• Former Rockstar Games developer Mike York says Grand Theft Auto 6's Jason "seems quite deadpan and monotone"
• York hopes Jason will show more personality, like Grand Theft Auto 4's Niko Bellic
• He also suggests co-protagonist Lucia will contrast Jason's more subdued personality

Former Rockstar Games developer Mike York has shared his thoughts on Grand Theft Auto 6's big gameplay reveal, including his initial impressions of co-protagonists Jason and Lucia.

In an exclusive interview with TechRadar Gaming, York, who previously worked on GTA 5 and GTA Online, said Jason appeared to move around "very slow and methodical," almost like a "robot" or "a Terminator," and showed very little emotion.

The developer compared the character to other GTA protagonists, such as GTA 4's Niko Bellic, a "great character" and one of his favorites in the series, who was "witty and had some great lines", and hopes GTA 6 will show Jason in a similar light.

"I hope we see more of that because right now, Jason seems quite deadpan and monotone," York said. "Rockstar usually gives us a bunch of neat characters who are funny and have their own flair. I don't know if we're going to see that with Jason, but I hope we do."

Jason will serve as co-protagonist to Lucia, his partner in crime and girlfriend — if you choose to romance her properly, that is. From the extended gameplay footage, it's clear that Lucia is much livelier than Jason, sometimes taking the lead in certain situations; York agreed that as switchable characters, Lucia could serve as the Yin to Jason’s Yang.

"I think that's what they're going to do," he said, and addressed the cutscene where the duo arrives at the Effluvia rooftop bar in the trailer.

"There's that moment in the trailer where they get in an elevator, and he says: ‘Sometimes I'm just more comfortable when I have to use a gun’. She replies: ‘Just be charming!’ Lucia's got this attitude where you can tell she's trying to break him out of his shell. She's the one that probably goes into missions gung-ho, all guns blazing.”

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Series S. Rockstar has confirmed that it will run at 30fps on consoles at launch.

• Alien Deathstorm producer Martin Willingham says the game is "not another corridor shooter"
• Head of design Ben Fisher says it's a "dynamically generated" survival horror game
• The Rebellion developers say it's a 360-degree sandbox experience

Rebellion Developments has said players can't expect its upcoming first-person survival horror game, Alien Deathstorm, to be another linear corridor shooter, calling it a "rare beast."

Alien Deathstorm was revealed earlier this year by the developers behind the Sniper Elite series and Atomfall and is described as a "visceral first-person action horror experience, where second-to-second survival hinges on responding to a monstrous, constantly shifting threat on a storm-blasted off-world colony."

TechRadar Gaming recently went hands-on with the game at Gamescom and then later caught up with some Rebellion developers, who talked more about it at length, including the concept and design influences, replayability, and player freedom.

While Alien Deathstorm may look like your run-of-the-mill survival shooter with typical survival horror features, the team considers it a "dynamic" experience with sandbox elements where the player's actions can affect unscripted enemy encounters.

Producer Martin Willingham said this means, "the horror, the tension, can happen at any time in different ways between playthroughs and between difficulty camps as well.

"For me, that's one of the most exciting parts of the game because in horror games the experience is typically kind of very, very choreographed because it has to be to build up that anticipation set of those jump scares. But it means you can only play it once."

He continued, saying the team values replayability and sandbox freedom, which means "we had to do something dynamic," and "building the encounters around the player and the player's activities means it's a different experience."

Ben Fisher, head of design, called the game "dynamically generated," where levels are played sequentially, and each has its own sandbox, adding that "It's a rare beast."

"It's not another corridor shooter," Willingham added later. "You're in that sandbox. It's 360 degrees. The action could be coming from anywhere, rather than just at the end of that corridor."

Alien Deathstorm doesn't have a release date yet, but you'll be able to play it in Spring 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

Not long into Marvel's Wolverine, protagonist James "Logan" Howlett is joined by fellow mutant and Team X member Mystique. The blue-skinned shapeshifter is eager to share a shocking discovery with him: a sinister secret hidden behind a closed door. But I ignore her request, instead continuing down the hall to soak in the game's stunning visuals.

It's the natural-looking rain streaming down a window that initially catches my attention. But beyond the pelting precipitation, I also spy equally impressive smoke, flames, and burning embers spewing from a fiery explosion – the apparent fallout of Wolverine's enemy-eviscerating entrance.

The destruction below is contrasted by beautiful moonlight above, which is occasionally punctuated by eye-pleasing flashes of lightning.

Production values as sharp as Wolverine's claws

Of course, if you've played any recent first-party PlayStation game, these realism-rivaling effects probably won't come as a huge surprise. As expected, Insomniac Games' latest superhero romp is obscenely pretty, polished, and packing the sort of production values that've come to define Sony's single-player, story-driven output.

This level of quality extends to Wolverine's characters and storytelling as well. Supported by incredibly layered, emotional performances (Liam McIntyre and Troy Baker especially stand out as Logan and Nathaniel Essex, respectively), the former features unmatched facial details and visual fidelity.

And while the game's narrative doesn't quite achieve the extreme highs of its technical and artistic excellence, it works surprisingly well, spinning an engaging tale that'll please Marvel enthusiasts while also welcoming complete newcomers into this potentially complex universe.

There are a ton of familiar characters, both friends and foes, that fans will love spending time with. But the game's pre-X-Men tale also does a great job introducing these favorites without boring the established audience or relying on exposition dumps.

In Wolverine's universe, for example, Logan and Jean Grey meet for the first time, challenging its writers to not only introduce these well-known characters to each other, but also to a potential new audience. The task is handled elegantly, however, in an early mission at Team X's HQ that sees the pair naturally sharing personal details while searching for drawings a mischievous mutant child has hidden for them.

Slice and dice with cinematic style to spare

This is a single instance, but the lengthy story often leverages these quieter, absorbing – and interactive – scenes to flesh out its nuanced characters and connect the larger story to the obscenely over-the-top bloodbaths that fill the rest of the campaign. While storytelling and characterizations certainly have their place in Wolverine, the game is, first and foremost, a visceral, action-packed power fantasy focused on showing fans what it feels like to get behind the titular mutant's adamantium death-dealers.

Of course, considering Logan is virtually indestructible and his signature retractable claws are capable of turning even a tank to ribbons, the developers also faced the daunting task of balancing the combat difficulty. How exactly do you ensure encounters are challenging and consequential when you're playing as someone who can return from the brink of death and cut through steel like it's warm butter?

Using a variety of creative systems and mechanics, Insomniac has mostly found a nice balance between allowing the beast-like protagonist to be the absolute badass you'd expect, without being ridiculously overpowered. At its core, the combat is an absolute button-mashing blast. Complemented by intuitive, snappy inputs, immersion-ratcheting DualSense effects, and environments filled with destructible items, simply shredding through hordes of enemies feels fantastic.

Reducing goons to piles of lopped limbs and red plasma is also as easy on the eyes as it is on the thumbs. Slick animations, cinematic finishing moves, and more blood and gore than you'll find on the floor of a slaughterhouse ensure every kill is as fun to watch as it is to execute.

The visual abuse Logan suffers is also a surprising highlight, as he too becomes soaked in viscera. But it goes deeper than that, literally, as his clothes become increasingly tattered, exposing ugly wounds and the highest fidelity sweat and body hair I've ever seen – enter photo mode at your own risk.

Whether you're taking on Bolivar Trask's cybernetic soldiers, chipping away at a towering Sentinel, or sinking your claws into any number of baddies and bosses we won't spoil here, slicing and dicing from behind Wolverine's shiny skewers is endlessly entertaining. But the game's attempts to deepen the combat beyond the animalistic amnesiac's rage-fueled hacking-and-slashing are a bit hit or miss.

As Logan levels up, you can invest points to unlock new moves and special abilities, dubbed "Techniques." The former are primarily flashy skills and combos that build on the character's base attacks, parries, kicks, staggers, jumps, dodges, and other core skills. Adding these to your already considerable arsenal definitely has benefits, from delivering more damage and disarming enemies to recovering some health and even flinging foes into each other.

Most of all, these moves – which require specific button inputs to pull off – inject a ton of cinematic style into your kill sprees. But more often than not, that's exactly why I used them, as their offensive and defensive benefits alone didn't feel impactful enough, especially when I could achieve similar results by spamming basic "barrage" attacks, dodging from danger, and unleashing specials as they cued up.

Those latter attacks, however, do make a huge difference. Working off cooldown timers, these devastating moves put you a button-press away from barreling through targets like a human drill, spinning through hordes with the force of a tornado, and performing other table-turning abilities.

These special attacks can be upgraded and also include a nice healing option when you're at death's door. Speaking of Logan's regenerative superpower, he also has access to "Rage," a resource he builds during combat that supports a second wind-like mechanic and – as advertised – allows him to go full-on feral, ventilating targets even more viciously than usual.

When combined with the specials – and some other late-game enhancements I won't spoil here – both the basic and rage-fueled skills make for unquestionably thrilling encounters, albeit battles that aren't as deep as their designers intended.

Snikt!-fueled style over substance

Similar sentiments can be applied to Wolverine's non-combat content as well. You'll spend most of your time in this globetrotting adventure painting cities and towns – across Canada, Japan, Madripoor, and more – plasma-red, but when not shish kebab-ing baddies, you'll retract your claws for some less violent activities.

In addition to the excellent story interludes, Logan does some investigating, chases fleeing enemies – on foot and while straddling a motorcycle – and a surprising amount of platforming.

None of these tasks are optional, and while they don't offer anything particularly special, they do deliver the occasional fun distraction. The bike chases, for example, are practically on rails, but it still never gets old slashing a pursuing vehicle's tires with your claws.

The platforming sections, meanwhile, generally get the job done, but sometimes kill the immersion when the mutant – who can often scurry up trees like a cat – suddenly can't scale a fence, crate, or wall.

Wolverine makes no apologies for being a linear, scripted action-adventure, a quality that often works to its benefit. But it can also be a detriment, like during those fickle platforming moments. This heavily directed approach does afford players some freedom, encouraging them to sniff out collectible bottles of whiskey and timed challenges accessed in Logan's creepy "Nightmare Cabin." These mini-games, unfolding in his haunted memories, also shed a bit of light on his dark, foggy past.

Whether hunting for booze or conquering these timed tasks, you'll collect DNA strand-altering "Adaptation" points, a currency that feeds another character progression path. But these passive perks don't feel all that meaningful among Logan's already considerable arsenal. Toss in the fact that these cabin-diving diversions have you partaking in the same gameplay you're already doing on the critical path – only against a clock – and they feel like an undercooked attempt at optional content.

Suit crafting feels similarly half-baked. The game contains 30-plus costumes and accompanying claws, a fantastic, fan-pleasing inclusion. But the suits are purely cosmetic, and accessed by investing the same "materials" hidden around the world.

Donning Logan with a cowboy hat or dropping him in this hyper-realistic world as his anime-inspired Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls persona is awesome, as is the permanent health bump you receive as you buy more suits. But with just the same single resource used and no gameplay effects added, calling it "crafting" is a stretch.

As a linear, single-player action-adventure, Wolverine works brilliantly, delivering a visually striking, cinematic blockbuster supported by engaging characters and emotional storytelling. It's also brimming with stylish, blood-soaked combat that kept a smile stretched across my face until the credits rolled.

When it strays from its heavily scripted path, however, attempting to layer strategic depth into its arcade-y encounters – as well as engaging, optional activities into its carefully crafted world – it does reveal some undeniable cracks in its adamantium armor.

Should you play Marvel's Wolverine?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

Marvel's Wolverine includes an impressive suite of accessibility assists, beginning with plenty of options to tailor the blood, gore, violence, and profanity to any player's comfort level.

Beyond that, there are various difficulty settings, as well as ample gameplay assists to further tweak and tailor the challenge within those defaults. In addition to the expected inclusions for customizing subtitles, UI, and HUD elements, a huge selection of audio and visual assists are also available.

While a variety of high-contrast modes and color customizations are included, dedicated protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia selections seem to be absent.

How I reviewed Marvel's Wolverine

I spent just over 25 hours with Wolverine, completing its campaign before replaying many missions to seek out collectibles and attempt optional time trial challenges.

I played the game on my PS5 Pro using my budget TCL 4K 65" TV, with HDR enabled. For audio, I tested with both the display's onboard stereo speakers and Sony's PlayStation Pulse Elite headset.

First reviewed September 2026

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve played the original Final Fantasy 7, and the thought of soaring through the skies aboard the airship Highwind with Midgar, Junon, the Gold Saucer, and Wutai scrolling past below in this level of detail always felt like an impossible dream. Now I’m watching it unfold in front of me in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation — and it’s glorious.

I cruise around for far longer than is even necessary, just soaking it all in. It’s a moment that finally fully realises what we expected when Square Enix first announced that it would be remaking the iconic 1997 RPG.

This journey has been a long one: from the restricted but well-focused part one of Remake, through the expansive and a little more erratic part two in Rebirth, and now this monumental finale to cap off the trilogy.

After a quick introduction to the cast for this demo section that takes place at the start of Chapter 4, I’m given the controls of the Highwind. I’m told the next destination for Yuffie, Barret, Red XIII, as well as playable newcomers Cid and Vincent, is Wutai. But I don’t need to go there right now. And I choose not to.

I zoom over to see what’s changed at the Costa Del Sol: this world’s happening holiday resort and lively town. How do I make my final approach? Not by landing the airship, but by parachuting off the edge, watching the terrain and the town grow larger as I approach the ground. It’s an impressive feat that this is possible, with such huge freedom given to how and where I land.

When I reach the Costa Del Sol, it is, effectively, exactly as it was in the previous entry. Folks are soaking up the sunshine in swimwear, popping to the bar to pick up a drink, and enjoying all sorts of entertainment by the seaside. The detail and density still impress and define the approach that Square Enix has taken with the trilogy as a whole. It’s bigger, bolder, flashier, expanded, and extended. There’s just more to everything.

I step out into the outskirts of the party playground, and I’m immediately hit by how Square Enix has taken this approach in other areas of the game. Sometimes, I feel, for the worse.

The demo was not afraid to impress upon me the sheer number of side activities that are going to be available in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. Photo hunts, monster hunts, the Queen’s Blood card game, environment investigations — all of these and more popped up as soon as I landed in a new location or were added as I explored. With an AI assistant, MAI, also trying to explain them all, it almost overwhelmed me.

I get why we played this section of the game, but hot-dropping into a location while completely fresh to the game and getting barraged by all of these notifications instilled in me equal levels of excitement and dread. Yeah, there’s going to be a heck of a lot to do in Revelation if you want it, but I don’t know how much of it is going to be compelling.

What does still shine, though, is the combat. Zipping over to Wutai for a change of scenery, I ran into several monsters on the path to the village, and my muscle memory from the dozens of hours I sunk into Remake and Rebirth started to come back.

Cid and Vincent both seem like excellent new additions to the roster. I gravitated more toward the vampiric ex-Turk after a couple of battles, enjoying the rhythm of how he’s played. Effectively, you build up attacks over time, before eventually being able to unleash his ferocious Galian Beast mode to deal more devastating damage. Even against unthreatening monsters, he was very satisfying to play.

What I didn’t get to explore too much was the new FITS mechanic, which gives your characters more focus by taking on a specific class. I could see how these roles help you refine your party and add another layer to the already strong combat system. For example, Barrett could be set as a Knight in some impressive, shiny, and slightly absurd mech armor, elevating his job as a defender and protector.

Intrigued by both the new characters and mechanics, I found myself seeking more combat, so my journey through Wutai was full of distractions, including accidentally wandering into a boss monster that was about 40 levels above me and destroyed me in a matter of seconds. One of the many, many, many side activities in the region that I’ll no doubt have to return to in the full game, if I don’t get burnt out by them again.

And then, even with those doubts in my mind, I did find myself in awe of Revelation again just as quickly after seeing the scale and glow-up given to Wutai village. The pagodas and the familiar Turtle's Paradise bar have gone from half-memories of pixelated and blocky buildings to stunning and expressive environments that I could never have imagined.

Overall, there was just so much that it felt impossible to wrap my head around even half of it in just the short 60 minutes I had to play Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. I’ve barely had a chance to mention all the new pieces of equipment you have to navigate the world and interact with it.

What I want to make clear, though, is that all of these features haven’t put me off the game at all. It might not have settled some of the worries I had after tiring of the deluge of mostly throwaway content in Rebirth, but I left wanting more time with Revelation.

More time cruising through the clouds of the Highwind, more time testing how easy it is to jump out from pretty much anywhere on the overworld map, and more time digging into the combat system with new characters and how the FITS system mixes it up. And that’s before we see what direction Square Enix takes the story after the controversial ending to the previous entry.

Whatever happens, I have the feeling that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is going to be a huge game when it launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC on April 8, 2027.

• Fable associate game director Will Kennedy says the game's combat system will be "faithful" to the classic RPG series
• However, Playground Games wanted to make the game "approachable" for modern audiences
• Kennedy says the game's "Style-weaving combat" offers more "breadth and depth" to achieve that

Fable's "style-weaving" combat system is designed for a modern audience, while remaining faithful to the classic role-playing game (RPG) series, according to Playground Games.

That's according to associate game director Will Kennedy during a Q&A session at Gamescom 2026, where he discussed the game's humor and how that has also been woven into the battle system by allowing players to turn enemies into chickens.

Speaking more about the design intention behind what Playground Games calls "style-weaving combat," which lets players mix and match different weapons and spells, Kennedy said the team wanted to balance what long-time fans of the series are familiar with, while making combat approachable for new players.

"When we're talking about being faithful to the classic franchise, we thought about how there was an approachability to combat there, and we knew that we wanted to be able to capture some of that for our game as well," Kennedy said. "But at the same time, we're making a game for gaming today."

He added, "We wanted there to be breadth and depth to it, so we landed on wanting to have style-weaving combat. We wanted to be able to move from move to move really smoothly and easily, and that combined with the level expression that you've got."

Kennedy explained that players can customize every element of their loadout, including ranged and melee weapons, and the four spell slots, which can be upgraded, and "by the time you play the game for even a little bit of time, you have a really broad, deep, rich suite of options to choose from."

"But being able to move so freely between the moves, and it feeling so responsive and so satisfying, is something we're really proud of," Kennedy continued, "because I think we've landed somewhere that is still approachable but has that depth that we want and so therefore is faithful but works in gaming today as well for players, which is sometimes to be proud of."

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

Kennedy also confirmed that Fable's main storyline will take up to 20 hours to beat, but the game's life systems are "limitless."

• Fable's main story takes between 15 and 20 hours to complete
• Associate game director Will Kennedy confirms additional side content can also take between 15 and 20 hours
• However, the game's life systems are "limitless"

Playground Games has confirmed that Fable's main story will take up to 20 hours to beat, but promises the game's life systems offer "limitless" replayability.

Speaking during a Q&A session at Gamescom 2026, associate game director Will Kennedy discussed the scale of the upcoming role-playing game (RPG), saying, "So the main story obviously depends on how you play, but the main storyline is around 15 to 20 hours."

He added, "But then we've got around probably about 15 to 20 hours again of open world and side content to engage with."

While not a massive amount of hours compared to other open-world RPGs, that at least gives fans an idea of what to expect when the game releases next year.

However, it's what Kennedy said later that confirmed that, while Fable will have a good-sized story with plenty of side content, the game's life systems, like interacting with the over 1,000 unique non-player characters (NPCs), buying real estate, committing crimes, and more, will offer up even more playtime.

"Honestly, with the life systems which we [shared an] in-depth look at and showcased earlier on in the year, that's limitless, and you can engage with it as much as you want," he said.

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

• Steam achievements of upcoming and unannounced games have leaked
• The achievements include spoilers for games like Control Resonant, Kingdom Hearts, and Persona 6
• Valve hasn't commented on the achievements or recent prototype leak on Steam

Steam achievements for both upcoming and unannounced games may have been leaked by Valve and spotted on the third-party site Exophase.

As reported by PC Gamer, the leak includes nearly 90 games, including Control Resonant, Kingdom Hearts 4, Gears of War E-Day, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and Persona 6.

The leaked achievements are listed for each title on Exophase, including spoilers for major plot points, character reveals, and even weapon unlocks (notably for Kingdom Hearts 4), despite missing full descriptions. It's effectively created a minefield of spoilers to avoid, which is made worse since the list includes games that don't even have a release date.

It's not exactly clear how this leak occurred on Valve's end, but it doesn't appear to be a breach of the Steam platform. Instead, it may very well be an issue with Valve's API exposure, at least according to Exophase owner Mike Bendel, who claims it's a "possible screw-up on Valve's end", which makes this the second slip-up in just a few weeks.

Recently, around 12TB to 13TB of early prototypes, unreleased titles, and scrapped builds of games between 2003 and 2013 were leaked from Steam, including games such as GTA 5, The Binding of Isaac, and even some of Valve's very own games like Left 4 Dead.

It's possibly the worst spell of game leaks for publishers launching games on PC platforms like Steam, especially with the leak of builds for games like Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Forza Horizon 6 before launch.

There's clearly a major security issue at hand with Steam, and until it's addressed, game leaks seem inevitable. Game achievements, while potentially spoiler-filled, are minor in comparison to the very recent game prototype leak.

Valve hasn't made an official statement on the Steam prototype or achievements leaks, but with its impact on both publishers and consumers, it wouldn't be surprising to see both cases addressed soon.

• CD Projekt Red says The Witcher 3 Remastered and its many upgrades helped realize Songs of the Past
• Game director on Songs of the Past, Jakub Rokosz, says the team had a "certain vision" for the expansion, but there were technological challenges
• He says the remaster "helped with applying optimization" to the expansion

According to CD Projekt Red, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past, may not exist without The Witcher 3 Remastered and its many upgrades.

If you missed the bombshell news the Polish studio dropped during Opening Night Live, The Witcher 3 Remastered is a massive free update arriving on September 29. It offers many improvements to the base game and the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions, such as upgraded visuals, a refined combat system, new Witcher Signs, transmogrification, and more.

The remaster will essentially rework the game in its entirety, giving fans of the 11-year-old role-playing game (RPG) an excuse for another playthrough, ahead of the upcoming expansion Songs of the Past.

Now, in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Jakub Rokosz, CEO of Fool's Theory and game director on Songs of the Past, and senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki shared that without these technological improvements, their vision for the expansion may not have been fully realized.

"The stars had to align, so to say, because a few things had to happen," said Rokosz, who was also one of the original senior quest designers for The Witcher 3. "The Songs of the Past expansion and Letten itself, the area that it takes place, it had a certain vision. We had a certain vision for it, and it posed us certain specific technological challenges that was impossible to realize without the remaster changes.

"So the conditions had to grow for the remaster to appear on the horizon for us to be able to realize this, so this is actually two things meshing together to make it a reality."

The developer explained that Letten's lush vegetation, small bushes, and dense forests caused issues during development, but were resolved with the remaster's advancements.

"One of the challenges when we started prototyping the area was [that] it was impossible to ride with a horse through it, basically," he continued. "So we had to do some improvements on the horse handling side, right? So it feels more organic or more natural."

Letten also features a big lake in the middle of its map that allows players a view of the horizon, and as Rokosz explained, having this huge amount of open space where you can see fishermen fishing "posed a challenge in terms of how the engine was handling this. So the remaster helped with applying optimization."

Songs of the Past is due to launch in 2027.

• The final season of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been revealed
• It includes a Doom crossover and lots of Halloween content
• Only one new multiplayer map is being added, however

Activision has lifted the curtain on the content coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 in its final season ahead of the Modern Warfare 4 launch.

With a new game on the way, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that this update is going to be a smaller one. Still, it includes plenty of spooky Halloween content as part of the series' annual The Haunting event.

This includes a bombastic Doom crossover, allowing players to unlock loads of Doom-themed rewards in a new limited-time event pass. As usual, this pass will be divided into two tracks: a free one and a premium option.

