"The driving sensation in NASCAR 26 is the star."

If there’s one thing I can immediately say, it’s that the driving sensation in NASCAR 26 is the star. And, for me, its balancing demands led to a more profound state of mind where I found joy in repeating the same process lap after lap. Across oval and tri-oval layouts especially, when my tyres felt locked in the groove, I entered an unblinking flowstate.

My driving was rarely perfect, with NASCAR’s characteristically round circuits scrutinising imperfections harder than more traditional tracks. An unsettled entry pushes you wide of the apex; getting back on the throttle too quickly compromises your exit; a millisecond’s over-aggression on the brake pedal leaves you fighting to recover the racing line. So yes, while you’re invariably chasing perfection across fifty, seventy, even a hundred-plus laps, rarely do you reach it. The trick, instead, is in how you keep things smooth and steady without over-correcting.

So, like real-life then, are NASCAR 26’s constant micro-adjustments. And, reinforcing this is the game’s refined tyre model – coming as a follow-up to NASCAR 25’s substantial rework – with iRacing Studios doubling the number of tuning parameters while decoupling lateral and longitudinal force. The result is a car that responds more convincingly to the competing demands of acceleration, braking, cornering, and drafting, so even minor inputs can prove significant, and you’ll feel their impact immediately on the track.

However, it did take some extensive controller recalibration to get there. Initially, I found the default settings far too responsive, particularly on the straights where the smallest steering corrections sent the car zigzagging across the track like I was drinking behind the wheel. Braking presented a similar problem, with the delta between left trigger and in-game application feeling noticeably delayed. If I missed a braking point in training, I’d prefer it was down to my moderate skillset rather than something calibrated directly into the game.

Fortunately, to remedy this – and perhaps aware that the default settings won’t suit everyone – NASCAR 26 ships with a suite of controller parameters, allowing you to adjust dead zones, steering non-linearity, speed sensitivity, damping, and braking response. After copious experimentation I found a calibration that softened the straightline skittishness, so I was able to engage with the car’s behaviour while establishing a sense of weight that was strangely absent before my extensive fine-tuning.

"NASCAR 26 ships with a suite of controller parameters, allowing you to adjust dead zones, steering non-linearity, speed sensitivity, damping, and braking response."

And while the controller’s calibration options were explained in the menu, the same can’t be said for your vehicle’s setup systems. Spring rates, bump and rebound, tyre pressures, sway bars, brake bias; all can be adjusted but the game didn’t explain what any of these parameters actually do. So, while I often like to tinker with my vehicle setup in other racers, I don’t retain the numerical knowledge to understand how to glean extra performance out of my machine. Here, I needed guidance, but the game doesn’t provide it. As a result, I stuck to the much simpler tight-or-loose presets knowing that I’d otherwise have been able to tame my car’s handling beyond controller calibration if, for instance, I knew which camber setting to choose.

Still, when everything eventually clicked, and when I wasn’t wrestling with the controls, the patient pursuit for precision indeed became meditative. NASCAR 26 achieves something remarkable in that the repetition of oval racing doesn’t feel like repetition at all. More like a mindful exercise in continually trying to get the next lap closer to perfect.

NASCAR 26’s attempts at authenticity go beyond reactive car handling. iRacing Studios has worked alongside NASCAR for generations, and that relationship is evident in the game’s attempts to recreate the ritual of a race weekend. The broadcast presentation, branding, trackside atmosphere, and visual spectacle aim to make each event feel like a genuine broadcast, but the overall feeling isn’t especially electric. New smoke, particle effects, dynamic lighting, and cockpit interiors add to the occasion, while the addition of burnouts brings some welcome personality to celebrating a victory.

Authenticity stretches to Peak Performance too, a training mode that puts Jamie McMurray in your ear while you observe useful visual markers around each circuit. Signs, cones, and advertising decals are taught as reference points for braking, turn-in, and throttle, and eventually you stop following the coloured racing line altogether in favour of reading the track. For a newcomer, this mode is an excellent way to learn the language of NASCAR.

And, Peak Performance’s bitesize track guides become the first step toward circuit mastery. Bristol, with its claustrophobic concrete and relentless cornering is like pressure-cooked NASCAR, demanding a different rhythm to the blistering straights of Indianapolis or the drafting battles of Daytona and Talladega. Pocono, meanwhile, rewards experimentation across its unusually wide tarmac, where multiple racing lines produce different approaches to a corner.

Yet, NASCAR’s road and street courses don’t offer the same rewards. On Watkins Glen, Sonoma Raceway, or San Diego’s Naval Base Coronado the heavy stock cars became clumsy, difficult to position, and prone to bumps and paint swapping. The reason for this, I feel, is the game’s handling model, which is favourably tuned for ovals over traditional track layouts. The experience was less convincing as a result, where precision gave way to crude racing.

Street racing in NASCAR 26 masked tyre degradation, too, which has grown in importance this year. At Indianapolis, I felt the car becoming less stable on corner entry as my tyres deteriorated, with my pace gradually falling away. Then, after fitting fresh rubber, the difference was dramatic, with me able to blast past multiple opponents on a single straightaway. Deciding when to pit, then, is more than a matter of maintenance, with strategic implications whether you opt to preserve track position or pit early for a late performance advantage.

Fuel consumption adds another consideration, forcing you to balance outright pace against how long you can remain on track. The thing with tyre degradation in this game, though, is that the performance differences are perhaps too pronounced. In Pocono, I opted to stay out for a couple of laps whilst my rivals pitted, only to find myself with too much ground to recover on the leader when I’d finally had my stop. Back in Indianapolis, I carved through the field too easily on an offset strategy. The problem here, though, was that I was a lap down after a pitstop blunder.

"Authenticity stretches to Peak Performance too, a training mode that puts Jamie McMurray in your ear while you observe useful visual markers around each circuit."

While the effects of old rubber are easy to measure, NASCAR 26’s new Dynamic Track feature is more difficult because its influence never felt particularly obvious during my play though. Conceptually, I’m compelled; as rubber builds on the circuit, the optimal racing line widens and encourages you to search for new grooves.

I certainly saw AI drivers moving higher as races progressed, but I rarely felt the need to change my own approach. Any performance drop-off or enhancement always felt to me like conventional tyre degradation rather than a track-wide evolution. Perhaps it’s deliberately subtle, but either way I’d prefer Dynamic Track to impose itself more forcefully during races.

Similarly, the distinctions between NASCAR 26’s four series were hard to parse. Shared between Cup, O’Reilly, Trucks, and ARCA are the same driving characteristics, although ARCA’s notably slower pace makes it a less enticing experience. There are differences in speed and braking behaviour, with Trucks, for example, able to full-throttle round Nashville while O’Reilly cars need to lift before cornering like their Cup counterparts, but these distinctions aren’t pronounced enough to alter how you approach a race. Jumping between series felt like a cosmetic novelty rather than an opportunity to learn a new discipline.

Elsewhere, career mode gives NASCAR 26 a place to earn progression, beginning with a humble ARCA season and gradually building towards the higher tiers of the sport. Good performance earns reputation which unlocks better sponsorship deals and money-making opportunities, while conventional income can be spent on repairs, car upgrades, and improving your team’s facilities. It’s a pleasing, if admittedly mild, ecosystem, where longer-term strategic depth takes time to reveal itself. Early decisions feel immediate, but the prospect of investing in your operation gives every dollar a purpose. The downside, however, will vary between players; repairs can become expensive, particularly if you’ve a habit of rear-ending your opposition. Resources are quickly stretched, meaning partial repairs and safer driving habits become the optimal way to eventually fund performance upgrades, new staff, and team development.

Outside Career, NASCAR 26 offers a modest selection of ways to experience its racing. The Chase provides a standalone postseason competition, allowing you to enter as one of sixteen drivers in a playoff encompassing ten rounds without committing to a full season beforehand.

Paint kit, meanwhile, provides extensive scope for customising your own liveries, while various quick race formats – each modifiable by race length, tyre wear and fuel consumption rates, and more, giving you a swift way to get back behind the wheel. None of these modes change the driving experience, but they provide useful alternatives to Career’s multi-season progression.

"Outside Career, NASCAR 26 offers a modest selection of ways to experience its racing."

So, in summary, NASCAR 26 surprised me. As someone coming to NASCAR with more experience of traditional circuit racing, I expected the endless ovals to feel repetitive. Instead, I found myself obsessing over incremental improvements; carrying a fraction more speed into corners, finding the fastest line, feathering the throttle a little more carefully. Like I said at the outset: NASCAR 26, for the most part, nails its driving model, making precision driving feel rewarding in a way few racing games manage.

That said, the game isn’t without its shortcomings. Dynamic Track never felt as influential as I expected, and the four series don’t feel sufficiently distinct to justify their inclusion (beyond simply providing multiple tiers to progress through during Career mode).

