It's a really good weekend for video games, unlike every other weekend we've had this year which have vacillated between good and great... look – it's already been a good year for video games. I don't know what to tell you. But, I will say that 007 First Light is really good, and so is Mina the Hollower.

007 First Light is not a bad game, it's just an uninspiring one—clumsy and awkward and constantly drawing comparisons between itself and other games that achieve its aims much better. It's a very good Bond tale wrapped in a game that veers between unexceptional and ungainly, and whose genuine moments of brilliance don't make up for its long runs of overfamiliarity.

James Bond has a long history in video games, but his quality missions are far fewer and farther between. I’m happy to report that 007 First Light can join the ranks of successful outings, offering a new and original take on the character that is both fresh and rooted in a deep understanding of the man and the fiction. While the game mostly features enjoyable interactive ideas, its mechanics occasionally threaten to dampen the excellent cinematic flow.

007 First Light is Bond's best game yet thanks to smart design decisions that make this a well-rounded spy thriller. Merging together moments of blockbuster spectacle with slower-paced stealth, this understands the appeal of spycraft and is able to deliver the fantasy in ways no other game can. Starring a young James Bond, this origin story can sometimes feel like just a beginning – but what a way for this spy's career to kick off.

007 First Light might just be the best James Bond game ever. The way IOI has translated the Bond fantasy into a 14-hour globetrotting epic is masterful. It's a game full of spectacle, humour, action, and romance.

It's not perfect, but 007 First Light is a mostly great start to IO Interactive's all-new take on the James Bond universe.

007 First Light is less cerebral and replayable than IO's World of Assassination trilogy, but makes up for it with excellent fistfights and oodles of charm.

It is remarkable, then, that I can't stop thinking about a tutorial montage in the early moments of 007 First Light. It's one of the most engaging and effective tutorials I've ever played, and it's all thanks to what it pulls from popular action movies. The scene in question comes when Bond is thrust into training camp with other trainees in the 00 program.

Here is a game that feels like an adventure. And it feels like it was an adventure to make, too. Mina the Hollower took six years to design and build, six years that took it from what sounds like a kind of coding doodle to a panoramic journey across a richly imagined island, taking in platforming and combat, puzzle-solving, and sheer immersion in the world building.

Mina is a gloriously gothic combination of ferocious combat and beautiful scenery, with enough secrets and modifiers to keep the game fresh and fun for a very long time.

Yes, Mina the Hollower is a love letter to Game Boy Zelda titles. It's also a 2D Soulslike, a top-down Castlevania, and somehow, something all its own. You can probably find a precedent for every mechanic here, to the point where it's almost impossible to discuss Mina the Hollower without invoking other games.

Despite Shovel Knight’s myriad spin-offs and continued ubiquity in the indie game space, it’s been more than a decade since developer Yacht Club Games delivered something wholly new. And maybe calling Mina the Hollower entirely “new” is a misnomer, as it is a reverential showcase of beloved game design and visual ideas from the past and present, all arranged into something that manages to be unique and nostalgic at the same time. Mina is not without its frustrations, but its density of discoveries, sense of place, and heartfelt story and characters all deliver an experience I was thinking about often whenever I wasn’t playing.

Mina the Hollower is a game in the Zelda tradition. It's a top-down affair like the original games, and while Mina can jump, they jump just like Link does in - hey! - Link's Awakening. They jump up into the space above the screen, as it were, and you need to use their shadow to work out where they are so you can collect things hovering about them and then stick the landing.

To golf, I press Tab, which pulls the camera back to give me a full-body, third-person view of my FMV golf-self as additional UI panels accumulate on-screen. One represents my character's body, letting me swing my club by clicking and dragging my hands, determining the swing's power and contact angle with the ball based on my speed and movement. It's imprecise, but it's manageable after some trial and error.

At its core Modern Warfare 4 is a faster, more ferocious shooter. New movement abilities allow you to seamlessly roar through the maps, quickly vaulting over obstacles for firefights or navigating the map in interesting ways.

Mechanicus 2 is a decent strategy game, but the original was a vibe, as the kids say—if the kids spent a lot of time playing turn-based tactics games where cybernetic zealots fought robot mummies.

My mom would tell me not to count my chickens before they've hatched, but the Paralives roadmap reads like my life sim dreams come true. The only problem is that it's a little hard to follow between a sparse infographic and a detailed Notion outline, but that's easy enough for me to solve and present here.

Paralives takes a different tack; opting for a sort of cosy-game-adjacent level of lower-stress, lower-stakes tranquility. It's an ambience reflected in its aesthetic, as Paralives Studio adopts a muted, sketchbook-watercolour artstyle that's just inherently more chilled, and a soundtrack that can be similarly lo-fi. And it's there in the design of Paralives' relatively expansive open(ish)-world map too.

I suspect this is intentional, but so much of what is shown off is the kind of stuff I've wished to see in The Sims for years. Tiny quality-of-life tweaks here, or mind-bogglingly absent features in The Sims that are happily present in Paralives' early access launch.

Life Below sees you restoring a dying sea floor, yet it makes for a surprisingly cosy city builder filled with touches of vibrant life

007: First Light is everything a Bond game should be and a true spectacle, taking inspiration from the biggest hits with sharp dialogue, inventive gadgets, classic cars, satisfying stealth, a great cast, and huge action set pieces.