The free track contains new operator skins for Wei Lin and Falkner, plus an adorable Mini Slayer weapon charm and a range of other rewards. Completing the entire track will grant you the Roc 20mm special weapon — a massive, almost cannon-like rifle that fires devastating 20mm rounds.

The premium track, on the other hand, unlocks the Doom Slayer himself as a playable operator in the JSOC faction. By default, he's wearing his Doom: The Dark Ages attire, but the premium track's final reward is an alternate classic 1993-style skin.

Other weapons introduced in the upcoming season include the TR41 Para Assault Rifle, which will be available at launch, and the Arcblade melee weapon added later on. There are also some new weapon attachments on the way for the VS Recon Sniper Rifle, Dravec 45 SMG, and Sokol 545 LMG.

Unfortunately, the offering is pretty sparse on the map front, with only one new one being introduced. It's called Quantum, and it looks like an appropriately ruined laboratory. There is at least also a new version of the existing Homestead map, called Bloodstead, for you to explore as well.

The cool Hordepoint mode will be returning from previous games in season too, challenging players to face off against a rival team and spawning waves of zombies.

All of this comes alongside a fresh battle pass full of new skins and unlocks, not to mention additional content for the Zombies and Endgame modes, plus the free-to-play Warzone battle royale.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is available now for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, and Xbox One.

• Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons' imp companion Skev provides narrative and gameplay assistance
• Skev will provide lore to the player as they explore Darkon, but can't be controlled in combat
• Guay says the imp is "his own character" with his own personal motivations

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons' imp companion Skev serves multiple purposes for the player, but was designed to be "his own character."

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay offered more insight into Skev and his relationship with the warlock protagonist Kaatri, revealing that the imp will assist the player as they navigate the open world of Darkon both narratively and with his utilities.

However, while Skev will act as a companion to Kaatri, Guay stressed that he still has his own motivations, including seeking out his lost master, just like how Kaatri is searching for someone too.

"We iterated a lot on him. So he actually is his own character," Guay said. "That was important to us. He wasn't born to be a sidekick. That was the mentality. He used to be the advisor to the ruler of Darkon, so in a way, he had a really important role in that land before his master vanished, and his quest is to find his lost master, and Kaatri's quest is to find someone too.

"So, he tags along, and Kaatri's kind of like, 'Oh well, he knows this place, and that's useful.' So he gives you a lot of insights as you travel around. You find new places."

The studio head said Skev will offer lore about new locations as players explore, adding that he thinks of the imp as "your unreliable guide to Darkon."

Skev won't be controlled by the player either, Guay confirmed, so he won't die in combat or get in the way, but will sometimes help in certain instances, like by picking locks.

"You can actually decide how you want to upgrade his abilities throughout the adventure," he added, "So [there's] some practical application."

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons arrives in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past spotlights Dandelion and will tell a "complete" story
• Jakub Rokosz, Fool's Theory CEO and Songs of the Past game director, says CD Projekt Red wants to "give justice to Dandelion"
• Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki adds that "it felt like a chapter was missing"

CD Projekt Red has said The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's third and final expansion, Songs of the Past, will "complete" the game's story by giving Dandelion the bard the spotlight he deserves.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Jakub Rokosz, Fool's Theory CEO and Songs of the Past game director and former Witcher 3 senior quest designer, explained that rather than the expansion serving as a bridge to The Witcher 4, as some fans might have expected, it actually completes Wild Hunt's story by delivering a new chapter that the team felt was missing.

However, the developer declined to comment on whether the expansion will have any direct connection to The Witcher 4, so we'll have to wait and see.

"We always wanted to give Dandelion the proper spotlight he deserved," Rokosz said, acknowledging that it's odd for an 11-year-old game to receive a new expansion. "So we knew that there was no space in the base game to give him justice. That's what I wanted to say: Give justice to Dandelion."

Songs of the Past will center Dandelion in Geralt's final journey in The Witcher 3, where players will explore Letten, the bard's homeland, and be wrapped up in another supernatural mystery.

"We knew that at some point we wanted to address this thing, because Dandelion is a very important character in Geralt's life," Rokosz continued. "There's a misconception of him being this comedic relief, and this is his only role in the Witcher series, whereas that's not true. He's a very deep and intelligent character. He used to be a professor at Oxenfurt [Academy], and he writes beautiful poetry, so we want to show the players what's behind that mask of a joker, where he came from, what his family is about, what's the world [like] where he grew up."

Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki added that it doesn't matter that the expansion arrives 11 years later, only that the whole story has been told.

"What's really important to us is not so much like should we release an expansion 11 years later; it could be, I don't know, 20, 100 years later," Anetaki said. "What matters is that the story we tell is complete. This is part of The Wild Hunt, and it felt like a chapter was missing, like something was not there. One more thing we wanted to tell, right? And Dandelion's story was one of those, right?"

The developer revealed that the team went back to the original Witcher novels and used the source material to make something that could "excite fans" and "something that could excite us most of all, because it was a difficult question when this idea was first pitched to the team."

Anetaki explained that the team had to figure out what would pull Geralt out of his retirement, and it had to be important enough to warrant a full-length expansion. That reason was Geralt's best friend, Dandelion.

"Once we identified that important thing," the developer added, "it all clicked together, and it became very clear that yes, we need to make this expansion because it makes us as fans of The Witcher really excited about it, and I hope that the players will also feel that."

Songs of the Past doesn't have a release date yet, but it's slated to launch in 2027. In the meantime, fans can look forward to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, which arrives this month on September 29.

• Creative Assembly has explained how it designed a faithful Warhammer player experience for Total War: Warhammer 40,000
• Battle product owner Dave Petry says the team didn't directly recreate the tabletop systems, but tried to "authentically simulate" them
• Creative Assembly continued its "trusting" relationship with Games Workshop, which shared its "infinite knowledge"

Creative Assembly worked closely with Games Workshop to ensure the Total War: Warhammer 40,000 player experience was as "authentic" to the tabletop game as possible.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, lead designer Joy Dey and battle product owner Dave Petry discussed the upcoming strategy game's combat system and shared how it was able to faithfully translate the feeling of Warhammer's tabletop systems.

Rather than a complete one-to-one recreation, Petry explained that the goal was to "authentically simulate" the feel of the tabletop's combat.

"We really, really care about trying to authentically simulate the feeling of the type of combat, whatever period or kind of warfare that it is, right?" Petry said. "So in a historical, obviously, war on Earth, and generally we have the sorts of weapons that you have on Earth. When it's fantasy, it's magic and mages and all that sort of stuff, and obviously, with the science fantasy and 40k, the biggest reference point you have to that is the tabletop.

"But it's not necessarily like the be-all and end-all of it," he continued. "We're not transposing the tabletop, right? We're trying to create an authentic sense of the lore and the kind of combat that's there, but the love for the tabletop absolutely is present."

Petry said that, like so many fans, he's been playing and collecting Warhammer 40k since he was young and confirmed that references and nods to the universe, like names, abilities, and lore, are in the upcoming strategy game. However, he said some elements of the tabletop game "just don't fit" with the game's real-time simulation

Creative Assembly also focused on making the game feel "familiar" to the Total War franchise; combat has also been scaled up, and he explained that macro positioning, where the player's forces are, flanking, and enemy morale are all things that come into play.

Petry said positioning in particular is being treated as "an interpretation of the lore and the universe, with the tabletop being one of the most important references."

The developer also added that Creative Assembly continued its long-standing collaboration with Games Workshop to ensure authenticity, saying their "special relationship" has helped the studio combat issues it was dealing with.

"[If] we can't find the thing that quite works for [the game], or this piece of lore sounds similar, but doesn't quite work," Prety added, "And for them to be able to come back with their infinite knowledge of all of this stuff and go, 'Well, you're right. This doesn't quite fit, but over here we have something that actually might be able to do the job.'

"And that close or trusting collaboration has, I think, enabled us to create something that captures that authentic feeling."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 launches in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay confirms Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons will have a toggleable HUD and minimal waypoint guidance
• Guay says this is to encourage exploration and reduce the "hand-holding" experience
• With these options, he says the game will be "immersive"

Invoke Studios has said Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons will encourage players to explore Darkon's open world by offering a toggleable HUD and minimal waypoint guidance.

That's according to Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay, who told TechRadar Gaming in an interview at Gamescom that the upcoming D&D action-adventure game will ease up on the "hand-holding" you often find in other open-world role-playing games (RPGs).

"It helps that we're trying to go easy on the hand-holding, so that allows us to pull back a little bit," Guay replied when asked why the hands-on demo had such a minimal HUD. "In this case, I'll be honest, though, we turned off some elements of HUD so that it wasn't overwhelming for people watching the demo."

The studio head confirmed the team will add "some" elements to the HUD to help players, but it can also be turned on and off in the settings, adding that there was a time when it "felt the need to put a lot of things in the middle of a screen."

"We realized that players, because they're being eased in with the number of spells they have, the number of things they can do, we don't need to overwhelm them," Guay continued. "And then we will give you some guidance. So the example I always give is, if the quest was to find me, you know, at Gamescom, and you open up the map, then you'd see it.

"We'd put a highlight around [the area], and we say, 'Well, he's somewhere in there, right?' So then you have a compass; you can get there, but we don't want to overwhelm you with too much information. [We want to] keep it immersive."

During the same interview, Guay explained why Invoke chose a warlock protagonist for the game, explaining that the concept of "creative magic" was central to gameplay and story.

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons launches in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Total War: Warhammer 40,000 will be accessible to hardcore fans and new players
• Lead designer Joy Dey says the tutorial will cover everything from story and lore to gameplay mechanics
• Battle product owner Dave Petry adds that the game is "a good entry point" for new players, and Creative Assembly wants to reach as many people as possible

Creative Assembly has confirmed that its upcoming strategy game, Total War: Warhammer 40,000, will be accessible to experienced fans and first-time Total War players.

That's according to lead designer Joy Dey and battle product owner Dave Petry, who discussed the game's onboarding process in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom.

The pair shared that they want to reach as many players as possible, so the team made sure the game's tutorials eased newcomers into the experience, while also offering an "appetizer" for hardcore fans.

"We are expecting there will be players who've never played Total War before, and there will be players who don't know the lore," said Dey. "So we have a story within the tutorial that has named characters from the universe, and it's going to ease you in. Like, what is a Space Marine? What is their motivation?"

The tutorial will focus on the Space Marines, the developer added, and players will learn the mechanics "on a step-by-step basis," adding, "It should be a gateway into 'What is 40K?'"

Dey acknowledged that the battles can be "quite complex" but said that every gameplay system, from the pause and play function, how to take cover, analysing the battlefield, and how to use height as a tactical advantage, will be introduced and taught to the player during the tutorials.

Petry added that many new and "reformed battle features" either needed reintroduction or tweaking for the new game, but reiterated how the tutorials will benefit both newcomers and long-time fans.

"So all of those concepts need a gentle reintroduction," he said. "Personally, I view the tutorial for an experienced player as kind of like an appetizer, where, if you know both of these things, you can go in there and be like, 'Yeah, teach me some of the new stuff and get me warmed up with a bit of juicy lore stuff.'

"And if you know nothing, it's just such a good entry point for both of these things, right? And we really want to make sure that we can bring as many people to Total War and to 40,000 as possible. Obviously, 40,000 is absolutely gargantuan, and it's a really wonderful time to be part of that fandom, right? So I think it's also a wonderful opportunity to show people how cool and great Total War is."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 launches in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

Gamescom 2026 was chock-full of the latest and greatest in video games and gaming hardware, and we saw an awful lot of it while on the ground in Cologne, Germany.

We went hands-on with games, played with some yet-to-be-released gaming devices, and carried out a boatload of interviews. We’ll be publishing a host of content based on all of that in due course, but we also saw lots that we want to shout about now. Our Best of Gamescom 2026 awards give us the chance to celebrate some of the best of the show.

There aren’t any categories; instead, each of the winners deserved general recognition for being what made up the Best of Gamescom 2026 in our opinion. Find all our picks below, in no particular order, and keep your eyes peeled on this page in the future, as there are even some things we can't quite talk about yet…

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Asus ROG Ally X20

The new version of the official Xbox-x-Asus gaming handheld is something I was really surprised to like so much at this year’s Gamescom. Many will argue over the actual efficacy and importance of the upgrades it offers over its predecessor — the Ally X — but as a piece of new gaming hardware, I found it to be excellent.

The OLED screen is punchy and vibrant, and the new larger-than-before size of it works very nicely in the hands too. The ergonomic design is comfortable, while the buttons are satisfying and responsive in their actuation, and it’s overall not too heavy in the hands despite the bigger screen. I messed around with the likes of Forza Horizon 6 for a while with the X20 and was successfully and totally immersed in the action to the point I didn’t want to put the handheld down.

Its translucent design and gold accents make for an incredibly cool aesthetic too, and as a quality handheld gaming PC for your Xbox games as well as your PC library, this is a very slick, attractive, and quality bit of kit that impressed me.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Razer Prio

A suspiciously simple mobile controller solution, but one that still features some Razer-isms and design flair, the Prio mobile controller was one of the most innovative and different things I saw at Gamescom.

With the ability to fold up to the size of something akin to a card wallet or earbud pillbox, the Prio is a foldable mobile gaming controller that will offer gamers a convenient and easy way to quickly jump into a game while on the go.

Despite its diminutive size and foldable form, it still features all you need to game, like dual shoulder buttons, satisfying face buttons, and thumbsticks featuring the latest in capacitive tech. It’ll work with Android and Apple phones, works with cases easily, and there’s also no need to charge it.

It’s a fascinating new addition to the mobile gaming controller market and could make quite the splash.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Beyerdynamic MMX 130 wireless gaming headset

The MMX 130 is an open-back gaming headset that channels all the excellence of the audio brand’s pedigree while embracing the benefits of an open-back design. And the results are fantastic, with a gaming headset that sounds full-bodied, clear and detailed, round and spacious, and overall brilliant — even in the short time I had with it at Gamescom.

Despite the design’s popularity in the headphone and audio-fi space, there aren’t that many open-back gaming headsets on the market, so Beyerdynamic is pushing the envelope a bit and challenging what we expect of gaming headsets a little too.

The open-back design enables the MMX 130 to offer a rounder, more spacious soundscape, and one that players of single-player, immersive, maybe open-world games will be incredibly well served by, who are looking for awesome, detailed audio and not something geared toward online or competitive play like dozens of other headsets.

I’m really looking forward to testing and adding this gaming headset to my ranks when it launches later this year in October.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Rainbow Six Tactics

I am not normally one for XCOM-like strategy or turn-based games, but Rainbow Six Tactics well and truly got its hooks into me at Gamescom, and has me yearning to see more and, frankly, play it as soon as I can.

The game perfectly captures the vibes and ambience of Rainbow Six, with the settings of missions, aesthetics, operatives, and action making a pretty seamless jump over to the turn-based strategy genre; breaching through walls, the chatter among operatives, and the use of tools such as the drone are some of the most notable and obvious successes of this in my time with the game, for example.

Likewise, the idiosyncrasies of the turn-based genre manifest excellently in the Rainbow Six aesthetic, with slow-mo actions and operators carrying out gunfire or actions particularly pleasing, as well as carefully plotting multiple, sequential actions to ensure you have a chance for victory — or seeing it all fall apart in front of your eyes.

There looks to be great depth to Tactics too, which I can’t wait to get into. Matching up a favorite roster of operators, upgrading said operators to my preferences and for particular scenarios, hoovering up intel from incapacitated enemies in order to get bonuses for future missions, and plotting out all the stages of the game’s Breach mode to ensure an impactful and full-blooded commencement of attacks all play their own part. The whole tactical strategic loop feels like the perfect blend of genre and series.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

MOZA × MotoGP Sim Racing Handlebar

One of the most original, cool, and exciting hardware products I saw at Gamescom was easily Moza’s new Sim Racing Handlebar, officially licensed by MotoGP.

While surprising and eyebrow-raising on one hand, after investigating it further, it really did suddenly dawn on me: why shouldn’t MotoGP video game players have access to the same kind of specific controllers that players of racing games, truck games, and even farming games have?

And now they do, with the terrific MOZA × MotoGP Sim Racing Handlebar, which should comprehensively serve that market when it releases fully (launch is still to be confirmed, however). And it’s a seriously awesome bit of kit that features all you need to fully immerse yourself in the latest game.

The handlebar controller will attach to MOZA’s own wheelbases, feature controls inspired by real MotoGP handlebars, and offer enough customisation options in terms of adjustment and button mapping to give it incredible flexibility. It’s niche, perhaps, but we can’t wait to test the excellently cool bit of gaming hardware out.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Fable

Playground Games' upcoming release in the long-standing fantasy series continues to massively impress us. While our first look at the game at Summer Game Fest 2026 showed us a glimpse of the reputation system, our time with the Gamescom preview gave us a proper hands-on look at combat, and it’s utterly fantastic.

Playing a sliver of the game with two builds revealed the elegance with which the game blends melee and ranged combat with magic and spellcasting. The hand-to-hand combat is weighty and feels excellent to carry out, offensively or defensively, with a perfectly timed parry.

The ranged weaponry is very effective, and one rapid-fire crossbow weapon had me grinning from ear to ear. However, the magic is a real stand-out for me, offering loads of options for not only effective combat but also comedic theatre. The amount of gleeful satisfaction I got out of raising up some silly undead enemies, only to then slam them down and turn them into chickens was glorious.

Combine all this with the brilliance in writing and acting that our demo had, as well as a hugely impressive graphical presentation of the world, and I really think we’re in for a treat when Fable releases, and it was easily one of the best games on show at Gamescom.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons

2027 looks set to bless us with not only one brilliant fantasy adventure game in Fable, but two, with Warlock really catching my eye at Gamescom in a fascinating and intriguing preview.

As well as a captivating land to explore and a story and narrative which seem deeply compelling already, the role of deep and raw magic and the creative ways in which the game’s protagonist, Kaatri, can use it caught my eye particularly. For example, each spell or cast doesn’t seem to be a one-and-done trick, or you can use subsequent spells and casts one after another to solve puzzles, take down enemies, and explore the world in satisfying and creative ways.

What’s more, it’s all put together very slickly and sharply too, with combat looking fluid and responsive, the array of spells at your disposal vast and varied, the world and its secrets yearning to be discovered, mysteries to solve, Kaatri’s sort-of-helpful companion adding some good banter, and a style that will please those familiar with D&D, and those not.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

SteelSeries Aeon Pro Controller

It’s been a while since SteelSeries gave a proper go in the controller market, and some of the brand’s mobile offerings have raised an eyebrow, but as soon as I saw the Aeon Pro controller, I knew the brand was on to something.

Built around the traditional Xbox controller design — akin to the Elite Series 2 controller in many ways — the Aeon Pro is a premium pad with a few exciting features up its sleeve. Chief among these is the OLED mini screen on the front-top part of the pad, which is tidily done; it’s not intrusive or gimmicky and feels like it will be genuinely useful for players looking to have easy access to profiles and some controller information while the pad is in play.

It also has an excellent infinite power and battery supply system built into its dock that’s heavily inspired by the Nova Pro headset series and can charge a spare battery while you use another.

Targeting those on PC or Xbox — and those with both, particularly — the Aeon Pro will also offer an excellent grippy texture on its wings, remappable buttons, and interchangeable thumbsticks to provide multiple options for players looking for a one-and-done premium controller solution.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Turtle Beach Command Series MC7 Mouse

While this mouse from Turtle Beach massively raised eyebrows when first announced, having now seen it in the flesh and understood how it can be used, the Command Series MC7 Mouse is both a quality addition to the market and a worthy winner of one of our awards.

The 2.25” touchscreen on the side of the mouse is the star of the show, of course, and its ability to house touchscreen controls and clearly visible features seems like it could well add a layer of functionality to a gaming mouse not really seen before. You can load an extensive range of controls onto the screen too, from OBS to apps, PC information, and loads more — it may even provide a worthy service to streamers alongside the likes of a Stream Deck.

And the inclusion of the screen doesn’t compromise quality elsewhere either: you’re still getting the two buttons on the side for your thumb, and there’s true 8K wireless ultra-low latency, Turtle Beach’s Owl-Eye 30K sensor, and an excellent external dock that houses the USB dongle, as well as a second battery for the mouse that charges while you’re using the mouse, ensuring you’ll never be out of juice.

It might not be for everyone, sure, but props to Turtle Beach for having the guts to try something totally different with a mouse and give it a proper go.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past

One thing I vividly remember noticing during my long preview of The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past was that everyone in the session — a few dozen members of the press, at least — was absolutely, totally, deathly silent and utterly gripped by the quest we were being shown on screen. The allure, pull, and attention that this game still demands, all these years later, even with brand new content, is as strong as it’s ever been.

Seeing Geralt and Roach ride across the lands of The Continent once more, in that familiar older-looking engine brushed up anew, was a true highlight of Gamescom for Witcher fans, but with Songs of the Past, it already feels like we’re in for one more absolutely thrilling and deep expansion from CD Projekt Red that will finally round out the game’s narrative and complete the story.

Focusing on Dandelion and the new area of Letten, Songs of the Past already looks to have the makings of a Blood and Wine-esque expansion, filled with brilliantly written quests, a fascinating main storyline, and a host of different places to discover and see.

It also makes The Witcher 3 look better than ever (thanks in part to enhancements offered by the Remastered upgrade coming later this year), with luscious vegetation covering the land, sun-soaked vistas across lakes and forests, as far as the eye can see, and expect more of the brilliantly acted and realised NPCs going about their daily lives.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Total War: Warhammer 40,000

The epic strategy game series finally comes to the epic and grimdark fantasy universe, and the results are absolutely belting. Offering up perhaps what was my favorite game preview of the entire Gamescom, Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is the perfect combination of the PC game and the grimdark galaxy.

Playing a bit of an onboarding intro, as well as some of the interplanetary campaign and a climactic, testing, and epic battle as the Space Marines, I devoured and soaked up every tiny detail of Creative Assembly’s creation at Gamescom.

The epic battle at the end, utilising a wide variety of unit types, terrain factors, reinforcements, and abilities, was a true highlight of the show for me, and gave me that excellent mix of confidence when plans were going well, panic when it looked like the tide was turning, and relief crossed with triumph when I clawed my way to victory.

Playing it all in the studio’s new Warcore engine was an absolute blast too, with projectiles filling the skies, blood covering the ground, and environmental effects like dust and so on adding to the brilliant visuals on offer.

I’m deeply intrigued by how the diplomacy, trade, and other non-battle-focused elements of Total War games will manifest in this 40K version, but if what I’ve played is anything to go by, fans need not be worried; only incredibly excited and hyped.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Thrustmaster SimTask Truck-40 Add-On Kit

Another niche but excellent hardware offering at Gamescom 2026 was Thrustmaster’s SimTask Truck-40 Add-On Kit, a large steering wheel designed specifically for truck and heavy-vehicle simulation.

It’s a simple affair in its design, but it has that Thrustmaster quality running through its veins, with a robust design, a pleasing aesthetic, and a strong feature set.

There are 22 action buttons, four different heights, and a 30-degree tilt angle achieved with its bespoke mount, and it looks set to be a welcome addition to the market for both PC and console users, working with all of the brand’s wheelbases too.

What’s more promising is that it might well offer the only wheel specifically designed for games like Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator that console users will have access to, earning it a huge thumbs-up from us for serving a dedicated community of players.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Nvidia RTX Spark

Among a few things that the hardware giant had to show, what stood out to me most was the new and upcoming RTX Spark. In case you missed it, this is Nvidia’s new ARM-based chip, specifically designed for slim and lightweight Windows laptops, with Nvidia AI and RTX graphics ready to be utilized.

The latter means laptops using the superchip are fully capable of playing numerous triple-A games at high frame rates, and that’s exactly what I both witnessed and played. The likes of 007 First Light, Borderlands 4, and Arc Raiders perform nearly flawlessly on the RTX Spark laptops on show.

Team Green has essentially opened up the possibilities for manufacturers to design slim desktop or laptop PCs, or even handheld gaming PCs — and Nvidia noted that it's more than happy for brands to reach out to use the superchip for handhelds. As a fan of gaming on the go on lightweight systems, I’m more than happy to give Nvidia credit where it’s due with this one.

