New Game Preview
New Game Preview
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Get a sneak peek at the most anticipated games of the year. From action-packed adventures to mind-bending puzzles, we've got something for everyone. Stay ahead of the game with our exclusive previews!
Titan Quest II Preview – Beautiful Banality
Titan Quest II Preview – Beautiful BanalityIn our first preview for the long-awaited action RPG sequel, Titan Quest II has the makings of a really good game, but it won’t get there without a major redesign. Developed by a German studio Grimlore Games, a THQ-found company comprised of key members from a now-defunct indie studio Coreplay. Coreplay was responsible for some shovelware […] Source
Previews – Niche GamerAug 23
The Coolest Games We've Played During Gamescom 2025
The Coolest Games We've Played During Gamescom 2025 Gamescom 2025 has begun, and I'm on site in Cologne, Germany, checking out more than two dozen new and upcoming games, ranging from Hollow Knight: Silksong to The Outer Worlds 2 to 007 First Light and beyond! I'll be doing individual write-ups for many of these games, but I'll also be writing condensed quick-hit thoughts on the coolest games I've played so far, and you can read them right here (so bookmark this page, folks!).  The Most Dope Games We've Played During Gamescom 2025 Below, you'll find a running list of the games I've played during Gamescom 2025.  Hollow Knight: Silksong It's real, y'all. Hollow Knight: Silksong exists and is playable, and I checked out the game's very first level, Moss Grotto. After a brief cutscene that shows Hornet trapped in a Cinderella-like carriage (that she then breaks out of), I take control. Immediately, Hornet is much faster than the first game's protagonist, both as she platforms around and with her attacks. She has a new ability called Bind (used by pressing B on an Xbox controller) that heals her. However, you can't spam this ability as it requires using a bar on screen that must be full.  It recharges over time and by defeating enemies, and I found it pretty easy to get it full for another Bind. Platforming around Moss Grotto feels a lot like 2017's Hollow Knight, though Hornet is more nimble and can mantle up cliffs and platforms. The enemies here are easy to defeat, and it's not until I fight the demo's boss, Moss Mother, that I'm challenged. It's a fun fight, but still mostly easy.  With the demo and my hands-on time with Silksong behind me, I'm excited to see what else awaits me in the full game. If this first level is any indication, it's going to be a great Metroidvania, much like the first game. That said, I'm not convinced it's going to break through the hype and make a mark on the genre like the first game did. I'm also not convinced it needs to, though.  For more, read my full Hollow Knight: Silksong hands-on thoughts here .  Pokémon Legends: Z-A Pokémon Legends: Z-A is not just a sequel to The Pokémon Company's latest spin-off/experiment to its traditional Pokémon series, but also the first Pokémon game launching on Nintendo Switch 2. Though I'm not convinced the experience will be great on Switch, after 30 minutes of hands-on time with it on Switch 2, I'm starting to believe this will be the best Pokémon games in years. My demo consisted of two parts: three trainer battles within a nighttime-exclusive battle zone, and a fight against a Mega-Evolved Absol. Stay with me here: Pokémon Legends: Z-A's combat reminds me most of Final Fantasy XII, something I suspected more and more as I heard more and more about its combat. It's real-time, but rather than mashing buttons to attack, you select moves in real-time that your Pokémon performs, then, while waiting for that move's cooldown to complete, use other moves. All the while, I'm dodging and running to get my Pokémon out of harm's way and utilizing stat-affecting moves to prime the opponent's Pokémon for my next move. It's an exhilarating change to the Pokémon formula, and its MMO-like cooldown-focused combat reminds me of Final Fantasy XII's hybrid combat that fell somewhere between real-time and the timed combat of its MMO predecessor, Final Fantasy XI. I like switching Pokémon on the fly, using my knowledge of effectiveness to bring the right one out from my party, and I especially like sneaking up on unaware trainers to start the fight with a big advantage. These battles were simple, but I can already see how the challenge could ramp up in the full game. In fact, I got a taste of that challenge in a 1v1 fight between my Lucario (capable of mega-evolution) and a Mega-evolved Absol. Not only did I have to balance my attack moves with my defensive ones like Protect to avoid fainting, but as the trainer, I had to dodge out of harm's way to prevent Absol from hurting me. This battle against Absol felt like an MMO boss fight where I had to pay attention to its moves and react and counter appropriately. Absol even had an AOE attack that blanketed the arena in damage after a brief charging period I could interrupt with a super-effective attack. This fight wasn't easy – I actually lost my first go – but it's a level of challenge I'm happy to see in a Pokémon game. I can't wait to see what else awaits in the final game this October.  Read my full hands-on preview thoughts here .  Keeper I didn't get to go hands-on with Keeper, but after a 30-minute hands-off preview of it, with developer Double Fine Productions' Tim Schafer no less, I wish I did. Set in a fantastical Salvador Dali surrealist world where humanity is no more and nature has taken over, Keeper is about a lighthouse with legs. And a sea bird named Twig. There's also a village of tiny lil guys that are actually clocks, a mystical area where pink pollen lowers your gravity, and so much more.  But I only saw snippets of this across three gameplay segments. At the heart of each is vibes and atmosphere, and according to Schafer, that's the heart of the game. There's no combat. There are some puzzles, but they short and sweet. There's no dialogue. Instead, Schafer and Co. want you bask in the ambiance of Keeper. I'll gladly do it, because that ambiance is great so far.  I'm excited to see how the core gameplay – walking around this island to reach its mountainous peak while using the lighthouse's light to illuminate objects – transforms across the game's runtime. Fortunately, I don't have to wait too long, because Keeper is out on October 17.  For more, read my full Keeper preview thoughts here .  The Blood of the Dawnwalker Rebel Wolves is a studio made up of former CD Projekt Red devs who worked on Cyberpunk 2077 and critically (for The Blood of the Dawnwalker), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I mention this because The Blood of the Dawnwalker feels like another timeline's Witcher, except instead of fantastical monsters to hunt and execute, it's vampires.  Protagonist Coen is a Dawnwalker, which means he can tap into vampiric abilities at night and magic during the day. The day/night cycle is core to Dawnwalker, as Coen only has so many days to save his family. Every quest he completes has a time notch associated with it, and upon completing quests, Coen's timeline gains a few notches, slowly decreasing the amount of time he has left to save his family. I'm not quite sure how this works in full, but it's an interesting gameplay addition I'm excited to see more of.  The combat itself is... very Witcher, except it's not just swords; Coen can utilize his vampiric claws and other vampire abilites (like sucking the blood of enemies to regain health). During the day, when he's not tapped into his vampiric abilities, Coen can use magic, like speaking with the dead to learn critical information about quests and more.  If you watched gameplay of Dawnwalker, didn't know what it was, and called it Witcher, I wouldn't blame you. A lot of what it's doing is clearly a result of former Witcher devs creating a new IP. But with its vampiric twist, day/night cycle, and time restraint, it's clealry charting its own course through medieval times. It still has a ways to go – it's not set to launch until next year – but it's one I'll absolutely be keeping an eye on.  Knights of the Fall Knights of the Fall comes from Airo Games and is one of publisher Bohemia Interactive's five games in its Bohemia Incubator project. Though my hands-on time with Knights of the Fall was just an early look at what the team has planned for this game, its unique blend of 2D sidescrolling with tactical, combo-heavy combat has me intrigued.  There wasn't much story to my quick demo – I believe it's set in a post-apocalyptic Japan that's been decimated by a sci-fi phenomenon that has caused grotesque monsters to inhabit spaces once home to humanity. You play as a lone soldier of sorts, handy with a katana and a wrist-mounted gun. Using this gun, you can stun enemies, which opens them up to become victims of your gravity gadget. You can pull stunned enemies toward you and decapitate them, push them into other enemies (especially useful if they're an explosive enemy), or let them fly past you, opening you up for an easy escape.  That was my main method for taking down enemies, though utilizing the katana's three-hit combo and parries did well, too. In my short demo, the protagonist was after some long-forgotten logs, left somewhere in a house. I explored various houses in search of these logs, running into different enemies along the way. I enjoy the game's slower, more methodical pace in the 2D sidescroller space, and its unique art style makes it stand out even more.  Airo tells me there's still lots of work to be done – it hopes to release a demo or playtest of sorts for the public next year to try it out – but after my hands-on time with the game, Knights of the Fall is one I'm going to keep an eye on.  Borderlands 4 Game Informer has covered Borderlands 4 extensively – it was one of our recent cover stories after all . But that didn't stop me from giving it a go during Gamescom 2025. For this quick demo, I played through a vault mission where I had to defeat waves of enemies, including mini bosses and a final boss, to complete a journey to the end of a vault where tons of loot awaited me.  