorgeous.

I’m filled with a feeling of proud disgust as I grasp onto a zipper of teeth using my telekinesis, only to pull it down to reveal a new area, while bouncing across a squishy yet jagged mixture of gums and teeth resembles a video game equivalent of a SpongeBob SquarePants close-up gag.

It’s gross, needlessly detailed, yet instantly endearing. Thankfully, the remaining levels in Psychonauts 2 are equally as impressive but don’t make you want to lose your lunch. I’ll never forget helping a brain in a jar regain his physical form by reuniting his senses, who almost happen to play in a rock band pulled straight from the psychedelic 1960s, or the Casino Hospital, where sentient syringes are rolling the dice to try and have a baby.

Every level is a platforming masterclass that begins with a central premise before using that foundation to offer up stellar obstacles and puzzles which are always challenging enough to feel rewarding. During my first playthrough, I became obsessed with collectibles, leaving the beaten path behind in favour of hard-to-reach areas or consistently backtracking to make sure nothing was left behind. That’s the sign of a great platformer — each level is an utter joy to traverse the first time round before evolving into a familiar playground awash with secrets.

What color is the sky in your world?

Beyond how good Psychonauts 2 can feel to play, it’s the writing and characters that occupy this platformer that help it rise to another echelon of greatness. Raz may be a psychic hero, but he’s also a naive little kid with so much left to learn about the world, which makes having to constantly fix the mistakes made by adults around him a smidge awkward.

This acts as an effective springboard for Schafer and his team to tell nuanced stories surrounding issues like alcoholism, depression, grief, and what it means to be human. The game world is held up by eccentric psychic realism, but the way it narratively expresses itself couldn’t be more real if it tried.

Throughout its seven-year tenure with Xbox, Double Fine never managed to release another game of this magnitude as it opted for smaller, more experimental titles like Kiln and Keeper. But I’ve no doubt that Schafer is currently hard at work on a new project as creative director or project lead, whether this ends up being a new IP or a sequel to something fans love.

It’s the sort of experience it will need to produce in order to succeed as an independent studio in today’s climate, where even a single failed project can usher in a studio’s sudden demise. Its enduring history and legions of hardcore fans sadly don’t make it immune to this fate.

I’m not saying I want Psychonauts 3 — although that would be lovely — but the medium would be far darker if Double Fine stopped creating games like the idiosyncratic platformer.

It offers so much heart, so much purpose, and showcases what video games are capable of outside of chasing trends and retreading nostalgic old ground. We simply don’t have nearly enough experiences like it in the modern era, so hopefully Double Fine’s current Amnesia Fortnight campaign will produce something just as spectacular.

Platformers of this depth and caliber are hard to come by these days unless you’re being made by Nintendo, so if you’re after an emotionally satisfying adventure that will stay with you for years to come, I can’t recommend Psychonauts 2 enough. Oh, and be sure to give the documentary a watch as well. If we make enough noise, maybe we’ll be crowdfunding the third game sooner than we think.

• Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe says the game's Showbiz system was "a real challenge" for RGG Studio
• Abe says lots of research was put into finding out what a show promoter does and how to depict that in-game
• Abe adds that "At some point we did have a small rhythm game," but the idea didn't match the team's vision

Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe has revealed how RGG Studio designed the game's Showbiz narrative system and how difficult it was to get right.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Abe said the Showbiz, an entertainment management system requiring the main character, Makoto Daito, to build a business, find sources of inspiration for music, and plan productions as a promoter, "was a real challenge for us."

The director explained that RGG started by asking: what does a promoter actually do? Because "you know what a singer does, and you know what a band does, but you don't exactly know what a promoter does in the music industry," so research began from there.

Abe revealed that "At some point we did have a small rhythm game, but it didn't exactly match the feeling that you're promoting a show," so the team went back to the whiteboard phase to try different things.

"One thing that we noticed is that a promoter is the person who brings in not just the money, but also the inspiration and the whole vision of the show," Abe said. "We thought that's an interesting aspect that we can put into this game."

In Stranger Than Heaven, players can walk around cities and interact with things in the environment, like a grandfather clock or a bonfire, and collect sounds as inspiration for music. Daito can then take these samples and collaborate with a composer to create new music and plan a production for the singer and band.

"The inspiration sources are basically like when you have a certain job, you always have these antennas looking for something," Abe said. "So, if you're a musician, you always have this antenna for the music you're hearing, and that can inspire people to create new stuff, and that was no different for Makoto as well.

Abe added, "That's why this game system of finding and then using that inspiration to create music came to life in the game."

Stranger Than Heaven releases on January 15, 2027, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

• Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe says RGG Studios did a lot of "difficult" research to depict the game's many cities across different time periods
• However, Abe says "historical accuracy wasn't the goal from the very beginning," and the team took creative liberties
• He says there is a lot of "fiction" woven through the cities for the player experience

RGG Studio did plenty of research for its multi-era action role-playing game, Stranger Than Heaven, but director Mikinobu Abe has said historical accuracy wasn't the end goal.

In a discussion with TechRadar Gaming about the early stages of development, Abe confirmed that a story spanning 50 years and five cities in Japan required a lot of research, which "itself was really difficult," and that RGG visited all the cities depicted in the game and libraries for material.

"No one knows what it was like back in 1915 Kokura, or 1929 Kure," Abe said. "So, we had to dig into a lot of our pictures, and we visited a lot of museums. We even bought a lot of books that were published back then, or magazines that were published back then, and read every single one of them. There was one time that bugs were coming out of them, which was not good to have in the office! We did a lot of research like that."

However, as much as research was vital to get a sense of the time periods RGG wanted to depict, the director said "historical accuracy wasn't the goal from the very beginning," and the team took creative liberties.

"We took a lot of inspiration from what we researched, but we wanted to depict the city in a way that we feel really represents the video game experience that we want the player to have," Abe explained. "There's a lot of fiction within the cities, but we wanted to capture the tone of what it could have been like or how it could have felt to be in that place."

It wasn't just historical research; Abe said he and the art director, Daishi Kanaya, researched paintings, vintage lenses, and film that were created during these decades, and that they "took a lot of inspiration from the equipment side of things," like what brush artists used when drawing at the time.

"We took a lot of inspiration from those and re-imagined how we, as creators in 2026, would use that equipment and create this new vibe or atmosphere for the game," he said. "That's just how this older colour, and the look, and the tone, and the atmosphere of the city came to life.

"I don't think 1915 Kokura was that populated or was that big of a city, but you know, we really wanted to capture the essence and humanise it in a way that we feel like it's really entertaining for people to play."