Isaiah Williams, Staff Writer, Computing

JBL Quantum Engine advancements

JBL continued its push into the world of gaming headsets at this year's Gamescom with the announcement of three new headsets, which build upon the stellar work already shown off in last year's range. And while these light, comfortable, powerful, and sustainable headsets should be lauded, it's the development of its Quantum Engine software that caught my attention at this year's trade show.

The JBL Quantum Engine starts simple enough, with an array of customisable features and EQs that you might expect from a piece of audio software. These settings adapt to the specific genre or game that you're playing, with the intention of emphasising the important sounds such as footsteps or making your experience more immersive, taking full advantage of the 50mm carbon dynamic drivers found in the Quantum headset range. It can also cleverly block out background noise from especially clacky keyboards.

And there are now more features to come in Q4 2026. Most notable of all is the increased interconnectivity between the app and the games you play. One feature shown off to me will be of particular interest to racing game fans. The app can receive information from the game to transform into your speedometer and heads-up display, giving you features and details you might expect from a premium racing wheel, but beamed to the app on your phone or tablet. It's a cool idea that builds on the manufacturer's audio nous to create an all-in-one solution for gaming.

James Pickard, Senior Deals Editor

And one more thing we can't talk about yet...

Sometimes we're shown games or products at Gamescom that we can't talk about for even weeks after the event has finished, and one of our award winners is exactly one of those things.

Check back here in a few weeks time when we can reveal our last Best of Gamescom 2026 winner!

• Xbox seems to be using dynamic pricing to tempt back some lapsed Game Pass subscribers
• A photo showing a surprise 30% discount was posted to Reddit by a US user
• The promotion is not visible to others

Are you suddenly being offered an Xbox Game Pass subscription at a lower price than standard? According to Reddit, some users are being shown discounts of up to 30% for 12 months, and there are a few theories as to why.

In a photo uploaded to the platform, one user shared the subscription screen featuring an unusual promotion — an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription for just $16.09 a month (down from the usual $22.99 monthly fee).

The screen states that the discount will last for an entire year unless the user chooses to cancel their membership early. "Been looking for an annual subscription for years," the poster wrote. "$16.09 a month for one year Ultimate. I'll take it."

Interestingly, not everyone is being shown the same discount, and if you head to the Xbox website right now, chances are you'll see the standard $22.99 rate.

This would suggest that the promotion is being dynamically awarded to accounts that fulfil certain criteria, and many commenters were keen to share their theories.

"If you log in to a secondary account on your Xbox, one that doesn't pay for Game Pass, then you will see an offer like this," posed one. "My offer was $18 something for 12 months, so I'm guessing they're doing some kind of dynamic pricing BS."

"I am on and off Game Pass a lot," the original poster went on to explain in the comments, suggesting that this promotion is being used to bring back lapsed subscribers.

"You won’t see any kind of reduced monthly offer while subbed," someone else added in a different comment thread.

Xbox Game Pass has had a tumultuous time recently, with its price only recently reduced following a string of hikes. According to analysts, the decision to briefly add day-one Call of Duty games to the service was expensive, but 'did not lead to a significant increase in Xbox console sales or even subscriptions.'

We'll likely see more efforts like this to boost subscriber numbers in the future.

The Wolf Among Us 2 has been in development hell for years, to say the least, since its 2017 announcement. After a studio closure, a sudden revival, engine changes, and further creative conflicts between Telltale Games (its main developer) and co-developer AdHoc Studio, the long-awaited sequel is finally arriving in 2027.

I had a chance to see what Telltale Games has been cooking behind closed doors, with a short preview of The Wolf Among Us 2 at Gamescom 2026, and I walked away intrigued and hyped for its launch. The Bigby fans loved in the first entry is back, and just as entertaining as ever.

This sequel takes place six months after the events of the first game; we follow Bigby Wolf, who has been temporarily removed from his duties as Fabletown's sheriff. Bigby's job is to uncover a mysterious string of murders happening, working behind the curtain to save a city "consumed by corruption, vengeance, and fear".

Right off the bat, I noticed Telltale Games leading The Wolf Among Us 2 in a different direction in terms of gameplay. Instead of the fixed camera angles present in the first game, and frankly, most of Telltale Games' entries (notably The Walking Dead), players will now be able to control Bigby in a third-person over-the-shoulder camera perspective.

The dialogue between characters is still as strong as ever, and decisions within those sequences matter in both shaping the story and the relationships Bigby has with others. In classic Telltale fashion, one sequence left me with a choice to lie to a new character, Faye, who Bigby meets early on, about whether the ongoing case involved magic or not, as she suspects a Fable (characters that include Snow White, Bigby Wolf, Mr Toad, etc.) is the murder suspect.

I quickly learned that your choice may come back to bite you or aid you later on, via the 'X will remember that' notification — but sometimes, silence is the best answer.

Sitting down with The Wolf Among Us 2's design director, Jessica Hara Campbell, and principal scene coordinator, Leslie Harwood, I raved about the camera perspective change, as it offers a more immersive experience than I've ever seen in any Telltale entry before — and it very much reminded me of Capcom's switch to third-person action in its Resident Evil series, via Resident Evil 4.

Unsurprisingly, both Campbell and Harwood highlighted that the switch was made to push "further immersion", as players control Bigby going on a long run of investigations. It's possibly the best choice the team has made with the sequel, and perhaps a camera switch all future Telltale and other episodic narrative-driven games should make.

It's also worth noting that The Wolf Among Us 2 features a new dynamic style of examining areas or objects during investigations. Players are no longer expected to examine every single item or area, nor will there be constant hints during puzzles if players don't want them.

If the player is already a step ahead in an investigation, you won't be pulled back to step one, as the game is designed to respect players' detective work, as Campbell stressed.

While The Wolf Among Us 2 has some new design choices, Campbell emphasized that Telltale has its eye on maintaining what fans know and love about the series.

"What we are looking at in a lot of our gameplay systems is keeping the core of what was built," Campbell says. "For our fan base, there's a very specific feeling of nostalgia, but the core of that is the noir detective piece that we don't want to reinvent the wheel on.

"It's about making sure the game still feels like Wolf [first entry], and with returning players, they feel like they're kind of coming along."

The Wolf Among Us 2 is expected to launch in 2027, but there is currently no specific timeline for which quarter it'll arrive in. My only hope is that the launch is successful without any further delays, as I'm quite excited to see what the team at Telltale has been working hard to deliver.

With soaring component costs, buying a pre-built gaming PC has become a more viable way to get a modern rig without paying as much. And when builders like iBuyPower are running sales with up to $350 off machines for Labor Day, it becomes an even better way to buy your next gaming PC.

• Browse the full iBuyPower Labor Day sale

While there are several different configurations in the sale, the one rig that stands out to me as the best value option is this RDY Element 9 Pro R08 for $2,099 (was $2,549) when you use the coupon code 'LABORDAY'.

This machine features an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32GB of DDR5-6000MHz RAM, an RX 9070 XT (16GB) GPU, and a 2TB NVMe SSD. That's everything you need for comfortable high-end performance at 1080p and 1440p, as well as solid 4K performance in some less demanding titles or on lower graphics settings.

An operating system, case, cooling, and suitable power supply are all included too, so it's a quick and straightforward way to get straight into PC gaming. I would usually push to build your own, but given the ridiculous component prices in today's market and the excellent spec of this machine, the choice seems straightforward.

Today's best gaming PC deal

I really don't think you'll find a better option than this PC right now, but you can browse the full Labor Day sale at iBuyPower if you want to check out other builds. The same 'LABORDAY' coupon can be used on all pre-built PC over $999, with discounts ranging from $50 to $350 depending on the final price.

Many also include a free keyboard and mouse to get you started, as well as one of several free game bundles, containing either Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Star Wars Galactic Racer, or Control Resonant.

You've got a little time to browse and see if there's an ideal machine for you as the iBuyPower Labor Day sale ends on September 8. Still, I really don't think you'll find anything better than the RDY Element 9 Pro R08 I've picked out above as an excellent all-around and well-priced gaming rig.

More of today's best Labor Day sales

• Amazon: 45% off TVs, AirPods, air fryers & vacuums
• Apple: iPads, AirPods & MacBooks from $99
• Appliances: up to $1,200 at Samsung
• Best Buy: 60% off appliances, TVs, laptops & more
• Casper: up to 30% off mattresses
• Dell: laptop deals from $249.99
• DreamCloud: up to 60% off mattresses, 66% off bundles
• Home Depot: 40% off appliances, furniture, grills & tools
• Lowe's: $1,000 off appliances, patio & tools
• Nectar: up to 50% off mattresses, deals from $349
• Saatva: up to $625 off luxury mattresses
• Samsung: up to $2,000 off 4K, QLED & OLED TVs
• Target: 45% off clothing, tech & furniture
• Walmart: 58% off back-to-school, furniture, & clothing

• Creative Assembly says Total War: Warhammer 40,000's new Warcore engine improves almost every aspect of the game
• From rendering and animation to "the sheer volume of projectiles" that can be handled on screen at once
• The studio says the scale has been upgraded, creating "a bigger play area for all the planets, all the solar systems, the whole galaxy"

Creative Assembly has shared just how much its new Warcore engine has enabled it to improve almost every aspect of Total War: Warhammer 40,000.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom 2026, lead designer Joy Dey and battle product owner Dave Petry discussed the upcoming strategy game and offered insight into how the updated Warcore engine delivers a bigger and better scale than previous Total War games.

"One thing the engine has allowed us to do is take the Total War into space, because we now need a bigger play area for all the planets, all the solar systems, the whole galaxy, really," Dey said. "And I think that's the biggest, biggest thing for the campaign."

Petry added that the engine has also let the studio easily manipulate assets in the game's 3D space and improve other features like rendering and animations, explaining that it was a "required engineering" for the team's vision.

"The rendering of things, being able to improve how we render things and the quality that we are rendering things at, the animation system, our ability to sort of build modular animations in a more modern way, and the retooling of all of that, so that we can build faster and better," Petry said.

"Just frankly, almost everything, and just in how we build and how we tool to be able to make our games a higher quality and at a better rate, right?"

The battle system also sounds amazing, with Petry mentioning the game's Havoc system and saying the engine manages to deal with physical explosions "much better" when it comes to destroying the environment, as well as the number of projectiles on screen.

"So you know, being able to bring in these these tools to be able to solve these new problems that get brought up by these really awesome games is something that we felt we absolutely had to do," he continued, "and it extends to model changes, like being able to just handle the sheer volume of projectiles that we are now spitting out of seemingly absolutely every orifice when it comes to this game.

Petry added, "It was just absolutely necessary to build that new foundation to work from."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 launches sometime in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons has "deep-cut" inspirations from the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG)
• He adds that the game will still have a mystery for new and experienced Dungeons & Dragons players
• Guay says, "We wanted players coming fresh, with no knowledge of D&D, to kind of figure things out as they play"

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons draws much inspiration from the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), but Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says the game will still offer mystery for even experienced D&D players.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Guay discussed the many "deep-cut" D&D elements Invoke applied to Warlock, such as monsters, items, and spells; he also touched on the game's setting, Darkon, a realm within Ravenloft's Domains of Dread.

Players can explore Darkon's open world and uncover its secrets in the classic D&D way, which will take "tens of hours," confirming Warlock isn't a 100-hour campaign.

"There have been books written about it. Some of it is deep cuts, but it's still really good material we tapped into," Guay said, but explained that it didn't want to create a D&D game whose world experienced fans are already familiar with.

"We don't want to create a game where if you know D&D, you're like, 'Oh, I know everything,'" he said. "We want players to live that mystery of figuring out, what's that place, what are the rules of that place? So a lot of players are familiar with Ravenloft, which is another Domain of Dread, and that'll give them some insight into some of the things happening.

"But we wanted players coming fresh, with no knowledge of D&D, to kind of figure things out as they play."

Guay also confirmed Warlock has many D&D tropes, whether that's finding a secret door or dodging a trap, suggesting the game will be authentic to the TTRPG.

"We're doing these things in a way that's trying to replicate the feeling, but in real time without rolling down dice or doing these kinds of things," he said.

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons is slated to launch in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• More mods are out for DLSS 5
• They allow for the tech to be easily used with many more PC games
• One of these mods also alters the way in which DLSS 5 is applied to improve performance considerably — at a cost

As you've no doubt seen, modders have been having a field day messing about with Nvidia's DLSS 5, and the latest experiments include a trick to boost performance in a big way, and a method of easily running the tech in a lot more games.

Let's start with the latter, which as TweakTown reports is the DLSS 5 Swapper app which appeared on GitHub courtesy of developer Rakan Alkhaldi.

This takes the pain out of having to manually fudge DLSS 5 to work in unsupported games by automating the process, adding all the required files in the blink of an eye. You just drag and drop the game folder into the app, and it takes care of everything from there.

Swapper can even detect games on the PC it's installed on which can have DLSS 5 modded in. Not every game is supported, of course, but plenty are — and any given title doesn't necessarily have to have DLSS support at all, in any form (this is achieved via another community mod called DLSS 5 Feeder which is included with Swapper).

A similar tool, DLSS 5 Autopilot, published by 'Kizzuwatnaa' and also on Github, offers one-click DLSS 5 setup (via Feeder) along with an additional trick in the form of the 'neural upstream' add-on (from 'matiasLombo'). This runs the neural rendering (AI) process before the DLSS upscaling happens.

Normally, the AI polishing that DLSS 5 applies is performed as the last step of the rendering process to the upscaled final frame, but if you choose this option with Autopilot, it's happening earlier in the chain of events.

Based on experiments detailed on Reddit (posted by ToxicFatee), this makes a major difference to performance. The Redditor has an RTX 4080, and ran Assassin's Creed Shadows at 4K which went from 63 frames per second (fps) to 31fps with DLSS 5, but it was around 50fps with the neural upstream take on DLSS 5. That's a 20% loss, and a far more palatable hit on the frame rate rather than it being cut in half.

Others have aired similar results on Reddit, and there's plenty of excitement about what's being achieved with this mod (and the automated implementation of DLSS 5 across all manner of games). As one Redditor put it: "Absolutely amazing time to be a PC gamer."

Analysis: tread carefully with unofficial mods

All these latest developments with modding are great to see, but for me, it ends at just seeing this progress. By which I mean I wouldn't advise jumping in and installing these kinds of mods – as wonderful as they seem – and I'm content to merely observe, and see the frame rates and visual results, that others are getting. And we aren't short of these observations of late.

Why do I take that view? Well, for starters, I'm not keen on installing third-party software from unknown sources as a rule, because of the concerns around security that this involves. Granted, these are open-source tools (so can be checked over), and I'm sure they're on the proverbial level; but nevertheless, I'd still rather be careful around the risks of viruses and the like.

The second note of caution here pertains to the idea of messing with the rendering pipeline in terms of having DLSS 5 applied earlier in the process (with the Autopilot mod). This will likely involve image degradation or artifacts to some extent — or generally messing with the graphics more than Team Green intended — and I'm sure if this really was a genuinely better way of doing things, Nvidia would've used this route itself. As per observations on Reddit, there does appear to be a quality trade-off for the improved performance here.

All that said, perhaps there will be some kind of official option along these 'performance or quality' lines in the future, as some gamers are already hoping. However, DLSS 5 is, for now, officially designed to work with just one supported title, NBA 2K27, and it does an excellent job with that basketball game.

• Free-to-play open-world adventure Ananta will feature two massive maps
• The second, Chongxiao, was revealed in a trailer at Gamescom 2026
• It's inspired by the real-world cities Shanghai and Hangzhou, home of the game's developers

Upcoming free-to-play Grand Theft Auto 6 competitor Ananta got a new trailer at Gamescom 2026, revealing a second massive open-world map.

Players will be able to venture from the coastal Nova City to the sprawling futuristic metropolis of Chongxiao, with producer Ash Qi promising "dozens of hours of story content and a huge range of urban gameplay" in a new interview with TechRadar Gaming.

"Our goal is to create the biggest open-world game in the free-to-play space," added Qi.

"Nova City was the first map we created," they continued. "Chongxiao is something we knew we had to make about a year into developing Nova City. In terms of scale, Chongxiao is quite a bit bigger than Nova City, but each map has its own identity, with different stories and a distinct atmosphere.

"Nova City leans more into a modern, entertainment-driven vibe, with a livelier, occasionally chaotic energy. Chongxiao, on the other hand, has more advanced technology, richer cultural content, and large-scale tourist attractions for players to experience and explore."

As well as conveying distinct atmospheres, both cities are also dramatically different from an aesthetic perspective. Nova City looks almost like a blend of Tokyo and Los Angeles, while Chongxiao is decidedly more Chinese in its influences.

"Right now we’re building Lingyun, a city within Chongxiao. The inspiration behind Lingyun actually comes from Shanghai and Hangzhou, where our team lives and works. Both cities have very striking everyday scenery and iconic modern landmarks," explained Qi. "Our goal was to have the real cities as a foundation and layer Ananta's setting on top of it."

Plenty of real-world features from both those places were on show in the latest trailer, including a skyscraper that's almost identical to Shanghai's iconic Oriental Pearl Tower. Chongxiao is also built around a huge ancient body of water known as the Weilan Lake, modelled closely on the famous West Lake in Hangzhou — a UNESCO World Heritage Site featured on the back of China's one-yuan banknote.

"Of course, we’re not just recreating these places one-to-one," added Qi. "We’re giving them new settings and memorable adventures shaped by our IP and story needs."

Ananta has already made headlines with its dizzying range of mechanics, with trailers showing off driving, melee combat, third-person shooting, flying wingsuits, and even Spider-Man-like web-slinging. But the cities themselves will also offer a broad selection of unique activities.

"Anything you’d want to do in a modern city: shopping, grabbing a bite at a restaurant, catching a live music show, or dancing the night away, it’s all there," said Qi. "You can even invite your favorite character to do these things with you. Each city also offers its own distinct activities based on what makes it unique. In Chongxiao, for example, you can go boating to experience Weilan Lake."

It sounds like players will have no shortage of things to do when Ananta launches for PC, PlayStation 5, and mobile on January 15, 2027.

• Creative Assembly developed Total War: Warhammer 40,000's controller support alongside the game's battle system
• Battle product owner Dave Petry says the team "landed something that really does work"
• Petry adds that he doesn't believe the "myth" that controllers can't work with real-time strategy (RTS) games

Creative Assembly developed Total War: Warhammer 40,000's battle system and controller support simultaneously, with battle product owner Dave Petry believing real-time strategy (RTS) games can work with a gamepad.

"So, we have a very clear mindset on, or a distinction between platform and controller, right?" said battle product owner Dave Petry in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom 2026.

"Because yes, obviously, controllers are your primary method for using consoles, but it's just an input method. It's an accessibility tool, right? It's how you want to play or how you would like to play, and so we've always wanted to be able to bring that experience to people who want to use a gamepad."

He continued, explaining that from the start, Creative Assembly developed the controller support alongside the game's battle system and campaign "to try and get it to the right spot" and believes the team has "landed something that really does work."

Petry referenced the internal experience developing Halo Wars 2, which he said was a "really strong implementation of controller and RTS," and that the industry is creating more and more strategy games that get controller support, and that these studios are doing "a brilliant job of it."

There's also a "myth" surrounding controller support and RTS and strategy games that don't work together, Petry added, but doesn't believe it.

"I think we are learning that we can do this right, and yeah, it's definitely something that we're all keen to keep evolving as we ship and work on it [Total War: Warhammer 40,000]," he said. "I think we've landed in a really solid spot. I think we're quite proud of where we are when it comes to the technical side of things as well."

Petry acknowledged the challenges that come with this technical aspect, but it's something Creative Assembly is "fully committed to doing" to "get us to a point where we are performing in the state we need to for console."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 arrives in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says the team knew it wanted a magic user as theWarlock: Dungeons & Dragons protagonist
• He says "creative magic use was at the core of what we wanted to do in gameplay"
• Guay adds that "the scope of managing what would be in our magic system is a real challenge"

Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay has shared why the team chose a warlock protagonist for Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, explaining that "creative magic" was central to gameplay and story.

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Guay said the team took time to consider which D&D class to spotlight in the upcoming single-player action-adventure game, but knew from a character and story perspective, a warlock would work best.

"We knew we wanted to write a character, write a story, [and] kind of force [us to pick a] class and kind of explore that," Guay said. "We started from the angle of wanting to have a magic user because creative magic use was at the core of what we wanted to do in gameplay, and we landed on warlocks."

"Honestly, from a storytelling perspective, it's a very interesting class," the studio head added, explaining that the main character, Kaatri, is a patron of a higher being, an ancient witch named Tasha.

"You're talking about someone who's going to step up to a super powerful being and say, 'Hey, give me some power,' and convince them to do it. So we thought, 'Hmm, what kind of character manages to do that?' And that got us to the warlock."

If you're familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, you'll know that the fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) has many classes players can explore, as well as a great number of spells.

From the gameplay trailer, it's clear that Warlock will have a ton of flashy spells, but according to Guay, it was a challenge to manage the game's magic system.

"Magic, especially if you think of Dungeons and Dragons, it can do everything," he said. "So we had to pick our spells, and we had to pick our battles. We wanted the player to be creative, but at the same time, we can't do everything, right? So the scope of managing what would be in our magic system is a real challenge.

"But at the same time, you know, it's kind of fun. It's fun for us. I've been doing open-world games for a long time, and to play with this idea of a character and use spells in [different kinds of ways]."

In terms of other potential games that could explore other D&D classes, Guay said, "Since we've been working on this game, people have been telling us, 'Would we do another class?'" Laughing, he added, "We'll start with this one, and we'll see. We'll see down the road what other opportunities there are. But for us, this was a cool class."

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons launches in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition (henceforth known as WITN) is a new version of the old action role-playing game (RPG) with a few quality-of-life fixes, tweaks, and improvements.

It ends up being diverting fun and well-priced for what it is, and gamers who loved the original (or perhaps loved games like it, such as Dragon Age: Origins) will enjoy the return to this sort of simple-but-satisfying gameplay loop of hitting orcs, looting gear, and upgrading your characters so they can hit orcs harder, faster, and for longer without falling over.

But while much of the game is fine, if not spectacular, it's a shame there are a few technical problems and deeper issues. Swapping between characters on-the-fly is novel, and there has been an effort to incorporate this into all aspects of gameplay. However, hot-swapping is obviously not quite what the original game intended, so there is some awkwardness here, while glitches and bugs sometimes mar the game at key points.

What about second Fellowship?

If you never played the old version, the basis of the game is this: as the Fellowship of the Ring embarks on their quest for Mount Doom, you play an adjacent, original party consisting of Eradan, a Dunedain ranger with all the skills of Aragorn; Farin, a dwarf warrior from the Lonely Mountain who looks an awful lot like Gimli with the serial numbers filed off; and Andriel, a Loremaster elf from Rivendell who can create magical blasts and forcefields.

Together, the 'other' Fellowship party chats with old friends like Aragorn, Arwen and Gandalf, visits familiar and new locations (book-readers will get a kick out of delving into the Barrow-Downs and fighting the famous Wights), and slices through hordes of orcs led by an evil man called Agandaûr, a fallen Numenorean like the Mouth of Sauron. Agandaûr is one of Sauron's trusted servants, one we've never heard of before or since.

So yes, it's all a bit fan-fictionesque, and it plays a lot like other action RPGs set in fantasy worlds, only this one takes the basic fantasy character set and plops them straight into Middle-Earth rather than a parallel-but-similar setting of elves, dwarves and dragons. It's even funnier when you get hold of special character weapon options, and you're controlling a random dwarf running around with legendary gear like Anduril or Sting. Dedicated Tolkien enthusiasts might find it a bit egregious, but it's all in the name of good fun and enabling the sort of repetitive hack-and-slash gameplay the genre is best at.