Extensive controller recalibration meant I had to work for my immersion, but once I’d sussed out the right settings for me the patience, aggression, and precision that make stock car racing so distinctive emerged. It isn’t a flawless simulation by any means, but after countless laps chasing the perfect line, I’ve come away from NASCAR 26 with a better understanding of why this particular brand of racing can be so hypnotic.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

Wings of Theve isn’t trying to be a realistic simulation of aerial combat. You’re not spending hours learning the intricacies of flying. You’re pulling off ridiculous manoeuvres, locking onto enemy fighters, and piercing through billowing clouds while an orchestral score swells behind you. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve puts you in the cockpit, dims the lights, turns up the volume, and makes you feel like the star of your very own aviation blockbuster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tobjsv6Ip4What’s obvious in the lead up to the game’s release is this isn’t a franchise that’s still figuring out what it wants to be. By the time the eighth numbered entry launches on October 2nd, Ace Combat will have spent three decades refining its particular style of arcade-infused aerial combat, with Brand Director Kazutoki Kono having worked on the series since 1996.

This is a remarkable amount of experience to bring to a single game, particularly when the formula itself has remained steadfastly focused for so long: give you a fighter jet, launch you into an enormous sky, and make you feel like you belong there.

Yet, Wings of Theve isn’t resting on the foundation established by its predecessors. If anything, the latest entry seems intent on pushing those foundations further than ever before. Kono has continually described three core pillars underpinning Ace Combat: creating a photorealistic sky to give you a sense of freedom in flight, making enemy engagements instantly satisfying, and delivering the personal experience of becoming an ace pilot.

And these three interlinking ideas help explain why Wings of Theve feels so ambitious. Each is enhanced by modern hardware, enriched by contemporary storytelling, and defined through decades of developer expertise, all in service of strengthening the same underlying fantasy. Now, the series can realise these three pillars more completely than the technology of previous generations has ever allowed.

Look – for all the aircraft, missiles, explosions, and fantastical set pieces that distinguish Ace Combat, one the series’ most important characters has always been the sky itself. After all, you’ll spend many blistering hours suspended above the world, so making that space feel convincing is arguably more important than making the ground below look pretty.

Wings of Theve is being developed with Unreal Engine 5 alongside Project Aces’ own proprietary cloud rendering tech, allowing the studio to create larger and more detailed aerial environments which push its clouds, weather, lighting, and atmosphere considerably further. The result isn’t just a version of the sky which looks better than before. It’s a layered, organic, dynamic space that can influence your tactical approach by giving you a clear sense of altitude, velocity, and scale.

This matters for an arcade-leaning shooter where accessible controls should feel immediately exhilarating despite their simplicity. The more convincing the sky around you becomes, the easier it is to forget you’re sitting in front of a screen and enjoy the sensation of tearing through the air at hundreds of miles per hour. The clouds are no longer the backdrop, but the centre of the action.

And this brings us back to one of Kazutoki Kono’s three pillars: the photorealistic sky which preserves a sense of freedom in flight. Through modern hardware, Project Aces has the opportunity to make you feel in-tune with the sky more than ever before. Through readable formations and multi-layered cloud patterns, you won’t need to monitor your altimeter. Instead, you’re in it; flying intuitively.

However, making the sky look convincing is one thing; making you care about the person flying through it is another. Wings of Theve is placing a greater emphasis on you living the experience of a star pilot than previous entries. Through first-person perspectives, aircraft carrier gameplay, and cinematic cutscenes, Ace Combat 8 is poised to make you feel like the person inside the cockpit.

But the switch to first-person isn’t doing all of the heavy lifting. No, the game’s story is built around the legend of the Wings of Theve, with you at the centre of a propagandist tool which carries considerably more weight than a high kill count. You’re not just another aircraft – you’re the pilot your nation depends on, surrounded by a cast of wingmen whose own stories unfurl alongside your rise.

Previous Ace Combat titles showed you that your character was a legendary pilot, whereas now you’re seeing the conflict through their eyes – in the cockpit, on the flight deck, and in the mess halls of the Endurance, your aircraft carrier home.

And this is where the game’s blockbuster, Maverickian ambitions begin to crystallise. See, the core of Wings of Theve’s colossal war is a human story. Surrounding each desperate sortie are people, and like the sky, you’re very much operating at their centre. You’re in it, living it, breathing the same air. And yes, this is a notion underlined by the game’s live-action prequel series too, where pocketfuls of aerial combat take a back seat for character-driven drama.

That prequel series – HOUR ZERO – puts its human characters front and centre to establish the circumstances people are facing before you even climb into the cockpit yourself. It’s a striking choice for a series defined by aircraft, but it reveals something important: Bandai Namco doesn’t just want to show the game’s audience what flying in Ace Combat looks like. It wants them to understand what its story will feel like.

And, there’s a secondary objective here too, and one that could help the series overcome one of its biggest hurdles: awareness. Series Producer Manabu Shimomoto has acknowledged that getting newcomers to discover Ace Combat has historically been a challenge, arguing that audiovisual content like HOUR ZERO can provide a meaningful entry point before new players experience the thrill of flight for themselves. And, to bring it back to the underlying idea in this feature, the live-action series is another way of selling the fantasy. By the time you finally enter the cockpit – whether you’re a rookie or a veteran – you’re not just slingshotting into a battle but flying into an already established story.

So, reverting again to Kono’s three pillars – modern technology makes the sky feel more convincing, arcade mechanics refined through three decades of experience make enemy engagement satisfying, and the experience of becoming an ace pilot is realised through the story, cinematics, and first-person perspective. After thirty years, Ace Combat 8 appears to have reached a point where every part of the experience is pulling in the same direction.

Sure, the Top Gun analogy is overused, but think about what it is that makes those films so appealing. Their stories, characters, and F-14 Tomcats all support the star pilot fantasy, showing you just how cool it is to be a fighter pilot. Ace Combat, similarly, has a meaningful story, engaging characters, and an airport’s worth of supersonic machinery, and bringing them all together leads to one simple realisation: you belong in the sky.

First-Person Give You The Eyes of a Pilot

Ace Combat 7 told its story through third-person cutscenes, mission briefings, and in-flight squadron dialogue. By the end, many felt they’d witnessed someone else’s journey rather than feeling it for themselves. Switching it up for the sequel, now you’ll experience the rise to flying ace via first-person, from eating in the mess hall with your co-pilots, to stepping onto the flight deck and strapping on your helmet. It’s a more immersive viewpoint, sure, but it also frames the narrative’s comradeship themes. While you might inherit the propagandist mantle ‘Wings of Theve’, the first-person perspective ensures you live it shoulder-to-shoulder with your wingmen.

You Can Now Command Your Squadron

A returning mechanic from Ace Combat titles before Skies Unknown, in Wings of Theve you can issue commands to your squadron. Via directional D-pad inputs, you can tell your wingmen and women to cover your approach, attack a specific target themselves, switch between standard and special weapons, or break formation to engage at will. While you adopted leadership responsibility in Ace Combat 7, the ability to instruct your squadron simply didn’t exist. Ace Combat 8 reintroduces the tactical wrinkle missing from its predecessor, and effective team control could make the difference between victory and defeat.

Aircraft and Loadout Customisation Extends to Your Crew

Ace Combat 7 lets you tune your fighter jet with parts, upgrades, and weapons, but Wings of Theve expands mission preparation beyond your own aircraft. As squadron leader, you can customise the machines flown by your wingmen alongside your own, giving an extra strategic edge that was absent in Skies Unknown. In setting your squadron’s loadout and choosing which pilot flies what, Wings of Theve emphasises the importance of pre-mission setup, where squad composition needs to be balanced with the sortie’s objectives.

Clouds Are Completely Overhauled

Clouds, alongside weather patterns in general, were a defining visual character in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown. Flying through volumetric clouds was an effective showcase of a fighter jet’s speed and velocity, and given the system’s success you wouldn’t have expected Wings of Theve to need a complete overhaul. Yet, with development shifting to Unreal Engine 5, the developers saw an opportunity to embed their own proprietary Cloud engine tech into the pipeline. Dubbed ‘Cloudly’, Ace Combat 8’s clouds now render in multiple layers, from dense rain clouds to atmospheric wisps, boosting immersion as you’re soaring at Mach 2.

Clouds Have a Greater Impact on Your Tactics

And, the impact of Ace Combat 8’s overhauled cloud system spreads beyond being purely visual to directly influencing your tactics in greater ways than in Skies Unknown. While you could use cloud cover to break missile lock and hide from enemy pilots in Ace Combat 7, now the clouds’ more visceral rendering gives you more opportunities to hide above and below, to lose enemies, and to use inclement weather to your advantage. Also, distinct cloud layers act as cues for assessing speed and approach angle, creating a more intuitive aerial battlefield and, ideally, more controllable dogfights.