Stranger Than Heaven releases on January 15, 2027, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

You could be forgiven for having reservations going into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. After all, both last year’s instalment, the much-derided Black Ops 7, and this game’s direct predecessor, Modern Warfare III, were clearly rushed and displayed a level of sloppiness that suggested the first-person shooter franchise had reached its breaking point.

Thankfully, it’s now apparent that these were merely temporary hiccups, and Modern Warfare 4 sees developer Infinity Ward successfully bring Call of Duty back from the brink with a fresh and exciting instalment that represents the absolute pinnacle of what the series has to offer.

The brilliant single-player story campaign delivers blockbuster thrills, there’s a stellar extraction shooter component filled with tense encounters in DMZ, and the core multiplayer experience is wonderfully crafted. It’s a package that you shouldn’t miss, and if it represents the trajectory of future installments, I’m confident that we’re in good hands.

Boots on the ground

The Modern Warfare 4 campaign is simply superb and sets a new benchmark for the series’ cinematic storytelling. It truly feels like the culmination of the last decade of the Call of Duty series – and not just the Modern Warfare games.

It all kicks off in the fictional city of Hajin, South Korea, where you play as the lowly Private Park. An unwilling conscript in the country’s mandatory service program, he and his squadmates are suddenly thrust onto the front lines when a routine patrol is interrupted by the start of a full-scale invasion by North Korea. There are some genuinely shocking scenes in the opening as your team pushes through a rapidly crumbling city, dodging artillery strikes and witnessing widespread civilian casualties.

The early death of a squadmate hammers home the high stakes, and the decision to focus on newcomers rather than the established Modern Warfare cast makes it clear that there’s no plot armor here. You genuinely start to care about these new arrivals, with each member bringing a distinct and memorable personality to the squad’s dynamic. Dunn, a US Marine embedded in the local unit, is a particular highlight. His cultural cluelessness and overconfident swagger are frequently played for laughs, stopping the otherwise bleak tone from becoming too unrelentingly miserable.

It’s a big departure from the almost Marvel-movie-like silliness of the recent Call of Duty games (I’m looking at you, giant Harper mission from Black Ops 7), and the focus on a ground invasion makes for a grittier story that’s more in line with the events of the original Modern Warfare trilogy. Despite this more constrained focus, there are still plenty of memorable set-piece moments, such as an invigorating sequence that has you rapidly switching between different team members spread out across an air base, working together to fend off waves of North Korean troops.

There’s even one massive, open-world mission that unfolds similarly to a Far Cry game. It’s far more in-depth than the disappointing open-zone levels of 2023’s Modern Warfare III, with resources to scavenge, outposts to clear, and even a few puzzles to crack. It took me a few hours to clear, and since I didn’t see everything, I really appreciate being able to return to it later from the mission select screen and pick up where I left off.

Park’s story plays out mostly linearly, but it's interspersed with missions that detail the exploits of the fan-favorite Captain Price in the lead-up to the invasion. Set a few years after the events of the previous game, which, spoiler alert, ends with Price executing his long-term adversary, General Shepherd, in the middle of the Pentagon, the former SAS soldier is now on the run and travels between global locations hunting the members of a sinister cabal.

Price’s segments offer all the bombastic Mission: Impossible action that made the recent Black Ops 6 campaign so great. One minute you're infiltrating a New York nightclub, and the next you’re speeding through Paris, hanging out the side of a car chased by legions of heavily armed gangsters. Vladimir Makarov, a terrorist Price pursued throughout the previous game, is unceremoniously killed off in just the second mission, paving the way for the introduction of Archer, a new foe portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen. Unlike Makarov, he’s a compelling villain with coherent motivations and, importantly, enough screen time to appear like more than an afterthought, as his predecessor unfortunately did.

While Park’s journey sees the recruit come face to face with the horrors of war but emerge victorious thanks to camaraderie and teamwork, Price’s is all about the dangers of abandoning your morals and sacrificing those close to you in pursuit of revenge. They contrast excellently and, while the messaging certainly isn’t subtle, the way both gradually converge for a unified conclusion is nevertheless highly satisfying.

Off the books

The events of the campaign lead directly into the new DMZ extraction shooter mode, which sees mercenaries returning to the crumbling ruins of Hajin to find and extract abandoned military tech left over from the war. It plays like a simplified version of titles such as Arena Breakout: Infinite or Escape from Tarkov, with your chosen operator dropping in to the map from an upgradable field base.

This serves as a little hub world that you return to in between runs, offering limited storage for your scavenged gear, a 3D printer to forge new equipment with collected resources, a vendor for spending extracted cash, and intelligence detailing the non-player character (NPC) foes and most dangerous players active in the zone. While most extraction shooter games include base-building elements, it’s rare to see your home as a physical 3D space you can actually explore, and it makes the experience feel much more immersive.

You have three options when deploying into Hajin: Story Missions, Dynamic Ops, and Free Roam. Free Roam is the most basic: it drops you into the massive map with a few other players to pursue your own goals, whether that means finding good weapons to extract or trying to complete DMZ Orders, little challenges that guide your experience. Dynamic Ops is more guided, feeding you a stream of multi-stage objectives with increasing rewards for each that you manage to complete.

They’re assigned at random, with a good variety of options in the mission pool that range from taking out key NPC targets to taking over military camps and collecting stashed bombs to destroy marked vehicles. Story Missions, meanwhile, offer a more linear experience that feels much closer to the campaign.

One early highlight had my team of three taking on guards at an abandoned hospital, pushing our way up to the intensive care unit and wheeling a sedated enemy general to a rooftop extraction point under heavy fire. It was genuinely exhilarating, and became even more exciting when a squad of enemy players turned up to disrupt our mission.

Other players can appear regardless of your chosen mode, leading to tense PvP situations where one wrong move can mean the difference between a successful escape and losing your current operator and all of their equipment. Not every encounter has to end in a fight, though, as you can work together with enemy teams (and even opt to join them) if they’re willing to cooperate, leading to some fun emergent play.

I entered one story mission and quickly discovered that my team of randoms was absolutely terrible, with no apparent interest in actually completing our tasks, so I beelined to a nearby enemy squad shouting “friendly” until they sent me the invite to join them. I quickly led my new friends right back to my useless former teammates, and took great pleasure in helping mow them down to steal all their gear.

No two games feel the same, and if that wasn’t reason enough to keep coming back, Hajin itself is a treat to explore. It’s big, beautiful, and filled with a variety of aesthetically distinct zones ranging from freezing cold, abandoned North Korean villages to the rusty ruins of the South Korean city and even some of the barren outskirts of Russia. Even when you’ve seen it all, the dynamic weather effects can still take you by surprise, introducing challenging conditions like dense fog or heavy rainstorms that make it more difficult to navigate and spot foes.

