Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker originally wasn't supposed to be a Mario spin-off – instead, it was meant to be a Legend of Zelda game. That fact was well publicized in the wake of Captain Toad's launch, but one more notable detail has emerged in a recently translated interview: the dev working on the concept was so distraught by Shigeru Miyamoto shooting down the Zelda concept that he burned the diorama he built by hand to sell the idea.

The basic gameplay format of Captain Toad started as a simple prototype at Nintendo. As in the final game, you'd slowly explore as a tiny character from a distant perspective, solving puzzles and finding collectables in a diorama-style environment. The concept was born within the Super Mario 3D World team, but the devs quickly realized that Mario himself was a poor fit for it.

"The thing we noticed was that if Mario could jump, the stages become pretty big, so we wondered whether it would be possible to make a game with a character who can't jump," according to 3D World director Koichi Hayashida. He was speaking in a 2015 interview with Nintendo Dream magazine, which has only recently been translated for a new Did You Know Gaming video.

So, 3D World level designer Shinya Hiratake "submitted an idea to Mr. Miyamoto, the father of both Super Mario and Zelda, to use Link as the character," Hayashida explained. To sell the idea, Hiratake spent painstaking hours in his off time to build a Zelda-themed diorama that he'd present to Miyamoto.

Miyamoto loved the diorama – but he thought it was an idea for a physical toy to be sold in stores. Once he realized the pitch was for a video game, Miyamoto shut down the idea. "If Hiratake had given a better presentation," Hayashida says, "there's a chance it would have been a different game with Zelda instead."

As for the diorama itself, Hiratake says, "I burned it. It was such a bad memory that I decided to let it die."

Eventually, the devs realized Captain Toad could be the protagonist for diorama-style levels as bonus stages within Super Mario 3D World, and they proved to be one of the best parts of that game. They even impressed Miyamoto, who suggested the devs spin off the concept into the standalone game Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker – which Hiratake co-directed. Hopefully that memory is a little nicer in hindsight.

Nintendo designed the DS and Wii to normalize "being a gamer" says Shigeru Miyamoto: "We don't say 'book readers and non-book readers.'"

In the run-up to GTA 6, we've been spending plenty of time revisiting the best GTA games. Just as important as each sprawling new city to explore is who you play as. Every protagonist is a criminal, but with their own motivations, style, and equipment, the results can be very different. But, which one resonates with you the most?

You might have your own answer in mind, but for scientific purposes we've created this personality quiz to properly determine the Grand Theft Auto protagonist you're the most like. Though, we can't be held responsible for the results. Whether you're bound to become the next '80s criminal mastermind like Tommy Vercetti, or are more grounded like Niko Bellic, who you align with can say a lot about you.

We've focused on the main games in this quiz, with proper protagonists that aren't completely interchangeable (though there is one nod to the true classics in here). Each protagonist , whether it's the trio from GTA 5, or from an earlier gaming generation, has been mapped to each response, so no answer is purely binary. Which means there's no wrong answers, either. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, but do do this quiz. If you're looking for more, we've got loads on our GamesRadar+ quiz collection page. Let us know who you get in the comments below!

Can't wait? Check out our games like GTA recommendations for what to play before GTA 6 comes out.

When Rubinite developer Cup Dog Games posted about the game's Steam launch on July 27, it had just crossed 1,000 user reviews averaging 91% positive. As of July 31, it's approaching 1,800 reviews that are 92% positive. I thought this game would be good when I played the demo last year, and it turns out it is really good.

"We're truly grateful to every single player for your support and encouragement," Cup Dog Games says. "Every review you leave and every recommendation you make fuels us to keep polishing and improving the game."

Rubinite is described on Steam as "an extremely challenging boss rush action game." I would compare it to Titan Souls (which is 90% off right now) – an isometric, arena-based gauntlet of boss fights with extremely tight core mechanics. The main difference is that Rubinite is a fair bit larger and more complex, not to mention melee-focused. Calling it indie Sekiro, as some people have, is a little reductive – and, given the focus on dodging over parrying, inaccurate – but it does give you a decent idea of the pacing.

You play as a young princess named Ruby, whose crimson eyes allow her to see the weak points of monstrous bosses. You can sneak in quick dagger attacks, but the name of the game is charging up attacks to deal lethal damage to exposed weaknesses.

Here's the fuel that makes this whole engine work: the closer you are to bosses, the faster your attacks charge up. Equally, the closer you are, the harder it is to dodge enemy attacks. This is the knife's edge that Rubinite walks, and it's ridden it straight to the hallowed lands of Steam acclaim.

Add in upgrade and skill systems that further elevate combat, render it in lovely pixel art, and pack it all into a mercifully short game (seemingly 10 - 12 hours) and you've got yourself a stew. As of July 30, Rubinite is also Steam Deck verified, and it seems like a natural fit for a handheld PC.

Soulslike RPG Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is getting a sequel from its original director, who formed a new studio after his alleged firing following censorship backlash.

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey player count soared for the first time in years since Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey adaptation released earlier this month, according to data gathered by Alinea Analytics.

Alinea head of market analysis Rhys Elliott explains in a new post on Substack that, once The Odyssey zapped onto IMAX screens on July 17, "the cultural spillover into games was immediate." 10 days later, Ubisoft's 2018 ancient Greek adventure Assassin's Creed: Odyssey had nearly doubled its active player count, swelling from an approximate total of 122,000 players to 233,000 across platforms.

"That's a 90% surge in engagement," says Elliott, "at 1.8x the game's pre-film July baseline." But unlike the Greeks as they piled into their Trojan horse, most recent Assassin's Creed: Odyssey players are unwilling to risk more than a boring afternoon. Only 26% of the action RPG's new recruits came from Steam, while PlayStation players went off like a car alarm up 94% to 114,000 daily active users, and Xbox boomed plus-134% from 36,000 to 84,000 active users.

Probably, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey's luck on console came from PS Plus and Game Pass subscribers – even with Game Pass currently limping toward death. Elliott says, "Lapsed fans jumped straight back in, while new players found a 60+ hour Greek epic waiting inside a subscription they already pay for."

Though, Nolan's The Odyssey also blessed Ubisoft's Odyssey with some fresh sales. "Software sales moved modestly at around 400K copies year-to-date," Elliott says, but the real news "is pure player engagement. The film didn't make millions buy an eight-year-old game, but it got a massive cohort playing it again. That data gives Ubisoft great ammunition for an eventual AC Odyssey Resynced."

The developer's recent Black Flag Resynced has been a gargantuan financial success for Ubisoft, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it capitalize further on Nolan fever – if it stops laying off devs long enough to do so.

Ubisoft had a very on-brand problem with Assassin's Creed Odyssey: there weren't many tall buildings in Ancient Greece even though it's a "climbing-frame game."

As Grand Theft Auto 6 slowly begins to emerge on the horizon like a portent of civilizational doom, and players endlessly speculate about what to expect from its multiplayer component, I find myself thinking back to what I consider to be the golden age of GTA Online – the late 2010s and early 2020s. Even back then, years after its release, endless post-launch updates adding science fiction weapons and flying supercars had long since robbed the multiplayer component of its crime sandbox of any claim to realism. Not when you could watch the hapless LSPD going up against players armed with Tron bikes and ray guns.

Perhaps this was why the playerbase ended up stumbling upon the perfect absurdist parody in response to this eternal escalation, one that would forever change the face of one of the largest online games in history.

Aliens among us

The "Alien Gang War," as it would come to be known, was not particularly complex at first. Such things never are. Teams of players would pile into panel vans, all dressed in neon green bodysuits, before driving around town until they found a suitable target based on… Well, it was never entirely clear, but comic timing was probably the most significant element.

With their prey decided, the van would come to a screeching halt, and between three and three thousand goons in cheap Halloween costumes would pile out and attack the offender with baseball bats and pool cues, before leaping back into their getaway car and squealing away.

Juvenile? Sure. Bullying? Maybe a little. But on a visual level it was always hilarious, a bunch of neon green mascots enacting frenetic street justice with broken bottles and hammers, ignoring the fact that there were actual ray guns and lasers available in GTA Online. Even players with heavy-duty firepower were generally taken aback by the sheer number of martians sprinting at them, and it only took a single whiffle bat to the skull to knock a target down and allow the rest of the crew to promptly beat them into the tarmac.

This all went on for months as a kind of background story, never really becoming too significant, but then the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic kicked in and things started to change.

As we all remember, lockdown forced many onto their computers for the hope of any sort of social life. This influx of people supercharged the extra-terrestrial conflict, driving Gang War participants well into the millions, and the community ended up producing a counter-force to the growing green menace: the Purple Aliens.

This led to all kinds of Green versus Purple skirmishes, with the former generally standing for chaos in all forms, while the purples usually just tried to obstruct them wherever possible. It was an obviously unwinnable conflict that was still deeply entertaining, even if the Green team reliably had about three times the numbers. Plus it didn't help that a lot of people seemed slightly uncertain what was even going on, but didn't see why that should stop them from getting involved.

And two factions were only the start of it all. Now other players would introduce themselves as human defenders of Earth, out to slaughter both sides, or war reporters documenting events from the peripheries, claiming the role of tritagonists in an ever-developing science fiction saga that had already put Rebel Moon to shame.

Beam me up, knock 'em down

Eventually the lack of a clear end goal or victory state for either side meant that it just petered out, but some players still try to bring back the Alien Wars from time to time, or simply fly the flag for their chosen team by digging out the bodysuit and battering a few people on a Sunday afternoon.

Me included! I'll admit I'm not above the occasional couple of hours spent in spandex while jumping people in dark alleyways, or as I sometimes think of it, "the mean meme green team bean and flee the scene scheme".

But what I hope is that this phenomenon – or something like it – re-emerges in GTA6, especially if it can happen organically without Rockstar's meddling and oversight. In many ways the Green vs Purple conflict was exactly what GTA needed back then, stripping back all the cloying, monetized elements and focusing on consequence-free fuckabouts with very little barrier to entry.

Meanwhile, such a thing never really could get a foothold in Red Dead Online, which ended up being the sensible, well-behaved sibling, less interested in wacky chaos than taciturn hat-tipping and herb gathering. If GTA 6 Online reels me in, it's because it'll have provided that same sort of playground for violent, team-building nonsense that its predecessor did.

Secure your copy of Rockstar's latest with this handy guide to GTA 6 pre-orders

The Countdown to GTA 6 has been activated. It's difficult to believe, but on November 19 you'll finally be able to leave Los Santos behind for a new sandbox to explore. Rockstar Games has booked you a ticket to the fictional US state of Leonida, the Florida-inspired region which also happens to include the neon-lit metropolis of Vice City. Mark the date on your calendars, because there's no stopping Grand Theft Auto 6 from landing this November now.

GamesRadar+ has launched Countdown to GTA 6 as a destination for all of the biggest news and updates on the upcoming PS5 and Xbox Series X release. We're also going to be celebrating the 13th anniversary of Grand Theft Auto 5, returning to the chaos simulator that is GTA Online, and looking back across the entire franchise – exploring the impact and legacy of a series which truly changed the world.

You'll find new Grand Theft Auto articles every week on GamesRadar+ as we countdown to what is undoubtedly the biggest entertainment release of the decade. This is a moment worth celebrating, and we want to do it together with you. So be sure to keep our Countdown to GTA 6 bookmarked and we'll see you out there on the road to release.

Countdown to GTA 6

Rockstar Games is yet to confirm an official release time for GTA 6. Right now, we're assuming that it'll be available globally from midnight local time. So until we have more concrete information, our Countdown to GTA 6 timer is set to 00:00 EST on November 19.

GTA 6: Essentials

Secure Your Pre-Order

The Latest GTA 6 Trailer

Essential GTA 6 Guides

The 10 Best GTA 6 Screenshots

Dive Deeper Into GTA 6

GamesRadar+'s Countdown to GTA 6 brings you new GTA 6, GTA Online, and Grand Theft Auto franchise coverage every week now that we're on the road to release.

It's typically difficult to predict when GTA 6 news is going to land. Developer Rockstar Games is historically secretive and tends to operate on its own schedule. But with around 110 days to go until GTA 6 lands on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X, that's almost certainly about to change.

The next 100 days are going to be critical. There's an exceptionally limited amount of information out there in the wild – we don't yet have a clear sense of how the latest Grand Theft Auto will play or the major gameplay innovations that Rockstar has developed. With that in mind, below you'll find my predictions for the 5 major beats that we should all expect to see on the road to GTA 6's release.

5. GTA 6 gameplay showcase

• Confidence: 95%
• Guesstimate: August

Rockstar previously indicated that the marketing for GTA 6 would kick into high gear over the summer, and with just one month left before the fall you should expect that a big reveal is on the horizon. Whether it's labeled GTA Trailer 3 or something else entirely, I predict that we'll get a detailed gameplay showcase in August ahead of Gamescom.