It was mostly a showcase of the game's combat, but I did notice how much more enjoyable (and less annoying) the writing was compared to Borderlands 3. It shows a lot more restraint than its predecessor. Sure, it's still the Borderlands humor you expect, but instead of 15 jokes a minute, it's a joke every couple of minutes. I really welcome this change of pace in its cadence of humor, and it allows me to focus better on the mission at hand. And that was crucial because reaching the end of this vault was tough work.  Enemies pursue you aggressively, forcing me to stay on the move throughout each wave. Bosses killed me more than once (and so did basic mob enemies), and I had to strategically think about when it was best to utilize my ultimate-like signature abilities. I felt challenged in a way that forced me to rethink my more casual approach to Borderlands 4 shootouts, and it was a feeling I really enjoyed. I look forward to seeing the other ways this game will keep me on my toes when it launches next month.  Black State Developer Motion Blur's Black State is a game I knew very little about before encountering it here at Gamescom. It gives off big Unreal Engine 5 vibes (you know the vibes), and while I initially thought it could go the way of this year's MindsEye, I walked away from my half-hour of hands-on time with the game at least willing to give it a shot next time I can.  Set in a futuristic sci-fi world, it plays with time travel in a fun way. In my demo, the protagonist is warped to a military camp just moments after enemy forces there launches ballistic missiles into the sky. Because of the time travel shenanigans at play, our protagonist already knows these missiles will start the very war he's trying to prevent. It's a cool premise, but unfortunately, I don't learn too much more of the story at play here.  I do learn a lot about Black State's gunplay, which is serviceable. The machine guns and pistols feel fine, and the shotgun packs a nice punch, but I'm most intrigued by items like grenades. Instead of chucking them into the air, you roll them on the ground and they autonomously roll right to an enemy, sending their body parts flying in gory fashion. The same can be said for special electric stun grenades that are effective against robots. There's even a Cleaner grenade that lasers away bodies, removing those you've killed from the sightlines of other enemies in the area.  That Cleaner grenade is especially useful when utilizing stealth to dispose of enemies scattered about the military base I'm infiltrating. Motion Blur isn't reinventing the wheel with stealth in Black State and it's about what you expect – sneak up on enemies and then press a button to execute them.  The final aspect of Black State that intrigues me is its portal doors. Sometimes, when walking through a door, you can walk back through it and appear in a totally different place. I'm told this will be explained better in the final game when I understand the story more, but I'm hoping Motion Blur uses this tech and premise to take our protagonist to more unique places than military bases.  Pragmata  I played one of the first stages in Pragmata and I legitimately cannot wait to play more. It feels like a new type of game, something I haven't felt since 2019's Death Stranding. That's because it's one part a third-person shooter, another part a puzzle game. The unique twist of Pragmata, though, is that the third-person shooting and puzzle solving happen at the same time. That's because the little android girl that accompanies protagonist Hugh (I love that this dude, the protagonist of a wild sci-fi story, has such a normal name) has the ability to hack into enemies.  You do this by moving a cursor along a grid, ideally moving it through debuffs that affect the enemy upon completing the hack. This hack weakens the enemy (and can damage them, too), opening them up for some heavy damage via Hugh's pistol and other weapons he can use like a fusion rifle or trap gun. I really enjoy the added stress of solving these puzzles on the fly while engaging in third-person shooter combat, and even in the early stages of Pragmata, it's good fun. I imagine this fun and stress will ramp up later in the game.  The design of this world is great, too, with an excellent sci-fi soundscape to accompany your every action. Electricity sizzles, fire explodes across the screen, and every weapon sounds cool. It also looks great, ironically evoking a lot of Death Stranding's unique sci-fi vibe.  Capcom's more experimental games of late have impressed me greatly – looking at you, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess – and Pragmata seems set on joining this string of releases. It's due out sometime next year, and I look forward to seeing what else is in store for Hugh and his hacker robot surrogate daughter.  Resident Evil Requiem Y'all, we are so back; not that we ever left, because Capcom has been releasing banger after banger when it comes to its prolific survival horror series, but Resident Evil Requiem is already shaping up to be an excellent game. The demo I played wasn't anything new – it's what Capcom let Game Informer's very own Marcus Stewart played during Summer Games Fest this year – but it was my first time playing, okay!! It begins with Grace Ashcroft upside down, strapped to a gurney, her blood being drained into blood bags... for some reason. If Ashcroft sounds familiar, you're probably recognizing it as the last name of Grace's mother, Alyssa, the playable Raccoon City field reporter from the Outbreak series of RE games .  My hands-on time with Requiem begins after a cutscene showing Grace strategically escaping from this gurney. My mission? Escape this decrepit care center. After stepping out of the room, I'm faced with a terrifying, dimly lit hallway, reminiscent of the hallway from P.T. Hands shaking, I head down it, attempting to find something to help me out of this hellhole.  I reach a storage room, but the light doesn't work and I can't see anything in the room. So I double back to where I started and go down the other side of the hallway. As I make my way to the end of the hallway, the walls and ceiling shake – I'm not alone.  I find a door adorned with Cherub imagery, but it's locked. I continue down the hallway, open a drawer, and find a Cherub key. I know what to do next. After opening the Cherub door, I frantically search for anything useful. I find a lighter! Aha! Light! I dip back to the other side of the hallway and light up the storage room, but not before a dead body jump scare starts me and then something even more terrifying: a massive hulking monster that I can best describe as a woman with extremely large humanoid feet, draped in distressed cloth, with a face not even a mother could love. Something is very wrong with this creature, and she's hungry for me, it seems.   Grace is the more helpless, "god, how do I get out of here?" type of character. As such, I don't have a way to fight back against this creature, save for throwing bottles in the direction opposite of me as a distraction.  The next five minutes of my demo – also the last five minutes of my demo – can best be described as me poorly escaping the clutches of this creature while trying to find a way to access a battery stuck behind a screwed-in panel on a wall. I say poorly because I'm unsuccessful in time, dying at the hands of this monster. I'm not allowed to describe the game over death scenes of Grace, but they sure are something .  One last thing: I was able to switch back and forth between first-person and third-person perspectives. Both work extremely well in Requiem and I have no idea which one I'll choose for my full playthrough of the game.  Fortunately, you don't have to wait too long to see them for yourself because Resident Evil 9: Requiem launches February 27, 2026.  [ Editor's Note: An earlier version of this Resident Evil Requiem write-up stated "Capcom has made clear that the dual protagonist approach of Requiem means Leon is the heroic action hero and Grace is the..." The article has been updated to remove this line, as Capcom has never stated anything about a dual protagonist system. Game Informer regrets the error.] Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV The single pre-alpha mission I played was simple: defeat the Ork base. I began at the bottom of the map and that base was at the top of the map. Dotted in between their base and mine were various neutral control points. Taking them over allows me to build various buildings where I can deploy more troops, elite soldiers, vehicles, and more. You absolutely cannot win without winning these control points, as they effectively allow you to move your base of operations and army manufacturing sites forward. Other than that, I needed to direct my soldiers and vehicles to hordes of enemies to defeat. It's all simple on paper, but much harder in execution. I sucked at it. I don't want to suck at it. My desire to play more is rooted in beating this mission one day. And I will.  Reanimal I love Little Nightmares I and II, both developed by Tarsier Studios, and though I'm excited for Supermassive Games' take on the series in Little Nightmares III, I'm more excited for Reanimal, the upcoming adventure game from Tarsier. It's set to launch sometime in early 2026, and after playing a quick 20-minute hands-on demo, I can't wait. It is a lot like Little Nightmares, but with a different coat of paint on it... on the surface. Small and smart tweaks to elements like its camera work, puzzles, and more show Tarsier still has more give to this genre.  