But 007: First Light isn't that. In fact it's quite the opposite: this is a very straightforward, really quite old school, linear third-person stealth-action game - at times, during my demo, so linear it's essentially on rails. If you were hoping for the Hitman-but-Bond version, that might sound a little disappointing - I think it is a tad myself - but once you get your head around it, things look better.

This is already an overlong preview. I’ve been writing about games for a long time, and usually such a transcript only runs away with you in two scenarios: when something is shaping up to be rubbish, or when something is shaping up to be truly special. Three hours have convinced me that First Light is likely to be the latter – I really hope IOI sticks the landing next month.

At times, you can't help but wonder if it's actually, really, possible to nail James Bond in this way. Great emphasis and great care - in many ways to already great success - has been placed on understanding and recreating the ineffable Bond-ness of the licence. That goes from the casting decisions to the story to the way Bond moves and talks; the way the game's mechanics are constructed; the tiny, missable moments of craft across animation, sound, music, lighting.

Amanita says Phonopolis is "loosely inspired by the works of Karel Čapek and George Orwell," and the game is not exactly subtle in that regard. Class is strictly enforced in the world of Phonopolis, the population is kept docile (and relentlessly monitored) by telescreens, wrongthink is ruthlessly punished, and the whole thing is shot through with the presence of The Leader, a near-mythical Big Brother figure to whom everyone owes everything.

Phonopolis is a point-and-click adventure that tells the tale of Felix, a garbage collector living in a city ruled by an authoritarian 'Leader' who controls the populace with messages blared through omnipresent loudspeakers. Felix one day discovers a headset that enables him to blot out the noise and break free of the Leader's influence; he quickly comes to recognize the threat it presents, and thus sets out—somewhat reluctantly—to thwart the Leader's ambitions before the arrival of the Absolute Tone, which will strip every citizen of their minds, freedom, and humanity forever.

Dawn of War is now a roleplaying game. It's a strategy game too, but it feels as if RPG is the dominant—if beardy and dice-juggling—gene.

And so the curtain has closed on BitSummit for another year, as indie developers and publishers from all around the world pack up their booths and head back to their respective studios. BitSummit has become increasingly popular with each annual event, and the huge queue of attendees snaking right around the Miyako Messe exhibition hall in Kyoto (as seen in the image above) was evidence that this year’s show was surely the most well-attended yet.

My Arms Are Longer Now is being published by Jackbox Games. Yes, the people who make the Jackbox games are called Jackbox Games, and this is their first step into publishing a game developed by other people. Those other people are Toot Games, a studio founded by Matthew Jackson and Millie Holten, who you may know from the Aunty Donna-adjacent actual-play series Trope RPG and the reality-adjacent web animation Long Head.

Mop’n Spark is certainly a change in tone, then, given its cutesy pixel graphics, but it’s got an interesting gameplay mechanic that makes me keen to check out the full game when it’s ready. The city has been plunged into darkness by pollution monsters, so it’s up to a street cleaner called Bepp and an electrician called Gola to save the day. Bepp can use his cleaning tools (like his titular mop) to kill the pollution monsters on each stage, while Gola uses her expertise as a sparky to fix the broken power lines and turn the lights back on.

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we've been playing. This week, Bertie enjoys digital characters' musculature; Connor goes on a trip and discovers he's possibly the nosiest person around; and Kelsey goes diving. What have you been playing this week?

Every summer, indie developers from all around the world arrive in Kyoto to showcase their upcoming games at the BitSummit festival. As the show’s Western media partner, VGC is here once again here to check out BitSummit’s 14th iteration, and now that the first day is over, here’s my recap of some of the more interesting titles I played.

Rather than control a single character, as you pick up weapons, you assemble a small squad, all of whom act independently of you. You can see a little of this in the new Warhammer Survivors' trailer that announces two new characters, Arbites Vigilant and their cyber-mastiff.

“A large portion of Resynced remains super, super faithful.” Said Fu. He tells me that when the project was in its earliest stages, he created a 100-page document based on his thoughts on the original game. He describes what his team has done as “additive, not edited.”

Mouseward is an N64-inspired soulslike from Finite Reflection Studios. In it, you play a royal knight resurrected by a fallen star—only, the stars have kinda messed everything up. All the cosy and cute woodland animals are, at present, under the thumb of decidedly uncosy things like indentured servitude, starvation, and the "restless"—undead who aren't anywhere near as smart or adorable as you are.

Final Thoughts While Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen is hardly going to ignite the thirst of adventure within an adult, its slavishly perfect presentation and gentle experience will undoubtedly be a massive hit where it matters. It’s this kid-centric notion that continuously has me striking out my negative impressions. Is the movement a bit slow? Sure, but it’s likely going to sit perfectly for a little set of hands.

Built on the latest iteration of the in-house Anvil engine (the same tech powering Assassin’s Creed Shadows), this remake isn’t just a simple coat of paint. From my short time at the helm, it is a massive mechanical, narrative, and technological overhaul designed to deliver the ultimate swashbuckling fantasy.

Resynced is an odd collaboration of old and new. There are features from later Assassin's Creed games now worked into Black Flag's world in a way that you could easily forget they weren't there before. For instance, crouching.

Combat has not been designed around damage numbers and modifiers. As such, crammed into the Shadows engine like it is, combat feels, for lack of a better word, shonky. But there's a roughness to it that reminds me of the more chaotic action-adventure games of the 360 generation, something from that Arkham Asylum/Brutal Legend/Prototype spectrum.

