But the internet isn't always the most trustworthy place, which is why some more cautious Swifties started questioning the validity of the artwork. Where was it taken? Who took the picture? And would Taylor really promote a new Taylor's Version with a sloppy graffiti logo design?

The Easter egg in question features an intertwined 'TS' in a light green hue, rather sloppily pasted on a black wall. Given Taylor's typical grandeur and creativity when it comes to cryptic clues, it certainly feels like quite the downgrade.

Soon things began to unravel as fans questioned the random T Swift mural. "This doesn't seem legit or professional for a Taylor Swift Easter egg. Taylor is bigger than this," one fan wrote. "Maybe it's fake or AI," another suggested, while one fan countered, "Well, this is Taylor we're talking about. She's always unpredictable."I'm sad to report this 'Easter egg' is most likely the work of AI.

Adding fuel to the fire, an official tweet from The Empire State Building captioned "WhaTS happening?" sent fans into a flurry of theories. The painfully on-the-nose initials had to be a clue, surely? Could the green light be a nod to Reputation, or was it a sign of an entirely new era? My guess is the Empire State admin just wanted to hop on the trend with a cheeky troll...

With her recent wedding and new married life, it seems a little soon for Taylor to be dropping hints for her next move – but then again, her Easter eggs are known to be extremely crafty and unexpected. While I hold my reservations about the validity of these recent 'teasers', I predict it won't be long until Taylor drops some serious hints.

As a photographer, the camera quality on a phone is my biggest priority, and some of the best camera phones of 2026 do an excellent job of blending raw image quality with AI enhancements, and not forgetting excellent video stability too.

Psst – Want the same phone as Spider-Man? The Z Flip8 features heavily in Brand New Day.

With the Samsung Z Fold8 series, there are now 2 options to choose from for the first time. The Fold8 has a new shape, with a 4:3 aspect ratio that feels super comfortable to use, a nd a 50MP main camera sensor.

The new "Ultra" model, on the other hand, is essentially what the flagship Fold series has always been, with a continuation of the same device shape and boasting that triple rear camera system with the 200MP main sensor.

What this means on paper is that the Z Fold8 Ultra has the better camera (200MP Vs 50MP on the Fold8), but how much of a difference are users going to notice if they opt for the Z Fold8 instead of the Ultra this year? That's what we're here to find out.

Prefer Apple? Check out our guide to the best iPhones for photography instead.

Quick Camera Specs

Camera Phone Shootout: Z Fold8 Ultra Vs Z Fold8

Take a look at the video I put together below to check out how these cameras compete.

*If you can't see the video above please refresh the page.

Image comparisons in detail

A lot of the images captured during my shoot in Bath were splitting hairs regarding quality, HDR, rich detail and exposure.

This is great news for those wanting the slightly smaller (and more affordable) Fold8 primarily for social media shooting, although the Z Fold8 Ultra model really shines when it comes to small details and will be worth the extra £200 if you ever plan on blowing your images up larger.

The main focus of this camera phone shootout has been quality, as the Z Fold8 Ultra and Z Fold8 standard both share the same 50MP Ultra Wide lens, as well as the same 10MP front camera – so there would have been no point in comparing those.

In the below image slider, you'll notice that the Fold8 Ultra offers a much more true-to-life image, whereas the Fold8 provides a high-contrast output with darker leaves in the foreground and lost detail in the building and sky in the background.

One other example shows how the images can look very similar when viewed normally, making them great for social sharing and general everyday photography. However, when you view these images zoomed in or blown up larger onto a desktop or monitor, you can really see where the 200MP does its job, and how soft the image really is with just the 50MP sensor.

Quality of the Z Fold8 Ultra Vs standard Z Fold8

What's the verdict?

Clearly the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra has the better camera, that was never a debate. But the question is whether or not sacrificing the 150MP difference in main camera quality to get the Fold8 is worth it for creatives.

After testing both of these phones for around a month, I can confident vouch for both as excellent options. I prefer the Fold8 for daily use, things like editing video, watching YouTube shorts and general social scrolling is so much more comfortable on this pocket-sized device.

With that said, If you're using your phone as a replacement for a pro-level DSLR or mirrorless camera (as I often do when travelling for press events to cut down on bulk) then it is absolutely worth opting for the Ultra model in this instance to ensure you're getting the highest quality image in every circumstance.

I've got a confession to make: I'm not particularly bothered about 16K pressure sensitivity anymore, even though new tablets like XPPen's Artist Ultra 14 make a play of the spec. We've reached the point where manufacturers can keep doubling the numbers on the box, but 8,192 versus 16,384 pressure levels isn't going to make your brush strokes twice as good, and I'd much rather see that attention paid to the screen, the pen feel and how the tablet is going to be used.

That's what makes the new XPPen Artist Ultra 14 interesting, because after using it for two weeks I think XPPen has got the balance about right. It's a $699 / £599 drawing display with a 14-inch 2.8K OLED, a 90Hz refresh rate, and a 720g body that's genuinely easy to pick up and throw into a bag.

It's also refreshingly straightforward to get going. The Artist Ultra 14 is essentially plug-and-play, so while drivers are available if you want to configure the tablet and make the most of its controls, you can connect it and start drawing without turning setting the tablet up into a stress test. That's exactly what I want from a portable pen display, particularly one that's likely to be pulled out in different places rather than permanently installed on a desk – though if you have a small desk or are a student, look for a neat tablet; the Artist Ultra 14's smaller size feels like a good option.

Perfectly portable design

The design makes the Artist Ultra 14 a portable, easy-to-use tablet. It's slim and light enough to hold comfortably in one hand, with hard-edged, angular sloping corners on the rear that give it a little more character than the usual flat, curved slab, and it feels like XPPen considered that you might actually carry this around. There's a folding stand in the box as well, so you don't immediately have to start adding accessories just to get a sensible drawing angle, and like the tablet it can fit into a small bag.

XPPen has gone down the familiar route of giving you a fairly generous collection of extras, including USB-C and USB cables, power adapters, the Quick Key remote and two X3 Pro styluses. I ended up favouring the slimmer pen design because it sits more naturally in my hand, particularly when I'm drawing for longer periods, although having the 'fat' option is useful if you need more on-stylus buttons. As ever, they both feel a little light in the hand and lack the weight and balance customisation of the Wacom Pro Pen 3, which remains my go-to style.

The display is where the Artist Ultra 14 really earns its keep, and like its larger Artist Ultra 16, it delivers a bright, smooth screen. That 2.8K resolution on a 14-inch panel works out at roughly 243ppi, so lines and small details look very clean, while the 16:10 aspect ratio gives you a little more vertical room than the 16:9 screens used on many similarly sized displays. That's particularly useful once you start using the best digital art software, like Photoshop and Rebelle, or animation software, which starts filling the edges of the screen with panels and timelines.

It's also a fully laminated display, and XPPen quotes ±0.4mm centre accuracy for the pen, which goes some way towards explaining why the drawing experience feels so direct. The pen isn't sitting some obvious distance above the pixels, and in use, when working on small details, there's very little sense that I'm fighting the hardware to get the line where it needs to go.

Why OLED matters

The OLED panel itself is lovely. Colours are bright and punchy without feeling cartoonishly overcooked, blacks are properly deep, and the 100,000:1 contrast gives the whole display a bit more depth than you're used to getting from an IPS pen display. XPPen uses a True RGB Stripe pixel arrangement too, and while that's hardly something you'll think about while drawing, I never did until I glanced at the spec sheet; it helps keep fine detail and text looking clean on a screen you sit very close to, because it is a smaller 14-inch screen.

The 90Hz refresh rate also makes sense in practice, because it's so smooth and responsive. Moving around the canvas, zooming, panning or using my finger to tap menus all feels very fluid, and the pen has that lovely sense of simply keeping up with what I'm doing. Touch can be switched on and off using a physical control at the top right of the display, alongside the brightness controls, which is much nicer than having to disappear into a settings menu every time you don't want your palm triggering something. The tablet also comes with a drawing glove, which is needed with touch turned on as it can be overly responsive, and I often randomly selected colours when using ArtRage because the colour wheel sits exactly where my hand rests.

In fact, I've spent quite a bit of time using the Artist Ultra 14 in ArtRage, and one of my favourite tests has been painting a sketch of a boat moored on the seafront from a recent trip to Croatia. I was working with a fairly limited palette, but the blues and greens in the water really pop on the OLED, and there's enough colour depth and contrast to make the whole thing feel more alive without me having to start pushing the palette around to compensate for the screen.

That's probably the biggest difference between reading the specs and actually using the Artist Ultra 14. The numbers are impressive, certainly, but the display just feels easy to work on. Small details can be scrawled and sketched with precision, the surface glides nicely under the pen, and the combination of the OLED and 90Hz refresh gives everything an effortless smoothness that makes me want to keep drawing.

It's small but perfectly formed

There is an obvious compromise: the 14-inch display size. Some artists will want a bigger canvas, particularly if you're working on detailed illustration, 3D modelling or animation where toolbars and timelines can quickly eat into your available space. XPPen has the Artist Ultra 16 for that, or there are larger recommended OLED alternatives like the Xencelabs Pen Display 16, but I think the smaller screen makes sense here because portability is clearly part of the point.

The closest rival is the older Wacom's Movink 13, which takes an even more extreme approach to portability. It's just 420g and uses a 13.3-inch Full HD OLED, with multi-touch and Wacom's excellent pen technology.

