While a stop-motion effect is enabled by default in the upcoming Xbox Series X game, Compulsion knows this element might not be for everyone. "It's a normal framerate," says art director Whitney Clayton of South of Midnight's solid 60 frames-per-second action, with individual character models and environment assets toggled during production to "have different amounts of stop motion treatment."

The goal? "To sell the impression that you're still in this handcrafted world without making it, you know, too nauseating in certain instances" – though accessibility settings can help players tailor the experience further.

As a Southern Gothic action-adventure infused with folkloric myth and legends, a thematic visual style was always a key design pillar propping up South of Midnight – and Compulsion had something specific in mind. "If you tell people, oh, we're making miniatures that feel made by hand, you could get people thinking, 'Oh, is it like Wallace and Gromit or Gumby or something?' And that wasn't the direction we wanted to go," says Clayton. "We found this animation called Madame Tutli Putli [by Clyde Henry Productions], which had this really atmospheric, mature, kind of creepy style to it, and we loved it."

When the stop-motion production company (and fellow Canadians) had Compulsion's art team visit their studio in Montreal, Clyde Henry became instrumental in realizing South of Midnight's handcrafted dreams. "On the left was a real maquette and then on the right was our reverse engineered digital 3D model, where we were trying to figure out how to apply rules that made things feel handmade," says Clayton of the learning process. "We applied this to everything in the game – the creatures, the characters, the environments, and the people."

Creating a stop motion effect on the fauna and flora wasn't as easy as simply dropping the framerate in the environment. "You had to have a slightly different treatment for each thing to get that stop motion feeling, which is a combination of animation styles. We used tech art and VFX to emulate the flickering of materials that you would see in a real stop motion, when people's thumb prints are moving on something."

To smooth out gameplay, Clayton outlines protagonist Hazel's movement and combat encounters as two areas where stop motion effects were minimized during production. They have been left more pronounced elsewhere – particularly in the environments. "The foliage does move in a specific way, and certain built-in animals and other elements of the game move more obviously as a stop motion thing," Clayton says. "But if we applied that equally everywhere, I think it would be too jarring."

Setting the scene

While South of Midnight features a broad range of accessibility settings – including a "boss skip" mode and "combat skip" mode – one area is off limits. The short cinematic intro by Clyde Henry, as seen in the stop motion trailer, can't be turned off. "We needed an intro video, or an intro cinematic, to set the stage," says Clayton. "And we thought, no better treatment for this type of cinematic than doing the real stop motion. And there were no better people to do the stop motion than Clyde Henry – if they happen to be free and available – and we were really lucky that they said yes."

The process to create this single animation took "the better part of a year," posing a hefty new challenge for the animation studio. "Like Whitney explained, her challenge was to take all these assets and try to translate it [to digital] for a handcrafted aesthetic," says Clyde Henry's art director Brigitte Henry. "For us, it was the inverse. We had to take all the CG assets and translate them into handcraft environments." Clyde Henry co-founder Chris calls it their "great challenge, to take them out of the computer and back, literally, into this world of physical, handcrafted puppets."

"And each one of them was a different problem," explains Maciek Szczerbowski, particularly Hazel's puppet. "Every little stroke looks like it could fill up half the cheek. You have to be very careful to make it not look like a Barbie by not doing enough, or to make it look [unrecognizable] if you go too far."

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"It's 10 to 12 hours," gameplay director Jasmin Roy tells GamesRadar+ of the average time it will take to beat South of Midnight's 14 chapters. "That was kind of the target, I think, [though] maybe a bit bigger than we thought, but it is pretty much in the ballpark of what we thought at the beginning. We don't like to necessarily put numbers on it."

"We always knew it was going to be a game that had a momentum of narrative," Roy says of the Southern Gothic adventure, with the game encompassing "a 24 hour period which also informed us of the kind of scale of the world we wanted to build. Because, you know, you're trying to find your mother. She disappeared. There's a kind of urgency to it that makes it feel like we do want you to explore, but it needs to support the momentum of Hazel's journey."

So, South of Midnight is "a day in the life of Hazel – a very strange day," according to Roy. In terms of how this single day pans out, art director Whitney Clayton describes it as "a linear game with some bits of exploration through the sections, and you go through various different types of locations in the deep South, all the span of one day. So you start your adventure in the morning, and it ends at midnight."

This means the game will take players through different environments as the clock ticks forward, each with "their own really specific mood, which would then reflect the type of story being told in that moment." Compulsion has already outlined four biomes in a half-hour documentary that premiered last year – the swamps, the Delta, the Appalachians, and a New Orleans-inspired area – but it's news to us that she'll be encountering them all across such a snappy timeframe.

Despite its shorter length, the reverse-engineered 3D modelled world of South of Midnight was no simple feat to develop. According to Roy, "it's [taken] around five years, I'd say, from the first few concepts." He references the extensive research, planning, and iterative prototypes throughout pre-production phases, though "the bulk of the game has been made in the last three years."

South of Midnight is one of our most anticipated games of 2025, and there's more where it came from

South of Midnight makes a strong first impression. Then again, titles from developer Compulsion Games always have. There was Contrast in 2013 and We Happy Few a few years later, experiences defined by their visually evocative worlds and deliberately modest scale. "We've always been ambitious with all the projects that we create, within the means that we've had," says Compulsion founder Guillaume Provost. Although the studio head is aware that expectation has shifted underneath the studio in years gone by.

Seven years on from its acquisition into the Xbox Game Studios group, Compulsion is larger than it has ever been before – having nearly tripled in size since work concluded on We Happy Few – and hungrier than ever to show to the world what it is truly capable of with this upcoming Xbox Series X game. "Within Xbox there was a certain amount of expectation, with regards to the level of quality that titles need to bring to the table. We all wanted to execute at a level that we felt good about when sitting in the room across from our peers and industry giants who have a lot of experience making games."

Welcome to the Deep South

The further Hazel burrows into Prospero the stranger things seem to become. Her hometown ravaged by a hurricane, the life that she used to know swept away in a single moment etched in time. And so into the rabbit hole of the American Deep South she dives, where local folklore seems to have a way of slipping beyond the seams of superstition and into the fabric of her reality. South of Midnight follows Hazel through "one very strange day," laughs Jasmin Roy, game director.

This is an action-adventure which takes place over 10-12 hours of playtime, "your adventure starting in the morning and ending at midnight," says art director Whitney Clayton. This frame affords Compulsion the opportunity to whisk Hazel along from one lush, decaying environment to the next as she heads off in search of her mother. "Different landscapes correlate with different times of the day. Each has its own really specific mood, which then reflects the type of story being told in that moment," she says. "It's a curated experience, which is a complete reaction to us having a game that was procedural before."

South of Midnight feels worlds apart from We Happy Few. That's not only a result of Compulsion shifting away from a roguelike structure in favor of a more linear presentation, but because of the general vibe that's being cultivated. Where the studio once channelled the dystopia of Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil', it's now grappling with the high-strangeness of Ethan and Joel Coen's 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' albeit through a distinctly southern gothic lens – stark realism colliding with a series of increasingly off-kilter events. "I don't know about you, but if a catfish started talking to me I would probably freak out a little," says narrative director Zaire Lanier. "But Hazel needs to find her mother; so while she will acknowledge that this is all a little weird, her reactions are also subdued."

That balancing act is at the heart of South of Midnight, a journey which is able to whiplash between smiles and sadness with relative ease. What you'll explore here is 14 chapters of a folktale – the titular South of Midnight – which tells of a world wrought with collective trauma, manifesting as knots in the grand tapestry, and of mournful monster kings who roam the land waiting to be tamed. You'll follow this path equipped with Hooks and Spindles, the tools a Weaver can wield to channel powers bestowed upon her by the land, and a Distaff, which lets Hazel tap into echoes of the past.

South of Midnight is exceptionally smooth in motion. The game runs at a stable 60fps on Xbox Series X as Hazel gracefully double-jumps between platforms and glides over hazards, oversized brambles and toxic waters. The stop-motion animation effect applied to all of the foliage and fauna in the world is actually a clever visual trick, where Compulsion uses a concoction of "tech, art, and visual effects to emulate this consistent, handcrafted stop-motion feeling in the world," says Clayton.

Compulsion tells me that the studio stopped short of applying this stop-motion effect to the entire gameplay experience because the style is not only "polarizing" but can induce nausea in some players prone to motion sickness. Clayton says: "We wanted to make something that felt nice to play whilst still maintaining a distinctive style." Roy adds that "the stop-motion effect is on by default, because we consider it to be the ideal way to experience the game, but there are accessibility options to turn it off if you want or need to."

The roots of this pain run deep

There's a pattern to the way South of Midnight plays. The hopes of a reunion between mother and daughter propulse the narrative forward, but each chapter sees Hazel attempt to bring some peace to the land. "Players move from these moments of contemplative exploration, traversing the world and discovering little points of interaction to build up the lore of the space naturally, and then they get trapped in these areas with evil spirits that haunt the place," says Roy.

Haints, angry creatures born of pain and stigma, make quick work of your health if you aren't able to successfully control the baying crowd. Combat is fluid, Hazel able to execute a five-strike combo and a charged-attack from range. You do, however, have limited options in the defense department. "The system is centred around dodging," Roy continues. "This was a conscious decision, even from our early prototypes; we wanted Hazel to be an agile character." Enemies are quick to press any advantage, so timing a precision dodge to unleash a shockwave Strand Blast is key, as is swinging the camera around to track surrounding spirits.

When that isn't enough, there are powerful spells at your disposal. Weave immobilises enemies, causing them to take increased damage for a short time; Strand Push repels enemies and disrupts attacks; and Strand Pull yanks smaller Haints towards you, or allows you to quickly close the gap with larger ones. "Spells are really powerful and using them is important," says Roy. "We didn't want you to spend too much time without them, but we also wanted to give players a resource to manage."

That's where Unravel comes into play. There's a brief window of opportunity to 'Unravel' a defeated enemy – reeling in the spirit's energy with spellbinding hostility, echoing a system seen in the 2007 PS3 exclusive Folklore. This action not only replenishes a fraction of your health (one of the only ways to do so) but kickstarts spell cooldowns, giving encounters this frantic push and pull. Roy tells me that this system was not present in earlier prototypes, although the team quickly fell in love with the dynamic it lends to combat. "We thought it was really enjoyable, so we just followed the fun at that point," he says. "There's a few upgrades that you can get later down the road that let you interact with Unravel as well."

Compulsion wants to be clear on this point: "South of Midnight is not an RPG, it's an action game." The upgrade path is minimal, with a nine-slot tree for combat abilities and twelve-slots for spell upgrades – unlocked by collecting 'Floofs'. That's the in-game currency; so named because Hazel has no other word for what she's seeing or experiencing, and earned primarily through leaving the critical path to go exploring the wilds of the world, a reward for completing light traversal puzzles.

"You're not necessarily going to see a linear climb on your damage output," Roy continues, "because the upgrades are really about adding new functionality to your spells and abilities." Strand Pull, for example, can be upgraded to unleash a timed Tethered Strand attack once an enemy is pulled within range, while Aerial Rend adds a ground slam attack to Hazel's arsenal.

There is some risk that South of Midnight's combat could become a little repetitive over time. It's fun, but I get the sense that it may lack the depth and dynamism necessary to avoid falling into routines. Still, Hazel will gain access to a fourth and final spell by the time you reach Chapter 6 – Crouton, an old rag doll that Hazel is able to control and reach new areas within the environment. Roy adds: "In combat, the puppet becomes the puppeteer, turning one of the Haints on your side."

How to overcome your demons

Once certain battles conclude, you'll encounter an Echo Knot. Unravelling these concentrated centres of trauma reveal a painful memory tied to the area, along with a pattern piece. This is how South of Midnight handles its narrative arc, through small vignettes that gradually help Hazel understand her purpose in each of the places she travels. Collect enough pieces of a pattern, trapping the painful memories within special blue bottles, and you'll be able to face the Monster Kings – "folkloric, mythical creatures that are the centerpiece to that particular biome," says Clayton.

"Some of them are going to be more confrontational – boss fights," adds Roy, speaking to two encounters with two mythical creatures glimpsed in South of Midnight trailers; Two-Toed Tom (a gigantic alligator) and Huggin' Molly (an equally gigantic spider), each based on real southern American folklore. "Others will focus on traversal." Lanier adds: "What connects them is that they each have their own haunted backstory. The gameplay loop is discovering why a creature is the way that it is, and then using that information to acquire a pattern and untangle them at the end of certain chapters."

What stuck with me since my time with South of Midnight is how connected all of these elements feel, with the experience of tapping into echoes of the past and collected pieces of these magical patterns so naturally woven together with both the visual design of the environment and the soundscape which envelops it. This is undoubtedly one of the most impressive aspects of the game.

"When you learn something about these creatures you get to listen to a part of their song, and through it you'll start to understand their trauma," says audio director Chris Fox. "And once you reach the final encounter, whatever that should look like, you get the full picture – to hear the full song about their life and story." And let me tell you, it's a delightful flourish.

The future is what you make it

South of Midnight is, in essence, the exact sort of experience Microsoft Gaming needs right now. After a generation cycle that's been largely defined by its fits and starts, the Xbox Series X is about to receive an adventure that is quite unlike any other – a big idea that's being delivered with bold, fearless execution. While my concerns of repetitious activity do remain, particularly with respect to the power of that core narrative loop and the scale of combat encounters over time, there is every chance that Compulsion will rise to meet the moment here with its first Xbox exclusive since the acquisition.

After five years of development, South of Midnight is content locked – the studio focused entirely on polishing the game ahead of its release on April 8, 2025. It's enough to put studio founder in Guillaume Provost in a reflective mood. "One of the reasons I was drawn to South of Midnight as a concept is that the setting isn't one that you typically see in video games."

"That has always been a priority for the studio. Whether it's from a mechanical, story, or a setting standpoint, we want to create video games that have a distinct voice, and that people can see it, and recognise it for what it is immediately. This team is hungry for making things that spell out our love for the craft," says Provost. "I feel confident about where we are with South of Midnight, and I can't wait to get it out into the world."

Predicting where Imamura's ideas will take him next is a fruitless endeavor – unless you ask the man himself. During a chat to discuss Omega 6, I asked who his dream collaboration would be for whatever comes next - and in typical fashion, his hypothetical project didn't disappoint.

"To tell the truth, I really really like The Witcher 3," shared Imamura. "I don't know whether we'd get on, but I'd love to work with CD Projekt Red on something. I'd love to do a Star Wars game with them."

At first glance, that reads like a wild game of pop culture bingo. But the more you think about it, the clearer you can see that dreamy space where Star Wars, The Witcher, and Imamura's Venn diagrams overlap – and now, I'm ready to bat for a future where his dream is realized.