There's so much that Rockstar could reveal, but I suspect that a first look at raw in-game action would focus on core game elements such as character-switching between the two protagonists, Jason and Lucia, and focus on the new systems and mechanics that'll feed expansive cycles of crime and chaos across Vice City.

4. A Living World Deep-Dive

• Confidence: 80%
• Guesstimate: September

Given that it's been 13 years since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5 and eight since Red Dead Redemption 2, it's now that much of a stretch to believe that Rockstar has a bit of a point to prove. The studio is known for pushing the boundaries of what is possible within open-world sandboxes, and I think that it's likely we'll get a dedicated showcase that covers the living world of Leonida.

GTA publisher Take-Two has a shareholder meeting on September 17, so what better way to generate some good vibes than with a focus on dynamic NPCs, evolving neighborhoods, wildlife density, and graphical fidelity. This seems like a no-brainer to me.

3. GTA Online 2.0 reveal

• Confidence: 50%
• Guesstimate: October

GTA Online remains one of the most popular multiplayer games, with reports suggesting that it still receives millions of active users a week. In my heart, I do believe that Rockstar will want to keep the focus on the core GTA 6 campaign for as long as possible; why risk pulling attention away from Jason and Lucia's adventure?

But with so many GTA Online users spread across PS4 and Xbox One (not to mention PC, where GTA 6 remains unannounced with no release date) it seems only fair that the developer will let its online playerbase know what to expect. The cost of the PS5 and Xbox Series X only continues to rise, so clearing up the future of GTA Online feels more necessary now than ever.

2. GTA 6 previews

• Confidence: 60%
• Guesstimate: October

Will Rockstar let anybody play GTA 6 before it's released? As the Editor-in-Chief of GamesRadar+, I would certainly hope so – I'm as desperate to play a new Grand Theft Auto as I am to share that experience with all of you. Even if Rockstar does deploy gameplay and living world showcases, there will no doubt be millions of unanswered questions that could be addressed by letting members of the press, content creators, and the GTA community go hands-on.

It's common for studios to put previews of their upcoming video games out there (Rockstar included), but then there's nothing about this marketing campaign that's been conventional. And, given how much of the game leaked in 2022, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Rockstar keeps this one close to the chest.

1. A Final GTA 6 story Trailer

• Confidence: 95%
• Guesstimate: November

If GTA 5 and RDR 2 are any indication, then the last few miles on the road to release will feature a GTA 6 story trailer that is wholly focused on the relationship between Jason and Lucia, and the criminal conspiracy that they get dragged into after a heist gone wrong.

Rockstar has always sought to showcase the filmic quality of its productions, and with GTA 6 being purpose-built for PS5 and Xbox Series X, I expect that to be especially true this time around. Grand Theft Auto is one of the biggest entertainment properties in the world and Rockstar won't want to miss an opportunity to remind the masses that GTA 6 is far more than a chaos simulator.

What comes next?

If 100 days takes us to November 8, 2026, then the 101st day will see the marketing campaign kick into high gear ahead of the November 19 release date. Expect GTA 6 to be plastered everywhere in physical and digital spaces, especially as pre-load for PS5 and Xbox Series X is set to begin on November 12 for those of you with a GTA 6 pre-order locked in.

While you wait for GTA 6, why not check out our rankings of the best GTA games and the greatest Rockstar games of all-time.

Many fans are dragging Shift Up, the studio behind Stellar Blade and its upcoming sequel Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, through the mud for promoting its action game with an official music video generated by AI.

Hot off Stellar Blade: Blood Rain's reveal earlier this summer, the South Korean studio today released a music video for a song called Wanna Be in Love, featuring the star of the sequel, Evie, seen singing and dancing in a futuristic city. The uncanny tell-tale signs of AI generation are confirmed in the video's small print: "This video was created using the Game resource from Stellar Blade: Blood Rain and regenerated with AI support."

The ending also contains logos for Shift Up's Second Eve Studio and AI Labs, which fans were very quick to take note of.

"You have such talented artists and programmers at Shift Up, please stop using this AI nonsense to stifle their work and give it a bad rep. The series doesn't need this dragging it down because this is all people unfamiliar with your games will see," one fan writes on social media.

Another says, "You guys have the models and everything to create this without the slop…"

That's a sentiment echoed across the player base: "You have all the in house resources and funds you could ever want to make this for real. It's a slap in the face to your artists and your fans to churn out lazy, ugly, subpar garbage when you employ some of the most talented people in the industry. No one wants this but you."

Funnily enough, the music video concludes with outtakes of what looks like a real, human production crew 'filming' and high fiving with an AI-generated Evie, though it can be quite hard to tell after it's been filtered through AI generation.

By and large, at least on primarily English-speaking online forums, fans of the first game are seemingly upset with how the AI-assisted video devalues the work of Shift Up's otherwise talented team - not to mention the ethical questions that naturally stem from using the tech at all.

South Korea has reportedly adopted generative AI faster than most countries, and high-profile K-Pop music videos have been using AI generation together with real recorded footage with increasing regularity for a couple of years now.

Stellar Blade: Blood Rain's Evie is more than just "physical attractiveness," Shift Up insists, but devs are taking notes from infamously horny Goddess of Victory: Nikke regardless

It's not just movie critics and general audiences who love it: Comic book legends have united in their praise over Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

J. Michael Straczynski, whose six-year run on The Amazing Spider-Man is regarded as one of the 21st Century's best takes on the wallcrawler, wrote on Twitter, "To be clear, I've enjoyed all the Spider-Man movies. But for my money, this latest iteration feels most authentically Peter, and Spider-Man."

Straczynski felt that the strengths of the fourth Spider-Man MCU movie lay in its heart and ability to provoke emotion, as well as not falling into the MacGuffin-filled trap of other superhero entries.

"So many comic movies have fallen into MacGuffin plots, looking for the code, the stone, the box, the sword... this one is all about what William Faulkner called 'the human heart in conflict with itself,'" Straczynski said. "It's a very human story, emotional without being slow or dull or self-indulgent. It feels like stepping into a really good Spidey comic. Well done to all concerned (and even those unconcerned)."

Frank Miller, perhaps best known for his work on seminal comic The Dark Knight Returns, was also a fan. He wrote, "The most [Steve] Ditko movie yet and with my Hand in it for all to celebrate. This fan’s dream come true. Tom Holland is my forever Spider-Man as romantic as he is heroic. Congratulations to [director Destin Daniel Cretton] and the whole team."

Brian Michael Bendis, over on Bluesky, said, "It's a blast" and later felt honored to be "part of the Spidey legacy."

It could have ended very differently, however. Star Tom Holland revealed there was one cut he "hated" – despite test screenings raving over it.

"It totally didn’t work," Holland told Quotable. "And it's what the people were asking for, but it wasn't quite what we wanted as the creatives. But they learned lessons from that experience. So, a movie can change in a thousand different ways in the edit room."

A lesson, then: going all-in on your creative path can sometimes be a good thing. It's little wonder that Brand New Day is on course to be one of Marvel's biggest box office successes on opening weekend.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now in cinemas. For more, check out our Spider-Man: Brand New Day review and our breakdown of the Spider-Man: Brand New Day ending.

The Gears of War E-Day multiplayer beta gives you a chance to try out the upcoming game for free while allowing the dev team at The Coalition a chance to see how it handles under stress. I'd call that a win-win.

If you want to join in and check out the multiplayer aspect of the upcoming game, here's how to gain access to the latest Gears of War beta, including the dates and times the server is open to all.

Gears of War E-Day beta dates

The Gears of War: E-Day Multiplayer Beta goes live across two weekends: August 6 - 10, and August 13 - 17, 2026. The first is for players with early access, while the second weekend is open for everyone.

The beta is focussed solely on the multiplayer aspect of the new Gears of War game, including the brand-new Horde Siege mode, which is "an Evolution of Gears' Iconic PvE Mode", featuring 12 players split into smaller squads, each playing cooperatively against the harsh and demanding environment.

You'll be able to try this and of course PvP in both weekends of the beta, so if you want to know how to get involved, read on.

How to join the Gears of War E-Day beta

To get early access to the Gears of War E-Day beta, you must pre-order the game or have an active Game Pass Ultimate or PC subscription. This does mean that there is technically a cost to playing early, but if you already have Game Pass Ultimate, you're in.

Unfortunately, this does mean that those on Game Pass Premium or Essential won't get early access, but you can upgrade your subscription level if you so wish. You can do this or purchase the game any time before the early access beta ends on August 10 to get in.

If you'd rather not make the commitment to the game or Game Pass Ultimate or PC just yet, then you can still participate in the beta during the second weekend, simply by downloading the beta on Xbox or PC nearer the time.

If you're not on PC or Xbox and are wondering about those Gears of War PS5 rumors, we've got a separate article for you.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Will Gears of War E-Day be on PS5 at launch, and if not, is that liable to change any time in the future? The new Gears of War prequel has captured attention since it was announced, but right now Xbox-owned games and their ports have a somewhat on-and-off relation with PlayStation 5, making it hard to know off-hand. Below I'll lay out the details and explain what you can play E-Day on.

Will Gears of War E-Day be on PS5?

No, there will NOT be a PS5 port of Gears of War E-Day, according to current information given to us by Microsoft.

The current plan is for E-Day to be an Xbox exclusive, playable only on the Series X/S and PC. While at some point in the past it appeared as though Microsoft was considering a PlayStation port, that appears to have changed in the wake of variously changing business strategies at Xbox.

This might come as a surprise to some, as recent Xbox games have had a habit of making it to PlayStation sooner or later, with recent years giving us PS5 ports of Starfield, Sea of Thieves, and the upcoming Fable game still planned for simultaneous releases on both consoles. However, Xbox appears to be reconsidering which games it makes ports of, at least when it comes to launch day.

It's possible that we may see a later port of E-Day to PS5 in the future, but there's no guarantee of that, and it certainly won't be at launch day according to current information. If you're determined to see the historic moment where a chainsaw was duct-taped to a machine gun as soon as possible, you'll need access to an Xbox or Gaming PC.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

These days, The Wind Waker is remembered as one of the best Zelda games ever made, with gorgeously expressive cel-shaded graphics that are still impressive to this day. The vibes were very different ahead of the game's North American launch in 2003, when many fans of The Legend of Zelda were taking to forums to complain about this new "kiddie" visual treatment. It seems that's why Eiji Aonuma decided to transform The Wind Waker 2 into what eventually became Twilight Princess.

Aonuma discussed this during a Game Developers Conference talk way back in 2007, but I only became aware of the story thanks to a recent Did You Know Gaming video going over canceled Zelda projects. And hey – I figure if it's new to me, it might be new to you too, dear reader. Japanese players had begun to transition away from the hobby in the early '00s, Aonuma argues throughout the talk, calling this phenomenon "gamer drift."

"At one point, I had heard that even Wind Waker, which had reached the million mark in sales, was quickly losing steam, and that things were sluggish even in North America, where the market was much healthier than in Japan," Aonuma said. "I asked [Nintendo of America] why this was. What I was told was that the toon-shading technique was in fact giving the impression that this Zelda was for a younger audience, and that for this reason, it alienated the upper-teen audience that had represented the typical Zelda player."

The Wind Waker 2 was set to use "a similar presentation" to the previous game, and Aonuma worried whether it "was something that would actually sell" even outside of Japan. "That's when I decided that if we didn’t have an effective and immediate solution, the only thing that we could do was to give the healthier North American market the Zelda that they wanted."

This decision to specifically alter Zelda to appeal to the North American market might sound strange given the recent comments we've heard from Shigeru Miyamoto. In a recent Famitsu magazine interview (via VGC's machine translation), he argues that "if you try to base your work on things that only seem to have broad appeal, you end up with something generic – something where you can’t tell who actually made it – and that kind of thing actually lacks global strength."

It seems, however, that the decision to create a more grown-up visual style for this new game actually ended up solving problems for the developers. "The proposed setting for The Wind Waker 2 was not on sea, but on land," according to an interview with Twilight Princess art director Satoru Takizawa, printed in the book The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts.

"The desire to depict Toon Link on a horse riding around the great plains was great; however, with his small stature and short arms and legs, it would have been difficult to make him look good on a horse," Takizawa continued. "It wasn't like we could create an adult version of Toon Link. And that was about the time we heard that people were waiting on a realistic-looking Zelda game again."

With all this in mind, Aonuma explained that, near the end of 2003, he "went to Miyamoto and said, 'I want to make a realistic Zelda.' Miyamoto was skeptical at first – I was so focused on changing the look of the game as being the solution we were looking for without coming up with a breakthrough in gameplay. And he advised me that, 'if you really want to make a realistic Zelda, then you should start by doing what you couldn’t in Ocarina of Time. Make it so Link can attack enemies while riding on his horse using the Wind Waker engine, and make your decision based on how that feels.'"

