• 007 First Light will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 on March 18, 2027
• The edition was originally scheduled to launch this year but was delayed
• IO Interactive says it will continue "refining the game's optimisation and performance" in the lead-up to the game's release

IO Interactive has finally announced that 007 First Light will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 on March 18, 2027.

The release date is much later than initially promised — IOI originally said the Switch 2 edition would arrive this year after the game's PS5, Xbox, and PC launch in May — however, it's now said that the delay allowed the team extra time to address performance issues and that it will continue to improve optimisation in the following months.

"Since announcing additional development time to ensure the quality of experience players expect, IO Interactive has brought hands-on builds of 007 First Light to both Gamescom and Tokyo Game Show, where players and press had their first opportunity to experience Bond's world running on Nintendo's hardware," IOI said in a statement.

"Player response from both events has been positive, reflecting the progress being made across the game as development continues toward launch."

The studio added that "the development team will use the coming months to continue refining the game's optimisation and performance on Nintendo Switch 2, ensuring it meets the standard players expect at launch."

On top of a Switch 2 release date and a new gameplay trailer running on the hardware, the 007 First Light – Deluxe Edition is now available for pre-order for $69.99 / £69.99.

The Deluxe Edition offers the Gleaming Lighter, Gleaming Earphones, Gleaming Dart Gun, and Gleaming Pen gadgets, plus four additional outfits, including the Day of the Dead, the Desert Explorer, the Silent Anchor, and the Gentleman Operator.

In addition, the 007 First Light - Special Edition on Switch 2 is also available exclusively at Amazon, giving players access to the Classic Tuxedo.

Anyone who pre-orders the game on Switch 2 will also receive early access to the GoldenEye Suit at launch.

IOI released 007 First Light's first major free downloadable content (DLC) earlier this month, which included New Game Plus, Photo Mode, and a brand-new "00" difficulty level, among other activities.

• Rockstar Games co-head of development Aaron Garbut says Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks from 2022 were an "invasive" moment
• The leaks caused a huge shift at Rockstar that forced a five-day in-office work policy for security reasons
• Rockstar’s head of publishing, Jennifer Kolbe, says Rockstar plans to reexamine the policy after GTA 6 launches

Rockstar Games has addressed the initial Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks from 2022, calling it an "invasive" moment that resulted in a huge policy shift at the studio.

In a lengthy interview with Bloomberg, where Rockstar leadership discussed GTA 6's long development period, co-head of development Aaron Garbut touched on the huge leaks from 2022 that changed how the studio works today.

In September of that year, someone hacked the company's Slack channel and leaked dozens of raw, unfinished gameplay footage before Rockstar was ready to unveil anything. Rockstar released a statement about the leaks, and despite copyright takedowns, the footage quickly spread like wildfire, and though law enforcement later tracked the alleged hacker down, it was too late.

"It feels like somebody’s wading through your dirty washing," Garbut said. "It’s like they’re inside your head. You see your early work out there. Nobody’s ever supposed to see that. It’s really weirdly invasive. And so it’s quite hard to deal with on an emotional level."

As a result, Rockstar introduced a controversial policy in 2024 requiring every developer to work in-office five days a week for security reasons; developers were also banned from accessing Rockstar’s servers and tools outside the office, which forced them to take vacation days if they needed to stay home for childcare or emergencies.

The policy set back the cultural progress the studio made after Red Dead Redemption 2's release, a game made under extensive periods of "crunch." With GTA 6, Rockstar knew it couldn't repeat those mistakes; however, the new policy following the leaks meant no more hybrid working.

Rockstar’s head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe told Bloomberg, however, that the studio plans to reexamine the policy after GTA 6 launches, though she doubts it will be able to switch to the more common three-days-in, two-days-out hybrid work model.

"The idea that we would have the game in that many environments is something that I think the security team would not love," Kolbe said. “I think if we did not have a game that people wanted to steal as much, maybe it would be an easier conversation."

Unfortunately, more leaks have since occurred, notably ahead of Rockstar's GTA 6 extended look, and persist to this day, with a prevalent leaker known as 'Cyberleek' threatening to release more in the lead-up to the game's launch on November 19.

In case you missed it, Rockstar has released the cinematic GTA 6 launch trailer, which offers a deeper look into the game's story.

• Rockstar Games has released the launch trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6
• The trailer features Jason and Lucia and sets up the game's story
• We see new cinematic footage and gameplay systems in action

Rockstar Games has released the launch trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, showcasing new story details and a deeper look at crime-duo protagonists, Jason and Lucia.

The trailer, which was captured "entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5," begins with some narration from Jason talking about his time in the army, before we see him receiving a call from Lucia in prison, suggesting the prologue will be from his perspective before we're introduced to his counterpart.

A montage of different scenes plays out, including missions with both characters, the pair getting hot and heavy in a shower, dancing in a club, fighting off bad guys and the police, as well as jumping off a building into a swimming pool.

Interestingly, we see Lucia wearing an ankle monitor, meaning she hasn't completely escaped the law just yet and some of what we're seeing is from the beginning of the story.

We also see Jason wearing tactical gear wading through water with two other men behind him, almost like he's leading an army mission; could this be a flashback to his army days?

The entire trailer looks incredibly cinematic, with footage showing a helicopter crashing into the side of a building, Lucia climbing the wheels of an airplane Mission Impossible-style, and Jason sneaking onto a huge ship; several other gameplay systems can also be seen in action, including bank robberies and seemingly quick-time events.

We also have a brand-new story synopsis provided in the description, which you can read below.

"Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them," it reads. "But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida — forced to rely on each other more than ever if they want to make it out alive."

The trailer also features a new track, 'Flower in a Hurricane,' from electronic duo Justice, the composers behind the original score of Grand Theft Auto 6, feat. Tame Impala, SZA, and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, who are also included on the Grand Theft Auto 6: The Album.

GTA 6 launches in just over a month on November 19 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S. A new report claims the PC version could launch in early 2027.

• The Xbox Nano Controller has been announced and launches on November 4
• Pre-orders are open now for the rechargeable, compact controller at $49.99 / £44.99
• Microsoft says it's designed as a pocketable and approachable controller for the whole family

Microsoft has announced the Xbox Nano Controller, an affordable, rechargeable compact gamepad launching on November 4.

Available for pre-order now at $49.99 / £44.99, the Xbox Nano Controller is Microsoft's "smallest controller," at just over 5 inches, weighing 3.5 ounces, and "lighter and shorter than most modern smartphones."

Designed as a pocketable, approachable controller for the whole family, all 18 standard Xbox gameplay inputs are featured, for games like Minecraft Dungeons 2, Grounded, Forza Horizon 6, and more.

"Designed to fit nearly every pocket and budget," Microsoft said, "Its compact design offers a great option for younger players, smaller hands, or anyone seeking something portable for play on the go."

The Nano Controller also includes a rechargeable battery and a programmable Action Button that players can customize for features like screenshots, gameplay capture, and other shortcuts, as well as Xbox Wireless and Bluetooth support, allowing a connection across a range of compatible devices.

In addition, Microsoft has teamed up with Samsung to introduce a special Xbox Nano Controller and a 2-month Game Pass Ultimate offer for new members in the US who purchase select Samsung TVs this holiday season.

It's also working with Meta on a separate holiday offer in the US that includes an Xbox Nano Controller and a 2-month Game Pass Ultimate subscription for new members with the purchase of a Meta Quest.

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko says he likes to "go to extremes to add depth to everything" in his work
• He says each Resonant has "their own features in the concept track" that can be picked apart
• Alanko says, "Nothing is obvious and nothing is rubbed into your face, and in the end it’s all only music made with love and enthusiasm"

Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko has revealed that his music features easter eggs that may take fans years to uncover, as he likes to "go to extremes to add depth to everything."

Speaking to TechRadar Gaming about his favorite aspects of the Control series and its music, Alanko said there are "layers" to each soundtrack, and some of them are only revealed "when you dive deep into my project file timelines and start digging out the details of sounds."

"One trick I’ve used about a million times with various tools is to add some string section’s 'resin' sound to something else, turning it into a resemblance of a stringed instrument," Alanko said. "Some of the tricks will probably never surface and are more or less subliminal, some of them slightly more at the forefront, but as I mentioned, I love to hide all kinds of nods and winks everywhere, pay homage to the greats."

He continued, sharing that if any hardware synth is involved in his work (which he explained is a big part of his musical arsenal), it was " reamped through a speaker setup and a pair of microphones," which was a trick he learned from the articles concerning the late Konradi "Conny" Plank, the sound engineer and producer of Kraftwerk and Ultravox.

"I learned my chops back in the day meticulously inspecting and evaluating Die Mensch-Maschine, Computerwelt, Vienna and Rage In Eden," Alanko said, adding that he "learned a good deal of studio tricks during my early adulthood" when he worked as a synth programmer and a producer for various productions, and all of that experience has "proven to be rather handy during the creation of the Control Resonant soundtrack."

Alanko went on to share some neat details about the creation of the game's enemies, the Resonant, and said each has "their own features in the concept track," with Hedron, for instance, having "clangorous, metallic, sequenced, patterned, constantly moving" sounds.

"Hiss wants to corrupt everything and especially with that entity, the pitches start going all over the place," he said. "And Mold is a triumphant spectacle of all kinds of dispersers, turning everything into some sonic goo."

Alanko said his passion allowed him to add as much detail as he wanted, which also meant leaving in small hints that listeners likely won't find until years later.

"I have, and I will go to extremes to add depth to everything," Alanko said, "and the most beautiful thing is when people realise something after, say, seven-eight years, and I get an email from someone who just realised the rhythm of a certain sound was actually Morse code for 'BEWARE'.

"Nothing is obvious and nothing is rubbed into your face, and in the end it’s all only music made with love and enthusiasm."

Alanko has discussed the early stages of Control Resonant's development, revealing that he was brought on to the project "very early" and was still working on Alan Wake 2. He explained that this proved to be a better outcome and suggested that other studios should value music more if they care about their games and avoid AI.

Funselecktor Labs Inc. is known for its minimalist yet vibrant takes on various forms of motorsport, starting with Absolute Drift in 2015, followed by Art of Rally in 2020 and Golden Lap in 2024. Now, the independent studio is tackling offroading, but rather than competing against the clock or other drivers, over the hill is about exploring an open world on your lonesome (or with a friend or three) at your own pace.

Taking inspiration from the recent wave of cozy games, over the hill doesn’t have concrete aims or objectives as such. Rather, you simply pootle around the various maps to discover various points of interest and earn Pebbles, the game’s currency, to upgrade your vehicle to better navigate the environment.

Off the beaten path

over the hill sticks to the same cardboard-cutout aesthetic of the developer’s past efforts. Textures are flat and basic, but they’re elevated by the pastel colors and lush lighting effects, with environments drenched in pinks, oranges, and greens that invite players to explore them.

There are two main regions to choose from at the start of a game: Canada and Algeria. Each has its own sub-areas (three for Canada and two for Algeria), featuring all kinds of terrain and climates; you’ll see rain, snow, and sandstorms, which naturally affect your driving and navigation abilities, adding an extra element of challenge.

The music complements the visuals perfectly. The in-game radio gives you four ‘albums’ to choose from, each representing a certain flavor of ambient, from synth-heavy pieces to folksy guitar numbers, all with gentle melodies to lull you as you play. I was impressed with the score’s production value, given that it merely serves to subtly set the mood as you play.

This is a game low on story and characters, but high in vibes — specifically of the zen variety. Aside from the Buddha statue that acts as your tutorial guide, the only other character is Crazy Günther, the hippie mechanic you visit to customize your vehicle. His textual dialogue (there’s no VO) adds a small amount of flavor to an otherwise purely functional NPC, and it chimes well with the gentle tone of the game.

Once you learn the basics in the brief tutorial, you’re left to explore the world. Campsites are the chief points to discover, as they act as the game's main fast travel hubs. You can also use them to fast-forward time, useful if you want to wait for a different time of day or skip certain weather events.

Other points of interest in the maps include crates that unlock cosmetic features for your vehicle, as well as scenic points from which to take photographs. You can also find Trial Challenges to complete, which take you along treacherous routes of varying lengths to test your off-roading skills, and find wildlife to snap. These discoveries and activities earn you Pebbles.

Pedal to the metal?

If you’re looking for a fast and furious off-roading experience, over the hill isn’t it. Instead, it takes a considered, sedate approach to the sport, one that rarely rewards harebrained driving and impatience. Speeds are slow at the best of times, with second gear being the highest. True to real life, vehicles have both low and high range gears, with the former being used to give you better control and traction on slippery surfaces and steep slopes. Such surfaces are indicated organically via the game’s visual style, without making it too obvious by overtly highlighting them.

Anyone who’s played MudRunner or SnowRunner will be in familiar territory with over the hill. As long as you’re in the right gear range, you don’t have to worry too much about being sensitive with the throttle; you’ll either make it up a slope or you won’t, regardless of how you modulate the throttle. Steering is fairly laborious as well, with the wheels being slow to turn and recenter on most vehicles, which only adds to the challenge of navigating around obstacles. I’ve never been offroading in real life, but this is how I’d imagine 4x4s to handle.

When the going gets too tough, you can use various bits of equipment to get you out of tight spots. First and foremost of these is the winch. A single button press will fire it at the tree you’re looking at (as long as it’s in range), and holding that same button will reel you towards it. You can also slacken the winch with another button, useful when you want to descend rather than ascend. If you want more control, you can use the winch in manual mode, which lets you choose which side of your vehicle to winch from and which tree to anchor to within a certain radius.

The winch can be used as many times as you like and is always in your inventory. Other tools, though, have to be selected before you enter a map; if you want to alter your loadout while playing, you’ll need to visit the mechanic. They’re also single-use items, although you select multiple instances of them, and they replenish whenever you visit a campsite. Among them are a portable anchor, which you can winch onto when there are no trees around, and two wooden planks to lay across small gaps or on the ground to give you more traction. These are a little fiddlier to use, as it can be a chore to line them up with your wheels, and misaligning them even slightly can easily result in your vehicle slipping off them. Still, they’re very useful and rewarding when you find yourself stuck. Other tools include a portable camp, a repair kit, and a car jack for righting your vehicle if you roll it over, which is easily done.

There’s a respectable number of customization and upgrade options for your vehicles. There are a variety of vehicle bodies to choose from, ranging from classic 4x4s and wagons to more utilitarian and industrial models — and yes, there’s even a campervan. The differences between them are more than cosmetic, as they each have their own speed and handling characteristics, despite the game not actually listing these stats. The selection is resolutely vintage, with no model looking beyond the 90s at best. Most are inspired by iconic real-life vehicles, too, as suggested by their menu descriptions.

You can personalize your vehicle with a large number of trinkets, unlocked via the crates you find throughout the world. Sadly, however, the paint options are more limited. As for upgrades, you can improve attributes such as speed, grip, protection, and tool capacity — all of which you’ll need to do if you want to explore every area completely. Again, though, the upgrades are limited in their stages, and you’ll find yourself maxing out your vehicle’s potential quite quickly.

Riding shotgun

While over the hill offers a good time solo, it’s more fun with friends. Having companions by your side (you can have up to four players in a server) not only takes some of the burden out of exploration, but also introduces the possibility of mischief. This is because you can winch to each other’s vehicles, which is obviously a big help when one of you is stuck in the weeds, but also allows you to pull each other off cliffs and into rivers. However, in order not to put the winch-ee at too much of a disadvantage, they can de-winch themselves at any point.

You can also explore independently if you so wish, and fast travel for one doesn’t mean fast travel for all, which gives everyone greater flexibility to explore. The whole experience ran smoothly during my testing; I didn’t encounter any problems with connectivity or lag, save for one occasion when my friend’s framerate dropped considerably, but Funselektor said this is a known issue with the preview build I played, so it’s entirely possible it’ll be rectified before launch. For most of my time in both single- and multiplayer, the game ran very smoothly, even at Ultra settings. The only real bug I experienced concerned some input clashes when I remapped certain buttons, but this was easy to work around.

Perhaps my main gripe with over the hill is that there’s just not that much to do. And while the central act of driving over rough terrain is fun thanks to the skill and problem-solving nous it requires, the mechanics lack real depth to sustain the game for long periods in the face of little additional activity. There’s not quite enough feel and feedback from slipping and sliding on loose ground to make it as engaging as it could be, and the lack of any sort of drifting mechanic — guaranteed to amplify the fun of any driving game by a factor of ten — is a real shame, especially since Funselektor has great form in this area, if its previous games are anything to go by.

I can only hope that future updates will add more to the driving and DLC will arrive to give players more to do. But for now, over the hill remains a fun time to while away an hour or so, but not much more than that.

Should you play over the hill?

Play over the hill if…

Don't play it if…

Accessibility features

There are no accessibility features to speak of in over the hill. Subtitles for dialogue are on by default, since there’s no VO, and the closest the game comes to offering any comfort features is letting you disable motion blur.

How I reviewed over the hill

I played over the hill for about 10 hours, seeing most of the main areas and features the game had to offer. I was also given a save file by Funselektor with all areas, upgrades, and customizations unlocked.

I mainly played solo, but I also tested online multiplayer by playing with a friend. I played on a gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, an RTX 5070 GPU, and 32GB of RAM. I played mostly with a controller, but I also tested its mouse and keyboard controls.

I’m a fan of racing and driving games, and I’ve played similar off-roading games, such as SnowRunner. I also played a lot of Art of Rally, one of Funselektor’s other titles.

First reviewed October 2026

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko shares what game he would like to work on next
• He says he would "love to do a proper sci-fi score one day" and enjoys "emotional psycho-thrillers a lot"
• Alanko says he would pass on any "cute cartoon-like games" like My Little Pony

Petri Alanko, the composer for Remedy Entertainment's Control, Control Resonant, and Alan Wake 2, has revealed which genre of game he would love to work on next, but insisted that "cute games" are a hard pass.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Alanko said that with "synth" being part of his musical arsenal, he would "love to do a proper sci-fi score one day," and shared his enthusiasm for thrillers.

"Just gimme a project and free hands, thank you," Alanko said. "I enjoy emotional psycho-thrillers a lot; they offer so much writing ground, but combining that with some other, say, sci-fi flavours, now that would be something I’d love."

As for what he's working on right now, the composer said he's moved on to another game soundtrack, which he couldn't reveal, and also the movie Häyhä, which is about a WW2 Finnish sharpshooter, Simo Häyhä (aka The White Death).

He explained that "scoring movies is relatively easy, really," as "you have the linear media unchanged in front of you," and compared to the average game, " you need only a handful of music for it."

"I certainly don’t want to look down on any film composer," Alanko added. "I know several of them, and they are very dear to me, but in some ways, I feel like that posse has it pretty easy in their line of work."

Alanko went on to share which genre of game he would absolutely avoid if offered the chance to compose music for, including cozy games, because they don't align with his personal tastes.

"One thing is sure: I’m not much good for a My Little Pony game," he said. "Or cute cartoon-like games. Or rally games. Nothing against them, but I don’t have that in me. I’m from a Northern faraway country, and I live with a forest behind my house, and Nordic Noir is more or less a code of conduct in my whereabouts (laughs), so that pretty much stamps my life with [a] 'psycho-thrillers ahoy' badge."

Elsewhere, Alanko suggested studios should value music more if they care about their games and avoid AI at all costs, saying, "Love your game, love your handiwork. Respect the client: the gamers, the fans, dammit."

• The PC version of Grand Theft Auto 6 will reportedly launch in early 2027, a few months after the console versions
• Some fans believe a 2028 release was possible, but Rockstar Games has moved the PC release up
• Fans speculate that Rockstar wants to get ahead of a potential PS5 emulator

A new report has claimed the PC version of Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch in early 2027, and fans believe Rockstar Games wants to get ahead of a potential emulator.

The news comes from GamesBeat, which reports that Rockstar plans to release the PC version of GTA 6 "in the first quarter of 2027," and that's according to "four industry sources familiar with the studio’s plans, all of whom requested anonymity to avoid damaging business relationships."

It's worth taking this report with a grain of salt, as Rockstar has yet to announce any PC edition; However, this is GTA 6 we're talking about, and fans are already theorizing over potential reasons a PC release could arrive mere months after the PS5 and Xbox versions, despite the PC version of GTA 5 arriving roughly two years after the console editions.