The Wacom is undeniably easier to carry, but the XPPen feels like the better all-round display to me. It may be an extra 300g, but in return you're getting 2.8K rather than Full HD, 90Hz rather than 60Hz, a larger 16:10 canvas and broader claimed colour coverage. Wacom's pen feel remains excellent, and if every gram matters, the Movink 13 is still a very compelling alternative, but with everything taken into account, I'd take the extra weight of the Artist Ultra 14.

The price makes that decision even more interesting. Wacom has been discounting the Movink 13, bringing it much closer to the $699 / £599 Artist Ultra 14, so you're now looking at two portable OLED pen displays that aren't miles apart in price but take very different hardware approaches.

Artist Ultra 14 is a new standard

For me, the XPPen Artist Ultra 14 is the better overall drawing display. The screen gives you far more room and resolution than the Movink 13; the 90Hz refresh makes it feel wonderfully fluid; the colour is excellent; and the X3 Pro pen is a pleasure to use, particularly in the larger form factor I preferred. The Wacom remains the one I'd pick if portability and its superb pen feel came first, because 420g is hard to argue with.

What I like most about the XPPen, though, is that it doesn't feel like I've bought a portable version of a desktop drawing display and then had to accept a long list of compromises. It feels like a proper little creative drawing tablet that happens to be small enough to carry around, and that's a useful distinction.

At this price, XPPen has managed to cram in the sort of display technology I'd expect from a $1,000-plus pen display, and it's light and sturdy enough that I don't have to think twice about putting it in a bag. There are more portable, larger, and cheaper displays, but for the combination of screen quality, drawing experience, and portability, the Artist Ultra 14 is one of the most convincing pen displays I've used at this price.

And it gets harder! I think both the Momentum 4 and the Momentum 5 are excellent headphones, but for very different reasons. In fact, they both sit at one and two on my list of the best wireless headphones guide, competing with all the other leading ANC headphones on the market, like the Bose QC Ultra 2, Sony WH-1000XM6 and Focal Bathys MG.

• Buy the Momentum 4 at Amazon for $217
• Buy the Momentum 5 at Amazon for $399

When you factor in that Sennheiser also make the best audiophile Bluetooth headphones on sale today in the Sennheiser HDB 630, things get more tricky to navigate. However, that headphone bring the price up with its parametric EQ and bundled USB-C dongle – the Momentum range is less about chasing neutral sound profiles, and more about making a practical travel headphone.

So, with the Momentum 4 now heavily discounted, is the newest model truly worth the extra outlay? Let's find out...

Design & build

At first glance, these are clearly siblings, but I think the Momentum 5 looks nicer – it's essentially a refined version of the 4. The Momentum 4’s straightforward, understated design mimicked its comfortable and functional feel, but the 5 tightens up the aesthetics to look and feel premium.

Most importantly, the Momentum 5 features a swappable battery. This is a huge leap forward for consumer tech longevity, and Sennheiser should be heavily congratulated for this move. Sure, it's a bit of a ball ache to actually do the battery swap yourself, but knowing that your expensive headphones won't end up as e-waste the moment the lithium-ion cell degrades is a massive win. When the Momentum 4's battery is dead, that's it. You'll need to get a new pair of cans.

Features

Sennheiser headphones have always been the long distance runners of the ANC scene, and you get excellent battery life for both of these sets. On paper, the Momentum 4 offers a staggering 60 hours of wireless listening with ANC on (more like 50 in my experience), while the Momentum 5 sits just behind it at a very respectable 57 hours (again, more like 50). Bottom line: You aren't going to be reaching for the charging cable often with either pair.

Where the Momentum 5 clearly pulls ahead is with its Active Noise Cancelling (ANC). Thanks to an upgraded and expanded microphone array, the Momentum 5 shuts out more daily commute noise noticeably better than the 4. Both also feature decent transparency modes and pretty good support via Sennheiser's Smart Control app.

Sound profiles

Both of these headphones go for a fun V-shape sound signature, and the Momentum 4 offers a bassy, pretty textured sound with recessed ear gain frequencies (where sound is most noticeable to the human ear). All that means that you get an exciting bass and treble elevated sound without grating spikes.

The Momentum 5 goes a little heavier on the low-end packing more sub-bass than the 4, and also keeps the recessed ear gain area. The result is that things can sound a little bit more muddy. Thankfully, this isn't a dealbreaker. Because the newer model connects to a robust eight-band EQ on the app, that extra bass can easily be knocked down.

Honestly, I don't think there's much in it between them.

Price and value

When it comes to value, there is really no beating the Momentum 4. Originally retailing for $349.95, it can now routinely be found for $200 to $270. For non-audiophiles wanting good sound and excellent battery life, it's currently the ultimate bargain in Bluetooth headphones.

The Momentum 5 comes in at $399. While it represents a larger upfront cost, it is still a great value proposition with its swappable battery. Thanks to the inclusion of that replaceable battery, the Momentum 5 is a genuinely future-proof investment that will likely outlast most of its market competitors. This one is close, and depends on how long you want your pair of headphones for.

Verdict

Choosing between these two excellent headphones comes down to your priorities. If strict budget and sheer value are paramount to you, the Momentum 4 wins hands down; it remains an absolute steal for the everyday user.

However, we are in 2026, and standards have shifted. With its superior aesthetic design, top-tier active noise cancellation, customisable sound, and the sheer longevity offered by the swappable battery, the Momentum 5 gets the final nod from me.

Ultimately, I don't think you can go wrong with either, but if it was my money, I'd go for the Momentum 5.

Known for creating some of the best adverts over the decades, McDonald's expertly makes this bizarre fusion work. From its playful ads to its custom Happy Meal toys, the collab proves that even the most unexpected alliances can make for a legendary branding moment.

The new ad begins with One Piece's Luffy spying a coveted McDonald's Happy Meal box. Springing into action, the Straw Hat pirates launch towards it, in tandem with the Bikini Bottom gang, resulting in a catastrophic crash (anime impact frames included). The result? An animation crossover for the ages, featuring SpongeBob and pals donning the iconic outfits of the One Piece crew.

"This is actually peak crossover chaos," one fan on X wrote. Another praised, "They did NOT have to make a Happy Meal commercial this majestic." The playful ad clearly resonated with some, as one fan called it a "direct attack on millennials with disposable income," while another commented, "Buying Happy Meals as an adult has never been more justified."

Coming to McDonald's across the globe throughout August, the Happy Meal will include 1 of 12 collectable crossover toys, such as Patrick as Zoro, Mr Krabs as Jinbe, Squidward as Sanji, and, of course, SpongeBob as Luffy.

It's not the first time McDonald's has nailed an anime collab – check out the fast food chain's adorable Kiki's Delivery Service ad that won the hearts of Ghibli fans. For more ad inspiration, take a look at McDonald’s new billboards that are painfully relatable.

Few artists understood the value of imperfection quite like Salvador Dalí. His famous observation, “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it,” takes that familiar idea of perfectionism, something many of us suffer from, and gives it a much more useful purpose: stop chasing it.

The quote comes from The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, his 1948 autobiography, in which Dalí looks back on his life, ambitions, and artistic philosophy, and it feels especially relevant when you think about how we work now.

The best digital art software available to artists today, whether using Photoshop, Rebelle or Procreate, have never been more powerful and flexible, and with that comes a deep level of control. You can zoom endlessly into a painting, undo a brushstroke, nudge a curve, shift a colour by a fraction, change the lighting, render another version. Even when working traditionally with the best acrylic paints, you can scan your art, then open it in Photoshop and start fiddling without fear of messing up. Mistakes are an undo or save-and-reload away.

No wonder finishing something can be difficult. There's always another adjustment to make, technique to learn, reference to look at, or artist who seems to be doing the thing you want to do but better (we're hopeless at judging ourselves by others' standards). The more sophisticated the apps become, the easier it is to convince yourself that, with enough tweaking, you can eventually get everything exactly right.

You can't, of course, and that is really the point Dalí was making. For many of us, perfection can become the goal, not the creative act of making art. You can keep refining a piece long after it has said everything you wanted it to say, or spend so much time worrying about whether the work is good enough that you never put it out into the world in the first place, letting imposter syndrome take hold. Digital art makes this especially easy because the original brushstroke, colour or composition is rarely final; there is almost always another layer, undo, or tweaked version waiting to happen.

That doesn't mean rushing work or accepting mistakes you know you should fix; indeed, many artists are embracing the looseness of imperfection to stand out in an AI art world. What counts is recognising when further changes are improving the piece and when you're simply changing things because you can't bring yourself to let go.

At some point the work has to leave the screen, and it has to be yours, with all the strange decisions, rough edges and imperfections that came with making it. And in an age of infinite edits, endless references and AI-generated images that can look polished while you're still pondering, perhaps the more useful act of rebellion is knowing when to stop tweaking, hit export and call it finished. After all, who wants to argue with Dali?

Our pick of the best Salvador Dalí art books:

Playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the first time since it launched back in 2008 is a strange feeling, partly because so much of what made it feel enormous back then has simply disappeared from games, that sense that you're playing the latest instalment in some sprawling, decades-long saga where every character, conspiracy and elegant bit of military hardware has been building towards this one enormous finale.

We get big games now, obviously, GTA6 is nearly here, but very few arrive carrying quite this much baggage, and MGS4 doesn't exactly try to hide it either, it throws the whole lot at you: Big Boss, Liquid, the Patriots, Snake's ageing, the Beauty and the Beast Unit, a return to Shadow Moses, Metal Gear REX, Ocelot pulling strings, and somehow expects you to keep up.

Then, when the music swells, and Old Snake is crawling towards his end, tapping 'Triangle' to keep him alive and save the world, it still works. I know what's coming, I've played it before, I've spent enough time with the series to know where all of this is heading, and yet there's something about seeing Old Snake drag himself towards his final confrontation that remains truly epic.