If you've played any other Lord Of The Rings games, whether the PlayStation 2's Return of the King or a more recent title like Middle-earth: Shadow of War, you'll be used to LOTR games taking these sorts of creative liberties. As a result, it works for what it is, and even as a die-hard hobbit-enjoyer I had fun scything through the dark lord's evil hordes and meeting characters never adapted like Elladan and Elrohir, Elrond's twin ranger sons.

Old game, new tactics

If you've played any action RPG, you'll know what to expect: you and your party are taking on wave after wave of mooks, weapons swinging with basic attacks, but you'll also trigger powerful maneuvers and spells that require cooldowns and replenishing a power meter, so tactical implementation of these moves is vital. Playing as Eradan, I would be skirting low on health and could use my disappearing skill, so I could make a break for it unharmed to Andriel's side, who can create a protective healing field. I'd quickly swap to Farin to unleash War Cry to up my party's health and durability.

It's this sort of synergy that creates tactical play beyond mashing light and heavy attacks until you see the 'Finish Him!' yellow triangle that pops up over an enemy's head. The ability to swap characters allows the quick-of-thumb to set up these combos without the use of the AI characters, who are otherwise competent enough to look after themselves and augment the main player. But you do need to be nimble, as the controls to do this are awkward on Switch: even ten hours in, I was accidentally drinking potions when I was trying to swap from elf to dwarf. Co-operative gameplay is available on most platforms (both online, in which you drop into someone else's game, and couch), but not on the original Switch.

There's a surprisingly steep learning curve once you learn the ropes: enemies come from all sides thick and fast, in numerous varieties, forcing you to switch from attack to defence, and then to ranged as explosive enemies approach, and implement your powers carefully.

You level up quickly too, and loot is plentiful, so there are plenty of regular rewards encouraging you to persevere through the samey waves of orcs and goblins, as PCs, enemies and environments begin to blend into various overlapping shades of brown and grey. I began the game thinking carefully about upgrading stats at each level, but after a while, I just pumped Stamina to keep myself alive while concentrating on that character's main attack stat, and that strategy seemed to work just fine too. I'm honestly not sure how much difference these RPG elements made.

Feeling thin, sort of stretched...

While a simple-but-satisfying gameplay loop, it's still very much of its time, and parts haven't aged well. The target lock-on can get tricky, and you'll occasionally find your character engaged in a long, sluggish animation, swinging their weapon at empty air while you cringe as you watch orcs running at you from behind.

Despite the hot-swapping feature and inclusion of each character's unique secret-finding ability (the dwarf, for example, can detect treasure hidden behind stone walls), the game is clearly still geared for a single-character experience. Ammo drops are still linked to the character you're playing at the time, so you might find you swap to a character without any ranged capacity. You'll also need to visit shops with each character in turn to do a proper gear comparison before buying new equipment, which is tedious.

Your health and power replenish slowly on their own, but once you've cleared an encounter, you're under no pressure to carry on. Occasionally, I found myself putting the controller down unpaused, heading off to make a cup of tea, and returning with my beverage to a rested, unmolested party at full health.

There's no sheathing weapons, so you'll occasionally be wandering around Bree or Rivendell, incongruously with swords drawn ready for action. There's also no jumping, which is fine on its own, but the frustration of encountering a chest-high wall and having to find a set of stairs is a sensation I've almost forgotten about, a relic of level design marred by the technology of the time.

Worst of all are the bugs, Aspyr's revamp of the game delivering fresh technical glitches alongside the improvements. These are quite common complaints on threads about WITN, and my experience was no different: from flashing inventory tiles to small areas of the map that caused my entire screen to flip to solid green. At one stage I was fighting blind, looking at chequered green flashes, while I could still hear Eradan's shouts of 'You face a Dunedan now!'

Others report platform-specific glitches, such as an 0KB save file problem on PlayStation 5.

The North Remembers

I think you already know if you want this game: you're either a Tolkien fiend who likes the idea of exploring and interacting with lesser-known locations and characters in an original story, a fantasy action RPG junkie, or you played the original and remember loving it. At the reduced price it's selling for, it's worth getting if you fit two out of three of the above criteria.

Personally, even though I'm as Tolkien-mad as they come and I've got no shortage of love for the RPG genre, I think The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition is... fine. Serviceable. Enjoyable at times, but without much to set it apart from all the other games in the space, even back when it was first released, other than its LOTR wrapper and nostalgia goggles.

I liked my experience with the game, but I can't see myself going back to it once done. It's a poor man's bite of lembas compared to the previous generation's excellent Return of the King hack 'em up.

Should you play The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

WITN has limited accessibility features. Available languages are English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, and Polish. Four difficulty levels are available: Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary.

How I reviewed Lord of the Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition

I played Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition on my Nintendo Switch (generation 1) for 15 hours, trying each character's various combinations and progressing through the story mode. I used the Switch both in handheld mode and on my LG OLED TV. When I encountered glitches, I examined community pages and threads for similar reports.

First reviewed August 2026

Following the leak of the tech and a raft of unofficial mods, this week saw Nvidia's official launch of DLSS 5, with the company showing it off in NBA 2K27 at Gamescom 2026 and providing some further illuminating details.

Before, after Nvidia's initial DLSS 5 reveal in March, I was skeptical on some points, but I wasn't tearing holes in the idea like some gamers were. However, this week, we've seen a rapid shift in opinions and the general online sentiment around DLSS 5 — and I'm a good deal more excited about this AI trickery myself.

Indeed, I think there are a number of reasons to be hopeful that DLSS 5 could prove to be a compelling step forward for PC gaming, from Nvidia's clarification on support for GPUs, through to what modders have shown that the tech can achieve since it was leaked — some of which is truly eye-opening.

Here are my five reasons why Nvidia's incoming neural rendering model could turn out to be a very literal game-changer.

1. Nvidia has clarified that DLSS 5 won't just be for RTX 5000 GPUs

While DLSS 5 is currently only supported by RTX 5000 graphics cards — the tech went live this week in NBA 2K27 — Nvidia has confirmed that it will come to older GeForce GPUs. Indeed, we won't have to wait that long before wider support is ushered in, which is good news.

VideoCardz spotted an update from an Nvidia rep on Reddit which stated: "Our current focus is on optimizing performance for the GeForce RTX 50 Series with model updates expected later this fall. Once RTX 50 Series performance is more fully tuned, we plan to work on expanding official support to the GeForce RTX 40 Series."

So, we could be looking at early 2027 for work to begin on bringing DLSS 5 to RTX 4000 models — and possibly previous generations of GPUs will be in line for the same treatment. Modders have already got the tech working on RTX 3000 and 2000 models, after all — although the performance levels could well be the sticking point here.

At any rate, this puts paid to fears that DLSS 5 could remain locked to just the latest Nvidia RTX 5000 graphics cards.

2. Continual optimization should improve performance a good deal

I just touched on performance, and this is the area which has proved to be the biggest downer with the mentioned unofficial experiments that have been conducted with DLSS 5.

As Tom's Hardware observes, the performance hit with DLSS 5 is a nasty one, and it's generally causing a 40% to 50% drop in frame rates. In some reports, it's less than this (more like 30%), and what we have to remember is that all these unofficial figures are based on a pre-release version of DLSS 5 being fudged into play by modders.

The final version of DLSS 5 will likely provide better performance, and in any case, optimization is going to be high on Nvidia's list of priorities. I'd be surprised if there weren't major strides taken in this department as 2027 rolls around and more games are supported.

3. Experimental results with DLSS 5 are pretty incredible

Those modders playing with the leaked version of DLSS 5 have clearly shown us that this tech can be used to produce seriously impressive results. Of course, on the official front, the demo of NBA 2K27 at Gamescom 2026 proved the case that this AI-powered graphics uplift can work wonders, too.

That said, the benefits of DLSS 5 are situational to an extent, and it's not a silver bullet for making all graphics better. It really shines in certain use cases, though. For example, even if you don't want the main character models in a game to have the tech applied because you hate that idea, it can still make a huge difference to background details, and the likes of the faces of NPCs in the lurking atmospheric crowds which are the backdrop for open world games.

As one Redditor points out: "NPC crowd faces are one of the best use cases for it [DLSS 5]. It sometimes takes you out of the game when you're talking to a character model that's clearly been hand crafted with a lot of effort, and as you said then there's some janky smooth skinned ghoul walking by you lol. Watching an LTT [Linus Tech Tips] vid where they showed the difference in random NPCs was actually super impressive."

DLSS 5 can also transform lighting and shadows to make graphics look far more realistic, including character models — some of the results shared by modders in a megathread on Reddit make that crystal clear. I was blown away by some of these examples, frankly. When it works, DLSS 5 works really well — although it doesn't always come off.

That said, some of the wonkier examples that have been aired are down to modders being daft with the sliders and options on offer, which brings me onto my next point.

4. Tuning options are key for DLSS 5

As noted, some of the more stomach-churning moments from the various modders messing around with DLSS 5 have come from those folks ramping up the intensity of the sliders — sometimes intentionally just to provoke an anti-AI reaction.

There's a decent level of granular control over various aspects of what DLSS 5 does (including intensity, tone, and structure), and when a game developer properly tunes the tech for their particular release, the effect is going to be more subtle, appropriate, and in line with the overall art direction. (Well, hopefully — you'd assume this will be the case, anyway).

Used judiciously, it's clear enough that DLSS 5 can really enhance the visuals of a game — modders have proved that in some cases, and NBA 2K27 is a great official example of how this works, too.

Yes, it is very possible to get 'uncanny valley' kind of effects with character models if you're extravagantly flinging sliders up towards their maximum limits — and not every game's art or graphics style suits DLSS 5, by any means. But we come back to the last point — when it works, it really does work.

5. DLSS 5 will probably age like a fine wine (ahem)

My final point is a simple — but important — one. And okay, I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating. Rewind time back to when Nvidia revealed the original DLSS, the very first take on this tech that was purely about upscaling, and it had some quite pronounced flaws. Problems like blurriness, ghosting and artifacts proved a blight on the upscaled graphics, but these were issues that Nvidia resolved with the next iteration of the tech.

I'd expect there will be examples of DLSS 5 which show the visuals going off the rails in a similar kind of way, although it already looks off to a far better start than DLSS 1. The point being that whatever we think now, at launch, may change quite drastically in a year or two, and there's a genuine potential for DLSS 5 to be revolutionary in polishing up gaming graphics — albeit that caveats around its misuse and situational nature aren't going to go away.

• Afterworld is a new strategy game by Paradox Interactive
• It tasks the player with building and managing a post-apocalyptic society
• Director Dan Lind says the studio won't "judge the player" for any terrible choices

Upcoming grand strategy game Afterworld is all about building your own society in a post-apocalyptic North America, and, like other games by developer Paradox Interactive, it offers an incredible level of freedom to run things the way you want.

In a recent interview with TechRadar Gaming, director Dan Lind opened up about some of the emergent possibilities that players might encounter as they build their own stories in the wasteland.

"A lot of it will come from the kind of things that you have to adapt your society to," he began. "One story could be like, 'oh, I found like this huge colony of only the elderly or something, and I took them in, and we worked with a lot of tech that meant people lived for a long time, but they're not able to contribute work-wise, and society is struggling...

"So now we figure out ways where they can, say, jump off cliffs at a certain age for the betterment of everybody, or something like that, right? The story becomes 'whoa, how did you end up there? Why do you have this kind of society? Well, it was because this thing happened and I had to make this thing illegal, so nobody could use this resource, and now we're all vegetarians or something. Those are the kind of stories I think you're going to get from this."

In addition to managing your own civilization, Afterworld also has you interacting with those ruled by others — including powerful, ancient tyrants who run large swathes of the wasteland and can subjugate you with military might.

"I also think you're going to get interesting stories when it comes to the big political space where it's like, 'well, I decided to betray this tyrant in this way, so now I have to manage all of New York' or something like that."

Lind said he thinks that the stories players create will make for perfect water-cooler conversation, and went on to reveal that the game won't prevent you from doing evil things like cannibalism or selling members of your society to other groups.

"One of the rules that we have is that we shouldn't judge the player for their terrible choices," he explained. "The game will, for sure, in the sense that your population is not gonna necessarily just like you doing terrible things.... Unless you have a terrible population. Maybe you managed to get them to that point, or you found some people like that.

"This [freedom] is definitely where I see the game sticking out a little bit. It's expected of the setting, right? People don't expect people to behave normally and with a moral code in the apocalypse [...] but as you develop, you can take it in different directions. There's certainly an advantage to having a society that is not doing too many crazy things if you want to grow."

The director went on to say that he's "super excited" to see what players manage to achieve when Afterworld arrives: "For all our games, that's the fun part. Someone's like, 'Whoa, you did that! That's crazy!' Right?"

The pantheon of US crime dramas is peppered with ruthless, hyperreal villains who have risked it all for a shot at the American Dream. Michael Corleone, Tony Montana, Keyser Söze, Tony Soprano, and Marsellus Wallace are but five of the fictional strongmen now synonymous with getting things done by hook or by crook.

In the 30 years since the inception of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Rockstar Games has evolved cinematic storytelling in video games to the point that you could, quite feasibly, add Tommy Vercetti, Toni Cipriani, Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson, Niko Bellic, and Michael De Santa to that list.

In the slipstream of Grand Theft Auto 6’s Extended Look, multiple questions emerge about what has become the most-anticipated video game of the 21st century. Most notably, will we soon be able to add Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos to this scurrilous list of ill-gotten individuals intoxicated by life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

As a former developer at Rockstar Games and seasoned industry pro, Mike York is well positioned to explain what the condensed 26-minute slice of gameplay reveals about the lead characters and the title itself.

Miami twice

“I see a heavier tone and a slower pace,” York says of the follow-up to 2013’s GTA 5, which was set in San Andreas, a fictionalised version of California. This time, Rockstar has returned to Vice City, their neon-hued take on the sun-blasted, Floridian playground of Leonida, to bring the couple to life in a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style misadventure befitting the studio’s wild and vivid creative vision.

“Jason moves around very slow and methodical. That's the first thing I noticed. He seemed like a robot — a Terminator —walking through every scene and mowing people down with no emotion,” suggests York of the US military veteran, mirroring some of the observations – and criticisms – that have accompanied the exclusive Netflix promo since it launched last week.

Will the male lead stand up against the aforementioned icons, who have helped cement Rockstar’s brand as pixelated pioneers in these imagined, open-world environments?

York continues: “I want to see that. Niko Belic, for example, is a great character. He was witty and had some great lines, which is why GTA 4 became one of my favourites in the series. I hope we see more of that because right now, Jason seems quite deadpan and monotone.

“Rockstar usually gives us a bunch of neat characters who are funny and have their own flair. I don't know if we're going to see that with Jason, but I hope we do,” he comments. Certainly, if you rewatch the Extended Look, Jason’s demeanour – he warns Lucia to stay cool in the opening seconds as they become embroiled in a meth lab shootout and then scolds her for being late when the pair drive to meet aged accomplice Brian Heder – is of a more self-contained, uptight and introspective personality than his vivacious, chameleonic, and combustible counterpart.

Perhaps that’s the point. As switchable characters, will Lucia provide the Yin to Jason’s Yang? “I think that's what they're going to do,” continues York, pinpointing the passage where the duo emerges at the Effluvia rooftop bar.

“There's that moment in the trailer where they get in an elevator, and he says: ‘Sometimes I'm just more comfortable when I have to use a gun’. She replies: ‘Just be charming!’ Lucia's got this attitude where you can tell she's trying to break him out of his shell. She's the one that probably goes into missions gung-ho, all guns blazing.”

Wired for sound

Indeed, there are further clues about the duo’s depiction in the fluorescent, 80s-colored Extended Look soundtrack. When the focus is on Jason, People Are People by Depeche Mode (featuring the line “I can't understand. What makes a man hate another man? Help me understand”) is used for context. Meanwhile, Lucia’s section of the clip, which sees her marching into Zeke’s Gadgets store to shoot up the place and flipping the bird at a swarm of cops when they make their escape from a second robbery, aptly uses global chart-smashing Devil Woman as the musical backdrop.

“With evil on her mind… She’s gonna get you!” warns the enduringly improbable British pop star Cliff Richard, in a phase that could be seen as Rockstar’s opportunity to showcase a central theme of female empowerment and mutual respect between sexes that has been almost entirely absent from the GTA series. In the toxic shadow of an era defined and divided by the manosphere, could this be an attempt to reset this predominant tone against countless accusations of misogyny that have stalked each title?

“A lot of their games have been viewed in that light. It'd be cool for them to shake that up and flip it on its head,” confirms York. Currently working on Six Days in Fallujah for Highwire Games in Seattle, Washington, he joined Rockstar New England – a studio based in Andover, Massachusetts – in 2012, leaving three years later after playing an active role in the development of GTA 5 and its online incarnation.

Red Dead detention

York’s induction into the much-mythologised studio’s work culture would prove to be prophetic. On his first day, he was instructed to play Red Dead Redemption in full – for the first time, in fact – to prepare for what was coming down the track: extensive animations on its Western-themed successor, where he was charged with designing multiple animal models intended to maraud across the North American frontier at the turn of the 20th century.

Elsewhere, his portfolio – including trailers for Dead Island: Riptide, Fortnite, The Walking Dead, Borderlands 3 and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines – suggests York could illuminate the top-secret processes that underpin the massively hyped Extended Look, which is only the third official piece of formal storytelling to accompany GTA 6 and pulled in more than 30m views on Netflix in four days.

“We weren’t told anything about trailers, and then, all of a sudden, my animations would end up in one. It’d be like: ‘There's one of my shots!’ I only found out once they were completely released, and we were all watching it.” He says this level of secrecy is baked into the studio’s DNA. “They try to instill in all their employees that you don't say anything anywhere. If you look up most of the people at Rockstar, they don't have any social media presence because they're scared to. I was. When I worked there, I didn't say anything ever.”

Across the industry, how does the decision-making play out for this type of media content? “You don't want to spoil it or give too much away. You want to hint and leave things to the imagination, get people to want to find out what the story is. But things are changing. More and more studios and companies are releasing big deep dives, reveals, and whole chunks of gameplay. We're getting to see a lot of stuff that we never used to back in the day.”

Face off

York was impressed by many components of Rockstar’s mega preview, in particular the visual clarity, use of lighting, and the lifelike physics deployed in specific graphical elements, such as the movement of individual characters’ hair.

However, he also admits being disappointed by some of the “rough” facial animations. He explains: “It doesn't seem like they're using MetaHuman capture technology. It looks like they're still doing it the old-school way, like in GTA 5. It's very similar to that. That might be because of the limitations and what's important.

“I’ve worked with Unreal Engine 5. The high-fidelity facial animation has hundreds of bones in the face. When you add those to the character, it slows everything down. This is the type of stuff you put in cutscenes for The Last of Us Part 2, for example. You want it to look super realistic. On GTA 6, they're not doing that. Everything they show is in-game footage. It's the cinematic version of the character, which still needs to be low-resolution enough so it can do all these things without bogging down the rest of the game.”

York pinpoints other features – citing the weapon wheel and mini map – that also look “a bit outdated and weird”. “The whole UI doesn't really match the style of game and what we're used to,” he comments. “Rockstar has a big and very talented team. If they wanted, they could go in and change those elements before a final release. Will they do that? That's another question because there’s probably a lot of other stuff they're sweating about.”

That said, he praises the overarching LOD (Level of Detail), suggesting that – to date – only the CD Projekt Red team behind the once maligned but now widely celebrated Cyberpunk 2077 has been able to match it. “There are levels to this shit,” he states. “Rockstar are the kings of that.”

Despite any minor quibbles, the Extended Look has reassured York – who runs York Street Gaming on YouTube – that GTA 6 will set a new high bar stretching years into the future. “People will still say it's one of the best games of all time,” he says. “It will perform really well and become something we'll be able to play for a decade later like GTA 5. Online will come out and probably be an ever-evolving metaverse which will carry the franchise forever.”

Grand Theft Auto 6 will be released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S on November 19, 2026.

• Afterworld is the first Paradox grand strategy game with an original fantasy setting in a decade
• Director Dan Lind says this brings a level of "design freedom" that would be possible in few real-world settings
• He also wanted "to do something different" after working on historical games for so long

The recently revealed Afterworld stands apart from the rest of the recent Paradox Games portfolio. It's the studio's first title in a decade to take place in an original fictional setting, this time post-apocalyptic North America, rather than a real-world historical one.

The game is being directed by studio veteran Dan Lind, who has been working at Paradox for almost twenty years. He started out on Europa Universalis 3, working his way up to eventually become game director of the supremely popular Hearts of Iron 4 — a massive-scale WW2 sim.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at the company's Stockholm HQ, Lind explained that not being tied down by history allows for a whole new level of "design freedom."

"I worked for like 15 years on just Hearts of Iron and history, so you want to do something different," he said. "That was a big motivator."

He also thinks that Afterworld, which features a map based on just part of one country rather than a chunk of the globe, will be able to fill a specific niche in Paradox's offering.

"Looking at our games, I think there's a niche in between a couple of them that we're not tapping," he explained.

"I think there's another different, fresh grand strategy game experience that you can have at a bit of a smaller scale, but with more detail basically. Also having worked with 'crunchy' games such as Hearts of Iron, I wanted to see if we could find a way to make the game easier for people to get into."

He continued: "It's kind of a bit 4X like this, and you can start scaling the mechanics over time. It makes it so much easier, right? It's hard to do that with a historical setting, unless you're doing something like a migration era, but this game can also tap a lot of those ideas."

He also revealed the surprising origin of his pitch for the game, which he's wanted to bring to life for over two decades.

"I think the first draft for this was super long ago. I'm not sure; it might have been like 2011 or something," he began. "We used to do these brainstorms at the pub, where the idea was to just come up with a bunch of games."

The team would sift through all of them at the end of the night, deciding which were "a terrible idea" and which were "actually an interesting idea."

"This was a good idea. I had one that was playing DNA chains through primordial soup, which we rejected, but this one was something that was pretty cool.

"I've always believed that you could do grand strategy games at slightly different scales. It doesn't always have to be big; the entire world. It can be just as interesting, but you've got to add details in the other direction as well.

At that point, it was a different scale. It was even smaller; I would say it was maybe the size of three states or something like that. When I was working on Hearts of Iron and a bunch of other stuff, I always had this in the back pocket as something I wanted to try and get back to."

Naturally, the idea evolved over time as Lind became "more and more interested in things that were...less board game, more simulation," leading to the current scale and focus on deep societal simulation.

"Now I'm shifting it more to groups of people, but not country level."

Afterworld is set to launch for PC in the future.

Persona 4 was my belated introduction to Atlus's Japanese high school RPG series, so it still has a special place in my heart.

The PlayStation 2 original was, however, also usurped by the greatly expanded and far superior Persona 4 Golden, which is where I racked up my New Game+ playthroughs. Even as I have become more time-poor over the years, I would still dip into its subsequent post-Vita ports.

That does, however, present a problem for Persona 4 Revival. When a perfect expanded version of the game already exists and is available on all current platforms, is a $70 modern remake really needed?

The elephant in the room is that this is also a way for Sega to plug the gap for the long-anticipated Persona 6, though given that it was only given the briefest announcement this year, fans will likely have a much longer wait ahead.

But after about an hour of hands-on time with Persona 4 Revival at Gamescom 2026, I can appreciate the different touches that have gone into making this JRPG classic more palatable to modern audiences, while still preserving key elements of the original.

One more remake

Persona 4 Revival's hands-on demo was split into three parts: the first focused on story, the second on its dungeon-based battles, and the last let me choose how to spend several calendar days as a transfer high school student in the rural town of Inaba.

As a remake, it follows a similar approach to Persona 3 Reload. Character models aren't just a huge visual upgrade over their original lower-poly PS2 counterparts; they're even better than Persona 5's and look virtually on par with the character portraits that typically accompany dialogue boxes. Turn-based battles, meanwhile, have been updated to mirror Persona 5's control scheme, where commands are mapped to different buttons rather than scrolling up and down a menu.