DMZ would be a strong offering as a standalone extraction shooter game, so it represents incredible value when bundled in alongside the rest of the Modern Warfare 4 package. This is a mode that I’m going to be coming back to time and time again in the weeks and months ahead.

A fresh start

Of course, no Call of Duty game is complete without a robust suite of core multiplayer modes, and Modern Warfare 4 delivers a truly superb experience across the board in this regard. The pacing of matches is perfect: noticeably snappier than the comparatively pedestrian battles of Modern Warfare II but not as overwhelmingly rapid as the wall-jumping, hip-firing action of Black Ops 7.

Fast movement helps you navigate the smaller maps of classic modes like Team Deathmatch or Kill Confirmed quickly so you’re always encountering new enemies to fight, keeping the excitement high. Focusing on tactical positioning is still rewarded, thanks to a finely tuned TTK (time to kill) that gives the player who lands the first hit an advantage, but not a guaranteed victory against particularly skilled opponents. New traversal mechanics like a ledge grab that lets you hang off the side of buildings and objects are seamlessly implemented too, opening up new exciting opportunities on every battlefield.

As I noted in my impressions of the Modern Warfare 4 beta, the overhauled ballistic system is far more than a marketing bullet point and genuinely impacts how you engage with weapons by accurately simulating the trajectory of bullets based on the position of your muzzle. In practical terms, it means being able to reliably hit shots when quickly shooting from the hip, which gives you a chance against players that slide around corners with SMGs at breakneck speeds to try and catch you off guard.

The guns themselves are all fantastic to use, with best-in-class model fidelity, impactful sound effects, and slick animations. There’s a great variety in the arsenal to boot, which spans from modern assault rifles to the antique WWII gear used by the real-world North Korean military. GUNNY, a new automated helper smartly built into the gunsmith system, makes it easier than ever to tweak your attachments for that perfect build. While I will always prefer poring over the detailed stats, giving newcomers the ability to automatically create good attachment setups based on their specific playstyles helps keep the playing field even.

As for the maps, they’re some of the best that we’ve had in recent years. They’re definitely on the smaller side unless you dive into the massive Ground War: Combat Outpost mode (which plays almost like a Battlefield match), though none of them stand out as suffering from poorly balanced spawn points or unfair sightlines. They’re visually stunning. Those taking place in South Korea, such as Silkworm, stand out particularly with their lavishly detailed streets, while little animated intros grant each arena a distinct visual identity.

Wrap all of this up in a slick UI that finally doesn’t look like the Netflix home screen, and it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that Modern Warfare 4 is going to reshape the direction of the long-running series going forward. If I had to truly nitpick, I would fault the lack of faction divisions in the operator lineup – being able to tell at a glance which team a player is on without having to rely on the red enemy indicator would help readability.

For something this insignificant to be my only complaint is a testament to how strong the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 package is

Should I play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

As with most modern Call of Duty games, there is an expansive selection of accessibility settings. This includes a wide selection of visual presets designed to enhance readability, as well as an assortment of subtitle options for the campaign.

The controls are also highly customizable, with full remapping supported whether you’re using a keyboard and mouse or a controller. You can also tweak aim assist settings and enable presets designed to reduce motor strain.

How I reviewed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4

I played more than 25 hours of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 for the purpose of this review. This included a full playthrough of the campaign, multiple DMZ sessions both solo and with a friend, and plenty of multiplayer. I also drew on my experience playing more than ten hours of the game’s beta, and some extra hands-on time in a studio visit earlier this year.

I tested everything on PC using a 5070 Ti-powered model by retailer Sca with a compact Corsair 2000d RGB Airflow case, Asus ROG Strix B860-I Gaming Wifi motherboard, Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU, a 2TB WD Black SN770 SSD, 32GB of DDR5 Corsair Vengeance RAM, and an Nvidia 5070 Ti manufactured by Asus. This setup lets me play smoothly on custom graphics settings at 1080p with most options set to High.

For peripherals, I used the new Logitech G Pro X2 Rapid keyboard and Logitech G Pro X3 SuperStrike mouse throughout my time with the game.

First reviewed October 2026

• An alleged former BioWare developer has leaked the trailer for "Mass Effect Universe"
• The cinematic trailer has been verified as real and features "in-engine footage" and "pre-production assets"
• Fans are hoping the game can be saved following BioWare's closure

A first look at the next Mass Effect game has leaked online following its cancelation and BioWare's closure, and fans are in an uproar, with many hoping for a revival.

One day after EA permanently shuttered the legendary developer behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, an alleged former BioWare employee leaked the Mass Effect 5 trailer on Reddit, and sadly, it looks amazing.

The cinematic trailer for "Mass Effect Universe" begins with text that reads, "The following is in-engine footage from our small team. It uses our pre-production assets." It then showcases a new protagonist, who appears to be an ex-soldier, in settings familiar to the series with a spy-thriller vibe.

We also see Liara T'Soni alongside new characters who appear to be companions, including a male Quarian, enemy encounters, and some awesome-looking action.

Now verified by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier as a real trailer for the game BioWare was developing up until its closure, the teaser has rocked the internet and sparked even more backlash against EA.

"I'm crying," one fan said on X. This is everything I wanted. They were a lot farther than we thought. F*** EA."

Another wrote, "This is absurd. These developers deserve for their years of work to see the light of day. They were clearly f***** cooking something special. Save BioWare. Save Mass Effect."

Mass Effect Universe may be dead, but fans hope the project will be revived, with a Change.org petition called "#SaveMassEffect" now live and holding over 45,799 signatures as of writing.

Fans are also speculating the leak could be a publicity stunt to save BioWare and the game, similar to how the Deadpool movie was revived after actor Ryan Reynolds personally leaked the test footage to the public.

"The alleged Mass Effect Universe trailer looks incredible," a fan account said. "We personally believe this could be a 'Deadpool-style' leak, intended to generate public pressure and potentially give the cancelled project a second chance. Could this be an attempt to save Mass Effect?"

BioWare's closure came as part of EA's first major restructuring plan that led to 400 layoffs across the publisher's studios, including "50-ish" of the remaining people at BioWare, according to former cinematic supervisor Tony de Waal.

De Waal spoke out about Mass Effect 5's cancelation after being laid off and said, "I believe we were making something special: a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match."

• Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe explains why the game's story spanning decades is being told in one game instead of multiple titles
• Abe says it was "a week isn't enough to tell the story" of how a yakuza organisation is built
• The director says the era-spanning story worked best when framed around a man's life

Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe has explained why RGG Studios chose to tell an era-spanning story in one game, rather than across multiple titles.

"The whole starting point was that we wanted to depict why, or how, someone would create such an organisation like a yakuza organisation," Abe said in an interview with TechRadar Gaming.

Stranger Than Heaven centers on the main character, Makoto Daito, and the origins of a Yakuza organisation spanning 50 years across five cities in Japan, and Abe explained that the initial idea of containing the story within a smaller timeframe simply didn't work for the team's vision.

"We started from there, and while we were creating the narrative, we started to slowly realise that a week isn't enough to tell the story," he added. "We then explored how much time we needed to tell the narrative of a man who's going to build a gigantic yakuza organisation."

Abe went on to explain that this story worked best when framed around a man's life (Daito's) and realized it was the best outcome instead of splitting the story across multiple games, despite how long the narrative is.

"It was really important for us that the player experience the whole life of a man, because we wanted to tell this epic story of how the organisation became an organisation," he said.

"The timespan needed for that was basically a man's life. So, if we split it, people are going to experience it separately. But again, the main focus of the narrative was to tell why he created this organisation, and the timespan needed to tell that story was a life."

The director added, "So we just decided to create it and do it in one game. I will also say that the game itself is pretty long, but I'm quite satisfied with what we’ve built."

Stranger Than Heaven launches on January 15, 2027, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

• Electronic Arts has confirmed it will "be bringing together" its "Respawn and DICE studios to collaborate on a future project"
• Multiple sources have confirmed with Variety that it is Star Wars Battlefront 3
• The confirmation comes as EA shuts down BioWare and lays off 400 staff members across all studios

Star Wars Battlefront 3 is reportedly in development after Electronic Arts confirmed that Respawn and DICE will work collaboratively on a new project.

According to Variety, EA’s Cam Weber, president and chief studio officer, and David Tinson, president and COO, have confirmed the publisher is leaning into live-service online games after seeing success with Battlefield 6.

The executives said the game was "a great success, and we learned a lot from the launch and the live service" and alongside more Battlefield titles, "we’ll be bringing together our Respawn and DICE studios to collaborate on a future project."

EA didn't specify what this project is; however, Variety confirmed with "multiple sources" that the game is Star Wars Battlefront 3. The game has made headlines recently, with initial reports claiming it was to be developed at DICE alongside Destiny developer Bungie.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 launched in 2017, but live-service support ended in 2020, leaving the popular online multiplayer game in the dust with no further content updates, and it was thought the series was on ice.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners acquired EA in September 2025, but the deal wasn't officially closed until August 2026, making the restructuring the publisher's first major move.

Alongside Respawn and DICE's project, EA will continue to "invest heavily” in the Apex Legends franchise over the next few years, with plans to introduce new multiplayer modes and other content, and has committed to delivering "our two huge launches coming up," which are Marvel's Iron Man and Star Wars Jedi 3.

It also plans to continue supporting EA Sports, with two new projects in development, The Sims franchise and Skate.

Unfortunately, it's not all good news. The executive's plan also included a major restructuring across its studios and projects, resulting in 400 layoffs and the permanent shutdown of the legendary Dragon Age and Mass Effect studio, BioWare.

Roughly 50 people were laid off from the studio, and work on Mass Effect 5 has been canceled.

Former BioWare cinematic supervisor Tony de Waal has spoken up about the studio's closure, saying that Mass Effect 5 would have offered "a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match"

• Secretlab has announced its new Titan Evo and Magnus Pro League of Legends K/DA collection
• The virtual pop group returns with new music, and Secretlab is celebrating with a themed gaming chair and standing gaming desk
• Both are wreathed in rich burgundy flame and the K/DA iconography

Secretlab is expanding its Secretlab Titan Evo and Magnus Pro series with a new League of Legends collection inspired by the game's virtual pop group, K/DA.

K/DA has officially made a comeback after years away with a new album consisting of four tracks, 'Firestarter,' 'Never Going Back,' 'Watch Me,' and 'Girls,' and to mark the occasion, Secretlab has announced its stunning new Titan Evo gaming chair and Magnus Pro desk, launching today at Secretlab.

"The comeback we’ve all been waiting for," Secretlab announced. "Celebrate the return of K/DA, the virtual global pop supergroup within the iconic League of Legends world, with the brand newSecretlabLeague ofLegends K/DA Firestarter Collection."

Wreathed in rich burgundy flame, black leather, and the iconography for the members of K/DA, including Ahri, Kai'Sa, Evelynn, and Akali, the Titan Evo League of Legends Firestarter edition also features gradient embroidery and silver frame motifs on the side wings.

The Secretlab Titan Evo is one of the best gaming chairs on offer, designed with patent-pending cold-cure foam, a pebble seat base, and four-way L-adapt lumbar back support to ensure comfort for long gaming sessions.

The Titan Evo can also be paired with the Magnus Pro League of Legends Firestarter edition, the first standing desk in the K/DA collection. Featuring fire wrapped around the entire frame and the same iconography of the group's members, the desk also offers a matching cable management bundle with hot metallic pink anchors.

The Secretlab Magnus Pro features built-in power, cable management, and a controller, and is one of TechRadar Gaming's picks for the best standing desks money can buy right now.

• Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe says the game's combat system was inspired by classic Ninkyo yakuza movies
• He says the action scenes in those movies were "raw and gritty" and encapsulated the feeling RGG Studios wanted to showcase
• Abe adds that the combat system also correlates with Makoto Daito, who will start as an inexperienced fighter before evolving

Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe has revealed that classic yakuza movies inspired the upcoming action game's combat system, and that it will tie into Makoto Daito's character development.

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Abe shared how RGG Studios conceptualized the game's combat, saying that it "really wanted to make sure that the player feels this atmosphere that it’s either you kill, or you get killed," and revealed that "we took a lot of inspiration from the old Ninkyo movies."

Ninkyo is a classic subgenre of Japanese yakuza-themed movies made in the 70s and 80s. Abe said RGG was influenced by movies like New Battles Without Honor and Humanity, starring Bunta Sugawara, who also plays a character in Stranger Than Heaven, because of its unrefined action scenes.

"While we were watching these movies, we noticed that what made those movies special was how raw and gritty the action scenes are in those movies," he said. "No one throws a cool-looking fist punch or anything; it's just people rolling around and fighting. We felt that atmosphere was what made those genres special."

The "raw" action scenes also influenced the game's main character, Makoto Daito, and his gradual progression to becoming a better fighter than he starts; players will see him evolving the more they become attuned to the combat system.