But what is Resynced? Officially, it’s a "faithful remake" of Ubisoft’s much-loved 2013 pirate adventure, "totally rebuilt from the ground-up" using the latest version of the company’s Anvil Engine. Fundamentally, then, it’s the same character-driven single-player open-word adventure of old ("This is not an RPG", Ubisoft was at bizarrely great pains to stress during its reveal), following the swashbuckling, sun-kissed Caribbean adventures of charming pirate Edward Conway as he roams the tropical seas.

As much as I love a huge showcase reveal for a game I've been looking forward to, there's a special place in my heart for indie game showcases, giving me a look at hidden gems I wasn't aware of. The Six One indie showcase is a great avenue for that, and today's livestream was no exception. The whole event is worth a watch if you're curious about some unique upcoming indie projects, but these were our favorites.

But honestly, while there's undoubted pleasure to be found in the usual social rhythms of collaborative sandbox survival, and as much as I've enjoyed the company, co-op is, I think, a pretty terrible way to experience Subnautica 2. Even in early access, this is a game of such carefully hewed ambience - of creeping dread and lingering melancholy, of intimate discovery and lonely survival - it doesn't feel quite right to ride roughshod over it all. And structurally, co-op is a bit of an awkward fit.

I adored the original Subnautica, so I’m pumped that the third game (Subnautica: Below Zero still exists, guys) is finally here. I don’t often put much time into Early Access titles, but I’m looking forward to exploring Subnautica 2’s depths and enduring what will likely be several jumpscares from all manner of Leviathan-class organisms lurking below. It seems I’ll be far from alone given how massively successful the launch has been, so here’s hoping the game is nothing but smooth sailing throughout its Early Access period.

The sheer coherence of Subnautica 2's early access build is also slightly miraculous, given that the developers have spent the past year in legal hell. I encountered no technical problems of note, and the distribution of resources and crafting recipes seems well judged, with codex hints and environmental cues guiding you towards rarer materials. Still, after seven hours, I do feel like I'm playing a remake rather than a sequel.

Hints of tragedy and disaster are everywhere, and after ten hours with the early access version, I'm keen to see just how all these elements - these alien creatures, this doomed world - fit together, and to learn exactly what the Pioneers' real place in all of this is. Already, even in Subnautica 2's far from finished state, it feels like there's simply so much to do; optimising crafting and base-building, locating more blackboxes to unravel, piecing together the story, and ultimately discovering what's hidden away in the ocean's complex cave networks and beyond. It's off to an encouraging start, then, and as much as I fear what's to be found later in deeper biomes, its compelling sense of discovery and mystery keeps drawing me on.

I rarely felt the tight control I wanted over the mascot character, and it’s held back by repetitive and bland level design. That this platforming is placed within a nonsensical world with threadbare characters and villains, an unsightly visual style, and terrible writing doesn’t help. Six hours of Bubsy 4D felt like an eternity – if only I could travel through the fourth dimension to get my time back.

Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core – Ghost Ship Games’ attempt at plunging the co-op FPS spelunkery of Deep Rock Galactic into an even deeper, darker pit of roguelike tension – is out today in early access. I tried it last year, during one of the early alpha playtests, and it was okay? Ish? Already a functional multi-dwarf shooter, as you’d expect from something built upon the excellent DRG, but also close enough to the original that it resembled an ambitious side-mode more than a standalone game. These days, though, Rogue Core appears to be doing a better job of carving out its own subterranean space.

Directive 8020 is Supermassive’s most ambitious choose-your-own-adventure in both tone and gameplay to date. Disappointingly, poor voice acting, boring characters and a simple gameplay loop means that it doesn’t live up to its potential.

Directive 8020 is everything you could want from a sci-fi horror game: Body horror aliens, the unwavering dread that all of us are insignificant when set against the great expanse of the universe, and fun QTEs.

Directive 8020 is a major step forward for The Dark Pictures Anthology, even if some of its weaknesses are hard to ignore. Its live stealth segments make the horror feel more tangible, its mimic premise works very well as cinematic sci-fi horror, and its crew dynamics only get stronger as the story unfolds. However, the game's tendency to make the truth too obvious weakens some of its biggest choices, while stiff animation, uneven performances, and occasionally robotic dialogue can undercut the emotion of key scenes.

Supermassive goes sci-fi horror, with a refreshingly cerebral, slowburn take on its usual popcorn thrills. It's let down by perfunctory stealth and an overfamiliar plot, but a stellar cast helps make it all worthwhile.

Supermassive steers The Dark Pictures Anthology toward brave new horizons in Directive 8020, and for the most part, the mission stays its course. The survival horror narrative, despite delivering chills and heart-stopping thrills aplenty, is often held back by pacing issues, plot armor, and the promising yet inconsistent implementation of series-first stealth. It's neither the best nor worst of the Dark Picture series, and while I had a pretty good time aboard the Cassiopeia, I might not become a frequent flyer.

Ultimately, I'm left feeling a bit confused and concerned by Directive 8020 after this showing. I hope some of the things I'm struggling with - a sense of attachment to the game and its story - are because I haven't played the opening parts of the game. After all, this series is typically strongest when you feel decisions pile upon each other and when you start to sense how many different ways the game could have gone, and when you care about the people you're trying to keep alive.

It’s not just the best Forza Horizon game – it’s the best racing game ever made.