So yes, the decision to move Twilight Princess to a more adult visual style was a nod to the preferences of North American gamers at the time. Amusingly, Takizawa noted the popularity of an unnamed "epic fantasy movie" – obviously the Lord of the Rings – as an indicator of the global market's interests. But the switch in art styles also helped make one of Twilight Princess's key gameplay innovations, horseback combat, possible.

"Four months later, development had progressed to a point where Link could swing his sword in battle against enemies while riding on his horse in a realistic-looking world," Aonuma explained. "When it was announced with a surprise trailer at the 2004 E3, it received a standing ovation by the media audience. This was a very exciting moment for us, but we were still very much in the early stages of converting the game into something more realistic. We knew that we had to create a Zelda game that would live up to the expectations of fans in North America, and that if we didn't, it could mean the end of the franchise. But I also trusted the ability of the team, which was able to bring the game so far in just four short months."

The Legend of Zelda was inspired by Western RPGs says Shigeru Miyamoto, because Nintendo wanted to appeal to more players: "We had to create new types of games."

Nintendo fans are convinced that amiibo have been giving away release dates for games for a while now, and I'll be damned if I'm not kind of convinced.

Despite the toys-to-life fad dying shortly after they were introduced, Nintendo's amiibo have been going strong for over a decade now. While it's not a guarantee that every game will get an amiibo like it kind of felt like back in the days where Chibi Robo or Poochie got figures, there are still multiple drops every year – with the impressive yet expensive Kirby Air Riders series being released throughout 2026. However, there's been a surprising correlation between amiibo and Nintendo release dates, and some reckon it may have revealed when The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Switch 2 remake is set to be released later this year.

As pointed out by a user on the GamingLeaksAndRumors subreddit, Nintendo has been releasing amiibo alongside new releases pretty consistently this year. The Kirby Air Riders Meta Knight and King Dedede amiibo had their release dates announced before Pokemon Pokopia and Rhythm Heaven Groove had been given dates. Next in line is the long-awaited The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Mineru's Construct amiibo, which had its date announced in May, before Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave was announced for the same date.

And now, the next two Kirby Air Riders amiibo – "Sword Kirby and Dragoon" and "Noir Dedede and Hydra" – have finally been given release dates, that being November 12, 2026. Given that Nintendo hasn't announced a release date for its 2026 Zelda game, and that October is already covered by Nintendo Switch Sports, the expectation has been it'll be a November title. The amiibo also releases on a Thursday, Nintendo's typical release day for the last few years.

Do I believe this means Zelda is locked in for November 12? Not entirely. But the fact that three major amiibo drops have coincided with three major Nintendo game releases this year is certainly the closest thing to compelling evidence we have right now. At the very least we should be finding out soon, as the game has recently gotten an age rating from the ESRB.

After 16 months, Zelda Ocarina of Time expert completes a hitless, totally randomized run of the game: "I genuinely didn't think it was gonna happen."

The Last of Us Part 2 modders are looking to do what Naughty Dog sadly couldn't and finally come out with a worthy successor to The Last of Us Factions, the first game's surprisingly thrilling multiplayer mode.

The Last of Us Factions launched in an era where single-player games regularly came out with supplementary online modes that mostly felt like afterthoughts, but Factions' tense scrambles and meta progression made it a fan-favorite regardless – so much so that Naughty Dog eventually started working on a standalone follow-up called The Last of Us Online, which fell victim to PlayStation's flailing live-service plans.

Modder Speclizer isn't letting the dream of The Last of Us Online die so easily, though. Work on a multiplayer mod for The Last of Us Part 2 began at the start of the year, and the team recently "hit quite a big milestone" to get competitive 4v4 matches working ahead of the project's planned launch in September (thanks, PC Gamer). The mod previously only supported 1v1 and then 2v2 games.

The modder has been pretty open about the mod's progress for months now. As recently as last week, they were "looking to implement Naughty Dog level animation sync" and were exploring how the studio pulled it off in Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Factions.

There's no telling how feature-full or beefed up the mod will be come September, but it's shaping up to be a really ambitious fan-made outing based on the info that's already public. Leaderboards are in, there's a map based on the sequel's Seraphite Forest area, the mod's pause menu is a replica of the original Factions one, and there's even a matchmaking system.

Basically, the mod has a couple months to go and already looks like it's a full-fledged, competent online translation of a famously single-player series, using the basic bones and assets and animations from The Last of Us Part 2. We might never find out what Naughty Dog had in store with The Last of Us Online, but PC players can get finally get a taste of the series' multiplayer action, at least.

The Last of Us Online was "the best multiplayer game" many Naughty Dog devs had "ever played," ex game director says.

Gears of War: E-Day remembers the golden years of multiplayer shooters that didn't double as undercover cosmetic storefronts, and it's promising a throwback experience where almost every piece of customization will be earnable by playing online matches. What an idea! But don't worry about grinding endlessly for in-game currency, the devs apparently aren't going down EA's "pride and accomplishment" route.

The Coalition today dived deep into Gears of War: E-Day's multiplayer portions – the Horde mode that pits 12 players against waves of subterranean beasties and the Versus mode that includes sweaty 4v4 PvP matches. While the multiplayer looked great, what really got my chainsaw-guns revved up was the talk of how The Coalition is ditching the seedier parts of modern online shooters.

"Remember the good ol' days when you bought a game and you could unlock all the customization items just by playing because you already bought the game? Us too! So, when it comes to growing your own collection of customization items in E-Day, we've taken a more old-school inspired approach," the devs write in a lengthy new blog post.

"Nearly every single item in Gears of War: E-Day can be earned by simply playing the game. That means no battle pass, no tour of duty, no gimmicks, no bullshit. Whether it's a Legendary Character Skin, an Epic Weapon Skin Set or a Rare Pose, almost all of it can be earned through gameplay," it adds.

According to the studio, the only exceptions to this rule are items included in the Premium Edition of the game, pay-only bundles that raise money for charity, and collaboration content like an incoming weapon skin set inspired by Metallica. That aside, you'll be able to earn in-game coins after online matches, by levelling up, or by "unlocking many of the medals from our Gears 3-inspired medal system."

The Coalition seems keen to avoid a Star Wars: Battlefront 2 type of disaster, though: "Now to address the Brumak in the room, earning coins is not intended to be painstaking or provide the player with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Earning Coins shouldn't be an arduous grind. Chasing your favorite skin and unlocking new items should be fun. As such, we've carefully tuned the rate you earn Coins with this principle in-mind and we'll pay close attention to player feedback to adjust as necessary in post-launch."

In case you've forgotten about the almost decade-old controversy, EA found itself in hot water when Star Wars Battlefront 2 fans complained about how unlocking certain characters could take upwards of 40 hours. EA's response? They wanted to give folks a "sense of pride and accomplishment" in having spent literal days to play as Darth Vader. It's still Reddit's most downvoted comment.

Here's hoping The Coalition's promises land true when Gears of War: E-Day comes to PC and Xbox Series X|S on October 6. A multiplayer open beta kicks off for pre-orderers and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers between August 6-10, before opening up to everyone between August 13-17.

In the meantime, check out the best co-op games to play right now.

Even the best online multiplayer games aren't firing on all cylinders all the time. In fact, I'd argue that's what makes their best moments standout – the clutch sniper nest you establish to help your team make a comeback in Black Ops 7, finally clawing back some rounds in Tekken 8 from a random player who for that evening has become your absolute nemesis, the (for some of us) rare, glittering Victory Royale in Fortnite.

The same holds true for Gears of War: E-Day's newest mode – Horde Siege – which I've been playing in early access, which at times feels like Gears as you've never played it before. At others, the same old. But, the attempt to craft these moments across large-scale player-versus-environment co-operative play is ambitious enough to be worth a respectful hat tip. Three squads of four players battle locusts across a stonking massive district of Kalona City while clearing a checklist of activities before battling to safely extract.

City boy

Gears of War E-Day's Horde Siege vision comes together when these squads collide, interacting across their different objectives to make it really feel like the city has burst into war. A few of your squad's goals may have you circling the edge of the district, before all at once lines moving through the city intersect with those of other players, bullets fly, and hulking groups of locusts all converge as well.

Kalona City, even as it's being reduced to rubble, is gorgeous – bringing to life the mix of brutalism and futurism that so characterizes what remains of civilization in the Gears games set after this prequel (E-Day, 'Emergence Day', is when the world is rocked by a locust invasion from beneath the earth). Gears of War: E-Day's single-player campaign is set entirely within Kalona City, aiming to ground this disastrous first incursion with a real sense of place. The same seems to be true of Horde Siege, maps centering on districts so large it's easy to barely see players not in your squad during large chunks of play. (There's one district in my hands-on, but there will be three maps at launch).

All this is to say that the map design is incredibly open, and the unpredictable nature of how other squads are moving through it means battle lines can feel like they emerge anywhere. If the match was only catering for to squad, you'd have a good idea of how to move through, say, a courtyard, while making effective use of cover. But when another squad is coming from a different direction with the same idea, things can get messy. Yet, thanks to the overall co-operative nature, alliances come naturally, firefights ebbing and flowing between units all driven by the same goal to wipe out locusts and get out of there intact in order to do it all over again.

Gears of War: E-Day marks a rare case where I'm more curious about the multiplayer than the campaign. I remain a bit grumpy about fleshing out the titular E-Day, as I think the still-incredible first Gears of War handles its gritty, sci-fi worldbuilding almost immaculately.

But, I'm not so cold-hearted that the prospect of a back-to-fundamentals approach to Gears doesn't appeal (I vastly prefer the original trilogy to the later games), and I can rock more with the idea of E-Day being a backdrop to multiplayer scenarios than I really need to have my 'Solo explaining Han Solo's name' moment with Marcus Fenix and the iconic lancer chainsaw rifle.

Which doesn't mean Gears of War E-Day's Horde Siege multiplayer is without flaw (for clarity, I only played this mode – not Versus). For all the moments where Kalona City comes alive with converging squads, there are many more when it doesn't, and I'm left with just my squad defending a point from oncoming Locusts, and the action doesn't feel all that evolved from my recent replay of Gears of War Reloaded.

Shifting gears

Gunplay, once meaty, feels sedate in these more modest encounters, with bullets glancing off enemies like they don't feel it as they plod directly for cover, almost ignoring I'm there. (Executions, though, are delightfully brutal). I'm not sure if this is a consequence of Horde Siege's sheer scale – combat looked more tactile in the campaign footage I've seen. After all, even when two other squads are duking it out on the other side of the map to me, they're still there.

Some of this is also the case in Reloaded, but there I can excuse it because it's a remaster of a game from 2006, and constant splurges of gore to cap off kills are frequent. Here, draining whole clips into locusts, I'm conscious of the fact I'm not seeing the chunks of them flying I'd like to see. Perhaps, also, I'm spoiled by the excellent Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2, where co-op encounters felt considerably meatier – though I understand that Space Marine 2's encounters are more tightly crafted than the sprawling scale of E-Day's Horde Siege. Whatever the case, it's true that Gears has more meathead gore-blasting competition now than it did back in the day.

I'm not sure what the solution is other than to see how Gears of War E-Day's Horde Siege mode performs once it's out in the wild. There's a chance squads run into each other more frequently than in my experience, and it feels more electric as a result. As it stands, those moments where Horde Siege shine are few and far between, and rather than feeling like exemplar moments that make the build-up worth it, I'm left soaking enemies with whole clips while I wish it was happening more often.

There's definitely solid craft within what I've played of Gears of War E-Day so far, but I'm struggling to really get a sense of overall intention. Did I mention you can jump at any point now? No, I didn't, because it seems – at least here – relatively pointless. You can slide constantly now as well, which I can see getting annoying much as it did in Modern Warfare 3. The variable cover size is a nice touch, the tutorial having me crawl along small bits of rubble on my back. But, in what I play in Horde Siege, it's still all waist high cover still rules the day.

Alongside Halo: Campaign Evolved, Gears of War: E-Day is yearning for the past, much as I'm sure Xbox is as it enacts thousands of lay-offs across some of its best-in-class development studios, has become the target of boycotts, and is staring down the barrel of massively inflated hardware prices thanks to the component crisis. But, I'm not yet convinced E-Day or Xbox fully understand what made its historic moments work. The same old can never be entirely new, and while Horde Siege can feel special, too much of the time I'm left grasping for reasons to play another match, especially when Versus mode is right there.

But what about you? Looking forwards to returning to Gears' online offerings when E-Day launches? Let us know in the comments!

Take a look at our best co-op games ranking for more!

Pragmata's supporting hero Diana has hair that's almost as tall as her body and apparently took a huge amount of effort to animate properly. In fact, Diana's head of hair was so demanding that developers working on this year's breakout action game actually considered giving her the cost-cutting, hair-cutting treatment.

As reported on by Famitsu and translated by Automaton, character artist Kenji Irie and animator Serina Ohara spoke about the game's various bad hair days during the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference 2026.