"We took a lot of inspiration from that, and wanted to make sure that Daito is a character who starts out not being too good in a fight," Abe continued. "As he progresses, though, he gets more comfortable fighting people. Because of that, because the game is about one man's life, we definitely wanted to depict how the main character is evolving, or I guess more like ageing, through the narrative. We wanted to make sure that the player can also feel that, while also feeling that tension of kill or be killed."

Abe added that "It was really, really important that the combat feels intuitive to create this sense of synchronisation between the player and Daito" and to allow the player to "immerse themselves in controlling Makoto."

"As the player's skill gets better, so does Daito as a character gets better," the director said. "So that was the whole concept of what we wanted to depict through this combat system."

Stranger Than Heaven releases on January 15, 2027, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

• BioWare cinematic supervisor Tony de Waal says the now-canceled Mass Effect 5 offered "a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match"
• The developer says BioWare "saw what Larian and CD Projekt were bringing to the table" with Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 and "started down a path to bring Mass Effect to the next level"
• De Waal also recounts his experience working on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which he called "a herculean effort"

A BioWare developer working on Mass Effect 5 has revealed new details about the now-canceled project, which was seemingly inspired by systems from Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.

Following the announcement that EA is shutting down BioWare and canceling the next Mass Effect game, former BioWare cinematic supervisor Tony de Waal has spoken up about the plans for the title, revealing that he was among the remaining "50-ish" people at the studio who were laid off, suggesting Mass Effect 5 had a very small production team.

"I was one of the lucky ones who stayed with BioWare to start on the next Mass Effect, where I believe we were making something special: a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match," De Waal said on LinkedIn (via PC Gamer).

"We saw what Larian and CD Projekt were bringing to the table with their latest offerings, and started down a path to bring Mass Effect to the next level while remaining true to the Trilogy."

De Waal started his career at BioWare "29+ years ago," left after Mass Effect 2's release, but returned in 2021 to "help get what would become Dragon Age: The Veilguard back on track and out the door."

The developer shared some challenges the team encountered along the way with the final Dragon Age entry, saying it was "a herculean effort that tested the limits of even my workaholic mindset" but is "proud of the level of polish we were able to pull off in the Frostbite engine."

"Seriously, you have no idea the craziness going on under the hood of that game to make a variable player character work across 3+ hours of cinematics, and the number of conditions to account for in the scenes towards the end of the game," he added.

Speaking more on Mass Effect 5, De Waal said he's "sad" fans "won't get to see what we were cooking" and "sad for the small, talented group of devs who were all punching above their weight to make something special."

Parent company EA announced major restructuring plans across its studios and in development projects. 400 people have been laid off, including roughly 50 roles at BioWare (via Bloomberg). Now De Waal is one of many out of work.

"Please consider those who stayed with BioWare until the very end. They are truly some of the most talented people I've had the pleasure of working with throughout my career," De Waal added.

"With that, if you need someone who knows cinematic production, blending gameplay with cinematics, the tools, the tech, and has the know-how to realize complicated narratives — a true production expert with nearly three decades of experience who isn't afraid to roll up their sleeves and create content — please think of me. I'm once again looking for the next studio and project where I can use the breadth of my skills to make a difference."

• Audeze and Audiokinetic are collaborating to add native head-tracking support to Wwise with the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC headset
• The Maxwell 2 ANC integration into Wwise will "advance spatial audio content creation possibilities for game developers"
• Audiokinetic CTO Martin Dufour says the collaboration will unlock "new creative possibilities for developers, making it easier to implement vivid spatial audio that elevates player immersion"

Audeze has announced a new partnership with cross-platform audio solution provider Audiokinetic to introduce native head-tracking support for the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC headset directly inside Wwise.

The collaboration will "advance spatial audio content creation possibilities for game developers" by integrating Audeze’s next-generation Maxwell 2 ANC gaming headset with Audiokinetic’s Wwise audio creation suite, leveraging both companies' tech and expertise to push its "commitment to driving innovation across gaming audio and delivering world-class tools to creators."

This will support sound designers and game developers alike, who can use Wwise and tap into Audeze’s Maxwell 2 ANC headset, which is equipped with real-time, self-calibrating head-tracking technology.

The tech will help creatives achieve highly accurate 3D sound placement and enhanced spatial audio authoring with a plug-and-play setup, with zero external software required.

"Simply connect the Maxwell 2 ANC via USB-C or its ultra-low-latency wireless USB-C dongle to begin monitoring directly in Wwise," Audeze said. "This collaboration is set to transform how game audio is created and experienced—from VR emulation and Tempest 3D AudioTech binauralization to non-standard speaker layouts for Location-Based Entertainment (LBE) using the AK Custom Panner."

Sankar Thiagasamudram, CEO of Audeze, shared a statement, saying, "By natively integrating Maxwell 2 ANC’s self-calibrating head tracking directly into Wwise, we’re removing the friction between creator vision and spatial execution."

"Game developers now have a portable, studio-grade reference system that lets them place, audition, and mix 3D audio effortlessly in any environment. Together with Audiokinetic, we’re establishing a new benchmark for spatial audio creation across the interactive media industry."

The Maxwell 2 ANC integration will also allow developers to take full advantage of the headset’s hardware-based, low-latency head tracking, "providing unparalleled spatial accuracy for creating immersive soundscapes in video games," as well as 90 mm planar magnetic drivers with Uniforce, Fluxor, Fazor, SLAM acoustic technologies, and Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), which is designed to maintain a consistent frequency response.

"We’re unlocking new creative possibilities for developers, making it easier to implement vivid spatial audio that elevates player immersion," added Martin Dufour, CTO of Audiokinetic.

• EA has laid off 400 employees across its studios and is shutting down BioWare
• The Mass Effect and Dragon Age studio confirmed that Mass Effect 5 is canceled
• Developers and creatives across the industry have reacted to the news, calling it "unimaginable" and "heartbreaking"

EA is shutting down BioWare, the legendary studio behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

BioWare delivered the devastating news in a statement last night, saying that after more than 30 years as a pioneer in the choice-based role-playing game (RPG) genre, it will close down and that Mass Effect 5, which was in early development, is canceled.

The decision comes from parent company EA, which has confirmed major restructuring across its studios and projects, amounting to 400 layoffs, including roughly 50 roles at BioWare (via Bloomberg).

"For more than 30 years, BioWare has been more than a studio," the studio said. "It has been a home for storytellers, developers, and the players who brought our worlds to life. Baldur's Gate. Neverwinter Nights. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Dragon Age. Mass Effect. Anthem.

