Arkheron is doing something we all love in gaming, putting a fresh twist on something familiar. Coming from Bonfire Studios, a team founded by ex-Blizzard Creative Officer Rob Pardo, and whose influence runs through World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Overwatch, Arkheron is a PvP multiplayer dungeon crawler, with teams of three attempting to make it to the top of the tower, slicing their way through enemies and opposing teams, as the playable space shrinks. A team-based, dungeon-crawling battle royale? It’s a brilliant mix.

Arkheron centres around the relics. Each player has four empty slots: two weapons, a Crown and an Amulet, and you fill these by looting treasure chests as you climb the tower. Each relic has its own unique powers, or individual weapon types, and while there are common-level versions, what you’re really looking for are Relics that belong to an Eternal.

There are eight Eternals in the game right now, each with four unique Relics and corresponding abilities. If you collect all four from the same Eternal, you can transform into them, gaining a fifth, ultra-powerful special move as well, giving you a distinct advantage, and, as an added bonus, making you look incredibly cool too.

What it does mean, however, is that you’re stuck as that Eternal for the rest of the match, and that might not be the best choice. There are literally thousands of possible combinations for the gear here, and that includes further bonuses for carrying a split pair of same-type equipment. It’s a dizzying level of customisation, and I can see players really digging into the swirling range of possibilities when Arkheron launches.

You have to get to the top of the Tower first. Every team is dropped into the bottom floor with an expanding field of view letting you see other team drops and enemies, giving you a decent picture of where you want to join the battle. Our team – led by the exceptionally cool Bonfire Studios team member, Raph, – was consistently patient, waiting to see how the map was panning out before making the leap, and that seemed to work well in terms of giving us time to start building up an armoury.

Each floor of the tower is filled with CPU-controlled enemies for you to work your way through, clearing areas so that you’re free to ransack the heady assortment of treasure chests. There’s different levels of chest, so you’ll find plenty of mundane, run-of-the-mill weapons, amulets and crowns, in the lowest level, while the Eternal gear tends to be tucked away in the rare ones that you’ve really had to work for.

As you’re decimating the various enemies on each floor, you’re earning currency to use in the shop. These contain consumables and a selection of gear, too, but they’re also focal points for all of the other teams, and you can suddenly find yourself embroiled in a melee, just because you wanted to pick up some health. We found that a hasty retreat wasn’t so much cowardly as efficient, and we repeatedly lived to fight through another few floors after spying an enemy team and legging it in the other direction.

You can hear enemy footsteps ringing out through the gothic halls, so there’s a nice and clear audible indicator of which way you want to go, much like in other Battle Royales. Running and hiding remains my favourite tactic in PUBG, and I can do that here too, so I was well at home.

I loved the hack-and-slash combat here, though. A mix of Diablo and Hades-esque weaponry and movesets, makes this feel like a multiplayer version of those incredible games, and that is as enjoyable as it sounds. The weight and variety of different weapons and abilities has been tuned really well, and while things definitely become chaotic when you’re facing off against an enemy team, it never felt unwieldy. There’s a few quirks to playing with a controller – there’s not quite the expected level of control, with the controller replicating the way you move with a mouse and keyboard – but I still found myself having a whale of a time.

The battle royale element really comes into play when it starts funnelling the fifteen teams together. At points you have to retreat to the safety of a nearby Beacon, the only thing that will protect you from the Abyssal Storm. Lower floors have plenty of Beacons, but as you climb higher, there are fewer and fewer, leading to an inevitable brawl at the top with a final remaining team.

There’s plenty of customisation too, though thanks to the isometric view during each round, the best view you’ll have of your character, and your teammates, is on the prep screen before you head to the tower. Still, the art direction is really strong throughout, and the Eternals in particular are particularly characterful.

Our hands-on time gave a tantalising glimpse of Arkheron’s possibilities. If you’ve got a steady team of friends to party up with, enjoy the action of games like Hades and Diablo, and love the competition and gameplay loop of a battle royale, you should definitely keep an eye on Bonfire Studios’ first game.

I’ve had a great week of gaming this week. I’ve just really enjoyed myself, and a lot of that seems to come down to my returning addiction to Overwatch. The community has blossomed with the introduction of the five new characters, and everything feels somehow fresh and new, while also being reassuringly locked down. I know I enjoyed my time with Highguard, but, with limited competitive gaming time, it’s got to be Overwatch for me. I, perhaps, shouldn’t still be playing it at 1AM, but, what are you going to do? Sleep?

Jason has been playing Skyrim, which he’s playing with mods for the first time. He says, “I’m enjoying the mix of nostalgia and cool new spells a lot. I’ve also been playing more Lort, which is an excellent roguelike which might have broken the balance with the latest character, but I’m not complaining.”

Aran finished The Man Who Erased His Name, which he says, “Was a great Yakuza spin-off. I enjoyed playing as Kiryu and wandering around Osaka playing through a standard over the top Yakuza storyline. The ending was great and very emotional.

Gamoc has been played Styx for review. He also started NG+ in Spidey 2 since it’s on PS+, while also starting Phantom Doctrine, “Because it was £1-odd on Switch.”

Jim has been glued to Red Dead Redemption all week, again. He said, “For the past several hours, I’ve been roaming Mexico, crossing off side quests and challenges before heading back up north. I remember finding this middle act fairly boring during my initial playthrough many years ago though now I have a much greater appreciation for it and clever shift in tone/setting. I’m unsure whether I’ll go for the platinum trophy though I intend to at least finish the main story and Undead Nightmares.”

Laura has been trying out Planet of Lana 2 for review this week – she says, “So far I’ve “squee-ed” (I’m pretty sure that’s a word) at least nine times at how adorable Mui is and “flargh-ed” (yep, that’s a word too) several times at how perfectly tricky the puzzles are! I’ve also been enjoying all the new updated content and improvements to Absolum with Ade – it’s now even better than before!”

Ade confirmed, “Oh yes! Let me tell you, the Absolum devs have clearly been working hard post-launch and have now fixed all of the roguelike related issues I brought up in my review. As a result, Absolum is now more than likely the best side-scrolling beat ’em up I’ve ever played!”

Steve has been writing a heck of a lot this week, while also fitting in some of his own gaming too. He said, ” I managed to spend some quality time playing through Lost Records: Bloom and Rage in an effort to clear some space on my PS5 for a big download which I ended up installing on PC instead. That big download is my current play but I am not allowed to speak of it. I also made a start on Son of Sparta, which is  a perfectly solid search adventure game but hasn’t really got going yet. Aesthetically, it reminds me of a dialled-down Prince of Persia but doesn’t have the fluidity or innovation (especially the map screenshot feature) of Ubi’s most recent iteration. Whilst commuting, I enjoyed finishing Gumball in Trick or Treat Land, a modern GBC JRPG that I’ll have the review up for soon.”

Tef has swanned off to Munich to check out the latest updates to Rennsport, though he’s also spent a lot of this week squinting into the Nintendo Virtual Boy. Fancy!

What about you? What have you played?

Any conversation about the best indie developers must include Capybara Games. With a catalogue that stems from Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, through Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, to Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked, they consistently turn out the kind of games that stay with you long after you’ve finished playing. Battle Vision Network is set to be their latest, continuing in the vein of previous puzzle-infused games like Clash of Heroes, Critter Crunch, and Grindstone, and just like everything that’s gone before, it looks like it’s going to sink its way into your synapses and have you playing out moves while you’re trying to drift off to sleep.

Battle Vision Network is a tactical puzzle Roguelike battler, with teams competing in an intergalactic contest for glory. Dan Vader, Capy’s Creative Director tells us, “A Roguelike run of the game is framed as a season of this sport, and of this spectacle that is the BVN show.” He continues, “At the start of the game there’s only one team available, but as you progress you unlock more teams and more captains, each with their own playstyle and abilities.”

You can see that play out in the gameplay trailer, where a piece of toast shaped like a cowboy faces off against a skeleton in a rainbow cape – that’s Texas Toast vs. Rainbow Sparkle, obviously. It’s not just extremely bright and vibrant, but there’s the same sense of humour and quirky art direction that made Grindstone so memorable.

