So why do I care? Well, for one thing, I was lucky enough to visit Samoa myself last year, and fell in love with its lush tropical landscapes, turtle-rich swimming spots and warm hospitality. And for another, I've just fallen head over heels for the 2026 contest's new logo.

Released to promote the 2026 Polynesian Cup and Women's Polynesian Cup, ahead of the Pacific Games 2027 in Tahiti, the design is built around a turtle rendered in the style of Polynesian tatau art (which is where we get the English word for tattoo, fact fans).

With its carved linework, weave-pattern shell and a red and white roundel at its centre, the design looks like something you'd see on a temple wall. It's rich in detail, very resonant of Polynesia and looks, at least to my untrained eye, pretty authentic.

That's what FIBA's press release suggests, too. In their words: "These new visual identities carry the weight of culture, community, and sporting ambition, designed to honour the traditions of Polynesia while celebrating the energy and global spirit of basketball. The creative direction draws from the cultural elements with motifs that speak to heritage, craftsmanship, voyaging, guardianship, and the deep connections between islands.

"The patterns are more than aesthetic choices; they are storytelling devices. They reflect the artistry found in tatau, weaving, carving, and Tahitian iconography, and they anchor the basketball silhouette in a distinctly Polynesian narrative."

All of which rings true to me. And as I've said, the design as a whole is very lovely to look at. But… does that mean it works as a logo? That, I'm not so sure.

Does it work as a logo?

A logo, lest we forget, isn't just designed to appear on a press release, viewed on a backlit MacBook display with the brightness turned all the way up. It needs to work at tiny sizes too. In the corner of a TV screen while you're watching the match. On a social avatar in your Insta feed. As an tiny icon on a watch display. You get the idea.

Unfortunately at that scale, I'd expect this design to be reduced to a murky, illegible smudge. The very detail that makes it so beautiful to view at large sizes is going to disappear. The fine linework and negative space is going to die. None of which will be good.

Oh, and here's another thing: does this design, at any size, say 'basketball' to you? Yes the turtle shell could be seen as doubling for a ball… maybe. But a specific ball in a specific sport? Absolutely not.

Yes, it's light years from being a generic design, and for that, FIBA gets full marks. But as a logo that has to survive a broadcast graphics package, a mobile screen and four long years of use across multiple media – some of which may not yet have been invented – I worry that it's storing up trouble.

The Polish AAA game developer behind The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 has updated its mythological firebird symbol to make it look more the part, with sharper lines, an open beak and more aggressive claws. And somehow that's led to it getting dragged into the strange culture war going on in the US.

CD Projekt Red won a lot respect among this week with its Gamescom announcement of The Witcher 3 Remastered as a free upgrade. It's an astute way to maintain brand loyalty and engagement with the franchise ahead of the Songs of the Past extension in 2027 and The Witcher 4 in 2028. But is such unusual generosity from a big corporation a sign of – gasp – COMMUNISM?

Of course, it isn't. CD Projekt, the developer's parent company is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and is very much a capitalist enterprise, but that's not the impression you would get reading some of the responses to the new logo design over on X.

CD Projekt Red calls its bird emblem a rárog, a tiny fiery spirit from Slavic folklore. The previous design in use since 2014 was very clearly modelled on the very real northern cardinal, a mid-sized bird that eats seeds and fruits and doesn't exude flames despite its striking red colour.

The studio says the redesign is intended to be more modern and adaptable, as well as "more mature, confident, and energetic". And it does. The new bird looks sharper and and has more personality, making it more fitting for the creature it's supposed to represent. The rebrand also makes more use of the colour red, which seems like a bit of a no brainer given that it's part of the studio's name, originally inspired by the red bricks of its first office in Łódź.

On the face of it, the rebrand is more evolution than revolution. But some people on X claim that it's "giving the woke vibes", which seems strange considering the bird looks like it's just started taking testosterone shots.

"Modernized and DEIfied," one person writes about the redesign. "This is what happens when your business is so rotten to the core by the woke mind virus," another person exclaims, while someone else describes the rebrand as "white erasure in favour of posting commie colours".

And there I was thinking the Cold War had ended over three decades ago.

It seems the shift from red on white to black on red is being taken by some to be a sign of allegiance to the US anti-fascist movement Antifa. I guess that makes Netflix and Coca-Cola Zero communist threats too.

It is true that black and red have been associated with rebellion since as far back as the Paris Commune and the Spanish anarcho‑syndicalists of the early 1900s. But that connotation was part of the original brief.

Co-CEO Adam Badowski explained the symbolism clearly at the time of the last rebrand back in 2014, saying “we are rebels, and rebels are free. Just like birds. The northern cardinal what we see ourselves in the industry: intrepid, bold and confident; flying high and aiming even higher.

"The colour, cardinal RED, is something that connects it with another bird, a mythological creature close to our cultural roots and heritage–the Raróg, a small firebird believed to bring luck to people. RED stands for energy, the inner fire that drives us; it represents something very close to everyone here in the studio–the creativity and passion we harness from within ourselves to make the best RPGs in the world."

The rarog has been updated, but what it symbolises hasn't changed.

Let me know in the comments what you think of the new identity.

While we still have Black Friday coming in three months' time, some of these savings are easily good enough to consider now if you're looking to upgrade your studio or home office. You can visit the main Amazon Tech Week page to browse all the deals, or see below for our 10 favourites on products that we and our sister sites have tested.

If you want help choosing the best creative tech for your needs, see our top buying guides for creatives. In the meantime, here are our Amazon Tech Week recommendations while the deals last.

10 Amazon Tech Week deals for creatives

But, as I recently discovered with the Logitech G305 Lightspeed mouse, you really don't have to pay loads of money for high-end performance and wrist-saving ergonomics. You just have to look at the 'gaming mouse' market.

• Shop for budget mice on Amazon

Amazon is packed with bargain gems that punch far above their weight, giving digital artists, editors, and designers top-tier tracking and comfort without draining the bank account.

Whether you’re looking for super-quiet clicks for late-night editing sessions, vertical ergonomic designs to ease forearm strain, or customisable buttons to streamline your macro shortcuts, I’ve rounded up six of the absolute best budget PC mice available today.

With the release of the Chromebook Plus Spin 514, Acer has attempted to bring this hybrid technology to a Chromebook workflow. Acer advertises the device as a "multitasking machine that delivers AI-powered productivity", and the brand has packed it with hardware to achieve this.

But multitasking and AI-powered productivity sound seriously dull. So, in my testing I was keen to see how it stood up to creative workflows. Did it have sufficient hardware to compete for a place in our best laptops for graphic design or best laptops for 3D modelling guides?

The bottom line was that I wanted to know if it could replace my Apple MacBook and whether having a 2-in-1 rather than a traditional laptop provided sufficient benefits to make the switch worth making. Read on to find out how it fared.

Key specifications

Design, build and display

• A slick-looking 2-in-1 with a high-resolution display
• All the connections most people need and nothing more

The primary design feature of the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 is its 2-in-1 laptop/tablet functionality. This is provided by a hinge that allows for the required 180-degree rotation. If you're purchasing this type of device, the last thing you'll want is the hinge failing you after a few months' use. Thankfully, Acer has engineered a robust hinge that is strong and smooth.

When in tablet mode, the display sits neatly in front of the keyboard panel, and the device is comfortable to hold. The overall thickness sits at just 1.55 cm, which is incredibly thin, although obviously thicker than almost all traditional-style tablets. The only issue with Acer's design is that the speakers are then located on the underside, which hampers audio performance a little.

The display is where the Plus Spin 514 really shines. Despite the hinge and webcam sides restricting the display from an edge-to-edge aesthetic, it still feels like you're getting a fantastic amount of screen real estate compared to the surrounding frame. The fact that it's 14 inches makes it feel huge in tablet mode and beautifully portable when being used as a laptop.