The duo reportedly explained how most games use something called hair cards, which are flatter hair textures where the individual strands aren't animated separately. For Diana, flat hair wouldn't suffice. The devs apparently animated each strand individually and had to work on 430,000 animation points to make her mane move properly.

To save on the exorbitant money and time it would take to produce, process, and animate Diana's hair, the developers toyed around with the idea of a makeover. A makeover in the form of a bob cut, I should add, right smack in the middle of production. The Pragmata team apparently even made a model to test her new bob.

In the end, Pragmata didn't launch with a blond Edna Mode following players around. Capcom's team felt that a longer and wilder hairstyle suited Diana's personality more, and a girl who's spent her whole life on the moon likely wouldn't be getting regular haircuts anyway.

Short hair or no, Pragmata's become a big success in just a few short months. Capcom recently hinted that chances of a potential Pragmata 2 are high, and it's all thanks to the game selling over 2.5 million copies without any brand recognition.

Bayonetta creator says Capcom might be thriving thanks to a constant push to create new IP like Pragmata.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Switch 2 now has an ESRB age rating, and if you can believe it… it's the same as last time. Mostly.

Over on the Nintendo US website (spotted by Nintendo Life), the store page for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Switch 2 has been updated slightly, with an ESRB rating now included. This age rating is E10+ with "animated blood, fantasy violence" descriptors attached, which is the exact same rating The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D got back in 2011, albeit missing the "suggestive themes" descriptor the 3DS game got.

Meanwhile, the original N64 version of the game nabbed an E rating – which makes sense when E10+ did not exist until 2005.

The ESRB website currently doesn't have a page live for this remake, so a more in-depth description isn't available right now.

So, what does this mean for Ocarina of Time on Switch 2? Well, not too much other than it sounds like it's going to be very similar to Ocarina of Time. The omission of a "suggestive themes" descriptor could in theory mean that there have been changes to some of the more risque elements – see: The Great Fairy, who is somewhat scantily clad, but more crucially makes the loudest noise on the planet when they emerge. But then again, it could just be that these elements aren't deemed "suggestive" anymore.

However, an ESRB rating is usually a sign that there will be some news about a game soon, as it's likely nearing release, so we could be seeing a random Direct or a news drop on Nintendo Today out of nowhere sometime soon.

If not that, then Nintendo typically hosts a September Nintendo Direct, where we'll be very likely to see more of Ocarina of Time remake than the pretty much nothing we got back in June… perhaps as some sort of Zelda 40th anniversary Direct stapled onto a regular Direct like we got with the Super Mario Bros anniversary in last year's. After all, the remake is supposed to launch this year, so we definitely need to see more of it before too long.

After 16 months, Zelda Ocarina of Time expert completes a hitless, totally randomized run of the game: "I genuinely didn't think it was gonna happen."

Peter Parker got new threads in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 recently. One inspired by new Marvel movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the other drawing from the wallcrawler's appearance in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, and the latter's art style doesn't sit quite right with Insomniac's aesthetic.

As with other suits that have distinct aesthetics, the Marvel Tokon costume retains the particular coloring of the game it's drawing from. This gives it a bright, cel-shaded glow amid the realism of Insomniac's vision of New York City. And in cutscenes and transitions featuring Peter and Miles, there's a bit of a color clash.

"God this shit looks so fuckin goofy," says one Twitter user, sharing screenshots of Peter, unmasked in the Tokon suit. His regular, adult face looks photoshopped onto the cartoony body, and it's made worse in moments where he appears to have a serious or glum expression.

They follow this up with a clip of Peter and Miles heading off on a mission, and in the video, Peter puts on his regular mask, which looks even more jarring atop his newer get-up. The game switches to the Tokon mask afterward, but it's hilarious to see in motion.

"For some reason it reminds me of Spy Kids," says one reply, referencing the heavy use of CGI in those films. "It's like if Nintendo were forced to have actor face-scans in their games," another says.

Spider-Man 2 already has a few suits that contrast with the game's generally realistic aesthetic – notably the Into the Spiderverse suits, which by default even cut the frame rate of Spidey's animations to make them look in line with the animated film. It's still a visual clash, but at least we get some absurd visuals to laugh at – win-win, honestly.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day box office predictions are in – and it could make Marvel history

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has been a massive (and much-needed) success for Ubisoft, even if that hasn't stopped the publisher from laying off a number of its devs. Looking at the player reactions, it's evident longtime fans of the series were ready for a return to the series' pre-RPG roots.

Understanding where open-world games are right now is impossible without studying what happened in the early 2010s. Skyrim proved density trumps raw size and that immersive sim elements are the key to immortality. GTA 5 became a new gold standard for modern-day sandboxes that many studios still haven't reached before GTA 6 arrives. Assassin's Creed, meanwhile, toyed with a bit of everything and began rowing towards beautiful worlds of deceptive depth and excess.

Even as someone who loves to get lost even in the largest of Ubisoft's sprawling maps, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced feels like the most satisfying and leanest the series has been in a very long time. Mind you, clearing its upgrade of a pirate-infested Caribbean still takes tens and tens of hours, but coming from behemoths like Crimson Desert – which are obsessed with stuffing as many mechanics and systems as possible into a disjointed package – Edward Kenway's seafaring adventure hits a sweet spot I think we didn't fully appreciate back in 2013.

Land ahead

Assassin's Creed Black Flag's biggest trick when it came to its scope was – and still is, despite Resynced's notable additions – that most of its Caribbean map is just water. It sounds obvious, but even with points of interest emerging from time to time and entire fleets of Spaniards and Englishmen hunting down pirates, the vast majority of the map isn't the icon-filled nightmare we started getting with Assassin's Creed Unity. Even clearing Black Flag's biggest towns, such as Havana, doesn't take too long.

By building the game around the core premise of a pirate simulator and raiding forts and small outposts in remote isles during most secondary tasks, "cities" (they aren't big) are more of a fancy set dressing for a handful of shops and key locations. Of course, they're still fun to traverse and are put to good use by scripted story missions, yet they were far from becoming "black holes" surrounded by even more content grind. I must underline Black Flag Resynced isn't a small or mid-sized game, but I recommend booting up one of its later relatives, such as Odyssey, and comparing how each of them uses its square kilometers.

Less obvious (at least at first) is the fact you can't really fully explore any chunk of land bigger than an islet with a hidden treasure and two turtles. Assassin's Creed hadn't yet reached the "you can climb anything and walk in any direction" approach that made the rebooted saga so sprawling. Dense walls of vegetation and rocky formations are used to "enclose" handcrafted areas that are rarely bigger than they need to be. Stunning vistas abound, but they're no more than that: pretty backgrounds to look at. You can't climb every mountain. Sorry, Todd Howard.

True freedom

Even rebuilt in 2026, Black Flag avoids becoming an endless expanse as gargantuan and playful as Tears of the Kingdom or a Bethesda-style simulation like the upcoming Fable. It also escapes the gravitational pull of last year's Assassin's Creed Shadows, a lovely but eventually tiring Japan-set action RPG that feels like the end of an era. It's an interesting result, and with some remaining traits – such as the lingering deluge of cosmetics – still around, it almost feels like both developers and executives fighting against their worst impulses in an attempt to chart the series' future.

There's a way to make ridiculously detailed open worlds engaging – Rockstar Games and Bethesda Game Studios figured that out ages ago – but Ubisoft isn't interested in following those schools of design. As gorgeous and well-researched as these historical romps are, Assassin's Creed exists in a different sphere, one that's concerned with more immediate thrills and "snackable" stealth action. At some point, probably influenced by entirely different mainstream hits, it moved away from that in an attempt to produce massive games for everyone. As a proud Origins truther, I've been okay with those, but like many others, I've had my fill and would like to go back.

Of course, we still don't know how Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe will implement these learnings while also serving as the next big blockbuster for Ubisoft. Success aside, Black Flag Resynced is more of an experiment – but it's safe to say we'll be getting more remakes that could be more transformative. In any case, the larger message is clear: We still like to get lost in open worlds, we just don't want them to become second lives.

The Legend of Zelda was inspired by old-school Western RPGs, which weren't popular in Japan at the time. Taking inspiration from these foreign '80s PC games, and wanting to create a non-linear title that could use a save system, Nintendo fellow Shigeru Miyamoto came up with the idea for Link's adventure in Hyrule.

In an interview with Famitsu, that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Miyamoto talks about Nintendo's inspiration for both The Legend of Zelda and the Famicom Disc System. An add-on for Japan's version of the NES, the Famicom, the Disc System could play games that required more data via rewritable floppy discs. However, the hardware sadly never made its way over to the West.

When talking about the early days of the NES, Miyamoto says: "We had arcade-style games and sports games, but in order to capture the interest of a large number of people, we had to create new types of games. We wanted to make a different style of game where you don't continue linearly towards the goal."

At that time, many games focused on high scores and didn't require players to save their progress. In longer games like Super Mario Bros., there were systems in place that let you return to certain checkpoints. Password systems and level selects are common examples, but they could be hidden perks like Mario's warp pipes.

Miyamoto had dreams of creating a game for Nintendo with the ability to save baked into the cart or floppy disc. "We wanted a game where the main character was the focus, and we also wanted to utilize save data," Miyamoto says. "With this challenge in mind we made the [Famicom] Disc System. It was after this that we started to think about game design."

Since the early '80s, vast RPGs like the Wizardry series were popular in the West, but Japanese players were focused on games developed within the domestic market. "At that time, RPGs on PC were catching on abroad, but they weren't widespread at all in Japan," Miyamoto says. "Nintendo leveraged the technology it had developed up until that point, and gathered the most interesting elements [of these games] to recreate them for the Famicom.

"That's how I came up with a similar game design for The Legend of Zelda," he concludes.

After 16 months, Zelda Ocarina of Time expert completes a hitless, totally randomized run of the game: "I genuinely didn't think it was gonna happen."

In what's becoming another strong year for Capcom, Pragmata stands out as a notable success. So much so, the third-person shooter is likely set for another installment, according to a higher-up at the long-running developer and publisher.

The company's first-quarter profits actually came in above estimates, according to a report from Bloomberg, and Pragmata was a strong contributor in that regard. The sci-fi adventure has sold over two-and-a-half million copies so far, an impressive turnaround for a game that only came out in April and isn't based on any existing properties.

Capcom corporate office Yoshikazu Shimauchi – the company's head of finance, accounting, IT, and the PR and IR division – mentions that Pragmata actually exceeded expectations, which isn't something you hear very often in this industry. As such, Bloomberg reports that Shimauchi stated that the possibility of a sequel is high, lining up with Capcom's previous comments about turning the game into a series.

Shimauchi puts Pragmata's sales reception down to a strong marketing campaign and having a distinctive protagonist in Diana, the female android you have to protect as part of the main narrative. It always helps to have a good face for your release, especially if it's slightly odd or creepy.

As a horror fan, it doesn't hurt that Diana immediately made me think of M3GAN, the killer android who became a slasher icon in 2013. I actually thought screenshots of Pragmata were a M3GAN-themed mod for something at first glance, before learning it was its own game. Such curiosity was enough to push me to add the project to my wishlist.

The ending leaves room for another installment, and the baseline concept – futuristic super-soldier protecting a small robot – is something that could be replicated in various scenarios ad infinitum. Wherever Pragmata 2 goes, there's clearly an audience ready to play it.

Bayonetta creator says Capcom might be thriving thanks to a constant push to create new IP like Pragmata.

One of the biggest highlights of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which is finally out this week, is Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) web-slinging capabilities. Spidey is swinging ninjas and Hulks around like he entered a cheat code this time around, which makes sense now that Tom Holland himself revealed the Insomniac Spider-Man games have heavily influenced how his wall-crawling alter-ego fights in the new movie. The game series has also proved to be a nice bit of therapy during his globe-trotting stint promoting the film.

“I was actually playing the game last night,” Holland confessed to IGN while attending the premiere. “I couldn’t sleep last night; I was so excited about today. I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do, and I was like, ‘I’ll just throw the game on and have some fun.’”

When it comes to taking tips from Insominiac’s Spidey, though, Holland revealed that a lot of how his Spidey ends his fights was influenced by the PlayStation franchise. “For me, a lot of those finishing moves, a lot of our stuff was influenced by that stuff.”

Holland wasn’t the only gamer taking notes from the video game series, either. Director Destin Daniel Cretton revealed that a lot of the stunt team were trying to bring some of Spidey’s thwipping, flipping button combo moves to life in the new movie.

“A lot of the action designers and stunt people we had were huge gamers,” revealed Cretton. “They were able to experience things in those games that made them excited, and they would just screengrab the moves they really liked and bring them into the writers’ room and show it to me. And then we’d be like, ‘Yeah, that’s sick. Let’s try to figure out how to do that for real.’”