Dan tells us that Battle Vision Network is a spiritual successor to Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, and anyone who’s played that classic title will be able to see the same gameplay threads running through BVN, with two teams made up of different units facing off in turn-based combat.

Different units have unique abilities and uses, such as Todd Thumb. This little finger fella can be stacked into a row of three, which sends a large thumb-based attack straight at the opposition. As you progress through a run, you draft more and more units into your team, until you’ve got a full roster, with a host of different abilities that will give you a variety of tactical options to choose from.

As you complete rounds, you’ll earn Bucks, which you can spend on upgrades for your team, or to upgrade specific units. You’ll also gain a Penant Flag through each round, choosing between three enhancements for your team, and leaning into that Roguelike structure and the random factor that can turn a mediocre run into a mammoth success.

Battle Vision Network began life as a mobile-first, PvP, season-based concept, and Capybara were originally working with Netflix to bring it to their mobile game library. However, in 2024, it became clear that Battle Vision Network wasn’t fitting into Netflix’s overarching plan, and Capy were thankfully able to reassess and rework the game, altering how players progress, shifting the focus to a single-player campaign, more like Grindstone and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes.

Dan honed in on some of the key changes when coming from a mobile title, saying, “OK, we’re going to make a PC widescreen game, and we know that kind of audience soaks up complexity and depth, and experimentation and optimisation, and we can lean into that. And for us, we’re getting older, I have a family, I have a very demanding job, I don’t get to play as many 100-hour RPGs as I used to, so it’s emerged over the years that I really love run-based games, because they’re bite-sized. I can pick them up, I can play a little bit, have a little run, or pause a run, and I don’t feel that I haven’t made a dent in the game. So, we were really enthusiastic to explore our mechanics in that format that we were loving, anyway.”

One of the main differences over Clash of Heroes is that your Captain isn’t just an icon in the corner of the screen, they’re a physical unit with their own abilities, effects and place on the board. They can make the difference between failure and success, but you’ll need to know when and how to utilise them to maximise their impact.

Beyond the gameplay, fans of previous Capybara Games will be delighted to learn that the soundtrack is a collaboration between two of their previous composers: Jim Guthrie, who penned the soundtrack for Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and Below, and Sam Webster, who wrote the soundtrack for Grindstone. BVN could well be amongst the best-sounding games of 2026, just on that legacy alone.

Battle Vision Network is set to launch initially on PC and the team are targeting being Steam Deck Verified, which seems like the perfect way to experience the puzzling action. As a huge fan of their previous games, BVN has dropped its way straight into my most-wanted list.

Self-improvement, growth, development. Ideally, these are tenets to live life by. Whether that’s setting aside time to train and exercise in some weird sport you’ve seen online, learn a new language with a pushy owl, or expand your horizons through travel, though only if you’re not just there for the sake of the ‘gram. Gamesir are a company with this same outlook. They started out with some peripherals of questionable quality, but have spent the following years crafting a wealth of incredible devices that tend to feature cutting-edge technology with seriously competitive pricing.

The G7 Pro was one of 2025’s best peripherals. One so good, it was fractions away from being perfect. Gamesir seem to have known that, and with the Wuchang Fallen Feathers Edition of the G7, they’ve made what is arguably the pro controller to beat, at least if you’re an Xbox or PC gamer.

The G7 already had a spec list to die for – well, if you lust after extra controller inputs, mechanical buttons, trigger lockouts and frictionless TMR sticks – but the one omission was a wireless connection to Xbox consoles. That’s the main addition for this release, thanks to the included 2.4Ghz dongle, and it completes the feature set perfectly.

This gamepad is also stunning. The Wuchang edition is boldly decked out in blue and gold, a colour scheme that’s carried through to the charging base as well, with Chinese iconography and artistic brush strokes sweeping between the two. There’s gold feathering – matching with Wuchang- Fallen Feathers’ malady that affects protagonist Bai Wuchang – that runs across both of the controller feet, doubling up as a textured grip. It immediately feels like a well thought out and intentional collaboration, rather than just a different colourway, and every time you reach for it, there’s a sense of occasion and impact that you’re definitely not getting elsewhere.

In the hand, the G7 Pro Wuchang Edition’ 272g has just the right heft to feel premium and purposeful, but it’s not wearying like the Xbox Elite line can be. Its mechanical microswitch-equipped D-pad is also one of the best out there at the moment, and I love the definition, speed, and the corresponding click that comes with every press.

TMR sticks are the newest frontier in analogue stick tech, and they’re the next step after Hall Effect. Just like Hall Effect, they operate without physical components rubbing together, avoiding the wear and tear that old-school potentiometer sticks could develop, and stopping controller-killing stick drift. TMR sticks use electromagnetic technology, making them more precise than Hall Effect, and they’re tuned to feel closer to traditional analogue sticks. Gamesir’s versions in the G7 Pro feel awesome, and through multiple rounds of Overwatch, they’ve proved blindingly responsive.

A couple of months ago, there was a clear audio lag when using wired headphones via the G7 Pro wirelessly with Xbox Series X|S. The most recent firmware has definitely improved matters, but it still feels like there’s a small measure of latency between the on-screen action and the audio being delivered to you. That can be a dealbreaker for a committed competitive gamer, but if you’re that committed, then you’re going to have your controller wired up too, making it a non-issue. Even so, we hope that Gamesir can squash latency down further for those wireless gamepad folks.

There are other amazing pro controllers out there, but the G7 Pro Wuchang Edition has them absolutely trounced on price. I love the Nacon Revolution X Unlimited, but its list price is £70 more than the G7 Pro (or even more, with the G7 Pro’s regular appearance on AliExpress) While it does have features that Gamesir’s offering doesn’t, I’m not sold that the OLED information screen is worth the sizeable premium.

The Nintendo Switch was not home to many great racing games, especially ones that didn’t feature karts and moustachioed drivers. So far, that’s continued to play out for the Switch 2, but there are some key signs of change with the arrival of GRID Legends last month. Drafting directly behind it is Gear Club Unlimited 3, an arcade/sim-cade racer that also boasts its own storyline, licensed vehicles and updated visuals, hoping to snatch its own place on the podium. While it puts up a valiant effort, it feels like it’ll remain firmly in the middle of the pack.

As we’re seeing more and more on Switch 2, Gear.Club Unlimited 3 gives you the choice between a 30fps Graphics option and a considerably smoother Performance mode with a 60fps refresh rate. Ideally, racing games need to be 60fps – though 30fps is fine if its stable – and it’s definitely snappier and more responsive. The Graphics option here targets 30fps, but it does not manage it by quite some margin. Stutters and lag happen throughout races in this setting, so much so, that I’d say it’s currently unusable. It doesn’t really seem to make all that much difference to the visuals, either, other than the quality of tyre smoke at the start of races.

In the world of Gear.Club, winning is everything. The story mode sees you joining the organisation as a rookie, before trouncing one of the old pros and stealing his slot on the tour to Japan. Thankfully, everyone is thoroughly amiable, and he comes along as your mentor instead, narrowly avoiding some genuinely interesting conflict and drama. All the story dialogue is told via text boxes and static character art, which serves to emphasise the game’s budget leanings, while the suit and shirt-wearing bigwigs feel completely out of place in a tournament of underground racers. The story is, at best, a fairly forgettable frame to the racing action. At worst, it’s just explaining the next menu you’ve unlocked.

The cars make a better first impression. They are extremely well modelled, shining and glistening in their metallic glory, and striking a tone that will have you feeling pretty positive about Gear.Club Unlimited 3’s chances, though with a roster of 39 cars, it’s relatively slim pickings.

Actually racing them isn’t so positive. Gear.Club Unlimited 3 offers a couple of options to tailor your experience, with different levels of brake assist and anti-skid. Whichever option you go for, the cars are relatively well grounded, and pretty reliable in the way they manoeuvre, if a bit lifeless, though there’s still a nagging sense of worry and uncertainty if you go for Expert settings and turn off anti-skid.

Where it comes unstuck is drifting. At no point does this become natural, easy, or enjoyable, and you’ll find you can launch it around curves like a terrible NASCAR driver without losing too much time. That’s all exacerbated by the lack of analogue triggers. We can lay some of that at Nintendo’s door, but when GRID Legends gives you right analogue stick throttle control, and supports the Gamecube controller’s analogue triggers, there’s little excuse for not having it in place.