A terrible fate

If you ask me to name some of the darkest fantasy games around, The Witcher 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask would both rank very highly. Geralt's quest to save Ciri is steeped in tragedy. Even the most straightforward side quest forces you into making morally gray decisions – the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few is a particularly common theme, but that cold logic rarely absolves your guilt when it comes to the fate of the few.

Even the "right" decisions leave you feeling like you've sucked down cold mud – In The Heart of the Woods twists the knife whether you choose to help a village destroy or bond with the monstrous leshen stalking its surrounding forest, while The Bloody Baron's familial drama is tearful at best and soul-crushing at worst.

Majora's Mask isn't as gory as The Witcher, but when it comes to exploring the human condition, it's just as bleak. For those who haven't played one of the best Zelda games, Majora's Mask is set in an eerie alternate realm to Hyrule called Termina, where a leering moon is just three days away from falling from the sky. Link has just three days to save Termina from its lunar fate, and if you run out of time, it's shown in no uncertain terms that the land and everyone in it is violently destroyed.

On the first day, local carpenters refuse to merit the fact the moon will even fall, and insist on holding the annual Carnival of Time regardless. Some characters are already convinced it's plummeting, but true realization doesn't sink in until it's essentially too late to do anything about it. A postman can't bring himself to abandon the people on his route, despite his terror, while separated fiances Anju and Kafei choose to reunite and spend their last moments together. It's an examination of how we respond to imminent death – an unflinching look at the scream before a crash – and to this day, remains one of Nintendo's darkest games.

As the art director for Majora's Mask, Imamura was largely responsible for some of the game's most darker imagery. Think of the moon with a human face, which grins and cries over you as it looms, or the intensity of the eponymous purple mask that drives the antagonistic Skull Kid – who is himself a victim in many ways – from childish pranks to abuse and would-be mass murder. It's a tone that Imamura picked up and ran with.

"The direction of dark fantasy itself came from the director, [Yoshiaki] Koizumi-san," says Imamura. "But when I got assigned to it, I started sketching the moon, the mask – that was my design – so that was one of the reasons it went in that direction. One of the other [reasons] is just that when I start working, I get into it – I'm really fast. So before we knew it, we already had the basis of this world."

With that in mind, I can already see a world where the bleaker tone of Disney's Andor is given life through the Imamura-CDPR collaboration I'm desperately trying to manifest. CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the best sci-fi games going – and with the amount of characters in it that want to escape Night City for a life on the moon, I'm starting to suspect the studio is projecting something. Even less needs to be said of Imamura, whose vast vast body of work is almost always set amongst the stars.

So, yeah: this may well be Imamura's pipe dream, but now it's my pipe dream too. Hit me with side quests that force you to choose between entire planets, and let me soak my eyeballs in Imamura's take on a galaxy far, far away. Squeeze a few hands of Gwent into that world, and I won't even ask for a matchmaker's fee.

Zelda and Star Fox veteran says the Nintendo Switch has been a global success, but thinks the House of Mario still has "something" up its sleeve for the Switch 2

In an interview with ScreenRant, Assassin's Creed Shadows director Jonathan Dumont explained how he personally chooses to spend his time between the two protagonists. They both have their own unique strengths and weaknesses, with Yasuke is big, powerful, and brutish, while Naoe is light, nimble, and quick, and Dumont wisely takes advantage of that.

"I play quite a bit balanced out and what happens is, I play with one for three, four, five hours, and then I switch, and then I just play two, three hours," said Dumont. "Usually I play stealth and then I play, all right, let me destroy some camps and stuff all right for a while. And then I just change like that."

Content-wise, Dumont said each hero has their own unique intro scenes and questlines, but he recommends simply playing the characters you're having more fun with.

"So I don't think you're missing out on things too much," he said. "I think it's more on your preference to [say], 'okay, I'll see how the game will adapt a little bit to the character if you choose one over the other.' They get individual introductions and then they get their own questline also. So that one is, let's say Naoe, a personal questline cannot be played by Yasuke and those are two distinct things. But the core of the game can be pick your character and the game adapts."

It's still not entirely clear how many unique scenarios can be missed, but Dumont said several times you won't be "missing out on things too much," adding, "we're not imposing players try to split the time. So if you prefer one character for any reason, you can play maybe - I don't know, I'm not going to put a percentage - but quite a bit of the game using one of them. But if you want to balance it out."

Assassin's Creed Shadows launches on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC on March 20.

Be sure to check out our Assassin's Creed Shadows big preview hub for more details about the game from our hands-on preview.

Last week, Zelnick again affirmed that Rockstar's long-awaited open-world sequel is still on track to launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X this fall, noting that "there's always a risk of slippage." An eventual PC release has always seemed fairly likely because of established Rockstar precedent as well as the unrivaled demand for a game like GTA 6, and in an interview with IGN, Zelnick seemed to raise that likelihood significantly.

"So with Civ 7 it's available on console and PC and Switch right away," Zelnick said, referring to Firaxis' recent multiplatform release, Civilization 7. "With regard to others in our lineup, we don't always go across all platforms simultaneously. Historically, Rockstar has started with some platforms and then historically moved to other platforms."

In the same interview, Zelnick said the PC version of a multiplatform release can account for 40% of overall sales and that the PC market has "become a much more and more important part of what used to be a console business." And though he shrugged off concerns over struggling console sales thanks to a promising 2025 release lineup, he also said "the trend that you'd want to focus on is this increasing share of the market that is reflected in PC."

Basically, it would be really weird for Zelnick to say all of this and then not have GTA 6 come to PC at some point, but it's hard to say how long it'll take for that to happen. The most recent Rockstar game of comparative scale would be Red Dead Redemption 2, and that launched on PC in November 2019, a little more than a year after its PS4 and Xbox One release date. There's no telling whether it'll be the same for GTA 6, but it's a sound enough general indicator.

"Rockstar Games seeks perfection in everything they do": Take-Two boss is confident in GTA 6, but "our competitors are not asleep."

As it stands, GTA 6 is only set to release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rockstar has remained vague about a potential PC release, although many believe it'll get a port eventually, just like GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 did a good while after their initial launches (it took over a year and a half for the former). Speaking to IGN, Zelnick makes it clear that he knows how important PC launches are, explaining that PC versions of multiplatform games can generate 40% or more of total sales.

In fact, Zelnick says the industry has "seen PC become a much more and more important part of what used to be a console business," but he's clearly not concerned about GTA 6's console launch, even if there's been a dip in sales for current-gen hardware. Rather, he's convinced that it'll actually help convince some players to splash their cash on a current-gen console for the first time. "When you have a big title in the market and we have many of them coming, historically that has sold consoles," Zelnick explains.

"And I think that will happen this year," he continues. "I don't think tariffs are going to be our friend, but I think there will be a meaningful uptick in console sales in calendar [year] 25 because of the release schedule, not just coming from us, but coming from others. So I'm not concerned about [console sales falling]. I think the trend that you'd want to focus on is this increasing share of the market that is reflected in PC."

Zelnick isn't just being humble about there being big games "not just coming from us," because 2025 is looking ridiculously busy. Beyond GTA 6 and Borderlands 4, we can also look forward to Elden Ring Nightreign, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Doom: The Dark Ages, and many more. Get those backlogs cleared now, because they're about to get even more chaotic.

GTA 6 still coming this fall, Take-Two boss says "there's always a risk of slippage" but "we feel really good" about a 2025 launch.

This is an extended version of a scene we previously saw in the State of Play trailer last January, where Sam and Fragile are discussing a mysterious benefactor who Sam doesn't trust. "We've both been used and lied to before, it's true," Fragile responds in this extended cut. "But as long as they keep up their end, I won't pry."

I've seen some discussion from fans that Fragile's face model might be improved from its previous presentation throughout the clip, more closely matching actor Léa Seydoux's actual appearance, but it's a bit tough to tell in this grainy, off-screen presentation.

Kojima notes that this is part of "main sound mixing with London," which seems to effectively confirm previous speculation that he's been teasing a new Death Stranding 2 trailer on social media over the past few days. There have been various rumblings about a new PlayStation State of Play event in the near future, and that'd certainly be a solid place to debut the next look at Death Stranding 2.

The previous Death Stranding 2 trailer noted that the game was set to launch in 2025. Here's hoping the next trailer reconfirms that window and narrows it down just a little.

Death Stranding 2 actors are finishing filming and getting gifts from Hideo Kojima, but "the game still remains in development," so don't expect it out any time soon.

In a new report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, it's claimed that – according to anonymous individuals familiar with the situation – the devs are struggling to bring the project together, despite the fact that $100 million has apparently been spent on it. Reportedly, the game – which was pitched as being a single-player, open-world action game at its reveal during The Game Awards 2021 – switched directors early last year, at which point it was also rebooted.

According to the report, while an early version of the Wonder Woman game included a reimagining of the Nemesis system seen in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – allowing the titular hero to go about befriending her foes – we shouldn't expect it in a final release. It's claimed that Monolith Productions scrapped that idea, and is instead focusing on making a regular ol' action-adventure title.

Regardless of what mechanics the game is or isn't expected to include, it sounds like the biggest concern right now might be on whether it actually releases in the first place. It's reported that the changes in leadership, combined with problems related to the game's tech, are leaving its future uncertain.

Either way, there's no doubt that Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns Monolith Productions, will be hoping for the best from Wonder Woman. It's not been having a fantastic time with its games recently, with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League struggling last year, and its fighting game MultiVersus set to shut down just a year after it was brought back.

We haven't seen the open-world Wonder Woman game for 3 years as it was reportedly "literally nothing" when WB Games announced it.

The famed studio behind beloved superhero romps Batman: Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Arkham Knight has had a turbulent few years. Developers were seemingly stuck in development hell while working on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League for seven years, a live-service looter shooter that didn't play to the team's strengths, was mired in behind-the-scenes turmoil, and was ultimately too late to the trend to make much money. Publisher WB Games had attributed a $200 million loss to the game.

Bloomberg now reports that Rocksteady is pivoting back to what made it a household name in the first place, citing anonymous sources familiar with the studio's plans. Rocksteady is allegedly "looking to return" to single-player Batman, though the game is years away from launching right now. It's also unclear if the project will be a continuation of its existing Arkham universe or if it'll exist in a different canon. I imagine the events of Suicide Squad, which were weirdly reversed in a comic-strip-style post-launch ending, might make the latter a more attractive proposition. (Batman Beyond might be cool!)

The change in direction could be down to several factors. Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced that head of WB Games David Haddad, who was in charge of the division throughout its live-service push, was exiting the company. Fellow online hopefuls, like Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions and soon-to-be-shutdown MultiVersus, also underperformed. In fact, one of the publisher's only purely single-player games in recent years came from Hogwarts Legacy, which has sold a whopping over 30 million copies so far.

Whatever Rocksteady's cooking up next won't have the involvement of studio founders Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker, who left late into Suicide Squad's development and quietly launched a new company called Hundred Star Games.

While we wait, don’t miss a single exciting release with our new games of 2025 and beyond release calendar.

"We believe that arrogance is the enemy of continued success," Zelnick said in a Q&A session following the Take-Two financials. "We run scared. We're looking over our shoulder. Our competitors are not asleep. And so what do we do about that? We try to be the most creative, the most innovative, and the most efficient company in the entertainment industry. And Rockstar Games in particular seeks perfection in everything they do. And we believe that if we do that right, and we focus on delivering for consumers, that's our best opportunity to succeed."

Zelnick has repeated similar lines about GTA 6 since the game's official reveal, saying in February 2024 that Rockstar was "seeking perfection" and reiterating in May 2024 that "It's about creating an experience that no one has seen before, and Rockstar Games seeks perfection." You heard it here, folks: GTA 6 will be a perfect video game.

Well, maybe not literally perfect, but after years of anticipation it feels like nothing short of perfection will come close to satisfying the fans who've spent all this time waiting for GTA 6.

GTA 6 still coming this fall, Take-Two boss says "there's always risk of slippage" but "we feel really good" about a 2025 launch.

"Look, there's always a risk of slippage and I think as soon as you say words like absolutely, you jinx things," Zelnick tells IGN. "So we feel really good about it."

In a separate interview with VentureBeat, Zelnick notes that "it’s always the possibilities in our business. However, we’ve given the narrow window for upcoming titles. After all, it is February and we’ve outlined the release schedule through calendar year end."

These interviews come alongside Take-Two's latest financial report, in which the company once again notes that we can expect "Grand Theft Auto VI in the Fall." While the official GTA 6 trailer only offered a vague release window of 2025, Take-Two has been specifying fall 2025 since last May. Clearly, the company is still sticking to those guns.

Take-Two expects a big year in 2025, with Civilization 7 launching in February, Mafia: The Old Country coming in the summer, GTA 6 in the fall, and Borderlands 4 coming sometime in 2025. Zelnick has noted that the publisher plans to ensure those releases don't stack directly on top of each other, as "we wouldn't, and no one would, stack up huge releases."

Former GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 animator says GTA 6 is likely playable "all the way through" right now.

As spotted by VGC, South Korea's Game Rating and Administration Committee posted Death Stranding 2's rating today. The verdict? According to machine translations, it's not for kids, which was to be expected given its predecessor's M rating. Specifically, the ratings board explains that the sequel features "excessive violence" and "vulgar language," as well as depictions of smoking, drinking, and drugs.

Although it's no guarantee of a game's imminent launch, it's always promising to see these sorts of ratings come through – it's often a solid indicator that things are coming together behind the scenes. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was already slated for a 2025 release, so it's not an enormous shock to see this come through like it was with Silent Hill f, which was also rated in South Korea last month after two years of silence. Konami still hasn't said a word about it since, mind you, but at least it shows the game is still alive.

The thing with Death Stranding 2's rating, as VGC points out, is that it's come right after director Hideo Kojima teased something rather trailer-shaped on social media. In a tweet posted yesterday (translated by Google and DeepL), he said he was sitting at the "editing machine," before sharing an image of text reading "a Hideo Kojima game" in what looked like video editing software.

Rumors of an upcoming PlayStation State of Play have also been running rampant lately, adding even more fuel to the fire. Just today, PlayStation itself leaked Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater's release date, which is set for August 28 according to a trailer that appeared on the PS App. We'll just have to wait and see if a full presentation is happening soon, too.

For now, be sure to check out our roundup of new PS5 games coming this year and beyond.

Talking to WSJ (thanks, Culture Crave), Ford once again praised Baker's performance, calling it "brilliant." This comes just weeks after he took the stage at The Game Awards 2024 and said Baker did "a great job" playing Indy, which is quite the turnaround for the actor, who said back in 2019 that "nobody else" could play Indy.

Anyway, he's obviously over all of that and a little more concerned about the rapidly rising prevalence of AI-generated performances.

"You don't need artificial intelligence to steal my soul. You can already do it for nickels and dimes with good ideas and talent," Ford said, referring to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. "He did a brilliant job, and it didn't take AI to do it."