If you’ve got the game, you can have a crack at reenacting some of these fights yourself now that the Brand New Day suit has been added to the webhead's wardrobe in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day releases in theaters on July 29 in the UK, and July 31 in the US. For more, check out our Spider-Man: Brand New Day review.

In 2017, Dischan Media, long known for visual novel-y bits like Juniper's Knot, hatched a game idea: what if paramilitary magical girls saved the world from alien invaders? Presumably after declining an anime offer from Studio Trigger, work on the game that would become Mahou Arms began, with lead dev Softmode saying, in a recent Reddit post, that the project dates back to "my parents' basement." Today, after about six years in early access, it's finally, properly out on Steam with version 1.0, and boy does it look cool.

Work on Mahou Arms began in the same year that Nier: Automata was released, and that's either a massive coincidence or a strong sign of the sort of character action DNA that was folded in over the years.

This is a third-person action game about two magical girls slicing, dicing, and otherwise beating the daylights out of "an unknown force invading Earth." Like Nier, it folds in a surprising mix of gameplay gimmicks and perspectives, including a strategy game-esque battlefield view.

Melee combat is the meat of the game, with tag-team combos filling a Devil May Cry-style meter to an SSS-grade climax. And if you loved Nier: Automata but were pining to woo 2B, A2, or 9S, you'll be thrilled to hear update 1.0 added romance side quests to Mahou Arms.

"The story has a beginning and end, there's 6-10 hours of not-procedural gameplay, and not a single pixel of generated art, audio, narrative, or code," explains Softmode. "Core dev team of two with contractors for music, sound, voice acting and occasional assets when we can afford it. I haven't slept in 48 hours. I don't know when I'll be able to sleep."

The first bite is with the eye, and my eyes are feasting. Mahou Arms mixes minimalist 3D models and environments with lavish 2D animation to delightful effect. With retro anime vibes paired with the somber piano soundtrack accompanying every trailer I've seen, it all feels laser-targeted at me.

Barring some 1.0 launch wobbles that are purportedly being addressed, Mahou Arms has reviewed pretty well on Steam, sitting at 78% positive lifetime after 542 reviews. "If you have been playing Mahou Arms already, we strongly recommend starting a new game to experience the full story, since more content has been added and changes made to earlier levels," the devs say.

The new open-world RPG climbing Steam is the biggest surprise since Crimson Desert: huge, pretty, and only $30.

MajinPhil jokingly describes himself as your "friendly neighbourhood masochist" on his YouTube page, and looking at his history of challenge runs, it's easy to see why. He 100%ed The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask without taking a single hit in 2024, and then beat a completely randomized version of the game hitless in 2025. The next logical step, it seems, was doing the same with an Ocarina of Time randomizer.

Randomizers are mods that shuffle the locations of enemies and items within a game. They offer a challenge similar to speedrunning, where a player's knowledge and mastery of a classic game is put to the test – in this case, it's just tested in a completely different way with every run. Typically, a randomizer has some built-in safeguards to keep the game from being completely unwinnable, but beyond that, it's all fair game.

MajinPhil's Ocarina of Time randomizer challenge, which he'd been streaming on Twitch for 16 months, had some additional parameters, too. Most notable is the fact that he could only take a single hit before dying – and he's not allowed to block. Taking a single hit from any enemy, even when MajinPhil is behind a shield, is an instant death that also deletes the save file.

So you might start to see why this challenge ended up taking 135 attempts across 16 months. But hey, the winning run, which kicked off last week, had an auspicious start. "I'm calling it now: this is going to be a banger," MajinPhil said near the start of run 135. "I'm manifesting a banger here. Manifesting a banger. 135? That's some good shit."

There are some tricks in MajinPhil's favor here, like the fact that he can save and quit at any time to get out of a bad situation – the caveat being, of course, that he has to run all the way back to wherever he saved, past loads of respawned enemies, every time the game restarts.

If you want some examples of just how devious this can be, MajinPhil's previous run ended when an invisible enemy appeared with a rare glitch, present even in the original game, that rendered it briefly invulnerable. You'd think that the multiple Iron Knuckles that appeared in the very first dungeon of run 135 might've been similarly dangerous, but MajinPhil bypassed them without much trouble.

Once he finally reached the threshold of the final boss fight, MajinPhil took a moment on stream to get up, pace around the room, and collect himself. "For anyone saying I'm being dramatic, I promise you I'm not," he explains. "I've been doing this challenge since March of 2025. This is the first time I've ever gotten this far."

Experienced Ocarina of Time players will know that the scariest part of the final few fights is the back-and-forth with Ganondorf, where you bounce a ball of magic back at the boss like it's a tennis match. At one point, there's a rally that stretches on for an absolutely absurd 18 swings. MajinPhil laments that as "bullshit" – but a type of bullshit he manages to clear, just before clearing the castle escape and dealing the final blow to Ganon.

By the time the ending starts to play, MajinPhil sounds like he's on the verge of hyperventilating. "My head's freaking out," he tells his viewers. "I'm freaking out, man. I can't believe I beat it. It's actually so much more intense than Majora's Mask. This feels so much more intense. The wind-down is like… I can't explain how I feel. The feeling of all that anxiety from the beginning of the stream, like it was two hours of anxiety – two and a half hours of anxiety – all released when that final Ganon hit [was] hit."

After 16 months of trying, "I genuinely didn't think it was gonna happen," MajinPhil admits, and says "that was the hardest thing I've ever done, gaming-wise." The scariest part? Now, I reckon, he's gonna have to try and figure out an even harder challenge.

Shigeru Miyamoto admits Nintendo's been pumping out "a lot of remakes" as Ocarina of Time approaches, but says most people stopped playing the original games within 5 years anyway.

Capcom is shouting out Pragmata's sales success as a big reason why the company's year-on-year profits have increased.

In the company's latest earnings report, Capcom notes an 83% increase in net sales year-on-year, and noting: "Unit sales of all-new IP Pragmata and catalog titles performed well, driving revenue and profit up."

Capcom confirms that – as of June 30, 2026 – Pragmata has sold over 2.5 million copies since it was released back in April 2026, while Resident Evil Requiem sold a further 1.14 million since sales were last reported, bringing the latest game in the series up to eight million copies sold. This mixed with strong sales for older Resident Evil titles, bringing the series to 213 million copies sold, and making it the best-selling Japanese game series not published by Nintendo or Sony.

In a press release, Capcom once again singles out Pragmata as a key factor in this increase in sales, saying: "Digital Contents business drove earnings with 23.81 million units in total sales volume, which exceeded sales of 14.16 million units for the same period of the previous fiscal year. This included sales of all-new IP PRAGMATA, which surpassed 2.5 million units worldwide following a positive launch reception due to increased brand awareness achieved through robust promotional activities."

Since launch, Capcom hasn't exactly kept its cards close to its chest regarding how it feels about Pragmata. It confirmed that it will consider "developing it into a series," after Pragmata hit two million copies within its first month and says it will continue making new IP. The push for new IP is something Devil May Cry and Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya credits Capcom's success with, while Pragmata director Yonghee Cho told us in May that he would "of course" love to make a sequel to the game.

In a games industry dominated by safe bets, Capcom keeps getting weird with it.

There's a new Spidey film coming out this week, and what better way to celebrate than with an update to Marvel's Spider-Man 2? Two costumes have been added to the game, and there's some added support for upscaling.

Of the two suits that are now in Peter Parker's closest, the first is the Fresh Start get-up, taking heavy inspiration from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the latest movie featuring the wallcrawler. This is another take on the classic, iconic Spider-Man look, and I'm not complaining because it's still extremely pleasing to the eye.

The second costume actually comes from another game, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls. This one's got a more contemporary sci-fi edge, with white accessories and a larger spider emblem on the chest. It maintains the slightly cel-shaded aesthetic from Fighting Souls as well. I do love when Insomniac incorporates different aesthetics for the suits, the resulting effect is always impressive.

In the replies on Twitter, Insomniac clarifies that these are completely free of charge. You need only start up the game, let it auto-update, and you'll have access to both of these as part of your wardrobe. Since Brand New Day opens tomorrow, July 29, the timing is perfect to see it, then settle into swinging around New York City in the same threads as our cinematic Peter.

Besides these ensembles, support has been added for both Enhanced PSSR on PS5 Pro and Power Saver mode. The former, if you're unaware, is an AI upscaling feature on the system. Your mileage may vary depending on how much you like what changes it makes, but it's good to have options for your crime-fighting escapades.

Now then, I have side-quests to complete. And by side-quests, I mean taking dozens of cool pictures with these two suits I can hopefully sell to The Daily Bugle.

After keeping the secret for over a year, Sadie Sink's Marvel character is spoiled at the Spider-Man: Brand New Day premiere.

Xbox is making it easier for you to transfer your digital console library over to PC, at least when it comes to a select few Ubisoft titles.

In an official Xbox Wire news release, a total of 13 Ubisoft games are revealed to be part of a new "Xbox Console-to-PC Offer" program giving players the opportunity to play their Xbox games on PC "at no additional cost." Basically, it all works via the Ubisoft Connect app, which you can install on your PC and access the following games for free if you already own them on Xbox:

• Assassin’s Creed Mirage
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
• Far Cry 6
• Immortals Fenyx Rising
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
• Riders Republic
• Skull and Bones
• The Crew 2
• The Crew Motorfest
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
• Watch Dogs Legion

Thankfully, it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of fine print here. Xbox says that starting today, if you buy any of the above games digitally, you'll immediately get both the Xbox and PC versions via Ubisoft Connect. Meanwhile, if you already own any of them, a "progressive rollout" will begin doling out PC versions starting on August 4.

In case you were wondering, as I was, the deal doesn't work the other way around, as Xbox says "you can only claim a free PC version" with this offer. Otherwise, "for most games," the edition of the game and any DLC you own will transfer right over to the PC version alongside any progress you've made so long as the game supports cross-progression.

This initiative is part of a newly expanded "partnership" between Xbox and Ubisoft that'll add "a broad selection" of digital games with premium editions to the Xbox app on PC. The full list hasn't been revealed, but some of the highlights include Assassin's Creed Shadows, Star Wars Outlaws, Rainbow Six Siege, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

Of course, the biggest caveat to all of this is something of an elephant in the room right now, as physical games don't appear to be included here. That's not surprising in the slightest given the nature of digital vs. physical entitlements, but it is yet another grain of salt in the wound for disc fans.

Xbox is down, just days after PlayStation outage, and it affects both digital and "disc-based" games

There aren't any explosive grenades in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, but a handy exploit lets you make some on the fly. Players have discovered a way to turn smoke bombs into impromptu fiery weapons to handle multiple enemies – but you really need to be careful when using it.

On Twitter, Assassin's Creed fan account Zephryss posted a clip of how it works. First, you throw the smoke bomb, and let it start filling the area. Then, using your pistol, shoot a bullet right at where it landed, and you'll get a nice little explosion. "Here's an insane secret trick," they say.

They include footage of them doing it a couple of times, across different areas and situations, to demonstrate how repeatable it is. In one of them, several enemies are approaching, and this tool of slight destruction takes a chunk of their health and bounces them back.

It's a fine addition to the toolkit of any assassin. Not very graceful, mind, but sometimes you need to just go for broke and do whatever you can to get out alive. That last part can be tricky, since many people are figuring this alternate way of using smoke bombs the hard way.

"THIS. THIS IS HOW I KEEP BLOWING MYSELF UP??" says one player in response to the clip from Zephryss. "I learned this the hard way when trying to get the trophy of kicking a [berserk] enemy in smoke off a ship," another adds. "Would accidentally pull out pistols and wonder wtf happened."

Now that word is getting around, there's a chance Ubisoft could patch this out if it's not intentional. I hope that doesn't happen, because this is definitely handier than it is a hurdle. But a primer on how to do it safely would help, lest more people wind up blowing Edward's face off completely by accident.

If you're yet to play it yourself, you can read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see how it compares to the best Assassin's Creed games.

It's December 2006, and after months of eagerly scrubbing through trailers and poring over Official Nintendo Magazine, a brand new Zelda game is on the way. Not just that, it feels like the Zelda game, a gritty successor to Ocarina of Time's throne, bolstered with the incredible motion controls of the Wii. As December 8 rolled around, I queued up at midnight with my best pal, giddy with excitement, and sped home quickly as if the wind of Tulin was behind me.

We stayed up until five in the morning playing Twilight Princess, briefly slept, then went straight back to it. My poor younger brother didn't touch Wii Sports for at least a week. But, it wasn't the much-touted waggle controls that offered the biggest thrills, or the (at the time) incredible graphics. Instead it was Twilight Princess's commitment to tone, to crafting a lived-in world, and the tangible feeling that this space was really right in front of us – if we could just reach in and touch it.

Now 20 years later, it's that attention to detail, along with a mixture of reality and fantasy, that still makes Twilight Princess's dungeons the best the series has ever produced.