That might be the strangest thing about coming back to MGS4 in 2026, and it's fantastic that we finally can, because for all the things that have aged badly, and there are plenty, Kojima's finale still has an extraordinary sense of occasion, playfulness and invention that many modern games simply don't have or strive for.

MGS4 is playable again

It also helps that this is the first time I've been able to play it properly outside the PS3, and it still feels like a technical triumph. MGS4 was already pushing the PS3 hard in 2008, and I had forgotten just how much visual information it was trying to throw around. The Middle Eastern battlefields are still busy and grimy, the character models hold up surprisingly well, the snow blowing around Shadow Moses looks fantastic, and the Shadow Moses Metal Gear encounter remains an enormous technical showcase designed to sell you on the power of PS3. There's not really a drop in quality from what you watch and what you play, and while that seems a given these days, in 2008 it felt like magic.

At 4K and 60fps it feels clean and crisp without losing that slightly grubby late-PS3 character, and while the assets obviously haven't been rebuilt to modern standards, the actual design has aged far better than I expected. The enemy design, environments and boss encounters still have nuance and subtle ideas running through them, rather than simply being places to walk through or fight between cinematics; designs like the Gekko that mix machine and organic, muscle, that 'moo' like cows and hunt in packs exude personality and showcase Kojima's renowned attention to detail.

The Beauty and the Beast Unit are still one of the best examples of this. These bosses are women traumatised by war and turned into machines of destruction, revenge and spectacle, and yes, the way MGS4 presents them is very much tied to the late 2000s, with Kojima's fascination with sex, violence and fetishised character design often pushing things further than they need to go, and in fact even 18 years ago eyesbrows were raised, but mechanically they're memorable fights that bookend missions nicely while playing on nostalgia for earlier entries in the series.

Laughing Octopus can camouflage herself into the scenery and disappear into rooms you've just searched, firing clouds of ink that disorient Snake, while Night Vision gives you another way of tracking her by picking up the footprints she leaves behind. Screaming Mantis takes control of dead as well as living soldiers, and Meryl's presence gives you another perilous route through the encounter as she's used as a human shield, particularly once you realise that shooting Mantis' puppets can help break through her defences. They are weird, inventive fights and, importantly, they make you think for a few minutes before you get to go back to the next enormous cinematic.

Because yes, that problem is still here. Back in 2008, I remember feeling that the balance between actually playing MGS4 and watching MGS4 was a little off, and coming back to it now hasn't changed my mind. You can play for a handful of minutes, and then suddenly you're watching a 20-minute cinematic, particularly during the early stages, and although the story is doing important work, it can feel like the controller has been taken away just when you're getting into the rhythm of the game.

Do want an MGS lore dump?

That isn't helped by the sheer amount of lore you're expected to soak up and ponder upon. MGS4 is assuming you've followed Snake from the original Metal Gear through Metal Gear 2, MGS1 and MGS2, and then spent enough time thinking about Big Boss, Zero, the Patriots, Liquid, Ocelot and the various clone projects to remember who everyone is when they suddenly appear on screen. If you've only a passing relationship with Metal Gear, good luck.

But if you have followed it, the fan service is ridiculous, and that's really why you were here in 2008 anyway. The final third is still one of the most effective pieces of nostalgia bait I've seen in a game, whether it's pressing 'X' during scenes to recall iconic moments or the iconic mission that starts with a pixel-art dream sequence before sending Snake back to Shadow Moses, the setting of the original Metal Gear Solid. It is basically Kojima taking you by the hand and walking you around his own history, pointing at things you remember and then nudging you to make sure you noticed the reference.

There are jokes about changing discs, because in Metal Gear Solid on PS1 you had to swap discs at this precise moment, and now you're on a PS5, so there's no need (the joke is edited from the PS3 original). The ghost of Psycho Mantis gets another fourth-wall-breaking shot at messing with you, only to discover there's no memory card for him to read, before settling for making the DualSense vibrate very weakly instead. It's silly, it's completely unnecessary, and it works because Metal Gear has always understood that the player is part of the joke.

Kojima spends much of the game doing things like this, breaking the fourth wall and turning the hardware itself into part of the experience. The controller can vibrate, and inputs become erratic to make you feel Old Snake's distress; Beauty and the Beast bosses 'remember' past encounters, while Snake can destress by reading Playboy magazines found in missions, which feels particularly funny now because it is such an aggressively 2000s idea of what a video game soldier should be doing.

Other moments haven't aged nearly as well. Snake staring at Naomi's chest affects his stress meter, and the game's treatment of its female characters can veer between genuinely interesting and deeply uncomfortable, sometimes within the same encounter (Mei Ling is the butt of one too many jokes). The Beauty and the Beast Unit are tragic products of war and fascinating mechanical opponents, but the camera and character designs are still very much Kojima circa 2008.

It's a game of contradictions like that, really, and perhaps that's why it remains so fascinating. For all the talking, MGS4 has some superb gameplay when it lets you get on with it. The return to Shadow Moses is fantastic, the sniper sequence in the snowstorm works brilliantly, the Metal Gear battle is a spectacular showcase, and the motorbike chase through an Eastern Europe Prague-inspired city is the sort of hyperactive cinematic set piece that makes you forget about the tedious cat-and-mouse follow-the-spy section that comes before it.

The enemy and world design have held up especially well, because Kojima's team has always been good at making the game's mechanics feel like part of the world rather than systems sitting on top of it. You aren't just shooting enemies; you're dealing with soldiers whose behaviour changes depending on the battlefield, watching factions fight each other, manipulating it too, and finding ways to move through spaces where the chaos can sometimes work in your favour, even now, which makes MGS4 unique.

Then I remember that this was all happening on the PS3 and you really need to admire the creative work involved. It's easy to look at the 4K/60fps presentation and assume the game has been substantially rebuilt, but this is still the MGS4 you remember. Konami hasn't recreated it in Unreal Engine 5 like Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and the underlying art and animation still come from the original game. What you're getting is a modern port and presentation of that 2008 game, and that's enough because the design still works, and it has one of the best final thirds of any game you'll play this year.

Peace Walker and Ghost Babel

The rest of Master Collection Vol. 2 is almost a relief after all of that. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is the obvious second headline game, originally released on PSP and set during Big Boss's story after MGS3: Snake Eater. It's a very different kind of Metal Gear, built around short missions and the gradual development of Mother Base, where you can transport enemy soldiers and equipment back to your operation (using comical balloons), expand your private military force and build up the resources you need for later missions.

I remembered liking the idea of Peace Walker more than the actual game, but it works better on PS5 than I expected. Those bite-sized missions, originally designed for a handheld, suit modern pick-up-and-play sessions surprisingly well, and the HD version runs at 60fps; the underlying assets still have their PSP origins, but the character models look sharp on a large TV.

The art does a lot of work here to sell Peace Walker's personality. Yoji Shinkawa's expressive, ink-heavy style remains one of the series' strongest parts, and the comic-panel cutscenes painted by Ashley Wood look particularly good because they were designed around these illustrations rather than trying to pretend the PSP could deliver MGS4-style cinematics. They can look a little blurry and blown-out on a TV, but the interactive elements are still fun – shooting mechs and fighting enemies inside comic panels is a very fourth-wall-breaking addition to the series.

But there is heavy asset reuse, and you will return to the environments time and again to grind for resources, which was always an issue with Peace Walker on PSP. As a handheld game, it worked because we accept the restrictions; here it can get repetitive, with only the lore to keep you hooked, because as with every Kojima game, there are big twists, teases, and insights that lead into other areas of the series.

Then there's Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, the Game Boy Color game that is arguably the purest Metal Gear experience in the whole collection, and the one game that disconnects from Kojima's need to keep fleshing out the Snake saga's lore, because it's set in an alternate timeline. Despite its Western title, Metal Gear Solid isn't a Game Boy version of the PlayStation game. It's an original story built specifically around the Game Boy Color, and that gives it a lovely sense of identity rather than feeling like a compromised version of something bigger. For that reason, and its simple, direct game design, Ghost Babel is a really enjoyable entry.

That sounds like a big statement when you sit it alongside Guns of the Patriots, but after hours of Snake's ageing, the Patriots, Liquid Ocelot and enough exposition to fill several textbooks – which funnily enough are, kind of, included here as the original scripts – playing this pixel art 2D stealth game feels fantastic. You sneak around, avoid guards, collect keycards, find routes and puzzle-solve through maze-like environments and generally get on with playing rather than being told about the history of the Metal Gear universe.

There is something refreshing about seeing Metal Gear reduced to those basic ingredients again, especially after replaying MGS4. And while it's basic, there are still moments of inspiration – boss fights like trap-based Black Arts Viper that require some thought to defeat – and nice touches like hiding in water and grass, tapping to lure enemies, basically all the stealth ideas from the 3D series distilled into pixels.

The Master Collection Vol. 2 extras

Master Collection Vol. 2 also goes far beyond simply putting three games on a disc. It includes the MGS4 and Peace Walker Screenplay Books, Master Books covering characters and story information, the MGS4 Database, a digital soundtrack, and other archive material. The wealth of content is fitting too, because Metal Gear has always been as much about its world-building as its gameplay, and being able to dig into that material makes Master Collection Vol. 2 feel more like an archive than a simple rerelease. Presentation is excellent too, with nice photography and clean menu designs, and you can adjust screen settings and dimensions if you want, such as pixel smoothing in Ghost Babel.

Compared with Master Collection Vol. 1 at launch, the PS5 version of Vol.2 feels considerably more polished. I'm not seeing the same combination of low-resolution presentation, 30fps limitations, input problems and obvious bugs that made the first collection feel like it needed more time before release. For Master Collection Vol. 2, it's simply the games that catch the eye.