Although he's obviously not pro-AI performances, Ford's also not terribly worried about his likeness being replicated in the future, telling WSJ "my plan is to keep working behind that face till I don’t care what happens anymore," and adding, "there won't be any need for me. There's somebody behind me. Doing what I did."

In the same interview, Ford addressed his 2023 movie Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny flopping at the box office in his signature dismissive style, saying simply, "shit happens." Gotta love Harrison Ford.

I cooked recipes from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and made some wonderful fishcakes – and got food poisoning.

Speaking with fellow actor Michael Rosenbaum on the latest episode of his Inside of You podcast, Ogg addresses if he cares what other people think about him, making references to the "things that are said," including the fact that "with GTA, everyone was saying, 'Oh, he hates being called Trevor.'"

Explaining this, Ogg reckons that he "probably said to someone, 'Well, my name's not Trevor.'" He adds: "When people call you by your character name it's kind of weird," noting that, with Trevor specifically being a "video game character cartoon, there's just no way I could be a cartoon."

He continues: "So I'm sure at some point I was like, 'What are you fucking talking about,' and then it became this thing of, 'He hates Trevor, he hates GTA, don't call him Trevor, he'll freak out,'" In reality, Ogg thinks Trevor is "a great character, he's awesome, and like still, Shawn [Fonteno, Franklin's actor] and Ned [Luke, Michael's actor], we're friends, we were just doing a Comic Con this past weekend. So those kind of comments don't bother me, because I'm like, 'You don't fuckin' know me.'"

Later in the podcast, Ogg goes on to say that simply, "no," he won't be playing GTA 6, but he's clearly got nothing against the franchise. In fact, earlier in the conversation, Rosenbaum brings up that Ogg "didn't play games" even when he was "in the biggest game in history" with GTA 5. Ogg agrees that games have never really interested him, even if he played some arcade classics like Donkey Kong growing up.

Even if Ogg isn't excited to play, GTA 6 is more than likely the most anticipated game of the year for many. While Rockstar Games still hasn't given an actual launch date (or second trailer, for that matter), it's shaping up to have an immense impact on this year's game release calendar.

Former GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 animator says GTA 6 is likely playable "all the way through" right now.

It's become so ubiquitous as a style that I almost didn't notice it anymore, but that changed when Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 suddenly did away with it. And in doing so it's made a real, researched and borderline mundane place in history feel more fantastical and unique than any quasi-dimensional magical netherrealm I can remember.

Quip it real good

Let's be clear here – this discussion isn't just about certain kinds of jokes or well-worn one-liners. For a while now, mainstream games and movies, and a lot of nerd culture in general, has utilized a very specific kind of dialogue that the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Joss Whedon have been instrumental in popularizing across the last twenty years.

You know the sort of thing I mean. It has a certain rhythm and cadence. It's light and snarky, delivered fast and throwaway. It's largely comedic, with one character's speech often setting up another's punchline. It's somewhat post-modern and self-aware, sometimes even meta-aware or fourth-wall breaking, often tacitly inviting the audience to mock any element of the story that seems outlandish. It tends to puncture the more heartfelt or emotional moments before they can drag on too long, giving the impression of being a little cynical or emotionally disaffected.

Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. When done right, this lighter kind of writing sparkles, it's pure champagne! And while it's very common now, it's certainly not a new thing in fiction; there's a real case to be made that Oscar Wilde and P.G. Wodehouse were both working in this wheelhouse, arguably even certain Shakespearean comedies. But you can't deny that certain elements have really gained traction in recent years with flicks like The Avengers and Deadpool; that this punchy, irony-laden dialect has moved to the very forefront of the mainstream.

Though of course when you do this poorly, it's agonizing. Badly-written horror, romance, drama and action can all be hilarious, even if it's not intentional. Sometimes especially if it's not intentional. But bad comedy, by definition, can't be funny. A smirking joker with one cocked eyebrow rattling off some almost-punchline and waiting for laughter that never comes is… abrasive. A whole movie (or god forbid, a fifty-hour video game) doing that is reason enough to call for UN intervention.

Good or bad, this dialogue is everywhere, even in forms that you might not expect. A friend of mine commented the other day that the cast of Alien: Romulus (enslaved miners worlds away in the far future) have that post-modern attitude, which the cast of the original Alien didn't. Meanwhile, fantasy characters in Baldur's Gate 3 and God of War who would be baffled by an electrical outlet still somehow manage to think, act and speak like they're veterans of TV Tropes and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And to be honest, I barely questioned it in any of these cases. This is just what 21st century character writing looks like now (at least at a certain level of pop culture). Doesn't matter who you are and where you're from, it seems as though everybody has become a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. But then I started playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and that was suddenly no longer the case.

Bohemian rhapsody

Now KCD2 isn't going all prithee and verily like a Kirby-era Thor comic, but it's always been framed as a series with a strong historical focus, and dialogue is part of that. In fact, it makes its intentions clear from the first minutes when protagonist Henry is mocked by the noble he's escorting for not knowing Latin, a clear sign of his peasant origins. Later on, the same noble makes an honest reference to a medieval belief called The Three Estates of the Realm, a theory of divine law that states that nobility, clergy and peasantry are all in their assigned roles because God ordained it, and to break that pattern (in this case, by asking the young lord to do menial labor) is against nature. There's no punchline to this dialogue either; Sir Hans really means what he's saying, and while it's up to you how Henry responds, there's nothing overtly comic about the moment as a whole.

In any other game, this would be the sign of a particularly villainous or stupid character, but the Church, the feudal system and superstition dominate so many of the cast's conversations that it just feels like an honest representation of a historical culture. Meanwhile, concepts like lawful dueling and honor are also taken at face value, rather than being something silly or antiquated – and while characters do make jokes, there's all manner of comedic styles on display rather than one unifying tone.

And to be honest, I like how it feels so very alien to modern sensibilities, rather than trying to dilute itself to match them. For example, a major plot point in the story has a character arrested for the crime of poaching (specifically hunting livestock on a lord's land without his permission), and everybody takes it completely seriously, neither surprised or even particularly disapproving that the offender is given a death sentence, and certainly not eye-rolling about it.

Zounds! I can't say I was expecting a major character's life to hang in the balance as a result of shooting Bambi in the wrong postcode, but I like it! I like that these 15th century Bohemians don't act like they have a favorite brand of vape pen. I like that they're not embarrassed to be medieval. And I like I'm we're not just exploring a physical world, but a culture and a medieval mindset, with the dialogue being the means by which we traverse it. I'm no historical expert, but I found myself convinced I was in a real place in history, not just surrounded by modern-day cosplayers at a ren faire.

Talketh the talk

And thinking back, I've always enjoyed this sort of thing. Pentiment is an obvious example (and if you haven't played it, you absolutely should), but on a smaller level I remember now that I always appreciated the scene in Witcher 3 where Geralt is being taught the correct way to bow and dress before he meets the emperor, lest he embarrass the high court. CDPR didn't have to include that, but small, granular specifics give a world texture and make it something fully realized.

Good character writing is nearly always a matter of building empathy between the audience and characters. And yes, a sense of shared humor and recognizable cultural references are a totally valid way of doing that, they're not the only way of doing that. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is confident enough in the heart and soul of its cast (as well as the fascination of feeling like you're in a different era of history) to fully invest in that, and not compromise on what makes it special by trying to talk down to the modern world.

Want to know our thoughts on the game as a whole? Check out our Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 review here!

Metroid Prime 4 was first announced as an upcoming Switch game back at E3 2017 (RIP), at which point all we got was a logo reveal and the promise of it happening. After an extended period of silence, 2019 arrived, and Nintendo confirmed that it was going to "restart development from the beginning" since its "current development progress has not reached the standards we seek" for a new Metroid Prime game. After that, all went quiet until last summer when it finally reemerged with an actual trailer and a 2025 release date. Rejoice!

But now, here we are in 2025 with no actual release date confirmed yet. That's not an unusual thing, of course, it's still early in the year, but Nintendo appears to be attempting to put any worries to rest, as it's reiterated that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is one of its already announced "Nintendo first-party titles scheduled for release in 2025" in its latest financial results. 

Alongside Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, Nintendo has also included Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (which released last month), Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition (which is coming on March 20), and Pokemon Legends: Z-A, which similarly doesn't have a confirmed release date but is scheduled for 2025. As the company hints, these are just the games "that have been announced to date," so there's very little doubt that it has more secrets up its sleeve, especially with the Switch 2 set to launch this year. 

Speaking of which, it's not been confirmed at this point if Metroid Prime 4: Beyond could also be getting a Switch 2 version of some sort. It's definitely coming to the OG Switch, and thanks to the upcoming console's backwards compatibility, it's more than likely going to be playable on there, too. Nintendo doesn't refer to the aforementioned games as first-party Switch titles unlike the "Nintendo Switch first-party software" it mentions earlier in the financial report, but, of course, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is already out, and as it stands, just on the regular Switch, so this might mean nothing. Even so, between Metroid, Pokemon, and a new console, it's shaping up to be a good year for Nintendo. 

23 years later, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is set to revitalize the bounty hunter on Switch, just as the original did on GameCube.

I would probably have to defend myself before long – the one thing I knew about this region was its high number of bandits – but considering I had an arrow wound in my back and they hadn't even let me keep the arrow afterwards, my best hope in a conflict would be to poorly season myself and hope I looked too unappetising to eat. Surely there would be no coming back from this sorry state of affairs?

Carpe Cupam

The next few hours that followed were about as harsh as you would expect. Poverty led to frustration, led to suffering, and eventually death – which then led to long setbacks as a result of the ruthless save system. Most of the opportunities to make actual money put me in circumstances where I would be killed almost instantly, and those few sources of income that weren't treating me as cannon fodder were hardly thrilling: grimly chiseling iron into horseshoes or desperately wagering pocket change in some hustler's rigged dice game.

It was all getting horribly masochistic. The world of 15th century Bohemia was undeniably well-realized, but it also seemed to take a perverse pleasure in tormenting me. I tried harvesting flowers for brewing and selling potions, only to get my leg savaged by wolves – and consequently burn all my resources healing the wound. I tried to steal a few Groschen to pay for a proper bed, only to get caught and instead spend the night back in the pillory, quietly sobbing. I eventually managed to find some proper clothes, but within minutes they were caked in so much blood and pig crap that it was starting to impact my charisma checks, adding "soap" to the ever-growing list of items I needed and couldn't begin to afford. I would've haggled down the price, but again – blood and pig crap.

Combat was no more successful. In true immersive sim fashion, you start the game inept and bumbling at everything, and could be overpowered by a train of ducklings. A bandit would approach me, and I'd barely manage two ineffectual sword swings before my stamina was depleted and I'd need a time-out, only to be swiftly tackled and clubbed to death. I tried to slit a villain's throat from stealth, only for my intended assassination target to slip out of my grapple and elbow me in the nose. Again, clubbings ensued. Later, I was fighting from horseback, starting to get a good chivalric groove going, only to collide with a low-hanging branch and get knocked to the ground, suddenly staring up at a ring of burly, grinning faces. You can probably guess what clubbened next.

It's a long way to the top if you wanna Waffenrock n' roll

And to be honest, I hated it. My professional obligation to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 meant that I couldn't walk away, so every time a band of poachers or travelling group of Cumans split me down the middle, I'd just have to groan and carry on with this grim farce. Even FromSoftware hadn't been this stingy about quality-of-life perks.

But eventually I started to become aware of a change. A dozen hours in, and I'd managed to negotiate a cot to sleep on in a Blacksmith's storeroom. I had some clothes, and even some basic armor, dented and unremarkable as it was. I'd found a sword, and had learned a couple of tricks and combos that meant I might eventually hurt somebody with it. I had some money in my pocket, just enough to handle day-to-day requirements and basic necessities. I'd even found a horse to call my own! Alright, it was a flea-ridden nag that would probably pass out from exhaustion if it farted too hard, but everybody's first car is like that.

For hours I felt like I was trying to climb out of a well, scrabbling at the walls in the hope of creating a handhold. And finally, finally, I had a grip, a little niche into which I could pry a finger and start to lever myself up. The difference was electrifying. Momentum started to build. Money led to more money, as it always does. Combat victories let me pry better gear from dead men's fingers. I started to learn the nuances of the world, and then to exploit them. The man who trudged into Troskowitz village at the start of the game was a lowly peasant. The man who rode in thirty hours later was a wealthy, accomplished knight.

Let's be very clear here: those first ten hours of Kingdom Come 2 sucked. I genuinely don't know if that's meant to be intentional, some risky artistic gambit on behalf of the creators, but intended or not, I wouldn't have recommended it back then. It's not particularly enjoyable to be the medieval world's chew toy, and if my job didn't necessitate playing on then I might've thrown the controller down a long time ago. But I can't deny that it meant that when I clawed back all those quality of life options that would've been the default in any other RPG, I felt damn proud to have them. A bursting pouch of silver, a noble stallion, gleaming plate armor, a network of contacts, a range of talents to fall back on, and a combat record that John Wick would envy.

At my current point in the game I'm effectively a pre-renaissance Batman, a flashy swashbuckler capable of doing almost anything and fending off whole platoons with an effortless flourish of silvery steel. Earning that skillset has been a hell of a journey, and one that's clearly not for everybody – but I can't deny it's been one of the most satisfying progressions in an RPG I've encountered in years.

If Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 seems a little brutal to you, or if you just want a warm-up with something more merciful, why not check out our list of the best RPG games?

OlliOlli World has also been removed from the US Nintendo Switch storefront, though it's apparently obtainable in the UK. As of writing, the glossy, 2022 action games are also available to purchase on PlayStation.

But, since OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome's disappearances have been a gradual, furtive process over the past few days, even their availability on PlayStation might change soon. Not that anyone knows why.

Former Private Division owner Take-Two has been elusive over the past few months. Later reporting revealed that OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome's developer Roll7 was dissolved ahead of Private Division's sale, though Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick insisted in a 2024 IGN interview that "we haven't shuttered anything." In 2023, Zelnick earned $42 million.

Around that same time, Rollerdrome developer Anisa Sanusi told fans to "please pirate it because none of us work at the company that owns [Rollerdrome] anymore," clarifying in later posts on Twitter that "the studio I loved working at no longer exists, and my friends and former colleagues were laid off."

While Take-Two still has not revealed Private Division's buyer, Bloomberg reports the publisher's titles will be absorbed by a group of former Annapurna Interactive staff, who resigned in 2024 after feuding with the Stray publisher's owner.

Other Private Division games, including the celestial RPG and breakout title The Outer Worlds, continue to be available on storefronts, as are Roll7 games released by other publishers. In any case, OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome now serve as uncomfortable reminders that even the best digital-only games can easily vanish if a fickle owner wants them to.

Let's at least remember them fondly: OlliOlli World already feels like 2022's most essential indie.