Got that dog

Twilight Princess feels quaint in hindsight when compared to BotW, but when it comes to solving puzzles this works in its favour. Each dungeon feels like a distinct part of this world, but it also feels absorbing. Scale works both ways, and spending more time in a small but richly detailed world gives you a real sense of your place in 3D space, especially with the immersive motion controls helping to bridge your suspension of disbelief.

For instance, the Goron Mines in Twilight Princess feel like a functioning part of that world. Heavy doors groan when they're heaved open, and bridges thud with a distinct weight when you fire your arrow to lower them. Breath of the Wild offers so much to do, but occasionally the sheer scope of that world makes smaller moments feel weightless. Twilight Princess makes each room feel consequential, and every solution to a puzzle feels like you've shifted something monumental in the world. You can imagine the Gorons down here smelting all day, which makes it more fun when you interact with elements that feel tangibly useful.

One standout example is Snowpeak Ruins, a dungeon that sneaks up on the player as you slowly realize this frosty new area you have discovered is your latest mystery to solve. Here, you also consistently interact with the Yeti couple Yeto and Yeta as you explore the grounds, further strengthening the belief this is a space that characters actually inhabit. So, when you unlock the fantastic Ball and Chain and start swinging wildly, the sense of power and relief is thoroughly earned. Not to mention, the Snowpeak boss uses both those interactions and your understanding of the space perfectly, turning your time bonding with the Yetis into an emotionally resonant fight instead of just another piece of Ganon fodder.

Speaking of the Ball and Chain, Twilight Princess has one of the best selections of items in any game, let alone a Zelda game. Unlocking the Spinner, and not only discovering a Beyblade-esque method of transport, but the function of those conspicuous jagged teeth in the wall of the Arbiter's Grounds, is immensely satisfying. It is phenomenal dungeon design to add a weapon that feels like a genuine part of this world, then offer both functional ways to use it in this established environment but also ways to attack enemies like the awesome fight against Stallord.

Perhaps it was the overcorrection after Wind Waker's reception, but Twilight Princess works so hard to establish a feeling of unease, of an oppressive and omnipresent sense of dread in the world. Link feels truly up against the world, and you want to help every character you meet in this slim cast. Nintendo consistently makes great dungeons for Zelda games (except for you Breath of the Wild), but in Twilight Princess the mixture of tone, a push for realism, and the immersive motion controls really help to elevate already stunning work.

Even on GameCube, stripped of those motion controls, Twilight Princess works on many levels to make every action feel important. Link's quest here feels uniquely intimate; the standout cast of characters offers support and genuine peril, and the unique selection of weapons works overtime to make you feel like you're interacting with a living and breathing world. As we look to the future, I hope even as Zelda continues to grow, we can reclaim the sense of consequence and importance that occur when we interact with a smaller, functional, and uniquely living world.

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was so secret within Nintendo, most employees found out about it for the first time at its E3 reveal: "We popped off"

As Sony inches ever closer to a future where it permanently halts the production of PlayStation discs and as GTA 6 prepares to ship without a true physical version at all, Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto co-founder, Dan Houser, has some thoughts about the physical versus digital games debate.

The former GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 lead developer - who also had a hand in several more Rockstar classics - was recently asked about the topic at San Diego Comic-Con 2026. His thoughts? Houser isn't personally enthusiastic about physical games shipping on discs, but he doesn't see why companies should stop making them altogether.

"I don't know that I care, but if people want that, I think companies should provide it," Houser tells IGN in an interview at SDCC. "But I don't know that I personally care."

He also acknowledges that people sure are critical of digital games, but from a developer's perspective, "the ability to update and fix problems in games has been really useful for the quality of games."

The future of physical games are on a lot of peoples' minds right now after PlayStation announced plans to axe PlayStation disc production starting in 2028. That means new games that come out past that point won't get true physical editions on PlayStation hardware - it also means your ability to lend, borrow, sell, and truly own the games you pay for is seriously constricted. An ironic demonstration of how our all-digital future could go very wrong happened this week, when The PlayStation Network almost went down and stopped waves of people from downloading or even playing their digital library.

Also speaking to IGN, former Rockstar veteran Lazlow Jones chimed in, too: "We all have that sort of feeling when you get that copy, and you put the disc in the console, but I also have to say I really like being at the airport and going, 'Oh, cool. I can download some quick games to my Steam Deck for this 12-hour flight.'"

Jones and Houser are now both working at Absurd Ventures, a company making multiple multimedia projects, including an upcoming AAA open-world game and a new comic book. Jones says that's "a different creative process but also just really fulfilling to have a physical thing you can say, 'Look. We made a thing.'"

"I love physical media," Houser adds.

PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not

Former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida has explained that the company shut down Japan Studio in 2021 because its games didn't "drive console sales." He goes on to say that if you love the company's "creative games," then support the former developers by playing Slitterhead and Ratatan.

During his keynote speech at the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference, that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Yoshida says that he is frequently asked about PlayStation's closure of Japan Studio. "Players from around the world have said that it's unbelievable that Sony would shut down Japan Studio," he says. "Japan Studio released loads of games, creative games, didn't it? At that time I was saying something similar."

Japan Studio is responsible for some of the best and most innovative games in PlayStation's history. Ape Escape, Shadow of the Colossus, Siren, LocoRoco, Patapon, Gravity Rush, Astro Bot, and many more games come from the talented teams at Japan Studio. Essentially, if you fondly remember a PlayStation game with an ingenious hook, it was probably made there.

"At that time, as the head of development, I was worried about [Keiichiro] Toyama [creator of Silent Hill] and the other Japanese developers at Japan Studio," Yoshida says. "But while they came up with a lot of creative ideas, the games they made weren't big in scale. What we call AA games are a perfect fit for the PlayStation Vita, but we were slowly shifting to AAA on the PS4 and PS5, and sometimes it's difficult to scale up like that."

Despite the creativity of Japan Studios Vita and VR games, sales were poor compared to other PlayStation behemoths. Sony then decided to put its bets on AAA games. "As a company, PlayStation wanted to drive hardware sales with games like God of War and Uncharted, because that's the kind of game that's in demand," he says. "It's hard for Japan Studio to launch a new series on console."

He finishes by urging people who loved Japan Studio to continue supporting the developers who worked there. "Toyama also had a number of ideas which weren't able to be greenlit before Japan Studio shut down," he explains before encouraging PlayStation players to try his new game Slitterhead, and Patapon creator Hiroyuki Kotani's latest game Ratatan.

Even former PlayStation chief Shuhei Yoshida doesn't know why Bloodborne hasn't been remastered or released on PC: "It's a complete mystery."

The director of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is looking into adding a challenge system to the pirateventure, like the one Assassin's Creed Mirage eventually got, but he's not promising anything just yet.

Asked about bringing back a series feature that let fans replay missions with new challenges and requirements, in an interview with JorRaptor, game director Richard Knight says he thinks it "would be awesome."

Assassin's Creed Mirage actually got a post-launch update with the same challenge system last year, which offered unique challenges for contracts and black box missions. One challenge might have disabled Eagle Vision for the entire mission or asked you to slide a hidden blade into your main target while going undetected - they were essentially cool modifiers that gave mission replays some extra spice.

"We've looked into this one quite a bit," Knight adds. "I can't promise anything on it just because it exists in Mirage, but it doesn't exist in the modern Anvil [Engine]. So, it's like new tech, right? They do have a solution. We do roughly see how it works, but it's going to take time to understand if it's something we can build or how long it would take."

Part of Knight's desire to add tougher mission constraints and replayable challenges to the stealth game comes from his time on the Hitman titles, a series renowned for those sorts of open, free-flowing, flexible assassination sandboxes. "You know, personally, as someone who used to work on Hitman and has played a lot of Hitman and likes seeing the speedrun timer on screen, I think it's a very interesting way to play a game," he explains. "But, yeah, no promises on that one."

Seeing a similar system implemented into Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced isn't entirely impossible. Ubisoft confirmed that a New Game Plus mode is on the way, and the team apparently have a bunch of other DLC ideas as well.

At 3.5 million sales, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced beat Ubisoft's full-year expectations in 2 weeks with "historical" PC performance

A new God of War game starring dad of war Kratos is already in development at Sony Santa Monica, and it's set to tie in to the events of the upcoming God of War Laufey quite deeply.

Speaking during a San Diego Comic-Con panel attended by GamesRadar+, Sony Santa Monica creative lead Cory Barlog seemingly slips up and mentions that he was recently chatting with "the director of the next Kratos game earlier this week about all the different things that are going on - oh, f***, did I just announce the next Kratos game?"

The Kratos-led God of War game didn't receive a title, an estimated launch window, target platforms, or any firm details, but Barlog did offer some light information: "Kratos is in another game immediately after this [that] directly connects to the events of the Laufey game, but don't say anything about it to anyone," he quips. "The franchise is going in some amazing directions"

"Everything we are doing in the Faye game is a continuation of what came before and to set up and expand what comes next," he adds. "Phranque [the gelatinous cube] has been around since the beginning. It's interesting to see how to build this world out. Everything in the game is setting up for something so amazing."

Just don't expect that next game to drop anytime soon since the studio is still finishing up God of War Laufey, which was also announced to be coming on February 16, 2026. The upcoming PS5 game follows Faye, Kratos' lover and Atreus' mother, who finds herself stuck in an afterlife full of some very hostile gods and visions of her god-killing husband. The game has apparently been in the studio's plans for nearly 10 years, though it intends to also "always tell stories about Kratos."

Sony Santa Monica confirms "God of War Laufey will be available on disc" despite PlayStation's war on physical

Quickly following an action-packed reveal a few short months ago, PlayStation has put a concrete release date on God of War Laufey: February 16, 2027.

Sony Santa Monica creative head Cory Barlog announced the PS5 exclusive's new launch date at a San Diego Comic-Con panel, which was followed by a short and sweet clip posted to PlayStation's official social media that shows a brief golden logo. While God of War Laufey is available to wishlist now on the PlayStation Store, pre-orders and pricing information aren't yet available.

For those out of the loop, God of War Laufey is the first game in the bloody action series to not have main man and titular god-killer Kratos in the driver's seat. We instead follow the wife he lost before God of War 2018's introduction, Faye, as she travels an afterlife for the gods and potentially bumps into deities her lover once butchered. (Awkward.)

PlayStation debuted the game with a lengthy look at its epic opening and aerial combat just earlier this summer, perhaps making a release date of next February quite surprising. And, yes, the studio is also working on a Kratos-focused game coming sometime after.

Despite Sony planning to axe physical disc production the following year, developer Sony Santa Monica have confirmed the game will launch on a proper disc, not a code-in-box.

Next February is also shaping up to be another scarily packed month for new games. God of War Laufey is joining a crowd of blockbusters hoping to find refuge after GTA 6's huge impending launch, which includes Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis (February 12), Persona 4 Revival (Februay 18), and Xbox's Fable reboot (February 23).

God of War's Cory Barlog has been planning Faye's story for a decade, says Laufey director, and her actor has "had to keep this under wraps" the whole time

Once you give players an ability, you really can't control how they use it. People can do whatever they like with a photo mode, as the devs behind Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced have discovered due to the amount of feet pics they've seen.

"There's just nothing like having one million or two million players playing a game at once that you can't replicate. The feet pics were very surprising," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, tells JorRaptor. "That's kind of what photo mode is there for – to take really interesting, sometimes unusual, photos."

I'm not surprised – internet loves doing things for the bit, and bizarre, slightly lewd photographs emerging from a new Assassin's Creed game is the exact kind of tomfoolery that goes over very well.

But I'm far too innocent for such things, because my most in-depth experience with photo mode was in Insomniac's Spider-Man games. I loved swinging around and making fake comic book covers. I've made dozens of them across the three installments.

Obviously, that's the wrong line of thinking. Pictures of Spider-Man are out, pictures of feet are in, apparently. "I never would have expected that one," Knight adds.

I have to imagine someone on the team thought it was a possibility, but what are you going to do? Restrict people's creativity? You've got to just let people do what they do, that's the real adventure of life.

At 3.5 million sales, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced beat Ubisoft's full-year expectations in 2 weeks with "historical" PC performance.

PATCH NOTES: v24.09.2026 – Nintendo should have been taking a victory lap this week, following the release of Splatoon Raiders on July 23. At a time where discussion should have been focused entirely around the latest Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, attention on the platform holder's activities has been divided between two ongoing legal battles.

What's going on with Nintendo this week?

• The first Splatoon spin-off launched as a Switch 2 exclusive
• A patent infringement lawsuit hit a new roadblock
• Request was made to dismiss a class-action lawsuit

Why is this happening now?