Visual Tracking is More Viable Than Before

In Ace Combat 7, you’d have relied solely on your HUD and radar to find your aerial whereabouts, to understand your position in relation to your squad, and to locate enemies. Now, clouds act as readable combat markers, with you able to track contrails, plumes, and smoke through the air. Likewise, the aforementioned multi-layered clouds give you enough visual information to assess how high you’re flying without reading your altimeter. You can get a sense of altitude from the makeup of clouds and weather.

Chain Reaction Destruction Adds Yet More Tactical Layers

If you’re in any doubt Wings of Theve is abandoning its arcade roots, the introduction of chain reaction destruction should put those worries to rest. Akin to combo chasing, in Ace Combat 8 destroying certain targets can trigger cascading destruction, potentially taking out multiple enemies at once. There’s no comparative mechanic in Ace Combat 7; this one’s entirely new, and it changes the question of ‘who do I shoot’ to ‘who do I shoot first’.

Superweapon Battles Are More Elaborate

Now, superweapon battles aren’t new to Ace Combat. Indeed, Skies Unknown featured several colossal setpieces. However, Ace Combat 8 refines the core mechanics underneath how you engage with these massive threats, with the most notable innovation coming in chip damage. That is, whereas previously you could only deal damage by targeting specific boxes, in Wings of Theve any portion of a superweapon’s hull can take a battering. So, while weak points still exist, unmarked sections aren’t immune to your firepower. This makes strafing run accuracy less integral to success while ensuring the fights feel less punishing overall.

Ground and Naval Battles Get Bigger

Ace Combat 7 wasn’t limited to aerial dogfights, with its campaign regularly sending you after ground targets and naval forces. Wings of Theve builds on that foundation with larger, more varied encounters with missions that can throw aircraft, ships, ground installations, and sizeable weapons into the same arena, forcing you to switch between different types of targets rather than simply hunting a single threat. Furthermore, as seen in gameplay footage, you can now destroy environmental installations such as skyscrapers to halt enemy progress. As a result, each sortie will feel broader in scope.

Missions Are More Reactive

While Ace Combat 7 has its fair share of awestriking missions, the objectives and encounters you faced tended to follow predetermined sequences. Wings of Theve, instead, brings more reactive battles, with enemy behaviour, objectives, and even radio chatter changing based on what’s occurring during a mission. And, to counter these dynamically shifting objectives, Ace Combat 8 allows you to pack two special weapon types – air-to-air missiles alongside a ground attack speciality, for instance – whereas Skies Unknown allowed only one.

Disruption Systems Have Been Updated

In Ace Combat 7, you could disrupt enemy approaches, HUDs, and targeting systems through radar jamming, weather interference, and Electronic Warfare. While these systems are carrying over to Wings of Theve, Ace Combat’s eighth mainline entry updates how they behave. For example, Skies Unknown’s jamming functioned like an on-off button, scripted to specific moments or localised ‘jamming’ fields, whereas Ace Combat 8 degrades your lock-on distance depending on how close you are to the source of the jamming.

Onboarding Has Been Reworked

Aiming to retain players that were new to the series following Ace Combat 7, and perhaps capitalise on attracting further rookies, Ace Combat 8 ships with a reworked tutorial. So, even though, ostensibly, the game is about aligning the trajectory of your aircraft with your target before firing, Wings of Theve features lessons on understanding flight systems, reading UI, and selecting targets, alongside more advanced aerial combat manoeuvres. These training modes can run alongside the campaign, and will likely benefit veterans as well as newcomers.

Online Mode is Much Bigger

While the upgrades and additions discussed in this feature suggest Ace Combat 8 will be the most established entry in the series to date, the expansions coming to its online mode are arguably the most significant. Ace Combat 7 included just two PvP modes – an eight-player Battle Royale deathmatch, and a four-vs-four team dogfight – whereas Wings of Theve brings PvE co-operative assaults, and PvP-based battles featuring air, land, and ocean targets. Emergency sorties targeting campaign bosses and superweapons plus dogfights against NPC aces round out the modes, with everything contained in an air base lobby of up to 100 pilots.

Multiplayer Has Its Own Progression

Supporting Ace Combat Online’s newfound independence, participating in Ace Combat 8’s multiplayer modes contributes toward its own progression and save data, keeping it separate from the single-player campaign. You’ll create a new avatar and earn rewards to raise your rank, acquiring aircraft upgrades, unique abilities, and cosmetics such as skins, emblems, and weathering effects. Elsewhere, Ace Combat Online expands Ace Combat 7’s multiplayer bounty system with an individual Threat Level. Before, shooting down the highest scoring players netted you extra points, whereas now you’ll also earn points the longer your kill streak continues.

Ace Combat Online Brings a Wider Selection of Aircraft

In Ace Combat 7’s multiplayer modes you could choose between three aircraft categories: dedicated air-to-air fighters, hybrid multirole aircraft, and ground-assault attackers, with matchmaking balance coming in the shape of a ‘Total Cost’ system. Wings of Theve’s Ace Combat Online introduces an extra class: the Electronic Warfare support ship, outfitted with tools to disrupt enemies. The emphasis this time is very much on team composition too, with you and your squadron needing to balance your chosen classes to succeed. Through classes, loadouts, and ability customisations, Ace Combat Online also allows for dynamic team synergies to emerge beyond Ace Combat 7’s potential.

Brave the Unknown in an All-New Dimension

Mysterious portals are appearing across the Overworld, and entering one takes you to a brand-new dimension: the Sift. Unlike the familiar Deep Dark and Nether, the Sift is a glowing, vibrant land composed of ancient stone and lush vegetation. When there, you’ll encounter entirely new mob types, dimension-specific items, and the brand-new boss-tier adversary the Twisted Warden. Lore-wise, the Sift is speculated to be a place wandered by stray souls, with the Twisted Warden itself corrupted by their power as it guards the Deep Dark portal.

Exploration Follows an Interconnected Map

Where the original Minecraft Dungeons divided its adventure into individual missions, the sequel, instead, adopts a seamless approach to exploration. Large regions form an interconnected world, with narrative events, settlements, ancient structures, hubs, and numerous points of interest, plus caves and ruins with layouts that can vary between runs, all ensuring travel throughout Minecraft Dungeons II feels like an expansive adventure rather than a series of clearly defined expeditions.

Quests Come in Two Varieties

While the new interconnected world provides expansive exploration, Minecraft Dungeons II’s quest structure is a little more traditional, with them split into two categories: main quests and side quests. The former pushes the central story forward as you uncover the source of the unusual events occurring across the Sift while the latter provides opportunities to explore the world and help its inhabitants via light-hearted detours. One mission could see you tracking down the Twisted Warden, while the next you’re pursuing missing bees.

Combat Slots Are Expanded to Twelve

Buildcrafting potential has been greatly expanded for this sequel, with Minecraft Dungeons II increasing the number of available combat slots from six to twelve. This should give you considerably more room to experiment with your equipment and abilities, instead of being forced into a relatively limited selection of tools like the first game. Now, you’ll be able to create a more specialised combination moulded around the particular playstyle you’re chasing.

Armour Now Split Into Four Pieces

Armour now works differently in this sequel, too. Instead of treating it as a single piece of equipment, Minecraft Dungeons II splits armour into four separate categories: helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots. The idea here, it seems, is to give you another opportunity to customise your character, shaping your overall build. Combined with the game’s expanded combat slots and deeper enchanting systems – which we’ll get onto in a minute – the new armour structure should give your loot hunting extra depth.

Projectile Weapon Ammo Switched to Unlimited

Projectile-based weaponry has been switched up in Minecraft Dungeons II, with ammunition now unlimited and automatically replenishing over time. This means you won’t need to constantly scour for more arrows or other ammo types during a raid. Instead, ranged weapons can be treated as a consistent part of your arsenal – you’ll just need to give them enough time to recharge.

You Can Finally Jump

Yes, finally, in Minecraft Dungeons II your heroes can jump! While this may sound like a small addition, a quick scan of the community’s response to this news tells you all you need to know – the inability to leave the ground in the first game adversely affected both exploration and combat in ways that were difficult to ignore. Jumping can now be used to reach areas that weren’t previously accessible, to navigate environmental obstacles, and as a combat tactic allowing you to perform attacks from above. Together with the returning dodge roll, this addition should make movement considerably more intuitive than it was in the original game.