This might shock modern gamers, used to cross-platform releases as the standard, but even back in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era there weren't only vast differences in things like release dates – but ports could vary wildly between the two dominant HD platforms. Few games exemplify this quite so drastically as Xbox 360's Ninja Gaiden 2 and the PS3's Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2.

Back in black

The original Ninja Gaiden 2’s brilliant premise amped up the violent, fast-paced action Ryu Hayabusa had already become known for by forcing him to deal with legions of enemy ninja at once. Limbs could be cleaved from them easily, opening even hulking foes up to one-hit finishers – but they also became more dangerous while vulnerable, eager to take Ryu with them. Its action was and still is electric – it’s been in my regular replay rotation for years, and can go toe-to-toe with the character action greats like Devil May Cry 5 largely because of how unique its approach to group fights feels.

The PS3 version added extra levels with new characters and new bosses. A definitive version, then? Unfortunately not. With fewer enemies on screen at once, and spongier health bars to attempt to accommodate the difference, it awkwardly cut down the brilliant premise of the original Ninja Gaiden 2. Crowd Control: The Game doesn't work quite so well when crowds are more small assemblies of like-minded enemies whose pesky limbs are very keen to stay attached. (It also removed the vast amounts of blood spray in favor of a strange purple aura). Annoyingly, 2021's Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection remasters featured a Ninja Gaiden 2 based on this compromised version.

At the very least, the original Ninja Gaiden 2 has remained available via backwards compatibility on Xbox One. But, for as much as I adore it, the original game isn't without some problems. Fighting at range is clunky yet hard to avoid due to plentiful projectile spam and flying foes, and enemies can be annoyingly grab happy. It's aged well in many other ways, but not quite well enough to be able to recommend it without some caveats.

Despite still being built on Sigma 2’s foundations, though, Ninja Gaiden Black 2 feels like the perfect remedy – its gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 overhaul and slicker menus making it feel like a fantastic modernization from the off, but it also makes some smart choices to bridge the gap between the Sigma and Sigmaless divide. It feels a lot closer to the spirit of the original, while ditching some of that version’s annoyances too.

For example, enemy groups are still based on the reduced numbers in Sigma 2, but now they feel more aggressive, jumping collectively into the fray together at once, nodding towards that claustrophobic feel of the original. With blood back in the game, and what seems to be a better chance to dismember, Ryu’s slashes and strikes pack plenty of impact, and limbs go flying easily. Even though they’re less spongy than in Sigma 2, fights end up feeling more chaotic – which all adds to the joy.

Even on normal difficulties – while noticeably a bit easier than others past (harder ones are available) – there's plenty of tension. The feeling that one wrong move may see an enemy grab you and explode themselves, or that one wrong combo may end up with Ryu's health bar turning into a fine mist is ever present. Importantly, though, the sense of danger, stickier foes, and ability to open them to one-hit kill chains, means that Ninja Gaiden Black 2 zeroes in on the unique cadence of the original.

Some of the additional bosses from Sigma 2 don’t reappear here, which feels like a conscious – and smart – choice. Battling a massive buddha statue and the statue of liberty might be kind of funny, but Ninja Gaiden 2’s mechanics weren’t designed for wailing on the vulnerable hands of gigantic foes God of War style. Ninja Gaiden Black 2’s pacing is better for losing them, and keeping those epic brawls coming at you fast is vital for keeping the action flowing.

It results in a game that feels meticulous, a Dragon Sword honed to a fine point. Would I like enemy groups to be a bit larger? Sure, I will always say yes. But for the first time, Ninja Gaiden Black 2 has sold me on the changes Sigma 2 made, by adjusting them to make a lot more sense. I’ll always recommend checking the original out, but I understand getting grabbed five times in a row by Alexei is annoying, and that spending five minutes against waves of demons in a single Test Of Valor can feel repetitive.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black makes its enemy encounters always matter, always feel like they could tear you apart – but reinforces that you have the tools to do the very same, and that with just the right combination of blade twirls yourself, you can literally tear an enemy squad coming at you ten-to-one limb from limb without wasting a single action. Missed the original? Ninja Gaiden 2 Black's got your back.

On a nostalgia kick? Check out our best Xbox 360 games list!

Liu had already said on Twitter that he was "Working with the rights holders to bring Sleeping Dogs to the big screen!" when a fan asked him to work his magic and revive the property that gamers had been introduced to in 2012. Some of the magic using the Ten Rings as Shang-Chi has clearly rubbed off on him because while it still had been halted in the past, Liu's determination seems to have paid off. "So few film projects make it from pitch phase to greenlight. Pitching execs who don’t understand the game has been tiring. Everyone’s overwhelming love of Sleeping Dogs here has really given us life! First a movie, then a sequel game for everyone… that’s always been the dream."

A classic for many, Sleeping Dogs puts players in the high-kicking shoes of Wei Shen, an undercover cop walking the mean streets of Hong Kong to infiltrate the Sun On Yee Triad organization. Things get a bit messy, and Wei Shen begins punching, kicking, and breaking bad guys at an alarming rate. Back in 2017, Donnie Yen had initially been signed on to take the role and had stuck with it for years, but the project, much like a highly sought-after video game sequel, never came to pass.

Perhaps now, Liu might have more luck with Wei Shen and his world. We just hope it doesn't impact his return to the MCU whenever that happens. For now, give Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings a rewatch and use our guide to watching the Marvel movies in order while you're at it (apparently, there are quite a few).

That comes from former Rockstar Games developer Mike York, in a now unlisted interview with Kiwi Talkz, who speculated about the state of the studio's newest blockbuster slated to come out this year. With Rockstar Games' history of high-profile delays, there's been lots of chatter around whether GTA 6 will also slip into next year, but York thinks the team are close to the finish line.

"They're probably still making a few new things here and there or adding to things here and there, of course, but I would assume that the game's probably playable now, and a bunch of people are testing the whole thing all the way through," he guessed. "There's probably a ton of bugs" - as is the case with crowded open-world games still in development - "and they're fixing all those bugs, and they're trying to find more bugs, and they're trying to find as many bugs as they can before they release because a game like GTA is unlike any other game."

York even said that, during his time working on GTA 5, the team "played the game all day, every day for, like, 8-to-10 hours a day." York also explained how creating a huge, densely-populated game, such as GTA 6, differs from something like The Witcher 3 as players can get up to all sorts of antics that the developers simply can't anticipate during production.

Along with GTA 6, check out all the other new game release dates of 2025 to look forward to. 

The studio announced the project and showed "just a few characters from the Absurdaverse" yesterday, with a peak at its bold logo and huge lineup of modern-fantasy character that you can see below. A moody dwarf, grim reaper-type phantom, medieval skeleton, middle-aged man donning a Hawaiian shirt, and regular people who look like they work in IT are all part of the (truly absurd) cast.

"Prepare to meet some new kinds of heroes (and watch them suffer)," the post teased. "More information to come this year about the first animation projects and about our original story-driven action-comedy adventure game set in the Absurdaverse, now in development at Absurd Ventures."

Absurd Ventures has, most notably, debuted several other multimedia projects. Fictional podcast A Better Paradise has been ongoing for a while and the team is also preparing to launch a crime comic book series, American Caper, later this year. That means the team is juggling at least three 'universes,' though the above "action-comedy" is the only one with a planned video game in production (that we know of, at least.) And when it finally comes out, it'll be Dan Houser's first game since his departure from Rockstar Games in 2019. It's unclear if it's the same game as the open-world one we found out about last summer, though.

That’s not all of what’s in the pipeline either - check out every other exciting release with our new games of 2025 and beyond. 

Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, released in 2005 and 2006 respectively, are among the best PSP games of all time. The pitch back when Sony’s handheld was the hottest piece of portable hardware on the market was having fully-fledged 3D Grand Theft Auto games on the go. That sounded like utterly insane talk before LCS was first unveiled, but it somehow happened and was great. Far from being downgrades of what we’d experienced with GTA 3 and Vice City, they added new places, storylines, and even mechanics to locations we'd already visited on home consoles and PC. You just had to be there.

As publisher Take-Two and developer Rockstar Games scramble to take down the fan-made ports of GTA 4's Liberty City into GTA 5 and Vice City into GTA 4, it's become quite clear that there's a hunger among the community for new experiences – even if they're not really new – that take us back to past iterations of the most iconic cities in the long-running series. If Rockstar breaking ties with original Definitive Edition dev Grove Street Games and finally getting that re-release to where it should be was any indication of better quality control in the future, I'll happily raise my hand and begin asking for LCS & VCS remasters.

Portable magic

After making a splash on PSP, both games were ported to PS2. Moreover, Liberty City Stories made its way to mobile phones in late 2015 and early 2016. Clearly, the powers that be didn't quickly forget about them, which is why the possibility of proper modern remasters in the vein of the Definitive Edition isn't too much to ask.

Despite the platform they were developed for originally, these spinoffs (prequels to both GTA 3 and Vice City, actually) retained improvements that happened first in the bigger entries. For example, LCS included motorcycles, clothing changes, and a bigger number of interior environments vs. GTA 3's more limited approach to a 3D sandbox (it was the pioneer). Likewise, VCS added its own exclusive empire-building system and recovered air vehicles and the ability to swim from Vice City and San Andreas respectively.

Those key features were just the tip of the iceberg. As I said before, neither LCS nor VCS were designed as lesser versions of the original trips to Liberty and Vice City. Whereas Chinatown Wars (2009) returned to the franchise’s top-down origins and clearly was a smaller-scale experiment, Rockstar's PSP efforts should've stood tall alongside the 'classic trilogy' we continue to praise to this day. The only thing that’s stopping more players from discovering and enjoying them is, once again, video game preservation being treated like an afterthought (or a downright annoyance).

Forgotten stories and history

I've also batted for Grand Theft Auto's strong stories and characters for as long as I can remember. Far too many people treat the IP as an uncomplicated, unambitious series of wacky tales that are little more than excuses to support all the sandbox elements and the potential carnage. I could understand this (crap) take if it came only from boomers and folks who are completely disconnected from the medium, but to see it popping up time and again, and coming from supposedly dedicated gamers and even some games media individuals who are asking for 'more' from video games every other day is baffling.

Sometimes, we just need mean, hard-hitting satire which makes fun of everything and everyone at a certain point in human history, points out flaws in the systems which are supposed to protect us, and lets natural tragicomedy flourish out of the constant state of contradiction most of us live in. Dan Houser, James Worrall, and other writers that have allowed to GTA to grow over the years should be celebrated more often. Even when the PSP games were envisioned and developed, they made sure they had a firm place in the GTA timeline and added to the cities, characters, and relationships that had driven much of their bigger relatives forward.

Toni Cipriani and Victor 'Vic' Vance – and their bumpy personal journeys – are every bit as important as Claude and Tommy Vercetti. Their hijinks and struggles weren't just 'more content' while everyone waited for GTA 4. It’s hard to fully understand how the series evolved in the gap between San Andreas and its successor without playing these neglected games, and their original platforms should've never dictated their importance past their prime. In the age of endless remasters filling the gaps between massive AAA releases, there are enough solid reasons to let Liberty City and Vice City Stories make a dashing return.

If you're a fan of Rockstar's series, check out our pick of the 10 best games like GTA.

Speaking to Edge in the magazine's latest issue, artist Imamura recalls that he "wasn't too pleased" about helping out with A Link to the Past when initially drafted in. Not because he had anything against Link and the gang, but more so because he was looking forward to playing the game as a fan – and not dealing with the strenuous process of QA.

"To tell the truth, when I was asked to help out on the Zelda team, I wasn't too pleased about it," he shares. "I didn't really want to, and the reason was because I wanted to enjoy the game when it was finished, as a player. I can remember that feeling even now.

"I also remember that the debugging, the QA, was really tough, having to do the same thing over and over again. I still really don't want to play that game - the testing was that difficult. Even now, if I just jump into the game for a minute or so, the feeling comes back. It's like PTSD or something."

Ouch. Imamura goes on to explain that he came to work on the Zelda game as the previous one did so well that then-president of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, said he wanted a sequel "done in a year."

"At the time, I was already on another project, and I got called in, yet again, into a Zelda project halfway through," he says. "Again, I wanted to experience it as a player, not actually work on it, but hey, there you go."

There you go, indeed. Next time you play A Link to the Past, maybe spare a thought for Imamura, who gave up playing the game stress-free so you could experience it unlike he did.

No longer of Nintendo, Imamura is gearing up to release his own 16-bit retro adventure game called Omega 6 The Triangle Stars, which is due to release next month.

"I couldn't resist": Nintendo legend Takaya Imamura on trying but failing to keep a huge console secret, his hopes for the future of Star Fox, and a lot more.

Speaking to Kiwi Talkz in a now unlisted video, former GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 animator Mike York said that the upcoming game is "unlike any other" because of the "unpredictability of the game and the unpredictability of what the player is going to do in that game."

"Because of it being open world, because of it being like a human city, right?" he continued. Vice City's dense, populated urban environment is also what makes GTA 6 a very different beast to optimize than other open world games, according to York. "And the way it is, it's a lot different than, like, The Witcher open world. It's totally different. There are a lot of things that can happen that you don't really think about until some random kid in his basement tries it, you know? You really don't. When I worked on GTA 5, we played the game all day, every day for, like 8-to-10 hours a day."

The Witcher 3 might boast one of the best-looking, most-detailed open worlds in any game out there, but when you stop to think about it, Grand Theft Auto's maps seem even more daunting to develop. There's the crowds of people, the busy streets, air traffic, bugs and wildlife and ecosystems under the sea - not to mention how rowdy some of the NPCs looked in that first GTA 6 trailer.

It's no surprise that York expects GTA 6 to launch with only a 30fps option, then, with our best hope for a 60fps mode coming from the game's eventual PC port. 

GTA 5 Trevor actor wants the fan-favorite to return in GTA 6 just so Rockstar Games can kill him again. 

It's simply "for exciting times!" he writes in the description of his LinkedIn experience. In parenthesis, he adds the unambiguous admission, "No, it's not FNV2."

But that won't stop fans of the apocalyptic action game from fantasizing. Last year, they guessed from Obsidian art director Daniel Cabuco's LinkedIn page that the "unannounced title" he described himself as working on might be another Fallout game… but Cabuco has since removed references to an "unannounced" game from his profile. And Obsidian hasn't revealed information for any game other than its first-person RPG Avowed, which is out in February.

Gonzalez might be trying to further obfuscate whatever Obsidian's "unannounced" game might be, or, more likely, people need to lay off the LinkedIn. Either way, Gonzalez's time off of Obsidian brought him an incredible range of experience. He was the narrative director on both Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, and, most importantly to me, co-developed the Orc's unforgettable dialogue in 2014 Lord of the Rings action game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. I hear a voice calling out "man-swine!" in only my most important dreams.

About his time working on New Vegas, which has now been out for 15 years, Gonzalez writes "Thank you, God" on LinkedIn, a typically godless place. With enough of this kind of passion, maybe there really is hope for Fallout: New Vegas 2.