• The legal system works in weird and mysterious ways
• Nintendo has been embroiled in a dispute with Pocketpair for two years
• Two battles on the same week as Splatoon Raiders is bad timing

Meta Shift

This should have been a straightforward week for Nintendo. After a year of anticipation, Splatoon Raiders finally arrived, giving the Switch 2 one of its most compelling first-party exclusives. At any other time, this delightful spin-off – a confident shift away from the multiplayer focus that has otherwise defined the franchise – would have dominated the conversation for days.

Instead, Nintendo spent the Splatoon Raiders launch window fighting legal battles on multiple fronts. Attention was repeatedly diverted by fresh developments related to the ongoing legal dispute against Palworld developer Pocketpair, as well as a new court filing in a US class action lawsuit over the impact of tariffs.

While none of these stories are directly related, they do provide a window into one of the challenges Nintendo faces in 2026: launching platform-defining exclusives while simultaneously fighting to defend its business priorities in courtrooms all around the world.

Known Issue

• Another strange twist in the Palworld lawsuit

The biggest distraction from Splatoon Raiders' release week was undoubtedly from Japan, with a new development from a patent dispute adjacent to Nintendo and Palworld developer Pocketpair's ongoing legal battle. Nintendo has been attempting to patent the 'in-game monster-capturing system' popularized by Pokemon, which the Japanese Patent Office has rejected.

This decision has prompted Nintendo and the JPO to enter into a pretty extraordinary back-and-forth of counterarguments that, frankly, are well worth your time if you have it to spare. While this fight isn't at the center of the legal battle with Palworld, it certainly doesn't help Nintendo's case at all.

Patent disputes are difficult to follow at the best of times, but that's why this story was so essential – it illustrates just how complex these types of legal proceedings can become, and how entertaining it can be when they boil over in public.

• And then there was the tariff lawsuit

Just as players started to lock into arguments over whether it's even fair for Nintendo to test the strength of gameplay patents in this way (hint: enjoyers of Palworld 1.0 would say that it is not), a legal story with some spice emerged from the United States. This may have flown under your radar, but Nintendo is actually engaged in legal battles over tariffs.

Nintendo filed a lawsuit earlier this year over what it alleges was an "unlawful imposition of tariffs" by the US. This prompted two individuals to file a class action lawsuit against Nintendo; the pair claim that if Nintendo is owed refunds on collected tariffs, then so too should be consumers who purchased Nintendo products at increased prices.

Nintendo bit back hard, suggesting that players were "free to abstain from purchasing the product or seek out competing products" and that they got "exactly what they bargained for and paid for." Ouch.

Patch Notes Summary

• One company, three conversations

Nintendo spent the Switch era cultivating an image that it was consumer-first and software-focused. To see three separate conversations kickstart within days of each other – one about a platform exclusive, one around Japanese patent law, and the other around US consumer litigation – has created the impression that Nintendo's priorities are now being pulled in different directions.

Lawsuits and legal filings landing the same week as Splatoon Raiders is unfortunate – the courts work to their own schedules, not to the hype cycles we spend our lives following. But the diverting of attention in this way has been fascinating to witness.

Nintendo will have plenty of other moments to celebrate this year, with Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and The Duskbloods all expected to land. Whether they will also converge with ongoing legal disputes remains to be seen, but one thing's for certain: Nintendo needs to pull the focus of players back to video games and away from the courts.

Still, regardless of all the legal drama that has (admittedly) been pretty entertaining to watch from afar, I'll be spending this weekend diving into Splatoon Raiders. What about you?

Related Stories:

Even Ubisoft seems surprised you all wanted classic-style Assassin's Creed back this bad. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has sold 3.5 million units in 14 days, already beating the publisher's internal sales projections for the full year.

"The strong launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced in early July by Vantage Studios is an encouraging proof point" of Ubisoft's new corporate structure, CEO Yves Guillemot says in the company's latest financial report. That same restructuring has also cost numerous developers their jobs, including many of the very people who brought Black Flag Resynced to life.

Black Flag Resynced is the first Assassin's Creed game to reach over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. According to Ubisoft, "this translated into a historical proportion of sales for the franchise on PC, led by the US and Chinese markets."

As part of today's financial report, Ubisoft announced net bookings of €256 million for the first quarter of the fiscal year, "down 9% year-on-year and slightly above guidance." Notably, that does not include any boost from Black Flag Resynced sales, which launched just after the start of the second quarter. Instead, those first quarter revenues were "driven by a record performance for Invincible: Guarding the Globe," an idle RPG for mobile.

Clearly, though, Ubisoft expects investors to be pleased with the performance Resynced is going to show next quarter. "The game is the highest-rated Assassin's Creed title since the original Black Flag, and we are very pleased with the praise it received from players," Guillemot continues. "Two weeks in, the title has already exceeded the annual expectations we had. I would like to warmly thank the teams whose talent and dedication brought it to life. This launch illustrates the enduring appeal of the Assassin’s Creed brand, as well as the early benefits of our ongoing transformation and commitment to delivering very high-quality experiences."

Ubisoft CEO says ditching physical games "helped" PC gaming, and PlayStation ending discs won't "disturb" the industry much anyway.

It's always fun to see what lurks just below what we can see in a video game through datamining and the like. You can find remnants of ideas that hit the cutting room floor, or perhaps suggestions of what's to come in DLC. A lead developer on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced respects the curiosity, but asks we don't put much stock in what's uncovered.

"Many games get datamined, it's very clever, I understand," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, says in an interview with JorRaptor (below). "Sometimes these are for assets that don't even exist yet, and sometimes they're placeholders that were done three years ago."

For projects as big as the Black Flag remake – or any triple-A game, really – all sorts of little curios and oddities tend to sneak into the finished product. Perhaps it was easier and faster to just cover something up than to take it out entirely, or, as Knight suggests, there was the kernel of an idea that didn't pan out, but you can still find a little marker, left however long ago in the game's past by god knows who.

They make for good discussion around the game's development, but holding people who worked on it to account for them is difficult. If they're placeholders, the devs genuinely might not remember what the point was, and if they're hints at what's coming, nobody will be allowed to talk about it yet.

Naturally, this comes up because JorRaptor asks about costumes that have been found in the game's innards. Multiple get-ups for Edward drawing on several entries from the storied franchise have been discovered, leading people to believe they indicate what's coming.

Knight is saying nothing, however. "This is my way of saying I don't actually know," he responds, remaining coy. "I can't spoil it because I don't know."

He does say whatever comes, the team will "support the brand legacy." Take that however you like.

If you're yet to set sail in the remake yourself, be sure to read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see how it compares to the best Assassin's Creed games in the series.

Despite having only just been revealed, it's already proving hard to buy Hasbro Legend of Zelda action figures. Namely, I've seen one sell out already even though it's only been available to pre-order for a few hours.

With that in mind, I thought it might be helpful to track where you can currently get your hands on these toys. I've already gone on record about how good I think they are, so I'd say they're well worth grabbing - and from what I've seen so far, speed is of the essence if you want to buy Hasbro Legend of Zelda action figures. Link is selling out fast, for example (perhaps going back to the shrine for another 100 year nap).

Where to buy Hasbro Legend of Zelda action figures in the US

Where to buy Hasbro Legend of Zelda action figures in the UK

• See all the latest action figures at Hasbro Pulse

If you want more cool collectibles, don't miss the best toys or the best Lego sets. With summer in full swing, it's also worth dropping by the best water guns!

Lead developers of Castlevania: Belmont's Curse have spoken about the process that led to the creation of Rose Belmont, the game's protagonist. Initially, they didn't have a specific gender for the protagonist in mind, but after developing the story, they wanted to base it around the strong bonds between mother and daughter.

In an interview with Famitsu, as translated by GamesRadar+, director Yukiko Hokao explains how the process of developing Belmont's Curse began without a specific protagonist in mind. "At the start we hadn't decided that the protagonist would be a woman," she says. "While we were building the world and the story, we thought the role would best suit a woman, and it was decided that it should be Trevor Belmont's daughter."

She goes on to explain how the original concept for the game had the protagonist's mother die before the beginning of the game. After discussing the game's world with Motion Twin and Evil Empire, it was agreed upon that the main character should be a woman.

Producer Tsutomu Taniguchi expresses how the game's world didn't feel right for a male protagonist. "For example, if this story featured a male protagonist, we'd have to consider the type of world depicted, and I think that could be cool," he says. "However, for this story, it was naturally decided that a female protagonist would be the best fit."

Creative director Emmanuel Nouaille further explains how the protagonist's gender fits into the game's themes. "Particularly, considering her mother Sypha's curse would be inherited by her daughter, there's a bond between parent and child," he says. "There is a strong connection between the two, and it gives her a clear motivation to avenge her mother's death and face her cruel fate. From this, the protagonist became Rose Belmont, and the role was best suited for a woman."

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse wants you to find the "joy" in the difficulty and it won't be "simple or easy": "That's not Castlevania."

I honestly think Hasbro getting the license to make Legend of Zelda toys is the best thing for fans.

Now, listen: I appreciate the concern about corporate giants scooping up IP so we're left with a monolithic industry run by big names. The company isn't perfect, either, so don't mistake this for blind loyalty. But Hasbro winning the license to make Legend of Zelda toys has me excited nonetheless – and it's all thanks to a galaxy far, far away.

As you probably know, Hasbro is a behemoth in the field – it has numerous companies under its belt, from the creators of Furby to D&D's Wizards of the Coast. One of these is an imprint called Hasbro Pulse, which focuses on high-quality action figures and replicas for adults based on Star Wars, Marvel, Transformers, and more. Hand-to-heart, I think it produces some of the best toys around – and it just got its paws on Legend of Zelda, as revealed by its first action figures based on the series. That means fans are in for one hell of a treat.

For starters, Pulse's action figures are absurdly detailed (often using face scans of the actor in question) with premium deco accompanying a host of accessories and multiple points of articulation for more realistic poses. However, they don't come with a premium price. The six-inch Star Wars Black Series range starts at around $27.99 per figure through Hasbro Pulse, for example, and you can usually get them for significantly less at the likes of Amazon after launch. The same has proven to be true for Legend of Zelda, and considering how good they look, I don't think $28 for Link or Zelda is bad.

Yes, Ganondorf is pricier at $43. But we saw the toy in person at SDCC so can confirm it's about two or three times the thickness of the others – so that higher cost does make sense in context.

What really excites me are the replicas, though. Hasbro Pulse is also responsible for a wealth of roleplay items such as lightsabers (including my all-time favorite, the Darth Vader Force FX Elite Lightsaber), helmets, and even masks from the Marvel universe. I've found the vast majority of these to be truly excellent thanks to a host of neat interactive features, quality build materials, and impressive weathering that makes them look as though they've been stolen from a movie set. If you take that care and apply it to the Legend of Zelda universe, we'll be truly cooking. We'd get Master Swords and Hylian Shields like this replica that made us weep with pure Zelda fandom joy, sure, but that also opens up the floor to Majora's Mask or accessories like the hookshot.

Crucially, both action figures and replicas will be much easier to get hold of than anything else we've had before. Existing Legend of Zelda toys are hard to pin down and often expensive due to being out of print. Hasbro's equivalent, on the other hand? Judging by how widely available its other products are, they'd be easy to find.

Of course, there's plenty of other Hasbro-related possibilities to get excited about. Hasbro is responsible for a wealth of board and card games including Magic: The Gathering, for instance, so a crossover seems inevitable. In much the same way, I'd be surprised if a Zelda supplement of some description didn't appear in the Hasbro-owned D&D down the line. But despite all that, it's the action figures or replicas that excite me most – and that's all thanks to how good Pulse's Star Wars gear is.

For more cool collectibles, don't miss the new Lego Star Trek Enterprise Bridge from the original series or the recently-revealed, playable Lego Donkey Kong Arcade set.

Shigeru Miyamoto says that Nintendo will have to be more proactive in creating new characters, but has to be careful about it.

One thing Nintendo has continuously gotten stick for over the last decade or so is the tendency to rely on legacy series for its games. And while there have been more attempts at bringing something new to the table than many give it credit for (remember Codename S.T.E.A.M.?), a new IP – especially before 2015 or so – was a bit of a rare sight for Nintendo. However, Splatoon has proven that the sauce is still there, and has gone on to be one of Nintendo's premier franchises in its 11-year lifespan.

Speaking to Famitsu (via Nintendo Everything), Miyamoto says that "it’s good to create new characters," but the company has to be "strict in judging whether they’ll really work globally."

There have been a few, let's say, out-there titles in Nintendo's library that use pre-existing characters but almost feel like they belong to a different franchise (for example, Wario Master of Disguise), and Miyamoto admits that this happens at the company. "Even during the development of Splatoon, there were times when we thought, 'If the characters are going to be like this, wouldn’t it be better to just use Mario?' And then, when we came up with the prototype for the Inklings that are out there now, we realized, ‘With these, there’s no need to use Mario.'"