Just like Persona 3 Reload, Persona 4 Revival has also updated its audio with a completely new voice cast and a re-recorded soundtrack, including at least one or two brand-new songs. I don't mind so much the decision to recast the roles, especially as several of the original voice actors have become much higher profile (including Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, and Yuri Lowenthal).

Still, the voice of Teddy takes time to get used to because while some may have found his original voice a tad annoying, now he just sounds a bit too much like another teenager rather than a mysterious being inside a mascot suit.

From what I played, the story seems to unfold virtually beat-for-beat in line with the original. I think that's fine, and given how long the game already was, the script really doesn't need fleshing out in the same way as the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series, for example. But there are still some interesting changes within that.

The most notable is the more interesting camerawork going on, including close-ups, that make extensive cutscenes more engaging to sit through instead of just lengthy dialogue you might be inclined to skip if you can read faster than the characters speak.

The script itself has also undergone some subtle adjustments in the localization process. It might seem very minor, but I picked up on how Yosuke now addresses the other female students like Chie and Yukiko more formally by their family names, which is closer to how real-life Japanese classmates who aren't close friends behave.

I'm still intrigued by how and to what extent Yosuke's character is updated in Persona 4 Revival, as in the original, he behaves like a creep and is pretty insensitive at times. Given there's a moment in the story demo where he gets annoyed with Teddy and pushes him over, my guess is P Studio is still retaining at least some of the more abrasive side of his personality.

Holding on to the past

Persona 4 Revival's visual upgrades apply to the environments too. With a completely free-looking 3D camera, you can appreciate more of the details in the Dojima household, while in the Twisted Shopping District, you can look up and see the strange red and black vortex instead of a sky that indicates you're in the Midnight Channel's parallel dimension.

Nonetheless, the places you go to are still very much as I remember them. Rooms are still separated by loading screens; Inaba's main commercial district has the same businesses, including the item shop that turns into a bar at night. That's also fine for me, as I don't think it would necessarily benefit the game to suddenly expand the real estate.

While seemingly still randomly generated rather than having the bespoke design of Persona 5's palaces, the dungeons you explore have nonetheless been adjusted to be a little less tedious, from having objects you can break to gather resources to a subtle wayfinder if you just want to get to the next floor ASAP. Ironically, I took this as a cue to go the other direction to explore more of the map.

When encountering enemy shadows on the map, the game even clearly indicates whether you've got the drop on them to get a pre-emptive attack. Failing that, Persona 4 Revival also adds the ability to guard against a shadow's attack so that you're less likely to start a turn-based battle at a disadvantage.

During battle, the Baton Pass mechanic has also been passed down from Persona 5 and Persona 3 Reload, which allows you to attack again if you've hit an enemy with their weakness, but pass that turn onto another party member who may have the right attack to exploit a different enemy's weakness.

But whereas Persona 3 Reload was criticized for not being a truly definitive remake, given the lack of an option for a female protagonist like in Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Revival at least is confirmed specifically as a remake of Persona 4 Golden. That means it will include that expanded version's additional story content, such as Marie, the mysterious and temperamental guest in the Velvet Room.

Despite those smart updates, I'm still curious why some other elements have been left untouched. For instance, character portraits were used prominently in JRPGs as they were more expressive than in-game models. But when Persona 4 Revival's character models are better animated and expressive, having these portraits seems arbitrary.

Similarly, when you knock down all enemies and trigger an all-out attack, Persona 4 would originally cover the enemies in a cartoon cloud for comical effect, yet the remake opts to keep this visual despite also having party members running in to perform a lot of flashier animations alongside it.

There might be some nostalgic charm to retaining these conventions, but it also feels unnecessary in the context of a modern remake. Similarly, once my hands-on time was up, I came away impressed with what I had played, yet still not convinced why I would drop $70 on it when Persona 4 Golden is right there for a fraction of the price.

Persona 4 Revival releases on February 18, 2027, on Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

• Two DualSense wireless controllers inspired by Grand Theft Auto 6 have been revealed
• Both editions are said to "capture the essence of Vice City"
• Pre-orders open on September 10

Sony has announced that it will release two limited-edition DualSense wireless controllers inspired by Grand Theft Auto 6 when the game launches.

Revealed during today's State of Play broadcast, the controllers come in black or white with purple chrome, feature the GTA 6 logo on the touchpad, with distinct palm tree designs and glowing buttons inspired by Vice City.

"The black and white limited-edition DualSense wireless controllers each capture the essence of Vice City, from bright days along the coast to vibrant city nights," Sony describes in the PlayStation Blog.

"Both editions feature a shimmering, color-shifting finish that brings together the hues of a Vice City sunset and the glow of neon lights. They both also feature custom palm tree details molded directly into the controller, adding a unique tactile element alongside official Grand Theft Auto 6 branding."

The white edition "embodies Vice City at daybreak, from its white sands and pastel skies to all its laid-back glamour," while the black version "captures the energy of Vice City’s iconic nightlife."

The DualSense Wireless Controller – Grand Theft Auto 6 Black Limited Edition and DualSense Wireless Controller – Grand Theft Auto 6 White Limited Edition will be available for pre-order on September 10 and launch alongside the game on November 19.

Both controllers will cost $84.99 / £74.99 through PlayStation Direct in limited quantities.

Ahead of the game's launch, Rockstar Games treated fans to the Grand Theft Auto 6: An Extended Look, which offered a deep dive into the game running on the base PS5. A new report also confirmed that the game will run at 30fps on consoles.

The spirit forms of The Warrior of Light, Terra, Zidane, and Cloud bob up and down behind each character in my party as I get into battle in an early dungeon in Final Fantasy Resonance.

When the trio of monsters is briefly staggered in front of me, I’m given a choice of which iconic character’s power to unleash to end the battle, and I promptly pick the spiky-haired and Buster Sword-wielding hero of Final Fantasy 7. My reward is a flashy CG cutscene of Cloud obliterating everything on screen in a visual display that seems strangely at odds with the rest of the game's HD-2D style.

But this clash is perhaps to be expected when you learn that Final Fantasy Resonance adapts parts of an old 2015 mobile game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, to create a brand-new entry in the traditional turn-based style of Final Fantasy’s NES/SNES golden era.

For players like me whose formative gaming years were spent playing those classics and who long for more old-school turn-based RPGs, it’s the kind of pairing that should shoot Resonance right to the top of the must-play list. And even in just the brief hour I spent with the game, I could feel myself getting sucked into its combat and presentation style almost immediately.

I can’t speak much on the story that frames this fan-service-heavy premise, given I got to experience so little of it, but it feels very much in the vein of a Final Fantasy of old. There are warring factions, a party of adventurers, and crystals to protect in temples dotted around the world.

However, it didn’t matter that I had very little exposition to set up my time with Resonance, given that I immediately saw so much to dig into with the characters and combat.

Alongside the four that were already assigned to my party, there are signs that many more familiar faces from across the full history of the series will make an appearance as Visions that you can equip to your characters.

These provide a vast number of active and passive abilities that can be brought together to create particular builds or strengths that you want characters to focus on.

For example, The Warrior of Light has several physical attacks and defensive magic that work together to make the equipped character a strong frontline warrior or damage-mitigating tank. You can further build upon that with abilities learned and masteries gained from other Visions to perhaps buff your health or offer other worthwhile passives.

I enjoyed tinkering with the makeup of my party to create the classic areas of expertise across all four members — the tank, the physical damage dealer, the mage, and the healer — and I’m sure you’ll be able to create more interesting hybrids as more Visions and their classes become available.

And like the best turn-based RPGs, it was even more fulfilling to see those builds succeed in combat. It led to a satisfying rhythm where you exploit the elemental or physical weaknesses of an enemy to stagger them, earn bonus turns for your characters to create an even bigger advantage in battle, and then unleash a Vision’s special attack once all opponents are in a staggered state.

It’s nothing hugely revolutionary in the world of turn-based combat, but it does add some flair to a familiar formula.

Throw in summons, limit breaks, and more abilities that are exclusive to each Vision, and you have the makings of an exciting and dynamic battle system that still retains some old-school charm.

And that sums up how it felt to play Resonance. Anyone with a hankering for some classic Final Fantasy will find a lot to love here — even beyond the fan service with its large cast of well-known characters from across the series. If that sounds like you, a demo is available to try right now.

Final Fantasy Resonance launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, and PC on October 22.

Last month I travelled to Paradox Interactive's HQ in Stockholm, Sweden, for early hands-on access to its next big grand strategy title, Afterworld, before its big reveal at Gamescom 2026.

Set in the studio's first original setting in a decade, it takes you to a post-apocalyptic vision of North America as one of a handful of possible groups faced with rebuilding life amid the ruins or tearing what's left of society further apart.

Paradox's most popular releases truly put the 'grand' in 'grand strategy' — with the likes of World War 2 wargame Hearts of Iron 4 offering complex systems that replicate everything from economics to supply chains, unit management, politics, and diplomacy on a daunting global scale.

They give you all the tools you need for tens, hundreds, or (for some players) even thousands of hours of immersive play, but only if you're willing to overcome a steep learning curve.

Sure, the games all have tutorials, but the amount of information you're bombarded with practically necessitates at least a few hours watching explanatory YouTube videos or consulting community guides if you're new to the genre.

Slow and steady

With Afterworld, however, Paradox aims to make its most approachable game yet.

Even so, director Dan Lind, who previously helmed Hearts of Iron 4, tells me that the upcoming release will still offer "some of the deepest simulation" we've seen from the studio yet.

"We're not really designing it much simpler," he adds, "it's the first game that actually has a population model that keeps track of which sex the person is and stuff like that."

He explains that some higher-level systems will also track the opinions and beliefs of different groups in your growing society.

This is something players will have to manage carefully as they set out establishing cities, harvesting resources, and creating military units to defend against the many threats of the wasteland.

The difference is that Afterworld is designed to steadily introduce its mechanics rather than throw players in right at the deep end.

It's a philosophy reflected in the overall scale, with a map that's condensed down to just North America rather than the whole world. Individual cities and units are represented in more detail than ever before.

"It lets you get closer to the ground," Lind explains. "I can do stuff where a unit is actually [just] ten people."

Things start small, but the scale ramps up as you progress. With multiple cities established, the action slowly builds into something that doesn't look too far removed from Hearts of Iron 4 or Europa Universalis 5.

"What we're trying to do is to manage the complexity with how you're unlocking it," Lind says.

"I think anyone can learn to play a Paradox game; you just might not be able to play the entire game if we shove it in your face right away. The idea is instead to drip-feed you until you're hooked."

If successful, Afterworld could help bring in a new generation of grand strategy fans when it releases for PC in the future.

• Free-to-play live service game Let it Die shut down earlier this week
• It's not the end, though, as players will still be able to play the game in a new offline state
• The new offline version costs just $19.99 / £16.99 / AU$28.50 and has all microtransactions removed

It feels like a live service game is shutting down every few weeks, and I'm no stranger to the crushing disappointment of learning that one of your favorite games is going offline.

Normally, the news means you lose access to the game for good — with all your progress, achievements, and in-game items vanishing along with it. Just look at Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, Anthem, or Hawked: three offline titles that died in the last few weeks alone and are now completely inaccessible by official means.

Although the reasons for such shutdowns are often understandable, it still seems like a massive waste of resources, development time, and sometimes some genuinely good game mechanics or ideas.

With Let it Die, however, developer Grasshopper Manufacture is defiantly bucking that trend. The free-to-play game shut down earlier this week after nine whole years on the market, but that doesn't mean it's now unplayable.

The company put in the work to create an offline version, which you can buy on PC or PlayStation 4 for $19.99 / £16.99 / AU$28.50. You lose some of the original's offline features, but all microtransactions are removed so you can experience the full game without having to open your wallet more than once.

You can even bring over your progress from the online game if you played it before.

A positive example

If you're not familiar with Let it Die, it's a roguelike hack-and-slash with a challenging, almost soulslike combat loop that has you battling your way through a massive enemy-filled tower.

Players loved its wacky writing (with iconic characters like its skateboarding rendition of the Grim Reaper) when it first released back in 2016, but microtransactions were pretty pervasive. In short, it was designed to make you part with real money to keep reviving your characters when you died, which, given the high level of difficulty, was pretty often for most.

With these mechanics now removed, I'm already seeing long-time fans call this new release the definitive version.

"Great to see this game won't ever die due to its servers being shut down now," wrote one Steam reviewer. "Plus all the crappy monetization which held the game back a ton is gone."

Others praise the decision to keep the game alive in some form: "Shutdown the servers but made sure the game was still playable afterwards. That's how you actually end a live service."

Of course, the irony of a game called Let it Die carrying on forever is not lost. "Can't say the devs don't have a sense of humor," quipped one player.

It goes to show that the end of a live-service title doesn't have to screw over gamers, and I hope other developers take note of the positive reception.

When I previewed The Blood of Dawnwalker, its prologue was an impressive snapshot of what Rebel Wolves was hoping to achieve with its vampiric open-world role-playing game (RPG). It was a tight and tense introduction to a game that encourages you to spend your time wisely, live with the consequences of your actions, and balance Coen’s newly acquired Vrakhir abilities with the hope of maintaining his humanity.

Now, after sinking dozens more hours into the full release, this team that includes several ex-Witcher 3 developers hasn’t quite made that formative game’s spiritual successor. However, I can’t fault the ambition found in the studio’s debut release — even if not every idea is fully realised and a few elements lack polish.

Ever since playing through that exciting opening, which sees Coen’s village razed and his family held captive to be used as sacrifices in an upcoming coronation for the valley’s vampire overlord, Brencis, I've been desperate to get back in and see what awaited in the rest of the game.

So, it’s strange that when you first hit the open world, the game starts to feel a little aimless. Your main goal may be to kill Brencis and save your family, but the direct approach is almost certainly going to lead to your death. Instead, it’s smarter to take the time to destabilise Brencis’ reign by going after his generals and increasing your power for the upcoming showdown.

No rest for the wicked

Unfortunately, that means engaging with a lot of dull and fairly repetitive tasks dotted around the map, mostly clearing camps of soldiers and smashing up boxes of supplies. The set dressing changes a little depending on which vampire lieutenant you’re going after (it may be blood supplies for Ambrus or slivovitz distilleries with Bakir), but you’re ultimately going through the same motions.

And I was surprised at how little some of the vampire leaders actually feature in the story while you’re being such a thorn in their side. Most development happens off-screen, while notes are found on soldiers bemoaning Coen’s actions and edicts are issued as you become more notorious.

There isn’t as much time given to interacting with these villains before an inevitable confrontation. And that’s a shame, because when you do come face-to-face with these flamboyant, furious, and fascinating characters, they end up being killed off just as they’re starting to get interesting.

I did find that The Blood of Dawnwalker found its feet when you dig into one of its many lengthier multi-part quests. Given the developer’s history and pedigree, and what was shown off in the prologue, this is more of what I expected. You get to spend time with some entertaining and well-written characters, explore interesting environments and dungeons, tackle challenging combat encounters, and often emerge with some nice new loot.

Choices and consequences come front and center in many of these quests, and I felt the game gives a surprising amount of room, as your investigations can open up different approaches or outcomes. And quite cleverly, not all effects are felt immediately, with some outcomes or repercussions only felt much later down the line. It shows Rebel Wolves really thought about the interconnectivity of its world and wanted to show the impact you have on it. A huge plus for the RPG lovers who thrive on that level of world-building.

The final countdown

Tying it all together is the 30-day time limit that’s central to The Blood of Dawnwalker. Much has been said about this mechanic, but the countdown to Brencis’ coronation and your family’s execution wasn’t a constant threat looming overhead. I considered it a lot at the start, but eventually, instead of making me question whether every single action was worth doing or made worthwhile progress, losing chunks of time eventually became something I just accepted as the price of doing business.

Where it was always a frustration, though, was during levelling up, where almost all skills and perks require you to spend time learning them, meaning you could lose half a day (or night) simply to make Coen stronger. I would understand this if it were reserved for learning more advanced skills, but when the same price must be paid to get 25 per cent more health or some passive stamina regeneration, it doesn’t feel worth the cost.

The transition from day to night didn’t substantially change the game, either. Yes, it enables Coen’s vampiric powers, with neat tricks such as shadowstepping across chasms or walking up walls, but these don’t have the impact I feel they could have.

For starters, there’s so much blood available in consumables or animals to hunt out in the wild that I never felt this moral dilemma the game wants to push about Coen needing to feed. There is a neat idea that only happens if you’re low on health in vampire form and chatting with a non-player character (NPC), where you risk Coen giving in to the hunger and sucking the blood from his conversation partner, but it didn’t happen to me once in my playthrough.

Tonight I'm going to suck...your blood

When it comes to a clash of steel and fangs, the vampire powers don’t elevate what is a perfectly serviceable, if mostly underwhelming, combat system. The foundation is based on directional inputs to attack, block, or dodge, and picking the correct direction will set up your opponent for a devastating riposte from your sword or claws.

You can weave in a few abilities that range from the mundane, such as using pocket sand to temporarily blind an enemy, to several witchcraft or vampiric skills that burn your opponent's blood or set them up for a gruesome and bloody explosion. And while it all works fine, it never flows as smoothly as you would like or feels as impactful as you wish it did. Combat ultimately became something that I got through impassively rather than finding myself excited for the next encounter.

And that’s ultimately what makes me struggle to wholeheartedly recommend The Blood of Dawnwalker. Too many elements are dull, repetitive, or underused to keep me fully engaged over its lengthy playtime. There are captivating moments, though, that I feel some may be able to appreciate more if you’re able to overlook some of its flaws. Perhaps with some updates or a sequel, the ambitions of Rebel Wolves can be fully met.

Should you play The Blood of Dawnwalker?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

The Blood of Dawnwalker has limited accessibility features. Subtitles are available in 14 languages, but you cannot customise the size, color, or position on the screen. Two control options are available, with the ability to invert both axes if required.

There are more choices when it comes to refining the difficulty of the game, though. As well as general preset options ranging from Story to Duelist, you can also specifically tweak enemy health, enemy aggressiveness, how easy it is to perform perfect blocks, and whether blocking is automatic if you want an easier combat experience.

How I reviewed The Blood of Dawnwalker

I’ve put around 25 hours into The Blood of Dawnwalker over the past week and a half, and while I haven’t completed it yet, I feel I’ve seen more than enough of the game’s main story and side quests to offer a comprehensive verdict.

I spent all my time playing on a PlayStation 5 Pro on a Samsung S90C OLED TV and Samsung HW-Q930C soundbar while using a DualSense Wireless Controller.

I played on Balanced mode, which aims to run the game at 40 frames per second (fps) in dynamic 4K. A 30fps Quality mode is also available, but I preferred the option with a more stable fps that didn’t impact the visuals significantly. A Performance mode targeting 60fps will also be made available at launch.

First reviewed September 2026.

• Nvidia unveiled DLSS 5 at Gamescom 2026, showing it off in NBA 2K27
• DLSS 5 will launch alongside NBA 2K27, and be available from September 3, 2026
• DLSS 5 is exclusive to RTX 5000 GPUs, but Nvidia is working to eventually make it available on older GeForce cards

It's no secret that Nvidia's reveal of DLSS 5 earlier this year led to instant controversy and a backlash from gamers, not to mention game developers. The technology was branded as generative 'AI slop', effectively changing the look and style of character models, notably Leon S. Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft in Resident Evil Requiem.

Since then, Nvidia has worked on developing its neural rendering tech, and DLSS 5 is now ready for launch — and it's arguably being used in the game that's most appropriate for it.

DLSS 5 will debut on September 3, 2026, and will be first available in NBA 2K27 on September 4. The new tech will be exclusive to RTX 5000 GPUs, but Nvidia made it clear that it will explore ways to bring DLSS 5 to older generations of GeForce graphics cards eventually.

At Nvidia's Gamescom 2026 booth, I was treated to a brief hands-on sample of DLSS 5 running in NBA 2K27, on multiple systems including an RTX 5060 gaming laptop and also on GeForce Now.

Much to my surprise, DLSS 5 looks absolutely amazing with NBA 2K27's environments and character models, providing a level of realism that can only be described as the next leap in visuals for gaming.

The level of detail in character faces in terms of lighting and shadows is truly next-level, and it's all possible thanks to AI-enhanced lighting on the rendered frame, which Nvidia states is trained to 'preserve artistic intent'.

When DLSS 5 was first revealed in March, I was bewildered by what Nvidia was attempting, which appeared to be generative AI used to make everything in-game more lifelike. If it wasn't clear already, I have strong feelings against generative AI in gaming, but my initial fears were misplaced, as this isn't what DLSS 5 is about.

DLSS 5 uses three different models, with each including options for structure intensity, tone intensity, and masking. Structure and tone are both responsible for aspects such as ambient occlusion, contact shadows, reflections, and broader lighting.

Masking allows manual or automatic control of where each effect is applied, and Nvidia has designed DLSS 5 for developers to have full control over the final frame that's rendered.

The DLSS 5 model running in NBA 2K27 was fine-tuned directly by the game's developer, not Nvidia, and the result is way different from the first glimpse of DLSS 5 in March. What was illuminating here is that the team at Nvidia stressed that the initial reveal had the sliders for each of those models at maximum levels.

As I saw with NBA 2K27, when put in the hands of developers, it's easier to see just how great DLSS 5 is when used appropriately. Developers will be able to adjust the intensity for each scene for both the environment (foliage and other objects) as well as character models.

Performance is a different ball game too

DLSS 5 isn't exactly easy to run, which isn't a huge surprise considering how realistic the results are. However, Nvidia has made significant progress in six months: DLSS 5 required two RTX 5090 GPUs to function at the initial reveal, and now works with any RTX 5000 series GPU.

The RTX 5060 gaming laptop running NBA 2K27 displayed very smooth performance, only using Frame Generation x2 with DLSS 5 enabled. This was a big surprise to say the least, and suggests that it may not take as long as expected to introduce this new tech to RTX 4000 series GPUs (and older).

My only concern at this stage isn't related to Nvidia at all, in fact. DLSS 5 on its own now looks very useful for producing lifelike visuals, and seems set to be the future for impressively detailed graphics.

Visual Concepts, the developer behind NBA 2K27, has done enough here to quell my fears that DLSS 5 would somehow mess with game art and design direction in a negative way.

However, we're yet to see how other developers will implement the tool in their games. I'm somewhat worried that many could fall into the trap of using DLSS 5 as a shortcut for great game visuals, rather than an added bonus on top of already well-crafted graphics.

I shared similar concerns regarding Nvidia's Multi Frame Generation, and how developers may rely on this very useful tool as a band-aid for poor game optimization.

Fortunately, though, if NBA 2K27 is anything to go by in terms of what to expect from the likes of Capcom, Bethesda, and Ubisoft, then I'm excited to see DLSS 5 implemented in upcoming games. After all, it is an optional game setting, so if you don't like it, you don't have to use the tech.

• Asobo Studio says it's interested in making a new A Plague Tale game set in the modern day
• The studio says it would be like The Last of Us, since Naughty Dog's game was a "big inspiration"
• Actor Anna Demetriou says a modern-day spin-off would work well since the Macula is "fantastical"

Asobo Studio has said it "would love" to make a new A Plague Tale game set in the modern day, since Naughty Dog's The Last of Us influenced the series.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom ahead of the launch of the studio's latest game, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, Valérian Robert (lead level designer), Carol Ann Bañuls (lead writer), and actor Anna Demetriou, who played the part of Resonance protagonist Sophia were asked about its next project and confirmed that a modern-day spin-off is something they're asked about frequently.

"Absolutely," Bañuls replied when asked if the setting would be a good pick for Asobo. "Definitely. Personally, I think so. I think it would be great."

Demetriou said, "It's one of the things a lot of people ask me about," with Bañuls adding, "It would be really Last of Us kind of."

Bañuls went on to say that, "Yeah, definitely, because it was a big inspiration. So yeah, if it's in modern days, it would be great."