Horizon 6’s DIY garages could be the foundation of something good in future Forzas, but at the moment I find they make for pretty uninspiring haunts. Beyond the monolithic garage doors lies a Japanese landscape dripping with authentic detail, varied biomes, and vibrant colours, but in returning home you seal yourself away from it.

Forza Horizon 5 was already an exceptional racing game, but Forza Horizon 6 takes everything up a notch to deliver an even more engaging, entertaining and all-encompassing experience. There's an absolute wealth of racing, exploring and collecting to do here, and that's before the inevitable live-service updates start adding even more content. Few games are as essential as this.

The Forza Horizon series is one of the most consistent out there. Since the original Forza Horizon released on the Xbox 360 in 2012, each entry has given racing game fans expansive open worlds to explore, full of exciting events to conquer, and objects to destroy in the name of racking up combos. Forza Horizon 6 brings the established Forza Horizon formula to Japan, and unsurprisingly, it keeps the franchise's hot streak going.

Despite some disappointing additions, Forza Horizon 6 is great enough to keep the series at the front of the racing grid.

Forza Horizon 6 doesn’t just bring the series to Japan. It finally brings Horizon home after a journey that started in Colorado, and the result is one of the best racing games of all time.

The best Forza Horizon game yet, delivering an astonishingly vast and detailed open world, filled with incredible features. With easily 100 hours of high quality solo content and infinite potential with community creations and online play, Forza Horizon 6 is a glorious showcase game for Xbox gaming. Just be warned the straight-laced racing gameplay is pretty tame compared to the genre's finest.

It's taken 14 years to get here, but I think Forza Horizon 6 finally delivers on the promises the original game made, way back in October 2012.

There’s always a moment early on in the Forza Horizon games when everything just clicks. Though that moment came a bit later for me in this sixth entry, by the time the game opened up, revealing its broad collection of offerings, I was absolutely hooked. Even for a series built on delivering approachable racing action that appeals to both newcomers and hardcore players, Forza Horizon 6 impresses at each turn, delivering one of the greatest racing games of this generation.

If the rest of the game is as good as the small taste I’ve played, we’re potentially looking at one of the year’s best. We’ll have a review of the full game nearer to its release, but at this stage everything’s on track to give Forza Horizon 5 a run for its money and take over pole position as the best open-world racing game around.

But the heart wants what it wants, and it turns out that my heart wants a 1989 Nissan Silvia K's. Here is a slick urban delight, its body the colour of evening skies that announce the arrival of a summer storm. It's the car that I chose when the campaign started, and I quickly grew to love its air of 80s-tinged menace.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is Nintendo’s most unique 2D platformer in a long time. The dinosaur’s expedition through a magical, anthropomorphic book powers along with the kind of breathless imagination typically associated with mainline Super Mario adventures, with new ideas and gameplay mechanics stretching across the margins of its pages until they run out of paper. It’s a brilliant, creatively rich sidescroller that will appeal to young children, while simultaneously offering depth and nostalgia – if not much raw challenge – to older players who remember Yoshi’s solo debut on the Super NES.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is an oddity to describe to others. Your average Yoshi-based adventure is one of predictable expectation, with your tongue-lashing lad moving from point A to point B to save the day. Mysterious Book’s casual approach to figuring things out at your own pace wormed its fingers deep into my brain – the rewarding sensation of playing this game felt more like slowly solving a Sudoku than trying to rescue my princess from another castle.

It's a game about the imagination and strange rigour that Nintendo always brings to its platformers. It's a surprise. It's a delight.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a delightfully charming platforming adventure that encourages exploration, discovery, and experimentation. With a host of curious creatures to investigate that shape the different levels and all have their own abilities, every chapter succeeds at feeling varied with plenty of surprises packed in. While narratively thin, Mysterious Book's inventive creativity makes Yoshi's welcome comeback worth your time.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is, by design, an inviting game with little challenge – a pleasant vacation where all the animals want to be friends and the soundtrack sounds like colorful bubbles bursting in front of a double rainbow. I admit I pined for the stress I associate with Yoshi taking care of a helpless baby, but this low-stakes adventure (potentially Yoshi’s lowest) does take care in making you feel acknowledged and generally rewarded in its attempt at a new style of puzzle-platformer.

From the short segment I played, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book was a pleasant surprise. Its setup feels unique among Nintendo’s other 2D platformers, and if it delivers on the early promise of systemic gameplay, it could turn out to be a real gem in Nintendo Switch 2’s 2026 line-up.

This forms the core of your Mysterious Book journey, serving as a taxonomist (I admit I only just learned this term) that wants to understand what the heck these goobers are. You’ll identify an organism, tool about with it and learn its secrets, before giving it a name and heading into the next page. Eventually you’ll start to encounter multiple critters on a page, with unique roadblocks and hazards appearing in the level that can be circumvented by leveraging your animal pals’ unique discovered traits.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight takes 87 years of Batman history and crams it into one plastic package. The result is a joyous love letter to the Caped Crusader that feels like every classic Batman movie rolled into one.

It’s only now that I’ve hit credits and immediately jumped back into its impressive open world that I see Legacy of the Dark Knight for what it truly is: the definitive Batman experience for every kind of Bat-fan. Using the Dark Knight trilogy as a narrative foundation, the campaign starts with a young Bruce wandering the gardens of Wayne Manor before a fateful night at the cinema, moves to training under Ra’s Al Ghul, and hits just about every major milestone in Batman’s crime-fighting career before things are said and done. Inspirations are drawn from all sources, with Poison Ivy’s look and mannerisms lifted from Batman and Robin, Joker’s museum scene taken from Batman 89, and the Penguin chase sequence borrowed from Matt Reeves’ The Batman.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is a new Arkham game in all but name. It combines the combat of the Rocksteady series, the open world of Arkham Knight, and a shedload of TT Games humour to create a game that Batman fans will likely love.