Enchanting Has Been Overhauled

The sequel reintroduces Enchanting, but this time it’s been significantly reworked to give you greater control over your builds. A deeper and more flexible system than before, throughout exploration you’ll encounter enchantment books which unlock unique effects which can be added to your personal library. These can then be applied to your gear through the Enchantsmith, encouraging an intentional approach to the effects you apply to your equipment. Furthermore, enchantments can be upgraded and leveled up over time, meaning you can continually refine and strengthen your preferred builds.

The Entire Game Can Be Played Solo or Co-Op

Whether you want to forge through the Sift alone or you’re looking to cause chaos with your mates, Minecraft Dungeons II has you covered. The entire campaign is playable solo, or up to four players can form a party, with local couch co-op available alongside online multiplayer with cross-play. There’s also mixed co-op, allowing you to share the same console or PC while joining friends situated elsewhere online.

Matchmaking and Party Codes Are Included

And, if you don’t have a trio of friends able to play with you, you needn’t worry. Finding people to play with should be easy in this sequel thanks to the introduction of matchmaking. So, now, you can use matchmaking to find other players who are also looking for a party, and you can jump into the adventure together. Party codes are also available, giving you another way to connect with specific groups.

Co-Op Comes With Several Quality of Life Improvements

Minecraft Dungeons II isn’t content with just adding more ways to play together; it is also bringing ways to make co-operative play as seamless as possible. Loot is automatically shared between party members, for instance, which removes some of the friction around distributing dropped items. Reviving fallen teammates has also been accelerated, meaning you won’t need to spend quite as long waiting for someone else to get back into the fray. On the face of it, these are small changes, but they’ll make a meaningful difference to the flow of co-operative playthroughs.

Loot Can Include Random Bonus Effects

Minecraft Dungeons II’s loot system introduces an extra layer of unpredictability thanks to random bonus effects. Dropped weapons and armour, for example, now have the chance to include additional effects, meaning two pieces of otherwise identical gear can exhibit different abilities. It’s a further incentive to collect every drop rather than treating duplicate items as worthless, and if you’re chasing the most powerful build possible you’ll need to scour through every dropped item to find the strongest rewards.

There’s a Mini-Inventory on the D-Pad

Minecraft Dungeons II includes a mini-inventory that can be accessed via the D-pad. Designed to provide a way of accessing your equipment and quickly swap items, the mini-inventory also makes exploration more streamlined by removing the need to navigate through full inventory menus.

Release Date, Platforms, Price, and PC Requirements

Minecraft Dungeons II launches on September 29th to PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store, plus Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. The sequel will also be playable on Xbox Game Pass day one. Price-wise, the game’s Standard Edition will set you back $29.99 while a Deluxe Edition retails for $49.99. To play the game on your PC, at a minimum you’ll need an Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 2200G CPU, an NVIDIA GTX 1050 or AMD Radeon RX 560 GPU, and 8GB RAM. Recommended hardware, however, includes an Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, NVIDIA GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580 GPU, and 16GB RAM.

Modernised Combat Makes Geralt More Responsive

One of The Witcher 3 Remastered’s most substantial overhauls centres on its combat, with CD Projekt Red refining Geralt’s animations, transitions, and responsiveness to be more in-line with modern expectations. Attacks will flow more seamlessly into one another, while switching targets becomes a breeze, with the goal being to make Wild Hunt feel like a game that could have been released for the first time in 2026 rather than reflecting its 11-year age.

Witcher Signs Get New Finishers

Adding some finesse to Geralt’s modernised combat are new finishing moves, with the remaster incorporating Signs into his executions, including an Aard-based finisher shown in the game’s reveal. The signs themselves are also receiving a visual refresh, with Aard, Igni, Quen, Axii, and Yrden getting a cosmetic refresh. As far as we know, the underlying mechanics haven’t been confirmed to change, but executing them should at least look more impressive.

Enemies React, Move, and Fight More Smartly

While CD Projekt Red has not detailed specific behavioural changes for The Witcher 3’s gauntlet of monsters, the studio has confirmed that enemies will react, move, and engage more smartly thanks to improved AI. Combined with refined combat animations – which apply here as well as to Geralt – then encounters will feel more dynamic and awestriking, particularly when the White Wolf takes on larger and more aggressive creatures.

Traversal Receives a Much-Needed Overhaul

Getting around The Witcher 3’s enormous continent should be notably less fiddly in the upcoming remaster. Climbing, vaulting, and mantling have all been reworked to make Geralt’s traversal more responsive and engaging, no matter the environmental obstacle. This is particularly significant as the original was often decried for its stuttering navigation, where frustration consistently reared its head as Geralt scrambled over rocks, ledges, and walls.

Roach Will Feel Better To Control

Improvements were made to Roach’s handling in The Witcher 3’s 2022 next-gen update, but Wild Hunt Remastered is set to build on this with another handling overhaul. This time, you should have greater control over where Geralt’s trusted steed roams, wrestling back control from the famously unpredictable horse. White CD Projekt Red hasn’t detailed every adjustment yet, we expect traversing with Roach should feel more deliberate than the original ever did.

Skill Trees Have Been Completely Redesigned

The Witcher 3 Remastered’s progression systems have been rebuilt from the ground-up, with them now mirroring the structure CD Projekt Red used in Cyberpunk 2077. Now, there are interlocking branches that govern how perks are unlocked, while existing skills are being reworked alongside new abilities that are set to be introduced. This, alongside combat and graphical overhauls – the latter we’ll get onto later – represents one of Remastered’s most substantial updates, potentially giving returning players an entirely new way to build Geralt.

Transmogrification Combines Stats Between Equipment

Wild Hunt Remastered finally lets you separate Geralt’s appearance from his equipment’s statistics, with transmogrification allowing you to use the stats of one weapon or armour piece while retaining the appearance of another. This welcome change means you’ll no longer have to choose between looking like the White Wolf you actually want to see or equipping whatever items happen to have the better numbers.

A Significant Visual Overhaul Does More Than Make Things Look Better

Yes, The Witcher 3 Remastered’s graphics package goes considerably further than boosting the 2022 next-gen’s resolution. CD Projekt Red has reworked textures, foliage shading, global illumination, environmental geometry, and the interactions between specific surfaces and light. Going deeper, there’s also improvements coming to subsurface scattering, ambient occlusion, tone mapping, and ray tracing. The key here is these improvements are coming to every individual element, from grass and plant texture, to how light passes through skin.

PC Gets Further Graphical Updates

Those graphical overhauls just-mentioned apply to every platform, but PC players will get several extra additions that won’t be available on console. The headline is full path tracing, creating more physically accurate lighting simulation beyond rasterised ray tracing. There’s also Nvidia Ray Reconstruction, DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 2.0, producing cleaner outputs, high image quality at lower resolutions, Nvidia-less upscaling, and machine learning upscaling respectively.

Meditation Is Much More Immersive

Not every change coming to Wild Hunt Remastered represents a substantial overhaul. Some are smaller, more atmospheric changes which point to CD Projekt Red considering how the game will feel to play in 2026 rather than simply how it performs. The newly immersive meditation system is one such change, where a screen fade out is being replaced with a time-lapse of the world around Geralt as he meditates on time passing. Again, it’s a minor addition, but it makes a system previously functional feel more in-tune with the game’s tone.

Menus and UI Updated To Match Modern Expectations

The Witcher 3’s menus are getting an overdue usability refresh too, with the interface and navigation being redesigned with clarity and ease of use in mind. Navigating the game’s huge inventory, map, quest log, and progression systems, then, should prove to be much quicker. It might not be as flashy as the new violent execution finishers, but given how much time you spend menu diving through lengthy playthroughs it will feel impactful.

Photo Mode Has Been Expanded

First introduced in the 2022 update, The Witcher 3’s photo mode is being expanded with additional tools and options. New poses, camera controls, frames, filters, and character models give you more ways to capture Geralt than ever before. Considering how spectacular the visually refreshed Continent is set to look, the expanded toolkit should give screenshot hunters plenty of reason to feel satisfied with their snaps.

The Tutorial Has Been Modernised

If you’re new, or, indeed, returning for the first time in a long while, you should have an easier time understanding The Witcher 3’s interconnected systems thanks to a thoroughly modernised tutorial. Going beyond the fundamentals of combat, Wild Hunt Remastered’s tutorial covers the gamut of Geralt’s capabilities, including Witcher Signs and alchemy. In truth, it’s likely a useful addition for every player, with The Witcher 3 being one of the densest RPGs in existence.

Console Players Get Cross-Platform Mod Support

Remastered is also set to bring cross-platform mod support to consoles for the first time, with the Xbox Series X|S specifically cited as a platform confirmed to support user-created modifications. Indeed, custom quests, weapons, equipment, and individualised balance is set to give console players an entirely new way to experience the game’s wealth of community-created content.