In the A Plague Tale universe, the Prima Macula is an ancient curse that poisons the blood of certain families and is something that appears in every major A Plague Tale game, including Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. Demetriou thinks the Macula would work very well in a modern-day setting, because the plague is "fantastical."

"It would be amazing," Demetriou continued, "I would love that to fit into a modern-day setting. Yeah, it would be interesting to see what that would look like. I would love that."

Asobo Studio hasn't announced its next project just yet, but A Plague Tale game set in a time gamers are familiar with sounds awesome. Now, fans can pick up Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, which is available today on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

FiiO FG3: one-minute review

As an audio journalist, I’ve covered FiiO plenty of times; the brand is known for beloved digital audio players like the JM21 and digital-audio converters like the FA15. But I was surprised to see the brand enter a totally different market, trying its hand at a gaming headset.

The FiiO FG3 is the resulting device, and it clearly bears some of the audiophile DNA that FiiO is known for. It offers a coaxial dual-driver set-up, which is uncommon in games-focused headphones, and also totes a lightweight DAC control module to jump between audio presets.

So it should be a gaming gem, right? Right? Well, I think something was lost in translation.

FiiO’s hardware is fantastic for music, and the FG3 is the same, with the dual-driver set-up and handy EQ modes working well. However, it’s not quite as good for gaming, which isn’t ideal for a 'gaming' headset.

Audio is often too muddy and rumbly to do justice to the layered sound design of an immersive environment or frantic battlefield. It’s largely the low-end which lets the side down, with higher-pitched sounds cutting through pretty effectively. This won’t affect all games, and dialogue-heavy or rhythm ones will benefit massively from the tuning.

The fit of the headphones isn’t perfect either. While the cups are incredibly soft, the headphones squeeze and the headband is too firm. I had to take breaks from long gaming sessions to avoid my head hurting.

That all may sound like a series of criticisms, but there’s a lot to like here too. The cans are easily portable, and the control app being online-only is a breath of fresh air in this bloatware-riddled world (even if it rules out EQ control when you’ve got no internet).

The FG3 is also, crucially, pretty affordable, and I can see a discount or two making it an absolute bargain. If you’re reading this when they’re even $10 / £10 off, they’ll be an absolute bargain.

So it’s easy to look past some of the more annoying elements, or rougher edges, of FiiO’s sound tuning and design. But I can’t help but hope that the brand’s second foray into gaming headsets makes some improvements on what we’ve currently got.

FiiO FG3: Price and availability

• List price: $69.99 / £69.99 (around AU$140)
• Available in the US, UK and Europe
• Matches RIG R5 Spear Pro HS, undercuts other rivals

The FiiO FG3 sells for $69.99 / £69.99 (about AU$140, though at the time of writing, it’s not on sale in Australia), and was unveiled in June, 2026.

At that price, it undercuts many of the best wired gaming headsets, though it matches our top-rated pick: the catchily-titled RIG R5 Spear Pro HS. That makes it fairly good value for a gaming headset, with many alternatives going for three-figure sums.

For your money, you get the headset as well as a removable microphone, control cable and USB adaptor (which lets you plug the USB-C control cable into a USB-A port, if that’s what you have available).

FiiO FG3: specs

FiiO FG3: design and features

The FiiO FG3 comes with a non-removable cable, which connects into a 3.5mm jack. It’s not long, but it’ll reach a hand-held controller. However, it’s best to connect it to a control module which comes in the box; this offers you the ability to mute, change EQ or modify volume, and has a much longer cable which connects to a device via USB-C (or USB-A, thanks to an included adaptor).

These cans aren’t particularly unique-looking, although the cups are slightly canted, which helps them fit a head shape better. They rotate a little horizontally and vertically, which also helps with the fit, though some other elements like the thin metal headband or certain cheap-feeling plastic elements discourage any notion of these being premium headphones. There are no on-cup controls either.

While the ear pads are soft and comfortable, I did find that the padded headband wasn’t padded enough. Longer gaming stints ended in growing aches; the FG3 fit isn’t as comfortable as other gaming headsets I’ve used. A slight squeeze offered by the cans didn’t help either.

You can fold the cups in on each other, and remove the microphone, transforming the headset into a compact unit which is easy to transport (though it doesn’t come with any kind of carry case). Combined with a feature we’ll get to later, it’s a great headset for people who game in different venues.

Now onto the feature set. A potentially-divisive feature of the FiiO FG3 is that you don’t need to download a control app to clutter up your PC. Instead, FiiO’s website offers the ability to change EQ and flick between presets.

I loved the fact I didn’t need to download more bloating software onto my rig, and that I could tote the FG3 between different systems and locations and still customize them, but it does mean that you get no control while offline.

The control site lets you choose three presets, which the control module lets you change between: a gaming mode, a cinema one, and a music one. The latter list, which includes the custom mode, is the one I found myself using most.

This module also means you can still jump between your EQ presets when you're on a console or handheld, so your decision to play on a Switch, PlayStation or Xbox doesn't mean you're banned from customizable sound.

Don’t expect any Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) here. I found that the Passive Noise Cancellation (PNC) or natural ear cup blocking, managed to cut out annoying background sounds from my street, as did the closed-back design. But it won’t save you from louder interruptions.

FiiO FG3: performance

True to its audiophile heritage, FiiO has packed the FG3 with two drivers per cup: one 50mm dynamic driver designed to handle mid- and low-end, and a smaller 16mm dynamic driver for higher-end sounds. The benefit of dual drivers, rather than the sole unit found in most gaming headsets, is twofold: firstly, each being dedicated to different frequencies means that they can be better catered to them. Secondly, simultaneous sounds can be delivered with better clarity.

This latter is certainly true of the FiiO FG3, which has a distinct V-shaped sound profile; that means that bass and treble are well-defined and clear, though mids are a little lost. This isn’t a huge issue for gaming, as most sound effects are low or high ones, but it’s audible in music (including game scores).

It’s also clear that the high-end dynamic driver does its job well. Dialogue is easy to make out, even in frantic battles, including in-game audio and friends’ voice chats during gameplay. It’s also easy to make out nearby footsteps or the twinkle of a distant collectible.

However, I’m not as sold on the bass capabilities of the larger driver. In music it’s scooping and well-defined, but while gaming it lacks the power or ‘oomph’ of some other headsets I’ve tested. This means the chatter of your gunfire sounds a little dulled, nearby explosions lose a visceral edge, and roaring monsters sound like they have a sore throat.

Perhaps most importantly, the background rumble of a city or busy landscape which so often defines an alive-feeling open world felt a little too ‘rumbly’ for me. Some of FiiO’s equalization modes go some way to fix its issues, but not the whole way; I never found a way to stop the sound feeling a little muddy, and sometimes even made it worse.

A much-touted selling point of the FG3 is the use of Virtual 7.1, an algorithm which spreads sound to give a feeling of surround sound, without using 8 speakers (which would simply be 7.1 sound). It helps a little in spreading environmental and atmospheric sounds about you, though you’ll never forget that you’re simply getting spread-out headphone sound.

The removable microphone is… fine for purpose, but won’t deliver especially crystalline audio. Even recording onto my PC’s own voice recorder app, speech is a little crackly. However, I appreciate how dexterous the strut holding the microphone is: you can move it to different angles or heights, and there’s far more versatility than in many other headsets I’ve used.

Should I buy the FiiO FG3?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

FiiO FG3: Also consider

Here are two more gaming headsets that we've given positive reviews to, if you're not sold on the FiiO FG3.

How I tested the FiiO FG3

• Used for three weeks
• Tested for gaming and other tasks
• Mainly connected to gaming PC

I tested the FiiO FG3 for roughly three weeks in order to write the review. Through this time, I used the headset while connected to my gaming PC; I tried to plug it into my Android phone, but the connection was stuttery.

The majority of the testing was done gaming; predominantly Nioh 3 and Total War: Pharaoh, but with time also spent on Old School Runescape, Isonzo, Slay The Spire, Crying Suns and the Mortal Shell 2 beta. I also used the headset to stream music while at work, and watch YouTube videos and TV shows.

Since I review audio products for a living, I have plenty of experience testing gaming headsets (and using other headphones for gaming purposes). I've also tested other FiiO products.

First reviewed August 2026

Read more about how we test

Onimusha: Way of the Sword has blown me away after 30 hours with its engaging, emotional, and immersive narrative, filled with epic combat encounters. Capcom nailed the sword-fighting in almost all areas, further aided by some of the best boss battles I've ever played in the action-adventure genre.

The enemy variety in Way of the Sword appears a little weak initially, but fortunately, there is surprisingly a decent number of diverse enemy types to tackle, some of which will put players' skills to the test, and enemies that tie directly to some of the darker and morbid aspects of the story — giving me every bit of motivation to defeat those responsible.

Much like previous games in the Onimusha series, upgrades and enhancements work by collecting red souls from defeating enemies or by finding other necessary resources to stay well-equipped for more difficult encounters or boss fights (because there are many of them).

Capcom has blended elements from the beloved franchise with modern elements (notably thanks to the RE Engine, used in Resident Evil Requiem), creating a sword-fighting, narrative-driven experience that successfully revitalizes the franchise for future entries — and yet again, it proves that it's in the best form it's ever been in.

What it takes to be the strongest

In Onimusha: Way of the Sword, we follow Miyamoto Musashi, a confident young samurai looking to climb to the very top to be the best swordsman there is, battling rivals and those with the same goal. When an encounter with a fierce rival, Sasaki Ganryu, goes wrong, both Musashi and Ganryu are thrust into lives and roles neither could ever expect.

Genma (demons) are seeping into Kyoto, Japan, from the depths of hell, and chaos is unfolding, with the lives of innocents taken brutally, and formidable Genma tormenting those who are vulnerable.

Musashi and Ganryu seek the same goal: master the blade and become the ultimate swordsman. However, both will eventually learn that far more important matters are at stake: humanity's attempt to repel Genma is in dire need of attention, and with Ganryu led astray, it's up to Musashi to forge the right path to heroism.

Equipped with Oni gauntlets, Musashi and Ganryu possess strengths far above the ordinary human, with plenty of abilities to challenge and defeat Genma. However, as expected, with that power comes plenty of responsibility.

Do strength and power derive from one's own efforts? Is it honorable to seek absolute power with the sacrifice of innocents? These are questions Musashi is left to answer throughout his journey, learning through victory but also through trial and error, ultimately creating an engaging rollercoaster that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Musashi is far from perfect in his use of Oni powers, but the character's development throughout the Way of the Sword and his bravado (significantly amped by the face model of the late and legendary Toshiro Mifune) are the strongest aspects of the game, keeping you coming back for more after each main story mission.

Miyamoto Musashi shines in every single cutscene, with a level of charisma that accurately represents the legendary Japanese figure, Musashi himself, and Toshiro Mifune's prowess. (Video Credit: Capcom)

As much as Onimusha: Way of the Sword maintains a strong focus on sword combat, it's very much a strong cinematic experience, with cutscenes that are absolutely phenomenal. The level of detail in every character's facial expressions and speech makes it feel like you're watching a movie at times.

Unfortunately, that makes the switch back to gameplay and dialogue sequences quite jarring. It's not that the visuals aren't great during gameplay; it just doesn't match up to those cinematic sequences, and I found myself constantly wishing gameplay looked as great as those important cutscenes — but ultimately, those beautiful visuals are designed for what's most important: the story.

Exceptional, addictive sword combat

Unsurprisingly, the combat in Onimusha: Way of the Sword is fantastic, taking fundamentals from what series veterans are accustomed to, alongside new and exciting skills, making every encounter entertaining.

As mentioned in my preview, the Issen technique makes its return, allowing players to viciously strike enemies right before being hit, and it makes for an incredible spectacle.

More importantly, parrying and deflecting are pivotal to overcoming foes in Way of the Sword. Just like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice by FromSoftware, both defence options significantly deplete enemy stamina or 'posture', leaving them open to attacks for huge damage.

Way of the Sword treats Sekiro's 'deathblows' slightly differently; instead of one central area to attack, players have several options for areas to strike against bosses.

In scenarios where Musashi runs out of Hozuki (used for quick healing), most bosses will have a limb or part of a weapon (notably with the Byakue boss) highlighted in purple that is filled with red, yellow, blue, and purple souls, but does less damage to the enemy compared to the traditional main attack.

It's an aspect of combat that creates a dynamic back-and-forth between Musashi and various bosses, especially if you need more yellow souls for health from dealing too much damage earlier on.

Patience is key when attempting to execute Issen or Chain Issen, as the timing window is very narrow, more so than those for parries and deflects. When mastered, though, you'll overcome most enemies with ease. (Video Credit: Capcom)

Capcom did promise that enemies further into the game's story would be more difficult, after players voiced concerns that the demo was too easy. While I can say that endgame enemies are certainly more formidable and aggressive, some even making me sweat when in larger numbers, most basic enemy encounters are still easy.

This is directly due to Capcom's design for Way of the Sword's combat, which is very obviously focused on replicating samurai-like fights, taking after historical samurai duels that often ended in a single strike. Enemies won't attack Musashi in groups, making clashes with enemies easy, but I can see what director Satoru Nihei was aiming for with slower, more deliberate, and steadily paced sword clashes.

Fortunately, once you beat the game, you'll unlock the hard mode, Carnage, which is encouraged for use in New Game Plus. This raises the stakes to a new level, as a single hit could result in death, similar to Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima and its Lethal difficulty.

While that doesn't directly address the fundamental aspect of enemies not attacking Musashi all at once, it will keep players on their toes to remain efficient in combat.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword genuinely has some of the best animations I've ever seen in any video game, particularly when parrying. Musashi oozes so much swagger in every single fight, making his confident and cocky attitude shine through combat, not just dialogue and cutscenes.

At the same time, I was slightly disappointed to see that Musashi's katana is the only primary weapon to use throughout the game. Yes, you'll find Oni Armaments on the journey, which effectively act as secondary weapons, but they require blue souls to pull off special attacks. It's a step away from a series tradition, where characters like Samonsuke or Jean Reno had a wide arsenal of weapons to use on the fly.

The game excels at its parry and deflect animations, but is surprisingly lacking in the number of animations for enemy finishers — and I couldn't help but feel like another primary weapon besides the katana would instantly fix that.

Nonetheless, Onimusha: Way of the Sword's boss fights make up for it, as they are easily the standout in an already immersive and addictive game experience. While some of the boss encounters are repeated too often, particularly during the game's climax, they are easily among some of the most epic boss battles I've played in games.

Besides the final boss battle, Dohatsu-ten is a strong favourite of mine, putting my reflexes to parry fast attacks to the test, and its design reminds me of Capcom's very own familiar and beloved half-demon, half-human demon hunter, Dante. (Video Credit: Capcom)

If difficulty is a major concern, fear not, because not only are the boss fights a fantastic spectacle, but they're also very challenging. Bosses will often launch attacks (where swords have a purple glow) that can't be dodged or blocked, so players must parry or deflect them or lose plenty of souls in the process.

Losing souls from being hit by an enemy's unblockable attack is very risky, as they'll be collected and used to make them even stronger mid-fight — and this is the last thing you'll want to happen during the final boss fight, which I won't spoil.

Players will also have to look out for bosses attempting to grab Musashi by hitting the dodge button just before it lands, as mistiming this results in serious damage and can single-handedly decide a fight. Pulling off well-timed dodges, parries, deflects, and counters to grabs makes the entire combat experience addictive, and once you unlock the Oni transformation, the game takes a new leap to greater heights.

What about performance?

I played Onimusha: Way of the Sword on my main desktop gaming PC, equipped with an RTX 4080 Super and an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D processor, and performance was the least of my concerns. Through most of my 30-hour playthrough, I played at maximum graphics settings at the 3440x1440 display resolution, with DLSS Quality enabled, and consistently stayed above the 100 fps mark.

When testing the game on my Lenovo Legion Go S Z1 Extreme handheld gaming PC, I could easily hit around 40fps with graphics settings preset to medium, with FSR set to balanced, at around 24W (power consumption).

This is another Capcom game that runs very smoothly, which was a worry considering some of its semi-open world hubs. The RE Engine seems to struggle in open-world (open-area) games like Dragon's Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds, rather than those with linear environments in Capcom's Resident Evil games.

I did experience a few odd moments of heavy frame rate dips during some cutscenes, but these were few and far between, so it didn't break the flow of important narrative development.

There is full ultrawide support in both cutscenes and gameplay, which isn't exactly common for PC ports, as the former is often restricted to the 16:9 aspect ratio.

Should you play Onimusha: Way of the Sword?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

Onimusha: Way of the Sword has plenty of accessibility options, notably color blindness aids alongside visual and auditory accessibility presets. Within those presets lie options such as subtitles (toggle on or off), subtitle size, subtitle background, menu text size, and HUD size.

There are also numerous options to change the blood color, disable dismemberment, remove action prompts, and motion sickness reduction settings.

Players can also change keybinds for mouse and keyboard play, while there are several different options for sprint control (toggle or hold), deflect control, menu cursor speed, and even one to disable the Windows key's functionality.

The game ships with DLSS 4.5 and FSR 3 frame generation, CPU performance presets, and ray tracing, which doesn't seem heavy to run — at least on a high-end gaming system.

How I reviewed Onimusha: Way of the Sword

Most of my 30-hour playthrough of Onimusha: Way of the Sword was on my main gaming PC, using the LG 45GS95QE OLED ultrawide display, providing exceptional immersion thanks to its 800R curvature.

During my trip to Gamescom, I put Onimusha's performance to the test by lowering my Lenovo Legion Go S handheld's TDP as much as possible, and was quite impressed by how steady it was around 40fps. It's certainly possible to achieve 60fps, but it would require lowering graphics settings further and increasing the TDP.

First reviewed August 2026

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review: two-minute review

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is a high-octane handheld games console that can run PC and Xbox games from a wide range of game stores. With the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chipset — featuring the Intel Arc B390 GPU and 32GB RAM — it’s easily the most powerful portable console I’ve ever (quite literally) gotten my hands on. But there’s a pretty huge catch to that performance: a price tag that would buy you two Steam Deck OLEDs or a mid-price gaming laptop.

Let’s start with the superficial stuff: the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ looks gorgeous. Its screen is an extensive eight inches across, offers wonderfully rich colors and a silky-smooth 120Hz refresh rate. Combined with its discreet RGB lighting around the asymmetrically placed thumbsticks and Void Purple colorway, it has a unique look that definitely helps it stand out from the crowd.

But its design goes far beyond aesthetics. Its Hall effect thumbsticks and triggers should not only offer greater longevity, but they felt really responsive, even if they’re not quite as sensitive as the TMR versions now offered by some controllers. Meanwhile, it felt perfectly ergonomic in my hands — I was genuinely surprised how light it felt for a 1.73 lb / 786g console — although its laser-etched grips sure made my hands feel sweaty, for some reason.

What cements the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ as one of the best handheld games consoles out there, though, is its performance. It’s the first gaming handheld on the market with the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chipset and, boy, does that have a pronounced effect on how it plays. While benchmarks showed it offered similar CPU performance to the recent Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, thanks to its Intel Arc B390 GPU and 32GB RAM, it managed to smash its 3D Mark benchmarks by between 35% and 76% — that’s a significant performance upgrade.

Numbers only tell part of the story, though: what was the Claw actually like in action? Well, Baldur’s Gate 3 looked truly gorgeous on Ultra graphics settings and yet it hovered around a decent 38fps. Meanwhile, despite only being released in 2025, both Doom: The Dark Ages and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 played at a rock-solid 60fps — whether I was punching demons to death or countering devastating attacks, there wasn’t a hint of latency or lag. Even the boss-level challenge of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered hit 60fps at points… before plunging to a stuttery mess in busier areas. Still that’s impressive stuff for a handheld console.

But the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ has a pretty huge barrier to Fosbury flop over: its price. In return for its premium components, you’ll pay a seriously premium price tag of $1,799.99 / £1,399.99 / AU$2,849. Not only is that significantly higher than any other gaming handheld to date, it’s also as expensive as some mid-range gaming laptops.

And that presents an enormous problem for the Claw. Despite the fact that some of the best gaming laptops come in at a similar price, many of them offer superior performance in our benchmark tests. Now don’t get me wrong: no gaming laptop offers the kind of ergonomics or compact form factor you get here, but I do have doubts that the pro gamers that can afford this kind of device will be willing to trade performance simply for the sake of increased maneuverability.

That’s a real shame because in almost every respect, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is a fantastic gaming handheld that has really stretched my expectations of what this kind of device is capable of. I want one. And you should too. But I’m not convinced either of us will be able to justify the spend.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review: price & availability

Having launched on June 23, 2026, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is available now. As you can see from the specs — or if you took sneaky peak at the benchmarks in the performance section — it’s seriously mighty for a gaming handheld.

It’s the first handheld console on the market that rocks the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chipset, which includes the 12-core Intel Arc B390 GPU and a hefty 32GB RAM. That puts it considerably ahead of most of its competitors, even if it can’t quite rival any of the best gaming laptops for sheer processing punch.

Unfortunately, like the hero in a Greek tragedy — or Oddyseus, apparently — it has a fatal flaw. The price. At $1,799.99 / £1,399.99 / AU$2,849, its cost is possibly the most eye-watering thing I’ve come across in a while and that includes all the people on social media that bragged about raw-dogging the solar eclipse in August. While the price tag here might not literally melt your retinas, it’s likely to give you second thoughts.

By comparison, we threw some shade on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X for its price on its release — and that only retailed for $999.99 / £799.99 / AU$1,599. The Claw 8 EX AI+’s sticker price outstrips every other handheld console by quite some margin, sitting more up the gaming laptop end of the spectrum. For example, a mid-spec Alienware 16X Aurora, with Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 and 32GB DDR5, goes for $1,999.99 / £1,799 (around AU$2,800). Ultimately, I think there aren’t going to be that many mainstream gamers able to pay this price and those that do are going to expect stellar performance in return.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review: specs

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review: design

I’ll be honest: when I first picked up the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, I was pretty shocked by how light and manageable it felt. Fundamentally, this is not a small console — it’s as broad-shouldered as the Steam Deck OLED or the Lenovo Legion Go S and weighs in at 1.73 lbs / 786g, which is the heaviest gaming portable I’ve gotten my hands on to date. But despite this, it never felt at all bloated, sitting comfortably in my grasp.

I’d chalk this up to its ergonomic design. On top of feeling well balanced, it offers flared grips, unlike previous iterations of the MSI Claw. These sat really comfortably in my hands, although they aren’t quite as easy to wrap your hands around as the controller-mimicking forked grips of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X.

This was also helped by the laser-etched texture of its grips, which enabled me to keep a decent grasp on the Claw. But I will say they aren’t quite as comfortable as those on some of the best Xbox controllers I’ve tested, feeling a little on the rough side and quickly getting sweaty as I tried to splat sakapatates in Clair Obscure: Expedition 33.

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ also left a pretty good impression on some of my other senses too. No, I didn’t lick it — I’m talking visual appeal here, rather than gustatory. Subtle RGB lighting around each of the thumbsticks is my personal highlight, although I’ll also give its gentle curves and Void Purple colorway honorable mentions as well. Honestly, I’m a little less jazzed about the way the screen juts out past the bottom of the device, but this does seem to be a more common look these days, with the jutting grips of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X creating a similar effect.

Speaking of screens, despite it not quite rocking the richness of the Steam Deck’s OLED display, the Claw 8 EX AI+ has a beautiful looking screen. As a result of its expansive eight-inch breadth and 16:10 aspect ratio, it rocks a 1920 x 1200 resolution, not to mention a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz. Every game I played always felt detailed and smoother than whipped cream under a heat lamp. Meanwhile, its 500 nit typical brightness felt plenty bright enough in most settings — on max brightness, I even found I was able to play it outside, although when I faced it directly toward the blazing August sun, it was quickly overpowered by the fiery onslaught.

Anyone familiar with previous incarnations of the MSI Claw will be pretty familiar with the layout here. The Claw 8 EX AI+ has the same combo of asymmetrical thumbsticks, Xbox-style face buttons and vertically aligned Menu, MSI Center M, View and Quick Setting buttons that you’ll have seen on previous iterations. There’s only two macro buttons on its rear, which honestly feels a bit stingy compared to the four offered by the Steam Deck and many Xbox controllers.

