There has been no shortage of action games attempting to capture the excitement of challenging sword combat in recent years. From Souls-inspired adventures to character-action games built around elaborate combinations and precise timing, the genre has become increasingly competitive. Standing out in such a crowded field is not easy, particularly for a developer attempting to establish a new property. However, S-Game’s Phantom Blade Zero manages to make a strong impression, largely because it understands what makes this type of game enjoyable: responsive combat, memorable enemies, interesting weapons, and encounters that reward players for learning their opponents.

Released for PC and PlayStation 5 in October 2026, Phantom Blade Zero is an action-adventure game built around Chinese wuxia traditions, supernatural elements, and a visual style the developers describe as kungfupunk. It combines traditional martial arts imagery with mechanical contraptions, grotesque creatures, mysterious organizations, and a dark interpretation of historical Chinese settings. The result is a world that feels familiar in some respects but has enough personality to distinguish itself from other fantasy action games.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is a polished first-person shooter that gets many of the series’ familiar strengths right. Its graphics are impressive, the PC version runs smoothly in my experience, and the single-player campaign delivers plenty of enjoyable action. Yet beneath that technical quality is a game that feels too closely tied to the direction of recent Call of Duty releases. It offers more of what the series already does well, but rarely gives the impression that it is moving forward in a meaningful way.

The campaign follows a North Korean invasion of South Korea, with players experiencing the conflict through a South Korean squad while Captain Price pursues his own objectives elsewhere. The story moves between Korea, New York, Paris, and Mumbai, mixing conventional firefights with large cinematic sequences. Multiplayer and the extraction-based DMZ mode provide additional ways to play, making this a broad package rather than a single-player experience with a few extras attached.

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For a series as long-running as Final Fantasy, looking backward can be just as difficult as moving forward. The franchise has spent decades reinventing itself, shifting from traditional turn-based battles to increasingly elaborate real-time combat systems while experimenting with different approaches to storytelling and world design. That willingness to change has kept the series relevant, but it has also left some longtime fans longing for the kind of adventure that defined its earlier entries. Final Fantasy Resonance is a response to that desire, bringing the franchise back to a more traditional role-playing experience while dressing it in Square Enix’s increasingly familiar HD-2D presentation.

Based on the first story arc of the discontinued mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Resonance has more to prove than a typical nostalgic spin-off. It needs to work as a standalone RPG, appeal to players unfamiliar with its source material, and justify revisiting a style of adventure that has already been explored extensively by the genre. Removing the original game’s gacha mechanics and rebuilding its progression around a conventional single-player campaign gives this adaptation a much stronger foundation, even if some aspects of its design still reflect its mobile origins.

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Valor Mortis takes an unusual route into the Soulslike genre. Developed by One More Level, the studio behind the Ghostrunner series, it combines demanding melee combat, supernatural abilities, platforming, and exploration in an alternate version of Napoleonic Europe. Instead of another fantasy kingdom populated by knights and mythical beasts, players enter a world ravaged by war and a mysterious plague that has transformed soldiers and civilians into grotesque abominations.

You play as William, a soldier who awakens after death in a world that has fallen into ruin. With Napoleon’s voice guiding him and strange powers emerging from his own condition, William must fight through the devastated landscape to uncover what happened. The premise gives the game a strong identity, while its first-person perspective changes the feel of encounters that would be more familiar in a third-person action RPG.

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Planet Zoo 2 expands Frontier Developments’ zoo management simulation with flying and aquatic animals, flexible construction tools and Wildlife Reserves that take players beyond conventional zoo exhibits. The sequel retains the original game’s focus on designing habitats, caring for wildlife and managing visitor facilities, while introducing new environments and a more direct role for conservation. These additions broaden the creative possibilities, although their impact depends on how well the game’s building, management and animal simulation systems work together.

The appeal lies in the relationship between construction and animal care. A successful habitat must look convincing, accommodate its inhabitants and fit naturally into the wider park. Players can shape terrain, arrange vegetation and build structures around a particular theme, then observe animals moving through the environments they have created. Aquariums and aviaries introduce different design challenges, while Wildlife Reserves provide an alternative to the visitor-focused business of running a zoo.