Hey, you! You've been complaining that not enough games use Arkham combat? Here's a game that does exactly that, and it's still got Batman in it. You just need to look past the fact this version of him is Lego-shaped, because it's the most Arkham game since the last Arkham game.

This is a Lego take on Rocksteady's Arkham games more than anything. It captures both the bumper-based 'rush-up-and-glide around an urban open world' approach, and the glorious Freeflow combat system, which is delivered here with a wonderfully brisk blend of countering, dodging, and charging up ultimates. God, Legacy of the Dark Knight loves to drop you into a fight where it's you against a whole school bus of baddies: they surround you and circle, the icons appear above their heads, the camera pulls back just so.

Every Batman video game that comes out for the rest of eternity will be measured against the Arkham titles, and Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight knows it. Rather than try to reinvent the Batwheel, however, Legacy of the Dark Knight just… lifts as much as possible and drops it into a Lego skin from combat to the open world to certain story elements, and more. And it really, really works.

Still, I am utterly delighted by Legacy of the Dark Knight. Its story is charming and effective, its combat is engaging, and its open world is top-notch. It's a no-holds-barred approach to the revered character, and though there are spots where the execution could have been better, TT Games included everything I could have asked for in one wholly entertaining package.

Greeted by Alfred as I entered the Batcave, I was almost immediately assured how wrong my initial assessment was. Not only is Legacy of the Dark Knight’s Batcave a fully explorable space, but it’s also a lovingly constructed museum dedicated to the Caped Crusader’s 87-year history.

Celebrating the storied history of the Caped Crusader, Legacy of the Dark Knight is shaping up to be one of the most endearing and downright enjoyable love letters to Batman that we’ve seen yet. The move to a more engaging combat system and the inclusion of a fully realised open-world Gotham City feel like meaningful steps forward for the series, while goofy jokes, puzzle solving, and wacky random happenings make sure that it’s an unmistakable LEGO experience through and through.

In fact, I would go so far as to affectionately dub it Arkham for kids. Just like those games, Batman and his minifigure sidekicks will need to make the most of not just their combat abilities, but also their detective skills and gadgets such as Whips and Foam Sprayers - which can be used in combat as well as exploration - to make it out in one piece. So, if you were hoping to pummel your way through levels by simply spamming a single button, you may be in for a surprise.

Despite a beautiful world and some clever mechanical flourishes, Zero Parades doesn't commit to its espionage concept enough to be convincing.

As a successor to Disco Elysium, ZA/UM's spy-fi RPG is a little too fearful to roll the dice on something new. But if the systems and themes are a little too familiar in Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, that does mean some of the old charm persists – and if you can look past the odd irritation, you'll find an NPC crew worth getting to know in Portofiro.

The second game from Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM, this text-heavy, dice-driven RPG is an exquisitely constructed take on consumerism, empire, nostalgia and beyond.

For many players, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies will never be anything other than a seedy clone of ZA/UM's reputation-making Disco Elysium – a soul-sucking forgery of a doomy leftist masterpiece, whose original lead writers and designers have been ousted by scheming executives. It's appropriate then, that, Zero Parades proves obsessed with clones, forgeries, bootlegs, and the ways in which these entities can be wielded for erasure and displacement. Its opening third is a comical squabble over notions of authenticity and (thereby) identity, an interrogation of connoisseurship and the notion of the 'genuine article' as vectors for assimilation.

The most striking takeaway for me is how this shambling, dilapidated bazaar is doing something very important. It is laying the dialectical groundwork for the player to chew on the idea of nostalgia and its value, not just in the physical piles of old cosmonaut memorabilia and eternally tacky party costumes, or 80s-coded anime collectibles and obscure music formats that inevitably end up becoming plasticky objects of worship.

Throughout the entire thing, however, I’ve felt the most mixed of feelings. At times, Zero Parades feels very much like a cynical imitator wearing Disco Elysium’s skin. It’s Schrodinger's Disco, and I want to see more of it before making a definitive judgement as to its fate.

The Adventures of Elliot’s development team has quietly been mastering the modern minigame, and its latest action-RPG once again shows us how it’s done. Because the development team behind the title has a real gift for this sort of additive experience, and its upcoming (and, again, horribly-titled) The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales once again proves that any good role-playing game can be made leagues better by a good minigame or two. It feels like the group cares deeply about the history and legacy of minigames in RPGs, and knows that no matter how compelling or attractive the main gameplay loop is, it needs something else as dressing; a nice bit of sauce to go with the steak.

Beast’s third and final expansion is shaping up to be its greatest. It’s not simply that Ashfall introduces three worthwhile hunters and two (potentially three) standout beasts, but it also reshapes how players will interact with the game itself. Making base maps more dynamic is a huge win for Beast, and it’s a change that will see this already excellent hidden movement game find my table far more often than it already does.

Demigod is gloriously bombastic, the introductory cutscene intoning the slight backstory in its best, booming Christopher Lee voice. One of the gods has been destroyed after leaking company secrets. As one of eight monstrous, magical demigods, you’re fighting for promotion to the suddenly vacant position of Totalgod.