On the plus side, the Claw 8 EX AI+ is packing both Hall effect thumbsticks and triggers — as well as preventing the inexorable drift issues that plague potentiometer thumbsticks, Hall effect sticks and triggers also offer smaller deadzones and increased sensitivity. They’re not quite as sensitive as the marginally fancier TMR thumbsticks and triggers you see in a lot of premium controllers these days but I’m not aware of any portable consoles that offer those currently.

So for the most part, its control scheme is suitably versatile. The only area it falls a little short is the lack of built-in mouse control for games that require a cursor. Unlike the Steam Deck’s super flexible trackpads or the quirky hybrid mouse-cons offered by the Nintendo Switch 2 and Lenovo Legion Go 2, the only way I could mimic a mouse input on the Claw 8 EX AI+ was by jabbing its touchscreen with my greasy hand-sausages. That ain’t gonna cut it for some Steam and Windows games. Now, in MSI’s defense, it has never pitched the Claw as a substitute for PC gaming, but it is a shame that some sections of my Steam library will lay tantalizingly just out of reach. Of course, I could connect a mouse via USB or Bluetooth, but that then prevents the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ from being as portable.

Another criticism I have is the fingerprint scanner. While I appreciate that these narrow scanners are space-efficient, they’re not efficient in any other sense of the word. Every single time I tried to log in to the MSI Claw, I found I had to pop my pinky on the scanner three or four times just to access the home screen. Given my MacBooks’ Touch ID readers require just a single tap to unlock, I honestly wish MSI found a way to squeeze in a circular scanner here.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review: performance

While the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+’s looks are impressive, what makes it exceptional is what’s going on underneath the surface. While gaming handhelds have previously involved some performance tradeoffs in return for their diminutive size, that’s not the case here, thanks to the Herculean Intel Arc G3 Extreme chipset it’s packing. MSI claims that the Arc G3 Extreme should unlock 42% faster performance on average compared to the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme that the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is rocking, although this requires a little unpacking.

Certainly, performance benchmarks alone don’t suggest the Arc G3 Extreme is leading the field. The Claw 8 EX AI+ hit 2,492 single-core performance and 12,550 multi-core performance in our GeekBench tests, compared to the 2,788 and 12,883 scores nabbed respectively by the ROG Xbox Ally X. So for raw processing power, there’s not a huge amount of light between the two chipsets, with the Ryzen Z2 Extreme taking a narrow lead.

But factor in graphical performance and Intel’s SoC absolutely spanks AMD’s. With the help of the Intel Arc GPU B390, the Claw 8 EX AI+ gets some seriously punchy 3D performance — in our 3DMark benchmarks, it scored 3,544 in Port Royal, 12,358 in Fire Strike and 6,534 in Time Spy, compared to the 2,006, 9,141 and 4,033 the ROG Xbox Ally X hit. Those are 76%, 35% and 62% increases respectively, gains which show the Claw’s graphics are seriously swole.

And that translates to some staggeringly smooth performance in-game. On Ultra settings, Total War: Warhammer 3 comfortably averaged out at 81.3fps, while on Low settings Dirt 5 ran smoother than a nitro cold brew at 95.7fps and still managed a very creditable 48.3fps on Ultra. But what blew me away most is how well it ran Cyberpunk 2077 on Ultra settings with ray-tracing disabled, netting a reasonably polished 43fps — that’s downright playable and throws some serious shade on the ROG Xbox Ally X, which only managed 8fps.

Unfortunately, while these benchmarks are impressive compared to other gaming handhelds, at this price those aren’t the Claw’s biggest competition. Several of our picks for the best gaming laptops have costs in the same region and yet offer significantly better performance.

For example, the Alienware 16X Aurora with Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 and 32GB DDR5 we tested costs only a few hundred dollars / pounds more at $1,999.99 / £1,799. And yet its performance is leagues ahead of the Claw, hitting a 3DMark Time Spy score of 13,594 and Fire Strike score of 31,480 — that’s double and nearly triple the Claw’s scores respectively. Naturally, you’re not getting the same compact form factor but I wonder how much that truly matters for the kinds of gamers that are willing to drop almost one and a half grand on a pro gaming device.

Okay, enough nerding out over numbers. Time to focus on the thing you actually care about: how the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ actually feels to play.

Honestly, what the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is capable of kinda blew me away. As those benchmarks would suggest, it can offer ludicrously smooth frame rates. Playing a 2D game like Hollow Knight: Silksong, it remained rock solid at 120Hz, with all the action as Hornet zipped around the rich, mysterious landscapes of Pharloom as slick as ice on a spring day.

Granted, that might not feel like much of a challenge, but this unflappable stability carried over when I transitioned to modern 3D games. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ran at a wonderfully smooth 60fps. Rather than having to strip it down to the basic visuals required to get it running on the Steam Deck, it actually looked pretty great and ran so stably I was able to crack out counter after counter on chromatic bosses. Being able to enjoy the game on the go felt like such a novelty that I’d honestly be happy to mop up the game’s remaining optional bosses purely on handheld.

Keen to push the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ to breaking point, I even tried playing a bit of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered on Xbox. I’ll admit my expectations were pretty low here, as I’ve heard plenty of people complaining about performance issues on their 5000 series Nvidia GPUs. And yet, amazingly, it was playable.

Well, kinda. With the graphics settings on Low while in the depths of Xedilian, performance plowed along steadily at 60fps, which is truly wild for a AAA Bethesda game. However, it didn’t take long for it to start exhibiting some pretty hinky behavior — sporadically I encountered some audio stuttering and, once I entered a more densely populated open area, the frame rate dropped so far it was more 19th century zoetrope than an RPG from 2025. But I feel like most gaming handhelds would spontaneously combust if you even had the cheek to try this, so Imma still put this one in the win column for MSI.

On top of this, the Claw 8 EX AI+ seems to be able to keep a cool head during all of this. In comparison to its predecessor, the Claw 8 AI+, MSI promises the EX AI+ can achieve an extra 5W cooling capacity, 25% higher static pressure for fans, and 9% higher airflow, thanks to fans that are 0.5mm taller. I can’t speak to how accurate such granular figures are but certainly even slamming out epic boss fights or pushing the CPU to its limit, I rarely noticed the EX AI+ getting unbearably warm, which speaks to the strength of its cooling.

What the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is capable of is honestly pretty staggering. The only criticisms I have come down to software and input issues.

The Claw’s MSI Center M launcher felt a little unreliable. Occasionally, I got locked out from being able to access it — hitting the MSI button did nothing, and switching between windows just returned me to the Xbox app. On top of this, sometimes switching out to this menu then returning to a game would lock the input, meaning I could no longer use controller settings till I’d switched out and back again. That’s not a total deal-breaker, but it is a shame, given how stable the Steam and Xbox OSes feel by comparison, and shows that even the mighty MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ isn't immune to Windows 11's unsuitability for gaming handhelds.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review: battery

Given its huge 80Whr battery capacity, I was expecting the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ to have some serious endurance. Unlike the ephemeral life I get out of my 40Whr Steam Deck — where I’m lucky if I get 90 minutes out of many 3D games — the whopping battery in the Claw had me anticipating some pretty epic gaming sessions. Which is why I was a bit bemused by the actual results I eked out during our benchmarks.

Running our standard PC Mark 10 Gaming Battery benchmark with all the settings switched to balanced in both MSI Center M and Windows 11, I was shocked to see the battery discharged from 100% to 0% in just 1 hour 36 minutes. So sure was I that I must have made a mistake, I recalibrated the battery using the Claw’s built-in software, revisited all the settings and ran the benchmark two more times. Despite this, I was only able to squeeze out 1 hour 40 minutes and 2 hours 31 minutes on subsequent tests.

Certainly that’s not completely incompatible with my objective experience — on the console’s default AI Mode, I comfortably drained its full battery in a two-hour play session of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, for example. But that’s an incredibly demanding game, even for the MSI’s specs, and 2D games didn’t seem quite as thirsty in comparison.

So what’s going on here? Ruling out a fault with my review unit, I suspect that the capacious 80Whr battery the unit ships with is only part of the picture when it comes to the life you’ll squeeze out of it. The more important part? Its AI performance mode.

While our standard benchmarks set consoles and gaming laptops to balanced mode, the default performance mode for the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ automatically adjusts its power consumption on the fly for the best efficiency in any given moment. That means the mode you’re most likely to play it on will stretch out the battery life without causing a noticeable dip in performance.

Even when the battery has run dry, it doesn’t take long to top it up again. With its 65W charging, you’d expect it to take about 90 minutes to juice up that 80Whr battery — and that’s bang in line with my experiences. When plugged into a cable capable of at least 65W, charging up the Claw only ever took around an hour and a half. However, I did occasionally experience some glitchy behavior here, with progress freezing at 98% or 99% full even when left for 20 minutes, suggesting the console’s battery monitoring software can occasionally be a touch off.

Should I buy the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review: also consider

How I tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

• Tested it over two weeks
• Tried playing a wide range of titles at different graphics settings
• Conducted TechRadar’s full suite of testing benchmarks

I tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ over the course of two weeks. I made sure to play a wide variety of games from multiple game stores, whether they were from TechRadar’s Steam library or Xbox Games Pass Ultimate. On top of this, I tried out a wide variety of games at different graphics settings, from relatively undemanding 2D games to AAA 3D titles.

When it comes to more detailed assessments of its performance, I conducted our usual suite of benchmarks. Not only did that entail getting detailed performance scores from 3DMark and GeekBench 6.5, but I also conducted a range of in-game fps benchmarks at both ultra and low graphics settings. To test the console’s battery life, I ran multiple PC Mark 10 Gaming Battery tests to see how rapidly it drained the battery from 100% and I also timed how long it took to charge the console from 0% to 100% using a cable that was rated more than its 65W max charging rate.

During my career, I’ve tested a wide variety of gaming gadgets and accessories, from wireless controllers to gaming handhelds. I’ve also invested a truly ludicrous amount of my four decades on this Earth playing computer games, whether they be RPGs, action adventure games or creative sandboxes. And while I’m a little hazy on the details, I’m told this investment will pay dividends any day now.

• First reviewed: August 2026
• Read more about how we test

MechLands Vibe99: One-minute review

The MechLands Vibe99 is a mechanical keyboard that takes aim at the budget-end of the market, but does so without any apparent sacrifices to features or performance.

It doesn’t make a great first impression, however. The retro aesthetic fails to charm, with its chunky design and the copious amounts of grey in my review unit merely looking downmarket. Fortunately, the bright and customizable RGB backlighting does help to liven it up a little.

The build quality isn’t terribly impressive, either. The plastic chassis is solid but doesn't feel premium. Fortunately, the Double-shot PBT keycaps are much better, although their opaque legends don’t allow that aforementioned backlighting to shine through. Their Fn shortcuts aren’t labelled, either, unlike those installed in the best gaming keyboards.

However, the compact width of the Vibe99 is impressive, and thanks to the smart 1800 layout, you still get plenty of keys. What’s more, it also features an integrated screen. It may be a basic TFT affair with limited information displayed, but what it does show is useful, such as the time, date, and battery level. You can also upload GIFs to it if you so wish, but I wouldn’t advise that you do, given the screen’s small size and low fidelity.

You’ll need to use MechLand’s peripheral software to upload them, but it takes an incredibly long time to do so, and you can’t do much else while it’s in progress. What’s more, the whole app has a poor UI, lacking sharpness and clarity. The remapping suite is also disappointing, with only a basic selection of assignments and no direct visual indication of your rebindings.

The performance of the Vibe99 itself fares better. The keys are generously lubed yet quite clicky, lacking the dampening of the very best in the space. However, they’re satisfying to use and have plenty of snap, actuating and rebounding quickly while forgiving accidental hits. The natural tilt of the layout and the folding feet help to make the board more comfortable to use as well, although I still wish it came with a wrist rest.

It’s impressive that the Vibe99 offers all that it does at such a low price point. It’s far cheaper than many of the mechanical models offered by the big brands, and it’s even cheaper than some other great budget options. It’s not perfect, and the software isn’t as good as it should be, but the Vibe99 is still worth shortlisting if you’re looking to save.

MechLands Vibe99 review: Price & availability

• $82.99 / £63.99 / AU$120
• Available now
• One of the cheapest mechanical keyboards around

The Vibe99 costs $82.99 / £63.99 / AU$120 and is available now in various colorways but with one switch type, which is MechLand’s Linear Mint model. It comes with a keycap puller and a braided USB cable.

This is a very competitive price for a 1800 wireless mechanical keyboard with hot-swappable switches. It’s even cheaper than the aluminum variant of the MonsGeek FUN60 Ultra, which has fewer keys. However, the build quality of that board is superior, and thanks to its analog switches, it has far more performance-related tweaks.

The Vibe99 is also considerably cheaper than big-name mechanical models, such as the Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro 75%. But the BlackWidow has a far superior build and unrivaled performance, thanks to the glorious response of its switches. Its software is much better, too.

MechLands Vibe99 review: Specs

MechLands Vibe99 review: Design & features

• Tired looks
• Cheap-feeling plastics
• Poor software

The Vibe99 aims for that faux-retro appeal, but I don’t think it succeeds. Not only does the thick base look dated, but the grey and black finish of my review unit looked quite dour. The bright RGB backlighting did at least add some vividness though.

Unfortunately, the build quality isn’t anything to write home about either. Although it feels solid enough, the plastics used throughout feel cut-price, especially when compared to the aluminum frames of more upmarket gaming keyboards. Its saving grace is its keycaps, which have a Cherry profile and are made from Double-shot PBT. They’re also solidly installed with next to no play. However, it’s a shame their legends aren’t transparent to allow the backlighting to shine through. Also, the default Fn shortcuts across the Function row and dotted around elsewhere aren’t labelled, so you’ll have to commit them to memory.

To speak in favor of the Vibe99’s design, it’s an impressively compact board, and its 1800 layout means it still manages to feature plenty of keys, including a number pad. It’s also quite light, which makes it easy to maneuver when required.

What’s more, a TFT display is nestled in the top corner, and while it’s small with a low resolution, it still provides some useful readouts, such as those for the time, date, and the battery life. You can also upload custom GIFs to it via the MechLands’ software for Windows, although I’m not sure it’s worth the effort given the screen’s quality.

This software also lets you record macros and customize the Vibe99’s backlighting. You can remap keys here as well, although the selection on offer is quite lackluster, with only a handful of system and media shortcuts available. What’s more, your selected bindings aren’t shown on the layout map directly; you have to hover over each individual key to see your remapped function, which is highly impractical.

The rest of the app’s UI has issues, too. Text and various other elements are fuzzy and sometimes oddly proportioned. Worse still is the aforementioned GIF uploader: during my testing it took an achingly long time for one to upload, and most of the app was inaccessible during the process. To add insult to injury, the dialog box for its progress remained on top of all my other windows, not just the app’s. If you’re hoping such issues will be patched, I wouldn’t get your hopes up; according to MechLand’s website, the last update for the software was in 2025.

MechLands Vibe99 review: Performance

• Pre-lubed keys
• Snappy response
• Needs wrist support

In contrast to its somewhat incompetent software, the Vibe99 is a solid and impressive performer. The keys are well lubed, which makes them feel less harsh when pressed, yet they still retain a gratifying clickiness. They’re relatively loud, but thankfully the noise isn’t grating.

They’re also quite snappy, thanks to their reasonably shallow actuation point and fast rebound. However, they’re not so reactive that mere grazes will trigger them, which means you won’t be making many typos.

What also helps with typing are the keycaps, with their low Cherry profile making them easy to glide over. Additionally, they’re spaced far enough apart to prevent mis-hits, yet close enough to make gaming comfortable, with various common keys remaining easy to reach from the WASD position. The space bar is a triumph as well — the combination of its low profile and sloping shape makes it conducive to direct hits on its top surface, rather than on its back edge.

However, the Vibe99 really needs to be paired with a wrist rest to make it comfortable for long sessions. That aforementioned thick chassis strained my wrists as I reached for the keys. The natural tilt of the layout and the unit’s fold-out feet improve ergonomics to an extent, but neither can compensate entirely for the lack of additional support.

The Vibe99 connected to my Windows PCs via the 2.4GHz dongle and Bluetooth just fine, and hot-switching between them was quick thanks to the toggle switch on the back of the unit.

Should I buy the MechLands Vibe99?

Scorecard

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

MechLands Vibe99 review: Also consider

How I tested the MechLands Vibe99

• Tested for several weeks
• Used for a variety of tasks
• Plentiful gaming keyboard experience

I tested the Vibe99 for several weeks, during which time I used it for gaming, working, and general productivity. I used it with two Windows 11 PCs, one connected via the 2.4GHz dongle and the other via Bluetooth, and regularly hot-switched between them.

One of the games I played with the keyboard was Counter-Strike 2, which is a great test for peripherals since it requires quick and accurate movements.

I’ve been PC gaming for over a decade, and have used a large number of keyboards in that time. I’ve also reviewed plenty of them, from budget offerings to premium models from the likes of Razer, Corsair, and SteelSeries.

• First reviewed: August 2026
• Read more about how we test

Recently I’ve been playing Deathloop, Twelve Minutes and The Forgotten City: three time loop games all released in 2021.

That year produced a bumper crop of time loop games, with games released one after another in the span of three months. But while I’d first experienced — and since replayed — Twelve Minutes when it was first released in August 2021, The Forgotten City and Deathloop had been stuck in my backlog for a while, their critical acclaim placing them high on my priority list until I finally made time for them.

Time loops fascinate me because, in a way, the device is endemic to videogames. If you can’t get past a certain segment in a game, you would play through it over and over again, the repetitions of these game loops a facsimile of these temporal cycles. The key difference, at least in a time loop game, is the character’s growing knowledge of their circumstances, as they are driven to figure out why this seemingly inescapable reality is happening to them.

As such, time loop games become a nifty narrative puzzle, with new details fed to them in every cycle, while introducing wrinkles in gameplay that transform a typical game loop, be it exploration or point-and-click, into invigorating, investigative work.

What I’ve learned playing these games is that time loops are also a way to invite introspection. While Twelve Minutes is a stylishly intimate nightmare of Freudian proportions, The Forgotten City reckons with the concept of immortality and morality, set in the days of the Roman Empire.

Then there’s Deathloop, in which the very people who stay on Blackreef Island wield the time loop anomaly as a device to be abused. The games are all remarkably evocative from the very first loop, although some are eventually ensnared by the repetitive, sometimes verbose trappings of this narrative device.

And for these three games, the loops have unravelled the mysteries at their core in vastly divergent ways.

Cycles of brutality

Let’s start with Twelve Minutes, a star-studded affair that features the voice talents of Hollywood heavyweights Daisy Ridley, James McAvoy and Willem Dafoe.

A top-down point-and-click game, it begins with you arriving home after work and settling down for dinner with your wife. Some minutes later, a cop barges in to interrogate both of you, resulting in a violent scuffle that you would eventually pass out from. The cycle restarts, and you’re returning home from work once again.

It’s an extremely gripping start, and changing your circumstances means tinkering with objects in the vicinity, from a hidden, unopened present to even fiddling around with a light switch. And as the cycles inevitably continue, you’ll see patterns emerge, like your wife reading a book, or her anticipation as she waits to break an exciting piece of news. In a world where the perimeters of time have disintegrated, these become routines that you simply must disrupt in order to glean more insights.

The unfortunate reality, however, is the sheer violence it inspires. Twelve Minutes is ultimately bogged down by these cycles of brutality, with the consequences-free nature of these cycles meaning you can even stab your own wife just to see what happens. At the same time, these routines soon become dreary and tedious to relive over and over again.

Then there’s its twist ending about your wife’s actual identity, a revelation that remains just as distasteful when I experienced it again years later.

Historical loops

The Forgotten City, on the other hand, uses the time loop mechanic to tell a vastly different tale of historical fiction.

You stumble upon a portal that takes you back centuries and into an underground city in ancient Rome, where its denizens have to obey the Golden Rule at all costs: when one sins, everyone will be turned to gold.

The point is to break the cycle, and your first lead is to discover the identity of a would-be sinner who may doom the whole city. Unspooling the narrative thread that holds The Forgotten City means exploiting the time loop, as each cycle introduces new information that can reshape the outcome of its mystery.

What’s notable is that The Forgotten City takes its time to portray its denizens as folks with very personal stakes in this hellish reality, with some even bringing up intriguing theories about the Golden Rule. It’s a deftly written tale rooted in a historically accurate setting, filled with fascinating twists and turns that hardly become overwrought.

Yet some quibbles persist. The incredibly helpful Galarius will be your best guide and buddy in this city, but his tendency to dash off and fulfill tasks you’ve completed in previous cycles (so you don’t have to do them again), unquestioningly, is an oddity you’ll need to overlook, alongside some inexplicable coincidences the story throws at you.

Then there’s the game’s finale, which concludes on a cheesy and self-aggrandizing note that slightly sours the experience.

For a game predicated on tightly conjured twists and in-depth discussions on morality, it’s a pity that The Forgotten City struggles to find its footing towards the end.

Breaking the cycle

But perhaps my favourite time loop game from 2021 is Deathloop, which wields the time loop conceit without falling prey to tedious repetitions.

Like Twelve Minutes and The Forgotten City, Deathloop doesn’t steer far from the basic structure of investigating and breaking the loop, but it does inject new ideas into this formula so the cycles never feel trite. Waking up every morning at a deserted beach, you eventually realize that you’ll need to kill eight individuals in Blackreef within a single day.

It’s a seemingly impossible objective initially, but becomes within reach as you tamper with the events through your knowledge of the time loop. But rather than chuck you in a constrained space, there are four different districts, across four time periods (morning, noon, afternoon and night) to visit.

Every cycle still remains compelling to revisit even after your day ends and the loop restarts, as Deathloop drips tantalizing leads and revelations to you gradually.

Each district, too, will differ depending on the time of your visit. Certain events may render a part of the map inaccessible until a specific hour; for instance, one of your targets may be hosting a party only at night in the Updaam district, and another would be busy tinkering away at their research in the afternoon at the Complex.

Making your jaunt across these places even more hair-raising is the abrupt appearance of your arch-nemesis Julianna, the only other person on this island who retains her memories across these temporal cycles. She’s hellbent on stopping your progress, and her appearance tends to ratchet the tension to a thrilling degree.

Yet the inability to quick save and exit the game at any point is extremely aggravating. This is by design — a means, perhaps, to avoid save-scumming — but quitting the game before you exit a district means losing whatever progress you’ve made in the same visit.

One thread that ties these three games together is the need to achieve the perfect, flawless run. It’s a trait that harkens to the original, endemic loop of videogames, and therein lies the lasting appeal of time loop games as well; you keep trying, and trying again, to make sure you eviscerate every foe, uncover every conspiracy, and discover the reason behind the time loop’s existence.

You’re neatly checking off every task in the list. It’s the ultimate display of efficiency and accomplishment — a satisfying way to complete and bring these games to the finish line.

Nvidia's DLSS 5 has been nothing short of a bubbling cauldron of controversy ever since the next-gen gaming tech was first aired. That initial reception shocked Nvidia as what seemed like a legion of PC gamers took up arms and vowed, well, all sorts of colorful things — most of them involving the term 'AI slop' in some fashion.

However, there are signs that this overwhelmingly negative tide of opinion is turning courtesy of a fresh revelation this week. This comes in the form of a leak rather than anything official from Nvidia, with Team Green's only DLSS revelations at Gamescom 2026 pertaining to the current incarnation of the feature (namely DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction for better quality ray-traced graphics, alongside some interesting GeForce Now announcements).

To refresh your memory and recap — in a nutshell, as there's a lot more to it than this — Nvidia has billed DLSS 5 as a 'real-time neural rendering model' that polishes up a game's visuals using AI (without altering the game assets, and with the developer being given a decent level of control over the exact implementation).