A Range of Accessibility Options Is Included

Finally, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered is set to add a substantial collection of accessibility options, letting you remove some of the game’s more cumbersome and repetitive mechanics. Now, you’ll be able to enable things such as infinite breath, while adjustable vitality duration, unlimited boat durability, and unlimited item durability should ease the sometimes unnecessary management of your equipment. Automatically looting corpses is another notable inclusion, but this alongside all other changes can be toggled individually to tailor the experience to your liking rather than settling for a broad-brush easy mode.

You Have More Control Over The Order Of The Campaign

Control was generous with exploration, but its story ultimately followed a pre-prescribed narrative. Jesse moved through the Oldest House according to the campaign’s structure, with optional missions, secrets, and place to revisit providing opportunities to deviate from the path. Now, Control Resonant is loosening these restrictions. While the first and final Resonant encounters are fixed, Remedy says the major Resonants in between can be tackled in whatever order you choose. Accommodating this, much of Manhattan becomes freely available early on. This change affects the structure of the campaign itself by giving you the option to determine the sequence of events for yourself, rather than simply providing a larger world to explore.

Defeating a Boss Can Permanently Change The World

In Control, bosses were generally obstacles for Jesse to overcome. Defeating one meant collecting a reward, acquiring the next piece of the story, and moving on. Their impact, then, was confined to the encounter itself. In Control Resonant, Dylan’s victories are considerably more consequential. When he defeats a Resonant, Manhattan shapeshifts, with new threats appearing, existing encounters growing more dangerous, and objects and activities evolving as part of what Remedy calls the Resonance Cycle. Thus, killing major enemies in the upcoming sequel can create new obstacles elsewhere, potentially changing your trajectory as you move through Manhattan. Resonant’s bosses then, are strategic milestones; not isolated challenges.

Dylan Doesn’t Level Up – Manhattan Does

Control kept progression focused on Jesse. Completing missions earned Ability Points which could be invested into improving her paranatural abilities. It’s a standard loop used in countless games, but Control Resonant takes a divergent approach. Here, Dylan doesn’t have conventional XP, but the zone he’s operating in does. Completing activities levels up the zone, which can provide benefits such as health drops, loot reveals, and extra excursions. Zone progression, also, can award Dylan with Talent Points. Without intending to find a philosophical underpin, Resonant brings an inversion of the usual RPG formula, and that’s fitting for a follow-up which its developer describes as the opposite side of the same coin to its predecessor.

Combat Encounters Don’t Always Lock You In Anymore

By Remedy’s own admission, Control frequently forced you into combat by sealing off areas with Hiss barriers, locking Jesse in until she’d cleared every enemy. Now, to be fair, this worked well in the amorphous confines of the Oldest House, where penned-in combat encounters could be more plausibly constructed, but this idea is less practical on Manhattan’s open streets. So, rather than trapping you wherever enemies appear, Resonant instead incentivises you to fight. Remedy wants you to engage in this sequel because there’s something worth fighting for, not because you simply have to. The knock-on effect is that encounters should feel more organically engrained into both the environment and exploration, with the decision to engage or move on resting squarely in your hands.

Dialogue Choices Can Actually Have Consequences

Like boss encounters, Jesse’s conversations throughout Control had a primary purpose: to deliver information that points you toward the next objective. However, in Resonant, Dylan gets much more to say, with the sequel introducing dialogue choices that can influence how characters respond to him and how their relationship develops going forward. Some World Quests can even have their outcomes altered by your decisions, whether Dylan says something or chooses to stay silent. While conversations require more participation and lead to tangible consequences, an important caveat to remember is that Control Resonant will not feature branching narratives, and there is still one main ending. It’s more about shaping your relationship with Dylan and the world around him, rather than bringing a seachanged story.

One Playthrough is Deliberately Not Enough to Unlock Everything

While Control offered plenty of ways to develop Jesse, you could still complete her progression during a single run through the Oldest House. Flavoured builds existed, but Resonant’s forebear wasn’t designed around sending you down an exclusive upgrade path. Dylan’s journey, meanwhile, is more explicitly committed to specialisation, with Remedy confirming that you won’t be able to unlock everything in a single playthrough. Furthermore, some rewards will push Dylan toward a specific playstyle, meaning the choices you make during your first campaign could follow a substantially different direction from your second. It’s one of the clearest indications yet that Remedy is pushing the sequel into action-RPG territory rather than expanding on the foundations Control already laid.

Your Build Menu Is An Actual Place

And, back to Jesse’s progression – throughout Control her upgrades were handled inside conventional menus and systems accessible via Control Points. It’s not really in keeping with Remedy’s style, especially given how memorable Alan Wake 2’s metaphysical Mind Place was for narrative organisation. So, for Control’s sequel, the Finnish outfit plans to take you somewhere decidedly stranger: The Gap. Now, this surreal space connected to Dylan’s psyche is where you can manage and shape his build, with recent coverage even highlighting potential spaces where you can test his augmentations. Going forward, Remedy has no choice but to place progression inside some supernatural realm – it’s very much their signature now.

Control’s Isolation Has Been Deliberately Reversed

Isolation was one of Control’s heaviest themes, with Jesse entering the Oldest House as an outsider and spending much of her time navigating its shifting forms with relatively few companions. Underlining our suggestion earlier of Resonant inverting some of Control’s most prominent ideas, Dylan’s relationship with Manhattan develops alongside others. See, Manhattan here isn’t an empty disaster zone. No, there are civilians remaining within the ongoing catastrophe, while the FBC maintain a field presence with characters such as Zoe operating as handlers for Dylan’s journey.

Enemies Are Designed Around More Distinct Combat Roles

Control had plenty of enemy variety, from different Hiss forms to Mold enemies and other phantasmagorical threats. But, for this upcoming sequel, Remedy has stretched its legs considerably. Yes, in Resonant, the developer claims they’ve taken enemy design to “the next step”, with enemies that fulfil more distinct combat roles alongside an expansive gauntlet of different shapes, sizes, and danger. Evolved versions of the Hiss and Mold appear, intended to make you consider the appropriate response based on Dylan’s outfit. In summary: Resonant isn’t simply introducing more enemy types, but individualising threats so that they occupy more distinct roles within each encounter.

You Can Maintain Multiple Concurrent Playthroughs

This quality of life change is perhaps the smallest we’ve discussed in this feature, but it could prove itself to be one of the sequel’s most useful additions. See, listening to player feedback, Remedy has provided the option for multiple save slots, which is something the original Control did not have. What this allows is for you to maintain multiple concurrent campaigns, enabling you to explore divergent builds, choices, and outcomes without having to start again.

Here are 15 things you need to know before you buy.

Dylan Faden is the New Protagonist

Control’s protagonist and Director of the FBC Jesse Faden has mysteriously absconded for this sequel, and it’s up to her brother Dylan to find her. Stepping outside the amorphous concrete of the bureau’s Oldest House after years of incarceration, Dylan’s own paranatural powers have morphed Jesse’s parting gift – an Object of Power shaped like a spear, plunged inside his chest – into a physical weapon that’s bonded to his body. What follows are Dylan’s attempts to contain the cosmic anomalies that have spilled into Manhattan whilst also tracking Jesse down.

Dylan’s Weapon is The Aberrant

Put simply: The Aberrant is Control Resonant’s centre. Its characteristics move the sequel’s combat to close-quarters melee, while buildcrafting is expressed through the weapon’s forms – Dual Blades, Axe, Scythe, Whip, and Heavy Hammer. Whereas Jesse’s Service Weapon was a gun with changing designs, The Aberrant is a shapeshifting instrument tuned to five distinct combat identities, with move sets, attack speeds, range, power, crowd control potential, and more, governed by whatever form Dylan is wielding.

The Gap System is Combat’s Core Loop

Every enemy Dylan encounters has a Gap meter, which, essentially, is a stagger bar that depletes with every blow he lands. When the Gap breaks, enemies are left vulnerable to punishing attacks and lethal finishers. There’s an optimal technique to dishing out damage here; a rhythm dictated by The Aberrant’s forms. See, the low power, swift manoeuvrability of the weapon’s Dual Blades or Whip can overwhelm enemies and chip away at their stagger meter. Then, Dylan can switch to the Axe or Hammer to deal heavy punishment. It’s a familiar system in some ways, but the skill comes in recognising which form to use and when is best to switch.

Each Weapon Form Can Be Upgraded

Each of The Aberrant’s five forms has its own tailored upgrade tree, with improved power and efficiency, new moves, enhanced stagger damage, status effects, and exciting combo-extending potential all a part of their customisation paths. And, on the combo potential specifically, The Aberrant utilises three slots – Primary, Secondary, and Combo Ender – which you can assign forms into, allowing the weapon to seamlessly shapeshift mid-combo. But, if you decide you want to switch up your playstyle, respec’ing your upgrade points is possible.