That's the biggest surprise here, because I went back into MGS4 expecting to be reminded why I didn't love it so much in 2008, and in some ways I was surprised by how modern it actually feels to play and replay on PS5; I enjoyed it more. The cutscenes are still very long, the exposition bloated, some of the sexual representation has aged badly, and the game assumes you care deeply about a story that has been running since 1987.

But I also remembered why I cared about it in the first place: I had to play it at the time, and enjoy replaying it again now. MGS4 has an ambition you rarely see now: a willingness to let a video game become completely consumed by its own history, then try to bring all of it to a close. It can be exhausting, occasionally embarrassing and sometimes completely baffling, but when the pieces come together it still has an emotional force that's difficult to dismiss.

Peace Walker gives the collection a much more manageable stealth-action experience, and Ghost Babel is a wonderful reminder of how simple and inventive Metal Gear could be before Kojima turned the series into his own particular blend of video game, action movie, political thriller and elaborate in-joke.

But if you're buying Master Collection Vol. 2, you're buying it for MGS4, and after 18 years, finally being able to play that game outside the PS3, in 4K and at 60fps, running nicely, it's worth the price of admission. Whatever you thought of Old/Solid Snake's final mission in 2008, there's something genuinely satisfying about watching it run properly on a modern console, especially when the music starts, the callbacks begin piling up, and you realise you're heading towards that ending all over again.

I still don't think MGS4 is the best Metal Gear game, but playing it again has reminded me why it felt like such a big deal back in 2008.

The 2D animation, I can get behind. It's giving nostalgic Saturday morning vibes. But the self-aware gags? Golden Axe's 16-bit graphics might look rudimentary today, but this was a gritty game with gravitas, atmosphere, and blood-curdling movie-sampled screams when you killed someone.

Coming to Paramount+, the Golden Axe animation features the three playable characters from the original game. Matthew Rhys voices Gilius Thunderhead, “a grumpy battle dwarf with exceptionally poor hygiene and a chip on his shoulder,” Liam McIntyre is Ax Battler, “a barbarian warrior with a strict code of honor and sweet golden retriever demeanor,” and Lisa Gilroy is Tyris Flare “deadly in a fight and even deadlier with her sharp wit.”

There's also Chronos "Evil" Lait, Golden Axe III's humanoid panther, who you may or may not consider to be canon, as well as the Cocatriz (or "trusty purple mutant thingys" as they're now called, and Golden Axe II's menacing headless Death Armor.

But series creators Mike McMahan (Star Trek: Lower Decks) and Joe Chandler (American Dad) are also taking some controversial liberties with the, admittedly rather sparse, Golden Axe lore. A new comedy character has been introduced in the form of Hampton Squib, an eager and unqualified newcomer played by Danny Pudi.

For those who don't remember the arcade game, Tyris helpfully sums up the premise in the trailer. The team has to "face a series of progressively harder enemies until we have a big final battle with Death Adder. And then we kill him for good.” Death Adder is bad, as you may have guessed from his name.

It's great to see new 2D animation, but a knowing meta comedy overlooks the atmosphere of Makoto Uchida's 16-bit masterpiece (above). Some games like Sonic and Mario make perfect sense adapted as light comedies, but Golden Axe was grim business.

As they hacked away at skeletons that rise from the ground like in Jason and the Argonauts, our three heroes were working through the trauma of their parents and siblings' deaths at the hands of a sinister giant who's stolen a golden axe. Now they sound like characters from Scooby Doo.

After Masters of the Universe, does every nostalgic sword and sorcery fantasy revival now have to be a parody?

Golden Axe will premiere on Paramount+ on 16 September. If you want some real retro gaming action, check out our guides to the best retro gaming consoles and the best retro handheld consoles.

With competition now so intense, the unusual packaging design adopted by Jacked Granny (yes, that's really the brand's name) might be seen as purely an attempt to stand out on the shelves. But it turns out that there's a practical reason why it's putting its products in sardine tins (also see our round up of packaging design inspiration).

Jacked Granny's pull-tab metal tins enable it stick to its objective of using simple ingredients and few of them (it's tagline is "The Simplest Protein Bar ever"). The tins hermetically seal the bars therein to prevent them from entering into contact with the air or moisture.

That allows the company to achieve acceptable shelf life for the products without adding preservatives: the made-in-the-US bars have just four ingredients (peanut flour, egg white, maple syrup and either dried raspberries or cocoa powder). Flexible paper something that would be difficult with traditional plastic wraps.

The design might seem to present a certain irony: fewer ingredients but more packaging. But the packaging isn't just superfluous bulk, it actually solves a practical problem. And while a tin might seem like an excessive amount of material use, the material tends to be easier to recycle.

It should offer some relief then that B&H Photo has just launched a massive MacBook Pro sale with prices slashed by up to $400. Its stock on some models and configurations is flying, so you'll want to get in quick, but this could be the moment to beat the price rises and grab a serious saving on the best MacBook for video editing or the best MacBook for programming.

Today's 5 best MacBook Pro deals

For photographers on the move

For developers and analysts

For remote video editors and 3D artists

For architects and engineers

For researchers crunching large datasets

For high‑end film editors, VFX and machine learning engineers.

Not the right deals for you? See more of today's best MacBook deals in your area below.

And right now many of these heavy hitters are enjoying discounts in Shenzhenaudio's summer sale. Just to be clear – these are excellent value at full price, so they're an absolute steal discounted.

And just to prove my point, 5 of the 10 IEMs below are featured in my list of the best budget IEMs on the market today, so this is a really strong sale.

With the recent popularity of Apple's Lil' Finder Guy, it feels like brand mascots are back in a big way, moving from the tired internet meme trope to something more wholesome. While Niles has only just hatched, I can see him quickly becoming my favourite of the brand mascot bunch.

Taking to socials, Crocs gave a cryptic teaser for its new arrival, posting a mysterious video of an XL egg, sparking a slew of fan theories. What could it mean? Perhaps a new brand collaboration? A shoe debut? Little did they know, 24 hours later, Niles the 6ft anthropomorphic crocodile would emerge.

If you're a Crocs veteran, you might think you recognise this cutesy crocodilian – and you'd be right. Since 2002, each pair of Crocs has featured a dinky lil croc on the shoe's rivet, hidden in plain sight for all these years. As Crocs looks towards its 25th birthday next year, the birth of Niles marks its move towards a more character-driven brand.

"For Crocs, Niles represents a long-term strategy in storytelling meant to deepen the emotional connection with consumers in ways that extend beyond any single product launch, campaign or collaboration. Niles is more than a mascot – he is a character with his own personality, voice, perspective and ambitions," says Terence Reilly, chief brand officer at Crocs.

For more branding inspiration, take a look at Wikipedia's adorable mascot for its 25th anniversary or check out why a mascot isn't enough to survive in today's branding world.

The consensus is that a well-designed UI reduces cognitive load and guides attention through visual hierarchy. But is Gen Z's obsession with anti-design turning everything UI designers have studied on its head? A viral social media post has got people talking.

Writing on X, one designer challengers millennials who think they understand the next generation of software users to consider a photo of his 16-year-old daughter’s iPhone. He later suggest the layout could be considered a "study in anti-a11y" (accessibility, for those not familiar with developer numeronyms).

The picture shows an iPhone customised to display clear app icons against a striped background that seems to have been chosen specifically to make scanability as difficult as possible. For those people who complain that the Google icons all look the same and make it hard to find the app you want, this is not a layout for you.

Some of the people commenting have come up with some amusing descriptions for what the layout choice looks like, from "OLED burn-in theme" to a dead display matrix.

But it seems that such intentionally difficult design is a bit of a trend among generation Z. "My daughter did this exact thing to our family iPad and it’s unusable now," one person writes. "I thought my daughter was just extremely odd. Didn’t know this was a thing," someone else says.

Some have attempted to find a logic behind the contrarian design choice. It's "the next generation’s legitimate attempt to claim 'I didn’t see your message'," one person reckons. "No one over 40 can see what's on the screen," someone else points out.

Others think it's a healthy practice intended to make the phone look less appealing, so the user will look at it less. "They stare at it less. My kid does something similar, it's to limit screen time," one person says.

It may also be that kids just like the aesthetic. Y2K nostalgia has been big in recent years, this does feel a bit like it's turning back time to the busier, noisier and more personal style of the early internet.

Whatever the reason, it also suggests that younger digital natives are so familiar with their devices that muscle memory is starting to make visual UI less important.

And Japan's Studio Ghibli? It's been three years since it released the Oscar-winning Boy and the Heron, and it still doesn't know what it's next film will be or what co-founder Hayao Mayazaki is working on, according to a new report.

The update comes from a recent in‑depth feature on Studio Ghibli published by Bloomberg. The article was written by Sohee Kim and Felix Gillette following a visit to Ghibli’s headquarters near Tokyo, where they spoke with Hayao's son, the landscape architect and animation director Goro Miyazaki, as well as the studio's new president and CEO Kenichi Yoda.

The report paints a portrait of a company with an uncertain future, but which seems quite happy with this ambiguity. It says that Hayao, now 85, still turns up to the office every day, but nobody knows what he's working on, and there's no idea of what the next movie will be. “Only he knows exactly what he’s working on,” Yoda says.

Yoda told the reporters that the studio's founders had never cared much about market research, investors, or strict release schedules. If the inspiration isn’t there, they won’t force a film into existence, he said.