It just doesn’t come together very well. Rubber banding in races sees you fly past the entire pack, only to have them inexplicably reappear in your mirrors and pass you at the last moment. There’s a Kudos-like scoring system for keeping it clean, and achieving various other feats of vehicular control, but it feels pretty perfunctory and uninvolved.

Gear.Club Unlimited 3 is at its best when it’s trying to emulate Tokyo Xtreme Racer. Battles and duels that take place on packed Japanese highways are the most fun events here, and nipping your way through traffic is a blast. Well, it’s a blast till you clip somebody and invariably end up facing the wrong way.

Upgrading your Club is a pleasant little diversion. You’ve got a massive garage to work with, filling it with technicians as well as designing areas to relax in, and stuffing them full of arcade machines. Upgrading your cars is tied to which workshops you’ve unlocked, and then adding engineers to unlock higher tiers within each one, and that’s interesting enough, giving you a reason to take part in an additional race or two, to fill things out.

The problem is that the engineers and upgrades dry up at points, with little to do but persevere with the ‘story’ mode, and just keep on racing across a map that you can barely tell has changed.

Gear.Club Unlimited 3 is a largely solo experience, with the main story mode taking you from a rookie to the leader of the Gear Club Japan arm of the racing company, while taking in time racing across the roads of France. It’s a shame that progress feels so slow, and the upgrade system so lacklustre, because there are elements of the game that work pretty well.

There is a Free-Roam mode too, which I hoped might suddenly turn Unlimited 3 into an open-world racer. Unfortunately, it just lets you – or you and a friend – drive the tracks without any constraints, or you can do some two-player racing, which is a nice thing to have. Being able to explore the world might have been more impactful if there were more sights to see, beyond the occasional train racing by.

On top of everything else, the music is horrendously repetitive. I managed about an hour before I turned it off in the races, and maybe a couple more before wanting to cull it in the menus too. Besides that, the game hard-crashed at points too, dumping you back to the Switch 2’s main menu. It’s just another thing to chip away at Gear.Club Unlimited 3’s potential.

It’s already 2026? So that means it’s time for a new year of fresh new games, and a whole 12 months of lusting after the next big thing? Let’s get started then! One of the first big things for the year has to be Romeo Is A Dead Man, a hyper-kinetic, hyper-violent, hyper-insane new action title from the iconic Grasshopper Manufacture. This has already hopped onto a bunch of the TSA team’s radar, and this new story trailer gives you the lowdown in a typically Grasshopper-like way, which means it’s irreverent, weird and darkly funny. Go take a look!

So, I’m not too sure what the moral of this story is going to be. Don’t pick up women in the road? Don’t fall in love? Don’t let your grandfather shove technology down your eyeball that turns you into some sort of living-dead superhero? I’m not entirely sure whether SUDA51 and his team are in the habit of including morals or finger-wagging in their games, so I’m going to take it that the moral is going to be something about being faster, meaner and more violent than the bad guys, so you don’t end up being a doubly dead man.

Romeo Stargazer, a sheriff’s deputy, is the hero of this piece, but he doesn’t stay human for all that long by the look of things. He finds Juliet – because of course he does – in the middle of the road, and they fall in love. I’m hoping that there’s more Shakespearean asides for the English Lit fans in the back too, as the rest of the trailer opts instead to tell you about how Romeo dies at the hands of a White Devil, and how his grandfather, Professor Benjamin, saves him. Surely he should be Professor Montague? I suppose Benjamin is close enough to Benvolio. Just about.

Anyway, it’s clear that the tone of Romeo Is A Dead Man is going to be all kinds of tongue-in-cheek and all kinds of raucous fun, as your living-dead hero takes his revenge on a series of creepy monsters.

Romeo is a Dead Man releases on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam and Windows platforms) on February 11th, 2026.

You can wishlist it on Steam, PS5 and Xbox right now!

The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Rogue Trader is not the best version of the game. We might as well make that the starting point for a review that puts me in a very difficult position. How do you rate a game that’s as good as Rogue Trader, but which runs here, somewhat inexplicably, like a bag of spanners? You could just skip right down to the bottom of the page, but here’s the thing, Rogue Trader on Nintendo Switch 2 defies whatever score I finally settle on, because even when it’s running badly, it’s one of the best tactical RPG experiences you’ll find anywhere.

Load times are not good. That starts with the tone-setting creep of a loading bar that laughably shoots to 41% before taking a loooonnnng rest, searching around for the energy to make it to the end. Any movement from major area to the next brings about another lengthy wait, but the central sections themselves don’t incur any loading at all, so there is that. Travelling in your Voidship across the map also causes various stops and starts as different narrative moments are played out, a fresh load cycle happening every time despite those moments taking place in the same bridge section, and it serves to sap a lot of the game’s momentum.

You’ll be slowed down further when the game autosaves, pausing the action for at least ten seconds while it sorts itself out, and if you run quickly back and forth through a new area, the game will hang as it loads the required assets in. It’s then absolutely fine once it’s finished doing so, so it’s almost worth having a run around for a few moments to settle things down. All of this doesn’t sound very good, and… it’s not, requiring players to have rather more patience than most games should given that we now have SSD speeds for storage on Switch 2.

However, Rogue Trader is the kind of game to attract the patient. This is a role-playing game in the purest sense. From the first moments spent creating your character, where you’re choosing their background and backstory as well as selecting their visual design, you’re then drawn ever deeper into the world of Warhammer 40,000 thanks to some of the best writing and storytelling you’ll find in gaming.

If you’ve been a fan of the Warhammer 40K universe, and perhaps read some of the many novelisations, Rogue Trader feels utterly authentic, perfectly capturing the language, lore and feel of Games Workshop’s sci-fi series. It’s intensely literary, with a great deal of excellent writing, and the size of the text has thankfully been enlarged for the Switch 2 edition, so it’s still enjoyable whether you’re playing in docked or handheld mode. There should definitely be a toggle or a slider for this, mind you, but I can live with it as it is.

That writing is enhanced by the excellent voice acting that’s prevalent across the entirety of the cast. Each character feels unique and fully formed, and as your crew expands, you’ll find yourself coming to know each of them in exceptional detail. It’s at a level that you’ll consistently marvel at, and despite the many performance issues in this version of the game, you can definitely look past them thanks to the quality of the actual game itself.

That will depend on how sensitive you are to frame rate issues, though. While things have improved following the first major patch, Rogue Trader on Switch 2 still chugs along when you’re moving around each area, and it’s incredibly inconsistent. Frankly, it looks and feels pretty horrible, and that’s with an obviously reduced resolution across the board as well, which makes the character models and level design look considerably uglier than you’ll find on other platforms.

You might be disappointed to find that following the most recent patch, they’ve also broken the menus. You can access the main options, but none of the graphical or visual options currently work, which feels as though it’s a deliberate choice while they try to improve things. There were previously two different anti-aliasing options, as well as a film grain toggle, but right now, none of it works. I do expect Owlcat to continue working on this, but in its current form, Rogue Trader on Switch 2 looks and feels more like it’s running on the original Switch.

The shame of all this is that Switch 2 owners are going to experience the game in a way that they may find utterly off-putting. They will check out from one of the best sci-fi RPGs of recent years, and that is tantamount to being a crime. The storytelling, the character building and the tactical combat are some of the best in the genre, but right now, this version of the game is a mess. It is broadly playable – I’m still persevering as the game has got its hooks back in me – but currently, if you can play Rogue Trader anywhere else, you should.

I’ve been ill. Wallowing in a horrible flu-ridden morass, and sleeping a hell of a lot. I have had some companions through this Lemsip-flavoured fog, though, and I’ve especially loved my time with Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. This is a football game that doesn’t feel like a football game, and it’s just a cracking JRPG that happens to feature kicking a ball. Besides that, I’ve been playing the demo for Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, and that’s just lovely, while I’ve been balancing things out with Avatar: Frontier of Pandora’s bombastic newest expansion, From The Ashes.

Gamoc was first up this week, and he’s played Ghost of Yotei, Borderlands 4, and also delved into Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, though he worries, “I’m trapped beneath countless open-world games!”