After 4 years, Fallout: New Vegas' massive New Mexico mod is canceled: "Continuing forward simply isn't sustainable."

PlayStation's PC ports have definitely been on the upswing as of late with blockbusters, like God of War: Ragnarok and Horizon: Forbidden West, all running smoothly on your personal computers. But following on from The Last of Us Part 1 and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart's dodgy ports, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is also courting less-than-stellar reactions from new PC players.

The superhero sequel is currently stuck with a 'Mixed' rating based on almost 2,000 Steam user reviews, the majority of which complain about the PC version's various tech woes, which supposedly include constant crashing, wonky performance, stuttering, and graphical glitches.

"Hold off on buying until they get a couple of stabilization patches out because holy hell," one review reads. "To say this is 'rough' is an understatement. Lighting doesn't load in some cutscenes, those same scenes run at seconds-per-frame, audio desync issues up the wazoo, freezing, stuttering, and just about every other performance issue I can think of. I'm gonna get a refund for now because frankly, there's other stuff I could use $70 for right now."

"The crashing and visual issues with this game are pervasive," another claims, with another saying, "The game is currently unplayable on PC... the game crashes to desktop every five minutes."

Of course, there are still plenty of positive user reviews that don't seem to have been affected by any of those tech issues. If you're swinging through New York with Miles and Peter hand-in-hand with no problems, then make the most of the adventure with our guides on where to find all tech creates and all Spider-Man 2 costumes.

Months after the Helldivers 2 fiasco, Sony drops its PlayStation Network requirement on PC and promises free stuff for people who sign up voluntarily instead. 

"We have received: 400 emails, 150 pitches, 2,000+ LinkedIn requests," Pocketpair Publishing writes on Twitter. "We are blown away by the interest we have received from YOU, the developers, and we're doing our best to review each request and pitch."

"Of course, we cannot help everyone," Pocketpair continues, "but we're determined to help as many great games get made as possible."

The publisher has already confirmed its first project, an "original," as-of-yet unnamed horror game by Assassin's Creed actor Abubakar Salim's Surgent Studios. Neither studio nor publisher has revealed any details about the game's story or content, but the horror title is scheduled to release this year, according to Pocketpair's website.

"This is really only the beginning, but we’ll do our best to help as many people as we can!" Pocketpair Publishing communications director and Palworld community manager John "Bucky" Buckley reiterated on Twitter. Earlier this week, a graphic illustrating Pocketpair's financial independence Bucky also posted on Twitter seemed to imply Pocketpair Publishing was working on two unannounced titles in addition to the one by Surgent, denoted mysteriously by question marks.

In any case, it's impressive that Pocketpair is keeping so busy despite the overbearing gloom that is a Nintendo lawsuit – currently, the Palworld developer is combating the Mario mammoth's patent infringement claim. But that hasn't stopped Pocketpair from confidently porting its 2018 card game Overdungeon to the Switch for no reason, so why not fund a couple hundred indie games, too?

Palworld devs faced "so many challenges" in the survival game's first year as pre-launch attention "brought its own difficulties" and post-launch "accusations" were "a lot to handle."

Speaking on Kiwi Talkz, Mike York sets his expectations after being asked if Rockstar will shoot for 30fps or 60fps for GTA6. "I don't know if they'll be able to pull off 60fps," York says. "I don't think so. I think they're gonna be shooting for 30fps – and a locked 30fps, meaning it never dips below that. They're gonna try to optimize as much as they can to where it never goes below 30. But it can be bumped up to 40, 41, 52, whatever, and I bet you, like, later, once it's on PC, it'll probably get super optimized and changed and new graphics cards that come out and you'll be able to run it at 60fps probably at that time."

Currently, GTA 5 can run at 60fps on PS5, but let's not forget that the game originally came out on the PS3 back in 2013, so it's had plenty of time to be optimized. With the graphical quality we saw in the GTA 6 trailer, getting a stable 30fps would be a minor technological miracle.

"I don't think [the] initial release it'll come out at 60fps unless it's getting those 60fps by [using] an AI upscaler thing like the PlayStation is doing, unless something is coming in and helping it get those 60fps," York explains. "I don't think it'll get the 60fps raw out the gate on a base console. PS5, for instance. Maybe PS5 Pro, or whatever, but I still don't think so."

However, it's important to note that while York did work on GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, he's not at Rockstar anymore and hasn't worked there since 2017.

"I don't know what they're doing over there," York says. "I don't know how massive this is going to be. But from my experience, they're going to squeeze every little freaking thing they can out of it and then optimize later for 60 frames because it's not as important as just making the game amazing at 30 frames."

While I have become spoiled by all the PS5 games that run at a smooth 60fps, I have to admit that I'd much rather have a game that runs at a consistent 30fps than one that dips and rises depending on what's happening on screen. If I drive through Vice Beach and see sand and tourists flying everywhere, I don't want the frame rate to slow to a crawl; I want speed.

Although York doesn't know what's coming in GTA 6, Trevor's voice actor has a wish for the upcoming game. He wants Trevor to be killed right at the start of the game. It would be pretty funny, and a nice nod to the way he was introduced in GTA 5.

While you wait for GTA 6, check out our ranking of all the best GTA games.

It appears that Ubisoft must toe the line between two sets of expectations, if not surpass them completely. On one side of this precarious path sits Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch's artful ode to samurai action cinema that has long been considered the pinnacle of its subgenre. On the other, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is an undisputed fan favorite among the best Assassin's Creed games – especially when it comes to the trio of existing RPG entries – that has been held up repeatedly as an example of Ubisoft's finest work. Each could make the case for unfavorable comparisons when critiquing Shadows as either a samurai game or an Assassin's Creed RPG, mounting pressure on the publisher to show how it has learned from past mistakes.

After replaying Odyssey in anticipation, though, I'm reminded that Ubisoft is already sitting on all the ingredients it needs to come up with a winning formula. By leveraging the series' greatest strengths, I have confidence that Assassin's Creed Shadows can blow both of its biggest comparisons out of the water – and it all starts with climbing.

Side questing

It's wild to think that Shadows should have been in our hands back in November. Even after the first delay, I was still disappointed to hear that the upcoming Assassin's Creed game had been delayed once again, this time to March 20, to account for "gameplay quality control." This second postponement might have only nudged it a few weeks back from its intended February 14 release, but I had been so ready to immerse myself in everything Assassin's Creed that I couldn't help but feel cheated. Thank goodness, then, that Assassin's Creed Odyssey is still among the best games on Xbox Game Pass.

I've spent almost every evening over the last week exploring ancient Greece as misthios Kassandra, playing double agent to Spartan and Athenian alike as I take on each contract with a barefaced liar's smile. It's been a delight to rediscover Odyssey's responsive, reactive open world, teeming with side missions and outposts to stealthily loot and high-level mercenaries I have no choice but to avoid. History feels so alive in this game to the point that I rarely question any of it, turning it into an educational as well as entertaining experience when I let myself get caught up in the drama of it all. But with one of Shadows' biggest gameplay reworks being the implementation of unclimbable surfaces to dial into the realism, I'm suddenly picking holes in Odyssey's illusion. As I climb a statue of Zeus on the island of Kephallonia, Kassandra scaling the smooth, marble curvature of his gigantic backside as if part mountain goat before expertly landing the three-foot jump to an overhang, I have to admit that maybe level-locked assassination damage isn't Odyssey's one and only sticking point.

If Ubisoft wants to capitalize on the immersion factor in Shadows, that process would start at these smaller breaks from reality. Climbing foothold-free surfaces with the strength and grace of an acrobat is one thing a burly samurai like Yasuke might be less proficient at, while I do hope to see sleek shinobi Naoe putting even the likes of Arno to shame with her parkour. Assassin's Creed Unity had some of the best, weightiest traversal in the entire franchise, and if its buggy launch hadn't soured its initial critical and public reception alike, I think it would be better remembered for it.

In with the old

While I'm keen to see Shadows steal realistic climbing mechanics from the series' past, with Ubisoft Quebec calling the shots I'd be remiss not to once again extol the joys of Assassin's Creed Syndicate and how much I hope to see the spirit of my favorite AC game in this latest offering. It might be a rogue choice – to anyone other than myself and Senior Staff Writer Heather Wald, anyway – but I've always loved the heart and soul it exudes.

A tightly written script and impressive vocal performances bolstered Evie and Jacob Frye as they pioneered the existence of dual protagonists in the franchise, their moments of playful back-and-forth establishing reasons to root for each twin for respective reasons. I've not found an Assassin's Creed protagonist as likeable as the Fryes since Ezio himself, which is really saying something considering how fond I am of Kassandra. We already know Ubisoft can hit a home run when it comes to brilliant character writing, so if Yasuke and Naoe have even a hint of that spark I saw in Evie and Jacob's eyes, Shadows could well become my new favorite Creed.

Thus, the perfect combination of elements is clear to me. Shadows needs the believable weight of Unity's parkour to immerse us, well-rounded protagonists who embrace flaw and brilliance alike, and a world that channels a deeper sense of historical realism like Odyssey's – with a lot of artistic fictional embellishment to seal the deal. I'm more than ready for Ubisoft to deliver all of the above on March 20 – and if it gets delayed again, I guess I'll have to brave Assassin's Creed Valhalla's daunting wealth of DLC to keep that excitement stoked.

Check out all the upcoming Xbox Series X games we're itching to see in 2025

Functional recipes are a rare treat in video games and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle doesn’t disappoint, featuring 11 full recipes covering dishes from Italy, Egypt, China, Siam, and Iraq – a veritable smorgasbord of culinary delights. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say, so I’ve put the writers at MachineGames to the test by trying out three of the recipes to see if they cut the mustard in… Indiana Jones and the Recipe for Disaster.

Risotto ai funghi

Of the three recipes Indy can nab in the Vatican, Giovanni's risotto ai funghi felt like the best place for Act I of this eating experience. I've made risottos before, so it would serve as a nice way to ease myself into this challenge. Or so I thought.

While the recipe's ingredients were exactly what you'd expect from a mushroom risotto (although the recipe does not specify that you should use arborio/risotto rice), the major issue was that it called for chanterelle mushrooms. It turns out these are difficult to find in UK supermarkets and aren't cheap – there was no way I was going to forage for my own either.

"No matter!", I thought. I figured I could just buy whatever slightly exotic mushroom variety I find and can add the dried porcini mushrooms necessary for the stock, despite the fact the recipe doesn't explicitly mention adding them to the risotto itself. These exotic mushrooms turned out to be shiitake mushrooms which I tenuously justified as an acceptable Great Circle-themed substitute due to the Japanese air raid that threatens Indy and Gina in Shanghai.

The risotto recipe itself was easy to follow, and in the end, I had a rich and earthy risotto with a bit of acidity from the white wine and funkiness from the masses of grated parmesan. Delicious enough that even my risotto-disliking dad said it was "excellent". A resounding success and a good start to my Indiana Jones and the Great Circle recipe testing. Until I woke up the next day.

Punished for my hubris in ignoring the recipe and adding the porcini mushrooms, I came down with food poisoning the following morning. That's my theory anyway. I reckon I may have got unlucky and ate a dodgy mushroom that hadn't rehydrated properly, though it's possible that something else entirely unrelated did me in. Either way, this could have potentially been avoided had I followed the recipe exactly – do as MachineGames says, not as I do!

Ful medames

Since I was now in very unfamiliar territory with Egyptian cuisine, and needed a proper win after my illness, I chose the ful medames recipe – a kind of bean stew enjoyed all over the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East – for its simplicity and easy shortcuts. The main one being that tinned fava beans would let me get this dish done in minutes rather than hours. Like the chanterelle mushrooms, these proved elusive, so I had to settle for tinned broad beans, which are actually fava beans at an earlier and fresher stage in their life – close enough!

With that, the bulk of the Great Circle's ful medames recipe can be summarized as: "put things in a pot to make beans taste delicious". The punchy lemon, garlic, and cumin mixed nicely with the more fatty and starchy beans and lashings of olive oil, making for a hearty meal.

The recipe also calls for a secret ingredient – a mix of pastirma cured meat and tahini – but I'm not sure this added much. Though I admit I had to use pastrami as I couldn't find pastirma in a small quantity, so maybe I set myself up for disappointment.

However, adding a flatbread to scoop the beans like an edible spoon was a much better idea, adding something extra to such a simple but satisfying dish. I can completely understand why this was, and seemingly still is, a popular breakfast dish in Egypt – perfect for providing the energy you need to stop the Nazis reconstructing the Great Circle.

Thot man pla

The final act of this gastronomical globetrot was making thot man pla, a Thai fish cake dish with a sweet and spicy dipping sauce. It stood out as something a little challenging but achievable, and given my previous failures with sourcing ingredients, I also wanted it to be as accurate as possible.

I failed at the first hurdle. "Catch a good bounty of clown featherback fish", the recipe says, and I can't fish. In my defense, clown featherbacks do not exist in UK waters and, according to some of the modern recipes I checked, any kind of white fish is acceptable, so I went for cod. I even managed to get holy basil, a herb I had never heard of before and will probably never use again.

Gathering ingredients wasn't even the hardest part about making thot man pla. The main issue is that the recipe's ingredients list bafflingly uses deciliters for some items, which is not only a unit of measure I had never seen before, but also one for volume and not mass. What does 1.5 deciliters of green beans look like? Thankfully, my guess of 150 grams seemed about right.

After the measurements debacle, the recipe was actually very easy, largely thanks to my food processor. Blitz the fish, add in all the other bits, and blitz some more, then form the mix into small patties – I made seven, but I reckon you could get 10 out of this recipe. Next, blend the garlic, chilli, and other ingredients for the dip and let it all simmer a little in a pan while you fry the fish cakes. You'll be left with fragrant, spicy, and salty fish cakes that are complemented well by the sweet, sour, and spicy dip, which was the surprise star of the recipe for me and makes this my favourite dish of the bunch.

Despite a rough start and a slightly tricky end to the challenge, perhaps my Recipe for Disaster should be a Recipe for Success. All three of these Indiana Jones and the Great Circle recipes were excellent and I could definitely see myself cooking any of them again. Thanks to the unique ingredients, unconventional measurements, or lack of specific instructions, each recipes' quirks also presented interesting challenges to overcome and made the recipes feel even more authentic to me. It's clear they haven't been rigorously kitchen-tested and certainly weren't written with an international audience in mind.

Instead, all 11 recipes have been crafted by the writers at MachineGames to not only be functional and edible, but also to fit naturally into the world of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, whether they're translated from ancient tablets or are family recipes passed to a granddaughter or nephew. They're such a small part of the game but are a worthwhile inclusion and worth pursuing as a player, helping to show off a little bit of the cultures that are threatened by Voss and his fascist cronies, and it's something you just can't get from any of the Indiana Jones movies. Food poisoning and all.