The display also features a 2.8K resolution with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which looks clear, sharp, and vibrant. It offers an outstanding experience when editing photos and videos, as well as watching YouTube or browsing the web. My only gripe with it is that it's slightly too reflective, which can make it difficult to use when there are bright light sources around.

The Plus Spin 514 boasts a simple mix of USB-C and USB-A ports as well as a 3.5mm combo audio jack. This is all that most modern users need, although if you're looking to connect it to a monitor, then you'll need to either make sure it is USB-C enabled or settle for using an adapter. Additional connectivity specs include a fingerprint sensor, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth.

Design score: 4.5/5

Features

• Everything you'd expect from a Chromebook⁣
• On-device AI for image generation and editing

The Plus Spin 514 is, at the end of the day, a Chromebook. It therefore offers a stripped-back user experience centred around a range of web apps. With the upsurge of AI, the lack of a traditional OS is less important because more advanced production tasks can be carried out by AI on the cloud.

Every Plus Spin 514 purchase qualifies the customer for 12 months of Google AI Pro. Considering this would ordinarily cost £228, it's a pretty sweet deal if you rely on AI for your creative workflows already. Google AI Pro will enable you to boost your productivity and creativity and now includes NotebookLM.

Speaking of AI, on the Plus Spin 514 it's possible to edit photos inside the Gallery app using AI. This feature makes it possible to remove background clutter and even create personalised stickers of your pets or faces. Unfortunately, I couldn't make this feature work with the error "Can't edit right now. Come back soon" was being displayed every time I tried.

In addition to the design specs mentioned in the 'Design' section above, the Plus Spin 514 is also engineered with military-grade MIL-STD-810H durability and aluminium top and rear covers. This type of durability is normally reserved for adventure-focused smartwatches, but Acer has seen fit to design this device with that benchmark in mind.

Video calling is made possible by the 5MP webcam, microphone, and DTS Audio with dual speakers. The video quality is actually surprisingly good for a webcam. In fact, it's so good you'll have no problems using it for your video calls with not just family and friends but also clients.

Feature score: 4/5

Benchmark scores

We test every one of our laptops using the same benchmarking software suite to give you a thorough overview of its suitability for creatives of all disciplines and levels. This includes:

• Geekbench: Tests the CPU for single-core and multi-core power, and the GPU for the system's potential for gaming, image processing, or video editing. Geekbench AI tests the CPU and GPU on a variety of AI-powered and AI-boosted tasks.
• Cinebench: Tests the CPU and GPU's ability to run Cinema 4D and Redshift.
• UL Procyon: Uses UL Solutions' Procyon software suite to test the system's ability for AI image generation in Stable Diffusion, its Microsoft Office performance and its battery life in a looping video test.
• Topaz Video AI: We use Topaz Video AI to test the system's ability to upscale video and convert video to slow-motion.
• PugetBench for Creators: We use the PugetBench for Creators benchmarking suite to test the system's ability to run several key tasks in Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as its performance when encoding/transcoding video.
• ON1 Resize AI: Tests the system's ability to resize 5 photos to 200% in a batch process. We take the total time taken to resize the images and divide by 5.

Performance

• Excellent performance but you're limited to ChromeOS apps
• Solid battery life and no overheating

As well as a superb implementation of 2-in-1 functionality and a delightful design, the Plus Spin 514 is also an excellent representation of what Chromebooks are capable of. When we reviewed the lesser-specced Acer Chromebook Spin 514 back in 2023, we said it "may just change your mind about ChromeOS." The Plus Spin 514 proves the case again, but with even greater fervour.

With a superior MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 CPU and 12 GB RAM rather than 8 GB RAM, the Plus Spin 514 is fast across all on-board apps, including Chrome, Gmail, Photos, and YouTube. If you're a student or creative professional who is 99% of the time using web-based apps, then your experience will be snappy and hassle-free. Most YouTube creators will have everything they need.

And with the increasing availability of AI tools featuring cloud-based processing, the need for top-level CPUs and next-level GPUs is becoming increasingly redundant for large swathes of users. Google Gemini, for example, is available straight out of the box on the Plus Spin 514, enabling users to generate photo content quickly and efficiently.

But what about more serious creatives? Well, with Photoshop not available in the Google Play Store, I installed Snapseed to test the laptop's ability to handle photo-editing tasks. I was pleasantly surprised with the laptop's ability to effortlessly perform all types of colour corrections, add masks, and fine-tune the image without any lag or hang-ups.

The results were the same for video editing with the InShot app. I was able to work with multiple clips, add text, apply effects, and add filters without any trouble at all. This is a lightweight editing app, though. If your workflow demands the most advanced features found in Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, then this Chromebook is not for you.

Without so many overheads associated with power-hungry creative workstations, the Plus Spin 514 just keeps on going. It also charges via USB-C, which means you don't have to lug around a hefty power pack. The device also stays cool even when used for extended periods of time.

Performance score: 4.5/5

Price

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 retails for £899.99, which isn't bad given the 2-in-1 laptop/tablet functionality, but if you have no need for a touchscreen, then it's more expensive than a lot of other Chromebooks.

If you're not fixed on having a Chromebook and would like to save £200, then I'd recommend going for the Apple MacBook Neo. With prices starting at £699, it's not only more affordable, but you'll also get the creative-friendly macOS experience.

Value score: 4/5

Who is it for?

• Generalist creatives needing one device to do it all

The main selling point of the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 is that it can be used as both a laptop and a tablet. This makes it perfect for creatives who demand flexibility. The device is equally suited to working at home, in the office, or out in the field. Use it to carry out on-location photo edits or get some project admin done while you're on the train. Alternatively, you could use it in tablet mode to show off your work and get client feedback.

Buy it if...

• You prefer having one device rather than a separate laptop and tablet.
• You are happy with all that ChromeOS offers in terms of functionality.
• You find yourself working here, there and everywhere and need a versatile device.

Don't buy it if...

• The cheaper MacBook Neo would serve you better.
• You have demanding creative workflows and need a lot of power.
• You need a dedicated GPU to power your graphical pursuits.

Also consider

As reported on VGC, it started with NBA 2K27, where the DLSS 5 Neural Rendering files were reportedly discovered in the game's early-access build, giving curious players access to the same technology Nvidia is preparing to roll out officially. It didn't take long for the files to escape their intended home, with modders on gaming forum ResetEra now experimenting with DLSS 5 in other games, including Control and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

That is handy for the rest of us, because while Nvidia has been talking up what DLSS 5 can do, these experiments give us an early look at what happens when you drop the technology into an existing game to see what survives. The results? According to users over at gaming forum ResetEra, it's "objectively horrendous", "uncanny crap" and "horrifying". On the bright side, one gamer did point out, "It looks really good with foliage in particular, and I think it will work pretty well with racing and sports games".

DLSS 5's AI controversy

DLSS 5's Neural Rendering system is designed to use AI as part of the final rendering process, with Nvidia promising improvements to things such as lighting, reflections and materials, essentially giving the finished frame another layer of visual processing before it reaches your screen. The company sees it as a way to push games toward more convincing photorealism without asking developers to build and render everything traditionally.

The leaked version is interesting because the games modders are testing it on haven't been built around it. The artists haven't spent months preparing assets for DLSS 5, technical artists haven't been tuning materials specifically for it, and lighting teams haven't been working out where Nvidia's neural rendering should and shouldn't be allowed to interfere.

Sometimes the answer is better-looking lighting and more convincing surfaces; other times it's less convincing, particularly around faces and characters, where the AI processing can produce distinctly odd results. That's the caveat here: this isn't quite how DLSS 5 was intended, because a game's developer and artists haven't been involved in setting the boundaries of how it can be used, but they do show just how much the system can potentially change the image after a game has already done all the hard work of rendering it.