Jim has been revisiting a couple of his favourites after wrapping up his playthrough Mafia: The Old Country (which was also a great game). He says, “For the first time in many months, I stepped back into the sandbox realm of Calradia for Mount & Blade 2’s War Sails expansion. As the name implies, this DLC is all about naval gameplay, having also introduced a Viking-influenced faction. I’m learning the ropes of how to run my own ship while making lucrative trade runs between cities, hoping to save enough to buy a big ‘ol warship.”

He continues, “I’ve also been playing Warhammer 40,000: Darktide after picking up the post-launch character DLCs. The nimble, punk-styled Hive Scum is fun to play as though I’ve decided to main the Arbites class, channelling my inner Judge Dredd as I dole out justice beneath the Undercity.”

Meanwhile, Aran has played a bit of Star Wars Outlaws, but most of his time has been split between Big Hops and MIO: Memories In Orbit for review.

Ade “thinks” he finished Hades 2 this week. That’s not due to some Roguelike dementia, but rather the difficulty level, saying, “There’s a few challenges remaining but they are well beyond my abilities. All in all, what an incredible game!” He also played ‘real-life’ games, telling us, “My son and I had an epic battle of Warhammer 40k down our local games shop. His Tyranids versus my Battle Sisters, pretty much everyone died after an epic battle, with us drawing on victory points. It was great fun and we’re booked in again for a rematch next week!”

And finally for this week, Tef has been having fun with skirting board in his free time, so hasn’t really carried on from his holiday Switch 2 gaming. And the thing that he has played? He can’t tell you about it until Monday.

What about you? Have you played any New Year games?

Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is a football game that feels, almost wholeheartedly, like it’s not really about football. This is a sports drama through and through, focusing on the interpersonal relationships, the individual journeys, and the yearning for acceptance that epitomises our teenage years, rather than sporting glory. You play as Destin Bellows, a young man with a heart condition, who appears to hate football and attends South Cirrus Academy, a school where football is banned. None of this really screams the word ‘football’ – or ‘soccer’ if you’re so inclined – and yet, Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road also revels in the joy, the purity, and the companionship that football can bring. This juxtaposition also makes it one of the best sports RPGs you’ll find.

I’m a sucker for sports dramas. Maybe it started with The Mighty Ducks, a movie that took a rag-tag team of unlikely players who went from being woeful nobodies to the best team in the league. With Emilio Estevez! While there’s no Young Guns alumni here, there’s that same sense of camaraderie and overcoming adversity throughout Victory Road, starting from incredibly meagre beginnings, before working your way towards rebuilding the school’s football club and setting forth on a path to sporting greatness. It’s the characters that pull you through this drama though, rather than the extraneous bumps in the road, and you’ll quickly embrace Destin and his myriad teammates wholeheartedly.

Level-5 have made this character focus easy, because you won’t be playing football any time soon, at least not in the central story mode. My save file had clocked up an oddly impressive 4 hours before I played my first 5-a-side game against an ageing group of shopkeepers, and I kind of love the investment that’s been built into Victory Road’s narrative. To a certain extent, you won’t care that there’s no football, and when it does arrive, with its quirky stop-and-start gameplay, special moves and occasionally clunky controls, you’ll want to persevere, learn and get a grasp of it so you can lead the team you’ve built to victory. It’s something that wasn’t ably captured in Victory Road’s early beta testing, and it feels a lot more natural within its proper context.

The original Inazuma games were mostly exclusive to Nintendo’s DS and 3DS, using the stylus to move your players around the pitch, and selecting special moves as you went. It was a system that I loved across multiple games, and I was sad to see it go, but Victory Road’s updated take does a good job of replicating and replacing it, with more action and reaction than you needed before.

It’s best to think of Victory Road’s matches as a series of RPG encounters, strung together in quick succession, rather than a football match. Every time your player meets an opposing player, whether you’re playing offence or defence, it begins an encounter. Depending on the player, you’ll have basic options like passing, shooting, or dashing past, but you may also have special moves available to you, each wilder and more unbelievable than the last. That can mean creating clones of yourself to confuse defenders, or unleashing a shot that’s the result of a thousand kicks, but, with the level of variety on offer, it makes matches continually action-packed and exciting. It’s definitely not regular football, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Destin’s tale is easy-going, and occasionally a little slow, but it’s all so amiable, and the characters are so likeable, that I found I didn’t mind all too much. Destin loves to investigate and collect data, so there’s a fair bit of running back and forth, and that’s interspersed with funny turn-based RPG battles/conversations that use rock-paper-scissors mechanics as you try to argue your way to victory. I preferred the original Japanese voices over the English dub, but only marginally so, and if you prefer to play in your native language, it’s perfectly satisfactory.

While the central story mode strings you along without any matches, there’s a secondary story that gets you into the action much quicker. Chronicle Mode brings a time-travelling tale to the Inazuma timeline, sending you back in time to form the ultimate eleven, in the hope of preventing a world-ending apocalypse. Newcomers might raise an eyebrow at first, but returning fans have been here before. Chronicle Mode manages to perform a whole bunch of functions at once: introducing people to the series’ extensive history, getting into the football sections quicker, and bringing an Ultimate Team-like experience to the game to boot. It’s a winning formula, and one that shows how strong the revised gameplay formula is.

Level-5 have given players an absolute avalanche of places to play in Victory Road. From the two story modes, you can then set forth with your created team into a tournament, in either single player, multiplayer or online modes, or there’s another mode where you can play with full-powered historical teams from each of the previous games. If you need a break from all that, you can even create your own Inazuma Bond Town where you can meet up with friends online, filling them with all sorts of decorations, buildings, people, cats or giant statues of Mark Evans. To be fair, it’s probably the weirdest inclusion here, and yet, it feels thoroughly Inazuma.

All of this is wrapped up in a lovely 3D anime aesthetic that ties really well with the traditional cartoon cutscenes. It often feels like you’re playing an interactive cartoon – a fact heightened by the story modes’ many cutscenes, and chapter-by-chapter framing – with Level-5’s design department clearly working at the height of its powers. It definitely bodes extremely well for this year’s Professor Layton and the New World of Steam.

It’s already 2026? So that means it’s time for a new year of fresh new games, and a whole 12 months of lusting after the next big thing? Let’s get started then! One of the first big things for the year has to be Romeo Is A Dead Man, a hyper-kinetic, hyper-violent, hyper-insane new action title from the iconic Grasshopper Manufacture. This has already hopped onto a bunch of the TSA team’s radar, and this new story trailer gives you the lowdown in a typically Grasshopper-like way, which means it’s irreverent, weird and darkly funny. Go take a look!

So, I’m not too sure what the moral of this story is going to be. Don’t pick up women in the road? Don’t fall in love? Don’t let your grandfather shove technology down your eyeball that turns you into some sort of living-dead superhero? I’m not entirely sure whether SUDA51 and his team are in the habit of including morals or finger-wagging in their games, so I’m going to take it that the moral is going to be something about being faster, meaner and more violent than the bad guys, so you don’t end up being a doubly dead man.

Romeo Stargazer, a sheriff’s deputy, is the hero of this piece, but he doesn’t stay human for all that long by the look of things. He finds Juliet – because of course he does – in the middle of the road, and they fall in love. I’m hoping that there’s more Shakespearean asides for the English Lit fans in the back too, as the rest of the trailer opts instead to tell you about how Romeo dies at the hands of a White Devil, and how his grandfather, Professor Benjamin, saves him. Surely he should be Professor Montague? I suppose Benjamin is close enough to Benvolio. Just about.

Anyway, it’s clear that the tone of Romeo Is A Dead Man is going to be all kinds of tongue-in-cheek and all kinds of raucous fun, as your living-dead hero takes his revenge on a series of creepy monsters.

Romeo is a Dead Man releases on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam and Windows platforms) on February 11th, 2026.

You can wishlist it on Steam, PS5 and Xbox right now!

Gamers are always looking for the next level. A bigger sword, a more powerful gun, magic that turns your foes into globs of pink mush. But what about levelling up your gaming setup? A headset would always be my first call, and then maybe a pro controller or high end mouse, but what then?

Woojer have their own ideas on that, and they’ve been toting their haptic-infused devices for several years. While the Woojer Vest – now on its fourth generation – is the headline grabber, the Woojer Strap is the more accessible option, giving gamers and music lovers an extra layer of immersion by strapping a single device to your body, its haptics shocking, rumbling and thumping in time with the action.