And while Yoda says the studio could be open to collaborating with an outside director one day, Goro suggests that's "impossible" while his father is alive. “Any sane animation director would not come close to this castle,” Yoda adds.

He also mentions that part of this role means ensuring that "nothing changes" after Nippon TV acquired a majority stake in the studio in 2023. He said the TV chain has so far avoided pushing Ghibli toward franchise expansion.

Studio Ghibli's new stance on AI

Miyazaki is famously quoted as defining AI as an “insult to life itself”, although the comment was in response to a demo of one specific early application. It turns out from the interview that the studio isn't so definitively anti-AI as some might have hoped.

Goro says the studio’s stance is neutral: “We’re not denying, or feeling negative, about AI technology itself.” He also suggests that the late Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata would have experimented with it given his interest in embracing new tools.

As for the viral "AI Ghiblification trend", Goro says the company "didn’t think much of it, to be honest. If someone started making a lot of money out of it, then it would be a problem.”

Before the AI bros get excited, this is hardly a vindication of AI either. We all know that AI technology in creative workflows comes in many different forms, not only image and video generation. Ghibli did, very politely, ask OpenAI to stop ripping off its animation style. I don't think we'll be seeing it following Disney in pursuit of AI partnerships too soon.

The interview reinforces the idea that Studio Ghibli is almost the philosophical inverse of Disney and Pixar in the west. It rejects rigid planning, market‑driven strategies, and franchise expansion, embracing uncertainty, artistic spontaneity and cultural depth. Where Disney/Pixar operate as global entertainment machines, Ghibli deliberately resists the industrialisation of its art and operates with no masterplan.

This doesn't mean that life at Ghibli is as laid back as it might seem. Remember those "Studio Ghibli rules" posted online a while back? Reportedly showing a sign at the studio's HQ inspired by a quote from Hayao, they stipulate the "conditions for employees we want to leave".

The undesired traits included not thinking independently, not doing anything without being told, quickly relying on others for help or being frequently absent or late. This is a studio with a strong discipline and work ethic. It just doesn’t worry about when the inspiration is going to strike or how the market will react. It also seems to be in no hurry to answer the question of who might step into Miyazaki's shows, and how the studio will evolve without him.

I already have a standing desk in place, but simply standing and shifting around isn't always enough to ease the soreness and I've been having to take walking breaks regularly anyway. Solving this issue by combining working and walking did raise a concern was that the action of walking and typing might be too much but it turns out I do pretty good thinking whilst striding – and the typos started to ease off pretty quickly. Here are my honest thoughts about the Urevo CyberPad for Office Smart Treadmill (spoiler: I'm ever so slightly addicted).

• Shop Urevo CyberPad for Office

How does the Urevo CyberPad for Office look and feel?

I was surprised by how streamlined and well designed the Urevo CyberPad is. It's got a smart aluminium-style casing and atmospheric lights that appear either side of the machine.

The CyberPad feels sturdy underfoot, with no wobble, which is vital if your mind is on creating and not on the walking itself. It's heavy, as you'd expect, but it has wheels on the front so you can move it out of the way when you want to put your chair back in place.

There's a well-designed app, with a simple and attractive UI. This allows you to control the treadmill as well as choose different programs for your movement if you don't fancy just walking it out. It syncs cleanly to any other fitness app you're using, Apple Health, in my case and you can even choose videos to play if you fancy a work break walking in an outdoor simulation.

I'm really impressed by the quality of the treadmill itself, and of the app. Note: there's also a remote control if you don't fancy the app experience.

Does it work well?

The joy of using a new type of tech that just works straight out of the box is underestimated. The CyberPad was plug-and-play as soon as I downloaded the app, and everything runs smoothly.

The promise on the box is that the CyberPad is "whisper quiet". While it's not loud, I wouldn't take this to a normal office situation because it isn't silent. But it's totally manageable for working alone, and isn't audible from other rooms in the house – though my footsteps are another matter.

I've tried several of the programs and they actually give more of a burn than you'd think, thanks to the incline setting. The incline goes as far as you'd want it to – 14.3%. The machine gives a beep before if changes settings automatically, which is helpful for not being taken by surprise.

I know this isn't a fitness site, and I'm not trying to overstep beyond the realms of what this does for creativity and overall ergonomics, but do watch out for the calorie burn estimation, if you're tracking that. I suspect it overestimates given I burned about the same calories in a 30 minute moderate walking session as I would doing a more vigorous Peloton workout. Inputting your height and weight will help with this but it's good to be mindful of potential discrepancies.

My advice

• Don't have the treadmill positioned too far forwards under the desk. I found a second of forgetting the length and leaning back in thought had me almost off the end of the pad. Repositioning helped here.
• Start the pad from the app itself if linked to Apple Health (or similar fitness tracking) and it'll track your stats. Or pop your fitness watch on your ankle.
• Make sure the standing desk isn't too high up because the tension from walking seems to make the wrong typing position worse for your shoulders.
• Ditto for making sure your monitor is at eye level. Tension from walking and typing plus neck strain from looking slightly down isn't comfortable either.

Would I recommend the Urevo CyberPad for Office

Yes! I think it's brilliant. It's actually made me much less likely to slouch on the sofa in the living room during my work sessions, and it's a great alternative to simply standing or having to take a break to walk around.

It is an investment as it's in the $500 bracket, but if you're someone who is affected by sitting sedentary then I think you'd find it worth the money (my personal experience and not medical advice).

I've been quite opinionated about romantasy book cover design in the past, so seeing Maas divert from her usual broody jewel-toned aesthetic has me torn. On one hand, it's great to see romantasy book covers divert from the trends. On the other, I don't know if this is the direction I'd hoped for.

Taking to Instagram, Maas shared the upcoming ACOTAR titles A Court Of Splintered Harmony and A Court Of Forgotten Melody. Set to arrive in October 2026 and January 2027 respectively, the new instalments will follow the Valkyries, an ancient clan of fierce female warriors, bringing us into the new Valkyrian Cycle Movement narrative arc.

Stories aside, the new book covers have proved divisive among the fandom thanks to their bright gradient design. While the ACOTAR series hasn't shied away from bright jewel-toned pinks and emeralds, the confident block colouring has become a signature of the covers. Featuring pink-yellow and turquoise-yellow gradient designs, the new covers have a playful, candy-coated look that feels like a rogue choice for the fierce Valkyrie era.

In the romantasy world, the ACOTAR series arguably features the most recognisable book cover design. Featuring intricate black illustration and the series' signature serif font, the new designs feel at home among the predecessors, but I find myself wishing for something a little more brooding – it's giving major 2016 Instagram vibes, and not in a good way.

For more design news, check out why you need to stop being a book cover design snob or learn how to paint a book cover with these speedy tips.

As well as still selling books directly, Amazon's marketplace is used by many third-party booksellers, and the company remains the leader in e-readers with its Kindle line launched back in 2007. That's why it's so harmful for the self-proclaimed "Earth's biggest bookstore" to have, apparently, just been caught destroying old and rare books to train AI – and even celebrating the fact with a fun cartoon logo design.

Amazon built its business on selling books, first coming online as a bookstore back in 1994. Now, according to an investigation by 404 Media, it's tearing old and rare books apart so it can feed them its AI models.

Journalists hid an Apple Airtag inside a book in a bulk shipment of 1,000 books ordered via Biblio, a marketplace where buyers can remain anonymous, after the seller said they suspected that the order was made by an AI company. The tag was then traced to Amazon's LAS8 warehouse in Las Vegas, reportedly the location of a scanning operation called VGT3.

404 reports cites workers at the facility, who say their work involves scanning books to provide training data for Amazon's AI. To speed up the process, they would cut the bindings off books.

In an online forum, a VGT3 employee said that “all we do is scan books,” and that “some are assigned to cut books, and others go to receive where they get books and scan the bar codes.”

That practice would be damaging enough for Amazon's brand image, but to make the optics even worse, the warehouse team reportedly has a logo design that depicts a Tyrannosaurus rex devouring a book. The tone-deaf image reinforces the irony of a bookseller now consuming books for profit, including rare and irreplaceable volumes.

A couple of years ago, a backlash led Apple to hastily withdraw an iPad Pro advert that showed a machine crushing physical objects like musical instruments, books and camera lenses. In Amazon's case, it seems the crushing machine really exists on an industrial scale as a core part of its AI development.

The revelation of such cultural vandalism raises more doubts about AI developers' claims that their technology is good for human creativity. It's also likely to alienate authors, bibliophiles, and customers by clashing with Amazon’s identity as a platform for readers.

The books bought via Biblio were not necessarily highly valuable in monetary terms, but they were defined as rare. "There are a lot of other types of value," the bookseller is quoted as saying. "There’s historical value, intellectual value, sentimental value. All sorts of things, and all of those the AI companies don’t care about. They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together.”

Rare and old books not only offer "clean” pre-2022 text not polluted by machine-written content, but they can also contain data that rivals don't have, making them potentially valuable training material.

Courts have ruled that training AI on legally purchased books can qualify as fair use, but that doesn't change the fact that Amazon shredding rare works is highly damaging for its public image and brand even if technically legal.

Non-destructive scanning or licensing digital archives could achieve the same goal without destroying cultural artifacts. Rivals also destroy books to train AI, but Anthropic has claimed that it avoids using rare or antique books, which makes Amazon’s approach look particularly reckless.

“Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.

Set in the New Republic era after the events of Return of the Jedi, this isn't actually about podracing; instead, it centres on the Galactic League, a high-stakes underground racing tournament that includes a breadth of other high-speed racing vehicles. These include landspeeders, speeder bikes, and a tantalising new vehicle type in the Star Wars universe called skimspeeders. That variety does lead to one character awkwardly trying to mimic young Anakin Skywalker's catchphrase as, "Now this is… racing!" (doesn't quite have the same ring to it, huh), but the idea is being able to unlock and utilise different vehicle types, such as how skimspeeders can rotate sideways on a knife-edge for tight turns.