Many have speculated that Rockstar moved the PC release date up to anticipate a possible PS5 emulator, which would allow PC owners access to a "PC build" of GTA 6 without having to wait and pay for the official version. This would also allow users to avoid the "double dipping" scheme that many believe Rockstar is going for.

One redditor suggested Rockstar is "Not waiting a year with the PS5 emulator breathing down their necks." Some other fan wrote something similar, saying, "GTA 6 will probably be emulator ready a month after launch. It’s almost guaranteed at this point."

Some have also pointed out the more recent leaks from 'Cyberleek' (via GamesRadar) and suggest the studio wants to get ahead of the hacker.

"I actually believe this because of the leaks and emulator thing, they probably want the game out asap," a fan said on Reddit, as another wrote, "Im leaning heavily towards an original 2028 PC launch, but some exec has seen the speed that recomps are coming out and realised if they dont release it quick, everyone will be playing it for free."

Other fans think Rockstar hasn't announced the PC release date yet in order to maximise console edition sales; we've recently seen retailers hit with huge price hikes on the PS5 and PS5 Pro in anticipation of the game's launch.

"Not the first rumour we've heard like this," one fan said. "I find it believable - I strongly suspect the PC version is already pretty much done and the 'delay' is artificial from Rockstar to maximise the console release."

We'll have to wait for an official announcement from Rockstar, but in the meantime, PS5 and Xbox users don't have much longer to wait because GTA 6 launches next month on November 19.

In other news, new details have emerged ahead of the GTA 6's launch, which details even more gameplay features and immersive systems.

Metro 2039 pre-orders, including that brilliant-looking Collector's Edition, are out in the wild right now!

The big news right away is that some UK retailers are live already! I expected action to commence at 4pm UK time, but Smyths Toys, The Game Collection, Game UK went live ahead of that time and a few on both sides of the |Atlantic have followed after that time to fill out the options for players.

We now know that there are three editions: the excellent Collector's Edition with a wearable Spartan helmet; a Deluxe Edition with a steelbook and art book; and a Standard Edition. If you pre-order any copy, you get a few in-game goodies as well as what each edition brings to the table. I've got more info on the specifics below.

Now we have one more reason to look forward to our next grim adventure in the Moscow metro tunnels; below you'll find all the best links for the Collector's Edition, Deluxe Edition, and Standard Edition that I could find at the time of writing this.

Where to buy the Metro 2039 Collector's Edition - US

• Walmart:
  🔆Check for PS5 stock🔆
  🔆Check for Xbox Series X stock🔆
• Best Buy:
  🏷️Check for PS5 stock🏷️
  🏷️Check for Xbox Series X stock🏷️
• Target:
  🎯Check for PS5 stock🎯
  🎯Check for Xbox Series X stock🎯
• GameStop:
  🎮PS5 - $299.99🎮(out of stock)

Where to buy the Metro 2039 Collector's Edition - UK

• Very:
  𝓥 PS5 - £259.99𝓥
• 𝓥 Xbox Series X - £259.99 𝓥
• Smyths Toys:
  🧸PS5 - £279.99🧸(out of stock)
  🧸Xbox Series X - £279.99🧸(out of stock)
• The Game Collection:
  🎮PS5 - £259.95🎮(out of stock)
  🎮Xbox Series X - £259.95🎮(out of stock)
  🎮PC - £259.95🎮(out of stock)
• Game:
  🕹️PS5 - £259.99🕹️(out of stock)
  🕹️Xbox Series X - £259.99🕹️(out of stock)
• EE:
  📱Check for PS5 stock📱
  📱Check for Xbox Series X stock📱
• Currys:
  ©️Check for PS5 stock©️
  ©️Check for Xbox Series X stock©️
• Argos:
  🟥Check for PS5 stock🟥
  🟥Check for Xbox Series X|S stock🟥
• ShopTo:
  🟡Check for PS5 stock🟡
  🟡Check for Xbox Series X stock🟡
• John Lewis:
  🛍️Check for PS5 stock🛍️
  🛍️Check for Xbox Series X stock🛍️
• Hit:
  💥Check for PS5 stock💥
  💥Check for Xbox Series X stock💥

Where to buy Deluxe and Standard Editions - US

• Best Buy:
  🏷️PS5 Standard Edition - $69.99🏷️
  🏷️PS5 Deluxe Edition - $109.99🏷️
  🏷️Xbox Series X Deluxe Edition - $109.99🏷️
  🏷️Xbox Series X Standard Edition - $69.99🏷️
• Amazon:
  📦PS5 Deluxe Edition - $109.99📦
  📦PS5 Standard Edition - $69.99📦
  📦Xbox Series X Deluxe Edition - $109.99📦
  📦Xbox Series X Standard Edition - $69.99📦
• GameStop:
  🎮PS5 Deluxe Edition - $109.99🎮
  🎮PS5 Standard Edition - $69.99🎮
  🎮Xbox Series X Deluxe Edition - $109.99🎮
  🎮Xbox Series X Standard Edition - $69.99🎮
• Walmart:
  🔆Check for PS5 stock🔆
  🔆Check for Xbox Series X stock🔆
• Target:
  🎯Check for PS5 stock🎯
  🎯Check for Xbox Series X stock🎯
• PlayStation Store:
  🅿️PS5 Digital Deluxe Edition - $99.99🅿️
  🅿️PS5 Standard Edition - $69.99🅿️
• Xbox Store:
  ❎Xbox Series X|S Digital Deluxe Edition - $99.99❎
  ❎Xbox Series X|S Standard Edition - $69.99❎

Where to buy Deluxe and Standard Editions - UK

• Amazon:
  📦PS5 Deluxe Edition - £94.99📦
  📦PS5 Standard Edition - £59.99📦
  📦Xbox Series X Deluxe Edition - £94.99📦
  📦Xbox Series X Standard Edition - £59.99📦
  📦PC Standard Edition - £59.99📦
• Smyths Toys:
  🧸PS5 Deluxe Edition - £89.99🧸
  🧸PS5 Standard Edition - £59.99🧸
  🧸Xbox Series X Deluxe Edition - £89.99🧸
  🧸Xbox Series X Standard Edition - £59.99🧸
• The Game Collection:
  🎮PS5 Deluxe Edition - £94.95🎮
  🎮PS5 Standard Edition - £54.95🎮
  🎮Xbox Series X Deluxe Edition - £94.95🎮
  🎮Xbox Series X Standard Edition - £54.95🎮
• Very:
  𝓥 PS5 Deluxe Edition - £94.99 𝓥
  𝓥 PS5 Standard Edition - £59.99 𝓥
  𝓥 Xbox Series X Deluxe Edition - £94.99 𝓥
  𝓥 Xbox Series X Standard Edition - £59.99 𝓥
• Game:
  🕹️PS5 Deluxe Edition - £94.99🕹️
  🕹️PS5 Standard Edition - £54.99🕹️
  🕹️Xbox Series X Deluxe Edition - £94.99🕹️
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Should I pre-order Metro 2039?

We can safely (probably) approach this question for Metro 2039 in terms of the editions that will be available.

In short, if you're interested in the Collector's Edition for Metro 2039 with that super cool wearable helmet, then my advice is to absolutely pre-order. We already know that there'll be a limited number of these, so waiting around until launch to hopefully snag one is a fool's game. If you're a big fan and willing and able to place a Collector's Edition pre-order, then my advice is to definitely do that.

If you're interested in the other editions only, then the pressure probably isn't so high. Certainly not with the standard edition in terms of stock anyway; you'll be able to find this at launch naturally, but the pre-order bonuses might make it tempting.

Now, if you're keen on the Deluxe Edition that sits 'in between' the standard one and the Collector's, then I'd lean more toward placing a pre-order over not if you're interested. We often see these middle editions being super popular due to the fact that the Collector's might be too pricey for most (or sell out), but fans want something a bit more special than the standard edition, especially if they are big followers of the series.

As a result, it's slightly nuanced but, in brief: the bigger the edition, the more need for a pre-order, I reckon.

Metro 2039 pre-orders — what's in each edition?

Thanks to Smyths Toys in the UK going earlier than I expected, we now know what's in each edition of Metro 2039. First, if you pre-order any copy of the game, you get:

• The Metro 2039 Specialist Pack that includes three blueprints - three unique, swappable backpack upgrades: an Equipment Specialist Pouch, Chemtech Specialist Pouch, and Munitions Specialist Pouch

If you want to go for the Collector's Edition, you'll get:

• A copy of the game
• A wearable replica Spartan helmet
• An exclusive steelbook
• A hardback art book
• Story expansion DLC
• A digital copy of the art book
• A digital copy of the soundtrack

But if you'd rather go for the Deluxe Edition, you'll bag the following:

• A copy of the game
• An exclusive steelbook
• A hardback art book
• Story expansion DLC
• A digital copy of the art book
• A digital copy of the soundtrack

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko tells TechRadar Gaming how he approached the game's musical aesthetic
• He says "human vocals" and the "significant" relationship between Dylan and Hedron helped inform his writing
• Alanko says Dylan being an "involuntary hero" provided "a lot of writing material"

Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko has shared how the game's new setting and the relationship between protagonist Dylan and antagonist Hedron informed the soundtrack.

"Usually, it’s the scenery that hits best, and how the main character is related to the scenery, be that a connection or a disconnection," Alanko told TechRadar Gaming in an interview when asked about his design process. "It’s interesting, as there also are no rules whatsoever; again it’s a classic case of 'Hey, I think THAT would make you think this…'

"It’s basically psychological to an extent, really. Trying to play with your brain first, and later on with the player’s brain."

Alanko said "human vocals" was a term he and Remedy identified as part of the Resonant's core music aesthetic, "offering a whole dimension, practically." In addition, the "significant" relationship between Dylan and Hedron, a powerful Resonant entity, was another angle that "drove this first phase onwards."

"The path of the main character [Dylan] and the main antagonist’s [Hedron] relationship with him, it’s indeed a very conflicted pairing," he said. "Dysfunctional, one would say, but that provided a very human layer to the original setting.

"Dylan, being one might call 'an involuntary hero', or 'anti-hero' even, provided a lot of writing material; his path from a blank, soulless and partially mindless being into something willing to sacrifice himself just to find his sister is worth a dozen stories alone, not to mention the fact that their relationship hasn’t been exactly peaceful."

The composer went on to say that terms like "rough," "larger than life," "gut-wrenching," "human, yet inhuman," and "organic" were all on his Post-It notes at the beginning of development, concerning how he approached Dylan.

On the other hand, for Hedron, he had "strangely familiar yet frightening," "clangorous," "structured and sequenced," "mathematical and procedural" as his terms.

"And when I mention 'procedural', I mean the appearance," Alanko added. "It’s almost as if Hedron communicated with circular shapes, hence the term."

Alanko also shared his approach to the whole Remedy-verse score and musical landscape with TechRadar Gaming, saying, "There’s always the absolute evil lurking in there," at the games' core.

Slaying vampires always feels good, and 2D action-adventure and exploration game Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is no exception. The first entry in the iconic horror platformer in more than a decade, Evil Empire and Konami have crafted a love letter to past titles that, while not changing much of the formula, delivers an experience worthy of the Belmont name.

Despite a fantastic animated adaptation (and great spinoff series with Nocturne), Castlevania has been six feet under as Konami barely revisited the series. Seldom for tie-ins with Dead Cells and re-releases, so fans were ready to sink their fangs into a new title.

Fortunately, it would come from the Dead Cells team, Evil Empire. Its mastery of the craft with the Metroidvania genre made it a safe but effective pick to hand the Vampire Killer whip to. And, lo and behold, they ran with it and made something fans will love.

You must whip it, whip it good

Surprisingly, the game is a sequel of sorts to both Netflix’s Castlevania and Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse. As Rose Belmont, the daughter of Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades, she is tasked with stopping the newfound dangers flooding Paris.

With her father’s guidance and all the Belmont tactics, she’ll discover the root of it all, as well as how she and her mysteriously cursed arm fit into things.

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse does go a good distance with its narrative, but it doesn’t reach too high. It’s got some twists, turns, and great moments, though it can feel sparse. Of course, most of the fun will come from your experience dashing and slashing, but it can feel uneven with its cinematic counterparts. Still, it’s serviceable enough for you to want to keep playing and see more.

Rose Belmont, as the daughter of Trevor and Sypha, is a pretty likeable protagonist. She’s not one-note by any means and struggles with her emotions, especially with the spotlight now on her. However, it’s the supporting cast that provide her with what she needs to be a worthy Belmont.

Without spoilers, her Confidantes will be her moral compass, and it’s up to her to choose which direction she wants to go in. Props go to many of the fantastic performers in the game, as everyone works perfectly with their respective characters.

A missable little pile of secrets

Once you set foot off the docks of the Seine, you’re instantly thrust into classic Castlevania gameplay: slay monsters and maneuver through obstacles. There are small tutorials, but for the most part, Paris is an open book, and you’re free to flip through the pages almost immediately.

Action-wise, it also harkens to classic Castlevania, with Rose using a variety of weapons to kill the many creatures of the night. There are many types of weapons, from the iconic whip to flashy gauntlets. Finding new versions of them throughout the world is always a treat, as it never disappoints when you equip them and test them out. Personally, the whip was a go-to, as it rewarded distance with better damage output, though the spear was a close second.

Also, with Rose’s abilities, which she’d earn after certain bosses, it unlocks various attacks, like throwable crosses or pillars of fire. It leaves customization very open, letting you play how you’d like in terms of combat.

Without going into spoilers, Rose’s journey goes beyond the confines of Paris into various regions. Each of them has some theme and gimmick that makes them memorable in both a playing sense and a backtracking sense. As this is a Castlevania game, you will find yourself going back to certain locations to find secrets and clues for other locations. Luckily, with new abilities like an air dash and, of course, a grappling hook whip, you’ll be able to do so easily and rapidly.

That said, the level design in Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is phenomenal. Traps and platforming take advantage of Rose’s abilities, including ones she earns throughout her adventure. It takes precision and good reflexes to maneuver through them, and it never gets old. It can get frustrating, though, especially if you’re going back and forth a ton. Still, finding what you need after a seemingly impossible challenge feels so good.

Slaves to our family’s wishes

As the first new 2D Castlevania in decades, there have been noticeable increases in graphical fidelity since then.

Belmont’s Curse blends 2D with 3D to bring a Dead Cells-like style to the gameplay and look. It does keep the drawn silhouettes of characters for dialogue, but in-game cutscenes are all flat 3D. While the pixelated depth in past titles like Symphony of the Night and Order of Ecclesia is sorely missed, Evil Empire’s redesign works well with the series and fits right in.

Frame-rate-wise, there were rarely any hiccups during the playthrough. There was a stutter or two during certain moments with tons of monsters, but it was pretty seldom. However, there were a handful of glitches with the audio, as it would cut in and out and, often, restart with each level transition. While rare, some glitches with the gameplay, like phased-out enemies or awkward platforming, would happen.

It’s also important to mention that it can be quite a difficult game. The series is known for being brutal, and Belmont’s Curse is no exception. A death can bring you way back and reset tons of progress. It’s a worthwhile challenge, but it is one that takes time and patience. Bosses will be the bane of many people’s existence, as some of them, especially late-game ones, are super difficult. It can feel a bit overkill, but it’s nonetheless satisfying to whittle them down and then finally get the last laugh.

In short, Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is classic Castlevania brought to the modern age. Evil Empire and Konami have crafted a title that, while it’s not the huge blockbuster many would hope for, is a well-done action platformer. It doesn’t go too far outside the box, but it makes the most of what it does have.

With fantastic level design and combat, the franchise is in a position to return to its glory days and its bloody reign over the action platformer genre.

Should you play Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

While the game touts its difficulty, there are available accessibility features to lessen it. There are also various visual adaptations for thicker outlines or colorblind mode. In addition, subtitles are available in different languages, as well as voice-overs. However, despite some accessibility, some things, like one-hit-kill traps, exist and can be frustrating.

How I reviewed Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

I played Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse for around 16 hours, seeing much of the game’s map, bosses, and secrets. I also got many of the available weapons and spells, as well as heart and mana containers. In addition, I did play the demo, which was released prior to the game’s release, and transferred the save file from that to the full title.

I played the game on a base PS5 with the DualSense Wireless Controller and HyperX Cloud 3 wired gaming headset, all on a Roku 4K TV.

First reviewed October 2026

When you read ‘video game fashion’, you likely picture faintly embarrassing Pokémon-inspired onesies, awkward PlayStation-branded rucksacks, or cringeworthy Sonic the Hedgehog T-shirts. But the world of video game and lifestyle collaborations has changed markedly over the last few years. With gaming becoming more of a major cultural force, higher-end brands have started to get involved.

You can probably already think of some examples. It wasn't long ago that cult streetwear brand ARK/8 launched a capsule inspired by the world of Elden Ring at the peak of that game’s popularity, including a coat that made headlines thanks to its eye-watering $1,700 price tag.

On the more approachable end of the cost spectrum, premium watchmaker Hamilton has been collaborating with some of the biggest names in gaming for years and has big plans for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launch in just a few weeks.

From Hollywood to high scores

“What’s fantastic about Hamilton is that the brand keeps working to its DNA and its roots,” explains Hamilton International CEO Francesca Ginocchio as we chat about the company’s gaming efforts. “I would say the American spirit of the brand, now with Swiss movement, is very strong, as is the link with cinema and entertainment, which has been so consistent starting back in 1957 with Elvis Presley.”

The King of Rock and Roll himself famously owned and frequently wore a Hamilton Ventura, the watch even appearing on his wrist in the 1961 musical film Blue Hawaii. The asymmetrical design became so synonymous with the star that the model is still dubbed the ‘Elvis watch’ today.

Hamilton continues to work closely with the glamorous world of Hollywood today, collaborating with directors including Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve to create custom pieces for titles like Tenet and Dune: Part Two.

“We have been in more than 300 movies so far, but we keep on trying to update ourselves,” Ginocchio continues. “Gaming is really a new part of the DNA of a brand linked to entertainment and movies. It’s the next step.”

Hamilton’s gaming collaborations began back in 2021, when eagle-eyed Far Cry 6 players might have spotted a custom titanium field watch on protagonist Dani Rojas’s wrist. Designed specifically for the game, Hamilton made 1983 identical real-world pieces available for dedicated fans to buy.

For a tie-in product, the design was understated: a vintage brown leather strap, military-style titanium case, and a simple watch face with beige numbering. It looked like an object that could plausibly exist in the game’s fictionalized Yara setting, which draws heavily on the aesthetic of modern-day Cuba. You would be hard-pressed to identify it as a collab unless you spot the vertical line dividing the dial’s number six in a reference to the game’s logo.

According to Ginocchio, this subtlety is by design and all in view of delivering a product that feels authentic to the fictional universe: “We have this credibility in the entertainment world, and we apply how we work with movies to the gaming industry. Basically, we try to do the best watch for the character in the movie or in the game.”

Mission ready

This approach is evident in Hamilton’s latest video game endeavor, a collaboration with the upcoming blockbuster first-person shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

Fan-favorite hero Captain Price wears a Hamilton Khaki Field watch on his wrist throughout the story campaign, with a matching model releasing alongside the game.

It’s a pairing that Ginocchio says came naturally given the brand’s heritage. “When the Call of Duty collaboration came up, a big pillar of a business and big part of our story, or DNA, is the Khaki collection,” she explains. “It was born in the US and used in World War One and World War Two. It’s very recognizable; Khaki, I would say, is almost a brand within the brand. If you have a Khaki on your wrist, everybody can tell you’re wearing a Hamilton, and Call of Duty was the perfect combination to put all that storytelling and this part of the collection in a game.”

The Hamilton x Modern Warfare 4 special edition is outfitted with a 38mm black PVD-coated stainless steel case, a rugged material in an unassuming color befitting a man trying to keep a low profile.

There is some brightness, though, in the highlighter yellow arrow of the second hand and little triangle shape at 12 o'clock – a dominant color in the upcoming game’s marketing. Otherwise, the dark green numbers are perfectly legible against the black dial and, if you look closely, you’ll spot the Korean character 사 in place of the usual Arabic number, reflecting the game’s Korea setting and mirroring its branding.