Priced at £124 – with a healthy holiday season discount down to £95 – the Woojer Strap 4 is the latest iteration of the single-unit device. In the box, you’re getting the Woojer Strap 4 central unit, an elasticated strap to wrap around your body, a USB-C to USB-C charging cable, and a double-ended 3.5mm cable to physically connect your audio devices.

As gaming devices go, the Strap 4 is pretty straightforward. The unit itself has some weight to it and feels incredibly robust in your hand, crafted from solid plastic throughout, and available in a series of different colours. To the front, there’s a customisable LED ring with rubberised physical volume and intensity controls within it.

The top edge features the power button and Bluetooth pairing button, while the bottom includes a USB-C charging port and two 3.5mm audio sockets, one for input and the other as a dedicated output. I thought the older model’s copper finish looked great, but the addition of RGB allows the Strap 4 to match your gaming setup, and the extra layer of customisation gives you some individuality too. If you’re not an RGB fan? You can just turn it all off.

You’ll need a mobile device for the Strap 4 setup, and it proves pleasingly simple to connect the device to the Woojer app, where it takes you through pairing to your device, and then the secondary pairing of your headphones to the Strap 4. This all worked first time, which almost never happens, and you then find yourself with the main control page, which gives you an input and output display, as well as power remaining and the current latency setting, which you can alter if you find that the Strap 4’s haptic output doesn’t quite match up with whatever visuals you’re looking at.

Besides that, you can directly control the volume and the intensity, though there’s physical buttons for these as well, and, if needed, you can dive into the haptic sensation mode, which alters the behaviour of the haptics through Broad, Focused and Gaming settings.

The app also gives you decent control over the LED lights. There’s a full spectrum colour wheel to dial in the exact tone you want, adjust the brightness, and choose between a series of different effects to keep things interesting. While you’re playing, it’s not exactly something that adds all that much to the experience, but it’s certainly more futuristic, and if you’re out and about listening to music, you’ll certainly turn a few heads.

The Strap 4 experience is definitely easier to get into than the Woojer Vest. It’s small and portable, doesn’t take up much space, and requires minimal setup. You can just throw it on, and start watching, playing or listening to whatever you want, and I really liked how simple it felt. In turn, it immediately lifts your experience, with the added haptic feedback from your audio immersing you deeper in your content than ever before.

You can wear it in a variety of ways, though Woojer seem to recommend particular setups for particular input types, so for music you’d wear it around your waist, or horizontally while playing VR . Fundamentally, you can go for whatever feels best and most natural to you, and I gravitated most towards wearing it across my body, with the strap over one shoulder and the unit in the centre of my chest. This makes the haptic sensation fire directly into your chest, and explosions and heavy hits thump and rumble straight into you. Just like the rumble motors in a controller, it brings the action to life that bit further, and I find it hard to go back to playing without the extra layer it provides.

I loved using the Strap 4 for regular flat-screen gaming, listening to music and rewatching the most recent Star Trek movies, but VR is where it truly makes a major difference. With your senses cut off from the outside world, the rumble feels more nuanced and powerful, and whether you’re playing Beat Saber and throwing yourself directly into the music, or going for something more action-heavy like the new Deadpool VR, the Strap 4 brings a new level of immersion for a relatively low entry price.

While it can’t compare to the full experience you feel with the Woojer Vest, in terms of value for money, I think the Strap 4 hits the sweet spot between what it brings to your experience and the asking price. If you’ve already got a great headset, a pro controller, and a VR setup, the Strap 4 is practically a no-brainer as the next step in your gaming setup.

The only limitation, and this goes for all Woojer devices, is that this is a physical representation of audio output. That means your experience relies on how the audio is delivered, getting the levels right, and it will change on a game-by-game or song-by-song basis. It means there’s a certain degree of variation and inconsistency that some users might find disappointing, and hopefully Woojer can find a way to tap into the rumble and gamepad haptic signals in future. Once you’ve become accustomed to that abstraction, though, I still don’t think you’ll look back.

We shouldn’t be surprised to discover that an Assassin’s Creed game is good. Admittedly, Assassin’s Creed Shadows was beset by development problems and missed its release date any number of times, but as a series, Assassin’s Creed has earned its place as one of gaming’s key tentpoles. Shadows was originally released earlier in 2025, and proved to be another excellent action-adventure, its Japanese setting opening up a new set of features for the long-running series. Now, it’s arriving on the Nintendo Switch 2, and we’ve had the opportunity to discover whether Ubisoft have managed to stuff the huge experience onto Nintendo’s latest hybrid console.

There’s no getting away from the fact that you can immediately tell Assassin’s Creed Shadows is running on less powerful hardware, but what has been achieved with this port once again shows the level of polish that Ubisoft are capable of delivering and the adaptability of the Anvil engine. Just as with Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft have managed to bring across the core experience across in a deeply playable form by making smart decisions with regard to the visual nips and tucks they’ve had to make.

Clear signs include less-detailed floor textures, simplified water effects, static bodies of water, and mild pop-in, which seemed particularly prevalent in shadows. There’s also the tell-tale sign of anti-aliasing shimmer, and at times there’s a distinct line a few feet away from your character where it almost seems to present as screen tearing. That’s only visible under certain circumstances, though, and only when you’re not in motion.

All that considered, Assassin’s Creed Shadows still looks great on Switch 2. When the sunlight is shimmering through the trees, fronds of grass sway in the breeze, and fallen leaves shuffle underfoot, you can’t help but be impressed by the organic, vibrant world that Ubisoft have created. There’s baked in puddle reflections, which still carry a real sense of quality despite losing the ray tracing of the beefier consoles, while birds and beasts populate every scene, albeit with less definition than elsewhere. It looked incredible elsewhere, and still looks arresting here.

The real key is the frame rate. Assassin’s Creed Shadows aims for 30fps on Switch 2, and that does feel clearly slower and less immediate than its 60fps brethren. Depending on how sensitive you are to such things, that, in itself, might ruin the experience for you. It can dip from there at times too, especially through night scenes with an excess of burning flame effects such as in the opening battle, and even some of the cutscenes struggle to maintain a locked frame rate.

However, it mostly sits at or around 30fps, and in this context, that is a strong start. Given the continual patches we’ve seen for Star Wars Outlaws, you have to assume that Ubisoft will be refining the experience further in the coming weeks, but overall it’s absolutely playable at launch. It feels hugely impressive to have Assassin’s Creed Shadows in the palm of your hand, especially given the size and scope of the game, and I’ve really enjoyed returning to the world, even with the reduced graphical fidelity and lower frame rate. It was a good game originally, and it remains a good game now.

Of course, if you have the option of playing elsewhere, whether on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S or PC, Assassin’s Creed Shadows does look, play and perform better. That said, you can’t carry those out the door, and the core experience remains in place on Switch 2, whether you’re playing docked or handheld.

If anything, this is a game that works remarkably well in handheld, as you complete the odd mission here or trek across the map there, breaking the game’s huge number of quests and side missions down into something more manageable. Thanks to Ubisoft Connect, you can also carry saves over across platforms, so if you want to double-dip, grabbing the game to continue on the go is well worth considering.

There is one underlying issue here at launch, and that’s crashes. I experienced a series of hard crashes after the first couple of hours with the game, but at intermittent points, so there was no clear trigger for them happening. Restarting my Nintendo Switch 2 seemed to remedy the issue, but I made sure to perform manual saves afterwards, just in case. Here’s hoping that a day-one patch will wipe out the issue, especially as I’ve not been the only player to experience them.

Role-playing video games have been around almost as long as D&D itself, but for every step they take towards modernity, many of the fundamentals remain the same. Octopath Traveler 0 is a game that’s more aware of that than any other AAA release this year. It readily leans on RPG fundamentals like turn-based combat, grinding for experience and epic storytelling, while aping the 16-bit visuals of classics like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. It’s also a reworking of the mobile title, Champions of the Continent, but, for all of that, Octopath Traveler 0 looks and feels every inch the modern RPG.