While I got to briefly take control of some of the racing rivals in the opening tutorial, including ex-TIE pilot Griff Halloran, and the league's reigning champion Kestar Bool, for its runs-based single-player campaign, I'm cast as the somewhat bland, if customisable, protagonist Shade, trying to make their way up in the Galactic League with just a humble landspeeder, and where being retired from a race means having to start over from scratch.

Galactic Racer oozes Star Wars identity

For a game largely devoid of any familiar characters, Galactic Racer nonetheless nails the look and feel of the Star Wars universe, its races set across a variety of planets in the galaxy's Outer Rim (even though you once again begin on a desert planet, but at least it's Jakku instead of Tatooine), with an unusual-looking cast of alien races, and of course the use of screen wipe transitions during cutscenes.

More importantly, the vehicles aren't pristine or shiny. No matter how you customise them, they always look beat up with chipped paint, just as you'd expect when racing in extreme conditions and ramming into other competitors. Speaking of which, Galactic Racer's unique sauce is that developer Fuse's founders are also former staffers at Criterion, the studio behind the Burnout series, and that DNA comes across in the dramatic crash cams whenever a vehicle has the misfortune of colliding with a wall or exploding into smithereens from overheating.

Admittedly, I found myself on the receiving end of the crash cam one too many times during my hands-on, proof that Galactic Racer is every bit as fast and ruthlessly furious as any high-speed sci-fi racer (despite the roguelite aspect, it's still generous to an extent as by default you can crash up to three times before you're actually eliminated). Part of the risk-taking comes from the Ramjet. It's like an additional speed booster you can use even after the booster gauge has depleted, but if you hold it down too long, it will overheat and turn your ride into a blazing wreck. Let go too early, however, and you'll have to wait for it to completely cool down before it can be used again, and as you can upgrade the Ramjet with more perks that activate while it's overheating, there's a risk-reward element to staying in that red danger zone for the extra milliseconds you can afford.

The campaign is described as a 'racing adventure', and so you're also immersed in the Star Wars universe through cinematic cutscenes as well as getting to roam a little around small hubs on each planet in between races. I've already had a scuffle with Kestar Bool, who ended one race threatening to have Shade frozen in carbonite, and am intrigued by how this narrative develops over the course of racing a series. There already feels like more stakes and substance than just another arcade racer of one-off races.

The latter is, however, available outside of the campaign with a number of single-race events and time trials. It's the perfect place to bring back podracers screaming into 2026 with Unreal 5 fidelity. Of course, one of the podraces I tried is practically a perfect creation of the original podrace in The Phantom Menace, with the twist here being that I'm not playing as Anakin but his arch-rival Sebulba, who you also get to play dirty with his flame vent that torches races on either side. It really feels in another league too in terms of velocity and skill - the F1 to the Galactic League's GT, if you will- so it makes sense that podracers can't be selected alongside other vehicles. But it's good to know that the podracing lineage lives on in the game, including multiplayer options.

I also got a taste of the game's online racing, with the headline attraction being a tour with up to 12 players. Like the campaign, it's also a series of races where you have the opportunity to improve your racer or spend your winnings on unlocking randomised upgrade packs. The fact that online tours don't have a roguelite elimination aspect does at least mean you'll actually see more of the kind of circuits and environments on offer, such as tracks with corrosive swamps, or volcanic lava that overheats your engines even faster - I certainly manage to experience more this way than my attempts at racing through Jakku over and over again in the campaign portion of the hands-on.

Explosive online pod-racing

Still, racing online against other human players is always ruthless, especially when crashing will see you dropping positions quickly. Fortunately, if you're the one causing the crashes, Galactic Racer also employs Burnout's moment of grace where you have a brief invincibility window for enjoying your rival's crash in slow-motion but without crashing yourself. Another fun part of proceedings takes place before a race where you can bet on yourself on how well you do, with rewards if you predict right but also better rewards if you aim higher.

In any case, there's an incentive for you even if you know you're not going to end up with a podium finish, while you also have the chance to double your rewards as an underdog if you finish last in a race (something I sadly discovered through firsthand experience). That you can also see other players' bets placed in real time, which can be changed right up until before the next race starts, adds to some meta visual mind games, as you scope out the cockiest racers or bet big before tempering expectations at the last second.

After an afternoon of sheer speed blasting inches away from my eyeballs, I've come away impressed with the package and proposition that Star Wars Galactic Racer offers. While you can trace its older roots from Episode I Racer to Burnout, the roguelite twist is sure to make its single-player campaign more engaging and replayable, and while Fuse captures the authenticity of the Star Wars universe, its galactic races expand its dimensions in new, exciting ways, which ought to make it stand out in one of gaming's busiest release schedules this autumn.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer releases on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on 6 October.

The main advantage of an Android drawing tablet over a traditional pen display is the convenience of portability. The use of Google's operating system means no need to hook the tablet up to a computer. You can use it anywhere, including for tasks other than drawing, from email to entertainment (also see our guide to the best drawing tablets overall).

We have over a decade of experience testing technology for digital art and working with artists. After reviewing most of the tablets on the market today, we've boiled down the best Android drawing tablets to five options, which each have their pros in terms of size, specs and price point.

For more options, check our guide to the best budget drawing tablet.

The best Android drawing tablets in full

The best Android pen tablet overall

30-second review: The Wacom MovinkPad Pro 14 is a revolution in standalone creative tablets, making Android devices finally a viable option for serious digital art. It has a glorious colour-accurate 14-inch OLED screen, while the Pro Pen 3 delivers the premium build and drawing accuracy you expect from the biggest brand in the business. Overall, this Android drawing tablet is a rarity in that it genuinely feels like a complete, portable art studio rather than a device you would use as an extra.

Design: The MovinkPad Pro 14 looks and feels like a well-balanced cross between a portable pen computer and a dedicated drawing tablet. We were impressed by how thin and light it is for a 14-inch device, while the magnesium-alloy build feels study enough to stand up to regular use on the go. There's no camera, either front or back on this tablet. For many artists, that will be no issue, but it is the one missing feature that could prevent this from being a complete portable workstation for people that need to take video calls or want to snap reference photos. You'll still need your phone for that.

Features and performance: The OLED display is the headline feature of this tablet, providing excellent contrast and colour accuracy. A zippy 120Hz refresh rate keeps the drawing experience fluid and free from lag. When you combine that with the Pro Pen 3’s 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity, the experience isn't too far removed from that of Wacom’s traditional pen displays.

The etched glass adds enough texture to give a nice tactile feel for drawing (something you don't get as standard on an iPad), and the reduced parallax is notable in how lines track closely to the pen tip.

In terms of performance, the MovinkPad Pro 14 powers ahead of other Android drawing tablets we've reviewed. In our testing, apps like Clip Studio Paint ran smoothly during drawing sessions.

You can use the tablet in a hybrid workflow as well as on its own. We found that connecting it to a PC worked in general, but the refresh rate drops to 60Hz in mirrored or extended display mode. That's functional but lags behind dedicated pen display setups. The built-in storage capacity is 246GB, but a microSD card slot can support cards up to 2TB.

Price: At $899.95 / £749.99, the MovinkPad Pro 14 is not a cheap tablet. In fact, it's twice the price of options like the XP-Pen Magic Drawing Pad (see below), but it's also much more convincing as a flexible standalone Android device that can truly compete with an iPad Pro or Air (for the drawing experience at least). Plus, you're getting that OLED panel and Wacom’s precision pen tech.

Read the Wacom MovinkPad Pro 14 full review

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The best compact Android drawing tablet

30-second review: This smaller sibling of the Pro 14 above excels as a portable sketching companion for artists who value mobility over screen size. It's a well-built lightweight tablet with a pen‑on‑paper feel but its mid‑range performance means it’s more of an additional tool than an option to use as your main drawing device.

Design: The compact 11‑inch size makes the tablet easy to carry, and the optional cover accessory doubles as a stand and pen holder, making a well-designed package for travel. A rigid brushed metal housing feels reassuringly premium for the price point, although it adds some weight.

The MovinkPad 11 also looks more like a traditional consumer tablet due to its camera bump. Unlike its larger sibling, it has cameras both on the front and rear, which can be useful for capturing reference sketches or taking calls.

Features and performance: The display in this case is not OLED, and it doesn't offer the same professional-grade wide-gamut accuracy for colour-critical work as the Pro 14. That said, the QHD resolution and 99% sRGB coverage is fine for sketching.

Like the Pro 14, there's a matte etched glass surface that mimics the feel of paper. Without the same specialised anti-glare treatment as the more advanced tablet, colour saturation can fade at extreme viewing angles, but honestly, not the kind of angles you would normally be working at.

The stylus is the same Pro Pen 3, offering 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt support, and Bluetooth support for keyboards and mice makes note‑taking or light layout work possible.

Powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 processor, the device handles 2D sketching, thumbnails and light 3D blockouts reasonably well, but can start to lag with heavy rendering or complex 3D work. If you value portability above all else, this is the Android drawing tablet for you. If you're looking for production‑level power or better value for money, look further up or down this guide.

Price: At around $500, the MovinkPad 11 is much more economical than the same brand's higher-end 14-inch tablet above, but it's still a little bit pricier than the XP-Pen Magic Drawing Pad below, which has a larger screen and larger storage capacity of 256GB (note that the MovinkPad 11 also has no MicroSD slot) but you're paying for Wacom's exceptional line quality, accurate tilt and minimal parallax.