During my demo, which I played in co-op alongside another member of the press, we needed to move a cart across some tracks over a massive gap. As you might expect, especially if you're familiar with Little Nightmares, puzzles required us to work together, sync button presses, and even work in tandem to properly work a see-saw lever up and down to move the aforementioned cart. During this section, we also encountered what I can best describe as meat sacks: the abandoned flesh of humanoid monsters without innards, and a large and terrifying farmer hat man. We hid under benches, snuck through grass, and sprinted for our dear lives to escape his clutches (but not before dying and being eaten by him first). It was a blast, and I enjoyed the extended control of the camera and use of an X-Y-Z plane, in terms of perspective, to make every action feel more cinematic.  We'll see how it pans out next year, but so far, Reanimal might turn out to be even scarier than Tarsier's Little Nightmare games, and it's undoubtedly going to be just as fun to play if this preview is any indication.  Ground Zero I cannot emphasize this enough: if you are not paying attention to Ground Zero, you should be. Coming from Sweden-based newcomer studio Malformation Games, Ground Zero is – wait for it – a survival horror game set in post-apocalyptic South Korea with visuals and gameplay inspired by PS1-era titles like Resident Evil. It has save rooms, inventory management, tank controls (as well as more modern controls), fixed camera angles, and 2D pre-rendered backgrounds.  Dropped into South Korea's Busan, special forces agent Seo-Yeon, with help from an agent companion named Evan, will travel more than 125 miles in her journey across a ruined South Korea to Daejeon as she tries to piece together what's become of the country after a meteor strike has morphed humans into monstrous creatures. It looks and plays like a PS1-era survival horror, but features unique touches that make it distinctly its own. I'll elaborate more in the separate preview I plan to write for Ground Zero, but just know: if you're a survival horror sicko, you should keep an eye out for Ground Zero.  Exoborne I enjoyed my Exoborne demo so much that it has me wondering if maybe I've been wrong – maybe I am an extraction shooter sicko. Perhaps "sicko" isn't the right word, considering I've barely dipped my toes into the genre, but it's a style of game I rarely pay attention to. After 30 minutes with Exoborne, I am, at the very least, going to start taking notice. In fact, it has a closed playtest coming up next month, and I'm hoping to get into it.  It follows the extraction shooter formula closely: drop onto a map, take out enemy AI and other actual players, loot as much as you can, and get out with all of it intact. Oh, and if you die, none of that loot comes with you. It has a lot of risk versus reward opportunities. But Exoborne's twist on the formula comes in the form of futuristic skeletal rigs that grant you special abilities, like being able to super-jump and hover via jetpack, and post-apocalyptic weather. There's fire, lightning, and, as I experienced in my demo today, tornadoes.  Of course, this weather poses a threat, but it can also be used to your advantage. I loved using tornadoes to launch into the air and glide to safety and looting what I wanted amidst a firefight. I look forward to seeing how other types of dangerous weather shift the tides of the various combative encounters Exoborne follows with each extraction run.  Rewilders: The Last Spring I really enjoyed Herobeat's Endling – Extinction Is Forever, an adventure game about foxes with something to say about the environment and humanity's impact on it. After watching some Herobeat devs play the team's next game, Rewilders: The Last Spring, I'm excited for more. Like Endling, it, too, has something to say about the environment, this time about humanity's destruction of nature and its effect on the natural world, but it's wrapped up in a mechanical package I prefer: roguelike.  After your four siblings are consumed by hatred, they become bosses scattered around a destroyed land. Your mission is to explore these lands, restore life to your siblings, and defeat them to save them. Rewilders is a run-based roguelike, so the world you explore and restore is different in each run, but the Hantus – fictional animals with abilities you use in combat that populate your airship home base – stay with you. You can upgrade their skills, teach them new ones, and mix and match your playstyle based on the ones in your four-Hantu party. Alongside Hantus, you'll fight off once-beautiful creatures poisoned by the environment's destruction in third-person Dark Souls-inspired combat.  The entire package is wrapped up in a cozy visual style, and I look forward to seeing if Rewilders can successfully marry two communities – Soulslike and cozy fans – to create something unique in the roguelike space.  Lego Batman: The Legacy of the Dark Knight I will have a lot more to say about this game very soon after I write a separate preview for it, but Lego Batman: The Legacy of the Dark Knight is easily the most exciting release from developer TT Games' history, for me. It is a Lego Batman game based on the movies I love – pretty much all of the Batman movies in the character's lineage – while also pulling inspiration from other Batman media, such as TV shows and comics. And, perhaps most excitingly, it's heavily cribbing the combat from Rocksteady's Batman Arkham games to create easily TT Games' best combat.  After roughly 45 minutes with the game, exploring the open-world Gotham City and playing through a full mission set in ACE Chemicals, I'm comfortable betting that Legacy of the Dark Knight will join games like Arkham Asylum and City as some of the best superhero games ever made. The humor, charm, collectibles, and reverence TT Games has always excelled at are here, but now the studio is using a world-class combat system as the basis for its latest take on the Caped Crusader, and it feels incredible.  Stay tuned for more of my thoughts on Legacy of the Dark Knight, including some information I learned from an interview with one of its lead developers.  Crimson Desert After a new 45-minute demo with Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert, which starts with a brand-new tutorial tweaked heavily following fan feedback before placing me in the center of a chaotic battlefield, I continue to be heavily intrigued by this game. It is doing so. dang. much. Every time I learn more about the game, I believe a little more and more that this team might pull it off, but there is truly a staggering amount of systems and mechanics in this open-world single-player RPG.  The tutorial alone took me 15 minutes, and it features a staggeringly large number of moves and combos to complete actions. For example, to lift a banner flag and place it into a control point – a critical aspect of gaining ground on the battlefield – I had to press L3 + R3 to go into Focus mode, then press Triangle + Circle to pick up the banner, then press X rapidly to lift the banner, then press Triangle to hold the banner once it's been fully lifted off the ground, then walk it over to the control point, and press L1 + another button I can't remember to place the banner in the control point. Okay, it sounds ridiculous typing it out, and it somewhat felt the same in practice.  But I can't deny that I'm intrigued by the way these myriad systems interact with each other and work in practice in combat, exploration, and elsewhere in Crimson Desert. There's so much happening in the game that it almost feels fake, but it's not – I played it.  Project Spectrum Project Spectrum comes from China-based studio, Team Jade, and one of its main leads is a former Call of Duty: Mobile designer. As is becoming increasingly frequent in China, a mobile developer/team is looking to break into the triple-A world , and Project Spectrum presents an interesting case for why horror fans should keep an eye on Team Jade's next title.  It's an asymmetrical first-person multiplayer shooter that features soldiers called agents, PvE elements, and a controllable Executioner, a Symbiote-like thing that stalks agents while they investigate anomalies and other supernatural elements. Before Team Jade told me, I could already tell Project Spectrum is inspired by Annihilation and Arrival , and I learn during a Q&A with the team that other inspirations include the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. books, too. Project Spectrum is a tactical first-person shooter, the kind where every bullet counts, and it features a unique "Sanity" system that directly affects what you see. Bad weather, enemies, and more can bring your sanity down, causing you to hallucinate and see the world differently. That this happens while a player-controlled Executioner stalker is hunting you makes it all the more exciting. It's still somewhat early in development – production only began last year – but what I saw was unique enough to guarantee I'll keep an eye on this asymmetrical multiplayer game, a genre I typically don't care to monitor.  Recur Braid fans, this one's for you. Recur comes from Germany-based studio kaleidoscube and uses time-advancement elements to create unique puzzles in a world with a visual style inspired by Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse . It helps that one of the developers actually worked on that film. The premise is this: your world is ending, you need to save it, and when you walk right, time advances, and when you walk left, time reverses.  I only got to play 15-ish minutes of Recur, but I really enjoyed solving the puzzles presented to me using this unique time mechanic. It took a second for my brain to understand how I could use this mechanic to solve puzzles, but once it clicked, I wanted more. Unfortunately, I only got a taste of Recur's puzzles, but I can't wait for more. However, if you think you're immediately turned off by how many times I used the word "puzzle" here, fret not – Recur's director tells me Recur isn't really a puzzle game, but rather, an adventure game with some puzzles. I look forward to learning what that means when Recur launches sometime in the future. 