It’s paired with a durable green fabric strap for a look that the brand says is inspired by British-issued service watches. Interestingly, this model uses Hamilton’s mechanical H-50 movement, which offers an 80-hour power reserve but requires hand winding.

Ginocchio notes this as another conscious choice steeped in history, saying that "Mechanical hand winding was really important for us" as it harkens back to old service watches and "really represents Hamilton."

She goes on to explain that, although the finished watch is something entirely new, it’s important to use existing real-world models as a starting point to maintain believability. She also says every design decision was the result of close conversation with Activision and the Call of Duty team: “It’s really done in collaboration, because we don’t want to make the perfect Hamilton watch. We want to make the perfect watch for the character of the game, and that’s a different story.”

Custom packaging is also an important part of the real-world product, and the Hamilton x Modern Warfare 4 watch comes nestled inside a cigar-box-like travel case – a not-so-subtle allusion to Price’s frequently lighting up in-game.

Never slowing down

This isn’t Hamilton’s first Call of Duty collaboration: the brand released a special edition Black Ops 7 model last year (worn in-game by multiplayer operator Axel Vermaak).

Last year’s watch was noticeably tamer, however, with far fewer customized elements and little more than a branded caseback to set it apart at a glance – something that many online commenters were quick to lament.

The CEO says that the choice to make this year’s model more adventurous came as a result of such feedback: “Last year, we had some enthusiastic people, and some people who were saying, ‘Oh, but we wanted something more customized. You could have done more!’ [...] People that buy a Hamilton watch, they are passionate, and so we listen to them.

"This year we said, ‘Okay, let’s do something stronger. Something with more differentiation.’ [...] This year, as it’s the second collaboration, we feel we can push a little more and go with something more aggressive.”

Of course, for well-known brands like Hamilton, gaming collaborations are a way to reach a new audience outside of their core market. “We have our usual watch 'passionates' who have to buy everything we propose, and they will go for this because it's something totally new, totally fun,” she adds. “Then we have many, many people who are gaming passionate – but they don’t know about Hamilton, and they get to know us.”

It’s a strategy that seems to be working, with Ginocchio stating that Hamilton’s top sellers “are all watches with a movie or storytelling behind them” and teasing that there are even more collaborations to come. “We already have three new projects for 2027,” she reveals. “It’s a long-term strategy; we want to keep on going and be consistent.”

You can learn where to buy the Hamilton x Modern Warfare 4 special edition via the brand’s official website, or see it in-game when Modern Warfare 4 launches for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC on October 23, 2026.

There’s little else quite so satisfying in gaming as a really chunky parry sound effect. When you read your opponent precisely and time a deflection to perfection, hearing that impactful audio cue as a reward is about as good as it gets — especially if you can follow it up with a devastating finishing move. Valor Mortis nails this.

I never tired of hearing the reverberated twang of blades clashing in my time with the first-person ‘Souls-like’ from One More Level. And given how much time is spent duelling with the reanimated corpses of Napoleonic soldiers, body horror monstrosities, and a few unique creatures I won’t spoil, it’s really something the developers had to nail.

So, I’m pleased to say that they have, and it’s one reason why I stuck with Valor Mortis through several of its other less successful aspects.

The opening, however, is strong. You awaken on a battlefield, surrounded by corpses, the rousing voice of Vincent Cassel as Napoleon in your ear encouraging you to move forward. But this conflict has turned into something far worse than just blades and cannon fire. A plague of sorts has torn through the land, transforming humans into monsters and unlocking mystical powers for you to use in your quest to understand exactly what’s happened while you’ve slumbered.

It’s all a setup that fits the Dark Souls-inspired core of the game, with its dangerous, foreboding, war-torn world to explore. This time, lanterns serve as the safe spaces to save your progress, level up using the blood from dead enemies, tweak your build with several skill-tweaking gems, and restart from when you inevitably die.

Your power to fight back against the horrors builds slowly and doesn’t ever get massively expansive. First, a sabre. Then, a pistol. After that, well, it’s the ability to shoot fire from your hands and put enemies in stasis. You can switch between these and a handful more melee, ranged, and magical powers at will — and will often need to do so to tackle different enemy types most effectively.

Bonjour

For example, basic soldiers can be taken out with a few sword slashes. A more imposing axe-wielding officer is better handled by keeping your distance as you burn it with fire to set off the explosive keg on its back. There’s a malformed grenadier who protects its sack of explosives with an engorged hand, but when it moves to lob a grenade at you, a well-timed shot can cause a massive explosion.

As you proceed forward, each encounter requires you to assess whichever threats you’re facing and break down the best way to take them out or exploit a weakness with the tools at your disposal. Of course, you can always go wailing in with a sword, but it’s rarely the smartest move. You have limited stamina, and the aggressive enemies can obliterate you in just a few hits.

As is the trial-and-error nature of these types of games, it takes a few encounters with some new foes to get the better of them, but I wish Valor Mortis wasn’t so obsessed with the trickery of it all. Long delayed attacks that are preceded by multiple feints and five seconds of interpretive dance before a sudden blow pulverises you is kind of funny the first couple of times, but by the dozenth time I was getting irate.

The same goes for some aspects of the level design, which is regularly full of traps and “gotcha” moments. Enemies pop up out of bushes, others surprise you from behind doors, items are placed for you to be ambushed, or trigger rocks falling on you, or make you step on sections of floor that fall out from under you. I get that these moments are meant to keep you on your toes, but when they happen repeatedly in quick succession, they start to feel cheap rather than challenging.

What I do like is that at least Valor Mortis mixes up linear gauntlets with open areas that give you more freedom in how you approach. There are opportunities to sneak up or around to get better vantage points and backstab enemies for an instant kill or significant damage. Thinning out larger groups is definitely something you’ll need to do, as even facing just two enemies at once puts you at a massive disadvantage in the game’s first-person view.

Variety is added further with some fantastic sections that combine the frenetic platforming of the team’s previous Ghostrunner series with the tight combat mechanics to create some entertaining and inventive set pieces. A section across broken-up ships that are suspended in time above the sea is a highlight, as you hop and swing between the splintered decks, take out snipers with your musket, and slash through any remaining soldiers prowling around.

Finding its footing

On the other hand, a diversion into a mine is perhaps one of the game’s most dreary and aggravating sections. Here, lots of tight, dark, and windy corridors are not the easiest to see or fight in. Then, while you’re also trying to dodge and parry different enemies, the game decides to throw freewheeling minecarts that can almost kill you in one hit down these same small alcoves at the same time. A fun idea, in theory, but there’s a point where a situation becomes too chaotic for you to assess it and react to it quickly enough, and so my approach changed to brute force and luck rather than skill.

But then I was quickly brought back again by another thrilling on-rails segment that makes full use of all abilities and weapons you’ve gathered until now, before culminating in a surprising out-of-this-world boss fight that puts the rewarding parrying mechanics front and centre.

When that works, it really works. And the flourishes One More Level adds with ranged weapons and magical abilities are welcome tactical options — even if you will have to rely on swordplay more than anything else. The fact I kept getting beat up but wanted to keep coming back to nail a parry combo shows where the strengths of Valor Mortis lie. It’ll likely scare many away, but if challenging Souls-likes are what you enjoy, here’s another with an intriguing premise and a neat twist to add to your list.

Should you play Valor Mortis?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

Valor Mortis offers very few accessibility features. In terms of dialogue, there is only an option to adjust the subtitle size between small, medium, and large. Mouse and keyboard, and controller options are available, with full key rebinding possible on the former and several control schemes available to choose from on the latter. You can also adjust the field of view, turn off or tone down camera shaking, as well as turn blood splatter and dismemberment on or off if you prefer a less gory experience.

How I reviewed Valor Mortis

I played over 10 hours of Valor Mortis on PC using an Xbox Wireless Controller and playing audio through my Bose QuietComfort Headphones. I’m using a fairly mid-range rig with a Ryzen 5 9600X, an AMD Radeon RX 9060XT, 48GB of RAM, and a Samsung 990 EVO Plus SSD. My monitor is the MSI MAG 27CQ6F.

With some tweaks to the settings, I was able to play the game on High at 1440p with frame generation on and maintain a comfortable 100+ fps at almost all times. It may not be a hugely demanding game, but it looks good and runs smoothly, which is ideal for reaction-based combat.

First reviewed October 2026.

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko says every Remedy game has "absolute evil lurking in there"
• Alanko says he and Remedy rely on players' intelligence to understand the "psychological aspect to it all"
• He adds that "Remedy is not a dictating entity; we don’t do walking simulators, and we don’t hold hands"

According to Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko, every Remedy Entertainment title has a sinister aspect at its core, and he relies on the player's intelligence to understand it through his music.

When asked if there is a particular approach to the whole Remedy-verse score and musical landscape in an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Alanko explained that "There’s always the absolute evil lurking in there," with an added psychological aspect.

He said, "It affects instruments, instrumentation," as well as "the overtone series" (a sequence of musical pitches or frequencies that naturally sound above a main base note when it is played), as something so evil it "has a gravity" and "that affects the sounds, too, by bending and separating the overtones from each other."

"Its nature is very prominent, and there is a psychological aspect to it all: when you hear something familiar to be slightly off, it triggers your lizard brain into action, and with some preparation, we’re able to have a very suitable fight-or-flight reaction to introduce some action as a spice," Alanko said. "It is a very, very interesting process to affect people, to sort of kick them into action without actually telling them what to do."

As for how he and Remedy portray that "evil" across the games, he explained that they rely on players' understanding of subtext and context clues to find the meaning of what they're experiencing.

"Remedy is not a dictating entity; we don’t do walking simulators, and we don’t hold hands; we believe in intelligence and the ability to think and deduce something from the facts given," he said. "Same applies to music: a set of hints and a basic feeling may be introduced, but it ends there.

"A good mentalist always lets the audience do the magic. And everyone has seen those really awful marketplace magicians; nobody wants that for a birthday. Remedy is not that. We believe in a thinking, investigating, curious human being."

This applies across all of Remedy's games, whether it's Control, Alan Wake, or Quantum Break; however, Alanko and the studio know they can't regurgitate the same thing over and over again, but players will find a commonality between each series.

"Every new IP adds to the recipe, more or less, and though we don’t exactly want to repeat ourselves, there must be something in common and something familiar to the scores and the soundtracks, and that’s something you can’t really create overnight," Alanko said.

"The same applies with everything: it gets better with time. For instance, we introduced orchestra to Remedy’s sonic identity with Alan Wake, and it was there as is, but also as a slightly mangled version of itself, too. Then there was a very softly played grand piano, with enough compression to turn Manhattan into a peanut, with a reverb that ate half of Helsinki, basically. Quantum Break allowed for much more industrial and electronic flavours to enter the soup, and Control brought musique concrète in."

He added that those three qualities created "What I love to call 'A Remedy Sonic Bermuda Triangle', some top-notch processing," noting that a "huge amount of raw material is originated from acoustic sources, as "There’s very little 'just synths' stuff, although I do love my arsenal."

In the same interview, Alanko has suggested studios should value music more if they care about their games and avoid AI at all costs.

Revisiting one of Omega Force’s most beloved works via Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered has been interesting. I got into the series quite late, so I’ve never had the same reverence for the earlier games that many other fans do. I’m happy to say that has changed with this remastered version.

This is a very different game compared to modern entries like Dynasty Warriors Origins or Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. Objectives are straightforward, battles (for the most part) tend not to last as long, and your KO count per battle is much lower than the thousands you rack up in newer installments.

Satisfaction lies elsewhere in Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered. It trades bombastic theatrics and ‘rule of cool’ battlefield domination for a more grounded approach. Instead of tearing across battlegrounds like a Category 5 hurricane, you’ll need to pick your fights more carefully and move with your army. Even basic peons are far more aggressive in this game, so ditching your allies isn’t exactly the wisest decision.

There are some cool quality-of-life additions, such as being able to counter enemy Strong and Special attacks with your own. A handy checkpoint feature lets you rewind the battle to key moments if you die, and there’s an honest-to-goodness dodge button that helps even the odds and can even be followed up with a counter if timed correctly. Alternatively, you can set the entire game to a ‘Classic’ mode, ditching all of this in favor of the original gameplay experience.

It’s an incredibly thoughtful remaster in that regard, offering options for newcomers, purists, and everyone in between. The visual facelift is nice, but not overbearing. Plus, additional content from the Xtreme Legends expansion is included here, too, making Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered an extremely beefy package for its relatively budget price tag.

Same as it ever was?

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered, as ever, presents a loose interpretation of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Which in itself is a romanticization of this turbulent wartorn era of Ancient China.

As an earlier entry, Dynasty Warriors 3 pretty much gives you the highlights rather than delving deep into character drama or motivations. It’s quite refreshingly simple, though individual playable officers do get their own cutscenes, endings, and the like.

You’ll spend the majority of your time in Musou Mode — effectively the game’s campaign. You will then choose an officer from one of four factions: Wei, Wu, Shu, or Other. The latter of which featuring officers with no set affiliation like Lu Bu, Dong Zhuo, and Diaochan.

Each officer has their own bespoke Musou Mode route, though some are longer than others. Even so, your goal on each map typically boils down to defeating a key enemy officer, while ticking off smaller objectives to boost your side’s morale or rob the enemy of powerful weaponry.

That might sound repetitive, and it can be if played over longer sessions. However, I think Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered is tailored to shorter bursts of play, and the bite-sized Musou Mode campaigns for each officer support that. Playing through a campaign will bolster that officer’s stats, as well as earn them new weapons and equippable items — the latter of which can be shared between all officers.

Part of the beauty of Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered is that it feels like a snowball of unlockables. You’ll routinely be bagging new playable officers, more powerful weapons, and potent rare items should you meet their conditions during a stage.

Some stages can also grant you an officer’s fourth or fifth weapon. These are extremely strong, but are typically gated behind higher difficulties and some rather stringent objectives so be sure to bring upgraded officers and plenty of patience for these.

Old and new

One of my favorite things about Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered is that it has options for basically everyone. You can play the entire game in either modern or classic modes. Classic is just that: Dynasty Warriors 3 as it played on the PlayStation 2, for the most part. No fancy extras. Does it feel a bit dated? Yes absolutely, but I’m happy it’s here as an option for purists.

The more modern take applies a bunch of quality-of-life changes and gameplay additions. As mentioned at the top, these include Strong and Special attack counters, a dodge, and a quick mount option for your horse. It helps the game feel a lot more fluid, in my opinion.

Was I still getting juggled to death by lowly peons for daring to take on an officer on my lonesome? Yep. More than a few times. But ultimately I did appreciate the more humbling experience here when I’m so used to treating enemy armies like mowing the lawn in more modern Musou games.

What’s nice is that if you’re somewhere in the middle — say, wanting a hybrid modern/classic experience — Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered supports that. Quality-of-life additions can be toggled individually in the options menu, allowing for a widely customizable experience.

Additions aside, Omega Force has elected to keep the original game’s amazing soundtrack and cheeseball dialogue fully intact. I love this because there are some truly hilarious line deliveries across cutscenes, and the overt mispronunciation of officer names just adds to the charm of it all. Battles have been spiced up with combat lines from later entries like Dynasty Warriors 8, though, which is a nice touch.

Should I play Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered?

Play it if…

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

There aren't any dedicated accessibility toggles in Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered such as subtitles or colorblind modes. However, individual game settings can be toggled based on preferences. These include target-facing assists, dodging, power guards, and strong attack counters.

How I reviewed Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered

I played Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered for 15 hours on PC via Steam for this review. Being a remaster of an older title, my Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 was more than enough to run the game on maximum settings with zero hitches or issues.

My gamepad of choice was the Valve Steam Controller (2026), and I often hooked up my RIG 900 Max HS gaming headset to enjoy the game's banging soundtrack and corny dialogue sequences.

The majority of my playtime was spent in the main Musou Mode, unlocking characters, weapons, and optional rare items. Though I did delve into the Free and Challenge modes for a change of pace, too.

First reviewed October 2026

What could possibly be left to say about Grand Theft Auto 5?

In the 13 years since the release of Rockstar Games’ open-world magnum opus, we’ve had a nonstop running commentary from YouTubers, podcasters, and game journalists about its world, writing, and many secrets. Entire careers have flourished based on the art of talking about GTA 5.

Rockstar’s 2013 open-world opus has had such an effect on culture since its initial release that it’s hard to imagine a world without it. It’s seen releases and remasters across three console generations. It’s won the highest awards in some countries and been outright banned in others. And an entire generation of gamers has grown into adulthood knowing the streets of Los Santos better than their hometown.

Alas, GTA 6 is on the horizon – following years of trailers, teasers, and unfortunate leaks, the sixth Grand Theft Auto game arrives on November 19, 2026. The fact that the game won’t launch with a physical disc version won’t stop it from dominating conversation and the sales charts on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC for years to come.

I’ve spent a good few years playing GTA 5 (in order to keep PEGI off our backs, that’s as specific as I’ll be getting) and have put in thousands of hours across various versions of GTA 5 and GTA Online.

As a final salute to Los Santos, I loaded up GTA 5 on my PlayStation 5 and PS4 to see how one of the best games of all time has evolved during its ten-year tenure at the forefront of gaming culture.

Re-remastered

Full disclosure: I’d never actually played the PS5-native version of GTA 5 before starting work on this piece, and loading up the game for the first time, I wasn’t sure if Los Santos could still surprise me after so many years spent drifting through its virtual streets.

Luckily, I was proven wrong — not in the prologue, which is showing its age at this point, but in my first drive around the open world. After speeding through the first few missions as Franklin, I stole an Aston Martin-esque sports car and blasted north on the Great Ocean Highway, stopping along the way to take in the enhanced visuals and classic San Andreas vistas, and ultimately spending around an hour just drifting through the streets and countryside trails.

GTA 5’s PS5 edition comes with a few new graphics modes, and the one that stands out is Performance RT. This combines the ray-tracing of the Fidelity mode and the 60 frames per second (fps) framerate of the Performance mode, and leaves the game looking simply gorgeous.

There’s only so far you can polish 13-year-old character models, and some textures are beginning to look a little JPEG-ish, but the environmental design, excellent weather effects, and increased framerate made GTA 5 feel more alive than ever. The game has always had best-in-class driving controls for a casual title, and passable combat and on-foot input, but doubling the framerate to a stable 60fps makes everything feel more immediate and responsive.

Speaking of driving, the PS5’s DualSense controller gets a few neat tactile responses with this version of the game — you’ll get a bump on the right trigger as your car changes gear, feel the weight of each trigger pull in a shootout, sense the rumble of passing traffic. It’s a small change, but one that pulls you even further into the game’s criminal underworld.

Not that immersion was ever an issue. I played GTA 5 on PS5 up until the end of the first heist, and I felt that, in some ways (more on that later), the writing had aged tremendously — though I’m not sure how much of that is down to my own progressing adulthood.

As I step into the latter half of my twenties, Franklin’s frustration with the everyday struggle at the start of the game comes through as incisive and relatable. Michael’s unstable ennui is, likewise, easier to imagine with the weight of the world resting a little heavier on my shoulders. I don’t quite relate to Trevor yet (maybe that’s one for my thirties). It’s quite something for a game to imprint on you as a blockbuster action experience in your teens, only to reveal some much more grounded undertones years later.

That’s not to say that GTA 5 is any less of a spectacle than it was at launch. This is where Rockstar really started presenting its games as directed, cinematic experiences, a formula it perfected with the follow-up Red Dead Redemption 2.

Even the first few missions — sneaking into Michael’s mansion as Franklin, the boat chase just a few missions later, and of course the jewel store heist — are loaded with moments ripped straight out of Hollywood. And a near-endless render distance makes launching off of Mount Chiliad on a dirt bike seem terrifyingly real.

It’s really quite amazing that GTA 5 originally launched on PlayStation 3. My original disc has been lost to time, but looking at videos, the original holds up pretty well — despite its 720p resolution and graphical patina, it’s still entirely enjoyable today. And beyond graphics, its gameplay and world wouldn’t feel totally out of place in a 2026 release.