If you've rolled credits in Indy, our Big in 2025 has ranked 50 games you should plan to play this year

YouTuber Dark Space has created a version of Vice Beach and plans to make the Venetian Islands, too, parts of the world that were shown in the GTA 6 trailer. It's been a long time since we had any GTA 6 news, and they're clearly getting antsy.

While Take-Two and Rockstar have gone after a few fan projects lately, Dark Space seems confident that their work will be an exception. They tell IGN "This is just me making my own fan-made map myself. All within GTA 5 itself. Any assets are from GTA 5 itself. A typical practice."

Take-Two recently issued takedown notices for two GTA fan projects. One was a mod that ported GTA 4 into GTA 5, and another brought the original Vice City game into GTA 4.

"Vice City mod is a whole game remade in GTA 4. Not good for Rockstar. Also makes them look bad," Dark Water says. "Liberty City Preservation project ripped a whole game map from 4 to 5 eliminating the need for Rockstar to ever do that."

Even though they believe their project differs from these other recent ones, Dark Spaces admits they're "always worried" they could be asked to stop work on the project.

Former Rockstar dev Obbe Vermeij says Take-Two is just doing "what companies are supposed to do," but also thinks that "It would be better if R* did quality remasters of their classic games."

Dark Space hopes to get their work out within the next couple of weeks – hopefully Take-Two lets them. Who knows, we might get modded GTA 6 before we get actual GTA 6? As long as the new map has some of San Andreas' backwater bliss, we'll be happy.

In the meantime, check out our ranking of the best GTA games.

Speaking during the 2025 Taipei Game Show (via IGN Japan and with translation from Genki), Yoshida spoke on The Last Guardian's famously lengthy development, which began in earnest at Team Ico in 2007, nine years before its release in 2016. The game was originally in development for release on PS3, but the console's hardware wasn't keeping up with the developers' ambitions for the game.

According to Yoshida, The Last Guardian was running at a staggeringly low 10-15 FPS on PS3, and after trying everything they could think of to achieve more favorable performance, PlayStation shifted its development over to PS4 where a lot of the pre-existing programming had to be started over from scratch.

Yoshida also said he doesn't think The Last Guardian would've stood up to scrutiny at a different publisher. However, he insisted on delivering for fans of Team Ico and its previous efforts, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Yoshida also had a lot of confidence in The Last Guardian director Fumito Uedo's vision, which gave him a 'failure is not an option' mentality. At some point, he decided "'whatever happens we have to release it!' and kept on saying to everyone 'let's do our best!' to get it done."

The Last Guardian suffered numerous setbacks in addition to the aforementioned technical challenges, chiefly among them the departure of Ueda and other key members of Team Ico in 2011. Thankfully, Ueda created a new studio with Ico and Shadow of the Colossus lead programmer Jinji Horagai, as well as other members of Team Ico, and helped Sony get to the finish line with The Last Guardian through contract work. In hindsight, and with these fresh insights from Yoshida, it's something of a minor miracle that we ended up getting The Last Guardian at all.

Here are the best PS5 games you can play right now.

In an interview with ScreenRant, Ogg says, "It would be fun if Trevor appeared in it just to be killed at the beginning." This would put a twist on his own introduction in GTA 5, where he brutally kills Johnny Klebitz, a character from GTA 4 who went on to be the protagonist in The Lost and Damned DLC. 

Ogg explains: "I think that would be cool because it also acknowledges the fans of like, 'Hey, thank you.' Pass the torch, stomp Trevor's head in, and sort of put an end to that and allow a new generation to take over."

GTA 6 is set in Vice City, which is that world's version of Miami. If we assume the US in-game is geographically similar to the real-life one, then that would mean Trevor is very far from his home in Los Santos. But if there's anywhere I'd expect Trevor to end up after GTA 5, it's Florida. Maybe it'll contain some of San Andreas' backwater bliss.

If he is alive in GTA 6, it would mean that two of GTA 5's possible three endings are the cannon ones: either killing Michael or teaming up against the FIB and Merryweather. I suppose Rockstar could make the ending where Trevor is killed cannon and find some way to explain how he actually survived, but it seems like the Deathwish ending would be the one it wants to be the most true, as that leaves everyone alive and well. Well, the protagonists, anyway.

Do you think we'll see any familiar faces when GTA 6 comes out later this year?

While you wait, check out our ranking of the best GTA games. My favorite is San Andreas.

Last week, the YouTube channel that was sharing videos about Vice City: Nextgen Edition was taken down by Take-Two and the modders released the mod as a free standalone download in retaliation. They're based in Russia, so it seems like it will be difficult for Rockstar to do anything about the mod itself.

This comes shortly after the company also shut down a mod that aimed to port GTA 4 into GTA 5, named The Liberty City preservation project. Ex-Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij tweets: "Take2/R* are a commercial company. They will take down mods that interfere with their business interests [...] The Liberty City preservation project  would interfere with a possible GTA 4 remaster. (No idea whether they’re working on that. I think they should)."

I agree. I've been wanting to return to GTA 4 for some time now, but the thought of having to reconnect my PS3 and its tiny controllers or get a terrible PC port annoys me. I also don't know if I trust Rockstar to make a decent remake. Just look at how bad the Definitive Edition was for GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. 

One person replies: "What irritates me and I believe irritates other players is that this fan mod is literally what we wanted in the GTA trilogy, man, it's impressive, it's bizarre to think that no one at Rockstar thought of this, they preferred to release a simple remaster without updating."

Vermeij agrees, adding, "It would be better if R* did quality remasters of their classic games." It's a shame Rockstar takes this approach, because companies like Bethesda seem more than happy to let people get on with modding games, even if some developers find the practice bittersweet.

In the meantime, check out our ranking of the best GTA games. My favorite will always be San Andreas.

The official Gears of War social media feeds have been napping ever since a few scant reveals and rumors last year; People Can Fly shared today's news in a blog post of its own. "We are honored to return to the world of Gears of War, a franchise deeply embedded in our studio’s history," the studio says. "As lead developer of the iconic Gears of War: Judgment and co-development partner on Gears of War 1-3, we have always been passionate about the series and its legacy."

Mike Crump, studio head at Gears dev The Coalition, says the team is "pleased to be partnering with the talented folks at People Can Fly who have been a part of our franchise’s legacy for so long."

"Our team at People Can Fly, made up of dedicated Gears of War fans, is pouring everything we have into creating an experience that will exceed expectations," adds People Can Fly development director Guillaume Barry. "While we can’t share more just yet, we’re eager for the day when we can show all the exciting things we’ve been working on."

People Can Fly's history is a fascinating mix of solid-to-great games and easy-to-forget contributions. Gears is obviously in its DNA, but did you remember that the studio also contributed to Fortnite: Save the World back when it was still Epic Games Poland before it rebranded back to its original name and logo? And let's not forget the many editions of Bulletstorm, arguably the studio's most recognizable game, at least to people who tragically haven't played Painkiller. Outriders, meanwhile, played and reviewed well enough, and it actually "surprised" publisher Square Enix, but it feels as though it was swept away by a tide of similarly looty shooters.

All of this is to say that People Can Fly has been at this for over 20 years, and the studio is already fluent in Gears of War, so E-Day tapping them in once again is simultaneously intriguing and unsurprising, like a relative you haven't seen for a decade turning up at Christmas dinner.

Fully committing to prequel authenticity, The Coalition confirmed last year that the original Marcus and Dom actors are "so back" for the prequel Gears of War: E-Day.

Born out of a pandemic, refined through reflection: Gears of War: E-Day is a chance for The Coalition to recapture the spirit of Gears and "tear a lot of s*** up."

Twinsies

In our hands-on Assassin's Creed Shadows preview, our Games Editor describes the upcoming Ubisoft game as "stealthier and bloodier than ever." The latter is courtesy of the violent, often barbaric nature of Feudal Japanese warfare, which is manifested in Yasuke's combat style as a merciless samurai. Not only does it make more sense for Yasuke to fight differently from Naoe considering this distinction, but a lot of what I'm hearing about his gameplay is oddly reminiscent of a certain loudmouth Brit.

2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate is my favorite of all the best Assassin's Creed games, and a large part of that is down to its series-first twin dynamic. Jacob and Evie Frye are both assassins in the Victorian London action epic, but their respective skill trees speak to how differently each character plays. Slight and agile Evie is the stealth master, her highest level ability "chameleon" being a character-specific skill that allows her to turn almost invisible in the blink of an eye. Conversely, Jacob's skills pertain to a stronger display of force. Jacob can still be stealthy if you play your cards right, but as it comes so much easier to his sister, you can safely swap between twins (most of the time) to plan your approach according to your preferred playstyle. In the Jack the Ripper DLC, a fear mechanic gets added to the mix. Brutal Takedowns replace simple assassinations, horrifying on-lookers with violent displays of murder that send them scattering. It's not too dissimilar, then, to the sound of Yasuke's own "Brutal Assassinations" in AC Shadows that have you "yell to attract attention just before the kill."

With Syndicate also developed by Ubisoft Quebec, it's clear that Shadows is a logical evolution of this twin dynamic as well as that of combat extremes. Much like Jacob, Yasuke can attempt to be stealthy if he so wishes, but each duo is supposed to offer oppositional experiences. The only difference is that Assassin's Creed Shadows simply calls a spade a spade, removing the gray area between stealth and action as offered in Syndicate. By stripping Yasuke of the assassin shackles altogether, Ubisoft is finally answering a question it's had on its lips since 2015: what would two refined, evolved combat fantasies look like in one Assassin's Creed game? And what if there was nothing stealthy about one of them?

You've been here before

Syndicate isn't the only AC game that's tried to broaden our combat horizons. Ubisoft has been seeding the concept of a non-assassin Assassin's Creed hero for years now, permitting greater flexibility and choice with each new game.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla's largely inconsequential choice between a male or female Eivor is down to nothing but player preference, but broad-shouldered male Eivor could be considered far more awkward when it comes to stealth than his lithe female counterpart – though given how broken stealth was at launch, I still think Valhalla feels best when played as a brash Viking RPG instead. Meanwhile, biological advantage has nothing to do with combat diversity in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Both Alexios and Kassandra have access to three skill trees – Hunter, Warrior, or Assassin – to let the player decide how heavily to invest in each playstyle.

I'm comforted in knowing I won't have to make that agonizing judgement call in Assassin's Creed Shadows. At the same time, I'm prepared to be much more careful with Naoe than I am with my current Kassandra, who can easily waste a whole Spartan stronghold as a one-woman armored stealth-tank. Shadows looks set to not only demand we think smarter not harder about our combat approach, but consider each character's strengths and weaknesses from a role playing perspective. In my mind, that only makes a non-assassin protagonist the perfect next step as Ubisoft experiments with the series' RPG future – although if all goes well, you'll hear my impassioned Syndicate 2 demands from outer space.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is one of our 50 most wanted games of 2025, and there's more where it came from.

You play as Brynn, an enthusiastic young Weaver (basically, a spellcaster). Unfortunately, Brynn lives in one of those surprisingly common fantasy universes where everyone hates magic users. There's been a major magical calamity called the Surge – the first of many proper nouns in the plot – that's basically gotten every magic user cancelled. After a brief prologue, Brynn and a caravan of equally chipper companions end up inside the area where the Surge kicked off. Time to start researching what happened by seeking out monsters to kill, resources to plunder, lore to skim through, etc. There's a world to explore and big enemies to fell, Yellow Brick Games taking more than a few notes from Monster Hunter World and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – though that's no bad thing.

Casting a spell

It's a colorful but somewhat overfamiliar fantasy world that feels very Fortnite, with its cartoony aesthetic and admirable amount of destructible structures. Combat is the usual hacky slashy affair with a sword and shield, with the option of using a bow for ranged action. So far, so basic. Far more interesting are the spells that Brynn has in her back pocket. You start off with one that can grab and hurl objects and enemies, much like the game-changing Half Life 2 gravity gun. Somehow even better is Ice Wall, which lets you fire torrents of the frozen stuff that can provide protective barriers, as well as locking enemies in place.

Not every spell you gain is spectacular, but there's some seriously inventive and joyous magic to be found if you poke around. I'm particularly fond of the little fiery companion you can summon to distract and fight enemies. I'll even forgive his annoying habit of exploding when he dies, often with me in the blast radius. I adore Kinetic Blast, a circle of kinetic energy that you can make nice and big on the battlefield, then trigger whenever you wish to send foes – and yourself – flying. It's great for removing shields or just smugly ejector-seating monsters towards bottomless pits.

New spells unlock at a decent clip and there's plenty here to keep combat consistently enjoyable and varied. I like that your fire and ice spells are deadly to yourself if used carelessly too, forcing you to think rather than just hold down the 'burn everything' button. Even the duller swordplay gets better once you find blueprints for more interesting weaponry out in the field. Collect enough resources and you'll be able to craft a two-handed weapon that shoots waves of ice, or a brilliant sword and shield combo that also messes with gravity to make enemies spin around helplessly in your orbit. There's plenty of rubbish blueprints too, naturally, but more than enough good finds to incentivize exploration, each new pickup making you think about the possibilities.

That exploration uses a climbing system that's been pilfered from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Basically any vertical surface can be climbed, so long as you keep an eye on your stamina meter. Eternal Strands is a much less strict parent than Zelda, too, with more generous stamina and few qualms about letting you scurry across ceilings Spider-Man style. It's a little jankier than Nintendo's masterpiece, but reliable enough to be forgivable.

Less so is the world you explore with it. There's a reason Nintendo filled Hyrule with loads of Koroks to find and secrets to uncover. Scaling Eternal Strands' tallest trees and highest peaks is often rewarded with… nothing at all. It feels like a missed opportunity, given the climbing you're capable of and how central finding new weapon and armor blueprints is to the game's core loop. Making falling into a bottomless chasm an instant game over, punished with losing a lot of your gathered resources, also seems a little overly harsh for a game that otherwise clearly wants to encourage exploration. Especially annoying when so many enemy attacks throw you into the skies. Fatal plummets are common.

Big Bads

The clear highlight of the game is far and away the fights with the Great Foes. Gigantic monsters that stalk each area, often brilliantly introduced with a brief cutscene that shows off their sheer scale and power. I'm delighted to report they meet the hype. Many can take off most of your health with one foot stomp and are more than happy to prove it. You have to clamber up them and pick away at their health bar with your pathetic sword strikes (or your much mightier magic, naturally), all while keeping a watchful eye for counterattacks.

Often they'll try and shake you off, but you don't have to worry about that. Because the game helpfully shouts "hold triangle to cling" at you about a month in advance. It's irritating that they didn't just let the monsters' impeccable animations do the talking. Luckily, it's the overly helpful exception, and the rest of these encounters do rely on you paying careful attention. To your stamina, to the temporary weak point you're currently exploiting, and to that massive monster hand that is about to grab you. There's great tension here because you're only ever a few stupid mistakes from downing all your health potions and having to flee to get more while the Great Foe happily chases you across the level. Each one you take out rewards you with a new spell too, more than enough encouragement to run head-on into the game's toughest encounters.