Game Informer PreviewsAug 22
Onimusha: Way Of The Sword Preview – A Potential Renaissance In The Making
Onimusha: Way Of The Sword Preview – A Potential Renaissance In The Making Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Capcom Developer: Capcom Release: 2026 As someone who only admired the Onimusha series from a distance during its heyday, Onimusha: Way of the Sword is an exciting prospect. It’s a modernized entry point for newcomers like myself that takes combat cues from its contemporaries while still feeling distinctly of its era. I traveled to Capcom’s San Francisco office to check out the first playable demo of the game, and though my time was short, I’m feeling good about this demonic romp. My demo unfolds seemingly early into the adventure. Protagonist Miyamoto Musashi, a fictionalized take on the real historical swordsman (and sporting the likeness of Japanese acting legend Toshiro Mifune), arrives at Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Kyoto to purify it of invading demons, known as Genma. Armed with the powerful Oni gauntlet, an heirloom the brash Musashi doesn’t even want, and his trusty katana, he’s well-equipped for the task. As I make my way down a mountain trail toward the temple, villagers flee the invading Genma, presenting my first opportunity to sample combat. The feel of Way of the Sword’s light and heavy attacks reminds me of another recent Capcom title, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess. It’s not as crisp or fast-paced as some other action games; it’s reminiscent of melee combat from the 2000s (ironically, Onimusha’s prime), and that’s a positive…I think. Most of the enemies I encounter in this section drop fast, however, and the difficulty is extremely manageable.  Musashi and enemies have stamina meters, and depleting a foe’s energy with successive attacks allows the execution of finishing moves called Break Issen attacks. Musashi may backstab a foe, then slice it down the middle to split it in half, for example. On the defensive side, Musashi’s auto-directional blocking means he can defend from all sides no matter where he’s facing (provided you have the stamina), but I much prefer parrying attacks.  Parrying drains enemy stamina quicker, and it looks and feels great thanks to cool sword-clashing animations. Parrying also opens foes to attacks by often repositioning Musashi behind them, providing a window to slice and dice unimpeded. Hitting the parry button and immediately hitting X (on PlayStation) executes a strong retaliation attack, such as deflecting arrows back at their senders. Furthermore, parrying or dodging in succession builds respective meters: blue for parry, and red for dodge. When full, the parry meter blankets Musashi’s sword in a sparkling blue aura, allowing me to execute multiple foes in quick succession. A filled dodge meter, meanwhile, unleashes a devastating mult-hit attack.  Defeated foes drop color-coded souls that Musashi absorbs with his Oni Gauntlet. Red souls serve as currency to purchase enhancements, and yellow souls replenish health. Blue souls fill the Oni Power Gauge, enabling the use of special weapons called Oni Armaments. I have twin daggers called the Two Celestials, and when the Oni Power Gauge is full, I hit R1 to unleash a short but powerful flurry. Landing hits with Oni Armaments also extracts yellow souls, making them great for siphoning health when Musashi is on the ropes.    After slicing foes and collecting plants called Hozuki to fill my health pouch, I reach the temple complex. A mass of dark energy appears, causing the Gauntlet to react and absorb it, violently triggering a vision of the past. A procession of shadowy villagers marches somberly toward the temple's high platform, where my objective lies, but for what purpose? The Oni Gauntlet speaks to Musashi – yes, it can talk – explaining that the black mass is a concentration of malice created by the cruel memories Musashi is now witnessing. Purifying the temple calls for finding the source of this darkness.  “Right, Gauntlet Lady. Enough of that,” barks Musashi. He begins to ask questions, but the gauntlet curtly cuts him off to decline his probing. She refuses to be addressed as “Gauntlet Lady,” you see. The annoyed Musashi rolls his eyes and silently acquiesces. It’s a humorous little exchange, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this reluctant relationship develops.  Witnessing this vision also unlocks an ability called the Oni Vision. This allows Musashi to see the demonic presence in an environment otherwise invisible to human eyes. To bypass a gateway blocked by a supernatural force field, pressing the left and right shoulder buttons sends a gold pulse, revealing a giant spectral rope. Following it leads to a spider-like creature hanging at the rope's base; killing it removes the rope, and the forcefield dissipates.   I make my way toward the temple’s high platform, where I discover another mass of Malice. This one shows villagers watching helplessly as their neighbors are forcefully thrown off the building to a ravine below, including a father who sacrifices a son despite the boy pleading to spare his life. This disturbing scene is interrupted by a surprise attack by Sasaki Ganryu, another historically significant swordsman and Musashi’s long-time rival. He, too, wears an Oni Gauntlet and is practically salivating at the chance to test his newfound powers on me.  The resulting boss fight is an enjoyable sword duel that challenges my parrying prowess. Unfortunately for the cocky Sasaki, I have a good handle on deflecting attacks, and countering his assaults creates openings for me to cut him apart while rapidly draining his stamina. Wearing him out creates a special form of Break Issen attacks where I can freely choose a body part to attack, such as his head or limbs. Each area is color-coded, indicating the type of damage it will deal; red inflicts extra damage, while purple rewards extra souls. The fight, with how it encourages and rewards constant parrying, is reminiscent of a sword duel in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, minus the brutal difficulty; I defeat Sasaki in quick and, dare I say, dominant fashion. It may not have been a long time, but it was a good one. Onimusha: Way of the Sword follows in the old-school-made-new-again template of some of Capcom’s recent hits, such as Resident Evil and Kunitsu-Gami. At its most basic, the action recaptures how the genre felt several generations ago, but the parry system feels sophisticated and flashy enough to hang with similar systems in modern games. In a world where the action genre is increasingly becoming a synonym for Soulslike, it’s also nice to have what is shaping up to be an enjoyable, old-fashioned take on the style. We’ll have to wait until 2026 to see if Way of the Sword can kick off a similar renaissance for Onimusha that Resident Evil and Monster Hunter have enjoyed, but I’m feeling good about its chances so far.
Game Informer PreviewsAug 22
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War IV Makes Me Want To Become An RTS Sicko
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War IV Makes Me Want To Become An RTS Sicko Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV was originally on my Gamescom schedule as "Unannounced RTS game," and I took the appointment out of pure curiosity. I haven't played an RTS game in ages, save for the excellent Pikmin games, and I wanted to know what "unannounced" was – when I saw Dawn of War IV announced during Opening Night Live earlier this week, I immediately knew it was the game I had an appointment booked for.  I'll be honest: my excitement for this appointment was quickly dampened when I saw the reveal trailer for Dawn of War IV. I'm not super familiar with the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, save for last year's great Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 , and, as I already mentioned, RTS games aren't really for me. Fast forward two days later and I'm sitting on a bench in Cologne, Germany, an hour separated from my hour-long Dawn of War IV hands-on preview, eating those words (or thoughts, rather – I promise I didn't talk out loud while sitting surrounded by strangers during Opening Night Live).    Now, let me preface this: I didn't do well during my hands-on preview of the game. In fact, I struggled to make any forward progress as the Blood Ravens (Space Marine) faction against the Orks. Sitting in a room surrounded by other members of the press who clearly live and breathe RTS games, I knew I was doing terribly. However, it's how poorly I was doing that has me wanting to play this game more; I'm even considering giving the older Dawn of War games a try, though it's clear based on the in-room sentiment that I should avoid Dawn of War III.  Not only did I have a good time tinkering with Dawn of War IV's many, many, many systems, units, buildings, and more, but I feel compelled to learn how this RTS series works, if only, at least, to go back and defeat the Orks in that single mission. It wasn't like playing a Soulslike or another challenging type of game where I just need to keep practicing; I need to learn Dawn of War IV's systems, understand how different combos work best together, and learn the strategy behind gaining ground, winning and holding control points, and ultimately, defeating the enemy.  The single pre-alpha mission I played was simple: defeat the Ork base. I began at the bottom of the map and that base was at the top. Dotted in between their base and mine were various neutral control points. Taking them over allows me to build various buildings where I can deploy more troops, elite soldiers, vehicles, and more. You absolutely cannot win without winning these control points, as they effectively allow you to move your base of operations and army manufacturing sites forward. Other than that, I needed to direct my soldiers and vehicles to hordes of enemies to defeat. It's all simple on paper, but much harder in execution.  I sucked at it. I don't want to suck at it. My desire to play more is rooted in beating this mission one day. I suppose this is a roundabout way of saying I think Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV is going to be a hit because if it has me wanting more, I can only imagine what those who already love these games are going to feel. And let's be real: this all might be a way for me to justify the horrid RTS performance I turned in today.    If you're already a Dawn of War fan and are not enthused reading an amateur's thoughts on the newly announced entry in the long-running hardcore RTS series, don't worry – I'm a much better notetaker than I am a Blood Raven commander and I have plenty to share about what to expect in Dawn of War IV when it launches next year. I've listed them below in bullet form for easy digestion:  There are over 10,000 permutations for combat, thanks to different factions, all the units, abilities, and more. Developer King Art Games says this is going to be the biggest Dawn of War game in series history in terms of content and game modes that will be available at launch. Dawn of War IV will launch with Skirmish, Multiplayer (co-op for Skirmish and Campaign), and Last Stand. There are four playable factions, and each has its own Campaign: Space Marine: the Blood Ravens Adeptus Mechanicus: this is their debut as a playable faction; they are zealous tech priests that use data and connectivity to augment forces and overcome foes. Necrons: one of the biggest factions; originally promised for Dawn of War III, but wasn't delivered. Orks: They rely on brute force and overwhelming numbers to beat enemies to a pulp. Each faction has well over a dozen missions to its name: Not every mission will be playable in your first playthrough, as critical narrative choices will change how your Campaign plays out. Dawn of War IV will feature a "flagship story campaign" with a narrative written by Black Library author John French, who has written various books set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Dawn of War IV marks a return to the planet Kronus, last seen in the first Dawn of War game. Three returning characters (so far, at least): Cyrus, Chief Librarian Jonah Orion, and Ork boss Gorgutz There are over 40 minutes of "gorgeous" cinematics in the game.  For more about Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV, check out the reveal trailer . 