Admittedly, we’ve been here before. The first two Octopath games took eight separate characters, and interlinked their eight narratives to great effect, but it was the HD-2D visuals that instantly won them an avalanche of pixel-art admirers. Octopath 0 immediately pulls the same trick by being undeniably stunning to behold, updating the look of the classics with a shimmering, living filter that brings every scene to life in remarkable fashion. I don’t think I could ever get bored of this art style, and three games in (and with a bunch of other HD-2D games alongside) that looks likely to pan out.

While the visual style remains the same, the overarching structure and narrative framing have changed, this time putting a created character at the centre of everything. Your silent protagonist gets their own name, look, and even a favourite food, but they don’t say much of anything at all, while other characters readily monologue through conversations to their heart’s content. You get used to it, but I did miss the individual characters of the last two games.

That said, the teams at Square Enix and DokiDoki Groove Works have crafted an interesting and companionable bunch of characters to surround yourself with, and there’s a huge number of them, and their backstories, to involve yourself in. Whether touched by tragedy, or seeking knowledge and influence, there’s hundreds of narrative threads to pull on, some of which go nowhere, while others contribute to your own, world-altering quest.

Outside of the thirty recruitable characters, virtually every person you come across can be spoken to, investigated, bartered with, or hired, whether through your persuasive talents or by beating them in combat. It’s an enjoyable, and often productive, diversion, and it makes every town and village feel as though it’s brimming with life and character, even when these backstories are often just a few lines.

The core narrative is split into three strands: Power, Fame and Wealth. At the outset, each of these is headed by a particularly hateful lead antagonist, from the murderous playwright Auguste – who’s definitely stolen the Guardians of the Galaxy’s Collector’s schtick – to the beautiful Herminia whose drug cartel stands to corrupt half the population of the continent. You can tackle these in any order, with the other strands remaining frozen while you work your way through the others.

Your hometown, Wishvale, finds itself decimated at the hands of these evil-doers, setting you and your friends off on a quest to collect the eight divine rings, and you find yourself chasing each of them down, enacting your revenge while also rebuilding your homestead.

Town building is a big part of Octopath 0’s gameplay, and it’s well done, even if you might find it a little limited and straightforward. You can build various homesteads, shops and facilities and gain certain boons by inviting people to live there, while the layout and expansion of Wishvale is up to you, albeit within the framework that you’re given to work with.

You’ll find yourself decorating and tinkering for hours, and getting to see your creation in the beautiful game engine is well worth it. There’s a small fly in the ointment for Switch 2 players, who don’t get to use quite as many objects as PS5 or Xbox Series X|S owners (400 compared to 500), but there’s still enough customisation to truly make this place feel like your own.

Octopath Traveler 0 evolves the series’ turn-based combat, though it does feel fundamentally the same as its predecessors. Boosting attacks and breaking enemies is the key to success, wearing down their defences by discovering what weapon types they’re weak to. This time, you can have a massive 8 different characters in your party, with half of those in the back line providing support, while you can also recruit helpers to throw in with you.

It’s a shame that the difficulty level often bounces between ridiculously easy and teeth-gnashingly tough, but it does even out the further you go. If you’re a fan of turn-based combat, Octopath 0’s rendition remains interesting throughout, with the multiple characters bringing some of the mobile-centric chaos and carnage that you’d expect with multiple effects and attacks going on, while failure means you often have to strategise and plan to progress.

If you head into the menus, there’s plenty of the traditional levelling and equipping you’d expect to find, and you can unlock skills in the order you want, which is a nice touch, although you have to bear in mind how much SP they cost to cast when you’re starting out. There’s a huge amount of customisation available, with characters able to learn others’ skills, while your central protagonist can also change jobs – choosing from eight, obviously – learning new skills and improving their stats as they do, and letting you experience some of that variation the previous games had with multiple characters.

One of the biggest worries with Octopath Traveler 0 was whether it was going to feel like a mobile port, and thankfully, it doesn’t. From the huge cast of voice actors, through the multiple quests and asides, to the town-building and exceptional production values, Octopath Traveler 0 feels every bit the full console game. It definitely has a different flavour to the previous titles, and I can see some fans struggling with the shift, but in many ways, it feels fresh and unique when placed alongside its predecessors.

It feels like I’ve spent most of this week playing the game ‘avoiding the Christmas crowds’, but I did get to enjoy my own version of Thanksgiving where I just watched NFL for six hours, and didn’t have to think about turkey for another month. In terms of gaming, I’ve been playing a truckload of Octopath Traveler 0, as well as some more Tomb Raider Definitive Edition and Kirby Air Riders. Besides that, I’ve been checking out Assetto Corsa Rally, and messing with GeForce Now across a bunch of platforms to see how it performs.

First up this week, Gamoc has played Sweet Surrender for review, as well as Halls of Torment and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Bizarrely keen to try and take on the Marvel Rivals PlayStation Cup challenge next week, Ade has been practicing by polished off his review of the retro-styled scrolling beat ’em up Marvel Cosmic Invasion. The embargo for that is on Monday, so check out his review then!

Meanwhile, Jim has had a much quieter week. After flitting between a glut of new multiplayer games, he’s back to Ghost of Yotei as he focuses on finishing the main quest.

Aran has been playing Duskpunk for review, which is a mix of Citizen Sleeper meets the rough life in a town full of opportunities and misfortune. Sounds great to me!

Steve has been playing the natural pairing of Terrifier: the Artcade game and Spongebob Square pants: Titans of the Tide. This weird gaming concoction has had mixed results, with Steve telling us, “The first was unfortunately pretty rubbish but the second is a solid, albeit short, 3D platformer” He continued, “With those wrapped, I’ve moved onto an indie space horror that’s been years in the making and is wonderfully atmospheric.”

And finally, Tef has been curling himself up into a ball for an upcoming review, while also dabbling with some upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Darktide DLC, and dipping into some cheap Black Friday sale pick ups, like Loop Hero.

And what about you? Have you played anything this week? Why not tell us about it!

The name Creative means a great deal in gaming and audio circles. Known as the creator of the Soundblaster range of PC audio cards, their range has expanded to include audio products of all kinds, from the excellent Creative Pebble series of speakers through to gaming headphones with SXFI technology. The Creative Aurvana Ace 3 is the newest edition of their ANC-equipped true wireless earbuds, offering a cost-effective alternative to Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 and the Galaxy Buds Pro 3.

The Aurvana Ace 3 are stem-style true wireless earbuds, available in an eye-catching translucent purple colourway, that’s matched through the charging case and each earbud. There is something quite retro about their look, with a mid-noughties vibe that brings an unexpected wave of nostalgia with it. When it’s paired with the silver band running down each stem, they’re certainly unique-looking, but if you’re hoping for a more understated option, this isn’t it.

They feel light in the hand, which diminishes that premium sensation, but it does mean that you can easily wear them for hours without any fatigue. The earbuds are rated for 7 hours, which is an hour less than the AirPods Pro 3 but an hour more than the AirPods Pro 2, with a total of 26 hours of playback with the charging case, all of which played out pretty effectively in our testing.

The charging case lid hinge is a little flimsy, but the body of the case itself feels solid and is the perfect size for chucking in your pocket. It also includes wireless charging, which is a very welcome inclusion. At half the price of their top-end rivals, it’s a good start for the Aurvana Ace 3.

The audio pairing and setup is a little more convoluted than its core competitors, though, as there’s a suite of features to set up to make the most of the Ace 3. The Creative app handles nearly everything here, but you also need the separate SXFi app, which seems unnecessary.

First, and perhaps most importantly, you use Mimi sound personalisation to create a listening profile. This involves a short hearing test – best done in a quiet space – and the results then tailor the output to your own ears. It’s a stark difference, particularly factoring in my 40+ year old hearing, and the years of damage I’ve done to them by, well, listening to headphones that I’ve turned up too loud.

After that, you can choose your EQ presets to tailor the audio to your personal taste, or delve deeper into a custom EQ setup. Even if you’re not clued up about audio, frequencies and kHz, it’s all easy enough to mess around with in search of the roght sound.

The Aurvana Ace sound very good indeed, even without any tuning. Part of that is the ability to utilise the best audio codecs out there, translating LDAC, AptX Lossless and AptX Adaptive into a seamless listening experience. The Ace 3 are equipped with Snapdragon Sound, so if your Android device meets the right specification, not only will you benefit from the high resolution audio, you’ll experience fewer connection issues, and benefit from exceptionally low latency, making your mobile gaming just that bit more enjoyable.