This is exactly the sort of thing that happens when new graphics technology gets loose on PC. Developers can spend months working out how a new system should be implemented, then somebody finds the files and starts trying it in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and all of a sudden Cloud looks like Scarlett Johansson in a Mötley Crüe wig. One ResetEra user called it "one of the most unsettling things I've ever laid my eyes on in gaming".

Nvidia still has plenty of time to show us what DLSS 5 is supposed to look like when it's properly integrated, but for now the PC modding community has got there first, and they're already finding out what happens when you let the new AI rendering tech loose on pretty much anything they can get running.

I actually got to play Penguin Colony a few months ago at BitSummit where I also got to meet game director Tali Faulkner at Melbourne-based indie studio Origame Digital, which previously made the award-winning Umurangi Generation. While there's a considerable leap in scope and ambition between the two games, that distinct lo-fi 3D aesthetic that harkens back to early console generations is still very much there. But where Umurangi Generation was described as a dystopian Jet Set Radio, Faulkner describes Penguin Colony as "a souped up PS2 game. Kind of like if you were making a PS2 game and had the power of a PS3."

There were also reasons that making a game set in the Antarctic was a better choice for the team's next project after it had to pivot away from another idea that was going to be more of a systems-driven detective game.

"Partly due to the current games crash, there's not a lot of money going around or people taking risky ideas, so how can we make a smaller game on a cheaper budget and rein in the scope?" Faulkner says. "Well, the Antarctic is just ice, right?"

Penguin Colony's large level design

That the environments can be just simple ice textures means that Penguin Colony can actually afford to have quite large levels. "It's not Death Stranding scale, but it's like a linear open world, and the idea is that each level is sort of a small open world," he clarifies. Another important thing was to make this open world fun to traverse, a response to the team's own critique that Umurangi Generation had pretty janky controls. So even though waddling penguins are not the type of species you would expect to have terrific mobility, they do feel good to control.

And you're not just controlling one penguin. There are different species of penguin available, which the team had just researched and modelled based off photos on Wikipedia, from the common Adélie penguin to the towering Emperor penguin. Get close to one and there's a prompt allowing the player to sort of leap from control of one to the other, which you'll want to do as each have their own distinct abilities, like the emperor being able to slide around at a higher speed to compensate for its slower walking speed, or the rockhopper who can traverse steep terrain.

Faulkner finds it especially fun to design an open worldish game that's also not human-centred. "If this was a game where you were a human character, you would essentially just be walking through the snow with a gun, and we want to sort of give something that's just a bit different," he explains. "This game gives you the fantasy of playing as a penguin who can slide and hop, and swim. With that water, we wanted to make it feel like an alien world underneath, and also if it was a human game, you probably wouldn't be able to go in the water."

But as I play the demo's opening, switching between penguins as I traverse the Antarctic, it all leads up to the cosmic horrors originally hinted at. Through their perspective, you observe a larger story involving two rival human groups that have come to your home in search of a mysterious eldritch god. While one of these groups are the Maori Kaitiaki, the other faction turn out to be the Nazis, itself a significant reason why this adaptation happens to be set in 1939, a few years after Lovecraft had already died.

It's not just a bold creative choice to confront Lovecraft's racism that's also reflected in his fiction but also makes it comparable to the depiction of Nazis also hunting for ancient artefacts in Indiana Jones films.

"The idea is this expedition believes that the thing that has been calling people to the Southern Hemisphere isn't a Lovecraft abomination, but it's an Aryan god," Faulkner explains. "The Nazis are sort of there to myth-make around that. Because we know from history and also films like Indiana Jones, the relic hunting missions that the Nazis went on were purely propagandistic and they were to rewrite history, such as prove that Jesus wasn't Jewish. One of the things we explore in the story is this idea of myth-making, what the Cthulhu mythos is, and it's sort of fun to play with the idea that these guys are just archeologists who don't understand their place in history."

Penguin Colony is coming to PC and Switch 2 in 2026, and a demo is playable on Steam.

When I attended Figma's Config conference in San Francisco last year, I was surprised to hear Jonze wax lyrical about Marvy Uchida's range of LePen pens. These fine-tipped pens come in a delightful array of colours, and most importantly, they're cheap. I've been using them for years, but this was the first time I'd heard anybody, let alone one of my favourite film directors, mention them.

LePen pens come in an endless array of colours, and are a delight to use. With an ultra-thin 0.3mm fineliner tip, they offer unrivalled accuracy, and they're also incredibly light. also light is the price. At $17.50 for a pack of 12, these are $1.48 per pen. Which, when you consider that some of the most beautiful pens cost thousands, is nothing short of a steal.

I don't know why it's taken me so long. I thought that the big bulky ergonomic mice were the best for 'productivity' work. But putting this piece together on the best student desk set ups yesterday, I discovered it's simply not true.

Of course, the MX Masters of this world still feature on my best PC mouse list. But gaming mice, such as the Logitech G305 Lightspeed, are unbeatable when it comes to lightness and speed. And with this 2018 classic down from $50 to $30 over at Amazon, it's unbeatable for value, for students going back to school and pros alike.

Another thing about the G305 Lightspeed that I like is that, since it's been around since 2018, it's got a healthy modding community behind it. There are plenty housing 3D prints to make the G305 Lightspeed lighter, to make the replaceable battery a rechargeable one, and to make it look basically however you want.

That makes me want to get one of these, and head over to an affordable 3D printer and start creating a new look for my mouse. In fact, that's exactly what I'm going to do! Watch this space...

I'll go over the tools I use, brushes, layer types and much more, and the principles that I think about at each step to move me towards the finish piece. (Note that you might want one of the best drawing tablets to work on, along with the best digital art software).

I hope this tutorial helps you with your future commissions and thank you for taking the time to read through. If you like tutorials like this and would like more of my brushes, and also behind-the-scenes of the art I make for clients, and personal work, please feel free to stop by my Patreon: patreon.com/cw/ColeEastburn.

This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.

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It was messy, chaotic and great. Until the bots, algorithmic doom spiral, mass layoffs, paid verification and lack of moderation undermined trust credibility, and an 'edgy' rebrand as X discarded one of the most recognisable digital brands in history. Elon Musk's plan was to turn the platform into an 'everything app'. So far, it's not really anything.

We already had several Twitter alternatives to choose from. As of this week, we have another one: Twitter. A small startup has relaunched the brand at Twitter.now with the mission of rebuilding social media with greater trust – complete with bird logo and blue colour palette. Could it be an almost unprecedented resurrection of a dead brand?

Operation Bluebird, a company based in Virginia, is presenting Twitter.now as a "reclaimed brand". Its argument is that the name is available to trademark again because the intellectual property was effectively abandoned after Elon bought the original Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X.

They should know what they're talking about because one of the founders is Stephen Coates, who was Associate Director of Trademarks, Domain Names and Marketing, at the original Twitter between early 2014 and August 2016, when he moved to Amazon.

X disagrees sued Operation Bluebird in Delaware last year and is seeking a preliminary injunction against it. The court has yet to deliver a final written order, but District Court Judge Colm Connolly's tentative ruling in April suggested that Bluebird may have a case.

Stephen stresses that Twitter.Now is "not an attempt to recreate the old platform". Instead the aim is to create a fundamentally different social media model that addresses some of the biggest complaints people have about the major social media platforms.

Rather than being entirely subject to the decisions of an algorithm, users will be able to exercise more control over what content reaches their feed by assigning trust levels to other users.

Although the interface doesn't look that dissimilar to Twitter, with the familiar mechanism of tweets and replies, posts show trust signals and users can control their feed with a 'Trust Dial'.

The platform's also testing a Google Gemini-based fact-checking tool called Vera (short for veracity). This runs automatically in real time on every tweet to call out false information.