At the centre of it all is Arthur Morgan, who gradually became one of Rockstar’s greatest characters. Watching his relationship with Dutch unravel while the Van der Linde gang slowly turns on itself gives the story its emotional core, especially during quieter moments around the campfire when the gang sing songs, argue, drink too much, and try to convince themselves everything will somehow work out. Like the original Red Dead Redemption, the game clearly draws inspiration from classic westerns, but there are also shades of revisionist films such as Unforgiven in the way it treats violence, loyalty, and the death of the frontier.

At first glance, The Adventures of Sir Kicksalot looks more like Minecraft than Dark Messiah, with its blocky-lo fi world and stiffly animated characters. But the game shows its true colours quickly enough, as the player character kicks an enemy into a wall of spikes.

For all its rip-roaring Indiana Jones adventure, its ancient civilizations and pulpy supernatural peril, Call of the Elder Gods' true heart is perhaps its tatty leather-bound journal. That won't be a surprise to anyone that's played Call of the Sea, its well-received predecessor, but it's gratifying to see that - for all this follow-up's bigger, bolder ambitions - the original's first-person narrative charms and smart, deductive spirit remains.

Although it may not reach the heights of other narrative-puzzle contemporaries released since Call of the Sea, Call of the Elder Gods is still an entertaining test for your noggin, wrapped in an adequately engaging Lovecraft-inspired story. Harry and Evangeline would say otherwise, but it’s okay to embrace this game’s insanity-inducing madness with open arms.

However, would you believe it, Invincible Vs is an exceptionally enjoyable game. Not only does it do wonders as an adaption, it might just be one of the best fighting games released in recent years.

Invincible VS is a content-lean, $50 3v3 fighting game that’s based on a popular franchise but ultimately feels optional for fans of that franchise, trying to stake a hold in an especially competitive genre with entrenched leaders.

Invincible VS is a rare tag-team fighter that manages to bridge the gap between high-stakes strategy and accessible brawling. Instead of fighting the controls, you’re free to focus on the actual flow of combat – drinking in the Invincible pizazz and picking your moment, rather than drowning in finger-twisting complexity. It’s a beautifully realized adaptation that captures the show’s visceral energy perfectly and even though the customization options are thin, the core gameplay is so liberating and fun that you’ll hardly care.

Invincible VS has enough complexity in its combat to make fighting fans punch drunk, but it’s straightforward enough that newer players can feel confident. Overall, it’s a wonderfully fun fighter that oozes personality in keeping with the comics and show, offering a good entry point into tag fighters that’s equally fun for newbies and die-hards alike.

Invincible VS is a joyfully gory fighting game adaptation that smartly dilutes the emotionally hard-hitting storytelling of its source material in order to serve up high-stakes combat that'll keep you playing for hours at a time. Its array of single-player and difficulty options encourages repeat story and arcade playthroughs, and makes character experimentation worthwhile, while its relative simplicity means Invincible fans need not be intimidated if unfamiliar with fighting games.

The 2D fighting genre, once thought to be a dying category, now flourishes thanks to major franchises and underground hits. Invincible VS straddles the line of those two classifications, bringing a red-hot IP into the space by way of a new studio made up of fighting-game veterans. The result is a 3v3 tag fighter with rock-solid mechanics, strong production values, and a fun, if flawed, story mode, enabling Invincible VS to go blow-for-blow with many of its contemporaries right out of the gate.

As part of our Invincible VS cover story, we got to spend exclusive hands-on time with Dupli-Kate, the latest addition to the roster. Arguably, the most unique fighter in the game, her ability to spawn clones of herself during battle makes her a particularly fearsome opponent.

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we've been playing. This week, Victoria almost sleeps through a foundational child-powered gaming moment; Bertie sounds a bit like a grumpy old man; Chris has a few more thoughts about Mixtape; and Connor plays a game that isn't RuneScape would you believe it.

Player choice is at the center of The Blood of Dawnwalker, and that includes not only what quests you take on and how you complete them, but how you interact with people in the world. "We have a number of systems around this; some of them are kind of exposed to you as a player," creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz says. "The system we have in place for that, we call 'infamy.'"

But I'm excited. This could be great, and with a freshly announced release date for later this year, there isn't long now until we can play it.

What I can confirm, having hauled some pickups from St Louis to Chicago in ATS' Illinois DLC - out today, May 14th - is that driving into the latter for the first time is as memorable an experience as the best of the truck sim's other motoring metropolises.

Based on 30 minutes or so, it's very good. The developers are Radical Fish Games, creators of CrossCode, an affectionate MMORPG/isekai caricature summarised with disarming precision by Khee Hoon Chan as "a truly great game you could devote 117 hours to". Where CrossCode looked like a top-down 16 bit game, albeit with many more bells and whistles than you'd find on Mega Drive, Alabaster Dawn is an angled, 2.5D affair with more organic-feeling, layered playspaces.

Mixtape is not, despite appearances - despite autumn leaves and sunsets and chunky physical media, and a Blockbuster-alike, and needle drop after needle drop after needle drop - a game about nostalgia. It's a game that features nostalgia; but it's a game about being a teenager, and likewise what the teenage experience means. It's at pains to make this clear, in fact: Cassandra, a central character, even goes as far as to restate that above quote from Galvatron almost verbatim, during one chat in her powder-pink bedroom.