Putting them to the test with some of my favourite tracks, I was immediately surprised by just how detailed the audio was from the Ace 3. Billy Eilish’s No Time To Die sounded suitably epic, with her vocals sounding so precise that it felt as though she was singing directly to me.

Changing tack, the brutal cacaphony of Pupil Slicer’s Heather was delivered in spades, losing none of its venom on its way into your ears. It’s always incredibly satisfying to hear new elements in songs, and the Ace 3s combined technologies make that a certainty. The dual xMEMS drivers here certainly help with audio separation, and bass response in particular is fantastic, being rounded and full, without becoming overwhelming.

The hybrid ANC proved moderately effective at blocking out background noise, though it is a clear step behind the Airpods Pro 3 and Bose Quietcomfort Ultra, and on a windy walk to work, they struggled against the wind quite a bit. Still, at this price point, it’s effective enough, and with the quality of the audio itself being so high, I don’t think anyone will be too disappointed with their performance.

As with many less expensive earbuds, the touch controls aren’t quite as reliable as their more expensive brethren. The Aurvana Ace 3 does keep things pretty simple, and there’s only one touch point on the main body of each earbud, rather than a panel or squeezable section. That does make changing the volume less efficient, requiring a long press on each earbud to move the volume up and down, and if you’re running that’s a real pain, but it does work, once you’ve adapted to it.

Phone call quality is good, possibly helped by the ability to use Snapdragon Sound via the connection to my Honor Magic V5, and family members confirmed that my voice was clear and easy to hear during calls. It helps to wrap up a compelling package from Creative, and if you’re looking for an excellent-sounding pair of earbuds at a mid-range pricepoint, you’d be hard pressed to find better.

The Aurvana Ace 3 are amongst the easiest earbuds to live with in this price bracket, and though their RRP is £140, you can currently snag them for a slightly bonkers £90 via the Creative website. The Nothing Ear (3) are also worth considering, currently coming in at £139.99, though they have worse battery life than the Ace 3 and are noticeably heavier too.

Just when the year was about to finish, and you thought you’d seen everything the game world has to offer, along comes the Indie Live Expo to throw a massive indie-game-shaped curveball. Set to take place on Saturday, the 29th of November, the stream will showcase over 100 different indie games, taking us from the close of 2025 into what we can expect from 2026’s release schedule, while celebrating the best indie games released this year.

The Indie Live Expo has been running since 2020 and stands as Japan’s premier digital indie extravaganza. The live digital showcase, which has garnered more than 100 million total views since its 2020 debut, will shine a spotlight on dozens of indies this Saturday, November 29th, 2025. You can catch the show live at 1:00 AM PST / 4:00 AM EST / 18:00 JST on YouTube Live, Twitch, X Live, Niconico, Bilibili, and Steam.

Viewers can expect 100+ announcements, including reveals of never-before-seen projects and updates to fan-favourite titles on the horizon. Afterwards, nine of this year’s standout games will be recognised during the INDIE Live Expo Award Ceremony, with award winners set to be selected by gaming industry titans including Shuhei Yoshida (former Head of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Indie Initiative), Keiichiro Toyama, (creator of “Silent Hill” and “SIREN”), CEO of Bokeh Game Studio (developers of “Slitterhead”), and many more.

English MC trio Kaori Horiuchi, J-mon and HighGai will be returning to host Indie Live Expo’s signature segments, while you can catch rapid-fire content updates during the INDIE Waves segment, highlighting dozens of games both in development and currently available.

Indie Live Expo takes place Saturday, Nov. 29th, 2025, starting at 1:00 AM PST / 4:00 AM EST / 18:00 JST, streaming live in English on YouTube Live, Twitch, X Live, Niconico, Bilibili, and Steam.

For more information, please visit the INDIE Live Expo website, follow @INDIELiveExpoEN on Twitter, and search for #INDIELiveExpo on social media.

I’ve been fascinated with headphones from an early age. My dad was a broadcast journalist and a real geek, filling our house with space-age tech like reel-to-reel players, condenser microphones, and CB radios. Most important, though, were the headphones. Huge, unwieldy things for my tiny head, they still opened my eyes – and ears – to just how good music could sound, and that fascination has stayed with me ever since.

So my interest was piqued by SIVGA’s latest, the Robin SV021, a closed-back, wired audiophile pair of over-ear headphones, which boast earcups crafted from wood. While they look genuinely beautiful, the sound they produce is even better.

Each of the Robin SV021’s earcups are handmade from Rosewood. If you want a pair of headphones that’s immediately different from the metal and black plastic-toting ones elsewhere, it’s a great place to start. Imprinted with the SIVGA logo, the external surface is perfectly smooth, and the wood carries a warmth and softness that plastic and metal simply can’t. I did worry about their durability, but after cramming the Robin into my bag on more than one occasion, they remained unblemished.

Elsewhere, the headband is wrapped in leather, with a thin slice of memory foam beneath it, while the frame, extenders and hinges are made from rigid, burnished metal. It’s all finished off by a pair of the plushest, softest ear cushions I’ve come across in a while, and they feel absolutely fantastic, moulding around your ears and providing a decent level of passive noise cancellation as well. The Robin SV021 look and feel utterly premium, and they definitely punch above their £150 price point.

Audio is handled by dual wiring to each earcup, with the two ends of the braided cable leading down to a single gold-plated 3.5mm jack. While the braided section is noise-free, the single cabling to each earcup will produce cable noise if rubbing against clothing, which does make it less appealing for listening while on the go.

That’s not its main draw, though. The Robin SV021 are reassuringly universal, and I’ve spent my time hopping between a MacBook, Nintendo Switch 2 and my PC. It has a relatively low impedance at 32 Ohms, and it performed well with every device I tried, with plenty of volume while retaining an excellent level of detail.

The SIVGA Robin SV021 sound excellent. The 50mm drivers are capable of moving plenty of air around, and there’s a wonderfully wide soundstage here, giving instrumentation and audio some real room to breathe. I’ve been playing a huge amount of Octopath Traveler 0 on its way to review, and the orchestral soundtrack has been delivered exquisitely by the Robin SV021, with that wider soundstage making it feel as though you’re experiencing a live recording.

They’re absolutely perfect for gaming, thanks to their lightweight design and ultra-soft ear cushions. I was able to wear them for hours, and they may well be the most comfortable headphones I’ve reviewed this year.

Checking in with my music collection, I loved how enveloping Gunship’s Tech Noir sounded, with the throbbing synth tones delivered with an exacting level of detail. The intro’s sci-fi spoken word sits clearly apart from the ominous notes beneath, while the bass response is excellent, with plenty of warmth and clarity. The Robin SV021 are certainly warmer-sounding rather than clinical, and they’re easy to live with across a range of different genres and content types. Crucially, they make you want to listen to music.

At £150, the Robin SV021 are aimed at the mid-range audiophile who’s looking for something a little different. Despite their closed-back design, they boast a wide soundstage, and their well-balanced tuning provides a hugely enjoyable listening experience no matter what you’re using them for.

It’s easy to throw around the word ‘classic’ when talking about games, but 2013’s Tomb Raider stakes a solid claim to the label. This is the game that reinvented Lara Croft for a new generation, setting in motion a great trilogy of action games, while also inspiring a new cinematic outing for the British heroine.

Some 12 years later, that original title has finally raided its way onto Nintendo’s consoles for the first time, for both the Switch 2 and the original Switch. Returning to the game in 2025 reveals just what made it so special, though you may want to experience it on the Switch 2, rather than its older sibling.

With the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 release, Aspyr has ported across the Definitive Edition of the game with all of its original DLC, scrubbing the game up and enhancing it with a few Nintendo-specific bells and whistles. In 2025, it is definitely showing its PS3 and Xbox 360 origins, but that doesn’t diminish its status as one of the best action-adventure games of all time.

To be honest, just the fact that Lara is listening to wired earbuds in the opening cutscene is enough to date Tomb Raider, but her shipwreck and subsequent kidnap have lost none of their initial impact as she’s separated from her friends amidst some truly terrifying iconography.