"Our governing principle is simple: freedom of speech, not freedom of reach," Stephen writes on LinkedIn.

For now, Twitter.now is only open to 'Early Access Founders' who pay $20 or 'Fighters', who pay $40 to register. Bluebird says the charge is necessary to maintain independence while it builds the platform, keep bots out, and help fund its legal defence against X.

The aim is to open the doors to more people later, although it's not clear if this will be free. For now, the number of users is only in the hundreds. But, like with the launch of Bluesky, limiting initial membership should allow the platform to manage its infrastructure as it builds capabilities and tests features.

The first test will be whether the Twitter name still has enough power to win Twitter.now more attention than other X alternatives. Many of the precedents for dead, abandoned brands being revived were largely driven by nostalgia, from Polaroid and Atari to Airwalk.

I'm not convinced nostalgia is a draw when it comes to social media – the perennial talk of reviving Myspace never really sparks excitement. But the quantity of headlines about the launch of the new Twitter suggests the name still has a lot of weight. The platform should also get a decent boost purely from the many people who will leap at the chance to troll Elon Musk.

But the biggest problem with X isn't the name. People left because of Musk's ownership, content policies and chaotic management rather than loyalty to the previous brand. The real test for the new Twitter will be whether it can build a social platform that doesn't feel antisocial.

Shams Jorjani, CEO of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios, believes that's a big part of what will make GTA 6 special.

“Rockstar makes ridiculous, high-effort stuff and it's awesome that games like this get made,” Jorjani says, although there's a nice bit of self-interest in his enthusiasm. He's quite happy that GTA 6 isn't coming to PC at launch and that GTA Online isn't arriving on day one either, giving Helldivers 2 a little more room to breathe when Rockstar's monster finally lands.

It's his wider point that's more interesting, though, as he says: "Everyone in the industry right now is constantly pivoting strategies and obsessing over early player feedback just to survive. But Rockstar has the brand power to confidently take their time and run their classic play. They have the confidence and freedom to spend a decade doing things the old-school way because they know the core game will deliver. It’s going to raise the bar for sure."

He's got a point, because look at how games are being made now with early access releases, live-service roadmaps, player metrics, constant updates, community feedback, monetisation experiments, studios changing direction because players didn't like something in a beta… the feedback loop can start before a game has even properly found its feet and in the case of games like Concord, killed altogether before they have a chance to get going.

GTA 6 is bucking the trends

Rockstar's model is different and a little bit old-fashioned. Make the game, spend years throwing people and money at it, polish the hell out of it and trust that when you finally put it in front of the world, people will want to play it. Obviously, Rockstar can do this because it has Grand Theft Auto behind it and most studios don't have the luxury of spending a decade on a single game, particularly when development costs are enormous, and shareholders tend to prefer quicker returns.

But there is something fascinating about GTA 6 being made this way, especially from an artistic point of view. Give artists, animators, designers and developers enough time and money and what happens to the work? How much more detail can you cram into a world when you're allowed to obsess over it for years?

For Jorjani, the answer will be significant, saying GTA 6 is “going to raise the bar” when it releases, and perhaps even make some publishers rethink how they handle game development.

As if you didn't know, the Grand Theft Auto VI showcase will be live-streamed on Netflix today at 3pm ET / 8pm BST.

The Montreal and LA-based AI company reimagined the game’s characters and world for 10 short vertical video episodes for TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram (see the first episode below.

HaZ, who's based in London, said protecting the game’s visual identity was a priority.

“I wanted complete control over a locked-down model trained exclusively on my assets," he says.

He worked with Nura Studios writer-director Abe Scheuermann, who developed and produced each episode in approximately one working week. This included scripting, animation, sound design, voice recording, music, cleanup and final delivery.

“The first test frames were trained exclusively on the original character sprites, animation and artwork I provided,” HaZ says. “I could send annotated notes and receive updates within hours, sometimes less, with the feedback addressed exactly. That level of responsiveness is rare for a director.”

Nura says the production remained firmly human-led. That included the voice cast. Graziela Larroca voices Astro, Elvis Deane voices AL, and Brian Ulrich performs a rotating cast of supporting characters. The music is by human composers, licensed through Epidemic Sound and edited to picture.

“I strongly prefer human voice artists because they bring nuances to a performance that are almost entirely absent from AI-generated voices,” Abe says. “The same philosophy applies to music.”

HaZ argues that rather than replacing a traditional creative team, Showcraft enabled a solo IP owner, one writer-director and three voice actors to complete a project that might otherwise have required months of production and significantly greater resources.

“AI can’t and won’t tell your story. That’s your job,” he says. “This works because the technology supports a clear creative vision, it isn’t about prompting random ideas to generate random shots.”

Astro Burn the game is available via Steam.

The collection brings together some of the best games of the 90s: Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, Congo's Caper and Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics, released on the Super Nintendo between 1991 and 1995. These are very much games of their time, with bold, goofy character designs, grinning dinosaurs and bobble-eyed prehistoric beasts.

There's a particular charm to 16-bit game art like this that comes from making everything work with very little; it’s why fans love games of this era, and why remakes like Manic Miner HD cause a ruckus. The new Joe & Mac Retro Collection isn’t a remake; it’s the old games running on new consoles, with character designs readable at a glance, enemies needing a strong silhouette, and backgrounds that suggest a whole world without turning into an indistinguishable wall of pixels.

Joe & Mac is full of chunky characters, big expressions, bright colours and ridiculous creatures, with the whole thing leaning into a cartoon version of prehistory rather than anything resembling an actual history book. Dinosaurs, cavemen, monsters and weapons all get thrown into the same visual soup, and somehow it works.

It looks like one of those releases that will go the extra mile. The Joe & Mac Retro Collection also includes the Japanese versions of the games, including the uncensored Japanese version of Caveman Ninja, so there's a bit of preservation work going on here too. You can play the games closer to how they originally appeared in Japan, or slap on the CRT filter, adjust the aspect ratio and pretend you're back in front of a chunky old television.

There are modern concessions, such as save states and rewind to make the famously old-school difficulty a little less brutal, while a new Boss Rush mode gives returning players something they haven't seen before. Joe & Mac 1 and 2 also support two-player co-op. But the really nice touch is the Virtual Unboxing Experience, which lets you explore digital versions of the original boxes, manuals, and cartridges, celebrating how we used to collect and handle these games as much as play them.

Red Art Games is leaning into that with its physical editions, too, which include reversible covers, posters, stickers, badges and manuals, while the Rock Edition adds an acrylic stand and a retro-inspired box.

Pre-order Joe & Mac Retro Collection now; it releases digitally on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Steam on October 29. Physical editions for Switch and PS5 are due in early 2027.

With Apple's new iPhone launch event just around the corner, and rumours of a foldable iPhone Ultra doing the rounds, a lot of people are understandably holding out on purchasing the latest Galaxy Z series over intrigue on what the rival brand could reveal.

This is a smart move, and there's no rush to make a purchase as important as this without first weighing up your options. At Creative Bloq, we look at reviews through the lens of how tech can actually benefit creatives in daily use cases, and that's exactly how I've assessed the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra in my quick video review below.

VIDEO: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra review

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

Sample images from the Z Fold8 Ultra

One of the most important aspects of a camera phone for creative professionals is, of course, the camera. Even if you're more of a casual smartphone shooter, part of being a creative is creating content now (whether we like it or not), and having a phone that can walk you through the entire script, shoot, edit, upload process in one device is a key selling point.

I have no complaints in the camera department with the Z Fold8 Ultra, and during testing I found that it handled small details remarkably well when shooting with the 200MP camera. For a more in-depth look at the Z Fold8 Ultra camera, check out my camera phone shootout where I pit it against the standard Z Fold8 model.