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Enshrouded has spent more than two years in Early Access, growing from a promising survival game into a substantial open-world adventure. Developed by Keen Games, it combines exploration, action RPG combat, resource gathering, crafting, and an unusually flexible building system. Its premise is familiar enough: a fallen kingdom, a dangerous wilderness, and a protagonist tasked with reclaiming what remains. What makes the experience compelling is how these different systems support one another.

The world of Embervale has been devastated by the Shroud, a deadly fog that conceals hostile creatures, valuable resources, and the remains of a lost civilization. As one of the Flameborn, players venture into corrupted regions, search abandoned settlements, improve their equipment, and gradually establish a foothold in the world. The story provides direction, but the game is equally interested in the adventures that emerge from exploring, building, and discovering places beyond the immediate objective.

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Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival takes one of horror’s most disturbing fictional worlds and turns it into a first-person survival horror game. Developed by Saber Interactive, it follows Aidan Lynch as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend, Sunny, after she becomes entangled with the Cenobites and the nightmarish dimension known as the Labyrinth. The result is a game that draws heavily on the atmosphere, imagery, and unsettling ideas that made the original films memorable, while building its own story around the franchise’s familiar horrors.

The game does not shy away from the material that defines Hellraiser. Its world is filled with grotesque imagery, brutal violence, disturbing characters, and an ongoing fascination with the relationship between pain, pleasure, and obsession. The Genesis Configuration, the mysterious puzzle box at the heart of the story, also serves a practical role in gameplay, giving Aidan abilities that help him solve puzzles and survive encounters. These elements give the game a clear identity in a genre crowded with familiar survival horror conventions.

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Star Wars: Galactic Racer combines aggressive arcade racing with a run-based campaign that makes every tournament a test of driving skill and decision-making. Developed by Fuse Games and published by Secret Mode, the game follows Shade, a racer seeking revenge against Galactic League champion Kestar Bool. Its distinct vehicle classes, equipment upgrades, and branching events give the racing a strategic dimension beyond simply finishing first. The result is an entertaining addition to Star Wars gaming, although unreliable assistance systems, difficult-to-read hazards, and an uneven story prevent it from being as consistently rewarding as it could be.

Galactic Racer’s races demand more than simply finding the fastest route to the finish line. Players must balance speed with control, judge when to take risks, and account for rivals who can disrupt a run with offensive equipment. The consequences of a mistake also extend beyond an individual race, as the campaign’s run-based structure makes preparation and vehicle upgrades important to long-term progress. These mechanics give the racing a competitive edge, but their effectiveness depends on how clearly the game communicates hazards and how reliably its assistance systems respond to the player’s decisions.

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There is an obvious problem with telling the story of Emergence Day after twenty years of Gears of War games: everyone already knows how it ends. The Locust emerge from beneath Sera, humanity is caught completely unprepared, and the event becomes the defining catastrophe of the series. Gears of War: E-Day therefore has little interest in trying to make the outcome mysterious. Instead, it focuses on what those first days actually felt like for the people caught in the middle of them.

Set fourteen years before the original Gears of War, E-Day brings Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago back to the beginning of their military careers. They are joined by the other members of Bravo Squad as Kalona becomes one of the first cities to experience the full force of the Locust invasion. The story works best when it stays close to that immediate crisis. The Locust are not yet a familiar enemy with an established hierarchy and decades of history behind them. They are an unknown force appearing from underground, and the uncertainty surrounding them gives the campaign a darker atmosphere than some of the later games in the series.

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It has been seven years since Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, but Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve wastes little time reminding you why the series has lasted this long. The premise remains wonderfully straightforward: climb into a fighter jet, find something that needs destroying, and do it while missiles fill the sky around you. What makes the series special is how effortlessly it turns that simple idea into spectacular aerial battles without requiring the player to learn the complexities of a flight simulator.

Wings of Theve does not attempt to reinvent Ace Combat, and that is probably the right decision. Instead, it expands the established formula with a longer campaign, a more personal story, dynamic weather that has a genuine effect on combat, more useful squadron commands and a substantially larger multiplayer component. It also makes full use of modern hardware to create some of the most impressive skies the series has produced.

