Xbox Game Pass has had a strong start to October. Gears of War: E-Day, Battlefield 6 and Valor Mortis have all arrived on the service, alongside a handful of other well-regarded games, and the result is one of the busier stretches the catalogue has seen this year. Two more day-one releases are now confirmed for the months ahead, adding to a schedule that already looks crowded. The confirmation is the story here: Microsoft is still committing to putting new games on the service at launch, rather than reserving them for a later date once the initial sales window has passed. For subscribers, that makes the coming soon list worth watching closely instead of treating the service as a fixed library. Day one is the phrase that matters most in the Game Pass conversation. A game that arrives on the service at launch is a different proposition from one added a year later, because subscribers...
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Xbox has added a new controller to its lineup, and this one is defined by its size. The Xbox Nano Controller is a compact, pocket-sized gamepad, positioned for younger players, people with smaller hands, and anyone who wants something portable. Controller design has quietly become one of the more interesting areas of hardware. For years the assumption was that one shape fitted everyone, with colour and grips doing the differentiating. That has changed as manufacturers have paid more attention to ergonomics, accessibility and the fact that hands vary enormously in size. The Nano’s pitch is straightforward. A smaller pad is easier for a child to hold comfortably, and it takes up less space in a bag, which makes it a better fit for travel than a full-size controller. Neither idea is new, but packaging them together in an official Xbox product is a notable step. It also reflects a broader shift in how hardware...
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Few decisions matter as much to Xbox right now as the one sitting in front of The Coalition. Gears of War: E-Day has been in players’ hands long enough for the campaign to be finished, and the reaction has been warm enough that attention has already shifted from the game itself to whatever comes next. That is the question the teaser puts on the table: a direct sequel to E-Day, or a return to Gears 6 and the story Kait Diaz was left in the middle of. The two pull in opposite directions, and both have a reasonable claim on the studio’s time. The case for staying in the past is straightforward. E-Day arrived with a clear sense of purpose, and a follow-up could build on the foundation it laid without having to reset expectations. Prequels also carry a particular kind of tension, because the audience knows roughly where the larger war is heading...
Read MoreThe first major update for Gears of War: E-Day is here, and The Coalition has not been shy about its scope. The patch arrives shortly after the game’s full launch on October 6, and the studio has described it as a “considerable” one that “affects all aspects of the game”. That wording is worth pausing on. A launch-window patch is usually a narrow thing: a handful of crash fixes, a progression blocker or two, maybe a small balance tweak. An update that touches every part of the game suggests the team has been collecting feedback since release and working through a longer list than usual. The notes themselves lean heavily towards corrections, with the campaign singled out as a major focus. That makes sense for a story-driven shooter. Campaign problems tend to be the most visible and the most frustrating, because a bug that stops progress can halt a playthrough entirely, while issues elsewhere...
Read MoreKotaro Uchikoshi has a new home for his ideas. The writer and director behind Zero Escape and AI: The Somnium Files has founded a studio called Crash Keys, where he serves as representative director and CEO. The name is a fitting one for a studio built around puzzles and hidden connections, though the announcement offers little else about what the team will actually make. For anyone who has followed his work, the move is not entirely surprising. Uchikoshi’s games are built on twists, branching paths and long conversations about identity, memory and the stories people tell themselves. That kind of writing needs room to breathe, and a smaller independent team is often better suited to protecting a strange idea than a large production pipeline is. The new venture is still at an early stage. Crash Keys is described as being in its nascent phase and is currently seeking funding for what it calls innovative...
Read MoreThe review of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival on Switch 2 is now live, and it begins somewhere unexpected. Before getting to the game, it spends time recalling a local video rental shop, the kind that sat between home and school and became a regular stop for friends browsing VHS tapes and DVDs. It is an apt way into Hellraiser. The series grew out of Clive Barker’s writing and is best known for a puzzle box, a group of cenobites and a mythology that treats pain and pleasure as two sides of the same door. It is a franchise soaked in physical media, in grainy transfers and late-night viewings, so nostalgia for the rental shelf is not just decoration. For younger players, that opening may read as history rather than memory. Rental shops are gone from most towns, and the experience of picking a horror film because the cover looked disturbing is not something a...
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