The PS4 version holds up even better — I remember being stunned by Rockstar’s 2014 trailer for the remastered version of the game, which focused on new wildlife, non-player character (NPC) density, and graphical improvements. It’s the version of the game I’ve spent the most time in, thanks in large part to these updates, and it still feels utterly alive today.

Cultural impact

Indeed, the massive reaction to GTA 6 proves that the Grand Theft Auto series is very much alive in the public consciousness, even if the long wait for its next entry rendered it dormant for a while.

It’s worth remembering how totally dominant GTA 5’s hold over online culture has been, especially for the first five years of its life cycle. We’ve seen countless YouTube video essays debating Mount Chiliad conspiracy theories and in-game UFO sightings, let’s play channels dedicated to covering GTA Online’s endless updates, and scammy shitposters claiming to have early copies of GTA 6.

Many of us will remember the mad dash to our gaming setups the day a new heist was added to GTA Online, or endless hours spent playing minigames and missions to grind for a new sports car or apartment.

Then there are the memes. ‘Watch your jet’. ‘Davey!’. Franklin showing up to defend his home. The green vs purple alien war. The Welcome to Los Santos texts. ‘We got X before GTA 6’. As one of the most-played games in the world for its entire lifespan, GTA 5 has propped up the online nonsense industry for years, priming the algorithm for an inevitable landslide of GTA 6 content in about a month’s time.

And as one of TechRadar’s contributing music nerds, I just have to talk about the radio stations. GTA 5 introduced me and thousands of others to some of the best music of the 2010s. I will never, ever forget the first time I raced Lamar through the streets of LS in a boosted sports car to the sound of ‘Appetite for Destruction’ by N.W.A., courtesy of West Coast Classics, or driving up to Paleto Bay to Frank Ocean’s Blonded Radio station, or idling in Vinewood while listening out for Cara Delevigne’s insane quips as the host of Non-Stop Pop.

In large part, GTA 5 is responsible for my love of rap music, dance music, country music, and radio DJing, which I continue to utilise as a writer and musician today.

Where do we go from here?

GTA 5 stands as a true titan of modern gaming and holds a deep-rooted place in my heart and hard drive alike. With that said, it’s not perfect, and jumping back into Los Santos left me with a couple of things that I hope GTA 6 can improve on.

First of all, GTA 5 is, in part, a story about contemporary masculinity struggling and failing to cope with late-stage capitalism – but in telling this story, it treats its female characters horribly. The only female characters with any substance are Michael’s wife Amanda and daughter Tracey, and Franklin’s aunt Denise, all of whom are portrayed as whiny annoyances that serve as plot devices for the male characters to revolve around and objectify.

In fairness, the game is a satire of American culture, which has no shortage of problems with sexism and objectification, and there’s an abundance of annoying male characters as well – neurotic heist-master Lester Crest and TV host Lazlo come to mind. But the game’s male characters get the chance to develop through or into their flaws, even if, as in Lazlo’s case, it’s only to become more of a punching bag.

Rockstar has said it’s leading with a more grounded tone for GTA 6, and the game introduces the series’ first female protagonist, Lucia, which suggests we’ll be getting at least one fully realised female character.

Gamers’ expectations and the window for jokes about gender have both changed quite significantly since 2013, and GTA Online grew to feature several key female NPCs throughout the 2010s, so I’d be surprised if GTA 6’s other female characters don’t have a little more substance.

We already know GTA 6 will introduce a hugely expanded map and RDR2-style role-playing mechanics, so my other request concerns how we get around that new immersive world. For lack of a better term, GTA 5 has a bit of jank about it – the ‘tap to sprint’ mechanic has never been anything but annoying, and its strange approach to climbing ledges and ragdoll physics is good for a laugh but not great in the heat of a firefight or police chase. Rockstar, with its infinite budgets and massive staff, is certainly powerful enough to smooth over the few bumps left in the GTA experience.

With these complaints well considered, GTA 5 still stands tall over the gaming industry, not only as a titanic financial success, but as an enduring blueprint for open-world excellence. It remains a totally gripping gameplay experience and, despite some dated writing, a genuinely cinematic heist adventure. In short, GTA 6 has a lot to live up to.

Before brandishing Geralt of Rivia's twin blades and braving a "new game" in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered, the main menu invites you to check out the re-release's patch highlights.

Clicking the option opens a top-level list of the title's abundant updates, improvements, and enhancements, from "Upgraded Visuals and Performance" to a "Reimagined Skill System." But while these entries showcase the game's most significant and ambitious inclusions, some of the remaster's best new features are hidden under the catch-all category of "And Much, Much More."

For example, the fact that the grey-maned monster hunter no longer navigates ladders and waist-high ledges like a toddler sorting out their motor skills might impress seasoned fans more than any fancy new lighting tech. Looting resources while riding Roach – another awesome update that doesn't earn its own bullet point – will similarly delight anyone who previously endured getting on and off Geralt's trusty steed every time they wanted to pick a flower.

While these subtle tweaks aren't as sexy as, say, the stunning visual update, they are welcome, meaningful fixes that not only make the game better, but also reflect CD Projekt Red's larger commitment to deliver more than the bare minimum to make a quick buck.

Much more than a pretty makeover

Of course, while you're effortlessly gathering alchemy ingredients from the saddle, you'll indeed also appreciate the significant graphical leap the game has achieved. The Witcher 3's 2022 next-gen update was already a looker, but the remaster's response to it is a confident, "Hold my beer (or Redanian Lager).

The lighting effects – and resulting shadows – are far more realistic, textures pack noticeably sharper details, and flora-filled environments look as though they've leapt off a postcard. Overall, there's an across-the-board fresh layer of detail and depth that makes the Continent come to life like never before.

If you're tackling the Wild Hunt on a PlayStation 5 Pro, you also have some say in just how striking you want the game to look. A Performance mode uncaps the framerate, guaranteeing the game runs at 60 FPS minimum – but is capable of hitting as high as 90 FPS.

Meanwhile, a dedicated Ray Tracing mode consistently hovers around 60 FPS, while funneling more horsepower into rendering the absolute best lighting effects. Both options more than get the job done, though I preferred the slight visual bump and solid framerate offered by the latter selection.

Combat worthy of a Witcher

It also doesn't hurt that you can now soak in the picturesque sights – such as sunlight realistically filtering through dense foliage – without having to pause every few seconds to reposition Roach. That's right, another "And Much, Much More" addition addresses your mount's previously frustrating collision detection, ensuring the 1,000-plus-pound animal no longer gets caught up on jutting branches and small rocks.

Roach's smoother movements have also apparently rubbed off on Geralt, as the sword-swinging, spell-casting hero not only navigates environmental obstacles with ease, but wields his steel like a proper badass on the battlefield. Previous iterations of The Witcher 3 have been endlessly praised for their graphics, storytelling, quest design, and content-packed open world, but their combat mechanics were typically left out of those acclaim-filled conversations.

That's been remedied in the remaster, as CD Projekt Red has seemingly reworked the clunky combat from the ground up. Where the protagonist's attacks previously felt loose and lacking weight, they now pack a more precise, impactful punch. But not at the cost of speed, as enemy encounters also feel faster, more fluid, and kinetic.

Some factors – from smoother animations and smarter, more reactive enemies to new finishing moves and, crucially, a dynamic camera that no longer struggles to keep up with the lightning-quick action – combine to deliver an experience that now has me eager to breach any bandit camp or monster lair I might stumble upon.

An unbeatable, beast-slaying bundle

CD Projekt Red could have polished the visuals, improved the combat, added a few quality-of-life fixes, and then collected a fat paycheck for their efforts. But they dug deep, considered fan feedback, and made the typical remaster look like a stain on the titular beast-slayer's boots.

Speaking of Geralt's well-trodden footwear, a new style-forward transmog system allows you to wear the armor and wield the weapons you want without sacrificing any attached stats. You'll find further flexibility in the reimagined skill system, which offers newfound freedom for molding your playstyle, experimenting with skills, and generally forging a meaningful character progression path on par with contemporary RPGs.

But these inclusions, too, barely scratch the surface of a lengthy list of improvements that could over-encumber Roach's Beauclair saddlebags. Quest tracking has also been streamlined, looting is less tedious, and meditation is now more immersive and interactive. All that, and a much deeper photo mode ensures you'll spend more time snapping pics than swinging your swords.

Needless to say, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered is the absolute best, most definitive version of a game that was already a genre-defining banger when it launched 12 years ago. Toss in the fact that this impressive update also includes the base game's two massive, equally excellent expansions – Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine – and securing this bundle is a no-brainer for anyone who's yet to conquer the Continent.

Best of all, those who already own any previous version of the award-winning RPG won't pay a single Novigrad Crown for the update, as it's completely free for returning fans.

Should I play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered?

Play it if…

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

On top of standard settings for adjusting subtitles, interfaces, and HUD elements, The Witcher 3 includes an expansive suite of accessibility options under a new, dedicated section dubbed "Bard's Ballad."

This mode includes several default presets – from unlimited item durability to faster boats – meant to make the game less taxing for those who might experience mental fatigue.

But the mode's nearly 20 toggles can also be tailored to individual needs, so different options, like color-blind-friendly Witcher Senses or fisheye Witcher Senses, can be selected individually based on a particular player's needs and preferences.

How I reviewed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered

I played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered for 30 or so hours. Having already invested dozens upon dozens of hours in more traditional playthroughs of both the original 2015 game and its 2022 next-gen update, I approached the remaster differently, focusing on the many fresh features, updates, and enhancements that separate it from its previous iterations.

I played the game on a PS5 Pro using my budget TCL 4K 65" TV, with HDR enabled. I tested the platform's Performance and Ray Tracing modes, finding the latter offered the preferred experience. For audio, I tested with both my TV's onboard stereo speakers and Sony's PlayStation Pulse Elite headset.

First reviewed October 2026

In my books, the most satisfying part of any action role-playing game (ARPG) like Diablo or Titan Quest is the constant feeling of progression. Nothing quite compares to watching your little on-screen hero grow from a tiny ant that can barely bash their way through a pack of lowly wolves to a maxed-out bringer of destruction that mows through entire armies without breaking a sweat.

Minecraft Dungeons 2’s aggressive level scaling robs the player of that experience. In the more than 12 hours it took for me to beat the story campaign, I never felt more powerful. Sure, I unlocked more interesting abilities and got to try a variety of weapons, but the amount of time required to take down each newly spawned foe remained near-constant throughout.

A friend even joined my game towards the end of my playthrough, with their level 1 character effortlessly keeping pace with my level 40 one throughout the final encounters, really underscoring the system’s ridiculousness. I’m sure the intention here is to make it easy for friends to jump into the same lobbies and play together without having to worry about their respective levels, but it left me wondering what the point of all the grinding actually is.

Blocky buddies

It’s a shame, because there is still some good in Minecraft Dungeons 2. This standalone spinoff recreates the blocky look of the popular Minecraft survival game expertly, with its own more stylized twists that make the world instantly recognizable, yet refreshingly new thanks to more expressive lighting and Pixar-like character animations that make everything pop even from the distant isometric perspective.

I may have lamented the fact that I couldn’t wow my friend with my character’s power, but the co-op experience is otherwise well done. Creating a group with up to three companions is impressively straightforward no matter where they play, thanks to seamless cross-platform connectivity. There’s even couch co-op, which is quite rare in 2026 and worth praising. The ability to play with others easily goes a long way in making Minecraft Dungeons 2 genuinely worthwhile for younger players.

For everyone else, however, everything here is just too straightforward to appeal. The enemy variety is sorely lacking for starters. The expected Minecraft favorites like the Creepers, Zombies, Skeletons, and, of course, the iconic Chicken Jockey are all present and accounted for, along with the evil grey-skinned Illagers from the first Minecraft Dungeons game. Unfortunately, most enemies function indistinguishably. Those with projectile weapons spray arrows at you from afar, while the rest just rush towards you in a big group.

The strategy in every encounter is to simply mash the attack button and occasionally dodge, even as more powerful Illagers with magic attacks are introduced. The boss fights are equally bland, forcing you to whittle down gigantic health bars for minutes at a time while waves of low-level enemies spawn in. To make matters worse, many of them are repeated throughout the campaign with little variation.

It’s frustrating because, on paper, the combat does have some depth: you have a melee and ranged attack, plus three equipped abilities granted by items that you’ve managed to find.

The weapon selection is decently varied, with scooping shovels and fast-attacking double daggers performing very differently from slow-swinging war hammers or claymores, and a steady trickle of new gear encourages you to experiment. They can be upgraded too, with unlockable enchantments that add little mechanics such as a lightning strike that triggers at the end of a chain attack.

Your abilities are powered by a blue soul-meter, which fills up a little with each defeated foe. I think the intention is to create some form of rhythm, with you alternating between melee, ranged, and your abilities, but the fundamental problem is that there’s just no real strategy to any of it.

Sure, you could probably spend ages creating a build with complementary gear – though there’s no real reason to bother when the aforementioned enemy scaling wipes out any real power gain.

Lacking craft

Much was made of Minecraft Dungeons 2’s world in its marketing. It’s much more open than the previous game, though I wouldn’t exactly call it a true open-world.

The map is designed like a linear corridor that funnels you from one story mission to another with no real room for exploration. Yes, there are side quests and optional dungeons scattered around, but none of the ones that I sampled offered anything that felt meaningfully distinct from the main story.

Regarding the story, the most polite way to describe it would be ‘functional’. It’s presented entirely in second person through a narrator that is devoid of personality. There are no memorable non-player characters (NPCs), no charming companions, no real atmosphere at all — just a bland summary of events.

The game also serves as the Minecraft community’s introduction to The Sift — a new dimension that’s being added to the main game sometime next year. It shows up a few times in the campaign in both procedurally generated encounters and a hand-crafted map. It's got a very distinct aesthetic and its own unique enemies, though it's sadly mechanically indistinguishable from the normal world as you navigate through it spamming attacks.

Like many elements of Minecraft Dungeons 2, it feels like a missed opportunity. Everything here is perfectly functional, but it’s just bland to the point of tedium. If the pitch was a skimmed-down version of Diablo for kids, then developers Mojang and Double Eleven have delivered a serviceable product.

Creativity is a core part of the Minecraft brand, and here I wish the team had been more adventurous.

Should I play Minecraft Dungeons 2?

Play it if…

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

Minecraft Dungeons 2 has some accessibility options. The game features a guidance trail that is enabled by default. Subtitles are used throughout, with customizable sizing, color, and background opacity.

There are two font options: the default stylized font and a simplified, easier-to-read version. There are also multiple color blind modes, a high-contrast mode, and the ability to set your own HUD colors.

How I reviewed Minecraft Dungeons 2

I played more than 13 hours of Minecraft Dungeons 2 on my RTX 4090-powered PC using the Turtle Beach Pacific Skyline Wireless Controller as my main peripheral, along with a 1080P Lenovo monitor and Logitech computer speakers.

I completed all missions of the single-player campaign and experienced a decent amount of side content both solo and with a friend.

First reviewed October 2026

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko explains the process of developing Dylan's theme song, which is Jesse's theme played backwards
• He explains how Jesse's theme was more about power, while Dylan's is "a source of growth"
• Alanko says, "Dylan’s is more upward-reaching, as if it was asking for permission for Dylan’s existence"

Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko has shared his process for developing Dylan's theme song, compared to how he designed Jesse's, his sister and the main character of Control.

In the same interview with TechRadar Gaming, where Alanko explained how he created the game's eclectic soundtrack for Remedy Entertainment, the composer said the method for writing Dylan's theme was distinct from Jesse's, because their origins start in different places.

Without going into spoilers, Alanko explained that their paths are different, but, "Due to their roots, they actually share the same theme - but Dylan’s is essentially Jesse’s theme backwards."

"It first appeared already in the original Control at a few points, but here I wanted to slap the gamer’s face properly with it," Alanko said. "They share the DNA, so the theme’s shared too. What was Jesse’s power theme is, for Dylan, a source of growth; it appears in different harmonies across the game, and depending on the events, the harmony root is changed under the melody a few times."

He added, "Jesse had her power theme played in direct conjunction with her position only in the ending, whereas Dylan’s appears all the way, texturizing his path from nothing to a superhero."

Alanko continued, explaining that "The scale of the protagonist is larger in Control Resonant," and while Jesse's theme "landed" and was "grounded" in a way that was "a 'THIS IS ME' statement," he said, "Dylan’s is more upward-reaching, as if it was asking for permission for Dylan’s existence."

"From the very early points of development, I had the feeling Dylan was asking for a justification for his release and his freedom," he added. "Dylan is an involuntary hero; although he chooses to become one, he just doesn’t know it in the beginning.

"By grabbing a walkie-talkie from a corpse hanging mid-air after having come out from the building is his knowingly made decision: 'I choose this.' He chose to walk that path, and I wanted to pinpoint and emphasize the attempt by creating a few very driving percussion patterns through the story."

While Jesse and Dylan have two different juxtaposing themes, Resonant also features a blended theme for both called 'Sibling Theme.' Alanko shared that the game's end credits track, 'The One I Once Knew,' "was easily one of my favourites," as 'Sibling Theme' "wouldn’t exist without it."

"We weren’t able to use any vocals with the 'Sibling Theme' as there was a metric ton of voiceovers happening, and we didn’t want to distract the gamer from the core feeling of the Broken Conduit, the place where 'Sibling Theme' is played through various devices and means," he said. "I had one of the music industry’s most beautiful voices appear on the end credit track, 'The One I Once Knew' (TOIOK), Amelia Jones, who recorded and edited her own vocals and sent me everything she had performed, and I didn’t have to change a thing from her selections. Awesome voice, awesome work ethic, awesome ear."

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko says he was brought on to the project "very early" while still working on Alan Wake 2, which he thinks resulted in a better soundtrack
• He suggested that if studios care about their game, then they should respect their soundtrack more and avoid "AI music"
• Alanko says, "If you value and respect your IP and your game - and your story - give a lot of love and time for the music"

Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko has suggested studios should value music more if they care about their games and avoid AI at all costs.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, the composer, who has a long history working with Remedy Entertainment, discussed the early stages of developing Control Resonant's soundtrack, revealing that he was brought on to the project "very early" and was still working on Alan Wake 2.

"I was still neck-deep with Alan Wake 2, and I used Control Resonant’s concept to detach myself from the Dark Place where Alan Wake 2’s events were happening," Alanko said, adding that it was beneficial to be brought on to the game during this time because, "The earlier I exist in the project, the better the outcome."

Alanko went on to talk about how he hears how other studios bring composers into the mix far too late into a game's development, which can be a great detriment to the quality of the soundtrack.

He suggested that if studios care about their project, then they should respect the music aspect more, and expressed a dislike for "AI music" specifically.

"I sometimes feel a great pity to hear a colleague was dragged in three months before the final deadline and they need to compose eight hours of music or similar," he said. "If you value and respect your IP and your game - and your story - give a lot of love and time for the music.

"And please, no library or AI music. Love your game, love your handiwork. Respect the client: the gamers, the fans, dammit."

The composer said he's been working with Remedy since 2004, and so he always has "some kind of an idea what their stories need," and the studio "also know what to expect from me," which shortens the soundtrack development process considerably, meaning less meetings and emails.

"The coherence of material increases greatly," Alanko said, "I’d say value for quality is much, much higher, not to forget the value for money. I’m known to work my ass off for a project I love, and I don’t exactly count hours - if you do this job properly, you cannot count in the first place, but one needs to remember there are no free days or free themes. And, at some certain level you need to re-evaluate your work/life balance, which I have done already ages ago. It was a surprisingly fruitful decision, and I’ve felt much better ever since. This was in 2011 already, so nothing new as such."

Alanko added, "When the time passes, you will notice 'speaking developer' (as in 'speaking French') gets easy and becomes your second nature, and you’ll start supervising your own creating so that your artistic outcome suits better to any sudden changes. And after a little time, you’ll notice how effortlessly you’re still able to maintain a high creative level and high emotional value despite what in the beginning looked like a restriction.

"Just hone your workflow into a decent order, and your ass will follow, basically. Know your tools, know the client’s tools."

In the same discussion, Alanko shared how he created the eclectic soundtrack for Control Resonant, revealing he captures a lot of everyday sounds on a recording device that he later manipulates into harmonies.