Best budget Android drawing tablet

30-second review: The Ugee UT3 offers a portable Android drawing tablet experience at a very appealing price, and it does it very well. The name may not be as familiar as Wacom, but we found the tablet to deliver great value and a surprisingly smooth drawing experience on a screen designed for the purpose.

Design: The Ugee UT3 is built around the company’s proven drawing tablet technology but packaged in a standalone Android device. At just 6.95mm thick and with an anti‑glare etched screen and a weight of 760g, it is clearly intended to be portable.

The display sits within a metal chassis, framed by slim bezels and rounded corners that lend it a premium finish. Unlike the XP-Pen Magic Drawing Pad below, it includes a protective sleeve that doubles as a stand and secures the stylus. While the stand is more practical for watching films than painting, the addition of hard rubber corner guards is useful.

The stylus is slimmer, lighter and shorter than the Apple Pencil 2. With just 4,096 pressure levels, it's less sensitive than modern drawing tablets, which can lead to a lag when working slowly on fine detail, though for rapid sketching or loose painting it performed well in our tests. Palm rejection was another weak point – our reviewer found he had to wear the supplied glove to avoid interference.

Features and performance: Given its price point, the UT3 clearly isn't going to match a device like the Wacom MovinkPad Pro 14, but it does compete with the MovinkPad 11 in terms of headlines specs, with a 60Hz refresh rate and 2.4k resolution and 16m colours.

The NanoMatte finish mimics paper and has an anti‑glare coating that makes it comfortable to use in varied lighting. In use, the screen feels surprisingly smooth and high‑end. Though larger than the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad, it remains light enough to hold in one hand.

Powered by the MTK Helio G99 (MTK8781) Octa‑Core CPU, it handled paint simulations in ArtRage without issue. Pre‑installed apps include ibisPaint and MediBang, alongside Ugee’s HiPaint and the PaintPal AI app, which can transform sketches into finished pieces and generate AI images live – more novelty than necessity.

The tablet is equipped with 256GB of storage, more than the Wacom Movink 11, and there's a MicroSD slot for expansion. We found the 13MP rear and 8MP front cameras to be adequate for capturing references on the go.

Price: The Ugee UT3 retails at $429 / £455, which is excellent value considering the inclusion of the case and stylus. A smaller 10.36‑inch version, the Ugee UT2, offers 6GB RAM and 128GB storage at $249 / £264.

Read our full Ugee UT3 review

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The best value Android drawing tablet

30-second review: The XPPen Magic Drawing Pad offers a similar experience to the Ugee UT3 but in a slightly smaller form factor, which makes it appealing if portability is a priority. The stylus proved more precise in testing, and the overall flexibility of the device makes sketching and painting enjoyable.

Design: The build quality is impressive, combining a sturdy metal frame with slim bezels and a soft‑touch display that feels premium. Though compact, it's still larger than a standard iPad, providing a balance between providing ample drawing space with the ability to hold the device in one hand.

The TFT LCD (IPS) screen is bright enough for outdoor use, with an anti‑glare finish that enhances visibility. Colours appear vivid, and line work is crisp. The screen’s micro‑textured surface prevents the slippery feel common to iPad displays, helping the stylus feel more naturally connected to the artwork.

Features and performance: A small rear stand integrated into the flexible case provides a modest incline of about half an inch, which can be useful for drawing or viewing. However, the case does not function as a full protective sleeve, so frequent outdoor use might warrant purchasing additional protection.

The newer X3 Pro Slim stylus now includes tilt support, and a high level of pressure sensitivity that we found to be more precise and versatile than the competing Ugee UT3 above. That said, general Android multitasking and processing power are modest in comparison to Wacom's options.

Price: The cost is comparable to Apple’s standard iPad, yet the Magic Drawing Pad delivers a more tactile and natural drawing experience. Choosing between this and the Ugee UT3 largely depends on preference for size: the Magic Drawing Pad is the more portable option, while the UT3 offers a larger canvas.

Read the full XPPen Magic Drawing Pad review

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Best of the rest

30-second review: The Huion Kamvas Slate 13 is another solid tablet but it's let down a little by underwhelming performance in terms of colour accuracy and pen precision. It's a tough sell now that there's more competition in the Android drawing tablet space but remains a contender on price when there are deals on.

Design: The Slate 13 is a nice tablet to look at with a sleek aluminium chassis and slim modern bezels. Buttons are minimal, with no shortcut keys, but you can connect a Bluetooth Quick Key remote and keyboard, and there's a Micron SD card slot to upgrade the internal storage by up to 1 TB.

At 650g, it's light enough to carry around all day, and the 4:3 aspect ratio strikes a smart balance between compact and canvas-like. One niggle is that the placement of the cameras top left does mean the Slate 13 can't sit flat on a table, but the faux leather case can serve as a stand if needed.

Features and performance: The matte laminated glass resists glare well and feels like a medium-priced drawing display. Colour coverage gives us 99% sRGB, sufficient for non colour-critical work, but it really isn't bright enough to use comfortably in strong lighting, which makes colours look washed out.

The included H-Pencil, supports tilt, pressure and fast charging via magnetic connection but only 4,096 levels of pressure. In our testing, we experienced some 'wobble' and lack of accuracy in fine pen marks.

For general Android tasks, like web browsing, video, emails and light gaming, the tablet was zippy enough, but we found that the MediaTek Helio G99 processor started to struggle with creative workflows. Multitasking proved to be another weak point. Split screen is supported, but the processor couldn't handle heavier apps well, starting to struggle with both ArtRage Vitae and Clip Studio Paint on large canvases with lots of simulation happening.

Price: For our money, the Huion Kamvas Slate 13 offers less value for money compared to the Ugee UT3 and XP-Pen Magic Drawing Pad above, which might be at least partly because it's a more established name. At $459 full price, it's in the same bracket as the Magic Drawing Pad, and it does have a slightly larger screen, but less pressure sensitivity and those latency issues that detract from the drawing experience.

Read the full Huion Kamvas Slate 13 review

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How to choose the best Android drawing tablet

Choosing the best Android art tablet for you may come down to several factors, including size, resolution, and price.

The size of a drawing tablet matters more than some first-time buyers realise. Smaller tablets are portable and can often be held in one hand. They're also usually more affordable, but larger models give you more room for expressive strokes and detailed work.

For most artists, between 12 and 14 inches provides a good balance between portability, comfort, control and drawing space, while larger displays are best suited to professional illustration and animation.

Screen: Different Android drawing tables use different screen tech. While most use IPS LCD panels, more premium models are introducing OLED display technology, which provides several advantages.

OLED means better contrast with true blacks. Every pixel makes its own light, which improves how you see dark shadows and fine lines. And because the screen has no backlight, it's physically thinner. With the glass is closer to the display panel, your pen tip feels like it touches the ink directly which means virtually no parallax and a faster pixel response for zero lag, and vivid color accuracy. At the same time, pressing hard with the stylus doesn't cause water-like ripples on the panel like it can on older LCD screens

Price: This will be an important factor for many artist, particularly students and beginners. A top-of-the range Wacom may be beyond what you're prepared to pay if you're starting out, in which case it makes more sense to start with an XP-Pen Magic Drawing Pad or Ugee UT3, which should give you years of use and a perfectly enjoyable drawing experience for less.

Stylus: Here most people now expect 8,192 levels of pen sensitivity, but older or non-specialist stylus drop to 4,096, which okay for general tasks and casual sketching. When testing a stylus for reliability, our reviewers track around the tablet, edge to edge, and run strokes across the tablet of varying pressures to create thick and thin lines, and crucially draw small, tight circles – cheap styluses struggle here.

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How we tested the best Android drawing tablets

This guide is based on hands-on reviews from our site. We test and review drawing tablets as they'd be used by you if you bought one. This means spending weeks using a tablet with a variety of digital art software to create art. For this list, we considered all the Android drawing tablets we have reviewed over the past three years, testing them with apps such as ArtRage Vitae, ibisPaint and Clip Studio Paint.

Some of the main things our reviewers look out for when testing are factors like the pressure sensitivity and accuracy, the colour gamut and accuracy, the screen quality and brightness and the ergonomics of the tablet, all of which factor into a whole host of use cases. We run the same stroke tests to gauge how sensitive a style is, for example heavy to light pressure and tight circles. We look out for stutter and lag and latency, and where possible we try and correct any problems.

You can learn more in our general guide to how we test and review at Creative Bloq.

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FAQs

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Over on the official website, fans were finally treated to the lineup reveal, so long as they could unscramble the cryptic puzzles. In true Flog Gnaw style, the unconventional promo certainly beats the typical festival poster designs, but in case you're not in the mood for word games, I think I've cracked it.

Head to the Camp Flog Gnaw website and you'll be greeted with a game to unscramble the 2026 lineup. Each word jumble has just one clue, and admittedly I found these next to useless for most of the acts. "This artist won their middle school talent show in 2004" and "God Energy, Naturally Amazing," aren't exactly the most illuminating clues Tyler, come on.

Eventually I managed to solve the anagrams (very slowly), and by my unscrambling skills, here's the full list.