"Now, after more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing, and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending. There is nothing easy about writing those words. Our focus right now is on our incredibly talented team who put their hearts into these games, and supporting one another through this transition.

"What generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember. These games became so much more because you played them, debated your choices, fell in love with the characters, and made these worlds your own. From all of us at BioWare, thank you for being the most meaningful part of our story.”

The news has rocked the internet, not just among BioWare fans, but also developers and creatives across the games industry who have shared their reactions to the announcement.

"This is not something I ever expected to see," wrote Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke. "Larian and BioWare started their trajectories in the games industry at the same time, and BioWare led the way in making RPGs big. It's almost unimaginable that we're now entering an era where the name BioWare won't show up anymore when discussing upcoming RPGs. What a loss for all of us.

"Thank you for all the games. Thank you for the many hours of gameplay. Thank you for all the stories. You can be damned proud of what you achieved. I hope you all land well."

Casey Hudson, former BioWare GM, and Star Wars: KOTOR and the Mass Effect trilogy director, reacted to the announcement, calling it "sad news on multiple fronts - for those of us who worked there, for our friends and colleagues at BioWare who are impacted, and for fans who were looking forward to the next Mass Effect adventure."

Hudson, who is now CEO of Arcanaut Studios and is now working on a new Star Wars game called Fate of the Old Republic, added, "I started my career at BioWare and will forever be grateful to the founders, Greg and Ray, for inviting me to join in BioWare's legendary journey. Its legacy will live on through those who were part of it and continue to create games through a passion for unforgettable stories, worlds and characters."

CD Projekt Red joint-CEO also shared a post, saying, "BioWare has been a massive part of CDPR history. We befriended them when localizing and selling Baldur’s Gate games in Poland, Czech, and Slovakia. And later they were [a] great help when lending us their engine for Witcher 1, sharing their wisdom and even giving us a spot at their booth at E3. I had a pleasure to visit them a few times in Edmonton and also host them in our Warsaw office. Very sad for the people affected, but also sad to see a legendary brand go down. Not a great day in the games industry."

The Game Awards founder Geoff Keighley said the news was "heartbreaking" and "I hope one day, somehow, Mass Effect will return," while Cyberpunk 2 associate game director, Paweł Sasko, said, "Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 shaped my imagination and the desire to create games. I would have never been here without BioWare igniting the fire in my heart. It inspired me, formed me, enriched my imagination, and for that I will be forever grateful. I will always remember you."

Michael Gamble, project director on Mass Effect 5 and executive producer on BioWare who worked on all the previous games in the series also shared a statement, thanking fans for their support.

"I could probably scroll for hours and continue reading the words of support for the studio, the legacy, and the impact that BioWare has had on you. It means so much to us. There is so much talent on this team of OGs, so if you are aware of any roles, please send them. I will personally vouch for everyone in my crew.

"As for me: At least I don't have to call in sick when GTA 6 comes out."

• Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe says the game's narrative is very unique
• Abe hopes that Makoto Daito, the main character, and his background resonate with players of mixed heritage and that players will engage with the narrative
• Abe says, "We put a lot of focus on telling this narrative about a man's life who starts by facing a lot of racism"

Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe hopes the game's multi-era narrative and its mixed-heritage protagonist will resonate with players and those who have experienced discrimination.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Abe explained how Stranger Than Heaven's story, which spans 50 years across five distinct eras and cities in Japan, is not a concept he's ever experienced in a video game before, and believes it's "not just entertainment."

"I would say experiencing one man's life as a narrative and as a gameplay experience is something that I have personally never played before as a video game medium. I think that aspect of the game could be something that’s not just entertainment," Abe said.

The director continued to discuss the main character, Makoto Daito, who is of Japanese-American descent, and how his mixed heritage background and the racism he experiences when he first arrives in Japan are aspects of the story that he hopes players engage with.

Abe also said that while RGG Studios was developing the narrative for Makoto, it "felt it was really natural that music would be a big part of this character," and was one of the things that would help break the barriers of the racism he experiences.

"Once he comes to Japan, he faces a lot of discrimination, and people won't even talk to him just because of his race and language," he said. "So, music was the only thing for him that would break those barriers and help him communicate with people. That was really natural for us to put into the narrative.

"Of course, Captain Orpheus is the one who's going to teach him how to make money off of music. And for Daito, because he has that experience, it was really natural for him to start making money, and you know, start showbiz as his life's work. So that's why we always wanted the concept of music in this game to tell the narrative of Makoto’s life. That was the starting point of why we wanted music."

Abe continues, saying that he and Daito's actor, Yu Shirota, have both experienced discrimination and wants players to immerse themselves in the story, even if they're only playing Stranger Than Heaven for entertainment.

"Because of the way Makoto Daito’s story is written, where he starts from a mixed-heritage background, comes to Japan, and gets discriminated against, I hope that Makoto’s life journey really speaks to people around the globe who have had similar experiences," Abe said.

"I myself have had one before, and our lead actor also had a similar experience before, so we put a lot of focus on telling this narrative about a man's life who starts by facing a lot of racism. I hope it really encourages people, as well as the player who just wants to entertain themselves while playing the game can also get immersed in this narrative."

The director concluded, "So the concept of a man's life is, I think, one of the biggest things that I would love the player to experience, and I can’t wait for them to experience."

Stranger Than Heaven launches on January 15, 2027, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

• Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe says the game was always going to be different from the Yakuza or Like A Dragon games
• Abe says, "There was no conversation whatsoever about what Yakuza or Like A Dragon was like"
• He adds that RGG Studios "never compared" Stranger Than Heaven to its past titles, so it became "something new"

Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe has explained why the upcoming role-playing action game was developed as a completely new experience from RGG Studio's Yakuza franchise.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Abe said approaching Stranger Than Heaven was "a big task" and a "huge challenge for us," but knew "from the very beginning that we wanted to make this experience different from the previous games."

Unlike the Like a Dragon games, which typically take place in one location and timeframe, Stranger Than Heaven shifts to a historical timeline by telling a story across five distinct eras and cities spanning 50 years.

It's an ambitious decision for RGG, but Abe said the team intentionally forgot everything it knew from making the Yakuza series to create something new.

"While we were developing Stranger Than Heaven, there was no conversation whatsoever about what Yakuza or Like A Dragon was like," Abe said. "We intentionally forgot what it was like in our previous games and started from scratch. We were doubting every single pixel of what we had in Yakuza."

This included everything from the game's map, the UI, and how RGG wanted to approach the world; Abe said it even applied to the narrative and cutscenes, and the team "never compared" Stranger Than Heaven to its past titles.