What actually happened here was that on Friday, VideoCardz spotted that following NBA 2K27's early access going live, a DLSS 'neural rendering' DLL was discovered in the build. It didn't take long at all before modders (in the RenoDX community) fudged things to get this working in games ('SpeedLemur' being the principal modder who "made this happen").

So, in theory this is effectively our first glimpse at DLSS 5 in the wild, with those modders demonstrating what it looks like by using the third-person fling-stuff-about action-adventure Control – as seen on Reddit. However, do note that the tech is only working for application to character models for now (not the environment or objects).

Nuts and bolts

There have been some very interesting revelations from those experimenting with this apparent leak of DLSS 5 in terms of how it works, how it runs — and perhaps most telling is the broad reaction to this spillage, which I'll return to shortly.

First, the nitty-gritty. In this leaked form — so add a whole heap of seasoning, because nothing here is remotely official — DLSS 5 seems to have a small set of adjustable parameters, including seven different 'styles' and various sliders to play with intensity, tone and structure. We're told that neural rendering doesn't need much in the way of data to do its stuff, and works off much the same inputs as regular DLSS (basic upscaling – where all this started, remember?).

It's also for Nvidia RTX 5000 GPUs only (although that's still not fully confirmed, it was always likely to be the case anyway). The news on the performance front goes a bit awry, though, with the discovery that in Control the frame rate is cut in half by the AI polishing up the visuals. With an Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti running Control at 4K with ray tracing on high and DLSS (Quality), the frame rate was 71 fps and it dropped to 35 fps with neural rendering.

That is, of course, a nasty hit indeed. However, this is a piece of leaked code – in an unknown state as far as the stage of development is concerned (one clue suggests that the model may date back to the start of July) — extracted and fudged to work on an old game. Given all that, we can't take this as anything like an indication of what the finished version of DLSS 5 might be like performance-wise.

Although it's at least comforting that it works in a playable (enough) manner on a single RTX 5070 Ti graphics card, because if you recall, Nvidia's demos used not one, but two, RTX 5090 GPUs. Clearly a 50% frame rate drop won't fly, granted, but Nvidia wouldn't release this neural rendering trick if the hit was anything like that, because no gamer would use it in that state.

Change in tone

What we can really take from this leak and the modding efforts thereafter is quite limited, then. But what's clear is that as mentioned, there's been a marked turnaround in the commentary and debate on the image quality on offer with neural rendering.

As one Redditor observes: "Remarkable difference in tone of the reactions compared to when the [initial] Resident Evil footage was released."

Someone replying to that says: "People freaked out about what was obviously just a bad demo, and failed to see what was actually going on with the underlying tech.

"There were a few talking about how different tone mapping fixed the issue with minimal effort, or how it wasn't actually adding/changing details, and it turns out they were correct. People freaked out over nothing imo."

Another gamer notes: "This looks like legit magic. I was saying this when the reveal happened and people wanted to burn Nvidia down: the tech is amazing, the demo might be off because it's too heavy handed, but the tech itself is incredibly impressive."

And a further Redditor enthuses: "Insanely huge graphical update. There's no going back."

You get the idea, then, and it's quite an eye-opener how many comments there are along these lines. Quite a lot of gamers are impressed by this leaked spin on DLSS 5 — and I can see why, frankly, at least with the Control material presented here.

And remember, this is with DLSS 5 working on character models, with the facial tinkering and tweaking being one of the main causes of concern with Nvidia's initial demos. The likes of Flight Simulator addicts are positively drooling about what this might mean for the graphics of the landscapes beneath their virtual wings.

And there's a lot of excitement about how the tech might be applied to older games like Control to make them look a good deal better.

Skeptics remain

Naturally, not everyone is convinced. The detractors remain and are unswayed by the material which has popped up around this leak so far. They argue that the AI-enhanced Jesse (Control's protagonist) is still all too 'uncanny valley' in appearance, and that DLSS 5 is still very much a visual downgrade.

Others also worry that there aren't enough fine-grained controls for the developer in what we see here. Although again, we can't take this leak as evidence of what DLSS 5 will turn out to be eventually, whether that's the end result of the graphics themselves or the suite of dev controls under the hood.

The performance hit has been seized on, too — as noted, though we can't judge on that yet, not with an early leak — and some feel that while screenshots might look good, this doesn't hold up in motion.

Simply put: it is still too early to judge, and we need to grab large handfuls of seasoning with all this. But the general sentiment on DLSS 5 appears to be turning around in quite a sizable shift of opinion — and Nvidia may yet convert PC gamers to its AI-enhanced vision of the future (providing any performance hurdles are cleared, of course).

At Gamescom 2026 in Cologne, fresh off Samsung's reveal of its 2027 Odyssey OLED lineup, I sat down with two of the people shaping the company's monitor and TV strategy: Jeremy Demont, Product Management Director for TV, Sound and Monitor at Samsung UK & Ireland, and Pepe Dijkstra, Head of Monitor for Samsung's European visual display organisation.

We chatted about everything from the prevalence of 1000Hz and higher refresh rate screens to 6K gaming, the brand's ongoing commitment to glasses-free 3D and how important strong partnerships with eSports professionals and studios are to getting the best out of screens.

A triple mode screen is more useful than you might think

Triple mode gets its debut on the new Odyssey OLED G8, a 32-inch 4K tandem QD-OLED panel that runs at 360Hz natively, drops to 1440p resolution for 520Hz, or goes all the way down to Full HD for 680Hz.

It's a first for Samsung: dual-mode switching already exists on its 6K panels, the ultrawide G9, and other, more conventional choices, but triple mode isn't something that can be patched in later via firmware. Dijkstra confirmed it's baked in on the panel side.

I pushed on whether this is solving a real problem or just adding a marketing bullet point. Halving your resolution to double your refresh rate is a genuinely large image quality penalty, so a middle ground – dropping from 4K to 1440p rather than all the way to HD – makes sense on paper.

However, Dijkstra was refreshingly candid about the uncertainty here: "If it's high-end gamers, they'll definitely benefit. But if the average Joe Bloke buys the gaming monitor, are they actually going to use it practically?" He described it as something Samsung still needs to watch play out once the hardware reaches the market, and said community feedback will directly shape what comes next.

1100Hz might not be the limit, after all

The number causing all the excitement is 1100Hz, supported by the new Odyssey G6 G60H – a 1440p Fast IPS panel that runs at 600Hz natively, but which can drop to HD resolution to unlock that 1100Hz ceiling, the fastest refresh rate I've seen on a gaming monitor to date. It wasn't long ago 500Hz felt like an extreme number, so I put it to Dijkstra directly: is there a point where refresh rate just stops mattering?

He didn't dodge the eSports-only framing. "If you deliver only 1100Hz and focus purely on eSports, that's a small market," he told me.

The reasoning behind Samsung's dual- and triple-mode panels, he explained, is about giving that headroom without forcing everyone to live with it – you can drop back down to a lower resolution for everyday use rather than running flat-out all the time. Whether the industry pushes past 1100Hz next, he wouldn't commit to. "If we go faster in the future, we'll have to see."

6K gaming screens have a genuine purpose outside of vanity

I've used 6K panels in a professional context on a few screens in the past, but never on a gaming screen, and 4K is already a heavy ask for most GPUs. So who is Samsung's 6K gaming monitor for?

Dijkstra's answer leaned on future-proofing rather than the present day: those with high-end PCs can already drive that resolution, and the dual-mode option covers anyone who can't.

It's worth noting the new G9 ultrawide also carries a dual-mode option of its own – 5120 x 1440 at up to 360Hz, or 'dual HD' at 2560 x 720 for 720Hz – so the same philosophy runs across Samsung's 2027 range rather than sitting in one flagship alone.

Likewise, he noted that the option for a 6K gaming screen offers a higher refresh rate than the professional screens on offer with the same resolution, which are stuck at 60Hz. Offering a higher refresh rate at that detail level aids both responsiveness for productivity tasks and helps where it counts for games, too.

After all, as both he and Demont noted, people are buying monitors for more than one purpose, so a 6K gaming screen covers off the pros who need the detail for high-res creative work and the gamers who have a beefy enough system to play games at 5K or 6K, assuming the game supports the resolution of course.

Glasses-free 3D is back – but content, not hardware, is the bottleneck

Samsung has kept glasses-free 3D alive longer than most of the industry, and at CES it showed a 6K, 32-inch glasses-free 3D panel. At Gamescom, it reaffirmed its commitment to glasses-free 3D and the importance of working with developers to keep the dream alive.

Dijkstra's framing was that the previous failure wasn't really a hardware problem – it was a content problem. "People were mind-blown by the product capability, but it's the content" that lagged, he said.

Rather than pour more resources into pushing the panel technology further, Samsung's product teams have shifted focus toward securing AAA game support, headlined by the newly announced Cyberpunk 2077 3D compatibility. It's a bet that immersion sells itself to gamers specifically – people who already spend hours in front of a screen – in a way it never quite did for passive TV viewing.

Demont drew the TV parallel further, comparing it to Samsung's early, unpopular push into 4K resolution at a time when broadcasters barely had any programming in such high-resolution or the likes of the BBC had caught up: "We can't just do it by ourselves, we need the whole industry behind it."

He sees HDR10+ gaming following a similar adoption curve to HDR10+ on TV, where streaming giants like Prime Video and Netflix moved quickly once the ecosystem made it easy to support. Samsung's own numbers back that up: the new Call of Duty is among the titles confirmed to support HDR10+ gaming, with more than 20 games expected to carry the standard by the first half of 2027.

OLED burn-in isn't as big of an issue as it used to be

Samsung has introduced a new fifth-gen QD-OLED panel for a lot of the new monitors it announced at Gamescom, which features the brand's Penta Tandem tech and an RGB stripe sub-pixel layout for greater power efficiency, longevity, and sharper text.

Compared to the quality of OLED panels for gaming monitors when they were first introduced, this tech has been through several generations of optimization and improvement.

At the time OLED gaming monitors were first introduced, it seemed you couldn't go five minutes without someone talking about burn-in (an issue with early OLED panels where static images that were displayed for too long could damage the screen). Now, both Demont and Dijkstra tell me it's virtually a non-issue. It's barely raised internally anymore, sitting towards the bottom of presentations as an improvement point.

Demont also noted that the improvements made to the OLED panels is a particularly good thing, especially because "if we can increase the product lifecycle or the durability of the product, that's all in the benefit of that end customer". After all, a high-end monitor or TV is a big purchase, and it's important that it lasts.

For what it's worth, my own two-and-a-half-year-old 32-inch 4K 240Hz OLED monitor has never shown a hint of burn-in – though the new Odyssey OLED G8 is, I'll admit, tempting me to upgrade anyway.

Pro feedback filters down for monitors, too

On the subject of product development, Dijkstra confirmed Samsung takes direct input from eSports professionals – citing an ongoing relationship with a multiple-time League of Legends world champion in Korea, where the eSports scene is especially demanding. "Their team plus others are just continuously pushing back that feedback," he said.

The trickle-down effect is vital to this, according to Demont – Samsung's stated strategy is to introduce new technology at the top of the range first and cascade it downward over time, never the reverse – something he framed as core to protecting the end customer's investment in what remains a significant purchase.

Monitors and TVs are converging – deliberately

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation was Demont noting that Samsung is folding its monitor team into the same visual display division as TV in the UK, given the convergence between them. We're at a point where some desktop monitors are the same size as TVs; this also works the other way, as people can use TVs as monitors, either on a desk or with a living room PC.

He was upfront that this decision is about capturing overlap: customers can opt for an equally rich spec TV or monitor depending on their situation, and there is an overlap in certain features for a consistent experience whichever product you go for.

For instance, some of the brand's smaller-sized OLED TVs boast a 165Hz refresh rate, while there are specific variants of some of its gaming monitors that come with its Tizen OS smart TV operating system built-in.

I maintain Tizen's presence on monitors is one of the more underrated moves Samsung's made recently: a screen that's a smart TV in one moment and a 240Hz gaming monitor in the next, with Samsung's Gaming Hub meaning you don't need a console or PC to access cloud gaming services like Xbox and GeForce Now.

We all agreed that this remains a surprising niche, and Demont stated Samsung is trying to change this with its TVs through retail bundling with the likes of Argos and Currys in the UK by offering incentives such as free controllers or game vouchers tied to TV purchases, specifically to get people asking what "Gaming Hub" actually means.

The bigger picture

Both executives repeatedly came back to the idea that Samsung's scale is its advantage: a portfolio broad enough to cover a 49-inch ultrawide monitor, a portable outdoor TV, and a glasses-free 3D gaming panel simultaneously, developed with a genuinely global customer base in mind rather than any single region's habits.

Demont pointed to the brand's clever Movingstyle TV, originally designed with Southeast Asian markets in mind, that ended up selling worldwide once its appeal proved broader than expected.

Whether triple-mode refresh rates or glasses-free 3D end up following that same trajectory – from a niche flex to a more mainstream feature – is, by Samsung's own admission, still an open question the company is waiting for customers to answer for them.

• Digital Foundry says getting Grand Theft Auto 6 to run at 60fps on current-gen consoles is "extremely unlikely"
• The tech experts say the 30fps footage from the Extended Look was "the most impressive example of real-time game rendering" they've seen
• It says the eventual PC version running at 60fps would be "genuinely challenging"

Tech analysts have suggested that getting Grand Theft Auto 6 to run smoothly at 60 frames per second would be a massive challenge on console.

After Grand Theft Auto 6's Extended Look, which finally offered a deep dive into Rockstar's biggest game yet running on the base PS5, reports confirmed that the game will run at 30fps on PlayStation and Xbox, with the possibility of 60fps being added post-launch.

That's no surprise considering the scale and how hyper-realistic GTA 6 looks, but according to the tech experts at Digital Foundry, it may be impossible for current-gen consoles to even hit 60fps.

Speaking about last night's extended look footage, the folks at Digital Foundry said it looks like "the most impressive example of real-time game rendering" they've ever seen; the gameplay shown is "relatively stable and well-paced 30fps output, with only very occasional single frame drops (though the nature of the 30fps asset means there could be more, unseen)."

It's believed that, while 30fps might seem low for a current-gen title such as GTA 6, Rockstar appears to be targeting this level to maximize the game's level of visual detail.

"It's clear that the focus was absolutely maximizing the level of visual detail at a fixed 30fps frame rate on all platforms," Digital Foundry wrote. "The rendering, simulation and presentation have all been tuned around that constraint — and the result is an unprecedented level of density, material quality and world coherence, with trade-offs landing primarily in image quality and animation smoothness rather than systemic scale or fidelity."

It continued, "The evidence suggests that the game maintains its 33.3ms cadence with care, and Rockstar has clearly spent immense effort balancing CPU and GPU workloads to fully saturate the hardware."

For this reason, Digital Foundry believes "a 60fps version extremely unlikely on console hardware — there's no way to regain enough GPU and particularly CPU time to make a 16.7ms update rate work without compromising the world."

It also suggests that the game could look better on PS5 Pro, thanks to the console's powerful GPU with PSSR upscaling, but Rockstar has yet to reveal official gameplay running on the hardware.

As for the eventual PC release, which hasn't been announced yet, "some level of caution is required" as while the platform could allow higher resolutions and benefit from upscalers like Nvidia DLSS, the CPU demand of GTA 6's complex world could "make hitting 60fps genuinely challenging in a way we don't often see, and will likely require a high-end CPU like a recent Ryzen X3D to avoid bottlenecks."

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S, and Rockstar has confirmed that the game can take up to 80 hours to beat.

• Grand Theft Auto 6's hand-crafted NPCs have over 600,000 animations
• Rockstar North co-head Aaron Garbut says Rockstar established a new team that art-directed every single NPC
• Garbut says every single room and the NPCs inside them were hand-crafted

To achieve the grand scale and realism we witnessed this week in Grand Theft Auto 6's extended look, the development team went above and beyond, according to Rockstar.

In an interview with The New York Times about the game's development, Rockstar North co-head Aaron Garbut revealed that the studio established a new Los Angeles-based team of writers, directors, and producers to focus solely on realizing non-player characters (NPCs).

"We art-directed each individual one of them," said Garbut, revealing that GTA 6 has over 600,000 animations, compared to GTA 5's 55,000 and double Red Dead Redemption 2's 300,000 animations.

"Every room in the game, somebody thought about this," Garbut said. "Who's sitting where, what they're drinking, the marks that are left on the table. The pictures on the wall will have the people that are in that room, with their tattoos on their arms and their family behind them. That whole thing has been made, and built, and photographed, and placed in this random room in a random building in a huge city, in a world."

Rob Nelson, the head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, also emphasised that the game is "an evolution" of what the studio achieved with Red Dead Redemption 2 and its impressive gameplay systems.

"Once we managed to accomplish that level of interactive fidelity in a more sparsely populated version of America 100 years ago," Nelson said, "we were already imagining what it would be like if we could do that at the scale and density of a modern environment."

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S, and a new report has confirmed that the game will run at 30fps on consoles at launch.

• Grand Theft Auto 6 can take up to 80 hours to beat
• Rob Nelson, the head of development, says it took him 80 hours, including the main story and some "optional goals with narrative ramifications," to complete the game
• This makes GTA 6 Rockstar's longest game yet

I hope Grand Theft Auto 6 fans have booked enough time off work, because the game will take up to 80 hours to beat, and that's just the main story.

In a new interview with The New York Times, Rob Nelson, the head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, revealed that his playthrough took 80 hours to finish, including the main story and some "optional goals with narrative ramifications."

Though we don't know what these "optional goals" are, they sound like side quests that affect the story's outcome, such as personal missions that could pertain to either Lucia or Jason.

This means the game can take up to 100 hours, possibly more, if players want to spend time exploring Leonida and Vice City, engaging in interactive activities, completing side missions, and messing around in the vast open world.

"I hope that there will be people that want to get up, have a cup of coffee, shower, get dressed, go out for a little exercise," Nelson said. "Interact with some people, explore, maybe get into some trouble. Rob some places, make some money."

For context, GTA 5's story takes around 30 hours to beat, while Red Dead Redemption 2 can take up to 60 hours. This makes GTA 6 Rockstar's biggest and longest game yet.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S, and Rockstar has confirmed that it will run at 30fps on consoles at launch.

If you missed out on the Grand Theft Auto 6: An Extended Look premiere, here are 16 new GTA 6 details we learned, including new details about Jason and Lucia's romance system.

• Grand Theft Auto 6's romance between Jason and Lucia is completely optional, Rockstar confirms
• Rob Nelson, the head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, says if players aren't into it, "don’t bother with it"
• He says players will need to nurture their relationship if they want it to be romantic

Rockstar Games has confirmed that the romance between Grand Theft Auto 6's co-protagonists, Jason and Lucia, is completely optional.

Speaking in an interview with IGN ahead of the Grand Theft Auto 6: An Extended Look, Rob Nelson, the head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, revealed that Jason and Lucia's relationship will be central to the story, but whether the player chooses to nurture their romance is completely up to them, and they won't be penalized for avoiding it.

"I have to say it feels great — if you are into it as a concept. Don’t bother with it if you aren’t. Up to you," said Nelson.

"The narrative is structured in such a way that the circumstances they find themselves in require them to stay together for most of the story and work together. At the very least, they will get through most things as partners in crime."

Nelson avoided talking spoilers, but he said the duo's relationship "adds a compelling element to things."

"It’s one of the reasons we wanted to approach this sort of story, because it's completely different for us," he said. "Could we bring some sort of emotional resonance to GTA for people if they wanted to engage with it? Could we also provide mechanisms for people to just opt out of it if they're not into it? If they feel like, 'I don't want a relationship in this?' That's what we're going to find out. It's not something that we want to foist upon players."

If players do want to make Jason and Lucia's romantic relationship flourish, however, they'll have to spend time nurturing it by spending time together in Leonida. Whether that's taking trips, holding hands, walking on the beach, or doing crime together, these activities will build up their bond.

"When you bring them together, it feels like you’re a steward of their relationship, and you feel protective of them as a unit," Nelson continued. "But this is something we did not know when we started, and it really had to be something we felt our way through.

"But I will say that whether you’re getting in trouble, or you’re running from the cops, or getting in a car, or waiting for the other one — playing as them together feels very cool. It feels like you’re taking care of them, if that’s something you’re into."

Last night's gameplay showcase was filled with a mountain of new details, with a new report later confirming the game will launch at 30fps. To catch you up, here are the 16 things we learned from GTA 6's extended look ahead of the game's November 19 launch.

• Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch at 30fps on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S
• Rockstar could reportedly add higher performance modes post-launch
• The footage from the GTA 6 Extended Look was running on the base PS5, which means everything fans saw was 30fps

Grand Theft Auto 6 won't run at 60fps and will reportedly launch at 30fps on consoles, but Rockstar Games may add more performance modes later.

That's according to YouTuber Davy Jones, a content creator who recently visited Rockstar North to preview GTA 6. Jones reported that Rob Nelson, the head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, told him the game is currently running at 30fps on console during development.

Flow Games also interviewed Jones about his time at the studio (translated via Kotaku) and reported that performance could change post-launch.

"According to Rob Nelson, Lead Developer and Co-director at Rockstar North, during this development period, the consoles are running the game at 30 frames per second," the Flow Gams report reads.

"According to the director, it is still necessary to consult the technical team to determine if there will be a 60 FPS option at launch (or in the future). He also emphasizes that he does not currently have details on resolution and other technical qualities, such as the use of Ray Tracing, but the performance, for now, is 30 FPS."

For now, Rockstar also hasn't confirmed whether the game will run at 60fps on PS5 Pro.

Last night, the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto 6: An Extended Look finally premiered and offered a deep dive into gameplay, cinematics, and co-protagonists Jason and Lucia.

The footage looks incredible and was confirmed to be running on the base PS5, and knowing what we do now, this means the extended look was also capped at 30fps.

As TechRadar Managing Editor Rob Dwiar puts it, "The amount of technical brilliance and sheer detail that will likely go into GTA 6 will surely translate into the amount of demand on a console’s GPU and CPU," which is why a 40fps mode on PS5 Pro would be perfect balance.

In case you missed it, here are the 16 new GTA 6 details learned from the big Extended Look, including an improved combat system, interactive gameplay mechanics, story hints, and more.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S.

• Asobo Studio played A Plague Tale: Requiem's soundtrack while motion-capturing Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy
• The cast would listen to the game's music to get into the right headspace for emotional scenes
• SPEAKER 3 says it helped "get into the sadder moments, the darker moments"

Asobo Studio has revealed that it used A Plague Tale: Requiem's music while motion-capturing Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, so the cast could get in the mood for the darker scenes.

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming during Gamescom, developers Valérian Robert (lead level designer) and Carol Ann Bañuls (lead writer), and the actor for the game's protagonist, Sophia, Anna Demetriou, discussed the design process for the game's atmosphere and the music that goes with it.

When asked how the team implemented audio and the game's score for the upcoming sequel, Anna Demetriou explained that Asobo played music tracks from A Plague Tale: Requiem to allow the actors to get into the right headspace for emotional scenes.

"A lot of the time, for emotional scenes, we would be playing the Requiem soundtrack to help us get into the sadder moments, the darker moments," Anna Demetriou said. "So it felt really like the beating [heart] of the [Plague Tale DNA] was still in the mocap room because we were using them and using this reference for some of the hard bits and stuff."

Resonance's score was composed by Olivier Derivière and sounds quite different from any of the prior games, with an emphasis on Greek culture, as the game's setting has moved from Middle Ages France to the Greek island of Crete.

"The incredible Greek soundtrack that has been done by Olivier, I had none of that at all," Demetriou continued, "So hearing it coming out, and the whole thing's on YouTube right now, I was sat on my laptop for the day, just listening to it all, just being like, 'I can't wait to play it because I I haven't connected what we've done with this with the music yet.'"

Bañuls added that Olivier also used choir vocals to give the soundtrack a more "authentic" feel for the time period, withRobert explaining that the music is also woven into the new gameplay systems and combat.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is available today on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.