Dylan’s Resonance Abilities Compliment The Aberrant

And while The Aberrant is Dylan’s primary weapon, it’s only half of his combat repertoire. His paranatural Resonance abilities provide a supernatural counterpoint to his melee attacks, powered by a resource generated through aggressive play. See, the more fights you throw Dylan into, the more Resonance he accumulates, which can then be spent executing high-impact supernatural abilities, summons, temporary subversions, projectiles, and more. Better still, you can equip two distinct loadouts of three abilities and swap between them at any time to best match the abilities to the situation. One for combat, the other for traversal perhaps?

Paranatural Movement is Just as Crucial

Dylan’s abilities aren’t exclusively tied to dismembering the Hiss. No, with Manhattan’s layout foregoing all known physics, traditional movement isn’t always an option, so Control Resonant equips Dylan with a hefty suite of movement and traversal skills. Reach, for instance, functions like a metaphysical grappling hook, allowing Dylan to catapult himself through impossible spaces, while Levitation and Air Dodging allow him to cross gaps, engage in aerial combat, and even juggle airborne targets.

Shift Can Flip the World Upside Down

We’ve reserved one of Dylan’s paranatural abilities for its own entry, as Shift is set to be one of the game’s most memorable mechanics. Encapsulating Remedy’s commitment to messing with reality, Shift allows Dylan to physically re-orientate a distorted world. If a road is upside down, or an entire building is on its side, you can flip its centre of gravity to allow Dylan to continue as if it was a flat surface. This eye-catching ability suggests that instead of always pushing against a corrupted world, there will be times in Resonant when you’ll mould it’s corruption around you.

Talents and Artifacts Build Dylan’s Passive Progression

Whereas The Aberrant and Resonance abilities might provide the foundations for Dylan’s combat style, Talents are what joins those systems together. See, rather than providing incremental stat boosts, Talents bring synergy between both sides of Dylan’s arsenal – boosting his Dual Blades while a Resonance shield is active, for example. You can steer Dylan towards radically different archetypes, whether you want to extend his combos, maximise Resonance generation, or something else entirely. Elsewhere, Artefacts offer another layer of customisation, where crafted gear perks can bring passive status effects, temporary immunities, automatic retaliatory attacks, or something altogether more explosive.

New Game Plus is Designed as a Power Fantasy

Available at launch is New Game Plus, and it’s a mode built around replaying Resonant’s campaign as the ultimate power fantasy. Carried over is your Aberrant mastery and unlocked Resonance abilities, while collectibles are relocated to renew exploration incentives. The result is an experience that gives you the tools to tear through Manhattan with everything you earned on your first playthrough.

Manhattan is Remedy’s Biggest Playground Yet

Control’s Oldest House was unnaturally large, but its brutalist corridors and fluorescent offices could only offer so much variety. Resonant, instead, opens the doors to Manhattan, giving Remedy considerably more leeway to incorporate verticality, scale, and colossal structure. Furthermore, hidden secrets, lore drops, optional enemies, and bizarre diversions lie in the corrupted streets, meaning every corner on every block is worth poking around in.

Manhattan’s Difficulty Evolves as You Progress

Resonant’s Manhattan isn’t an open world, but an open-ended city cordoned into zones, and the difficulty of these areas evolves the more you clear. While each district’s story is curated, progression through each zone ties back to the broader narrative. It’s just that the further you venture, the more the city responds with greater challenges – enemies level up, more aggressive threats begin to spawn, and previously manageable encounters become elite skirmishes. It’s an intriguing pull-push – the city’s non-linearity pulling you in, then pushing you back as it grows tougher – moving Resonant away from traditional ARPG levelling.

Patterning Gives Every District Its Own Kaleidoscopic Nightmare

Behind Manhattan’s transformation is the Patterning, an algorithmic phenomenon that twists the city’s everyday street furniture into kaleidoscopic configurations. This effect is most obvious in the Resonants themselves; the enormous boss entities which occupy specific districts embody the most extreme vision of these distortions. Yet, rather than just being a visually dizzying spectacle to decode, each Resonant is designed around a specific challenge, forcing you to adapt to the particular nightmare that’s taken root in its corner of Manhattan.

Resonant is Designed to be Welcoming

Despite the sequel’s deep systems and demanding melee combat, Remedy has ensured that Resonant is not an impenetrable game. Multiple difficulty options give every type of player control over how punishing their experience should be, while generous dodge timing makes evasive manoeuvres approachable to action-game newcomers. Even the ability to respec Dylan’s build means you’re free to experiment without fear of committing. And, even if you’re coming to Resonant having never played Control, Remedy insists that the sequel has been created to stand on its own.

Conversations Don’t Interrupt the Action

Whereas Control often pulled Jesse out of the action for a conversation, Resonant looks to build dialogue seamlessly into Dylan’s movements through the world. Admittedly, this system sounds relatively minor compared to the sequel’s more obvious combat and progression overhauls, but it should help the game maintain the momentum encouraged by the renewed emphasis on traversal and movement.

Release Date, Platforms, Price, and PC Requirements

Control Resonant is set for launch on September 24th, with PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store the confirmed platforms. Pricewise, the Standard Edition is retailing for $59.99, while a Digital Deluxe Edition is available for $69.99. To play the game on PC you’ll need a minimum Intel i5-8500 or AMD equivalent processor, a GeForce GTX 1070 or Radeon RX 5600 GPU, 16GB RAM, and 100GB storage.

"Infinite Rush made me think of how my kids play"

On its easiest difficulties, Infinite Rush is a casual cruiser. But, ramp up the challenge and its forgiving toy-car physics transform into exhilarating, barely controllable chaos. It’s an arcade racer not concerned with nailing corner entry or kissing apexes. When set to Very Hard, just keeping your little plastic machine pointing the right way is enough. Bumpers be damned – if I wanna bounce and ricochet toward the finish line then I’m gonna.

The game does facilitate my childlike carelessness though, with flipped cars that auto self-right, quick positional resets with a press of the right shoulder button, and, when streaming through the open playgrounds, obstacles that can be smashed to pieces like paper-mache piñatas.

Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is an accessible, frictionless racer. It’s why Easy mode works, and it’s also why Very Hard’s intensity works too. The game’s momentum-first design continually pulls you forward. The question, however, is this: can a lack of resistance sustain a lengthy campaign of racing events, diversions, and open world collect-a-thons? Or, will the adult in me want the toybox to fight back?

"Hot Wheels Infinite Rush is an accessible, frictionless racer."

Anyway, let’s start with the four vehicle classes: the self-explanatory Speeders and Drifters, the weighty, powerful Titans, and the Versatiles which sit somewhere between all three. Each harbours intuitive propulsion and handling except the Titans. See, Infinite Rush’s driving is centred around brake-triggered drifting, but the Titans don’t naturally suit it. In other words, they can barely sustain a useful slide. Their nose skews inward, and they’re less fun to hurtle through the open world than the other car types. If you encounter an emergent Daredevil – a rogue speedster whom you can challenge to a one-on-one race, with you adding their vehicle to your collection should you see the checkered flag first – then you’ll want to switch to a faster, more effective car type. Titans have powerful boosts, sure, but the game’s aforesaid momentum revolves around drifting just as much as throttling it out of corners. Really, enjoyment behind the wheel of a Titan only emerged once I maximised the difficulty.

In essence, Infinite Rush in Easy mode is straightforward and trouble free – ideal for children. Medium offers slightly more resistance, while races in Hard become noticeably more competitive. Yet, I don’t wish to big myself up, but even on Hard I still didn’t find a meaningful challenge, so I switched to Very Hard, and this – as I’ve already alluded – is where the game transformed. The jump was significant, and almost instantly my driving became more erratic. Corners could barely be contained, tiny mistakes became consequential, and victories felt earned. The nature of open world cruising doesn’t change, aside from perhaps Daredevils being harder to catch. It’s during races, elimination events, and the Daredevils where intense difficulty is found. And, for me, it made the extensive checklist of open world events more meaningful.

Still, all four difficulty modes are viable, and Infinite Rush doesn’t tell you how to play. Instead, through its momentum-first design, you can decide whether the game is an easygoing toybox or a fight for survival, with the latter, importantly, never feeling like a grind. If my car did end up pointing the wrong way, I didn’t care.

And, as for progressing through the maps themselves, well, again, supporting the momentum-first philosophy, they arrive quickly. Structured around completing events – races, stunts, time trials, speed traps – across an island to unlock a one-on-one boss-style encounter, you don’t spend too long pursuing victories before the next island appears. Wheelswood is predominantly a grid-based city, while Tentacle Bay is a coastal resort with golf courses and water parks. Gearville is another city, this time surrounded by desert and dirt tracks, while my favourite is a Japan-themed island of dense metropolis, water canals, ancient architecture, and rock gardens.