Is it a significant leap from Shadow of the Colossus, the 20-year old PlayStation 2 game it's cribbing from? Well, Colossus' fights were more about puzzling how to reach a colossi's weak point, whereas the more generous anything-can-be-climbed mechanic here makes it a far simpler case here of just scampering to the glowy weak bits, then going ham with your swords and spells. In its defense, Eternal Strands is going for a very different vibe. A fun swashbuckling spell-shooting adventure, compared to Shadow of the Colossus' introspective and bleak misery.

Shadow of the Colossus also never demanded I repeat Colossi battles, although Eternal Strands does make this feel somewhat fresh. To upgrade your spells, you'll need to extract a Great Foes' essence. Essentially, that means meeting a set amount of criteria that'll open a weak point. These criteria remain a mystery until you find a certain amount of lore in the world, upon which the game just tells you exactly what you need to do. It feels like a missed opportunity for more inspired sleuthing.

Still, having an extra set or rules in your head does reinvigorate these fights. I loved having to slowly take out several specific points on a Great Foe made of fire, all while my potion of fire resistance was far-too-quickly wearing off and said monster's patience with me was wearing equally thin. When you get the spell that lets you create tunnels of kinetic energy, and can start literally throwing yourself at the Great Foes, it's easy to forgive a lot of other flaws.

Which is for the best, as dynamic play is where Eternal Strands shines. That's certainly not the case for its story, a serviceable if inelegant cliché-ridden fare that just about gets the job done. Endless visual novel-style conversations with bland characters break up the fun monster hunting so often you'll long for Shadow of the Colossus' borderline wordless storytelling. I'm not knocking it for using a lower-budget solution to not having many 'proper' cutscenes, but the pace slows to a crawl when the cast really starts to monologue. It feels like it's overcompensating, too, as Brynn's fantasy-codec that allows characters to waffle during the action feels like more than enough on its own.

This becomes more of a problem as you near the 20-hour mark, where the 'Eternal' part of the game's title starts to feel like a threat. There's just too much backtracking between dull companions for more story beats. Too many fetch quests. Too many repeat visits to long-plundered locations, which inevitably run out of new monsters or fresh spells to excite you.

If you manage to connect with the game's characters, its fantasy technobabble, and its cringeworthy constant-praising of your abilities as the protagonist, there's plenty packed in. But I couldn't shake the sense that a tighter experience would better play to Eternal Strands' strengths – instead, it ultimately feels diluted, and you spend a lot of time waiting to get back to the action.

I respect the ambition of trying to take the best of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Shadow of the Colossus, even if too many bad ideas counter its good ones. Once you've got some decent spells and have started a scrap with a Great Foe, Eternal Strands can be a real thrill ride. But getting to those moments can feel like a bit of a chore. There's potential in the premise, and some real highs (especially when launched into the air), but it's the kind of game that makes you yearn to see what a sequel could accomplish by iterating on what worked – perhaps then we'll be in for something truly magic.

Craving further thrills? Our best action games list is for you!

Last week, the YouTube channel that was sharing videos about Vice City: Nextgen Edition was taken down. This is a mod project that aims to port GTA: Vice City into the engine of GTA 4.

While the YouTube channel is gone, the mod itself remains available, as the modders are based in Russia where Rockstar doesn't have an easy legal route to stop them.

Ex-Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij says: "Take2/R* are a commercial company. They will take down mods that interfere with their business interests. The VC NextGen Edition mod for GTA 4 directly competes with the Definitive Edition."

Vermeij used to run a blog about his time at the company before he was told it was upsetting some of the company's devs and stopped posting on it, so he's all too familiar with how protective Take-Two is of its IP.

He continues: "The Liberty City preservation project (GTA 4 in GTA 5 engine) would interfere with a possible GTA 4 remaster. (No idea whether they're working on that. I think they should). There's no point getting angry about it. This is what companies are supposed to do."

"The best we can hope for is that they allow mods that don't interfere with their business. Such as DCA3 (GTA 3 for Dreamcast). Afaik they have recently been decent about letting these projects continue."

The Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition package of remasters was not well-received when it launched in 2021.

There were bugs in all three games (GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas), and Rockstar even apologized for the state of the game. Vermeij acknowledges this. Takedowns like this "would be easier to swallow if they produced competent re-masters," he tweets.

Ironically, it seems this move from Take-Two could actually lose it money. In a statement released in the description of a video on a new YouTube channel, the modders behind GTA: Vice City Nextgen Edition write:

"Initially, the modification was planned to require the original game in order to show respect to the publisher. However, over the past two days, we have completely rebuilt the project, and it is now available as a standalone 'installation-ready package'. Just download, install, and play."

"There are no issues with version compatibility since the mod is now fully autonomous. In light of the current uncertainties, we had to make this change to ensure the mod's stable performance for the widest possible audience."

We're not going to share a link to that video, because it contains a link to the mod and we don't want Rockstar's lawyers coming after us next.

Vermeij says Rockstar and Take-Two are just doing "what companies are supposed to do."

But while Nintendo is also very protective of its IP, Bethesda seems to let almost any mod project go on. People are trying to port all of Tamriel into the Morrowind engine and Bethesda hasn't put a stop to that... not yet, at any rate.

In the meantime, some players seem to be loving what the Nextgen Edition is offering.

Over on Twitter one account writes: "It's an incredible fan project that carries Vice City over into the RAGE engine and it's genuinely amazing how well this thing plays."

Another writes: "GTA Vice City Next Gen Edition is pretty crazy. Seeing GTAVC run in real-time on top of the GTA 4 engine with all its cars, NPCs and even missions included is what The Definitive Edition should have been. Modders truly are incredible."

It remains to be seen what, if anything, will change here – particularly as Rockstar continues charging forward towards GTA 6, which is still set for release in Fall 2025.

Still, either way, it's likely that we'll see more intervention from developers into the modding scene as publishers work to protect their assets in a somewhat volatile marketplace.

While you're here, check out our ranking of the best GTA games. I'm starting to get a new appreciation for GTA 4, but San Andreas will always be my favorite.

It's occupied France, 1944. The look and feel of the game will be immediately familiar to series fans but, this time, you're not playing as Karl Fairburne. This time, former supporting character Harry Hawker takes the spotlight. Or perhaps I should say 'arry 'awker, as his cockney accent is thick enough to style your hair with. Indeed, there's enough ham and cheese in the dialogue and delivery to give texture to an otherwise straightforward story, which serves as an ample backdrop to the hugely enjoyable act of blowing fascists away.

The first mission, the shortest and simplest of the nine (with the exception of the last, which is essentially an epilogue), is a great introduction to what to expect. One of the first things you see is a bridge in the distance, and wouldn't you know it; there are Nazis wandering around up there, and you have a sniper rifle. You don't have to try to take them out from such a great distance, but come on, you're at least going to try. I certainly did.

Even if you're not familiar with the series, Sniper Elite: Resistance speaks a language that you're bound to understand. Long-distance sniping requires compensating for bullet drop and wind direction, crouching makes your footsteps quieter, tall grass hides you even though the top of your head is usually poking out, that kind of thing. Sniper may be in the title, but this isn't Camping Simulator, and you'll likely find yourself pulling out a pistol or SMG in a tight spot. Going back to that first mission, you're quickly introduced to the idea of Climbing Up Things on your way to the bridge. This becomes more important in later city levels, where clambering up a wall might offer a shortcut or access to some hidden kit.

Snipe for the picking

Each map has its objectives, both primary and secondary, spread across great distances. It's in your best interests therefore to stay hidden as much as possible, which is where climbing up to sneak through buildings and across rooftops comes in handy. It's disappointing that your opportunities to climb in this way are very limited, but to be honest, in many situations you'd just end up getting spotted if you hadn't already taken out nearby enemies anyway. A little more frustrating is the fact that some waist-high walls and fences can't be hopped over. Most can, but a small number can't, and you won't know which they are until you bash 'arry's knees against them while futilely hammering the mantle button.

Nonetheless, there's a lot to love about the core experience. There's a strong Hitman 3 vibe despite the lack of a disguise ability. In addition to the aforementioned stealth elements, enemies can also be lured and distracted, and you can even hide bodies. A few other familiar elements are present, but flipped in ways that will render tactics you might use in other stealth adventures ineffective.

If you enter combat, you're spotted, and/or an alarm is triggered, enemies will – as you'd expect – hunt for you if you manage to get out of sight. You just find somewhere to bravely hide until they call off the search, right? Well, you can do that here, and the 'investigation' will eventually end, but with a few caveats. Enemies will now be bolder and tend to move more erratically than you might be used to. That makes the risk of getting found higher. Also, once the all-clear is given, enemies don't usually wander off back to their previous posts like good little boys. If you attract attention and don't manage to clear soldiers out, you've now created an area that's much more dangerous. Perhaps you took out that guard after he spotted you, but now, there are six enemies where there was previously just one.

Silencers (usually only found on looted or hidden weapons with limited ammo) are present, and often a good idea to use. They reduce the sound of gunshots rather than eliminating it altogether, however, meaning you need to be sure there's nobody close enough to hear when you use them. Using an unsilenced rifle to take out an enemy sniper isn't a guaranteed way of getting caught, but you'll want to make sure you're far enough away, and not in line of sight of the keen-eyed enemies. The open world nature of the maps encourages you to think about where to go and how to get there, and ensures multiple playthroughs differ from one another.

Stealthy diet

I finished the campaign in a little under 10 hours on medium difficulty, but that was just the beginning of my time with Resistance. When I started over, kicking things up all the way to Authentic, it was the same game but a very different experience. No health or ammo on the HUD, no ability to tag enemies, no multiple zoom levels on the binoculars I rely on to carefully scope out the environment, and of course poor old 'arry was now much more fragile.

I found myself creeping forward more slowly; being less likely to pull out my loud but effective MP40 for short-range kills; picking my fights more carefully than ever, rather than indiscriminately scattering corpses across the ground like a child spilling a box of fascist lego. With the guardrails off, missions took at least twice as long, but I enjoyed every minute. Scoring a long-distance kill without the benefit of time slowing or a guide to where the bullet would land while using Empty Lung is immensely satisfying.

It's worth pointing out that although there are a handful of pre-baked and very well balanced difficulties, you can tweak the experience to your liking to a wonderful degree for a custom experience if you prefer. You can make sniping easier or harder, enemies more or less alert, and so on. You can also adjust the frequency of the signature X-ray cam (now activated for short-range and melee kills as well as sniping), or turn it off completely if you'd rather live completely in the moment.

New to the series here are the Propaganda challenges. Seven of the maps have a Resistance poster hidden somewhere, and should you manage to find and collect it, you'll unlock the associated challenge in its own little chunk of the map. The stealth challenges are particularly interesting. Instead of playing as Mr 'awker, you're a member of the Resistance armed with little more than a beret and a silenced pistol. You have 20 enemies and a time limit, with ghost kills (completely unnoticed, for the uninitiated) extending the timer, and high-value targets boosting your score multiplier. Time doesn't start until you get your first kill, meaning you have as much time as you like to explore and plan. The best scores are only achievable with a perfect combination of speed and stealth; it's a mode that seems ideal for co-op but, unlike the campaign, that's not an option.

The servers were pretty quiet prior to release, so I wasn't able to test the traditional PvP multiplayer modes or try out Survival alongside somebody else (playing solo, I found it a little frustrating, and the constant onslaught of alert enemies antithetical to the rest of the game). However, I was able to put some time into the returning Invasion mode, and this is where I see most of my time in Resistance being spent after release.

Fried reich

The premise is simple: invade a player's campaign, hunt them down, and kill them (allowing invasions is optional). Stealth suddenly becomes much more important for the defending player, as if they trigger an alarm, the invader will immediately have an idea of where they are. On top of that, if the defender is spotted by a soldier that's been tagged by the invader, their precise position at that moment will be identified.

'Invasion phones' are scattered across the map and, every few minutes, can be used by either player to mark the location of the other at the time. This avoids you wandering around for hours having no idea where one another are, but invasions can still be tense affairs for both players. That said, invaders who have played through the campaign themselves have something of an advantage. A knowledge of where the objectives are relative to your starting position usually gives you a good idea of where to start or where to lay traps.

You may be imagining long-range sniper battles, and I had one of those, but a game is much more likely to end at close range with an SMG or humiliating melee kill. Sometimes this will be preceded by a sneaky mine trap (which I've been on both ends of), a hail of bullets ending your attempt to self-revive. My finest moment so far is the long-range headshot I scored on a player who was in the process of leaping through a window, a detailed description of which is now at the top of my CV.

I'll still be going back to the campaign. There are collectibles I haven't found, insertion points I haven't unlocked, and still a few Nazis I haven't found to kill. It's not exactly a huge leap away from the last entry (in our Sniper Elite 5 review we called it "brilliant and brutal"), but what Resistance does, it does brilliantly. Should you feel the urge to wipe the world clean of fascists, and to do so with style, this is worth pulling the trigger on.

Want to continue being silent but deadly? We've got a list of the best stealth games with your name on it, as long as you keep quiet.

At the time of writing, the stealth 'em up is rated CERO Z, which means you have to be over the age of 18 to play it. However, there remains work to do.

In a post on Twitter (thanks, Automaton), Ubisoft says it's been forced to tone down the gore as depictions of severed heads and limbs have proved an issue. As such, while you'll have the choice of toggling dismemberment on and off internationally, the choice will be removed in Japan. Depictions of cut body surfaces are also going to be altered.

Automaton also notes that Ubisoft mentions modifications to voiced lines when compared to its overseas counterparts, though the developer doesn't get into specifics, which has apparently left some fans somewhat confused.

It's not the first time Japan's video game rating system has made headlines. Just last year, Stellar Blade's "uncensored" Japan release sparked some annoyance from an EA executive as Dead Space was refused a CERO rating unless it altered its gore.

It's not the first time Ubisoft has faced altering Assassin's Creed Shadows, either. The developer apologized last year for using an unauthorized flag design in Assassin's Creed Shadows concept art and has made several statements over ensuring the game remains as faithful as possible.

Regardless, we don't have too long to wait and see how Assassin's Creed Shadows fares. While the history-soaked RPG has been delayed a few times, we look set to finally get it on March 20.

Assassin's Creed Shadows devs want you to know that Yasuke isn't an assassin, and that means he's not getting any of those classic assassin abilities.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois confirmed that "Yasuke is not an assassin, because the narrative makes sense that he is not." Elsewhere, Lemay-Comtois said that a big part of Yasuke's importance in the plot of Assassin's Creed Shadows stems from his existence as an outsider, someone who can find his way into a distinctly Japanese story without having to wholly understand Japanese culture.