Game Informer PreviewsAug 21
The Coolest Games We've Played During Gamescom 2025
The Coolest Games We've Played During Gamescom 2025 Gamescom 2025 has begun, and I'm on site in Cologne, Germany, checking out more than two dozen new and upcoming games, ranging from Hollow Knight: Silksong to The Outer Worlds 2 to 007 First Light and beyond! I'll be doing individual write-ups for many of these games, but I'll also be writing condensed quick-hit thoughts on the coolest games I've played so far, and you can read them right here (so bookmark this page, folks!).  The Most Dope Games We've Played During Gamescom 2025 Below, you'll find a running list of the games I've played during Gamescom 2025.  Hollow Knight: Silksong It's real, y'all. Hollow Knight: Silksong exists and is playable, and I checked out the game's very first level, Moss Grotto. After a brief cutscene that shows Hornet trapped in a Cinderella-like carriage (that she then breaks out of), I take control. Immediately, Hornet is much faster than the first game's protagonist, both as she platforms around and with her attacks. She has a new ability called Bind (used by pressing B on an Xbox controller) that heals her. However, you can't spam this ability as it requires using a bar on screen that must be full.  It recharges over time and by defeating enemies, and I found it pretty easy to get it full for another Bind. Platforming around Moss Grotto feels a lot like 2017's Hollow Knight, though Hornet is more nimble and can mantle up cliffs and platforms. The enemies here are easy to defeat, and it's not until I fight the demo's boss, Moss Mother, that I'm challenged. It's a fun fight, but still mostly easy.  With the demo and my hands-on time with Silksong behind me, I'm excited to see what else awaits me in the full game. If this first level is any indication, it's going to be a great Metroidvania, much like the first game. That said, I'm not convinced it's going to break through the hype and make a mark on the genre like the first game did. I'm also not convinced it needs to, though.  For more, read my full Hollow Knight: Silksong hands-on thoughts here .  Pokémon Legends: Z-A Pokémon Legends: Z-A is not just a sequel to The Pokémon Company's latest spin-off/experiment to its traditional Pokémon series, but also the first Pokémon game launching on Nintendo Switch 2. Though I'm not convinced the experience will be great on Switch, after 30 minutes of hands-on time with it on Switch 2, I'm starting to believe this will be the best Pokémon games in years. My demo consisted of two parts: three trainer battles within a nighttime-exclusive battle zone, and a fight against a Mega-Evolved Absol. Stay with me here: Pokémon Legends: Z-A's combat reminds me most of Final Fantasy XII, something I suspected more and more as I heard more and more about its combat. It's real-time, but rather than mashing buttons to attack, you select moves in real-time that your Pokémon performs, then, while waiting for that move's cooldown to complete, use other moves. All the while, I'm dodging and running to get my Pokémon out of harm's way and utilizing stat-affecting moves to prime the opponent's Pokémon for my next move. It's an exhilarating change to the Pokémon formula, and its MMO-like cooldown-focused combat reminds me of Final Fantasy XII's hybrid combat that fell somewhere between real-time and the timed combat of its MMO predecessor, Final Fantasy XI. I like switching Pokémon on the fly, using my knowledge of effectiveness to bring the right one out from my party, and I especially like sneaking up on unaware trainers to start the fight with a big advantage. These battles were simple, but I can already see how the challenge could ramp up in the full game. In fact, I got a taste of that challenge in a 1v1 fight between my Lucario (capable of mega-evolution) and a Mega-evolved Absol. Not only did I have to balance my attack moves with my defensive ones like Protect to avoid fainting, but as the trainer, I had to dodge out of harm's way to prevent Absol from hurting me. This battle against Absol felt like an MMO boss fight where I had to pay attention to its moves and react and counter appropriately. Absol even had an AOE attack that blanketed the arena in damage after a brief charging period I could interrupt with a super-effective attack. This fight wasn't easy – I actually lost my first go – but it's a level of challenge I'm happy to see in a Pokémon game. I can't wait to see what else awaits in the final game this October.  Read my full hands-on preview thoughts here .  Keeper I didn't get to go hands-on with Keeper, but after a 30-minute hands-off preview of it, with developer Double Fine Productions' Tim Schafer no less, I wish I did. Set in a fantastical Salvador Dali surrealist world where humanity is no more and nature has taken over, Keeper is about a lighthouse with legs. And a sea bird named Twig. There's also a village of tiny lil guys that are actually clocks, a mystical area where pink pollen lowers your gravity, and so much more.  But I only saw snippets of this across three gameplay segments. At the heart of each is vibes and atmosphere, and according to Schafer, that's the heart of the game. There's no combat. There are some puzzles, but they short and sweet. There's no dialogue. Instead, Schafer and Co. want you bask in the ambiance of Keeper. I'll gladly do it, because that ambiance is great so far.  I'm excited to see how the core gameplay – walking around this island to reach its mountainous peak while using the lighthouse's light to illuminate objects – transforms across the game's runtime. Fortunately, I don't have to wait too long, because Keeper is out on October 17.  For more, read my full Keeper preview thoughts here .  The Blood of the Dawnwalker Rebel Wolves is a studio made up of former CD Projekt Red devs who worked on Cyberpunk 2077 and critically (for The Blood of the Dawnwalker), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I mention this because The Blood of the Dawnwalker feels like another timeline's Witcher, except instead of fantastical monsters to hunt and execute, it's vampires.  Protagonist Coen is a Dawnwalker, which means he can tap into vampiric abilities at night and magic during the day. The day/night cycle is core to Dawnwalker, as Coen only has so many days to save his family. Every quest he completes has a time notch associated with it, and upon completing quests, Coen's timeline gains a few notches, slowly decreasing the amount of time he has left to save his family. I'm not quite sure how this works in full, but it's an interesting gameplay addition I'm excited to see more of.  The combat itself is... very Witcher, except it's not just swords; Coen can utilize his vampiric claws and other vampire abilites (like sucking the blood of enemies to regain health). During the day, when he's not tapped into his vampiric abilities, Coen can use magic, like speaking with the dead to learn critical information about quests and more.  If you watched gameplay of Dawnwalker, didn't know what it was, and called it Witcher, I wouldn't blame you. A lot of what it's doing is clearly a result of former Witcher devs creating a new IP. But with its vampiric twist, day/night cycle, and time restraint, it's clealry charting its own course through medieval times. It still has a ways to go – it's not set to launch until next year – but it's one I'll absolutely be keeping an eye on.  Knights of the Fall Knights of the Fall comes from Airo Games and is one of publisher Bohemia Interactive's five games in its Bohemia Incubator project. Though my hands-on time with Knights of the Fall was just an early look at what the team has planned for this game, its unique blend of 2D sidescrolling with tactical, combo-heavy combat has me intrigued.  There wasn't much story to my quick demo – I believe it's set in a post-apocalyptic Japan that's been decimated by a sci-fi phenomenon that has caused grotesque monsters to inhabit spaces once home to humanity. You play as a lone soldier of sorts, handy with a katana and a wrist-mounted gun. Using this gun, you can stun enemies, which opens them up to become victims of your gravity gadget. You can pull stunned enemies toward you and decapitate them, push them into other enemies (especially useful if they're an explosive enemy), or let them fly past you, opening you up for an easy escape.  That was my main method for taking down enemies, though utilizing the katana's three-hit combo and parries did well, too. In my short demo, the protagonist was after some long-forgotten logs, left somewhere in a house. I explored various houses in search of these logs, running into different enemies along the way. I enjoy the game's slower, more methodical pace in the 2D sidescroller space, and its unique art style makes it stand out even more.  Airo tells me there's still lots of work to be done – it hopes to release a demo or playtest of sorts for the public next year to try it out – but after my hands-on time with the game, Knights of the Fall is one I'm going to keep an eye on.  