Each harbours a wealth of jumps, ramps, loops, and destruction, and they’re a breeze to traverse, even if the visual distinction between them isn’t always pronounced. Gears and stickers provide mechanical encouragement to explore, but there’s joy-a-plenty in simply careening through each’s freewheeling layout. None are enormous enough to get lost. They’re compact playgrounds designed to keep you moving.

"Still, all four difficulty modes are viable, and Infinite Rush doesn’t tell you how to play."

Less successful to this ethos the Gearville’s mountainous undulation, which can make waypoints difficult to locate. Likewise, dynamic events need to be noticed and chased to initiate, with a randomness that could feel frustrating to completionists.

That said, there’s always a pleasing momentum to expanding Infinite Rush’s garage. Cars are unlocked by winning races, taking on the Daredevils, completing timed delivery runs, or simply visiting the dealerships scattered across the island, as well as some secret sellers that dynamically appear later. Dealerships require Rush Coins, which are earned both conventionally through events and organically by tearing across the open islands, performing drifts, narrowly avoiding traffic, and smashing through the environment. Even aimless driving, then, feels productive, with Rush Coins consistently arriving at a steady rate.

Only on occasion did I wish currency accumulation was more generous. There are so many appealing cars to collect, alongside boost effects, and dash sounds, that I sometimes found myself impatiently eyeing the next purchase. Don’t get me wrong – the grind is never oppressive. But, a little extra reward so I could expand my garage at a pace which matches the momentum elsewhere would have been appreciated.

Likewise, once cars are in your garage the ways you personalise and develop them comes slowly, and the augmentations aren’t particularly meaningful once they arrive either. Four tiers of perks can improve your acceleration, handling, boost recharge, and more, but the fine-tuning they offer is slight. The cars are easy to drive as they are, so I never truly felt as though I’d crafted a speed demon or battering ram despite there being perks to enable such builds. Furthermore, higher tiers took a while to unlock, and finally reaching the most powerful tier only yielded one specific perk, and it remained the sole high-tier perk for a long while.

Another customisation tool is the livery editor, and it remained merely functional and fiddly throughout. Changing colours and finishes is straightforward, but placing decals precisely – particularly when attempting symmetrical designs – is unnecessarily awkward. A simple option to mirror placement would help. More frustratingly, equipping a completed livery requires several trips through menus. It’s an odd amount of friction given gameplay is built around movement.

"Only on occasion did I wish currency accumulation was more generous."

Likewise, the track creator is undermined by cumbersome UI despite a broader potential for creating outlandish circuit designs. Like playing without adult supervision, piecing bits of looping track together stirred the childlike glee in me once again, but the creator’s setup doesn’t foster spontaneous building like it should. My first attempt at a corkscrew demonstrated how easily it was to create something technically spectacular but completely unusable, too; the builder needs planning and foresight, whereas spontaneity should be in the front seat. There’s an excellent creative tool here, and, indeed, a course of unfathomable loops, cannon fire, magnetic roads, and a dinosaur emerged in later attempts in spite of the interface’s roadblock.

Elsewhere, Infinite Rush looks every bit the part, with popping colour and superbly detailed cars that occasionally look indistinguishable from their plastic counterparts. Milestone’s affinity for vehicles shines here, with slow-motion shots showcasing each panel’s texture and detail. Engine sounds are equally impressive, offering plenty of coarse, characterful variety.

Local multiplayer is less convincing. Basic races and elimination events are supported, but there’s no option to freely explore the islands. Given the game’s playful, toybox-like design, this feels like a missed opportunity – especially for families like mine, where six-year olds simply want to mess around and create destruction together.

Ultimately though, Infinite Rush understands the Hot Wheels fantasy. It isn’t about precise racing or perfect cornering, and while its easiest difficulties might seem too forgiving for adults, the sheer speed and spectacle of throwing little plastic cars around at unreasonable velocities awakened a childlike glee in me. I genuinely didn’t care if I won or lost, I just wanted debris.

This does bring the question back: is a largely frictionless experience enough to sustain a lengthy campaign? Unfortunately, I don’t think it is. In fact, I do believe the game would benefit from more focused career progression akin to earlier Hot Wheels titles. This isn’t to say the open worlds aren’t worth your time, but there needs to be a little fight back. Alas, I’ll be sticking with Very Hard difficulty, because, at least, it transforms frictionless toy-car physics into some genuinely exhilarating arcade racing.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

"Within minutes of digging in, I felt like a stranger to the skates."

Now, for 27, the left-trigger pivot is no-longer the reliable skating manoeuvre my muscle memory remembered. Overusing it left me vulnerable to poke checks. It took a few periods before I acknowledged its speed penalty and started to use it sparingly for subtle re-positioning or to open passing lanes, letting the AI skaters move rather than prematurely forcing the play.

This change gave me a useful introduction to NHL 27’s wider ambitions, with EA Sports skewing this year’s iteration toward making the on-ice action purposeful and reactive. See, more deliberate skating is just the tip of the iceberg – most significant this year is all 32 NHL teams now carrying individual playbooks informed by real-world NHL EDGE data. The Leafs, for instance, balance forechecking with speed through the neutral zone, while Colorado Avalanche prefers carrying the puck over the blue line. Other teams apply pressure by dumping, some lean on cycling to tire out defences, and others demand high-intensity across all zones.

More importantly, however, is that AI players are supposed to understand their team’s favoured strategies, adjusting their positioning, responsiveness, and support as matches evolve – the so-called ‘Cohesive AI’ which EA touts in its marketing.

After several games, it seems plausible that there’s something genuinely compelling here. NHL 27’s playbooks can tangibly affect the shape and rhythm of a game in ways that earlier entries rarely managed. The differences are there, and I can feel them on ice; what I’m less certain of is just how significant those differences really are. Have these playbooks fundamentally changed the way NHL plays, or have they simply given greater definition to systems that have underpinned the series for years?

The easiest way to understand NHL 27’s new playbooks is, for me, to not think of them as a set of tactics and more a demonstration of a team’s personality. Yes, they may specify the optimum formation for setting neutral zone traps or for which side of the rink skaters should stack during breakouts, but they also dictate their aggression, their willingness to take risks, or whether to hold cautiously. Now, each team has identifiable preferences covering things like forechecking, pinching, support, and structure across offensive lines and defensive pairings.

"The easiest way to understand NHL 27’s new playbooks is, for me, to not think of them as a set of tactics and more a demonstration of a team’s personality."

Assessing Colorado’s carry-focused approach, when breaking out of my defensive zone I noticed space opening up on centre ice. Then, moving through the middle of the rink revealed wide players who had found room to carry the puck into the offensive zone. The Edmonton Oilers, meanwhile, prefer dumping to carrying and shooting over cycling, so when I fired the puck around the boards for an AI teammate to chase, a supporting defenseman immediately pinched the blue line to occupy the passing lane before an opposing skater could close. Both the Avalanche and the Oilers, then, bring contrasting approaches to entry, but the tactical effectiveness hinges on their personalities and behaviour too; their patience, urgency, or a combination of both.

And the more I experimented playing with different teams, the more I realised that my own playstyle suited a particular team’s playbook over another. A match with the Montreal Canadians, for example, felt the most natural fit for me and the way I tend to play. They’re a carry-dump-agnostic team favouring low intensity cycling, and versus the LA Kings’ neutral zone control we fought an intense battle of repellent strategies. I played to Montreal’s strengths, cycled the puck, shot from the blue line, and lit the lamp with satisfaction knowing that I’d scored by playing the kind of hockey the team itself seems to encourage.

Of course, a team’s playbook means nothing if the players themselves didn’t follow its instructions. Thankfully, NHL 27’s AI is mostly convincing, with teammates shifting in-line with momentum, supporting breakouts, chasing dumped pucks, and launching desperation moves if caught on the wrong side of an odd-man rush. It creates the impression of a team that is thinking on their skates rather than following pre-prescribed routes.

This was particularly noticeable when I began paying attention to what was happening away from the puck. Driving down the wing of the offensive zone, the Utah Mammoth’s opposing winger would drive to the net, presenting an opportunity for a cross-crease pass and easy tap-in. And the Mammoth, as it happens, were another team that suited me, with them able to mix puck cycling and sniping with aggressive forechecking and recovery.

"Of course, a team’s playbook means nothing if the players themselves didn’t follow its instructions."

These observations carry over onto the opposing team and their defensive prowess, too. On higher difficulties especially, passing lanes were slammed shut as swiftly as they opened, meaning I had to commit to the pass immediately. In my Mammoth versus Dallas Stars game, with the Texan team often compacting around the slot, I had to find ways to work the offensive zone to open gaps to shoot. By the final buzzer, though, I’d achieved three wildly divergent goals, plus an empty-netter.