"Every single aspect of it, we started thinking about it from scratch, just to suit the style of Stranger Than Heaven," he added. "We were never trying to make this different because we never compared it with our previous games, so in the end, it became something new."

Stranger Than Heaven launches on January 15, 2027, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

Stranger Than Heaven is exactly the sort of game I want to champion. It’s rare to see a team of young developers given a significant budget and seemingly generous freedom to create a half-century-spanning epic that tackles heavy themes while taking bold risks with both the combat and music-influenced management game at its core.

My four-hour whistlestop tour across several of the game’s time periods between 1915 and 1965 in this latest fantastical tale from the Japanese criminal underworld did make it hard to see just how well all of this ambition from RGG Studio will come together in the end. But I haven’t really stopped thinking about it since.

And when you’ve played and previewed dozens (maybe hundreds) of games, it’s harder to find ones that leave a mark like that — ones that genuinely leave you wanting to play and see more.

What I admire most about Stranger Than Heaven is that it knows what it wants to be and fully commits to that idea to create its own unique vibe.

Music is the throughline. On one side, it's the way the protagonist, Makoto Daito, finds his place in a hostile world, as a way for him to break down barriers and overcome prejudice he faces as a Japanese-American immigrant.

There is a level of detail and adoration in the musical performances I saw in-game that made it easy to get swept up in the atmosphere — whether it was a professional big band showstopper full of belting brass, or an impromptu sing-a-long that draws in a large crowd on the streets of Kokura.

Play it, Daito

Music is also a fundamental part of several other aspects of the game. Mainly, it’s a key part of the main management mini-game in Stranger Than Heaven. Instead of running a hostess club or a confectionery shop as we've seen in Yakuza and Like a Dragon, Daito works as a promoter in the showbiz business. That involves creating tunes, hiring talent, scoping out venues, drawing in punters, and making sure performances run smoothly.

I dabbled with putting on a show or two, and can see how it has the potential to be another all-consuming distraction that RGG is known for, diverting you away from the main story for many hours. There’s a satisfaction to tinkering with all aspects of the performance to rake in the most cash, ensuring you’ve got the best singers and musicians performing the right sort of music in the right venue to suit the audience’s mood.

What also keeps that music throughline in other areas of the game is the way you draw inspiration for your next tracks and shows from the world around you. Those sparks also come from the combat, with small flashes or cues as kicks and punches fly that you can focus in on to unlock new sounds, instruments, or playing styles.

It’s a nice way to tie the game together, although I’m very aware that combat was a point of contention for some in earlier previews. I definitely struggled to grasp it fully in the beginning, but I was starting to get into the flow of it by the time I was wrapping up my time with the game. It has its own rhythm, swapping out flashy attacks and arcade-style simplicity from prior Yakuza games for more grounded and messy fistfights.

Mastering the art

It does require a bit of controller contortion to execute fully, with actions for your left and right hands and legs split across the left and right bumpers and triggers. Throw in directional blocking, perfect parries with spot-on timing, and the need to dodge some attacks, and it’s a lot to hold in your head and execute with ease.

Weapons add another dynamic, ranging from swords, knives, and batons to more improvised weaponry such as crowbars and a giant wooden mallet. These can be found or bought and switched between mid-combat to give you a bit more fighting power against multiple foes or tougher enemies.

Oh, and there’s ‘willpower’ too: a resource that you and opponents have that can be whittled down with repeated attacks, eventually causing you or them to fall to the floor when it’s emptied. You can then punish them with more severe finishers or find yourself fending off an assault while prone so you can get back on your feet.

It is a lot. And with pretty much all of these elements introduced from the first fight, I was getting beat up fairly regularly for a while. As I say, though, I eventually grew to like it with more practice, and I found myself taking down a few of the tougher enemies that are hiding around the game’s different locations in some extended but rewarding duels.

Those fights are just one of the many distractions that are dotted around the game’s towns, which include all sorts of games to play, items to find, and arenas to fight in. Even just exploring the spaces was fascinating, especially wandering through the entertainment capital of Sotenbori. It hits you with an overwhelming cacophony and a barrage of lights that RGG fans will be eager to experience in this different time period.

I think that’s what I appreciated most about Stranger Than Heaven: it does exist within that same universe of the existing RGG games, but is its own adventure in a new and confident direction.

Yes, it’s building off the Yakuza and Like A Dragon elements that are clearly in its DNA — in terms of the mix of brawling and business management, as well as its approach to story and presentation. But it feels like its own evolution. Or, to speak in the game’s terms, it’s several familiar melodies and motifs that have been remixed into a surprising new composition.

Stranger Than Heaven launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC on January 25, 2027.

Anomalith might be one of the most interesting releases of 2026. A third-person survival shooter set in a twisted, retro vision of Japan, it’s a major departure from publisher FuRyu Corporation’s usual role-playing game (RPG) output.

It looks almost like the company’s take on Resident Evil, with 17-year-old protagonist Reona Minazuki venturing into deadly anomaly zones filled with grotesque creatures at the behest of a shadowy government organization.

Real-time gun combat, managing your small inventory, and keeping track of precious ammunition form a key part of every mission. Each run unfolds in an almost extraction-shooter-like format, and between missions you can use the resources you’ve scavenged to upgrade your gear.

There’s more to Minazuki than meets the eye, though, with the hero able to harness a mysterious set of mutant powers brought on by exposure to these supernatural environments. I spoke to producer Gai Kidokoro over email to learn a little more about how this project took shape and discover some of what’s in store for players.

Expanded arsenal

Anomalith is Kidokoro’s first original project, having joined FuRyu in the company’s anime division, which has helped produce hit titles like Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, before making the leap to its gaming business to direct some licensed titles. Working on games has “always been an area I was interested in,” he says, adding that his career has been “a little different from that of FuRyu’s other producers.”

It therefore seems only fitting that he is producing quite a unique project, with Anomalith standing apart as FuRyu’s first third-person shooter. Interestingly, Kidokoro says that the genre was chosen because both he and the director “love third-person shooters and guns” and set out to create something based on the things they enjoy.

“Rather than thinking, 'Let’s deliberately challenge ourselves with a completely different genre,' it was really more about wanting to make a game in a genre that we personally love,” he continues.

This fascination with firearms seems evident in the game’s weapon customization system, which lets players “swap out a fairly detailed range of parts,” including a variety of attachments such as “sights, grips, stocks, and more.” These help you personalize the appearance of each gun, but also provide statistical bonuses to help in the field.