• Rockstar Games just released a sneak preview of six Grand Theft Auto 6 radio stations
• They include Cocoteo FM, Back Country Radio, AfroBank FM, The Chamber 106.6, Flash FM, and Dirty South Classics
• The studio also confirmed that " a series of on-demand podcasts" will also be available to listen to in-game "in vehicles or on foot"

Rockstar Games just dropped a preview of Grand Theft Auto 6's radio stations, while also confirming the existence of on-demand podcasts that players can listen to in-game.

Ahead of GTA 6's launch next month, fans can now head to Rockstar's website and listen to six "hand-picked stations from the Leonida airwaves," including singles from the game's official soundtrack.

"Spanning stations dedicated to everything from Classic Rock to Talk Radio, Grand Theft Auto 6 features the biggest and widest-ranging selection of in-game radio and podcasts yet," Rockstar said.

The six radio stations include:

• Cocoteo FM: Leonida's home for the best of modern Latin music. Hosted by El Martillo and La Gata and featuring everything from bachata and merengue to dembow and reggaeton — Cocoteo FM is el party que nunca se apaga.
•  Back Country Radio: MW and Delta Dawne blast renegade country music to the Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, and beyond. Stay tuned for Back Country’s roving reporter, swamp meteorologist, and Delta’s not-so-secret lover Mud Dog Mike checking in from the driver’s seat of his Grassrivers airboat.
•  AfroBank FM: Turn up the gbedu with Burna and Palmsy, AfroBank FM's dynamic duo curating the best in African music, from 20th-century classics and undiscovered gems to contemporary sounds like amapiano, 3-step, and more.
• The Chamber 106.6: Crushing metal has landed in Leonida. Jump in the pit with DJ Kerry and DJ Tom for classic metal from the ‘80s and beyond as they channel Leonida’s deep metal roots.
• Flash FM: The Vice City institution that delivers the best in pop music with Robyn and Alex — guaranteed to make you dance no matter where you find yourself in the Goodtime State.
•  Dirty South Classics: A little southern hospitality from Trick and Trina, blasting regional rap and hip-hop classics. From the beach to the block, nobody reps Leonida and the South like they do.

In addition, Rockstar has confirmed that "for the first time ever" GTA 6 will introduce "a series of on-demand podcasts, with both radio and podcasts available to listen to in vehicles or on foot through newly introduced headphones and earbuds connected to their smartphones."

This means players can tune into podcasts in-game using earbuds or headphones while playing as Jason and Lucia, and on the radio while driving around Leonida and Vice City.

Last month, Rockstar also released a sneak preview of 'Grand Theft Auto 6: The Album'. The soundtrack will feature 24 original tracks from artists like Travis Scott, PinkPantheress, Morgan Wallen, Keith Richards, and more, and the first six singles are available to listen to now.

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko says the game's "nightmarish" open environment influenced his approach to creating the soundtrack
• He says he "tried not to re-do Inception" because "That would’ve been a tad tacky" and "reduced Remedy’s concept"
• Alanko says "Accentuating Dylan’s starting point" was the origin point for conceptualizing the music within the open-world environment

Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko has shared how the game's new setting influenced the soundtrack compared to the first game, and how it helped him represent the protagonist, Dylan.

The Control sequel takes place in a warped version of Manhattan, a totally new environment from the first game's interior setting of The Oldest House, which offers more "open-world" exploration and pushes players to engage in side content alongside the main story.

The setting has been compared to Christopher Nolan's Inception, with its surreal art style and gravity-defying buildings; however, according to Alanko, he didn't want to copy the movie because it would have diminished Remedy's storytelling.

"I tried not to re-do Inception," Alanko said. "That would’ve been a tad tacky and would have reduced Remedy’s concept to something less worthwhile. I don’t personally believe in replicating or redoing, although in some rare cases an homage is fitting, actually, but such cases are indeed very few."

He added, "It was a great relief that we exited The Oldest House and used the nightmarish Manhattan-like surroundings for the game setting," with the scale of the buildings being a source of inspiration, particularly when it came to depicting Dylan within such a huge world.

"It’s beautiful, epic, majestic even," Alanko explained. "There’s so much more to the scenery than just the buildings; it’s about the scale and the feeling, feeling small and replaceable… how would you represent Dylan there so that one felt he’d be irreplaceable? That was the source of the backbone of Dylan-related pieces in the game."

The composer went on to say that "Accentuating Dylan’s starting point was an origin point for conceptualizing the music and among the first things I did," explaining that since Dylan is "a blank slate," it helped formulate the tracks to go alongside his journey.

"He’s a blank slate, a tabula rasa, and he’s to recover and become first a human, then something else," he said. "Hence the descending nature of the harmony of 'Tabula Rasa' and the clangorous percussion — it’s an introduction to Dylan and Hedron, in simple terms, a little like a concert overture.

"One could easily think the undulating noisy sounds towards the end would represent breathing - or, breathing again after a coma - for both the protagonist and the antagonist. I wanted to express the fragility and how brittle Dylan actually was, from how little he started, and where he ended up."

Control Resonant is playable now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Bose president Raza Haider says a new iteration of its QC35 II gaming headset would need to be "authentic" to gamers
• Haider says a new one would need to "meet a certain bar of performance that what we have right now isn't quite there"
• He adds that fans should "absolutely stay tuned" about potential hardware designed for gamers

Bose president Raza Haider has told gamers asking for a new gaming headset that the hardware would need to satisfy the community, but suggested fans should "stay tuned."

Speaking in an exclusive interview with TechRadar, Haider acknowledged that there haven't been too many Bose gaming audio products in recent years, aside from the 2021 QC35 II gaming headset, and that the audio manufacturer is aware that the gaming community is filled with "very passionate users" who hope for more hardware from Bose.

Haider explained that although the company produced the headset in the past, it didn't, "I don't think [it] resonated because it wasn't truly authentic," and satisfying the gaming community would be a top priority for a new iteration.

"I think if we do something, it has to be authentic to that consumer, it has to be authentic to that community, and it has to meet a certain bar of performance that what we have right now isn't quite there," Haider said.

However, it sounds like Bose is looking to expand into the gaming audio genre, because the president added: "Absolutely stay tuned. Hopefully something [is] coming at some point in the future, but it's a community we definitely keep our eyes on strongly."

TechRadar Gaming rated the Bose QC35 II four stars in our review, with Lewis Leong praising the noise cancellation, balanced sound, and comfort, though it lacked functionality that would benefit gaming, such as an instant mute button or auto play/pause.

"Taken as a whole, the Bose QC35 II NC is an excellent headphone for travelers and commuters," Leong writes. "Bose has found a good balance of features that will satisfy most mainstream listeners. Audiophiles, however, will want to check out our roundup of the best headphones for the very highest sound quality."

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko says he captures sounds using his iPhone or a field recorder, which he later transforms into harmonies
• He says, "The weirder, the better," but the studio doesn't have an "audio bible" for what it wants
• Alanko adds, "What I’ve noticed in my past: the worse the recording is, the better the outcome"

Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko has explained how he created the eclectic soundtrack for Remedy Entertainment's latest game, revealing that much of what he comes up with is initially captured on a recording device.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Alanko shared that he records "a lot of stuff on a daily basis" using his iPhone or "my tiny, crappy dictaphone," but if he's carrying a bag, he'll have a small field recorder; whatever he records, he explained, he will later manipulate into harmonies that can be used for his professional work.

"Every now and then I go through what I have found, and I start doing the next phase: turning them into something I could use musically, be that rhythm or harmony or melody," Alanko said. "A lot of Control Resonant’s soundtrack is of that origin. The weirder, the better. There’s no 'too weird' for that."

The composer, who also created the soundtrack for the first Control and Alan Wake 2, said since he's been "decorating Remedy’s game universe for ages" he has "a good perspective on what works and what doesn’t," but explained that the studio doesn't have a certain approach.

"We don’t have an exact 'audio bible' for brand usage; it’s just what one might call 'silent knowledge'," he said. "I’d love to create one for Remedy; by the way, I’ve done that for some clients with whom I’ve gone through so-called sonic identity cases, audio branding, in other words. I try to not use that latter expression, as it cheapens the process.

"With Remedy, it’s about philosophy and the emotional layer, and nothing actually is omitted or put aside; everything might work. Emphasis on the word 'might'. It depends, and often one miss would need another miss or two to become an un-miss - and then it works in conjunction with everything else.

"It’s a very meticulous process, actually, but there’s no 'Remedy Game Music And Music Concept For Dummies 1-2-3', really. If it feels right, it is right. I rely on intuition and let it kick my ass with inspiration."

Alanko said that when coming up with Control's atmospheric music fans are familiar with, "sometimes the key to something cool is just slowing down things," or "by stretching or transposing a recorded sound down, a little like slowing the tape," explaining that the slower the sound flows, the lower the pitch, or the higher the frequency, it can reveal "very interesting things."

"Also, what I’ve noticed in my past: the worse the recording is, the better the outcome," he added. "Sometimes I spend ages with iZotope RX to carve out something usable from an intentionally (or unintentionally) flawed recording, then shove that through anything by Zynaptiq and continue from there. Then I gather together some instrument material groups — percussive, tonal, atonal, etc — and assemble something playable through a synth keyboard from them… which is when the first ideas connect with the pictures and the presentation I had seen.

"It’s a very clear 'Hey, NOW I know how things go from here' moment, in other words."

Control Resonant is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• SteelSeries and KontrolFreek have announced a new Fortnite gaming accessories collection
• Each product is inspired by Fortnite's most iconic mascots, including Peely and Fishstick
• The SteelSeries Arctis Gamebuds | Fortnite Peely Edition, for example, feature a reimagined design in banana peel yellow

SteelSeries and KontrolFreek have teamed up with Epic Games to deliver the ultimate gaming accessory collection for Fortnite fans.

The officially licensed peripheral collection, launching today, is "designed to bring the iconic game to players’ real-world gaming battle stations," and consists of ten accessories and hardware pieces from across a multitude of gaming gear categories.

Inspired by Fortnite's most iconic mascots, like Peely and Gudd, Fishstick, Supply Llama, and Water Sprites, the collection includes headsets, earbuds, mice, mousepads, PBT keycaps, Performance Thumbsticks, Thumb Grips, and more.

Additionally, every SteelSeries item comes with a special in-game code for the likes of emotes, Outfits, and Pickaxes.

The Arctis Gamebuds | Fortnite Peely Edition, priced at $219.99 / £179.99, has received a full redesign with a banana-yellow finish and a unique charging case design; this comes with a code for the in-game Oro Outfit.

Meanwhile, the Aerox 3 Wireless Gen 2 Mouse | Fortnite Storm Edition brings a vivid multi-color splash to any setup, complete with a lightning-embossed scroll wheel and honeycomb pattern inspired by the Storm. Priced at $129.99 / £119.99, fans can also claim a code for the Frozen Bear Pickaxe.

PC players can also customize their keyboard with the PBT Keycaps | Fortnite Fishstick, Guff, Supply Llama Editions, which are priced at $79.99 / £69.99 and designed in collaboration with Epic Games. Players can also claim the in-game Statuesque emote.

You can check out the full SteelSeries and KontrolFreek collection below, alongside their prices.

SteelSeries Fortnite Collection:

• Arctis GameBuds | Fortnite Peely Edition – $219.99 / £179.99 / EMEA €199.99
• Arctis Nova 3 Wireless PC/Xbox | Fortnite Sprite Edition - $129.99 / £119.99 / EMEA €129.99
• Aerox 3 Wireless Gen 2 Mouse| Fortnite Storm Edition - $129.99 / £119.99 / EMEA €129.99
• QcK XXL | Fortnite Battle Bus Edition – $49.99 / £44.99 / EMEA €49.99
• QcK L | Fortnite Fishstick & Guff Editions – $29.99 / £29.99 / EMEA €34.99
• PBT Keycaps | Fortnite Fishstick, Guff, Supply Llama Editions – $79.99 / UK £69.99 / EMEA €79.99
• Artisan Keycap | Fortnite Edition - $79.99 / £79.99 / EMEA €89.99

KontrolFreek Fortnite Collection:

• Fortnite Aim Boost Kit | Durrr Burger Edition with Collector’s Burger Box Case - $34.99 / £34.99 / EMEA €34.99
• Fortnite Performance Fishsticks | Fishstick Edition – $19.99 / UK £19.99 / EMEA €19.99
• Fortnite No-Slip Thumb Grips | Supply Llama Edition – $14.99 / UK £14.99 / EMEA €14.99

In the run-up to a show like Gamescom, my inbox becomes a blazing trash fire. Inundated with requests to see everything from phenomenal-looking indies to Barbie Horse Ride and Rescue, literally thousands of game demo invitations charge into my mailbox, waving their banners and blowing their trumpets in a bid to attract attention.

One game that successfully breached my email defences was Chronicles: Medieval. Revealed during Summer Games Fest, this impressive open-world sandbox game not only promised massive, strategic top-down battles blended with third-person combat – but also narration from beloved homegrown actor Tom Hardy. And who was I to turn down battering virtual knights with Tom Hardy?

Tom? Hardly

"So, unfortunately, as much as we love him, Tom is not a part of the game.” Sam Millen, lead producer at Raw Power Games, tells me, sheepishly, as I ask him about the Bane actor’s involvement, “We do have the incredible Lars Mikkelsen in the game, acting in a chronicler role - taking a voiceover role during character creation and during parts of the game. Sadly, Tom Hardy was only part of the trailer.”

After ten emails and two press releases mentioning the BAFTA-winning actor, it turns out it was all a Trojan Horse-esque ruse to get me in the room. While hardly an auspicious start to my behind-closed-doors preview, thankfully for its Danish developers, Chronicles: Medieval's absurdly ambitious gameplay soon wins me over in spite of its misleading marketing, breaching my defences and ensuring a total coverage victory.

Chronicles: Medieval is an impressively nerdy history epic. What I didn’t expect, however, was just how deep the game’s roleplaying elements go. Slated for an Early Access launch in 2027, Raw Power Game’s debut mixes gargantuan troop battles that would make an eight-year-old blush with a vast, explorable world map. In this rags-to-riches tale, players start out as a lowly peasant and build their standing through questing, diplomacy, and, of course, combat.

From campsites to castles

“You start off without owning any land. You're just out in the wild.” Explains Millen, “Maybe you have a couple of men you grew up with in the town who walked together and decided to join you as you embark into the world.”

Drawing equal inspiration from Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, and Mount & Blade, the game’s 1313 AD map spans from the Pyrenees to Poland, and the British Isles down to Northern Italy. Yet while this could have been a broad Age of Empires-esque offering, Chronicles: Medieval revels in the specificities. Players can zoom all the way down to inspect individual sub-regions and see the individual lords that rule them.

“Each culture - England, France, HRE [Holy Roman Empire] - has different army trees: levies, household troops,” says Millen. “You're going to be able to upgrade your troops as they get experience…then you'll potentially take troops from being levied infantry to being cavalry, progressing up those paths."

There’s a heavy dose of Crusader Kings here, too. You can buy tavern intelligence to reveal the map, recruit mercenaries, or bypass combat entirely if you’d rather play that way. Despite its trailer's combat focus, the pair sell me Chronicles as a true sandbox. Whether you want to become a wealthy peaceful merchant, a feared bandit, or even claim the English crown through political backstabbing, the choice is yours.

"It's a sandbox, so you can do whatever you want to do in the world.” says Millen, “There's no linear narrative that you're set off on. If you want to become the best merchant in the world and become incredibly rich from just selling goods, you can absolutely do that.”

Boots on the ground

As a sea of hundreds of troops forms up along a hillside of gently swaying grass, Millen zooms in on each soldier individually, explaining the historical significance of their crests, weapons, and surroundings. In other words, this is a game built by massive history nerds, people who are deeply knowledgeable about the time period they’re depicting and passionate about getting it right.

Supporting up to 2,000 total troops on the battlefield, forces are drawn from three distinct unit categories: household troops, peasantry, and mercenaries. The pre-battle prep begins in classic top-down fashion, as Millen manoeuvres his various units, placing archers at the rear, pikemen at the front, and sending a troupe of covert cavalry up around the tree-shaded hillside to flank the French forces on the other side of the plain.

Once the battle commences, you drop straight into a third-person action-role-playing game (RPG) perspective, sending your commander charging into battle. As if he’s in a fully fledged action RPG. As Millen’s militia gallops towards the advancing enemy horde, he sends four of them flying with his poleaxe. Dismounting and unsheathing his blade, he parries sword blow after sword blow with impressive fluidity. Here, enemies have posture meters, parries require precise timing, and every weapon swing carries weight.

"When you start out, you have low proficiency, so your attacks are slower, and you don't have combos,” says Senior Game Designer Gareth Bourn, “But over time, you unlock a lot of these skills — including leadership skills.”

While cleaving heads on the battlefield will rile up and inspire your troops, if the tide of combat starts to turn in the enemy’s favour — or you take a particularly nasty hit from an enemy - your leadership skills will determine whether they leave you high and dry.

Mace swings and morale

"The troops have their own minds.” says Millen, “You take morale hits if you die — but they're going to keep fighting for their lives until the point where their morale dips, either because they're losing or because they've already taken a hit from seeing their commander die. If you're a great leader. They want to stay with you and fight to the death longer… They can pick up your injured body, take you back to a settlement, and you can recover, rest, get your health back, replenish your troops, and fight another day.”

As commander, you can still tell units to advance, hold, etc. In the thick of combat, keeping a hands-on tactical element amidst the manic melee. Yet as if to prove that this game’s show-stealing battles aren’t its only parlour trick, players can choose to bypass them entirely. "You can even auto-resolve battles if you want,” says Bourn, “But every time somebody clicks auto-resolve, I shed a small tear.”

While Chronicles: Medieval’s ambitions are impressive, these aren’t just lofty 1.0 goals. The duo tells me that full sieges — complete with trebuchets, crumbling walls, and battering rams - are slated to follow shortly after, with full console support and robust modding tools planned for the official 1.0 release.

Part intricately detailed Total War-esque historical battle simulator, part player-choice-driven RPG, much like a ragtag group of bannermen holding off a king’s army, Chronicles Medieval punches far above its weight. Developed by a hundred people in Copenhagen, this ambitious open-world sandbox game could well give Microsoft and 2K’s Age of Empires and Civilization a run for their money.

While it might have been a false Hollywood bluster that got me in the door, it's the admirable ambition, detail, and potential that have kept me thinking about Chronicles: Medieval since. If Raw Power Games can deliver even half of the features they’ve promised, this could be a very special sandbox game indeed.

As the entire gaming industry rearranges its calendar to avoid Rockstar’s impending juggernaut, another long-gestating title has quietly emerged from the shadows – 1666: Amsterdam.

Hitting Steam Early Access in August this year after 13 years of development hell, this tale of kittens and covens is the brainchild of Assassin’s Creed 1 & 2 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time director Patrice Désilets.

Revealed during 2026’s Summer Games Fest, this tale of sorcery and witchcraft immediately turned heads. As a hooded wiccan soared across thatched rooftops and ducked and weaved her way between soldier-ridden canals, crimson curses and talking cats teased an exciting, thematically unique-looking adventure. Yet despite its refreshing spin on open-world traversal, this time-bending tale took its first steps into existence all the way back in 2011.

"It’s been a long journey,” reflects Désilets with a warm but weary smile, sitting opposite me in a brightly-lit cardboard office, erected in the business area at Gamescom. Picking up the controller to proudly show off his gothic adventure, he takes one of the game’s dual protagonists for a covert stroll down a packed Amsterdam canal street, before shaking off her civilian disguise and raining hex-induced havoc on the screaming populace.

Once championed as THQ’s Assassin’s Creed beater, the inspiration for 1666 first took hold on a 2011 holiday to the Dutch capital. “Walking around, seeing the houses in Amsterdam. It’s really a level design city,” recalls Désilets, ”I could picture an Assassin’s Creed there…there's a facade, and all the mystery. Then I passed a building inscribed with ‘Anno 1666.’ and immediately I thought, 'What if I do a game about the Devil set in Amsterdam?'"