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After more than five years in Early Access, Valheim has finally reached its finished 1.0 release. Iron Gate’s Viking survival game has grown considerably since it first appeared, but its basic approach has remained remarkably consistent. You arrive in a mysterious wilderness, gather what you can find, build somewhere to call home, make better equipment and gradually push into increasingly dangerous parts of the world. The difference now is that the progression extends all the way to the Deep North, with a final biome, new equipment, enemies, resources, locations and building options completing the main journey.

The 1.0 release adds more than 40 weapons, four armour sets, two capes, two trinkets, more than 80 building pieces, new creatures, crafting materials, food, locations, events and mechanics. It also introduces quality-of-life improvements, performance changes and other adjustments across the game.

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Control Resonant takes one of the strangest action games of the last decade and makes a surprisingly bold decision about where to take it next. Rather than simply expanding Jesse Faden’s supernatural arsenal and sending her back into another section of the Federal Bureau of Control, Remedy Entertainment puts Dylan Faden at the center of the story, moves the action into a distorted version of Manhattan, and replaces much of the original game’s shooting with a more elaborate melee-focused combat system. It is a substantial departure from Control, but it is not an arbitrary one. Resonant still understands that the appeal of this series comes from putting recognizable places, people and institutions into situations that operate according to completely different rules.

That transition does come with some problems. Combat takes a while to develop into the flexible system that Remedy clearly intended it to be, and even after unlocking more abilities, some encounters can still feel more drawn out than they need to be. Remedy has already addressed one of the most significant complaints about the combat with the game’s launch hotfix, reducing the base health and Falter requirements of most enemies and several bosses while increasing Dylan’s maximum combat strength. That makes the opening hours less punishing than they were in the review build, although it does not completely eliminate the game’s reliance on repeated combat encounters.

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There is a familiar problem facing every annual sports game: once the basic formula is established, meaningful improvement becomes harder to demonstrate. EA Sports FC 27 does not attempt to solve that problem by throwing another enormous collection of features at the player. Instead, EA has concentrated on some of the fundamentals that have increasingly determined whether an FC game is enjoyable or frustrating, particularly the behaviour of defenders, attacking movement, the transfer system in Career Mode and the overall PC experience. The result is a game that looks familiar but plays differently enough to make the changes worthwhile.

The biggest improvements are found on the pitch. FC 27 reduces the influence of defensive automation and puts more responsibility on the player, while attacking movement has been adjusted to make forwards behave more intelligently when searching for space. Passing, crossing and set pieces have also received attention, although not every change is equally successful. Away from the pitch, Career Mode gets a more substantial transfer system and additional ways for seasons to develop unpredictably, while The Grounds introduces a new social space that brings Clubs and smaller-sided football together in a way the series has not attempted before.

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There is a lot going on in Aniimo. Pawprint Studio’s free-to-play RPG is a creature collector, an open-world adventure, a real-time action game and, to a lesser extent, a life-simulation game. There is an RV to develop, a character to customise, resources to gather, multiplayer content to explore and more than 200 Aniimo to discover. It is an ambitious combination, particularly for a game built around a concept that is already familiar.

What gives Aniimo its identity is Twining, a system that allows you to merge with the creatures you collect and effectively become them. This isn’t just a transformation used for combat. Different Aniimo have different abilities that affect how you move through Idyll, solve environmental challenges and reach places that were previously inaccessible. The collection system therefore has a practical connection to exploration rather than existing solely to provide another set of creatures to level up.

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Wardogs is a multiplayer shooter built around a simple idea that has surprisingly far-reaching consequences: everything you do has value, and almost everything has a price. Killing an enemy is useful, but so is spotting one, reviving a teammate, transporting soldiers, building a forward operating base or simply holding the right position. The money earned from those actions can then be spent on weapons, equipment and vehicles, while whatever remains carries over into future matches.

That economic layer gives Wardogs a very different rhythm from the usual large-scale military shooter. Developed by Bulkhead and published by Team17, it puts up to 100 players into three competing teams and drops them onto large, destructible battlefields set in the industrial mountains of Eastern Europe. The objective is inspired by King of the Hill, with teams fighting over randomized 2×2-kilometre Control Zones inside a much larger map. The team with the most players inside the zone earns points, and the first to reach 100 wins.