Pain points: what it is it missing?

We need to address the S-Pen issue

I'm a long-time Samsung user and a proud owner of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, so it's hard for me to imagine life without the Samsung Ecosystem taking the wheel. What I mean by this is that things feel really easy with Samsung. Almost too easy.

My phone has my data and passwords backed up, it knows how I like things organised, saves my preferences, can replicate my tone in emails, and Galaxy AI has been tremendously helpful in keeping life on track for me as a journalist, photographer, hobbyist maker, and now social media manager.

What I'm getting at is that Samsung knows how loyal its users are, and it understands the reluctance to jump ship without a strong cause. That's why it's even more disappointing when companies let us down and remove tools that creatives rely on.

The Samsung S-Pen is a stylus that used to come included as part of Galaxy devices up until the Z Fold6 series, after that, it was abandoned following last year's Z Fold7 series (though it still remains on the flagship S Ultra series). Not having a stylus might seem like such a small element to moan about, but it made a huge difference for things like sketching, digital art, signing documents, and photo editing.

It feels like a huge and rather confusing loss to ditch this compatibility yet again with the Z Fold8 series, when arguably it makes the most sense to use a stylus with a foldable display with larger screen real estate to use it on.

Samsung: bring back the S-Pen. Even if it can't be part of the device physically and must be sold separately to use, that's fine by me. Okay, rant over. Let me know in the comments if this is a bugbear for you too.

Centred around prompt-based editing, the new AI-assisted editor, now available in beta, offers a dedicated interface for users to edit using a natural language prompt bar alongside other generative tools, powered by various AI models.

The new editor represents perhaps Adobe's most decisive move yet in its embracing of 'conversational editing'. The company has already added new AI assistants to the likes of Photoshop and Adobe Express. But now it's offering an entirely new editing interface for its most established software.

As well as prompt to edit, the new AI-assisted editor features some of Photoshop's other AI tools, including Remove Background, Generative Expand, Generative Fill and Generative Upscale.

While the advent of a brand new AI-assisted editor is unlikely to appease those lamenting the insertion of AI into every area of digital creativity, Adobe is keen to stress that like all of its AI offering, the AI-assisted editor is designed to fit into existing workflows. Or, if a user prefers, they can disable it altogether.

And the prompt to edit feature isn't limited to the new AI editor. "Prefer to keep working in the Pro Editor? Prompt to Edit offers the same natural language editing directly in the Pro Editor's Contextual Task Bar, so you can transform an entire image using simple prompts, with no selection required, right from the context bar you’re already using," Adobe announced in a blog post. "Whether you prefer prompts, precision tools, or a combination of both, Photoshop offers the flexibility to support the way you create."

And that got me thinking. As it's Back to School season, why not put that experience to good use and choose the best work set up for students – pick the best budget options in a host of areas that all creative students need.

Below is my list of the nine most essential things that will elevate your work space, but won't break the bank. They include my all-time favourite budget ergonomic chair, the Sihoo M18, as well as the recently discovered $30 Bob Ross desk mat, which brings a smile to my face every time I look at it.

Kusama chose to spend more than five decades living in a Tokyo psychiatric facility. She worked at a studio across the road, and consistently described her artistic practice as more than a career. She described it as the only thing that kept her pain, anxiety and fear under control.

When talking about the art itself, her tone shifted to something much lighter – she spoke of polka dots gleefully and with love. This is a philosophy she stuck to all her life, outlasting the practice of most artists. Art was a survival tool whilst being the thing that delighted her most.

Here, I've pulled together the words she used to explain why she kept making work, a series of quotes many creatives might relate to and be inspired by.

Art as survival

"I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art." – Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama (Tate Publishing, 2013, p.60).

"I've sought for truth of art with an ambition and fought like hell all my life to accomplish my purpose as a human being." – From an interview with Tate in 2015, quoted in Hyperallergic's obituary this week.

Creating to the end

"I paint every day. I am going to continue creating a world in awe of life, embracing all the messages of love, peace and universe." – From a 2023 interview with The Art Newspaper, timed to her M+ Hong Kong retrospective catalogue.

"I do not feel the difference between my earlier creation and now. I never run out of ideas so I shall continue to show new things." – Same 2023 Art Newspaper interview.

"I will keep on making my art until the day I die. And even after I die, my spirit will keep creating new art." – Quoted in Artnet's obituary this week.

Legacy and mortality

On winning Japan's Order of Culture in 2016: "I feel there is little left in my life, but I am now still fighting to the death for my art," and "I am giving all I have so that many people will continue to be interested in my art, even after I am dead." – Reported by NBC News.

"I want to create things that are infinite, expand beyond the canvas." – Artnet obituary this week.

On process and pure delight in making

"Polka dots are fabulous"

"I want to create a thousand paintings, maybe two thousand paintings, as many as I can draw," she continued.

"I will keep painting until I die."

– 2012 interview with the Associated Press.

On her life

Asked whether she'd accept a feminist reading of her work, she said: "I am too busy with myself to worry about a man-woman problem. Since I find a refuge in my work, I cannot be bullied by men."

On her strict, matriarchal upbringing: "In my childhood, I experienced so much hardship, all thanks to 'feminism.' My mother wielded a tremendous amount of authority and my father was always dispirited."

Interview with curator Akira Tatehata

Kusama spent close to a century using art as fuel to keep her alive, and as the thing she loved doing most. She kept working right up until her final years.

• Buy Switch 2 for £449.99 on Amazon
• Buy Switch 2 for £378.85 on Amazon

From 1 September, the Switch 2 is getting $50 more expensive in the US, climbing from $449.99 to $499.99 for the 256GB console without a game, and £24 more expensive in the UK. That's a painful price rise for a Switch 2 that’s just over a year old, and with the price change now less than a week away, buying now will genuinely save you money.

The timing is interesting because Nintendo has also announced new Switch 2 bundles arriving this autumn, including packages with games that may soften the blow slightly, but you'll still be paying the higher hardware price. In other words, waiting for those bundles isn't necessarily the bargain you might expect; for example, the standout Nintendo Switch Sports Resort bundle will still be $529.99, a post-price-hike saving of $27.98 but still $22.02 more than where we are now, and in fact an actual $80 saving – phew!

If you're reading this in the UK, there's a price rise here too, although thankfully it's not quite as brutal. Nintendo has confirmed that the Switch 2 will increase from £395.99 to £419.99 on 1 September, a £24 jump. That’s still a price increase that could go toward a new game or Nintendo Online.

What should you pay right now?

The official UK price is £395.99, but you don't necessarily need to pay that as Amazon is selling Switch 2 for £378.85, while some retailers are still sitting at the full £395.99 price, which means there's a proper deal here rather than simply buying ahead of a price rise. At roughly £380, Switch 2 today would effectively be £40 cheaper than the new £419.99 UK price from 1 September.

Those kinds of prices aren't guaranteed to return next week, though. If you find a Switch 2 around the £360-£380 mark before 1 September, I'd consider that a much more interesting proposition than waiting for Black Friday and hoping Nintendo's retailers discount the console enough to cancel out the new RRP.

So while you could wait, and there will be Switch 2 deals after 1 September, usually around Black Friday, they’ll likely be bundles that don’t really push the price down but offset a cost rise by offering an old game to sweeten the deal – the hardware price won’t escape the $50/£24 price rise that’s coming in just a few days.

It’s simple right now: if you've already decided you want a Switch 2, buying one before 1 September means you won't be starting from a $499.99/ £419.99 price tag, and if you can find one below £380 in the UK right now, even better.