The Devil’s in the details

Originally envisioned as a cinematic Satan simulator, 1666: Amsterdam was meant to be the more gothic-feeling spiritual successor to Désilets’ 2010 smash hit game, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

Thanks to his previous pedigree, publisher THQ was in, and so he spent the next two years crafting what we’ll affectionately call ‘The Devil’s Creed’. Yet like many deals made involving the devil, it soon appeared that Désilets Lucifer-staring epic was afflicted with a thematically fitting curse. “I started working on it for two years, then THQ went bankrupt.” Désilets recalls.

With THQ then suddenly snapped up by his old employers, Ubisoft, Désilets found himself briefly back at the Assassin’s Creed publisher, who almost immediately let him go – leaving poor old Lucifer trapped in development hell. Fiercely fighting his former employers for the rights back, Désilets eventually regained custody of his demonic baby in 2016. “…we got everything back…the 3D, all the concept art, and some animation,” Désilets grins. Yet in the years that had passed, something had changed for Désilets.

Despite having grafted to reacquire his IP, as time passed, Désilets no longer found himself excited about writing a game starring the devil’s apprentice. The reason? He was put off by a certain hit 2016 TV show. “Lucifer, the TV series, came out, and meanwhile, I'm like, 'Is it really the subject matter I want to attack?” shrugged Désilets. While Désilets had fallen out of love with the devil, he still found himself drawn to the idea of an evil-infested 17th-century Amsterdam. “What if there was a witch hunt going on in Amsterdam in 1666?” Désilets posited, as a new story unfolded before his eyes, “The only thing that I really kept was this idea of also doing 1999 [a dual time period alongside 1666], playing off two sides of the same coin: reflection and duality. That's when I pitched it to my team in January 2020, and [I] rewrote almost everything.”

Processing phobias through polygons

Thanks to being forced into remote work during the pandemic, retooling 1666 took the team at Panache six long years. While the initial Satan Sim was a Désilets-led project through and through, with his newest studio having previously made the 2011 survival game Ancestors, he’d grown to trust his team at Panache, letting their ideas help remould his 2011 original prototype in unexpected ways. “It’s funny, because it’s really a team game, yet in some ways, if we go back to my original PowerPoint, it's crazy how similar it is.”

Yet for all its violence, hexes and history, there is a familiarly agile, gravity-defying protagonist at the centre of Panache’s latest. "... I feel like I'm always doing the same game ... about traversal…” laughs Désilets, “the cat is my way to play with verticality [here]... Even in Ancestors, where you were an ape in a clan, it was still this sheer pleasure of going around a 3D world. Once I analysed myself: 'Why is this always in my fucking games?' "Because I've got vertigo! In real life, I can't climb – so maybe that’s why [you climb in my games]. Don't ask me to climb anything. It's a joke in my family.”

While soaring across canals as an agile Wiccan - or darting across rooftops as a black cat - provides the vertical thrills that Désilets physically can't enjoy in real life, 1666 departs radically from the traditional Assassin's Creed formula in one surprising way. “Each time you fail, there's a reshuffle of your abilities. You must continue your investigation with a different set - that’s where the roguelite element appears,” explains Désilets. “You might fail as a fighter and come back leaning towards witchcraft, so you have to think differently. You go through the challenges the way you want - it's your game, man. If you want to spend six hours in a row being the cat, I don't care.”

Swapping polish for collaboration

“You're not supposed to do [Early Access] with a narrative game,” shrugs Désilets, “But we're giving you roughly between 10 to 15 hours' worth of narrative-driven, open-world-ish content... [and] our goal is to have 1.0 by the end of next year, with console releases at the same time.”

For Désilets, the old way of shipping a game was done out of necessity, not choice, with the Assassin’s Creed veteran always wishing that he had more player feedback and additional time to refine his art.

“There was a time in game development when the game was finished... There was nothing you could do — no patches. That time drove me crazy.” Says Désilets . “Now... give me feedback…and then I can tweak. This is what game making is all about: having a dialogue. Yes, I can make a really badass character like Altaïr, but if you take the pad and make him turn around in circles, the badass character is gone because you're the one finishing the game. It's a co-creation.”

Narrative-driven games usually rely heavily on cinematic polish to pull players in, making 1666’s rough-around-the-edges Early Access release a peculiar sight. Yet in an industry plagued by ballooning budgets and sweeping studio closures, launching a single-player adventure this way might not just be an anomaly- but a canny survival strategy.

“I do my games with my team a bit in a bubble,” says Désilets when I ask him about the precarious current state of the industry. “I'm not always in those conferences. I'm not totally sealed off from what's going on, but you walk around, there’s an energy here…that reminds me of the old times... and lots of quality new games. Maybe we can attract new gamers into what people liked in 2007 when they first played Assassin's Creed. It's got that vibe, right?”

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko says a musical score is "an emotional vessel"
• He explains that it's his duty "to represent the story in the most beautiful light possible"
• Alanko adds that the music "must be able to exist by itself, without the game and the story"

Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko thinks of a game's musical score as another way to tell the story, and it's his job to do that, even if he sometimes takes some creative liberties.

"In my thoughts, a score is what one might call an emotional vessel - or a tray for the story," Alanko told TechRadar Gaming in an interview about Remedy Entertainment's latest action game. "My duty is to represent the story in the most beautiful light possible, to help drill the ideas and the vision into the heads of those who experience the events."

The composer compared it to his band, where on stage it's his role to help the soloist "be the best version of themselves and showcase their talents in the most elegant way possible," saying that the "Same applies" to a video game.

"What I do is a series of deep bows towards the story; I love the story; it’s an honour for me to make it even more approachable and beautiful," he said. "But… it must be able to exist by itself, without the game and the story. Otherwise, it’d be just a pointless collection of noodling. I carry the responsibility of respecting both the story creator and especially those who enjoy the story."

Alanko went on to liken what he does to a customer service business, but added, "Trust me: I wouldn’t do anything just to please others; I do this to please myself. Simple as that."

"If I don’t like what I do, nobody else will, and, just to be clear and precise, I do really enjoy what I do," he reiterated, "my self-confidence is in very good shape that way (laughs). If something moves me, there’s a good chance it might move someone else, too."

While Alanko believes that it's a composer's job to translate the Remedy's story to the audience with his talent, he admitted: "I sometimes offer the story in a different light, as contradicting the on-screen events can be really delicious."

"It’s a very human feature to make errors, to have a sudden twist of a knife in your side in the middle of the most heroic event, as if someone reminded you of your mortality and how different the outcome would be if this-or-that happened," Alanko added. "A bit like memento mori. It makes you humble; it makes you human."

You can play Control Resonant now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

Mass-Effect-a-likes are a lot like interstellar buses: you wait ten years for one to arrive, and then two warp into view at once.

Unveiled at this year’s Summer Game Fest, both The Expanse: Osiris Reborn and Exodus look set to capitalise on the gaping hole left by BioWare’s beloved MIA franchise. Yet where Exodus’ Matthew McConaughey-starring project left Gamescom to rave reviews, in my infinite wisdom, I ventured into the far reaches of the outer rim to investigate the other Mass Effect-inspired epic: a sci-fi action-adventure based on the hit TV show, The Expanse.

With nine books to its name and six seasons of acclaimed television, Osiris Reborn was, I wagered, the candidate most likely to deliver a deep, narrative-led role-playing game (RPG) experience. Yet after an hour and a half spent sneaking across space stations, blasting soldiers, and fleeing stalking mutants, it turns out The Expanse isn’t really a narratively rich Mass Effect revival at all. It’s a so-so sci-fi Gears of War.

“We start the game from the Phoebe incident... It's set between Season 1 and Season 2 of the TV series... within the first two books,” explains Natalia Turina, lead level designer, as I pick up the controller and take my first steps.

Put into the space boots of the player protagonist and her twin, J, I join the duo as they infiltrate a space station owned by a shady private military corporation, Protogen. After a recent shipjacking by their crew, the duo has snuck deep into enemy territory with one vital task — delete the shipjacking’s virtual evidence from Protogen servers, and get the hell out.

Less normandy, more office bureaucracy

Thanks to its rich source material, I went into my demo expecting a deftly written, choice-driven world. Yet while the fiction of The Expanse promises a glimpse into a complex future, playing Osiris Reborn feels like traveling back into console gaming’s beige-looking past.

After slowly inspecting the busy cargo ship undercover, I duck and weave between armed enemy forces without arousing any suspicion, eavesdropping on ship personnel before heading to the ship’s computers.

As I pretend to be shipping a piece of intergalactic cargo and helmet-clad guards stare me down with assault rifles cocked, this should be a masterclass in tension and subterfuge. Instead, as I’m tasked with walking back and forth between computer terminals, I’m not immersed in the universe’s knotty politics — I’m bogged down by the minutiae of intergalactic shipping logistics.

“For choices in an RPG to feel meaningful, you need to believe in this world,” says Turina. “Every space needs to make sense — what is this place, how does it operate? This is why we spend so much time on the environment.”

It’s an answer that makes sense on paper, yet while rich in detail, there’s nothing exciting about the lore nuggets that I uncover. Well, I guess I certainly know how intergalactic shipping containers operate. After some more perfunctory dialogue, my cover is blown. Luckily, just as the alarm sounds and the station is alerted to our presence, I’m saved by an ambush. As a squad of a rival militia faction breaches the airlock, the formerly mundane depot erupts into a hail of gunfire.

A world stuck in the Xbox 360 era

Thankfully, combat fares a bit better than the world-building. Part Gears of War, part Binary Domain, there’s a retro 2010 feel to its firefights — for better and for worse.

Much like Commander Shepherd before me, I sprint between cover, deploy a drone, and blind-fire into a series of heavily armoured mercenaries, swapping between an assault rifle and shotgun. As I toss grenades at advancing militia and shatter glass over crouching enemies, I’m told players are free to change their specialisms on the fly, tweaking their tactical approach as needed via extensive skill trees.

It’s all functional lizard brain stuff, but while enjoyable, I worry that the combat [so far] doesn't feel dynamic enough to truly elevate it from the Xbox 360 era of cover shooters — let alone compete with modern peers.

Character interactions also struggle to hit the mark. When I encounter a lone marine — his hardened status signalled primarily by relentless swearing — our protagonist and her companion accept him as an ally almost immediately, despite being deep in enemy territory and under fire from multiple forces. It’s a jarring, immersion-breaking moment that once again highlights the quality of BioWare’s dialogue.

For all the granular detail painstakingly poured into Osiris Reborn’s lavishly rendered environments, its characterisation and dialogue currently feel paper-thin.

Running from horror, missing the tension

A late-demo pivot sees me being stalked by a Protogen-developed experimental mutant who broke containment amidst all the gunfire. Whoops. Impervious to bullets, the creature forces me into a frantic sprint down half-lit corridors. Where in Resident Evil or Dead Space this would be an exercise in sphincter-clenching terror, blending eerie exploration with a heart-pounding chase sequence, here the pursuit lacks any real tension. From the creature’s unconvincing AI to a complete lack of cinematic flair, I merely felt like I was running from A to B, meekly jogging toward a doorway to trigger the next cutscene.

As shiny as Owlcat’s mix of cover shooter and RPG is, I came away from my hour-and-a-half Osiris Reborn demo feeling fairly underwhelmed. Mass Effect won hearts not just through its worldbuilding, but through the strength of its writing: sharp wit, genuine heart, and moral dilemmas that stayed with you long after the credits rolled. It’s why during its ten-year absence, fans of BioWare’s space opera have been pining for a franchise to fill that galaxy-sized hole. So far, it sadly doesn’t look like Osiris Reborn is up to the task.

While I’m told the full game will feature wider exploration and more side missions and roleplaying, what I saw left me concerned that Osiris Reborn is less a Mass Effect spiritual successor and more a pale imitation.

Owlcat Games may borrow the same core Mass Effect ingredients, it appears to cook them together with none of the same skill or soul; its blend of corridor walks, light puzzles, and chest-high cover shooting feels closer to Kane & Lynch than Knights of the Old Republic.

With the full game not due out until next year, there is, of course, still time to refine the formula. Here’s hoping that the final adventure lives up to the title — expanding its source material’s beloved universe and, with any luck, helping its RPG aspirations be reborn.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance promises a fresh expedition into the skies, with players summoned there by the resurgence of ancient dragons and the promise of upgraded weaponry. At Tokyo Game Show 2026, I went hands-on with this upcoming expansion, getting up close and personal with the downloadable content's (DLC) interconnected aerial archipelagoes and battling against two brutal monsters with the use of the brand-new Boost Bracer.

The demo opens in a camp, with the reliable Alma serving up two important quests: Hunt the Alpha Araketa, a level 2 monster, and Slay the Teostra, a level 5 monster. Before jumping straight into the hunt, though, it only felt right to check things out at home first. The camp itself is a visual marvel in keeping with the high standards set by the base game — something here about how it looked; check demo vids online.

The demo is keen to focus on gameplay, though, and understandably offers little in the way of non-player character (NPC) chatter. Still, I was pleased to find a small jump across a ravine hides a barrel-rolling side game that, while unnecessary, was a fun side activity nonetheless. But I digress; it was finally time to break some monster parts.

Falling with style

The first expedition dropped me on a jagged island floating high above any visible Earth, where I was set to track the Araketa. The design of the space lands somewhere between James Cameron’s Pandora and the ruins of a medieval coastal castle. Rocky structures hang in the air above my eyeline, with aggressive tree roots tunnelling through them and disrupting their typical form.

As I came upon an unnervingly empty open area, I spied what looked like petrified dragon wings and tails buried in the white rubble, the blistering blue sky illuminating the stone and casting a dusty screen — so much so that I could almost feel my throat dry up as I stepped through the chalky stone.

Eventually, I spotted the Alpha, but it wasn’t alone. Typical of head honchos, the beast had two underlings, identical in species but much smaller in size.

New to Monster Hunter, the Araketa is a wyvern with a smooth, stone-like exterior painted with what looks like a turquoise-and-yellow platter pattern. Unlike a typical dragon-faced beast, the Araketa features a bulbous, boulder-like head, two wings with sharp claws at the back, and a long, winding tail. While beautiful, the most important note is that all three of these extremities are used in combat.

As I entered the battlefield and alerted the trio to my presence, the Alpha let out an ear-splitting screech before taking battle formation. As one of the underlings jumped up into the air, the Alpha and the second monster flew towards me at a startling pace. In no time, their attacks began, the younger creature attempting to headbutt me with its hammerhead, while the Alpha flanked me from behind.

Diving side to side, the Alpha then took its turn, digging its claw into the earth and performing a spin attack that knocked me off balance. As I regained my footing, the third skybound monster, which had been suspiciously absent, used its momentum to swoop down and take a swipe, too. It was overwhelming, but exhilarating.

My weapon of choice for this battle was the Insect Glaive, which proved useful for platforming around their bombardment. Thankfully, as I started to feel overwhelmed, I remembered I had a new tool to flex: Boost Driver attacks.

Another new addition to Monster Hunter Wilds is that players now wear a Boost Bracer, which enables weapon-specific special attack types. At the bottom of your screen, you’ll see a gauge with three charge slots. As you attack the monster, these slots will illuminate light blue, indicating you have charge. When in position, you can press R1, circle, and triangle in tandem to unleash a visually striking brutal attack.

For the glaive, this saw my character throwing his body into a series of explosive shifting sweeps. Beyond the spectacle and boosted damage, the upgraded moves did well to reset momentum, and I was particularly pleased to see I didn’t need any specific resources to harness its power.

As the battle drew to a close, I had just enough time to look around and take in the ambient wildlife of the new biome, spotting all kinds of creatures from rocky-backed alligators to fluffy, chicken-like birds.

Among the structures, I also got to experience the new wind mechanics mentioned in the marketing material and made use of my Seikret to dive across them, which was fun if not a little rigid — perhaps I’ll have more control in the full release.

The belly of the beast

The second quest sent me to a wholly oppositional location. Instead of blue skies and white rock, I was met with sludge and volcanic ash plumes rising from various organic chimneys dotted across the horizon. This area was composed of tones of grey, occasionally disrupted by orange or red illuminations.

The castle ruins had also been swapped out for what looked like giant pots, akin to Elden Ring's Iron Fist Alexander if he fell into some wet tarmac. Unlike the ambient wildlife of the first area, there was little more than Sisyphian dung beetles here, continuously rolling a solitary ball up a hill.

Descending to the bowels of the cave system, I spotted my prey, slumbering amongst fire and brimstone. Unlike the Araketa, the Teostra isn’t new to the franchise, with the elder dragon appearing in Monster Hunter World and long before that in Monster Hunter 2. However, it is the beast's first appearance in a long time, and he’s packing some serious heat this time around.

Before I could begin my barrage, a pop-up on screen alerted me to an unskippable step — if I didn’t drink a cool drink, I would lose health during the fight, presumably from boiling alive in my own skin. I’m happy to report that ignoring this message was a silly mistake, and it wasn’t long before I fainted and was forced to make the descent again.

Salve applied; I dove headfirst into what already appeared to be a complicated fight. Double my height, the Teostra’s feline form was blazing, its attacks involving a mixture of fizzing fire bombs and cat-like swipes. When used in tandem, it became steadily overwhelming, and I was pleased I had my attention-stealing Palico to draw away some of the heat, both literally and metaphorically.

To keep from burning alive, I leapt in and out of its proximity, buckling its back legs and taking huge swaths of damage — safe to say, in the twenty minutes I had to win, I was not successful. Thankfully for the sake of my pride, as I returned to the camp a loser, I noticed the player next to me was struggling against the Teostra as well; even with a different weapon and impressive dexterity, they failed to kill the beast in the time allotted.

It’s clear Monster Hunter: Wilds Ascendance intends to escalate the hunting in the base game, enabling players to wield powerful tools in environments designed to genuinely test their preparation and survival skills. As someone who dropped off the base game after hitting credits, this expansion provides more than enough reason to kit back up and head into its refreshed, uncompromising world.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance is releasing in 2027.

Sometimes the old ones really are the best, and Gears of War: E-Day is unapologetically retro. This third-person cover shooter could have easily fallen out of a time machine straight from the Xbox 360 era, were it not for its incredible graphical fidelity.

If you’ve played any Gears of War game, then you know exactly what to expect going in: intense combat encounters as human soldiers fight a desperate war against an invading mutant menace. Does E-Day reinvent the series? Not at all, though it does make some small changes by introducing somewhat more open levels and refining the weapon upgrade system introduced in Tactics.

That's far from a bad thing, though. Gears of War is an acclaimed series for a reason. Mowing down waves of baddies is still as fun as it ever was twenty years after the release of the first game, even if the story campaign feels a bit drawn out at times in between the bombastic set-piece moments, and the suite of competitive online multiplayer modes offers plenty of reasons to hone your skill and keep coming for more.

Back to the very beginning

E-Day does plenty to appeal, even if you haven’t played a Gears game before. It’s a prequel, set more than a decade before the events of the first game’s story, so it doesn’t require any prior knowledge to understand. It takes place on the titular ‘Emergence Day’, when the evil Locust army first emerged from underground and began its full-scale invasion of the series’ fictional Earth-like world. The story is a relatively small-scale one, focusing entirely on the initial first few days of the war in the city of Kalona.

The campaign is extremely strong in its opening hours, which really dial in on the more horrific and brutal elements of the franchise. Although still an experienced soldier, long-time protagonist Marcus Fenix faces a then-unknown threat that he and his companions, a ragtag group of his friend, a fellow soldier, Dominic Santiago, along with strangers Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes, are completely unprepared for.

There’s a real sense of chaos as the Locust tear through the city streets, with civilians running in panic, cars crashing, trains derailing, and huge sinkholes starting to tear up the floor. Weapons are limited at first, but you steadily gear up as the story unfolds. Experimenting with new assault rifles, snipers, shotguns, grenade launchers, and so on as you unlock them leads to a satisfying feeling of progression, further enhanced by a steady stream of unlockable upgrades for each and every one of them.

These range from basic stat buffs to more in-depth overhauls that fundamentally change how the weapons operate and can be paired together in interesting ways. The slow-to-reload lever-action Gnasher shotgun, for example, becomes an entirely different beast when you outfit it with a full-auto firing mode and the ability to replenish shells when stowed. It’s supremely enjoyable to experiment and, even without any upgrades, all of the guns are suitably punchy with satisfying sound effects that make each shot a joy.