Lovely, beautiful, heartwarming, and unable to convince me it needed my input as a player at all.

Mixtape’s style, soundtrack and unique storytelling flair all combine to elicit feelings both new and long forgotten. Simple moments make you appreciate life for what it is: a continuous evolution rather than a static state of being. Our adolescent selves relished in that freedom, and Mixtape seeks to recapture the magic.

Mixtape is a tribute to "the best years of your life." It combines authentic nostalgia for being young, with witty commentary on how life doesn't actually end just because you didn't have a Hollywood-style last night in town. The game's use of music is pitch perfect, and heavily contributes to Mixtape being one of the best coming-of-age games of the modern era.

Mixtape is a nostalgic, vibes-based experience set to a shockingly solid soundtrack that's narratively important and also kind of a bop all its own. Teenage ennui permeates but never overwhelms while Stacy and her buds try to have one last wild night before it's splitsville in what's ultimately a short, meaningful game that's relatively light on mechanics.

I love coming-of-age stories, but Mixtape stands out even among my favorites for how well it nails its earnest, whimsical tone, treating life milestones with grave sincerity. Its stellar writing, concise runtime, and inspired use of its licensed soundtrack make it an instant classic and a heartfelt trip down memory lane.

I really enjoyed The Sinking City back in 2019, and after a couple hours with the preview, my excitement for TSC2 has increased. Based on what I’ve played, I think the move to a more combat-heavy survival horror game has been a great call – Frogwares’ take on Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos makes for a great foundation for such an experience, and The Sinking City 2 is shaping up to be an impressive follow-up, building on almost everything I loved about the first game.

Aside from the original Alone in the Dark and Eternal Darkness, it's hard to pinpoint a game in the Resident Evil/Silent Hill formula that feels directly related to Cthulhu and his ilk. The Sinking City 2 aims to change this.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's long-awaited Nintendo Switch 2 port has finally arrived, and I'm pleased to report it's pretty good.

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes is playable for a run or two, and it has flickers of the series that inspired it, but spend too much time in its company and it simply becomes robotic.

I was recently invited to go hands-on with the first wave of content for Battlefield 6 – Season 3, titled Warlords: Supremacy, which consisted of a few new weapons and the biggest map in the game to date: Golmud Railway. The largest map in the game to date, Golmud Railway is roughly four times larger than Mirak Valley. There’s a central hook that makes Golmud unique– but we need to talk about vehicle combat before we get to that.

The first season of post-launch content for Battlefield 6 delivered two entire free-to-play experiences atop the expected additions in an effort to grow the player base. Battlefield Studios isn’t slowing down any time soon, having recently unveiled the roadmap for Season 2, complete with more maps, more weapons, more limited-time modes, and a returning vehicle that’ll either elicit excitement or fear, depending on what kind of player you are. Last week, I was invited to go hands-on with the first wave of content for Battlefield 6 – Season 2, and after two hours battling through the new map and fruitlessly trying to avoid a new/old aerial menace, it looks like I’ll be adding even more time to my 170+ hours spent with the online shooter already.

All hail the Battlefools! They fan out efficiently from spawn and are instantly massacred in a hail of rifle fire and grenades. Arguments erupt in the chat. Who's watching the flanks? Were you watching the flanks? I'm not supposed to watch flanks, I'm an engineer - my two defining passions are blowing tanks up and fixing them, a clash of loyalties that routinely gets me run over.

After spending a week with Battlefield 6's multiplayer and campaign, this latest entry proves that Battlefield is back and better than ever. Battlefield 6 multiplayer is a machine that generates water-cooler moments. No matter the map or the mode, every Battlefield 6 match is absolute chaos in the best way. As matches progress, vehicles are obliterated and buildings are reduced to rubble.

At its best, Battlefield 6 is everything you could ask for from a Battlefield game. Intense, close-quarters firefights transition into long-range skirmishes as control points change hands and the action moves from the tight confines of half-destroyed buildings to open stretches of land. As fighter jets and helicopters swoop overhead, a medic pulls out a defibrillator and rushes into a hail of bullets to revive a squadmate who was just blown up trying to destroy a tank with a handful of C4. Elsewhere, a sniper taking residence in a high-rise building is snuffed out by a well-placed RPG, blowing a hole in their nest until the entire building eventually collapses in on itself.

When it's firing on all cylinders, jets screaming overhead, rockets whizzing past your ear, building facades sloughing off their foundations before your eyes, Battlefield 6 is tremendous – undoubtedly the closest EA has got to the series' heyday in a decade. Yet hidden beneath this confident surface is a series still wrestling with its identity. There's a nervous desire to please everyone in Battlefield 6, visible in its oddly heavy catering to small and midsize maps and modes, the weird compromise between fixed classes and free weapon selection, and the peculiar sight of camo-clad soldiers who can knee-slide into battle and perform a 180 spin at the touch of a button. In all of this and more, you can feel Call of Duty breathing down Battlefield's neck.

Fortunately, the veteran task force hit the ground running with Battlefield 6, reintroducing the franchise’s tried-and-true traditions, such as an operator-less role system, a manageable 64-player limit, and an original single-player campaign. Most maps are dazzling sandboxes just waiting to be leveled, firearms feel impactful with detectable recoil patterns, and a bevy of demanding progression challenges keep the grind loop fresh. But like in most hard-fought victories, not every wartime decision yields a winning result. Battlefield 6 pushes the limits of cinematic sensory overload to great effect, even in multiplayer.