Borderlands 4 Game Informer has covered Borderlands 4 extensively – it was one of our recent cover stories after all . But that didn't stop me from giving it a go during Gamescom 2025. For this quick demo, I played through a vault mission where I had to defeat waves of enemies, including mini bosses and a final boss, to complete a journey to the end of a vault where tons of loot awaited me.  It was mostly a showcase of the game's combat, but I did notice how much more enjoyable (and less annoying) the writing was compared to Borderlands 3. It shows a lot more restraint than its predecessor. Sure, it's still the Borderlands humor you expect, but instead of 15 jokes a minute, it's a joke every couple of minutes. I really welcome this change of pace in its cadence of humor, and it allows me to focus better on the mission at hand. And that was crucial because reaching the end of this vault was tough work.  Enemies pursue you aggressively, forcing me to stay on the move throughout each wave. Bosses killed me more than once (and so did basic mob enemies), and I had to strategically think about when it was best to utilize my ultimate-like signature abilities. I felt challenged in a way that forced me to rethink my more casual approach to Borderlands 4 shootouts, and it was a feeling I really enjoyed. I look forward to seeing the other ways this game will keep me on my toes when it launches next month.  Black State Developer Motion Blur's Black State is a game I knew very little about before encountering it here at Gamescom. It gives off big Unreal Engine 5 vibes (you know the vibes), and while I initially thought it could go the way of this year's MindsEye, I walked away from my half-hour of hands-on time with the game at least willing to give it a shot next time I can.  Set in a futuristic sci-fi world, it plays with time travel in a fun way. In my demo, the protagonist is warped to a military camp just moments after enemy forces there launches ballistic missiles into the sky. Because of the time travel shenanigans at play, our protagonist already knows these missiles will start the very war he's trying to prevent. It's a cool premise, but unfortunately, I don't learn too much more of the story at play here.  I do learn a lot about Black State's gunplay, which is serviceable. The machine guns and pistols feel fine, and the shotgun packs a nice punch, but I'm most intrigued by items like grenades. Instead of chucking them into the air, you roll them on the ground and they autonomously roll right to an enemy, sending their body parts flying in gory fashion. The same can be said for special electric stun grenades that are effective against robots. There's even a Cleaner grenade that lasers away bodies, removing those you've killed from the sightlines of other enemies in the area.  That Cleaner grenade is especially useful when utilizing stealth to dispose of enemies scattered about the military base I'm infiltrating. Motion Blur isn't reinventing the wheel with stealth in Black State and it's about what you expect – sneak up on enemies and then press a button to execute them.  The final aspect of Black State that intrigues me is its portal doors. Sometimes, when walking through a door, you can walk back through it and appear in a totally different place. I'm told this will be explained better in the final game when I understand the story more, but I'm hoping Motion Blur uses this tech and premise to take our protagonist to more unique places than military bases.  Pragmata  I played one of the first stages in Pragmata and I legitimately cannot wait to play more. It feels like a new type of game, something I haven't felt since 2019's Death Stranding. That's because it's one part a third-person shooter, another part a puzzle game. The unique twist of Pragmata, though, is that the third-person shooting and puzzle solving happen at the same time. That's because the little android girl that accompanies protagonist Hugh (I love that this dude, the protagonist of a wild sci-fi story, has such a normal name) has the ability to hack into enemies.  You do this by moving a cursor along a grid, ideally moving it through debuffs that affect the enemy upon completing the hack. This hack weakens the enemy (and can damage them, too), opening them up for some heavy damage via Hugh's pistol and other weapons he can use like a fusion rifle or trap gun. I really enjoy the added stress of solving these puzzles on the fly while engaging in third-person shooter combat, and even in the early stages of Pragmata, it's good fun. I imagine this fun and stress will ramp up later in the game.  The design of this world is great, too, with an excellent sci-fi soundscape to accompany your every action. Electricity sizzles, fire explodes across the screen, and every weapon sounds cool. It also looks great, ironically evoking a lot of Death Stranding's unique sci-fi vibe.  Capcom's more experimental games of late have impressed me greatly – looking at you, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess – and Pragmata seems set on joining this string of releases. It's due out sometime next year, and I look forward to seeing what else is in store for Hugh and his hacker robot surrogate daughter.  Resident Evil Requiem Y'all, we are so back; not that we ever left, because Capcom has been releasing banger after banger when it comes to its prolific survival horror series, but Resident Evil Requiem is already shaping up to be an excellent game. The demo I played wasn't anything new – it's what Capcom let Game Informer's very own Marcus Stewart played during Summer Games Fest this year – but it was my first time playing, okay!! It begins with Grace Ashcroft upside down, strapped to a gurney, her blood being drained into blood bags... for some reason. If Ashcroft sounds familiar, you're probably recognizing it as the last name of Grace's mother, Alyssa, the playable Raccoon City field reporter from the Outbreak series of RE games .  My hands-on time with Requiem begins after a cutscene showing Grace strategically escaping from this gurney. My mission? Escape this decrepit care center. After stepping out of the room, I'm faced with a terrifying, dimly lit hallway, reminiscent of the hallway from P.T. Hands shaking, I head down it, attempting to find something to help me out of this hellhole.  I reach a storage room, but the light doesn't work and I can't see anything in the room. So I double back to where I started and go down the other side of the hallway. As I make my way to the end of the hallway, the walls and ceiling shake – I'm not alone.  I find a door adorned with Cherub imagery, but it's locked. I continue down the hallway, open a drawer, and find a Cherub key. I know what to do next. After opening the Cherub door, I frantically search for anything useful. I find a lighter! Aha! Light! I dip back to the other side of the hallway and light up the storage room, but not before a dead body jump scare starts me and then something even more terrifying: a massive hulking monster that I can best describe as a woman with extremely large humanoid feet, draped in distressed cloth, with a face not even a mother could love. Something is very wrong with this creature, and she's hungry for me, it seems.   Grace is the more helpless, "god, how do I get out of here?" type of character. As such, I don't have a way to fight back against this creature, save for throwing bottles in the direction opposite of me as a distraction.  The next five minutes of my demo – also the last five minutes of my demo – can best be described as me poorly escaping the clutches of this creature while trying to find a way to access a battery stuck behind a screwed-in panel on a wall. I say poorly because I'm unsuccessful in time, dying at the hands of this monster. I'm not allowed to describe the game over death scenes of Grace, but they sure are something .  One last thing: I was able to switch back and forth between first-person and third-person perspectives. Both work extremely well in Requiem and I have no idea which one I'll choose for my full playthrough of the game.  Fortunately, you don't have to wait too long to see them for yourself because Resident Evil 9: Requiem launches February 27, 2026.  [ Editor's Note: An earlier version of this Resident Evil Requiem write-up stated "Capcom has made clear that the dual protagonist approach of Requiem means Leon is the heroic action hero and Grace is the..." The article has been updated to remove this line, as Capcom has never stated anything about a dual protagonist system. Game Informer regrets the error.] Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV The single pre-alpha mission I played was simple: defeat the Ork base. I began at the bottom of the map and that base was at the top of the map. Dotted in between their base and mine were various neutral control points. Taking them over allows me to build various buildings where I can deploy more troops, elite soldiers, vehicles, and more. You absolutely cannot win without winning these control points, as they effectively allow you to move your base of operations and army manufacturing sites forward. Other than that, I needed to direct my soldiers and vehicles to hordes of enemies to defeat. It's all simple on paper, but much harder in execution. I sucked at it. I don't want to suck at it. My desire to play more is rooted in beating this mission one day. And I will. 