Not every experiment went as smoothly. Taking the New Jersey Devils into a game against the New York Islanders produced one of the most infuriating matches of my playthrough. And, intriguingly, I’m not entirely sure why. I committed to the Devils’ preference of carrying the puck into the zone, peppered Ilya Sorokin with 40 shots, but somehow couldn’t tire the Islanders netminder enough to find a breakthrough, all despite goalie fatigue being a consequential result of consistent pressure in this year’s edition. Their defence repeatedly collapsed around my scoring opportunities too, while the Devils’ supporting players didn’t seem as eager to support the attack as Hurricanes or Lightning players would. I lost, wondering if I was playing against a team whose strengths outmatched the Devils, or if I was failing to exploit the playbook properly.

Either way, it was a sobering reminder that NHL 27 doesn’t necessarily reward imposing your preferred style on every team. Sometimes, the biggest differentiator was me, the fallible human holding the controller.

Away from the immediate action, NHL 27 takes a steady step toward livening its presentation quality – a process started a few editions back. All 32 arenas have been rebuilt, complete with authentic goal songs, lighting, jumbotrons, and mascots, and the atmosphere is admittedly electric. The new commentary pairing of John Buccigross and Darren Pang slot neatly into the broadcast, but there’s a nagging feeling that each match’s atmosphere, away from the ice, isn’t necessarily distinct beneath the team-specific colour schemes and music. Some of the crowd character models remain distractingly rough, too. There’s a confidence in NHL 27’s broadcast package which makes it feel like a televised hockey game, but again I’m left wondering how significant these differences are.

"There’s a confidence in NHL 27’s broadcast package which makes it feel like a televised hockey game"

And this is where I begin to wonder if the game is worth buying, as elsewhere, its carbon copied modes are stark. World of Chel is unchanged, again, while Franchise Mode is essentially the same outside of playbook integration. HUT similarly integrates playbooks alongside real-world coaches, while Be a Pro partially revamps its storyline, but by-and-large it’s the same experience as the series’ previous entries. So, yes, while NHL 27 has invested in making matches themselves feel different, it’s done comparatively little in making the broader experience feel new. It’s a blight on annual sports titles, sure, but it feels especially pronounced here. If you haven’t taken to the virtual ice in a while, then full price could be worth it. But, if you already own NHL 26, 25, or even 24, team-specific playbooks and refined presentation might not be enough to incentivise opening your wallet again.

Given that, it’s fair to say NHL 27 leaves me feeling conflicted. On the ice, there’s an intelligence here that I genuinely appreciate. Its playbooks give teams more discernible identities, with AI mostly making those identities feel tangible. Adapting my approach to a team’s personality brought a surprising affinity where it hadn’t been before. I mean, no shade intended, but I appreciate the Montreal Canadians more than I did. Skating into a match for the first time, I really did feel like a stranger to the skates – and that piqued my interest.

But once the novelty wears off, NHL 27 struggles to justify its place as another annual purchase. Too much of the wider package remains overly familiar, leaving improvements that feel smarter rather than bigger or better. If you’re returning after a few years away, there’s plenty here to enjoy. For everyone else, though, NHL 27 may be a demonstration of where the series could go next – although I feel like we’ve said this before.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

See, nighttime Coen’s supernatural traversal skills transform how physical spaces can be approached. The game encourages you, of course, with objectives nestled above street level. A light leaking out of an open balcony becomes an invitation for investigation. Inside, you might find evidence of its former inhabitants who’ve fled the Vale’s authoritarian vampire overlord, or simply another weathered sword to add to your inventory. Point is, whilst you might find curios to follow during the daytime, it’s only at nighttime that the inaccessible become possible.

The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t make exploration addictive simply by scattering more things across its map. An icon appearing at roof level isn’t transformative on its own. What Coen’s dichotomy unveils, instead, is two maps which occupy the same space. Vale Sangora is effectively two places, layered over one another.

And, sticking with Svartrau, if this city is essentially two places, then there are two ways of reading the world. Human Coen, for instance, is socially capable, with NPCs – especially the occupying soldiers – reacting calmly to his presence. Certain interactions, quests, and opportunities are available, whereas these encounters dissipate in the dead of night. Because of this, vampire Coen operates to a different set of rules. His supernatural abilities allow him to approach physical spaces differently. Those soldiers might not immediately treat him with hostility, although if he’s spotted using his vampiric traversal, they’ll attack. They recognise Coen as the figure of darkness they’ve been told to look out for.

Admittedly, The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t push the world’s suspicious view of Coen as far as it perhaps should – he can, in large part, wander through villages in vampiric form unchallenged – but it still serves a counterpoint to the wariness of Coen’s blood-sucking tendencies. That is: stealth, subterfuge, and the good-old joy of sneaking around. If you’re a spectre of the night, why not act like one, right? Stick to the darkness, vault over rooftops, Shadowstep to your heart’s content. Neither version of Coen is better than the other, but his vampire form certainly expands the possibilities for traversal within the same geography.

In another game, a wall that seemed impossible to scale, an out of reach platform, or a blocked-off route might suggest gate design. The moment would be planted in your head: I’ll come back to this later when I have the right ability.

Dawnwalker creates almost the exact same feeling, except there’s no need to find a Double Jump. The alternative toolset is already in your possession. You simply need to come back at night. And, this distinction is crucial, as playing as daytime Coen can lead to certain spaces and situations that are closed off by his physical limitations. However, his ability to interact normally with the people of Vale Sangora can open doors that are otherwise shut to his vampiric counterpart, like accessing a blacksmith to check in on the person he rescued previously. Switch to vampire Coen, however, and the rules governing space change. His supernatural abilities are more than combat tricks; they can drastically alter how the game’s design feels.

Suddenly, every building becomes a question: can I reach the top as a vampire? You discover this at nearly every outcrop you reach throughout Vale Sangora, where at night, for instance, Coen has the option to surprise a stronghold of resting soldiers by scaling the crumbling tower behind their base. If it were daytime, your only option, really, is to waltz through the front door. You can still catch the battalion off guard, but swooping in from above, and perhaps silently picking a handful off first, feels much more gratifying.

Missions like these showcase Dawnwalker’s surprising pull. During my playthrough, as human Coen I encountered a particularly well-guarded fortress. Luckily, day soon switched to night, meaning vampire Coen could stylishly break his way in. It made me wonder how I’d have gotten inside if the situation had been reversed. And, more importantly, if there are any other locations that might contain the same unseen possibilities that I’d not been able to see in the inverse form.

Anyway, the point is this: The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t necessarily explain to you when you’ve discovered something inaccessible to Coen’s counter form. Instead, you can leave a location with the nagging suspicion that you’ve only experienced one interpretation of it. If I had to return later, it could lead to testing a different version of Coen against the same problem.

These trains of thought extend beyond traversal, too. An NPC who gives little to human Coen might have an entirely different interaction waiting at night. Likewise, a situation resolved could take on a new possibility if approached from the other side of Coen’s existence. Again, the geography hasn’t changed, but the mindset has.

If nothing else, The Blood of Dawnwalker provides a clever twist on familiar exploration loops. Going back to exploration, these games condition us to remember places we couldn’t reach, trusting that a future version of us will make them accessible. Dawnwalker, instead, makes us wonder whether we arrived at a location in the wrong form.

This kind of curiosity feels potent throughout. Expanding the conversation to traditional open worlds, the structure in these games, typically, makes mysteries explicit. Map markers appear, objectives tell you where to go, and once the diversion is resolved, that’s it. In Dawnwalker, you might leave a location fully explored, yet wonder if you’ve seen everything. This idea is why Vale Sangora doesn’t feel like a single open-world map, but more like two overlapping interpretations. And, in case you’re wondering, The Blood of Dawnwalker is designed explicitly to be this way.

The human world is shaped by Coen’s ability to communicate, negotiate, and interact with its inhabitants, while the vampire world changes where he can physically reach. Svartrau’s streets never move, but their secrets do. That’s why revisiting somewhere doesn’t feel like backtracking. Indeed, my first excursion into Svartrau was during the night, and an objective took me outside of the city before dawn. Yet, I was compelled to return, not just to pick up another quest but to test what happened when I saw the same place through a different lens.

And this is why The Blood of Dawnwalker’s exploration is addicting. Vale Sangora is one physical place, sure, but there are two fundamentally different experiences to be had. Crucially, too, the game doesn’t lock these possibilities behind ability gates. You’re given the tools before you’ve even ventured out of Coen’s home village. What the game provides, instead, is the promise of deferred discovery. In most open worlds, revisiting somewhere means simply going back. In Dawnwalker, it can mean seeing it for the first time again.