Improved but basically the same, The Sims remains a joyful simulation, and celebration, of life and all its dramas.

The year is 3232 CE, a "self-replicating megastructure" named MOTHER is launched into the centre of space. Fast forward to the year 4,199,245,344,263,242,348,389,893,582,349,373 CE (no I'm not joking), and MOTHER has "consumed 99.99999997% of the Observable Universe." What's left of humanity hangs on in that tiny percentage that hasn't be consumed, which is where you, a Reaper, a creation of MOTHER's, steps in as part of AlteredBlood+, a movement-FPS platformer where the blood of your enemies is your strength.

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we've been playing. This week, Bertie plays with the Greek gods again; Victoria dies "a lot-lot"; Connor has a relentless need for bones; and Chris is talking in riddles.

Playing through the demo's assassination story missions, I had to look it up, and yep: Your targets are several playable pilots and the mission control from Brigador 1. I don't need the hours of investment in the story and world I'll soon have to already know that's hard as fuck. Brigador Killers is brash, transgressive, and stylish.

While the first game played like a twin-stick shooter, with you piloting your mech through a linear campaign of destructive levels that looked like Syndicate, Brigador Killers has a lot more of that Bullfrog classic's DNA. Missions take place in sandbox cities, where your objectives are wrapped in layers of corporate security. You might have to target a former mech pilot who now lives behind the high walls of a luxury apartment block, or who only drives around town in an armoured car.

I first played Family Reunion at Gamescom Latam last week, which in hindsight was a bit of trek, considering the demo is right there on Itch and Steam. It’s good fun, though: a unique and chaotic time-attack adventure game, in which you play a disinterested child forced to entertain themselves throughout an interminable family meal, and rendered in the hand-doodled style that we all have before we learn how to properly hold a pen. Mercifully, the feast – or in my case the starter, as that’s all the demo covered – mercifully does not take place in real time.

Resident Evil Requiem has received a new bonus mode in a free update, and by golly it's fabulous. It also has a great name: Leon Must Die Forever. And I'm sorry to say for all the Leon-fanciers out there that, yes, you're going to see Mr. Kennedy dismembered in many different ways.

So, this Requiem DLC then. I hope it's just Grace. The back half of Resident Evil Requiem is its own thing. A perfect counter and tonic to that would be another Grace section that digs a bit deeper into the character we've been shown so far. I think (given the nigh-unanimous praise for the game so far), Capcom is aware of how much people love the first part of 2026's first proper GOTY contender. Give me another house to explore.

Resident Evil Requiem sets itself out with a hard task: wrapping all the best elements of previous Resident Evil games into one. Miraculously it succeeds, with very few moments which left me wanting more.

Capcom marks Resident Evil's 30th anniversary with a stellar return that's both a masterful bit of suffocating horror and a nostalgic, fan-thrilling victory lap for the legendary series.

In some ways, it acts as an incredible celebration of everything that Resident Evil is and has been up to this point, just in time for its 30th anniversary. In others, it feels like a retread that doesn’t live up to its inspirations. Resident Evil: Requiem is very literally a game of two halves, and while it’s a more cohesive tale than the likes of Resident Evil 6, its two distinct gameplay styles and protagonists can sometimes feel at odds with one another.

Resident Evil Requiem is an intoxicating mix of the series’ DNA, blending exhilarating action and palpable horror to make not only one of the best Resident Evil games, but one of the best modern survival horror experiences.

Resident Evil Requiem's gripping story and intoxicating gameplay blend are wrapped up in a perfectly-polished experience with eye-popping graphics and a blood-pumping soundtrack. Resident Evil Requiem is a horror gaming masterpiece and one of the best games Capcom has ever made. It's the ultimate Resident Evil game and will be remembered as fondly as the franchise favorites in the years to come.

For as long as it lasts, however, Requiem is fantastic. It feels like the culmination of Capcom’s learnings from years of indecision over whether the series should be full-on horror or action, delivering the best of both worlds.

Requiem's concoction of oppressive first-person horror and gory third-person action makes for a rip-roaring first half, even if its second can't quite match that energy.

Resident Evil Requiem is the most cinematic, bloody, surprisingly emotional moment for the franchise to-date. Its two protagonists complement one another for a balanced experience that feels more narrativized than ever before, with bombastic combat and strong set pieces amping up the nostalgia without feeling gimmicky. Requiem sees Capcom drawing from 30 years of terror to expand its lore, chart a path forward, and pay homage to a gilded survival horror legacy – one with plenty of life left in it.

It is fantastic, a revelatory mix of terrifying survival-horror and action that stops just short of being too over the top to dip back into the sentimental humanity of these seemingly everlasting characters. It is goofy, schlocky, and excessive, but it is also a masterclass in refinement, a tour de force of gameplay that arrives only after 30 years of lessons learned. Requiem is Resident Evil at its finest.

There’s missed potential, squandered ideas, and though I’m no purist, I think some of its streamlining sacrifices more in atmosphere than it saves in effort. There's a better version of it still to be made. But we get very few turn based shooters on the simulationist side of the moon, and this one is still entertaining enough to count as a success.

While the learning curve might be steep at first, Xenonauts 2 offers incredibly rewarding tactical action for those willing to ascend it.

More a novelty than your next roguelike obsession, but it has enough creativity and left-field ideas to be well worth experiencing—especially if you're still pining for the lost potential of Spore.