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Few horror villains are as naturally suited to video games as Michael Myers. He does not need to run through corridors at impossible speed or possess an elaborate collection of supernatural powers to be threatening. Much of what makes him effective comes from the opposite approach. He walks, watches and waits, often remaining just far enough away to make his victims question whether they actually saw him. John Carpenter’s 1978 Halloween built much of its tension around that simplicity, and any game based on the film faces the challenge of preserving it without making the experience too slow to be enjoyable.

Halloween: The Game takes an interesting approach to that problem. Developed by IllFonic, it is primarily an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game in which one player controls Michael Myers while four others take on the roles of civilians trying to survive the night in Haddonfield. There is also a single-player story consisting of a prologue and five main chapters, recreating events from the original film while introducing players to Michael’s abilities. The multiplayer component is clearly the main attraction, but the inclusion of a dedicated story mode gives the game more substance than a purely online experience.

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After more than two decades away from the spotlight, Capcom’s Onimusha series returns with Onimusha: Way of the Sword, a new entry that modernizes the franchise without abandoning the samurai action that made it distinctive in the first place. Set in a supernatural version of historical Japan, the game follows Miyamoto Musashi as he becomes caught up in a conflict involving the demonic Genma and a corrupted Kyoto. It is a straightforward premise, but one that gives Capcom plenty of room to combine historical imagery with the dark fantasy that has always been central to Onimusha.

The result is an action game with a surprisingly deep combat system, impressive production values and some excellent boss encounters, but also a number of modern additions that do not always improve the experience. The best parts of Way of the Sword are its tightly designed combat encounters, where timing and observation matter more than simply attacking as quickly as possible. The weaker sections are usually found between those fights, particularly in the larger Kyoto areas where exploration, resource gathering and repeated activities can interrupt the momentum established by the game’s strongest missions. Recent reviews have similarly highlighted the contrast between the excellent combat and the less convincing open-ended and progression systems.

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NBA 2K27 gets one of the most important things right: playing basketball is better this year. Visual Concepts has made meaningful changes to defense, shooting, dribbling and finishing, and those changes are noticeable from the first few games. Possessions feel more dependent on positioning and decision-making, while defenders have more ways to influence what happens on the court. For a series that has spent years adding layers around its basketball, it is refreshing to see the actual sport receive this much attention.

Unfortunately, NBA 2K27 is still much more complicated than it needs to be. The same progression systems, virtual currency economy, seasonal content and social spaces that have increasingly defined the series remain firmly in place. MyCAREER continues to surround a basketball career with distractions and expenses, MyTEAM remains tied to an ongoing card-collecting economy, and even the presentation can become excessive after spending enough time with the game.

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The Blood of Dawnwalker is built around a limitation that most open-world RPGs spend their entire campaigns trying to avoid. Coen, a young man living in the plague-ravaged region of Vale Sangora, has thirty days and nights to save his family from Brencis, a powerful vampire who has taken control of the region. After being transformed into a Dawnwalker, Coen exists between two worlds, relying on his human abilities during the day and drawing on vampiric powers at night. There is no expectation that everything on the map will be completed before the final confrontation. In fact, the game is designed around the opposite idea: some things will have to be left behind.

That decision gives Rebel Wolves’ first game its strongest characteristic. Quests, character development and other important activities consume portions of the limited time available, so deciding what to do becomes part of the role-playing experience. A quest is not simply another piece of content waiting to be cleared from the map. It is an investment, and choosing to pursue it can mean giving up another opportunity.

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How to Fish is built around a simple idea: catch fish, sell them, buy better equipment and use that equipment to make your way home. The difference is what happens between catching something and getting paid for it. Fish do not simply disappear into an inventory. They remain physical objects in the world, and the player is free to deal with them using increasingly ridiculous methods. Fishing rods eventually share space with knives, brass knuckles and guns, while trick shots turn catches into opportunities to earn more money. There are quests to complete, bosses to defeat and several islands to work through, giving the game more structure than its deliberately silly premise initially suggests.

The game begins with the player stranded on a small island after a drunken boating accident. The objective is to find a way home, and the route forward involves learning how to fish and earning enough money to improve the equipment available to you. Dazed Games has clearly designed the game around short, uncomplicated sessions rather than a large-scale adventure. The official Steam listing describes it as a one-to-four-player physics-based fishing simulator, and that description is useful because it places the emphasis where it belongs. How to Fish is less interested in simulating fishing than in using fishing as the foundation for a physics-driven co-op game.

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