Game Informer PreviewsAug 21
NBA 2K26's Highest-Rating Players Revealed, New MyGM And MyNBA Features Detailed
NBA 2K26's Highest-Rating Players Revealed, New MyGM And MyNBA Features Detailed NBA 2K26 is right around the corner, and as is often tradition for sports games before launch, developer Visual Concepts is continuing to share what's new with this year's entry. A couple of weeks ago, we learned about a host of presentation upgrades coming to NBA 2K26, and today, 2K released a new post detailing the changes arriving in MyGM and MyNBA, the series' long-term franchise mode. On top of that, we learned who the top-rated players in this year's game at the start of the season will be. This year, GMs have a wider array of scenarios that can play out in the 2025 offseason. Once you pick a team, you can choose between three goals that are distinct to that team's roster and history. The tasks can include picking draft picks, signing free agents, or leading your team to the NBA Finals. Some of the scenarios involve building around a number-one draft pick, while others force you to choose between trying to make one more run with your aging superstars or holding a fire sale and starting the rebuild process. As you play through MyGM and MyNBA, your achievements will be chronicled through dynamic banners that accurately update based on when you win championships. The experience is also highly customizable, thanks to Unranked MyGM, which lets you edit players, use custom rosters, import custom draft classes, and adjust sliders however you want. With MyPlayer DNA integration, you can even bring your MyPlayer into your franchise experience regardless of your Era.  If you're more on the managerial side, the simulation mechanics have received various improvements based on player feedback, including giving players greater control over strategic decisions. As GM, you also start each season by meeting with your team's governor to set the budget, goals, and core directives for the upcoming season. These will shape how secure your job is, as well as influence top free agents' decision-making processes. Updating your team facilities can also go a long way to attracting top talent, and you can allocate Facility Points to update team training and recovery facilities, luxury box amenities, and perform arena renovations. Budgets have also been updated to accurately reflect the budgets of specific eras of teams. On top of these announcements, we also got a list of the top 10-rated players in NBA 2K26 at the season's start.  Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets – 98 OVR Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder – 98 OVR Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks – 97 OVR Luka Dončić, Los Angeles Lakers – 95 OVR Anthony Edwards, Minnesota Timberwolves – 95 OVR Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors – 94 OVR LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers – 94 OVR Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics – 94 OVR Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs – 94 OVR Kevin Durant, Houston Rockets – 93 OVR NBA 2K26 arrives on September 4. To read our review of last year's game, head here . How do those player ratings look to you? Is anyone over- or underrated? Let us know your thoughts in the comments! 
Game Informer PreviewsAug 21
The Blood Of Dawnwalker Is More Than The Witcher With Vampires
The Blood Of Dawnwalker Is More Than The Witcher With Vampires Admittedly, from what I've seen of newcomer developer Rebel Wolves' upcoming first game, The Blood of Dawnwalker , it's given off some heavy Witcher vibes. That's not completely misplaced, considering Rebel Wolves was formed by former CD Projekt Red devs with experience working on The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077. Sure, there are vampires, but it's still a medieval dark fantasy where the protagonist is a gruff swordsman with one goal in mind.  After an hour-long hands-off preview with Dawnwalker, though, it's clear this game is much more than just The Witcher with vampires. Sitting in the room, themed to look like a 14th-century chapel, I frantically took notes of what I was watching on screen, wishing the entire time I was the one playing the game.  The demo begins in the valley of the Carpathian mountains, sometime during the 14th century. A plague has swept the land, weakening humanity, making them easier than ever to be overtaken by the Vrakhiri, or a race of vampires. Our protagonist, Coen, is what's called a Daywalker, and though details on what that entails are still murky after my preview, it's clear he is at least part vampire.  Rebel Wolves showcased this by running us through the same quest twice: once during the night, when Coen is tapped into his vampire side, and once during the day, when he can't use his vampiric abilities but can utilize magic. Though this quest ended on the same note both ways, there was an impressive amount of variation between the day and night versions.  Rebel Wolves began with the nighttime version of the quest.  Immediately, I'm impressed with the visuals. Sure, the game has been Epic's baby for demonstrating Unreal Engine 5 in recent showcases, but the art team is doing some gorgeous work with lighting. The way the full moon above illuminates the central cathedral's stained glass reminded me of the stained glass I witnessed myself at the Dom cathedral here in Cologne. Alongside the full moon high above in the sky is a red full moon, indicating Coen can tap into his vampire abilities.  Coen infiltrates a cathedral and sticks to the upper floors as, down below, a blood ritual is happening. He uses Plane Shift to walk on walls and ceilings like Spider-Man, albeit on two feet. He also utilizes Shadowstep, which allows him to teleport short distances by transforming into a moving shadow. In the cathedral, he searches nearby Frescoes painted on the ceiling, looking for a clue as to the whereabouts of St. Mihia's crypt, which houses a sword he's after.  After a bit more exploration, Coen fights off some enemies using his claws. It's fast, visceral, and extremely gory, with dismemberment galore. He also uses Voracious Bite to suck their blood and regain some health. Rebel Wolves says this is useful in battle but even more effective outside of combat. Rebel Wolves also uses this encounter to show off the options to switch between a far and close camera in combat (and a separate option to customize this viewpoint in exploration, too).  We eventually reach the crypt, and this portion of the demo ends.  In the daytime version of the quest, Coen is unable to tap into his vampiric abilities, so he must investigate things more closely. To keep it somewhat spoiler-free, instead of climbing walls and ceilings and Shadowstepping to different platforms, Coen speaks with a local monk and agrees to help them find a missing person. This leads him to an abandoned portion of an asylum, and it turns out the person he's after has become The Almshouse Monstrosity. This person is neither undead nor alive, stuck in the transition from human to vampire, and their mind is essentially gone, driven by an instinctual desire for blood.  In this form of combat, Coen uses a sword instead of claws, and it's here that the game looks most like The Witcher. However, Rebel Wolves is doing some interesting things here. Combat features directional blocking, like what's seen in the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series, and magic, too. After defeating this monstrosity, Coen uses the Compel Soul hex to speak with a corpse and learn what happened in this asylum. This corpse yields some useful information that eventually takes Coen to the same crypt from the conclusion of the nighttime demo, except this time, Rebel Wolves showcases what happens next. I won't spoil it here, but it's an awesome boss fight against an undead warrior, and it's clear you'll need to tap into all of Coen's abilities to come out victorious.  Our demo ended here, and a day later, I'm voracious for more. It just looks awesome, and a great score heightens the entire experience. Like The Witcher, the score in Dawnwalker relies heavily on a high-pitched female chorus, and it rules. I can't wait to hear more of this and see more of the vampires that run this part of the world when The Blood of the Dawnwalker launches sometime next year. 