E-Day introduces a small handful of large, more open environments to explore, with short side missions here and there. There’s plenty of guidance, and you’re always being funneled towards the next objective, so it doesn’t ever feel like you’re in a true open-world, but there are still plenty of collectibles to hoover up.

Their placement isn’t sophisticated, and you can easily find most of them without straying too far from the beaten track, which does seem like something of a missed opportunity.

Beauty in destruction

Luckily, you don’t need much encouragement to really take your time soaking in each and every environment, as they are absolutely gorgeous. This is without a doubt one of the most graphically impressive games ever released, with a level of fidelity that is simply leaps and bounds ahead of other recent releases.

The detail is truly staggering, with everything from sweeping views across the city to the individual items on sale in an abandoned convenience store realistically rendered and beautifully lit. I constantly found myself stopping to zoom in on every little thing, impressed with the sheer number of references to in-universe history.

All of this helps Kalona really feel like an actual place in a way few other video game settings do. The layout of its roads and public transportation network is totally believable, and your journey feels truly grounded, as you move through the game – even later on when the streets have been reduced to near-ruin.

There are some definite low points, though. This is by far the longest Gears of War campaign, taking me roughly 25 hours to complete while chasing every collectible and optional side mission, and a few hours in the middle should have been shaved off. Encounters are well-balanced in the opening and final acts with a good variety of foes and plenty of cover, but there are some sequences near the midpoint that just involve facing off a steady stream of overly tanky enemies in quite small arenas.

The shooting is so compelling that pumping them full of bullets for minutes at a time isn’t a dealbreaker; their removal would just have created a much tighter overall experience.

Continuing the fight

A Gears of War game wouldn’t be complete with a suite of multiplayer modes, and E-Day is no exception. The player versus player (PvP) deathmatch mode is excellent, challenging two small teams to face off and rack up kills with weapons from the campaign. Simplistic, yes, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not incredibly fun to blast away at others.

The player versus environment (PvE) games are more complicated, with 12 players divided into four squads tackling multiple objectives in a large open space to earn currency to spend on upgrades and defensive gear.

Bizarrely, the teams don’t interact with each other that much aside from the odd shared boss fight, so I don’t really see why the format needs 12 players, though any excuse for more of the strong combat is a good thing. There’s also a more traditional wave survival mode, which I can see becoming a favorite among friends looking for something more casual.

Throw in a wealth of unlockables, and you have a recipe for a good time even if, like the story campaign, it’s not anything revolutionary.

Should I play Gears of War: E-Day?

Play it if…

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

Gears of War: E-Day has a wealth of accessibility settings, found in the dedicated accessibility menu. There are multiple menu narration options alongside the ability to customize the size of UI text, enable subtitles, show speaker names, and fully tweak subtitle background color and opacity.

Distinct content filters are present for gore, profanity, and online chat content, plus visual settings such as a color blind mode, high-contrast mode, and navigation aids.

How I reviewed Gears of War E-Day

I played Gears of War: E-Day on my Nvidia RTX 4090-powered gaming PC. With this rig, it could easily hit a rock-solid 75 frames per second (fps) at ultra settings while playing at 1080p and using Logitech peripherals: the newly announced X3 Superstrike mouse, Pro X2 Rapid keyboard, and Pro X3 Lightspeed headset.

I played the game for over 25 hours, during which time I completed the campaign and saw the vast majority of side content. I also dived into the multiplayer modes for a few hours to check them out and compare them to other online games.

First reviewed October 2026

Fuse Games' Star Wars: Galactic Racer isn't what I anticipated. A fun Star Wars racing game that lets you take part in a series of high-octane relays across the galaxy? Sounds great; you had me at "Star Wars." But a heart-pounding roguelike sweat-fest that had me squeezing my DualSense wireless controller in a death grip and yelling at my monitor as Kestar Bool once again beat me in the final race by the skin of my teeth? Not what I was expecting!

Galactic Racer takes place after the fall of the Empire and during the New Republic Era, where the lawless and ex-pilots of the Outer Rim take part in the unsanctioned, high-stakes Galactic League. You play as Shade, a faceless human cargo pilot recruited to the league and who has a major grudge against the oppressive Bool family, particularly Kestar Bool, the guy who also happens to be the reigning champion of the Galactic League. Shade, for reasons you'll discover as you progress the campaign, has a long history with Kestar and is dead set on beating him, and you feel that rivalry grow after every attempt at completing the tour.

This particular Star Wars tale is contained without the bigger stakes we often see in the movies or TV shows, and while it's not a sweeping cinematic experience like Star Wars Zero Company or Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, with not much exploration in the way of character depth for Shade as the playable character, it's simple yet effective; Galactic Racer is first and foremost a racing game with an emphasis on replayability, buildcraft customization, and a tailored progression system.

A race across the stars

The freedom to choose how to proceed through the campaign is a core feature I greatly enjoyed, and players must first complete the qualifiers, then the main Galactic Tour. There's no randomized track selection; instead, a clever system of branching paths lets you choose a route and compete in races that fit your preferences, minimizing the risk of losing your League Tokens, which let you race in the first place.

There are standard races that present a variety of gripping courses, and you can come in first or 12th place; Field Tests, which I did find a bit repetitive and not as challenging after completing them numerous times; Mystery Encounters; and Eliminator races, an event where the driver in last place is disqualified until only the top three pilots remain, plus you'll lose a League Token, which makes it the riskiest race in the bunch.

Roguelikes can be hit or miss for me, but Galactic Racer's run-based structure offers an exhilarating and chaotic gameplay loop that excels at providing a highly engaging, heart-pounding experience despite the rinse-and-repeat system.

Even after beating my fellow racers and making it all the way to the finals, only to fail miserably, the notion of having to replay the entire process after losing should've been off-putting. Instead, I found myself not only eager to improve, but excited to get back on the track with the knowledge and skills I'd gained from previous runs, a feeling that not many roguelikes can achieve.

The game has a learning and difficulty curve due to its roguelike framework, and it may not be for everyone, but it's purposefully designed to make you become the best racer in the galaxy, since you likely won't be a winner straight away.

More often than not, you'll smash headfirst into an obstacle or fly off a cliff because you didn't drift in time, so it's incredibly satisfying how the game makes you feel like you're gradually improving after every run.

At the beginning of each tour, you choose a loadout, including your vehicle, Favours that provide a competitive edge, and a Racer Style, an additional preset that dictates your speeder's behaviour and active perks and feels more personalized to your playstyle.

Galactic Racer offers three vehicle types — landspeeders, speeder bikes, and skim speeders, as well as podracers during select missions — but in the end, I personally favored the speeder bike; its compact agility, vectored thrust, and kinetic burst felt incredible as I sped across dunes and whizzed around tight corners on slippery glaciers.

If at first you don't succeed...

When I started, I absolutely sucked. I frequently collided headfirst into walls and mismanaged my abilities, but the roguelike structure works so well that my muscle memory began kicking in the more I played; by the end of the game, I was hardly crashing and knew the tracks like the back of my hand.

It's no smooth ride; every choice shapes your prospects, and the challenge of not only trying to win while overcoming planetary effects like lava or acid, and outplaying your fellow pilots, takes the stakes even higher — it's a testament to how well the roguelike framework works and how brilliantly designed the courses are.

The game puts a huge emphasis on customization — the build possibilities are endless — and the system stands out against the competition as you gradually update your vehicles by applying upgrades, installing parts (and making sure they're not damaged), and unlocking new power-up abilities; there's an abundance of them, and they make a world of difference in close-call encounters and improve your odds of a podium position.

Not to beat the dead tauntaun, but seriously… this is podracing! Playing on the base PS5, Galactic Racer is a visual and audio feast, offering a gorgeously smooth experience at 60fps, while sweeping you up in the frenetic action.

The speeds you can reach are ridiculous when you have the right upgrades, and there's nothing more gratifying than going to the maximum with your Ramjet and executing perfect landings and sharp corners without crashing your speeder into a million pieces.

The best of the best

Racing is at the soul of the campaign, and it's a damn good time, but the game also allows you to interact with other pilots; they aren't just random racers, but fully written NPCs with unique personalities and playstyles, and I loved how Fuse represents these characters on and off the track.

You'll build rivalries, learn their backstories, and discover random encounters with multiple dialogue options, which also come with rewards and consequences, making the lawless world you're competing in all the more real.

With Kestar Bool, for instance, I chose to insult him after he tried to swindle me out of some credits, and since he basically runs the show, my speeder was sabotaged; it exploded at the start of the next race, and I lost two speeder upgrades in the process, putting me at a huge disadvantage for the rest of the tour. This is such a unique feature and a significant factor in the game's progression system that drives home the competitiveness among your opponents.

Jakku and Crait are probably my favorite out of the six available planets, which are all stunningly authentic to the Star Wars universe and a joy to experience from a brand-new perspective as a fan; the scale of their set pieces, whether it be the underbelly of a Star Destroyer skeleton or kicking up red salt in crystalline caverns, creates a sense of awe alongside the game's competitive atmosphere as you maneuver through various routes.

Fuse has designed a riveting racing game with creatively constructed tracks that compel you to keep playing even after a major fumble. At first, it's all about mastering the track — which corner to take to put you ahead, when to speed up or slow down — and the game does a great job of making each one distinctly different. Soon enough, however, these races get pretty aggressive, to the point where they'll turn into outright battles as your opponents try to ram you off the course (screw you, Griff Halloran).

Alongside the campaign, players can unlock Sebulba's storyline, a side activity where you play podraces from his past; it's a neat addition to the main story that offers up some amazing tracks while also providing additional backstory on the guy who had it out for little Anakin Skywalker. Surprisingly, Sebulba became a standout in the storyline, and I appreciate that Fuse didn't simply throw him in for the sake of nostalgia.

The game also offers other side activities like Scenarios that let you play as each racer, an Arcade feature, both worthwhile additions for after you complete the campaign, and a proper multiplayer mode. During the review period, I had access to several multiplayer sessions, a standard online PvP experience featuring quick race modes and Tours with 12 players and crossplay enabled.

From what I was able to play, I enjoyed the multiplayer as much as the campaign, and it has a lot of potential if Fuse plans on updating the game post-launch; it feels just as entertaining and competitive as the story, with extra unlockables and missions that incentivize you to keep playing after the campaign. While I didn't get to play too much due to time constraints, I already know I'll be sinking more hours into it, and I'm particularly excited about trying out the Podracing Tour mode at launch — it was locked during the review period — because I couldn't get enough of it in the campaign.

Should you play Star Wars: Galactic Racer?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility Features

Star Wars: Galactic Racer offers a ton of accessibility features in the form of your typical settings across visuals, audio, and subtitles. There are also some great controller remapping options, which can be adjusted to your preferences (these make a huge difference on the track), toggleable controls, and more.

How I reviewed Star Wars: Galactic Racer

I spent almost 30 hours playing Star Wars: Galactic Racer on the base PlayStation 5 with my Gigabyte M32U gaming monitor and my Sony WH-CH520 wireless headphones for audio.

First reviewed October 2026.

• Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko says he typically finds his inspiration by looking at Remedy's "gorgeous" concept art
• He reveals that he has synesthesia, which allows him to "hear" music by looking at these pictures
• Alanko says there's a "transparency culture" at Remedy, which helps prepare the team for a new project

Control Resonant composer Petri Alanko has revealed that he has synesthesia, which allows him to find much of his inspiration by looking at Remedy's concept art.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Alanko, who also composed music for the first Control game and other Remedy titles, shared his process for creating the music fans hear in Remedy's sequel.

"You wouldn’t believe, but quite often everything starts a little like that old Simpson yelling at a cloud meme, but in my case it’s more staring at the clouds instead," Alanko joked, adding that it's really about thinking and trying to find an interesting approach.

The composer went on to talk about the "transparency culture" at Remedy, revealing that every time the studio births a new game concept, it "has a habit of telling the whole company about it" in the form of a well-rehearsed presentation, and Control Resonant's was no different.

"That, by the way, separates Remedy from many others; the amount of detail and level of depth is unparalleled," Alanko said. "Very unique. One would think they already have everything ready, albeit we’re only taking the first steps."

When discussing what helps his composer mind come up with ideas, he explained that he typically leans toward Remedy's concept art, because they "tell a story, and they usually are really, really beautiful."

Alanko shared that he has synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon that causes sensory crossovers, such as tasting colors or feeling sounds, and in his case enables him to hear sounds when looking at pictures.

"Those pictures have a 'sound' in my head, and following those intuitional sources often bring me a few melodies, harmonies… a feeling, actually," the composer explained. "To be able to hear music requires the background concept story as well as a presentation, and the pictures. I rely heavily on that. Plus, as a composer, I’ve always been an outsider and felt like I’m just watching everything from a distance, an observer, if you like.

"That feeling combined with the ability to 'hear' pictures - synesthesia, to be exact - are my go-to tools at the ground zero point."

Control Resonant is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

New details about Grand Theft Auto 6 have emerged ahead of the game's launch, courtesy of an exclusive cover story by Game Informer, confirming even more gameplay features and immersive systems that will bring Leonida and Vice City to life.

There's a lot to unpack, from an expansive open world to an array of side activities to engage with, and the ability to post on social media and doomscroll, but I've put together the top five things that stood out.

1. A map bigger and better than ever before

GTA 6's world, which consists of six primary regions including Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia, and Mount Kalaha National Park, all culminates in a massive open world that Rockstar Games has ever created "by some degree," according to Rockstar North co-studio head Aaron Garbut.

Essentially, it's twice as big as GTA 5's world, and is more dense, populated, and interactive.

"This new world is different," Garbut said. "We obsessed about every part – the rooftops, the alleys, the internals and everything in between to the point we hit a critical mass with the numbers of our interiors, and you start to feel the buildings are more real inside and out. This world is a cohesive whole with the density of content and a hand-crafted quality to every bit."

2. An improved weather system

GTA 6 will bring realism to the next level and offer a brand new "re-engineered" dynamic and localized weather system, and players will experience everything from hot, sunny weather to rain showers, lightning storms, and more. Puddles will also remain on the ground after the rain passes, realistic rainbows will appear in the sky, and lighting will change depending on the situation.

"We have re-engineered our weather system to make everything much more localized and persistent, and really wanted the world to feel dynamically solid and achieve a sense of scale we haven't felt before," said Rockstar's VP of art for lighting and rendering, Owen Shepherd.

"The world features new fully dynamic cloudscapes that roll across the map; these give us a broad spectrum of weather from the clear blue skies of a Miami winter to the vertiginous cumulonimbus clouds with sporadic lighting that you see most afternoons in the Floridian summer and autumn."

3. Sooo many animals

Similar to Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA 6 will feature a wide variety of animals, including dogs you can pet, with Rockstar confirming 170 animal species in total.

Many of these are Leonida-native species that have never appeared in a Rockstar Games title, including over 60 bird types, more than 30 land mammals, various fish, reptiles, and more.

Rockstar vice president of dynamic art Michael Kane revealed that the game will feature creatures like flamingos, pelicans, and alligators; these are just a few of what players will encounter.

"Florida has a diverse animal ecosystem that we wanted to faithfully include across the different biomes in Leonida – urban and rural environs, aquatic life both inland and ocean, and the wetland habitats like the swamps and Everglades," Kane said. "The animal art and population teams are incredibly passionate about delivering animals that are accurately researched and look visually correct in every respect, alongside the supporting movement and animation to bring them to life."

4. More authentic NPCs and a passion for fashion

As we've seen from the trailers and gameplay presentation, GTA 6 will have a ridiculous number of handcrafted non-player characters (NPCs)— with over 600,000 animations combined—and will bring a new sense of realism to Vice City.

Rockstar has previously confirmed that the studio established a new Los Angeles-based team of writers, directors, and producers to focus solely on realizing non-player characters; according to Kane in Game Informer's interview, it was a "huge artist-driven effort" to make them "authentic and representative in service to both the story requirements and so that the entire Leonida map feels visually diverse and believable."

NPCs will now have different heights, skin and body types, individual features, with Kane adding that Rockstar "paid a crazy amount of attention" to making culturally correct tattoo styles that fit Leonida's diverse communities and regions, with hair and fashion also being heavily considered.

"We’ve been able to really go hard on that with creating the biggest range of garments and accessories we’ve ever made – supported with rich, realistic materials," Kane said.

"That surfacing includes color, patterns and branding that are both area-appropriate, but also tied to context (states of dirt/weathering and fitment) for the characters themselves and their social situation and how they inhabit Leonida. Shoes, sneakers, and colorways that we know carry cultural weight as items – likewise watches, sunglasses, or hats."

5. Robberies and the wanted system

As we've seen in the gameplay footage, players can take control of either Lucia or Jason. This applies across the game, including for heists and robberies.

However, alongside a six-star Wanted system, Rockstar has introduced a new "Heat" system that means cops can gather information on the co-protagonist's appearance, including their clothes, hairstyle, and the vehicle they're driving.

Changing Lucia and Jason's appearance and ditching their vehicle can help players lose cops, but separating the pair can give them a better advantage by splitting the cops' attention.

However, getting arrested will result in a "Busted" screen even if the other protagonist gets away, so players need to think carefully about their escape plans.

• 007 First Light update 1.3.0 and the game's first free Extended Operations downloadable content (DLC) is now live
• The DLC adds New Game Plus, Photo Mode, a new mission, a difficulty level, and the long-awaited Valhalla Protocol
• A host of other gameplay improvements and bug fixes also arrive with the patch

007 First Light's first major free downloadable content (DLC) has officially rolled out, delivering all-new playable content and huge improvements across the board.

With Update 1.3.0, IO Interactive has launched the Extended Operations DLC, which includes some of the most highly requested features fans have asked for since the game's release earlier this year, including New Game Plus, Photo Mode, and a brand-new "00" difficulty level "for those ready to show they’ve truly earned the number."

The new Jungle Heist mission is another new addition to the game, where players return to The Pearl villa in Vietnam to recover special documents, as well as the long-awaited Valhalla Protocol, where players drive the Aston Martin Valhalla once more in an action-packed side activity.

"Take the wheel of Bond's most heavily armed ride and cut loose on the open road, with machine guns and missile launchers at your command," IOI said in the patch notes. "In TacSim you will now find the new Activity, which brings you to the scenic landscape of Slovakia, where you can show off your best driving skills and aim for the highest score."

More TacSim weapons, like the Storm 12 Gauge and Squire Marksman Rifle, have also been added, and three new Bond outfits are now available, alongside a new IOI Account reward, The Grey Standard outfit, which players can claim until November 1, and a separate Twitch Drop outfit available from today until October 16.

To celebrate seven million game wishlists, players can also meet the newest member of the MI6 HQ personnel, Jack the Bulldog, "a distinguished and charming resident offering support in the form of his presence," and yes, you can pet him.

Extended Operations also "brings over 700 fixes and improvements to the game," which covers everything from crashes and progression blockers to "refined weapon handling animations across the arsenal," and more.

Swedish homeware titan IKEA has joined forces with Xbox to create what might be the perfect gaming collection. The YXSTABY range is quirky and playful, but doesn't forget the practical considerations of gamer furniture. Many of the pieces are on castors so they can be wheeled into place when needed and tucked away when not, and plenty have hidden pockets, slings and compartments to stash your gaming gear neatly.

If you'd rather make a feature of your kit, the wall-mountable, mirrored display boxes will show your controllers off from every angle. I'm a particular fan of the storage unit that doubles as a side table — again on castors for easy wheeling. You can slide the casing to reveal your gaming gear or hide it away.

To create the collection, the designers drew inspiration from the Xbox controller. The D-pad features in a lap cushion and on a decorative platter, and — less subtly — the thumbstick has been transformed into a stool. (TechRadar's James Pickard had a chance to sit on one when the collection was unveiled at Gamescom and insists that despite being completely absurd, it's "more comfortable than it looks".)

The YXSTABY range is finally available to buy today — scroll down to check out the full collection.