• Tyler, The Creator
• Future
• Earl Sweatshirt & MIKE
• Vince Staples
• Don Toliver
• Turnstile
• Steve Lacy
• Wallows
• Lola Young
• Magdalena Bay
• JID
• Domo Genesis
• Leon Thomas
• Syd
• Jane Remover
• Isaiah Rashad
• The Alchemist
• Left Brain
• Casey Veggies
• Concrete Boys
• Quadeca
• Mike G
• Audrey Nuna
• Not for Radio
• 310babii
• Thee Sacred Souls
• 54 Ultra
• Latin Mafia
• NSQK
• Lupe Fiasco
• Liim
• Gabriel Jacoby
• GENA
• threetwenty
• Natanya
• Ama
• Wyatt Waddell
• Nomi
• 2hollis

For more creative inspiration, check out the best Coachella billboards of 2026 or discover the unconventional story behind this year's OFFF Festival identity.

I've reviewed many of these, and have had listening time with all but two of them, and I think they're all worth checking out – whether they offer exceptional value, like the $20 Pula ARC IEM, or some of the best audio quality I've tested, as with the $257 Binary Acoustics EP321.

I've grouped the IEMs in ascending price with notes on sound, but if you're still hungry for more IEM ideas, head over to my list of the best budget IEMs currently on the market.

A series of clever OOH Coyote Vs Acme ads see the Acme corporations infamously risky products smash their way into the real world (Also see our pick of the best billboard adverts).

For some, Coyote vs Acme is a long-awaited release. It was originally slated to reach the big screen in July 2023, but Warner Bros decided to cancel the movie to claim a tax write off. After a campaign to save the film, Ketchup Entertainment stepped in and bought the movie.

It's now trying to ensure exposure with some creative ads in Mexico. Social media users have been sharing photos and videos of traffic-stopping installations that adapt the classic slapstick cartoon language of Looney Tunes to out of home advertising. The TikTok video above shows a billboard ad set in Wile E. Coyote familiar desert world. The villain turned victim and hero is shown suspended, trapped hanging in the billboard.

Other ads (see below) include a trashed car with an Acme-branded piano that appears to have fallen on it – another classic Looney Tunes motif.

The germ of Coyote vs ACME was an article written by Ian Frazier for The New Yorker magazine in 1990 in the style of a legal brief outlining Wile E's case against the fictional Acme for its faulty products.

Directed by Dave Green, the movie was written by Samy Burch from a story by Burch, James Gunn and Jeremy Slater. It sees the long-suffering Wile E team up with billboard accident lawyer Kevin Avery (played by Will Forte) to take the profit-obsessed conglomerate to court.

It will be released on 28 August. A lot of people will be tempted to go purely to spite the Hollywood giant that is Warner Bros, but the reviews suggests it's also a very funny movie.

What the story does leave me thinking about is something slightly bigger, particularly now we're moving towards a games industry where owning a game and owning a copy of a game are becoming two very different things. It’s a trend that's been slowly creeping up on us ever since the PS3 era, when digital stores emerged, post-game DLC became popular, and digital releases were a neat way to explore new indie and small-budget games, like Sony’s own Tokyo Jungle and Flower. But that’s a far cry from where we are now, with games releasing digitally only and the possibility of art and design history locked behind licensing as time winds on.

GTA 6 is a pretty good example. Even if you buy the physical edition, the game itself is increasingly becoming a digital product, with Rockstar's plans putting more emphasis on downloads and online access. That's a funny thing to get your head around when we're talking about something that will probably become one of the most important pieces of popular culture of the decade. What exactly are you buying? How can you collect it? Can you keep playing it 20 years from now?

Why retro gaming matters

I still like having games on a shelf. Maybe that's partly nostalgia, but I don't think it's only that. Pick up an old PS3 game – I still have my PS3, luckily – and there's something reassuring about it, whether it’s the disc, the case, the artwork, the little booklet if you're lucky, and the knowledge that you own this particular thing. You can put it away for ten years, forget about it, find it again and, assuming the hardware still works, play it. There isn't a storefront involved, there isn't a subscription to worry about, and nobody can decide that the game you've bought should disappear from your library.

I think retro gaming has become such a big thing again for this reason. People are hunting down old PS3 and PS2 games, collecting cartridges, buying old handhelds and generally rediscovering the joy of having games that exist somewhere outside a digital storefront.

Digital games are obviously brilliant in plenty of ways. I don't want to go back to swapping discs every time I want to play something; being able to download a huge game, get patches automatically, and jump straight in is incredibly convenient, especially if you want to play instantly and not wait for deliveries or travel to the store. GTA 6 would be an absolute nightmare to distribute if we insisted on everything being frozen onto a disc from day one, particularly when Rockstar will presumably want to keep improving and expanding the game after launch, but also logistically, as I'm not sure anyone can make GTA 6 discs as fast as they'll sell.

The problem comes later, when you start thinking about what happens to those games once the companies and platforms that support them move on. Games change. Patches replace textures, fix bugs, alter balance and sometimes fundamentally change how a game looks and plays. Music disappears when licences expire. Online modes eventually shut down (or entire games, like Sony’s Concord). Storefronts disappear. Hardware stops being supported. A game you bought ten years ago can become surprisingly difficult to access, even though the thing itself hasn't gone anywhere.

That's where I think the GTA 6 leak becomes interesting from a creative perspective, without excusing the leak itself. Think about the amount of work going into this game. Character design, concept art, environments, animation, VFX, lighting, sound, writing, UI, all of it produced by hundreds (even thousands) of people over more than ten years. It's an enormous piece of digital art, and one that will almost certainly be studied and picked apart for years after release.

The more games become digital products, the more ownership starts to mean access rather than possession. For the artists who made and worked on a game, like GTA 6, that creates another problem. Their work can be sitting inside a game for millions of people to see today and become inaccessible tomorrow, not because the art has disappeared, but because the systems needed to reach it have. A concept artist's work, an animator's character, an environment team's painstakingly built beachfront block all become part of a digital object whose future is largely outside their control.

That's why preservation matters. Not because every game needs to remain frozen forever, but because games are becoming an increasingly important part of our cultural history. We preserve paintings, films, books, photography and physical design because we understand that the objects themselves tell us something about the time in which they were made, and I think games deserve the same consideration.

The GTA 6 leak shouldn't be confused with preservation, and it certainly shouldn't be used to justify stealing unfinished work. If anything, it highlights how much creative history exists behind a game and how vulnerable that history becomes when almost everything is locked inside a company's digital infrastructure. That's why the retro game revival is so popular. People aren't buying old PS3 discs and SNES games, collecting Evercade cartridges or picking up hardware like Sinclair GamerCard simply because old games are fashionable again; it's because these are things they can keep. Many gamers want a piece of gaming history that doesn't depend entirely on somebody else's server continuing to exist.

GTA 6 will eventually become one of the biggest games ever made. We'll play it, talk about it, watch its world evolve and spend years looking at the work that went into creating it. But if the industry keeps moving towards games that exist entirely under the control of publishers and platforms, we need to start asking a much harder question than whether we can download them.

Can digital games be art?

Publishers aren't necessarily thinking about games as museums, because they have a thing to sell and a budget to claw back; in GTA 6's example, it's rumoured to be $1 billion. Instead, publishers think about products, updates, licences, servers, storefronts and the next release, which makes perfect business sense, but games are also creative works, ones that have a habit of outliving the systems that created them. If we really want to view games as ‘art’ and not simply as commercial products, then digital-only releases don’t quite fit that view, unless we’re defending NFTs now.

That's perhaps why the retro games console revival feels more significant than simple nostalgia. People want old games because they're fun, obviously, but they're also collecting a bit of gaming history. We love looking at the box art, the cartridge, the disc, enjoying the old hardware design. There's something appealing about being able to pull a game from a shelf decades later and know that, for the most part, the object hasn't changed and you can plug it in and play it how you remember. Also, no one’s queuing up for a midnight launch of GTA 6 as we did for Vice City, Halo 3 or any number of big physical game launches, which in itself feels like the community aspect of gaming is waning.

GTA 6 will arrive, and millions of us will download it, install it, play it and probably spend years talking about it. Rockstar will update it, expand it and presumably support it for a very long time – and arguably for the better. That's great for the game as a living piece of entertainment, but preservation asks a different question. What happens when the servers eventually go, the storefront changes, the hardware disappears, music licenses are replaced, textures and even characters removed or updated, side-stories locked, a revamped PS6 Edition releases, and the version of GTA 6 we remember at launch is no longer the version anyone can actually access?

The games industry has become very good at making enormous digital worlds and selling games in easy ways, but I'm less convinced there’s much love for preserving the artistic intent of those worlds.

Do you think games like GTA 6 should still be physical?

From tote bag styles to multi-compartment marvels, there's a lot to consider when it comes to choosing your backpack. Firstly, size matters. Choose something that can fit your laptop and everyday essentials, but don't overdo it with a heavy bag that'll weigh down your morning commute. Then there's the matter of style. Are you a minimalist style icon or do you crave a bit of colour?

Whatever your style, I've collected the best backpacks for this back-to-school season. For more back to school essentails check out these artsy desk mats or take a look at our Japanese stationery hot picks.

It’s a fascinating challenge for the art team to create believable, playable environments, particularly when so little of the Minoan world survives, and much of what we know comes from fragments, museum collections, and reconstructed sites. When discussing historical accuracy versus artistic interpretation, the New World team similarly talks about taking real-world inspiration and transforming it to fit a game's own visual identity.

The result is a world that takes some historical liberties, the team had to actually wind in some of real history's excesses to make the game believable, “We had to tone down that historical reality”, says art director Olivier Cannone, but is packed with the kind of details that make a setting feel lived-in, from pottery and bronze artefacts to colourful architecture, weathered materials and ancient frescoes.

Here, Asobo art director Olivier Cannone explains how the team evolved A Plague Tale’s distinctive visual identity, balanced historical research with artistic licence, and drew inspiration from everything from Gladiator and Troy to Assassin’s Creed Origins.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy releases 27 August 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.