Best Nintendo Switch 2 deals ahead of $50 price rise

Key specifications

Design, build and display

• Solid build
• Some gamer aesthetics

There's been no attempt at building a thin and light laptop here, and very little in the form of subtlety or quirkiness in the Crosshair’s design. It’s a thick, brash gaming laptop, with a rainbow keyboard and a dragon on the back of the lid. There's some linework too, in the kind of pattern that recalls a cyberpunk tattoo, and vents at the back and sides through which you can see the copper fins of a heat sink.

It’s a 16in laptop, so was never going to be small, and is fairly thick with nicely rounded corners. The screen, in particular, has some heft to it - perhaps a byproduct of using an IPS instead of an OLED - but the hinge is nice and smooth, with enough stiffness to stay in place once you’ve got it in the right position.

The font used for the keycaps is a bit much - it’s very wide and slips in a lower-case N among all the other capitals - but it gets the job done. Being a gaming machine, the WASD keys are clear instead of black, allowing the backlight to shine through at the expense of being able to read them clearly. Those who know what WASD are used for will be able to locate them by feel, but hunt and peck typists may find themselves moving more slowly as a result.

The trackpad, in contrast to the generally solid build quality of the Crosshair, seems a little loose in its housing. It’s nice and smooth, and has a good click when you press in on it, but there's just a hint of wobble. Perhaps it’s only our review model that does this.

Design score: 3/5

Features

• Excellent screen
• Poor battery life

The MSI Crosshair 16 HX doesn’t come with Thunderbolt or USB4 in this spec - look out for an Ultra 9 variant with TB4 if that’s important to you - so the best you’re going to get is USB 3.2 Gen 2 (that’s the 10Gbps one). Luckily, you get three of them, including the lesser-seen Type-A version of the port, so you will at least be able to hook up some reasonably fast external SSDs. There's no SD card slot either, so drone pilots will be using one USB port to hook up a card reader. MSI’s choice of charging port is a rotationally symmetrical rectangle that looks just like a USB-A at first glance, so it’s quite possible to find yourself trying to stuff a thumb drive into it and wondering why it won’t go in either way up. It’s also possible to charge through USB-C if you’d rather side-step this problem.

Those Type-C ports also support DisplayPort, and there's a full-size HDMI 2.1 too, so the Crosshair is well equipped for connecting to external monitors. Its IPS screen is a rather lovely thing, though, so you might be tempted to stick with it if it’s large enough for your needs. It puts out 99% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, along with 100% of sRGB and 87% of Adobe RGB, with a maximum brightness of 475 nits.

The screen’s 2560x1600 resolution and 240Hz refresh rate point to its origins in the world of videogames, but for use in creative apps it works well. High-framerate video is super smooth, and colours pop, especially if you take the time to calibrate it. Another nice little feature, often overlooked, is the webcam privacy shutter - many gaming laptops omit this, but here it’s a simple slider built into the camera housing at the top of the screen, with a red panel exposed when it’s closed.

Battery life is where the Crosshair really falls down, however. At just 2hr 25m when only lightly taxed, you’re not going to get very far between plug sockets before needing a top-up.

Feature score: 3/5

Benchmark scores

We test every one of our laptops using the same benchmarking software suite to give you a thorough overview of its suitability for creatives of all disciplines and levels. This includes:

• Geekbench: Tests the CPU for single-core and multi-core power, and the GPU for the system's potential for gaming, image processing, or video editing. Geekbench AI tests the CPU and GPU on a variety of AI-powered and AI-boosted tasks.
• Cinebench: Tests the CPU and GPU's ability to run Cinema 4D and Redshift.
• UL Procyon: Uses UL Solutions' Procyon software suite to test the system's ability for AI image generation in Stable Diffusion, its Microsoft Office performance and its battery life in a looping video test.
• Topaz Video AI: We use Topaz Video AI to test the system's ability to upscale video and convert video to slow-motion.
• PugetBench for Creators: We use the PugetBench for Creators benchmarking suite to test the system's ability to run several key tasks in Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as its performance when encoding/transcoding video.
• ON1 Resize AI: Tests the system's ability to resize 5 photos to 200% in a batch process. We take the total time taken to resize the images and divide by 5.

Performance

• Mid-range Nvidia GPU
• Loud cooling system

The Core i7-14650HX is a 16-core chip with its Performance and Efficient cores split evenly into two sets of eight. The P cores can hyper-thread while the E cores cannot, for the possibility of 24 simultaneous software threads. At 55W, it sucks the same base power as the Core Ultra 9 275HX, but performs at a lower level. In the Geekbench 6 multi-core benchmark, the Crosshair scores 11,580 against the 275HX (in an MSI Stealth 18) total of 17,883. The 275HX can also process 24 threads, but is newer tech and in a larger laptop for better cooling, so it’s no surprise it pulls ahead.

Elsewhere, the GPU proves its worth in the rendering tests, steamrollering anything using integrated graphics just as you’d expect. The RTX 5070 sits in the middle of Nvidia’s hierarchy, and is a steady performer capable of framerates above 30fps in Cyberpunk 2077’s ray-tracing ultra mode, and even more if you enable Nvidia’s Multi-Frame Generation tech. When it’s doing this, you’ll certainly notice the fans, which have the usual sound of rushing air underpinned by a hum that’s presumably coming from the motors. It’s definitely at the louder end of laptop cooling systems, but seems effective at holding the GPU’s thermals in check.

In creative apps, the 16GB of RAM may be the deciding factor, as 32GB laptops will have an edge. The Photoshop results from Pugetbench look pretty good, but the tight 16GB of RAM may limit it when it comes to high-res video with lots of layers. That said, as the laptop is able to rely on its GPU when it comes to AI apps, it beats the Acer Nitro V 14, with its AMD processor and RTX 5060, in the Topaz Video AI test even though the Acer has more system RAM (but less VRAM).

Performance score: 3/5

Price

On sale at £2,099 (or $1,299 for an i7/5060 spec, and $1,449 for i9/5070) the MSI Crosshair 16 HX isn’t a cheap laptop by any means, but as there's a version with a newer Ultra 9 275HX out there that costs even more, it’s clear the 14th-gen processor has an effect on the price, as does the 16GB of RAM rather than 32. You can get a lot of laptop for this price, with the obvious candidate being a 14in MacBook Pro, or the Acer Nitro V 14 for a bit less.

Value score: 3/5

Who is it for?

• After-hours gamers

There's no denying that a laptop with this kind of graphics power, not to mention the lovely bright display, is great for photos and video footage, but its true love is to be plugged in and pumping rendered frames onto the screen. You can use it for both! There's nothing to stop you!

Buy it if...

• A bright, colourful screen appeals
• You can make use of the GPU
• Maybe a few rounds of COD later?

Don't buy it if...

• You value thinness
• Or battery life
• Or quiet fans

Also consider

The Cupertino tech giant has upgraded the silicon in both of its desktop computers. The new Mac mini comes with a choice between Apple's M5 Pro or new M6 chip, while the Mac Studio comes with either the M5 Max or M5 Ultra. In each case it's an iterative but significant jump that should mean better performance in creative software.

Preorders are now live, with prices starting at $899 / £899 for the base M6 Mac mini and $2,499 / £2,499 for the Mac Studio with M5 Max chip. Premium configurations of the M5 Ultra cost well over $10,000, but there are ways to save on all models. The Apple Store is offering trade-in credit if you have swap an older Mac: up to $480 for an older Mac mini and up to $580 for a MacBook Air.

The new Mac desktops will start shipping on 22 September. Also check out the brilliant new stop-motion Mac mini advert.

• Mac mini M6: $899 at Apple | Amazon | Best Buy
• Mac mini M5 Pro: $1,699 at Apple | Amazon | Best Buy
• Mac Studio M5 Max: $2,499 at Apple | Best Buy
• Mac Studio M5 Ultra: $5,499 at Apple | Best Buy

New 2026 Mac mini and Mac Studio: who are they for?