The producer is also keen to highlight the player’s ability to scavenge “pieces of equipment called Artifacts that enhance your character’s stats” and change your overall build.

“These include loot-based, hack-and-slash-style elements,” he teases, “and if you manage to equip an Artifact with extremely high values, some skills have the potential to become incredibly powerful.”

The team is well aware that not everyone is going to be interested in tweaking their guns or experimenting with the nitty-gritty of their character’s stats, which is why the game offers a wealth of cosmetic options for players to outfit themselves with – some already available to try in the recent free Steam demo.

“We realized that there are quite a lot of people who don’t necessarily get the same enjoyment we do from firing their favorite, carefully customized gun,” Kidokoro begins. “We thought, 'Maybe adding character outfits and customization would make it more fun for those players,' and that’s why we ended up including such detailed character customization options. Judging from the response to the demo, I’m really glad we added the outfit customization.”

Uncanny valley

The world design is shaping up to be a treat, with plenty of intricate detail to pore over. In fact, Kidokoro highlights this as one part of the experience that he is most excited about. “The development team has put a tremendous amount of effort into designing the Otherworlds,” he explains. “There are many areas where something may initially look like nothing more than an ordinary ceiling, but if you stop and look up, you might find something that gives you a real sense of unease.”

He describes the fundamental concept behind it all as the “anxiety and fear lurking within familiar scenery” and reveals that it was inspired by popular ideas of “liminal spaces, including things like the Backrooms,” referring to the viral meme featuring endless wallpapered corridors that recently inspired a horror film adaptation.

“Within the development team, we often use phrases like ‘give it a liminal-space atmosphere’ when discussing the visual direction.”

This extends to the soundtrack. Aside from the game’s title theme, the music of Anomalith doesn’t feature any vocal tracks. Nevertheless, the producer argues fans “can definitely look forward to the soundtrack” and warns “many of the tracks are quite dark and unsettling.” He jokes: “I recommend listening to them during the daytime.”

Although Anomalith seems very different, long-time FuRyu fans will recognize some common elements shared with the publisher’s past games, such as the focus on a teenage protagonist. Kidokoro thinks the reasons behind this particular motif “would vary” depending on the title, but personally reckons “that it is easier for audiences to emotionally root for younger characters.”

“Watching boys and girls confront unreasonable circumstances and ultimately overcome them can also feel more hopeful and moving than a story centered on adults,” he continues. “Of course, we have been influenced by other games. However, we try to keep those influences as references rather than simply copying them. Our main criterion is always whether a particular element is necessary for players to enjoy the world and experience of Anomalith.”

We will be able to find out whether this formula pays off when Anomalith launches for Nintendo Switch 2, PC, and PlayStation 5 on October 29, 2026.

• Bloomberg's Jason Schreier says Rockstar Games went on trips to Miami for research for Grand Theft Auto 6
• Rockstar went on "police ride-alongs" and "wound up hovering over a Beyoncé concert" in a helicopter
• The developers also met people who revealed their past crimes when they learned the team worked on GTA

Rockstar Games did extensive research on Miami for Grand Theft Auto 6 and even encountered people who shared about past crimes when they learned the developers worked on GTA.

Speaking in a new YouTube video about his time at Rockstar North and his behind-the-scenes experience seeing GTA 6 before the general public, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier said he was told about the many trips Rockstar developers, including artists and leadership, made to Miami.

Since Miami and Los Angeles inspired GTA 6's Vice City, the team chose to do in-person research. They went on group trips and "went all over the place" for inspiration, even doing "police ride-alongs" and visiting "some scary places."

"At one point, some of the artists were in a helicopter taking photos of aerial views of the city, and they wound up hovering over a Beyoncé concert," Schreier said.

Speaking more about the ride-alongs, Rockstar also met tons of "really colorful characters" in Miami who shared their own life experiences with the developers.

Senior vice president of technology Jonathan Ashcroft revealed to Schreier that he spent his 40th birthday at a nightclub during one of these trips and said it was funny because he and some other developers were "these light-skinned Scottish people just like looking totally out of place wandering around this club" and "scrutinizing the lighting instead while everyone else around them is partying."

Returning to these "colorful characters" Rockstar met, Ashcroft said that they would divulge information about past crimes when they learned the team worked on GTA.

"As soon as they know where you're from, they just want to tell you every crime they or their friends have ever done," Ashcroft said.

In the same video, Schreier revealed that Rockstar Games reportedly spent years developing a new weapon interface for the game, but eventually stuck with the classic weapon wheel the series is known for.

• Lucasfilm Games vice president Douglas Reilly suggests more Star Wars games could be made following the success of Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Star Wars: Zero Company
• Reilly says that while "huge triple-A games like Battlefront are always going to be an essential part of the strategy," the "goal" is to find "the best partner"
• This goes for both triple-A and smaller independent studios

It sounds like Lucasfilm Games wants to release more Star Wars games following the success of Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Star Wars: Zero Company, but it's not necessarily looking for triple-A studio pitches.

That's according to Lucasfilm Games vice president Douglas Reilly, who told The Game Business that games developed by independent studios "very much is part of the strategy."

"Obviously, huge triple-A games like Battlefront are always going to be an essential part of the strategy," Reilly added. "But one of the great things about Star Wars is it has all kinds of other opportunities to tell stories in different genres.

Reilly said, "The goal has been to find the best partner who makes that experience come alive inside the galaxy far, far away," and it doesn't necessarily "have to always be triple-A."

"Sometimes it can be double-A, and it’s really about the experience that we’re delivering and the fantasy we’re fulfilling," he said, adding that Lucasfilm Games has "tried to be more flexible about who we’re willing to take pitches from."

Saber Interactive is quietly working on its Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake, which it confirmed is still in development, while a new game from Arcnaut Studios and Mass Effect trilogy director Casey Hudson, Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, is now in the works.

In addition, a new report has now claimed that Destiny developer Bungie and DICE are "aggressively" pursuing a Star Wars: Battlefront 3 project, but official confirmation has yet to come in.

"Good ideas can come from a lot of different places," Reilly continued. "You don’t have to necessarily be a top five publisher to make a great Star Wars game. There are some hurdles.

"We have a high-quality bar, and that means typically we work with more experienced teams than ones with no track record. But we’re exploring all kinds of things, large and small, with partners that are going to surprise folks."

I reviewed both Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Star Wars: Zero Company, and they're among the best games of the year. Galactic Racer is the Star Wars racing game I've always wanted and an exhilarating roguelike racer with endless customization, while Zero Company acts as an excellent companion story to the Clone Wars era with immensely fun turn-based tactics gameplay.