Aside from Nintendogs, the last new franchise Miyamoto was listed as coming up with the original concept for was Pikmin in 2001. He explains, "It’s been 25 years since I arrived at Pikmin, which was the result of my own pursuit of a globally appealing character, so we need to be more proactive to create new ones." However, don't expect it to come from Miyamoto, as he says, "I’ll leave that to the younger generation," which he did with Splatoon.

Shigeru Miyamoto admits Nintendo's been pumping out "a lot of remakes" as Ocarina of Time approaches, but says most people stopped playing the original games within 5 years anyway.

The Rockstar Games Workers Union has had its first meeting with Rockstar management after seeking recognition, confirming that "it was a step in the right direction."

Last month, it was revealed that Rockstar developers in the UK were seeking official union recognition – something which would give the union the right to negotiate with employers at GTA 6 developer Rockstar on behalf of its members regarding things like employment conditions. Rockstar agreed to meet with the union reps, and now, the union has shared an update on Twitter.

"We had our first meeting with Rockstar management!" a new post from the Rockstar Games Workers Union states, confirming that, as it stands, Rockstar has requested negotiations before agreeing to the union's voluntary recognition.

As for how things went, the RSGWU says: "It was a step in the right direction. We were able to make the case that workers' voices need to be heard and that we can collaborate to achieve this." Crucially, it adds, "we managed to secure a roadmap for a speedy negotiation process."

Next, the union says, "we will now look to agree on the 'bargaining unit' – the list of workers that the union can represent."

Although the union is seeking voluntary recognition, that isn't its only option. "If negotiations over a voluntary recognition agreement hit a wall, we will pursue statutory recognition, which legally obliges an employer to recognise a union once it represents a significant proportion of the workforce," it explains. And, although it doesn't share numbers, it sounds like the RSGWU is pretty big. In fact, it's "already the biggest game studio union in Europe."

With that said, there are benefits of voluntary recognition – as the RSGWU writes, it'd mean "anything can be written into the agreement document."

In this case, the union wants "no crunch" – ensuring that overtime is "always paid" and aiming for "a stronger process" to avoid crunching in the first place – as well as pay transparency, flexible working options, "a commitment to no layoffs," and to make it so no one's job can be "replaced with AI."

Crunch is a big part of this for the devs. One anonymous dev who recently spoke about the goals of the union alleged that "crunch is prevalent enough that the company built into our contracts, as standard, an opt-out of the Working Time Regulations."

For now, it seems we'll just have to wait and see how this all plays out. Last year, Rockstar Games was accused of union busting after over 30 employees – who were allegedly either current union members or planning to organize one – were fired. Rockstar claimed at the time that "we took action against a small number of individuals who were found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum, a violation of our company policies. This was in no way related to people's right to join a union or engage in union activities."

"There is a magic to what Rockstar does," former GTA 5 dev says ahead of GTA 6, "I just wish they could do it at a lower human cost."

Mario and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto says that the games that resonate the best with players aren't made to chase profit or global appeal.

Speaking to Famitsu (via machine translation by VGC), Miyamoto is asked why he thinks Nintendo's games have global appeal on the scale that they do. The Mario creator recalls the many times he's been asked how a "mustachioed middle-aged guy" became the best-selling game franchise of all-time, and admits he has wondered the same thing, but that the key may be that he was introduced alongside fun games.

And that may be the key, because if you really think about it, there is something kind of weird about video games' most iconic character not being a space marine or some sort of superpowered animal, but instead the guy you hire to fix your shower. But Miyamoto explains that when Nintendo comes up with new game ideas, the developers start with the fundamental ideas instead of looking at the current market trends.

However, that isn't to say those trends aren't taken into account, but starting from that point isn't the right way to go about it. The same goes for developers who seek to make a better version of the games they love. He explains that if a game is remembered for being unique, it'll end up making an impact on people.

Miyamoto also adds that he dislikes terms like "recouping costs" or "depreciation," adding that if you are constantly asking, "Will this make money right away?" you won't be making something unique or with broad appeal.

"The people funding these projects are doing it to make a fortune, so why celebrate things like ‘we recouped our investment’ or short-term profits?" He says. "To me, if you’ve burned through the talents of so many people just to achieve that, that feels like a massive failure."

He explains that when people at Nintendo ask what they should do, his number one piece of advice is to turn their idea into something that showcases they were the one who created the game. This has proven to be a great thing for many Japanese developers; you know when you're playing a game directed by Hideki Kamiya, Masahiro Sakurai, or Hideo Kojima simply by playing it, and Miyamoto bringing his own experiences into projects is how we got games like The Legend of Zelda and Pikmin in the first place.

Shigeru Miyamoto admits Nintendo's been pumping out "a lot of remakes" as Ocarina of Time approaches, but says most people stopped playing the original games within 5 years anyway.

Hasbro has pulled back the curtain on its first Legend of Zelda action figures during San Diego Comic Con 2026, and they're based on one of the most beloved games in the series.

Three toys will lead the line-up next year; franchise hero Link, villain Ganondorf, and Princess Zelda herself. All of them are inspired by the versions seen in Tears of the Kingdom, and they come with a host of accessories drawn from that game (including the broken Master Sword hilt for Zelda and a Hylian Shield for Link). All three Hasbro Legend of Zelda action figures will be available for pre-order later today. They should release in Spring 2027.

Produced by company imprint Hasbro Pulse (which is known for highly detailed action figures and replicas based on everything from Star Wars to Marvel), these Legend of Zelda toys stand at around six inches tall and feature multiple points of articulation for more realistic poses.

Hasbro Pulse has a reputation for creating impressively screen-accurate figures, and these don't disappoint. They certainly rival some of the best toys in terms of attention to detail. Actually, the thing that impresses me most is how they capture the cel-shaded design of the video game perfectly; they're surprisingly close to their on-screen counterparts. That's not easy to pull off without striding headfirst into the uncanny valley.

Am I a little disappointed we didn't get classic Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf to kick things off? Yeah, but Tears is a phenomenal game that's widely beloved with its own excellent designs, so I can't say it's too much of a blow. Plus, I'd be astounded if we didn't get more old-school Legend of Zelda action figures down the road. This isn't gonna be a one and done situation thanks to how broad the licensing deal is.

Indeed, this is just the start. As revealed last week, Hasbro has the license to produce all kinds of toys and games based on the series. Seeing as Hasbro Pulse creates props like helmets and lightsabers, I wouldn't be surprised if we got replicas based on Zelda mainstays like the Master Sword or Majora's Mask at some point.

What do you think about these figures? Will you be pre-ordering them? Let us know in the comments.

For more toy-related goodness, you'll want to believe you have space in your collection for this Lego X-Files set.

Yo dawg, I heard you like Grand Theft Auto, so I put multiple GTA games inside your GTA. That's probably what the modder behind the GTA multiverse was thinking, because he made it possible to quite literally jump between 3, Vice City, and San Andreas at will.

I'm not exaggerating, either. The creative mind in question is known as Dryxio, and he put up a video demonstrating his digital creation. Starting on Grove Street, the home of CJ in San Andreas, he's confronted by three portals: one going to a spot in the middle of 3, another to somewhere in Vice City, and another taking him to a different location in his current game.

He uses an assault rifle to show that what we're seeing is fully interactive. You can shoot through these portals at NPCs visible on the other end, as if it were a regular window. Stepping into one then places you in the shoes of the other protagonists, either Tommy Vercetti or Claude, and you can continue playing as normal through that particular installment.

It's truly a technical marvel, and in the YouTube comments he provides a bit of insight on how he did it. "All three games run inside the same process, sharing one Direct3D device," he writes.

"Each portal is a live GPU texture, the other game is actually running behind it, it's not a video or a captured window," he adds. "Walking through swaps which engine has control and the others keep running."

What he's saying is that all three games are literally running at the same time, and each instance of jumping through a portal transfers you over to that installment seamlessly. The modification isn't available publicly yet, but I'd advise following him for updates if you're keen to try it.

He's been modding Grand Theft Auto games for some time, with other videos on his channel for a San Andreas map editor and a filter for giving any clip the aesthetic of the 2004 classic PlayStation 2 release. This sets a pretty high bar for where he could go next. Can't believe we got all three PS2 GTA games running simultaneously before GTA 6.

GTA 6 probably won't include any cut content, says GTA 5 producer, even though Rockstar snuck "unannounced" game's missions into GTA 4

Leads working on Castlevania: Belmont's Curse have spoken out about how it will continue the series' tradition of challenging difficulty, while allowing players ways to mitigate it through level ups, exploring alternative paths, and if none of that works for you, difficulty settings.

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Belmont's Curse's producer Tsutomu Taniguchi describes how people might mitigate the difficulty by using the game's mechanics. "People might find the game difficult if they can't win a certain battle, but there are always numerous alternatives," he says. "There is also a level up system so new players and those who are not good at action games can still play. That's always been a part of the series."

Though there are ways in-game to negate the difficulty, there are also settings that deal with potential issues more directly. "For those who still feel that it's difficult, there are settings that adjust the level of difficulty in the options menu," he continues. "Whether someone is good at action games or not, there should be a setting that will leave as many players as possible satisfied."

However, the game's director Yukiko Hokao wants to emphasize that Belmont's Curse will still have the challenge the series is known for. "We didn't want it to be a simple or easy game," she says. "That isn't Castlevania. Looking at early games in the series, I think there is a kind of joy in making progress steadily through a difficult game."

Creative director Emmanuel Nouaille also weighs in with how fairness is at the core of the gameplay. "We also placed a big emphasis on gameplay being 'fair,'" he says. "We're confident that the level of difficulty will satisfy existing fans, and by removing barriers for new players it should be easy for them to get into the game as well."

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse was made to enlighten players who "love Metroidvanias" but have "never played a Castlevania game," Konami lead says.

After recently winning the license, Hasbro has teased its first Legend of Zelda action figures with a couple of iconic accessories – and these suggest which game the toys will be based on.

In a cryptic Instagram post that suggests "The hero's journey begins tomorrow," Hasbro Pulse (creator of the Star Wars Black Series line, e.g. some of the best toys in the biz) showed off miniature versions of the Master Sword and Hylian Shield that will presumably come with its first Legend of Zelda action figures. That in itself isn't a surprise; it stands to reason that a version of franchise hero Link with his most recognizable weapons will be front and center. However, what's interesting is the design used here. This Hylian Shield uses the same aesthetic introduced in Skyward Sword and continued through Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, suggesting that Hasbro's initial wave will be based one of those games.

If I had to guess, I'd assume we're getting Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom Link as our first Hasbro Legend of Zelda action figure. It'd certainly make sense; both games were wildly popular and are very much in the public zeitgeist, so it'd be logical to use them as the basis for a brand-new wave of toys.

There is another possibility, of course; that Nintendo has carried over the Skyward Sword shield design to its Ocarina of Time remake, and these action figures are based on that new game. I doubt it, though. We've not seen anything of the remake beyond a teaser trailer, so I'm not sure we'd get our first look at the revitalized character designs via these action figures.

What do you think we'll get from Hasbro's first Legend of Zelda action figures? Shout about it in the comments.

For more collectibles, don't miss the best Lego sets - our guide includes the must-have Deku Tree kit.

Splatoon Raiders producer Seita Inoue and director Yoshihiko Ito have discussed why the team chose to focus on a spin-off game rather than the series' next mainline entry, and basically, it's just because they wanted to. One of the big draws of developing the single-player spin-off, Splatoon Raiders, was that it allowed them to work on something different after 11 years of developing multiplayer games.

In an interview with Nintendo, Inoue discusses how the team wanted to work on a different type of project. "We’ve been going full speed ahead for over 11 years since the series’ launch, developing and updating three titles along the way," he says. "We thought it might be interesting to create something with a slightly different approach to gameplay, where you can really savor the action on your own."

Despite the team's pivot to a single-player game, Nintendo hasn't given up on Splatoon's multiplayer roots, with Inoue hinting that Splatoon 4 will be the next step for the team.

"One of our motivations for developing this game was our desire to create a new entry point into the series by releasing these non-competitive elements not just as a secondary feature, but as a standalone spin-off," he explains. "That said, we will continue to develop competitive gameplay going forward."

Ito previously worked primarily on Splatoon's single-player Salmon Run mode, so it makes sense that he would lead a Salmonid-based spin-off.

"Originally, around the time our work on updates to Splatoon 3 was winding down, we were exploring whether we could develop a single-player experience that players could dive into to their heart’s content, leveraging the gameplay of Salmon Run," he says.

With how frantic the attacks during Salmon Run are, the team started discussing using it as a way to leverage the Switch 2's power.

"We'd discussed developing the next Splatoon game for Nintendo Switch 2, and that being the case, we thought we could really take advantage of the system’s performance," he explains. "This prompted various experiments, such as ramping up the number of Salmonids for the 'ultimate multitasker' experience, where a single player battles them all."

Splatoon Raiders review: "Smartly translates Squidling vibes into a looter shooter I keep coming back to, even if some repetition grates"