Announced during Gamescom Opening Night Live, the September release will feature a plethora of upgrades to the original 2015 open-world RPG, from visuals to gameplay and performance. Anyone who bought the original for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S will qualify to receive it, and, Nintendo Switch players will be able to claim a native Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, with pre-orders open at Nintendo now.

CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3 Remastered promises enhanced combat, improved traversal and movement, overhauled mount handling, revamped monster behaviours, a skill tree update, transmogrification, expanded photo mode and new finishers.

In the brief "and more" section at the end of the reveal trailer, the developer listed no fewer than 30 upgrades, from cross-platform mod support to immersive meditation, refined animations, UI tweaks, updated textures, HDR and ray tracing improvements, a global lighting rework, new shading model and a new tone mapper.

Fans are excited about the move to full path tracing, including ray-traced hair, and revamped combat, while PC gamers are celebrating the elimination of DirectX 11 for native DX12.

And best of all, it's the kind of free gift that's almost unheard of in the industry. That decision is winning CD Projekt Red (CDPR) massive respect from players and differentiating it from competitors like Rockstar (GTA Trilogy) or Sony (The Last of Us Part I).

The studio could have charged for the upgrade or made it an entirely separate game to purchase, but it seems that after backlash over Cyberpunk 2077’s troubled launch, it's deliberately positioning itself as a studio that values players. It's even now giving away the existing DLCs Blood and Wine DLC and Hearts of Stone for free too.

It all makes great business sense. By giving the millions of players who already own The Witcher 3 a free upgrade, it strengthens brand loyalty, primes the audience for the paid Songs of the Past extension in 2027, and should help keep players engaged until The Witcher 4, which is expected in 2028.

The remaster is also a technical showcase demonstrating new cutting-edge features. Offering it free maximises visibility while ensuring that Geralt’s saga remains central to the franchise as we look forward to Ciri taking the lead in The Witcher 4.

CD Projekt Red also shared a new teaser for Songs of the Past, the upcoming third expansion of the game. The DLC will feature the new region of Letten, described as an idyllic land rich in rural tradition and folklore but with a dark secret lurking just beneath the surface.

The Witcher 3 Remastered will be available from 29 September. Songs of the Past will be released in 2027 as a paid expansion for The Witcher 3 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2. It's available to wishlist now for select platforms.

As developer Eschatology Entertainment describes it, this is a first-person Soulslike shooter. That is to say you have campfires for checkpoints, enemies respawn, you have precious resources that you drop when you die, while combat is also deliberately slow and methodical. That's quite a few things that you probably wouldn't associate with a shooter. Rather than medieval dark fantasy, this is set in a weird, occult, and apocalyptic version of the 19th-century American West, so for western film influences, think El Topo rather than A Fistful of Dollars.

That setting also turns out to be very apt, given you don't have the luxury of fast reloads and have to make every shot count. It's something that takes some time getting used to with my starting weapon, an iconic-looking six-shooter, where you're having to pull the trigger once just to load a bullet before pulling again to fire (the UI design also shows the actual bullets cycling into the chamber itself). In typical shooting instincts, you'd aim for the head, but while that might work for the very basic hat-wearing enemies, there's a more devious design for how you encounter each enemy.

What Guns of Eschaton gets right

Given that eschatology concerns studying the End Times, you're also technically studying your enemies, ranging from the undead to freaky flying eyeballs that explode if they get too close. A key item you pick up at the start is a Codex. In another game, this would be like an enemy compendium you might idly flick through, but here it's an actual book you carry around and open up in real time with an illustration of the enemy in front of you. These illustrations are also annotated, highlighting different body parts with numbers that indicate the order you need to shoot them in order to deliver serious, effective damage.

Take, for example, the Doomed Lawman, whom you must shoot in the right leg (your left) first before going for the head. But if you're facing the Severed Lawman, who looks annoyingly similar with the exception that they wield a long-range rifle rather than a pistol, they have a different pattern, where you have to target their left leg, followed by their left arm and then their head, incidentally parts also wrapped in bandages. Still, it's tricky to tell the difference between them initially, especially when you are holding the Codex in front of you while also trying to aim.

You do have some advantages, like being able to dash to dodge bullets (being a Soulslike, this costs stamina), which also allows you to platform across small gaps in the absence of a jump button. Your enemies also handle the same kind of slow firearms, so you do have time to react as they cock their pistol. This also allows you time to respond to an enemy shot by parrying. That idea might sound ludicrous for a shooter, but your protagonist has the fortune of having a mysterious demonic entity's floating arms that does this for you. Successfully parry, and you not only stun your opponent but have a second or so of bullet time where, if you're slick enough, you can land all your shots to blow them away. It's also the way to deal with the occasional one-on-one showdown where the twist is not who can fire first but where you must parry first, and then shoot.

A Dark Souls gunslinger

In practice, however, after getting through the tutorial, I spent the majority of my session barely able to escape the opening town in the Forgotten Desert, which looks like your typical western location, albeit with the cosmological sight of floating rocks in the distance. If I wasn't just an awful shot at targeting these enemies' body parts or memorising the order they're to be hit, messing up the parry timing or forgetting to cock the gun barrel when I had them in my sights, I was being flanked by shots I barely had time to figure out the direction they were coming from before. In several cases, I got caught off guard by not realising a stick of dynamite had been chucked at my feet until I was blown away and once again met with the game's equivalent of the 'You Died' screen (get used to being told, 'No Rest. No Peace.')

I can imagine Guns of Eschaton being a divisive game that will demand patience to get to grips with, but it also felt like a humbling reminder of what it must have been like when I played Dark Souls for the very first time. From its take on the Weird West to parrying bullets, it's got Colt potential.

Guns of Eschaton is coming soon to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and you can wishlist on Steam.

Players will step into the role of a warlock called Kaatri on a quest to find someone she's lost with the help of powerful witch Tasha. The gameplay makes clear that we're not in for another Baldur's Gate 3.

Kaatri is played by Tricia Helfer, the Canadian-American actress and former model best known for playing Number Six in Battlestar Galactica. Her character is described as an experienced warrior newly bound as a warlock. She must master forbidden magic in a land where she's an outsider. Maggie Robertson (Orin the Red in Baldur's Gate 3) plays the witch Tash.

The game is a single player action adventure in which you can combine magic with melee, with combat giving players a plethora of tools. The gameplay shows a more action-focused experience than the turn-based RPG formula of Baldur’s Gate 3.

At one moment in the reveal, we see Kaatri holds an enemy in the air, finish another and picks up a sword to throw. Se also defeats an enemy after summoning tendrils from the ground.

Fans are praising the darker, gothic aesthetic and strong visual identity, hailing Kaatri’s design as a bold attempt at modernisation. Her look blends battle-worn realism with supernatural flair. One person writing on X describes her as a mix of Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings and Sarah Kerrigan from StarCraft.

In an interview with Variety, Maggie says she believes the game will be "different because we’re following one character’s story,”

"Warlock takes us through the relationships of these specific characters, Tasha and Kaatri. Instead of being pulled in many different directions, we’re asking players to focus on one relationship with a lot of emotional depth,” she adds.

Helfer says of her character: “We really get to understand her, know her motivations, and hopefully become captivated by the emotion driving her. And you’ll still have all the fun parts of D & D. You’ll still see iconic spells, characters, and locations from D & D. I think Warlock is trying to balance being a great experience that is both accessible to newcomers and longtime fans of D & D.”

The game is expected in 2027.

I was worried about Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, mostly because of the sword combat. When Asobo announced that Sophia, the pirate we met in the previous game, Requiem, would be running around with a blade and proper melee combat in her own prequel, I couldn't help thinking, do we really need this? A Plague Tale had carved out a little space for itself with an original blend of stealth, puzzles, rats, Medieval misery and beautifully written characters, and suddenly it looked like we were heading towards a 14th-century God of War. There are enough games where I can smash someone in the face with a sword; A Plague Tale didn't need to be another.