Game Informer PreviewsAug 21
Pragmata's blend of shooting and hacking is the most stressful new idea I've seen in a shooter in generations, and it's brilliant
Pragmata's blend of shooting and hacking is the most stressful new idea I've seen in a shooter in generations, and it's brilliant We've said it before, here, already: Pragmata represents Capcom at its weird, experimental best . To me, it's in line with Exoprimal and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess as a game that shows the publisher is confident to let its studios run with any ideas they have. Whilst those two may not have been commercial (or in Exoprimal's case, critical) successes, I think Pragmata has a bigger shot at penetrating through the mainstream thanks to three key things: it's a shooter, its main character is more of an everydad - his name is Hugh Williams, for goodness sake - and it has one of the most exciting genre hybrids I've seen in a while. Read more
Eurogamer.net Previews FeedAug 21
Keeper Is A Salvador Dali-Inspired Surrealist Adventure With No Dialogue, No Combat, And A Walking Lighthouse
Keeper Is A Salvador Dali-Inspired Surrealist Adventure With No Dialogue, No Combat, And A Walking Lighthouse It's not often I'm thrown when previewing a video game. But thrown is exactly what I was when I stepped into the unassuming Xbox Room #10 in Xbox's business hall booth during Day 1 of Gamescom 2025. There were six seats, a small table, and a television showcasing Keeper, the upcoming adventure game from Psychonauts developer Double Fine Productions centered around a walking lighthouse and a bird. Oh, and the studio's CEO and games industry legend, Tim Schafer.  Nobody told me the person showcasing Keeper would be Schafer, and it's kinda wild to walk into a room and be surprise-greeted by a developer you massively respect. Of course, Schafer is a true gentleman, kind, and genuinely hilarious, so the nerves quickly disappear as he walks me through three previously recorded gameplay segments of Keeper.    I promise I'll talk about those segments, but everything Schafer told me beforehand was just as interesting (possibly more). First off, it's his first time doing press since 2021 with Psychonauts 2, so Schafer explains that he's nervous – ahhh, even ground – and his first time at Gamescom in 16 years! Though he was here in person to talk about Keeper, he mostly speaks about Lee Petty, the game's director (and Brutal Legend and Broken Age art director) and the person behind the wild idea that is Keeper.  Schafer says Keeper wouldn't exist without Double Fine becoming an Xbox studio. "Around the time we had just joined the Xbox family, we were wondering what we should make next," Schafer says. "We have support; we have money; and we don't have to worry about going out of business every day, and we don't have to pitch to publishers, 'Please make our game, it's very commercial.'"  At the same time, Petty was busy thinking about his time during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was locked in his home like the rest of us, but he found solace in nature hikes amongst the hills around San Francisco. He couldn't get an idea out of his head: what if humanity didn't survive this, but nature did and took over in our place? It's here that Schafer explains Petty is a "weird dude who loves strange images, and grew up loving Dark Crystal and Salvador Dali."  The result of all that pondering is Keeper – weird and chill, like Petty and his interests, Schafer says. He then describes the game as an adventure game with puzzles – light puzzles, though, because Keeper is about the "atmosphere and vibes and companionship between these two." The two he's talking about are Twig, a sea bird, and an unnamed lighthouse. After a violent sea storm isolates Twig from her flock, she perches on a lighthouse. For some reason, this awakens the lighthouse, it tips over, and in the resulting crash, it grows legs. Typical lighthouse behavior.  Awakened and the new owner of legs, this lighthouse feels immediately called to a giant mountain peak atop the island it's on. So, it begins heading that way, with Twig in tow. Controlling the lighthouse consists of moving through surrealist and fantastical landscapes and shining your beam on things. You can shine your beam on plants and sometimes they'll grow; you can shine your beam on gears and sometimes Twig will fly to them and rotate them to unlock gates; you can shine your beam on strange pot creatures that crash to the floor beneath them, sometimes revealing objects for Twig to interact with.  Your primary method of interacting with this world is your beam, and second to that is Twig. This might just be a me thing as someone who lives a couple hours away from Disney World and has a fondness for the technology of animatronics, but Keeper most reminds me of a Disney dark ride. If you're unfamiliar with that term, dark rides include Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. It's less about thrills and more about experiencing the things around you, watching animatronics move to tell a story, and soaking in the vibes. That's Keeper.  I love that shining your light on objects causes them to emote or come to life with animation. It might not affect your journey forward or be part of a puzzle every time, but that's okay – it's about the vibes! It's about watching the animatronics of this world, as it were, do things that make the surrounding area feel real, like it has its own story to tell.  The puzzles I see seem simple and quick, but I can't help keeping an eye on the things outside the primary focus of these gameplay videos. I see sunflowers dance as light grazes over them, carrots come to life and dive bomb into the soil below, and more. It really feels like a Double Fine dark ride in the most complimentary way.  Of course, I see some other things that catch my eye. At one point, Twig becomes a giant egg atop the lighthouse for some reason. I see a village of tiny lil guys that are rusty watches. I see the lighthouse prance through pink pollen that gives it a light, low-gravity effect when it jumps. Everything I see looks vastly different from what I witness moments before, but it's all oozing with Double Fine and surrealist Salvador Dali-inspired charm.  Some areas are more linear, designed around puzzles, Schafer says. Other areas are more open, prime for exploration. Regardless of where you are in the lighthouse's journey to the mountain peak, Schafer says Keeper is ultimately about change; how nature changes, how Twig changes, how the lighthouse changes. Every character, including Twig and the Lighthouse, has a story arc, he adds.  When I ask Schafer why Petty decided to have players control a lighthouse, Schafer laughs – he doesn't actually know. He says the lighthouse was one of the game's side characters, but when he saw it walking with legs, he told Petty that needs to be the game. "It was compelling," Schafer says. "It really looked like something from a surrealist painting."  Schafer ends my presentation further explaining Double Fine's love of nonsense and the bizarre, the type of work directors David Lynch and David Cronenberg are interested in making, he says. I see the vision.  Keeper is a weird game, but it has that undeniable Double Fine charm. I can't wait to actually play it when it launches on October 17 on Xbox Series X/S and PC. 
Game Informer PreviewsAug 20
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand Preview - Renovating A Haunted Hotel Isn't Easy, But It Is Quite Musical
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand Preview - Renovating A Haunted Hotel Isn't Easy, But It Is Quite Musical Platform: Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Friday Sundae Developer: Friday Sundae The pitch for There Are No Ghosts at the Grand might seem like word salad: mystery, renovation, exploration, horror, musical, and more. It's a strange mix of gameplay and vibes that does, somehow, blend together just right for a tune that can get your toe tapping. "You know, we didn't start off with the intention of writing a musical," writer and creative director Anil Glendinning says. "We wanted to write a ghost story. We wanted to write a ghost story set in Britain that kind of sent shivers up your spine and reminded us of TV shows that we watched when we were kids." This is the strange concoction that we learned about in an online, hands-off preview from developer Friday Sundae about There Are No Ghosts at the Grand. It started simple enough, with your protagonist Chris David, an American who's inherited the crumbling Grand in a seaside British village, tasked with tidying up the lodge. Friday Sundae A magical renovation machine, somewhere between a power-washer and sci-fi arm cannon, gives you the do-it-all potential to repaint, de-clutter, vacuum, and re-arrange furniture. The tools seem simple to use, but allow for some player expression in paint choice, decor positioning, and more. It feels like an easy sell to house-flipping fans. But a cell phone call from Mayor Greene, on a wonderfully dated brick of a phone, draws David out and onto a moped. She wants to investigate a nearby island to see if it's where all the mysterious black goo that's been troubling the town is emanating from; and after fixing up a boat to take you there, would also like to sing to you about why you should give back your inherited hotel rather than keep it for yourself. There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a musical, yes. But rather than showtunes or Gilbert & Sullivan, it draws on other veins of UK influence: ska, punk, and reggae. Glendinning name-checks bands like The Specials, The Clash, Madness, and The Selector in our chat. These influences run parallel to the broader vibe of small, seaside British town horror, too, with splashes of Doctor Who in there for good measure. During the musical number, in which Mayor Greene sings her side set to a catchy guitar riff and beat reminiscent of your '80s ska vinyls, the player gets a chance to (musically) respond in kind, which can affect your relationship with Greene depending on your answer. The immediate ramifications are not clear, but this choice, alongside optional renovation projects and exploration the player can undertake in the town, makes me curious to see if there are winding, maybe even branching, paths to explore. Friday Sundae For now, the boat and song get abruptly interrupted by a crash. And while your handy-dandy sci-fi fixer-upper cannon can fix the boat and remove the goo holding it in place, it sends both the boat and Greene out to sea in the process. A search for shelter for the night leads to an abandoned World War II bunker and all kinds of ambient scares, but also some mystery and puzzle-solving. The environmental puzzles we see in the demo are, according to Glendinning, toned down in challenge for the Gamescom demo, but the final game will feature more difficult mysteries to solve and information to uncover. These mysteries and puzzles also arrive in the form of memories. Renovations can be undertaken outside the Grand, too, and alongside making yourself a nice little bedroom inside the bunker, you can also use the tool to reform an area and trigger ghostly flashbacks of the past, hinting at the secret history of this seaside town. Friday Sundae An escape from the bunker leads to a surreal chase scene with creepy, crawly chair monsters in a delightfully tense finale. There are other bizarre mysteries to touch upon – a talking cat, a listening station picking up disturbing signals, maybe even ghosts – but all of those are better left for the final game. There Are No Ghosts at the Grand already has a killer combination of ideas and themes. But after seeing it in action, I'm most impressed by how well all those parts work in concert; simple and effective renovation tools, catchy musical motifs, dialogue choices, and a creepy atmosphere all make this strange and exciting premise come to life. Friday Sundae's hotel renovation horror musical seems like it could be a hot ticket when it arrives in 2026.
Game Informer PreviewsAug 20