US: YXSTABY collection

UK: YXSTABY collection

• CD Projekt Red originally wanted to add Geralt's silver chain to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but there were technological constraints
• Songs of the Past game director Jakub Rokosz says modern tech allowed the team to finally add it in the upcoming expansion
• Rokosz says the 11-year time difference between the base game and Songs of the Past has made a huge difference

CD Projekt Red couldn't implement Geralt's silver chain in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt due to technological constraints, but modern technology finally allowed it to add the weapon in the upcoming Songs of the Past expansion.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Jakub Rokosz, Fool's Theory CEO, Songs of the Past game director, and former Witcher 3 senior quest designer, explained that the chain, which first appeared in the first Witcher game, was something CDPR originally "always wanted to bring" to the third installment.

"There were numerous conversations that we [had where we] would want to do the chain even during the base game, but it was impossible from a technological standpoint to do it properly," Rokosz said. "Back then, the way the combat, the targeting, the camera, the enemies were implemented, it would require too much of an overhaul just for one feature."

CDPR didn't have the tools to overhaul these features for one weapon; however, working on the remaster and Songs of the Past with today's updated tech allowed the team to bring the chain to life.

"When we started working on Songs of the Past and the remaster at the same time, we knew that we were going to be touching up on various things, and all of a sudden the chain became a reality," the developer said.

"Also, one other thing is that the physics and animation technology had to go a little bit forward in time. And trust me, 11 years is a lot of difference. So now we were actually able to make the animations of the chain feel very natural, very fluid, and simulated very easily. Whereas 11 years ago, we would probably have to animate it by hand, with all the animations."

Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki added that, "from a practical standpoint," it's challenging to work with so many animations for a huge game like The Witcher 3.

"When it comes to the remaster, it's a lot of things already, so you can focus on new things, right? And this was a good opportunity for the chain," Anetaki said. "I think it's a really cool weapon."

Geralt's crossbow can be switched out for the silver chain, and players can use it on flying enemies, enemies in water, and for crowd control, with Anetaki saying she thinks fans will love it.

"It's a very versatile weapon, and I think it's gonna fulfill that butcher fantasy for a lot of people, especially those who have read the books and are imagining a badass Geralt with a chain. I think it's gonna be very good for them," she said.

Rokosz added that it was important to make sure the chain wasn't "a gimmick item" you get in Songs of the Past and wanted it to be "a very important piece" of a witcher's arsenal that can be used in the base game and previous expansions, with Anetaki saying that it is something that is "woven into the narrative."

Songs of the Past doesn't have a release date yet, but it's slated to launch in 2027.

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt lead writer Marcin Blacha has explained what it takes to create a worthwhile Witcher remake
• He says CD Projekt Red needs to "stay true to the spirit" of the original game
• However, the remake has to appeal to a new audience using modern technology

CD Projekt Red VP of narration and story director Marcin Blacha has revealed the secret to making a worthwhile Witcher remake, and it's about balancing what made the original game good with appealing to a new audience.

During a panel at Logitech Play 2026 attended by TechRadar Gaming, Blacha, who was a lead writer on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, explained that the studio needs to "stay true" to the 2007 original, but also design a fresh experience for gamers who didn't play it.

"The secret is to identify what was good in the original game, and find a way to retell it to the audience that, for some reason, cannot participate in this experience," Blacha said. "Those are two different things, and each of them is difficult on its own, because it's not that easy sometimes to recreate this experience."

The writer went on to discuss what the studio calls "Act Four" of The Witcher 1, which takes place in a rural lakeside region "that is very folklorish" and "full of beautiful landscapes," but said it's difficult to recreate that feeling again because it's a different experience for every player and can be "a little bit vague."

"To create a good remake, you need to identify what was good and find a way to recreate it using newer technology, [while] staying true to the spirit of the original game," Blacha added.

The Witcher remake is in development at Fool's Theory and will utilize Unreal Engine 5, as CD Projekt Red is currently all hands on deck making The Witcher 4, the first game in a new trilogy of Witcher games that it wants to release within a six-year time frame.

CDPR has also just launched The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, which offers a massive collection of improvements that promise an entirely new experience for the decade-old role-playing game (RPG).

• We can exclusively reveal 'Sibling Theme' from Control Resonant's official soundtrack
• The track represents Jesse and Dylan's bond and is a "subset of the origin theme"
• Composer Petri Alanko says the track "carries the emotions, as if it soothes and comforts the siblings’ dented childhood memories"

Remedy Entertainment's Control Resonant has launched on PC and consoles, and to mark the release, we've got a track from its official soundtrack to debut exclusively for fans.

The 'Sibling Theme' represents the bond between Control and Control Resonant protagonists Jesse and Dylan, with composer Petri Alanko describing it as a "subset of the origin theme," which you can now listen to on YouTube.

"If you listen to the instruments and the harmonies, there’s more than a vague resemblance in it," Alanko told TechRadar Gaming in an exclusive interview.

"At its core, 'Sibling Theme' was originally a much more vibrant version, an instrumental version of 'The One I Once Knew', but it just felt overwhelming under intimate childhood memory-driven sections, and I toned it down, but nothing quite clicked there, until I tested the harmonies and the melody line with just an electric piano."

Alanko, who also created the music for the first game, added that "a delicate moment needed a delicate solution," and he's pleased with how 'Sibling Theme' "carries the emotions, as if it soothes and comforts the siblings’ dented childhood memories."

"The acting of the protagonists is also really one-of-a-kind when the track plays; a lot of emotions are being surfaced," he said.

In addition to our exclusive reveal of 'Sibling Theme', fans can also listen to the official soundtrack on all available music apps and YouTube, featuring 13 tracks.

"Creating a soundtrack is always a labour of love: it’s a transition into a world where dream-like events pass you by and leave their mark, maybe forever," Alanko said in a press release. "The scope of Control Resonant was well beyond everything I have been involved with, so were the emotions under the surface.

"It was incredibly intense trying to hold back tears when the twists and turns were thrown at you, and emotionally Control Resonant went deeper under my skin than I expected. Under the action, it is a story about devotion, dedication, and determination."

Control Resonant is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Rainbow Six Tactics game director Martial Potron says it was "crucial" that the development team designed a unique roster of Operators
• Each of the 15 Operators has unique gadgets, playstyles, and progression to avoid "overlap"
• He says it would have been "impossible" not to feature fan favorites like Ash and Sledge

Rainbow Six Tactics game director Martial Potron has said that it was important for Ubisoft to design the game's Operators with unique loadouts and progression to avoid overlap.

"My team really wanted the operators to feel unique and to serve unique places," Potron told TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom. "It was part of the creative process to make sure that every Operator would serve one turf course in the experience, so we really made sure that all Operators were unique: unique gadgets, unique playstyles, unique progression. It was crucial for us, in fact, that we didn't have too much overlap with other Operators."

The upcoming turn-based tactics spin-off will offer 15 Operators in total, with Ash, Sledge, Glaz, Montagne, Doc, and Nokk confirmed so far, and you won't be able to play them repeatedly due to the game's new gameplay systems. While that's far from the entire roster fans are familiar with in the core series, Potron explained that it was also important to include "community favorites."

"We really did the operators that were impossible not to have, [like] Sledge and Ash," the game director said, adding that there are a few that he's personally disappointed aren't included.

"I love Tachanka. We don't have Tachanka; we don't have Lion." Potron said. "We had to make [tough] choices. It's part of my job to make [tough] choices."

As for the possibility of adding more Operators in the future, Potron said there are no current plans to do so, saying, "For the launch, it's not something we are digging into. We are very close to releasing a fantastic single-player experience, and so [we're] focused on the release date; shipping something amazing, and we'll see [about] the future."

Rainbow Six Tactics releases in 2027 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered's patch notes have been released
• The update will offer all-new animations and an improved skill system
• A new accessibility preset called Bard's Ballad also offers a more tailored gameplay experience

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered is officially here, and CD Projekt Red has released the long list of improvements that promise an entirely new experience for the decade-old role-playing game (RPG).

The patch notes detail a ton of upgrades, from better visuals, transmogrification, an expanded photo mode, updated textures, PS5 Pro support, and more. Some pretty impressive animation improvements that are sure to make my new playthrough feel even more immersive have also been added. Geralt's animations during combat, idling, and riding Roach have all been refined; new finishers have also been added, and ladder climbing, jumping, and vaulting are now "more responsive" and "fluid."

The skill system has also been completely rebalanced, and " Skills are now organized into a skill tree, and each skill has three ranks," while others have been renamed to better reflect their effects, and I can't wait to try out new builds.

One of the most notable additions to the remaster, included in the accessibility features, is the Bard's Ballad preset, which can be enabled when starting a new game on "Just the Story" difficulty or mid-game.

"It is designed to reduce cognitive load for players who experience mental fatigue or have difficulty concentrating," CDPR explained. "It streamlines gameplay by simplifying certain mechanics and disabling select features for a smoother, more focused adventure."

On top of that, players can customize the preset by enabling or disabling some options that I've always wanted and would normally need mods for. Those options include Vitality Regeneration Boost, Infinite Breath, Unlimited Item Durability, Unlimited Boat Durability, Faster Boats, Toggle Witcher Sense, and probably my favorite out of the bunch, Ignore Item Weight.

I typically play on normal or higher difficulties in The Witcher 3, but for my latest playthrough I'm quite eager to try out the Bard's Ballad preset for the added customization that comes with it.

There are plenty more quality-of-life, modding, UI/UX, gameplay, and visual improvements to discover in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered, which is now available and is free for current owners of the game. Players who also own only the base game can claim the two included expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, at no extra cost.

• The Golden Joystick Awards 2026 nominations have been announced
• Voting is open now until October 23, with winners to be revealed on November 11
• The nominations include some of our favorite games of the year, including Resident Evil Requiem and 007 First Light

The nominees for the 44th annual Golden Joystick Awards have been officially announced across 21 categories, with games like Resident Evil Requiem, Big Walk, and 007 First Light leading nominations.

Public voting is now live and will remain open until October 23 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET / 0:00am BST. Fans can vote for their favourite games of 2026 in 21 categories, including Console Game of the Year, PC Game of the Year, Most Wanted Game, and more.

Winners will be revealed during the ceremony on November 11, with the Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist to be announced on October 26.

"With the hugely-anticipated GTA 6 set to launch a week after our live show, the 44th annual Golden Joystick Awards is delighted to share its most diverse and creative nominees line-up yet," said Daniel Dawkins, content director of Golden Joystick Awards at Future.

"Indie hits Big Walk, Dispatch and Mina the Hollower sit alongside AAA blockbusters such as 007 First Light, Forza Horizon 6 and Resident Evil Requiem. This year, no single game dominates the field, this is one of our most open and unpredictable years yet - making your vote more influential than ever in deciding our winners. We’re thrilled to debut a new look for the Golden Joystick Awards, embracing the iconic joystick trophy that traces all the way back to our inception in 1983. Gaming has changed so much in the following 43 years, but not the creativity and determination of those who sacrifice so much to share the games we love so much."

The Golden Joystick Awards 2026 - Nominations

Console Game of the Year

• 007 First Light
• Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave
• Forza Horizon 6
• LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight
• Nioh 3
• Onimusha: Way of the Sword
• Pokémon Pokopia
• PRAGMATA
• Resident Evil Requiem
• Saros

PC Game of the Year

• Big Walk
• Crimson Desert
• Escape from Tarkov
• Esoteric Ebb
• MECCHA CHAMELEON
• Mewgenics
• Order of the Sinking Star
• Star Wars Zero Company
• The Blood of Dawnwalker
• Valheim

Best Audio Design

• Big Walk
• Marathon
• Onimusha: Way of the Sword
• Rhythm Heaven Groove
• SAROS
• Star Wars: Galactic Racer

Best Early Access Game

• Dead as Disco
• MENACE
• skate.
• Slay the Spire 2
• Subnautica 2
• WARDOGS

Best Game Adaptation

• Devil May Cry (Season 2)
• Exit 8
• Fallout (Season 2)
• Iron Lung
• Mortal Kombat II
• Resident Evil

Best Game Expansion

• Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven
• DAVE THE DIVER - In the Jungle Content Pack
• DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations
• Quake: Dawn of the Machine
• The Alters: Last Variable
• World of Warcraft: Midnight

Best Game Trailer

• Battlefield 6 x Top Gun: Carrier Strike Cinematic Trailer
• Big Walk - Release Date Announcement
• Cairn - Launch Trailer
• MOUSE: P.I. For Hire | Official Launch Trailer
• Prove You're Human - Announcement Trailer
• Resident Evil Requiem - Evil Has Always Had A Name

Best Gaming Hardware

• Logitech G PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE
• Razer Viper V4 Pro
• Secretlab ATLAS
• Sony INZONE M10S II
• Steam Controller
• Turtle Beach Stealth Pro II

Best Indie Game

• Big Walk
• Denshattack!
• Esoteric Ebb
• Mixtape
• Mouse: P.I. for Hire
• Order of the Sinking Star
• REANIMAL
• Sovereign Tower
• Titanium Court
• Valheim

Best Indie Game - Self-published

• Cairn
• Fields of Mistria
• MECCHA CHAMELEON
• Mewgenics
• Mina the Hollower
• Perfect Tides: Station to Station
• Phonopolis
• Rhythm Doctor
• The Incident at Galley House
• Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors

Best Lead Performer

• Aaron Paul - Robert Robertson III, Dispatch
• Angela Sant'Albano - Grace Ashcroft, Resident Evil Requiem
• Anna Demetriou - Sophia, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy
• Liam McIntyre - Wolverine, Marvel's Wolverine
• Patrick Gibson - James Bond, 007 First Light
• Will de Renzy-Martin - Coen, The Blood of Dawnwalker

Best Supporting Performer

• Frankie Kevich - Zoe de Vera, Control Resonant
• Grace Saif - Diana, Pragamata
• Lennie James - John Greenway, 007 First Light
• Terry O'Quinn - Richard, Silent Hill: Townfall
• Troy Baker - Nathaniel Essex, Marvel's Wolverine
• Vic Michaelis - Runa Blask, Star Wars Zero Company

Best Multiplayer Game

• ARC Raiders
• Big Walk
• Marathon
• MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls
• MECCHA CHAMELEON
• Valheim

Best Remake / Remaster

• Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced
• Gothic 1 Remake
• Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.2
• Star Fox
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered
• Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter

Best Soundtrack

• 007 First Light
• Crimson Desert
• Dispatch
• Lumines Arise
• Mewgenics
• Mixtape

Best Storytelling

• 007 First Light
• Dispatch
• Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave
• Silent Hill: Townfall
• The Blood of Dawnwalker
• ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies

Best Visual Design

• Control Resonant
• Forza Horizon 6
• Orbitals
• Phonopolis
• Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy
• Saros

Most Wanted Game

• Alien: Isolation 2
• ANANTA
• Black Myth: Zhong Kui
• EXODUS
• Fable
• Final Fantasy 7 Revelation
• God of War Laufey
• Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet
• Kingdom Hearts 5
• METRO 2039
• NO LAW
• Persona 6
• Resident Evil Veronica
• STRANGER THAN HEAVEN
• Stuntman: Hollywood
• The Expanse: Osiris Reborn
• The Witcher 4
• Tides of Annihilation
• Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis
• Total War: Warhammer 40,000

Still Playing - Mobile

• Balatro
• Genshin Impact
• Honkai: Star Rail
• MARVEL SNAP
• MONOPOLY GO!
• NTE: Neverness to Everness
• Old School RuneScape
• Pokémon GO
• Roblox
• Sky: Children of the Light
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Mobile
• Wuthering Waves

Still Playing - PC & Console

• Apex Legends
• Fortnite
• GTA Online
• HELLDIVERS 2
• HITMAN World of Assassination
• Minecraft
• No Man's Sky
• Palworld
• The Elder Scrolls Online
• Warframe
• World of Warcraft
• Call of Duty: Warzone

Studio of the Year

• CAPCOM
• Frogwares
• House House
• IO Interactive
• Nintendo EPD
• SQUARE ENIX

• Fable associate game directors Craig Littler and Will Kennedy say British humour is a "crucial" part of the reboot
• They say it's presented in all systems, from story to dialogue and combat
• Playground Games made sure to steer away "from anything that's too crude"

Playground Games has said its Fable reboot will feature the series' iconic British humour across all systems, but it avoided anything overly "crude."

During a press Q&A at Gamescom, attended by TechRadar, associate game director Craig Littler said British humour "is a core part of the Fable DNA" and the decision to bring it forward into Playground's reboot "has been a crucial thing that we're always thinking about, because for us it has to be interwoven throughout the entire game."

"It's not just in the story. It's not just in the dialogue, but you even see flourishes of it in the combat," Littler said, before talking about the spell that lets players turn enemies into chickens, which he laughs about every time.

"It's hilarious," he added, saying, "We believe that the core idea of Fable is that the humor is [shown] throughout."

Associate game director Will Kennedy said that even when enemies turn back from a chicken, they'll still flap around for a while, which is visually funny but also gives players the opportunity to land some attacks.

"To us, tone is something that we're thinking about all the time and in every system, really," Kennedy said. "Any opportunity to add that fabled British tone of humor."

The directors also said the team thought deeply about how to present the humour, particularly for a modern audience; not every joke or gag will land the same for everyone, and the humor in the older Fable titles may be outdated, and they made sure not to feature anything too rude.

"For us, we've steered away from anything that's too crude," Littler confirmed, "and I think the real test for Fable when it comes to the tone is that it does just have to be funny, and that comes from really great writing, having a brilliant narrative team, and honestly the actors that we've hired as well."

Those actors include British stars and comedians like Hayley Atwell, Matt King, Natasia Demetriou, and more, with Littler saying they "really bring themselves to the role and are also capable of the sincerity that really gets to the heart of fairy tales as well. You want somebody who has that humour, but can really deliver an enormous performance as well."

He also teased some improvisation from the cast, explaining that the actors are given a solid script, but do give them "some latitude" for some improv.

"At the end of the day, they're great British comedians," he added. "Sometimes they're going to say something that's just pure gold. So yes, there is some latitude, and absolutely we reuse it when we can."

Fable launches on launch on February 23, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Rainbow Six Tactics game director Martial Potron says Mario + Rabbids helped the team understand "the metrics of tactics"
• He says it borrowed the "DNA" of the series, and it was a different experience from working on Ghost Recon
• Potron adds that he had to change his developer habits when working on
• Rainbow Six Tactics

Rainbow Six Tactics game director Martial Potron has said the development team borrowed the "DNA" of the studio's turn-based game series, Mario + Rabbids, for tactical level design inspiration.

"Mario + Rabbids helped us shape some parts," Potron told TechRadar Gaming in a recent interview about the upcoming Siege spin-off. "The team, especially the level design team that came from Mario + Rabbids, really helped us to understand the metrics of tactics."

The game director explained that, instead of keeping in line with the series' first-person style, the team chose a turn-based tactics genre because it felt that Rainbow Six's DNA is already "tactical."

Speaking more on inspiration, Potron explained that some of the "core rules" for him as someone who worked on Ghost Recon are to design an experience that players would expect; "smoke and mirrors," as he puts it, in terms of lethality or enemy behaviors to "make the experience cinematographic," but the turn-based tactics genre is different.

"In tactical, everything is very precise," he said. "It's pure. It's like chess. So we had to change a bit of our mindset to adjust to this philosophy."

Poltron continued: "This is a bit of a paradigm shift for us in terms of habits. It's 15 years of my habits that I need to shift."

Rainbow Six Tactics launches in 2027 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

The Alien universe is incredibly rich and full of lore, and 2014's Alien: Isolation is a more than worthy addition to the pantheon of storytelling within it. It's a fantastic horror game, but also one that captures the setting, vibes, and atmosphere of the first Alien movie brilliantly well. But it's been 12 years (and counting) since it was released, and with a sequel being shown off this year, now's as good a time as any to celebrate the original.

I've spoken to the Alien: Isolation 2 developers twice this summer, and despite not being a huge horror fan, I am a big Alien fan, and it got me really hyped for the game. It also got me thinking: how much do I really remember about the first terrifying-but-excellent experience?

Well, both quite a lot, but also not as much as I thought. It turns out, so I made this quiz to see if that was the same for other players of the first game.

Good luck!

Did you survive our Alien: Isolation quiz? What did you think of it? Let us know in the comments as well as any other games we should make quizzes on.