But the combat turns out to be one of the least important things about Resonance, and that's why it works so well. The combat is perfectly decent, Sophia is a nimble fighter, and there are some nice but unrevolutionary ideas around parrying, dodging and using the environment – kicking enemies off bridges and into ancient 'holes' is oddly satisfying. The aim is to always knock enemies off balance, such as kicking a shield carrier or throwing objects to stun enemies, which leaves them open to a final killer blow – you've done this before. A simple upgrade tree gives Sophia things like faster dodges and double kicks, and new hidden weapons offer buffs and debuffs, like a broken spearhead for stabbing through shields but only useful when running.

Sword fights are well implemented but feel basic compared to games that make melee combat the whole point, like Devil May Cry 5 or God of War. The ancient Minoan 'vision resonances' where Sophia lives out Theseus' trials centuries earlier show this most clearly, because these gladiatorial encounters don't really develop the system beyond the same parry-and-counter rhythm; in fact, by the credits Sophia is more skilled with a sword than Theseus.

But the thing I kept thinking about while playing was how recognisably A Plague Tale it all felt, despite the introduction of combat into the mix. The writing, the sense of place, the puzzles, the horrible creeping dread, the way a beautiful landscape will evolve into grimly dark decay – it's all still here and done better than ever before.

Still A Plague Tale at heart

Resonance is both a prequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence and Requiem, with Sophia setting out to uncover the truth about her past on the mysterious Minotaur's island. Sophia is already a very different lead from the series' heroine, Amicia. She's a plunderer, a pirate, confident with a sword, and has enough swagger to make the early sections feel lively and just a little carefree, particularly when she's travelling with sidekick Leni. There's a real sense that the two of them have stumbled into something exciting, and for a while Resonance is happy to let you enjoy that feeling.

But things turn dark – visions, secrets, supernatural – and the game doesn't simply turn the lights off and throw monsters at you, but Sophia's whole attitude changes as she discovers what is happening on the island, what it means, and the performance sells that change particularly well. She starts out excited and curious, then becomes frightened, remorseful and increasingly aware that she's dealing with something she can't simply stab her way out of.

That shift is reflected in the environments too, as the spectacular open spaces, brilliant blue skies, clear water, sandy ruins and enormous ancient statues give way to claustrophobic tombs and catacombs where the walls are crawling with the remnants of the Macula – the game's supernatural blood infestation. There's a lovely late-game scene where the sunrise catches the orange rocks and temple ruins, and everything looks almost impossibly beautiful, which makes the uglier things lurking underneath feel even more horrible.

Exploring is enjoyable; there are grapple hooks, hidden tombs, secret passages and ancient mechanisms, and while none of this is especially revolutionary – and the 14th-century Tomb Raider tag feels apt – Asobo has such a good eye for environments that I rarely minded following the obvious path. I kept wanting to see what was around the next corner, and uncover the next tease of why everything went to literal hell for King Minos centuries before, because looking around these crumbling ruins, something wild went down.

The same goes for the puzzles. Most of them revolve around light, using an ancient golden sphere that Sophia can upgrade as she progresses. It can become a prism for matching coloured light or uncovering secret messages and clues, among other things, and eventually a focused beam with a rather more practical use. I wouldn't call the puzzles difficult – there were two that made me properly stop and think –, but I liked the way the idea runs through the game, particularly because manipulating light feels like a natural extension of what A Plague Tale has always done with torchlight and darkness. The more I play, the more Resonance feels like an evolution of the series' core identity and mechanics.

That's because the combat is never allowed to take over. You still spend plenty of time sneaking, solving puzzles and exploring the medieval world's enormous environments, as Sophia's emotional story unfolds, drawing together multiple strings into a slow-burning revelatory arc, and when the game really wants to frighten you, it drops the combat entirely and embraces the series stealth roots.

The tombs of Minoa are covered in fluorescent dust, and Sophia picks it up as she moves around. The Macula has produced a new sort of worm-like creature that can track her by following that dust, so now your footprints become a track it can follow. You have to think about where you're walking, where you can hide, which areas are safe and how quickly you can get from one piece of cover to another.

Artistically, the new creature feels like an evolution of the rat horde in how it moves and attacks – the creature fears light, will suck the dust from the air, and you can see the glowing particles being pulled away from Sophia as it gets closer, and more so, every particle in the scene is sucked past at speed. Its breathing changes too, becoming deeper and more urgent, and as it breathes in slowly, those dust particles move rhythmically on screen; there were several points where I found myself sitting completely still, waiting for it to move away, just watching the particles ebb, flow and subside.

You can light cauldrons to create safe spaces; moving slowly while crouched leaves no dust behind, and jumping across gaps breaks the trail for a little while, but there's never quite enough security to make you comfortable. You're always watching that dust, listening for the creature and wondering whether you've left too obvious a trail, or questioning whether you can run to safety or keep crawling, creating a novel sense of risk and reward. It's a different mechanic from the rats, obviously, but it produces the same kind of tension.

The horror keeps developing as well, with an impressive late-game sequence involving crusted, desiccated figures that starts out looking like another piece of environmental dressing and then becomes much less harmless as they crack into life and chase you down, and like the earlier games' rats, make too much noise, and you'll be swamped in the mannequin-like monsters.

Resonance doesn't just repeat its best tricks either, as the further Sophia gets into Minoa, the more unpleasant everything becomes, and the Macula's organic tendrils start appearing everywhere, turning what should be grand ancient ruins into something diseased and almost alive. The story pulls it all together through Sophia's connection to an ancient Carrier and Protector, with events from the Minoan era bleeding into her own journey.

I don't want to get too deep into what happens here because much of the pleasure comes from watching the pieces connect, but this is where Resonance earns its place in the series. Sophia isn't simply discovering an ancient mystery and ticking off a list of tombs. The Carrier, the Protector and the Macula become tied to the choices she has to make, and the game's revelations gradually explain why she has been drawn into this particular story.

A particularly effective parallel is how Sophia begins the game thinking she can handle whatever is put in front of her, only to confront something that can't be solved with confidence, a sword, or a clever bit of tomb raiding. That emotional progression is more interesting than watching her become a better fighter, especially since, like Requiem, no one here is safe from a gruesome death, and that pendulum hanging over every plot twist gives Resonance the emotional hook I've loved about this series. By the final third, Resonance is fully back in the territory where A Plague Tale has always been strongest. It's miserable, beautiful, frightening and surprisingly heartfelt, with the different pieces of the game finally pushing in the same direction.

I went into Resonance thinking Asobo might have made a mistake by adding combat to the mix; instead, that side of the game is almost beside the point. It gives Sophia a different physicality, and it adds another texture to the game, but the series' identity is strong enough to survive the change, and the new stealth mechanics actually push it somewhere more interesting.

There are still things I'd change. I'd like the combat to have more depth, especially in those ancient sections, and the puzzles could certainly ask more of you. But those aren't the things that stuck with me after finishing it.

What works? It's the landscapes. Sophia's relationship with Leni and her growing connection to Theseus. The slow collapse of that carefree adventure into something much darker. The glowing dust being sucked from the air as something hunts me through the ruins. Those desiccated figures breaking and beginning to move. The orange light over the ancient temples, the huge detailed environments that kept me pausing to enter Photo Mode. The feeling that every time I thought I'd figured out what Resonance is doing, there was another nasty little idea waiting for me.

A Plague Tale didn't need to become a new me-too God of War or even a medieval Tomb Raider; it just needed to remain itself while finding somewhere new to go, and Resonance manages that brilliantly. For all my initial doubts, this is the strongest entry in the series yet, and it leaves Asobo with a much bigger, stranger world to play with next time.