Lemay-Comtois didn't reveal any story details, so we don't know exactly what will happen to Yasuke by the end of the story, but he's clear that "he works with [fellow protagonist] Naoe, but he's not an assassin, and he doesn't have to be." That means that he's not likely to have access to the kind of combat and stealth tools that Naoe does - the split design forced Ubisoft to "always embrace" the reality that these two characters are completely different. 

Embracing that means the team could never go say "'what if Yasuke has Eagle Vision? It would be easier'." "No," explains Lemay-Comtois, "he needs to not have it so you play different with him than you play with Naoe."

While it goes against Assassin's Creed tradition, this tangential relationship with the Assassins is far from unheard of. Haytham Kenway, a major character through Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and Rogue, is not an assassin, and Lemay-Comtois points to Barnabas, the ship captain from Assassin's Creed Odyssey as another character who plays a central role but is never actually an assassin. Yasuke is "much more involved in the story" of Shadows than Barnabas was in Odyssey, "but he doesn't have to be an assassin, he has his own motivation and core beliefs that align with Naoe's, and off they go."

Be sure to check out our Assassin's Creed Shadows big preview hub for more details about the game from our hands-on preview.

For the uninitiated, Ghost of Tsushima was a third-person stealth-action adventure from Sucker Punch. Set in 13th century Japan, it was the samurai open world game we'd always wanted, and a terrific victory lap in PS4's final major year. The swordplay was particularly inspired, starting out relatively simple and then steadily introducing new powers and stances until you felt like a true legendary samurai, even if you were playing it hungover after a sake binge (er, hypothetically). If you have PlayStation Plus, the excellent PS5 upgraded version is well worth your time.

Blade stunner

Sucker Punch visited Japan several times for research, and apparently these trips left the studio so enamored with a whole different part of the country – inspiring the sequel's change of setting. This time it's set around the mighty Mount Yōtei in Northern Japan.

No complaints here, because what we've seen so far is, unsurprisingly, absurdly good-looking. Golden fields, lush greenery, snow that looks so real it's hard not to shiver just looking at it… It's a game that'll make you seriously consider remortgaging the house in order to afford a PS5 Pro. We're excited to see how it feels in our hands too, as the PS5 upgrade of the first game made great use of the DualSense's lovely rumble tech. We'd love another PS5 exclusive to showcase what that marvelous controller can do again so soon after Astro Bot reminded us that it remains one of the console's most exciting (and criminally underused) features.

According to Andrew Goldfarb, senior communications manager at Sucker Punch, we can expect "sprawling grasslands, snowy tundras, and unexpected dangers". One of the best features of the original game was how alive and dangerous it felt to explore. It's nice to see a studio remembering that an open world shouldn't just be an annoying long commute between the fun bits.

New protagonist Atsu possesses a skull mask that is the terrifying assassin accessory to beat in 2025. More outstanding swordplay is a given, but Atsu will also be able to use firearms. The conflict between fighting with honor and being more sneaky with your kills (and, therefore, actually surviving) drove a lot of the first game's story. I'll be interested to see if Atsu is similarly conflicted about resorting to gunplay. Us? Our trigger fingers have never been itchier, especially if you can now swiftly take out those bloody archers that made our lives so miserable in Ghost of Tsushima.

New toys

Gunplay's confirmed, but could the way we interact with animals also be getting an overhaul? Towards the end of the reveal trailer, Atsu stares down a wolf that changes its mind about attacking her. True, she is dual-wielding some nasty looking blades that would intimidate anyone, but what if we can now tame animals and get them to do our violent bidding? Sucker Punch have promised more varied activities this time, addressing a common complaint of the first game, so we wouldn't rule it out.

The big question is what the studio has planned for the swordplay. Ghost of Tsushima possessed an excellent combat system, full of unlockable stances and attacks that made it more rewarding the more you played. But in the years since, it's FromSoftware's Sekiro, with its parry-or-perish fights, that's proven more influential (like in last year's outstanding Nine Sols). We've also had the underrated gem Rise of the Ronin from Team Ninja, Like a Dragon: Ishin from Ryu Ga Gotuko Studio, and soon we're getting – after a delay pushed it out of 2024 – Assassin's Creed Shadows, a samurai epic also set in 16th century Japan. Basically, Ghost of Yotei is launching with a lot more competition than Ghost of Tsushima did. It'll be interesting to see if Sucker Punch deem a similar-but-evolved combat system enough to still compete, or if they have a more radical overhaul in mind.

But if any studio has earned the benefit of the doubt, it's this one, and we'll never say no to more satisfying samurai swordplay. It's PS5's most beautiful game, an adventure the studio tantalizingly describes as an 'underdog vengeance' story. If you're not excited for that, then maybe it's time to trade-in your PS5 and get into theater or something.

This is just one of the 50 most anticipated games for 2025 we can't stop thinking about.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Jonathon Dumont explained why Assassin's Creed Shadows characters Yasuke and Naoe have such different ability sets, pointing to Assassin's Creed Syndicate for his answer. That game, also developer by Shadows main studio Ubisoft Quebec, was the first to feature the dual-character archetype that appears in this new game.

"In Syndicate," Dumont explains, "what we set up is to have banter between different types of assassins. The two twins are bickering at each other and it's a cool vibe. They were a little different but not that much in playstyle." When it comes to Shadows, however, the duality of its characters "was driven at first not necessarily by the story, but a little bit more the gameplay."

In making an Assassin's Creed game set in Japan, Dumont reveals that it was the need for specific character archetypes that helped create Yasuke and Naoe - "we wanted a shinobi archetype, a ninja," he says, but it was also clear that the game would need a samurai archetype.

"But marrying the two on top of each other sort of diluted both fantasies," he says. "So we tried to make it their own. We really wanted to have the ninja fantasy - you climb everywhere, you have gadgets, you throw kunai, and then you stay in the dark, you're really spry, you have a grappling hook. But once you get in combat, you can get overwhelmed." As a samurai, clearly Yasuke has very few of those tools at his disposal, but instead, Dumont describes his playstyle as "the opposite" of Naoe's - "Samurai kicks the front door in, is a super-warrior."

But the need for those two different types of characters doesn't just stem from Syndicate. Dumont explains that it's also linked to the overall brand, and how it shifted with Assassin's Creed Origins. "Earlier on, it was much more of a parkour and assassination and stealth-driven game, and then with Origins, we had a lot more combat." That was also the case in Valhalla, and it means that now, "we have fans of both." That means, hopefully, "have fans that will all like what's done in Shadows," because fans of the Period 1 games - from the original game to Syndicate - and Period 2 - from Origins onwards - should all find a playstyle they like in Yasuke or Naoe.

You can find out more about those playstyles in our big Assassin's Creed Shadows preview.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Shadows' associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois explains the unique challenge that came with the Japanese setting. First and foremost, he says that the team is "really good at taking a place that has not been put in a game and then putting it in a game" – something which doesn't apply to Japan, which has been "showcased in many, many, many medias" and "has its own culture of video game development" to boot.

"So we had to be very careful to handle it with care, to do our research, to due diligence, to double check with Japanese experts on astounding amounts of details," he explains, giving the example of the protagonists taking off their shoes when they enter their hideout. 

"Japan has been, I would say, very, very tricky, and we want to be respectful about everything Japan. [...] We want to avoid telling a culture about their own culture," he continues. "That's one of the reasons as well why we have Yasuke as an outsider in the game. His perspective allows us to be a little more, I would say, free in terms of what Yasuke can do or say, as he's not from Japan and he doesn't know exactly everything. We were careful and attentive to feedback, and still, it's been a pretty constructive journey learning about Japan on the way."

In a separate interview, creative director Jonathan Dumont tells us that Ubisoft had to "be careful that we're not making a Japanese game. We're making an Assassin's Creed game set in Japan." This comes alongside the "pressure that we put on ourselves anyway," as the devs "want to make a good game set in Japan," and "our fans want it," too. 

As for the game's overall quality, he says that the "delay has allowed us actually to fine-tune and perfect and debug further down so that we can deliver that experience." With that in mind, hopefully it'll be worth the wait when it launches on March 20.

Be sure to check out our Assassin's Creed Shadows big preview hub for more details about the game from our hands-on preview.

Alongside female warrior Naoe, Black samurai Yasuke is one of the two main stars of Assassin's Creed Shadows, but since his reveal, some have shared disparaging comments online questioning his inclusion, the historical accuracy of his identity, and debating over whether he was a real samurai in the first place. Spoiler alert, he was – he served under Oda Nobunaga – and series executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté previously spoke out against "attacks driven by intolerance" while pointing out that "Yasuke's presence in Japanese history is fact."

Now, speaking to Rolling Stone, associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois touches on the discourse, acknowledging that "there's been some noise online about what this game is and why it's such and such," but the key point is that "we know what we're making." He continues: "We know why Yasuke is in the game, we know how he fits, we know how he builds towards the story, we know how critical he is. We know how Naoe is important. It's not Naoe's game, it's not Yasuke's game, it's both of these characters' games."

Furthermore, Lemay-Comtois says that players "can make their own minds up about what it is that Ubisoft Quebec set out to do" once they actually experience the game for themselves. The associate game director seems pretty confident, too, noting: "I think we're going to surprise damn near everyone who puts their hands on it."

In GamesRadar+'s Assassin's Creed Shadows hands-on preview, games editor Oscar Taylor-Kent says he "left more excited for the future of Assassin's Creed than I have been in years," calling the two protagonists "instant favorites, easy to love within moments of meeting them for the first time." Needless to say, things are looking promising for its release on March 20. 

Be sure to check out our Assassin's Creed Shadows big preview hub for even more impressions and info about Ubisoft's next game. 

We first spotted Grand Taking Ages back in early December before it had been pulled from the PlayStation Store and before the developer reworked it. The game was previously called Grand Taking Ages 6 in an even more blatant dig at GTA 6, and it was billed as the "most anticipated game about making the most anticipated game." At the time, the dev said the game was a "satirical take on game development and the endless wait for certain highly anticipated titles."

To be clear, the game was and is more of a parody of game development itself and not GTA the game, tasking you with running a game studio "while juggling angry fans, corporate chaos, and endless delays." Really, if it weren't for the flagrant digs at GTA, I'd imagine it wouldn't have run into any trouble.

Alas, the game sported what appeared to be AI-generated art specifically meant to mirror the look of GTA games and marketing materials, and thus Sony removed Grand Taking Ages from the PlayStation Store pretty quickly. However, now it's popped back up on Steam with the same July 2025 release window, although with some key changes.

Talking to IGN, developer Violarte said the changes were meant "to clearly differentiate Grand Taking Ages from the original inspiration, GTA 6, and to emphasize its unique direction." Namely, the 6 in the title was removed and the game's logos, descriptions, and overall look were modified to further distinguish it from GTA 6.

Apparently, that was enough to get Valve's approval to launch the game on Steam after a "thorough" review, according to Violarte.

Looking at the game's Steam page, it does seem like the most egregious references to GTA 6 have been removed, like the part in the old PlayStation description that read, "unlike some other devs, we actually mean" the release date. It's still a management sim about running a game studio, and there's definitely still a satirical tone throughout with references to "the ancient art of bug relabeling as features" and mastering "the 'it's not a delay, it's additional polish' technique," but it's a lot less slanted toward GTA 6 specifically.

It's also worth noting that Grand Taking Ages still reeks of AI, and critically the Steam disclaimer specifically says "AI services used for voice overs." This sadly isn't terribly uncommon these days, and certainly isn't limited to Valve's platform, but it is worth noting.

"We genuinely believe that, with the recent updates, Grand Taking Ages is now ready to be relisted on the PlayStation Store," Violarte said to IGN, adding that it had sent out a request to Sony pointing out the changes made. "We strongly believe that there will be no issues with Sony this time, given the adjustments we've implemented."

GTA 6 is due out in Fall 2025, just a few months after Grand Taking Ages' release date.

There has perhaps never been a more salient time to point you to our list of games like GTA we recommend playing.

That's the buzz around the bright-eyed GTA YouTuber community. The modders themselves, who go by Revolution Team, haven't updated their Telegram. The Team's last post in English reiterates Vice City Nextgen Edition's January 25 release date with a YouTube trailer that collected over 100,000 views before getting smited.

Since Revolution Team is based in Russia, it's possible that it will be protected by a 2022 government decree shielding Russian companies from copyright strikes issued by "unfriendly" countries like the US. But even over on Russian social media site VK, worried GTA fans seem unsure if Revolution Team's Vice City mod will survive Take-Two's tendency to sue.

"What now? I heard you're under sanction…" one VK user says, according to my translation.

"Trump signed it today!" another user responds with a laughing-crying emoji.

Seriously though, Take-Two seems to have been feeling particularly ornery this month, having already reached a "friendly" mutual agreement with GTA 5 modders who, to rapturous success, ported Liberty City into the game. But with GTA 6 trapped in a vague, fall release window, can you blame fans for trying to entertain themselves in the meantime?

That's partly why the sentiment toward Revolution Team's Vice City Nextgen Edition around the globe is so protective. "I will download, make copies, and spread them so deep into the internet that, even if the internet were destroyed, this mod would still exist," one fan writes on Twitter. Now that's dedication.

Rockstar literally just took down a Liberty City GTA 5 mod, but that's not stopping these modders porting Vice City into GTA 4 – and they might just get away with it.

On top of a release date, today's Xbox Developer Direct reveal also gave us a closer look at our heroine's textile-themed abilities and the delightfully named bosses on the receiving end of those powers.

Hazel, new to her Weaver powers, can spin up objects to interact with the environment or unravel enemies to cleanse the darkness infecting the land. Combat is a mix of melee combos, jump attacks, and charge attacks, with cooldowns limiting your thread moves instead of a stamina bar. There's a focus on pushing and pulling enemies to control fights, and the devs reckon "the combat system is fast and responsive."

That's all well and good, but I can tell you the GamesRadar+ chat was flush with excitement not for the combat, which looks quite good, but mostly for characters like Catfish, a big ol' catfish mentor, and some of the best-named bosses of the year.

When I think of giant animal bosses with silly names in an action game, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree's Golden Hippopotamus, which is – get this – a golden hippopotamus, immediately comes to mind. South of Midnight ups the ante with Two-Toed Tom the giant alligator and Huggin' Molly the whatever-the-hell-that-is. Let's not forget Rougarou, a bird monster who could pass for a wrestler with a really good costume.

The look and feel of South of Midnight has always been intriguing – having lived in Georgia my whole life, I can tell you from experience that southern goths shouldn't be underestimated – and its colorful bosses hammer it home. And packed into a game that, per an Xbox Wire post, "will take most players between 10-12 hours to complete"? Sign me up.

South of Midnight has been one of the lower-key Xbox games, but could end up being an ace up its sleeve for 2025.