The Nintendo Switch 2 version of the Definitive Edition is certainly crisp and sleek looking, and while the textures are showing their age, it’s still an eye-catching game, all these years later. It’s also running at a locked 60fps, making it feel as smooth and responsive as you could hope for a 12-year-old game. The original Nintendo Switch version sticks to 30fps and a lower resolution, but it’s otherwise the exact same game, just losing some of that sense of immediacy.

I’d forgotten just how brutal Tomb Raider 2013 was. Lara is impaled within the first five minutes of the game, she spends most of her time screaming, grunting, or dying, while she’s surrounded on all sides by dead bodies, walls covered in bloody smears and flickering candles.

Admittedly, most of the dead bodies here are of Lara’s making, and as a Lara Croft murder-simulator, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition is visceral, painful and without mercy. She is, of course, fending for her own life, and those of her friends, while trying to escape from a cursed island full of cultist soldiers, but at least once or twice you’ll likely wince with the impact of a few of the blows.

So much of what we think of in terms of the modern action-adventure was in place for Lara’s 2013 outing, and while some of the gameplay elements are definitely of their time – hello split-second QTEs with instant death for failure – there are other aspects, like the life-like climbing and clambering, dual-path skill tree, stealth kills and kinetic bow and arrow action, that remain as of-the-moment as anything else released this year.

The Rihanna Pratchett-penned tale also ekes out plenty of drama from the proceedings, and manages to make Lara feel both vulnerable and terrifyingly strong and single-minded. It’s been long enough since my last playthrough that I’d forgotten many of the story beats, and I was easily wrapped back up in the island of Yamatai.

Aspyr have opted to include some features that are exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, but… well, they’re not especially useful, or impactful. First up are motion controls. ‘Great! That’ll work really well for lining up those head shots or hunting a deer’ I hear you say, but wait! These motion controls are only for spinning around artifacts that you’ve discovered, which isn’t particularly useful.

There’s also mouse controls, which is great when a lot of developers seem to have forgotten that they exist. Unfortunately, they’re so sensitive as to be completely unusable in their current form, which makes you wonder how much testing Aspyr put into them before launching the game. Perhaps the shadow launch was also a surprise to the development team?

Sarcasm aside, both of these things can be easily fixed with a patch or two, which I hope Aspyr will be willing to put the time into, and neither is integral to the experience. With the game sitting pretty in second place on the Switch charts right now, I’d hope it’s worth their while to finish things off.

A big part of that draw will be the budget pricing, with it retailing for a very reasonable £16.39, plus a 10% launch discount to knock it down to £14.75 on both Switch 1 and Switch 2. While the Switch 2-specific features offer literally nothing as it stands, it’s a great game to return to once more, and it still holds up visually, particularly on the smaller screen.

Impressively, Aspyr have even fired up the multiplayer servers, and while many players won’t even remember that Tomb Raider had a multiplayer mode, it’s here in its entirety, letting you sneak around, finishing off other players with abandon. Thanks to the game’s popularity right now, there’s also plenty of players to face off against, so if you fancy a spot of 2013-centric Lara Croft multiplayer, you can.

Tomb Raider Definitive Edition may offer returning fans a nostalgic run through one of Lara Croft’s best adventures, but in 2025 it’s still a remarkably solid experience, especially on the Nintendo Switch 2.

If we rated things based solely on looks, the Gioteck WX5+ would immediately score top marks. This wireless controller for Switch, Switch 2 and PC boasts Hall Effect sticks and triggers and a pair of pro back buttons, but it’s the visual design that immediately grabs you. The delightful ‘Crayons’ livery is tied to RGB lighting, making this one of the most visually appealing controllers we’ve seen in a very long time.

At £24.99, Gioteck has also made one of the cheapest wireless controllers out there, especially considering all the features that Gioteck have crammed in. In terms of value, you’re simply not getting Hall Effect, programmable back buttons, RGB, a 3.5mm headphone socket, gyro and vibration anywhere else at this price point.

That budget pricing isn’t even immediately obvious when you pick it up. It is quite light in the hand, but the plastic that’s been used feels solid, and the textured grips help to keep it set in place.

While the Crayons livery is my personal favourite – who doesn’t want their controller to look like melted cake? – the other options are equally eye-catching, especially the 60s-flavoured Spiral and the multi-coloured mess of Doodle. If you’re a more serious type – or a teenage boy – there’s Dark Camo which is much more understated. There’s probably more chance of losing it, though.

Each of the analogue sticks houses colourful RGB rings as well, but it’s the performance of these Hall Effect sticks that’s most impactful. They’re pleasingly taut, returning to centre with a reassuring certainty, and they feel excellent in use. The Hall Effect tech should also mean that they are exceedingly long-lasting, outperforming standard potentiometer-equipped controllers that are more likely to suffer from stick drift.

The triggers are also Hall Effect, meaning that they’re a touch more accurate, while also benefiting from the frictionless tech. You can also switch them between analogue and digital performance, potentially cutting out a few more milliseconds of reaction time when playing shooters and other competitive titles, even without physical lockouts, which are ultimately the only thing the WX5+ is really missing. If you’re playing on Switch or Switch 2, the whole analogue trigger thing will be lost on you, but in a multi-platform house it’s a nice thing to have.

The only component that I’m not entirely sold on here is the cross-shaped D-pad. It feels too large under your thumb, and the left and right response feels slightly different. It didn’t cause any problems while playing, but there’s something about it that doesn’t feel as well-made as the rest of the WX5+. The other face buttons, and the shoulder buttons too, are reliable and responsive, and it’s just a bit odd that the D-pad feels as different as it does.

Around the back of the controller, there’s two programmable ‘pro’ buttons. These sit well under your middle fingers when you’re naturally gripping the controller, but with enough resistance to ensure you don’t accidentally activate them when you’re getting increasingly frustrated with purple shells ruining your peerless driving in Mario Kart World.

The Gioteck WX5+ is practically a no-brainer in a household that’s looking for a great-value second controller, and it even makes a compelling cost-effective argument against the official Switch 2 Pro Controller as a daily driver. In the hand, there is an obvious difference in terms of quality, particularly in the plastics used, but when you’re in the midst of the action, the WX5+ is a deeply reliable performer.

What is Kirby Air Riders? That’s the question I’ve found myself wrestling with throughout my time with it in the past couple of weeks. Is it a kart racer? Well… kind of. Is it a vehicular combat game? Sure, you could say that. Is it a multiplayer platform, designed almost completely to be played with others? Yes. Definitely. Yet there’s still a nagging feeling that Kirby Air Riders is one of those games that exists purely for its own reasons. As the first non-Smash Bros game to be directed by Masahiro Sakurai in over a decade, it carries an odd weight of expectation, only adding to the strange and slightly off-kilter vibes you’ll find when you check in for Kirby Air Riders.

Air Ride is the first pillar of Air Riders. This is racing, by way of Kirby and friends’ idiosyncratic flying, floating and grinding. It’s all largely controlled by the left analogue stick and a single button, with boosting and vacuuming up enemies forming your key abilities. Holding the button down starts a boost, with your racer slowing to a crawl before being unleashed when you release the button. Similarly, holding the button while turning initiates a drift, letting you angle your way around the corner, before launching yourself forward at the perfect moment. There is a sense of familiarity to this, part Mario Kart, part Sonic Racing, and as a basis for the game’s mechanics, it’s a good start.

You can then hoover up enemies and abilities from the track. This is your main offence, and there’s a real sense of fun to be had in sucking something up and spitting it at your nearest rival, letting you whizz past them. You can suck up fire, ice, poison or sleep abilities, as well as a host of others, aiming to use them to maximise your advantage. Aiming can be a little tricky at times, mostly because of the speed you and your target are usually moving at, and there’s not quite the surety you have in Mario Kart about how your attacks are going to pan out.

Still, the racing is fast, fun and frenetic, with a decent balance between the chaos of a kart racer and the fairness that you need to keep returning to it time and time again. It feels very different to its main rivals, and that uniqueness is probably its biggest selling point.

The second main mode is Top Ride. This takes the action and turns it into a top-down isometric experience, reminiscent of old-school racers like Super Offroad or its modern brethren Super Woden GP. This, of course, is all very Kirby though, and the small-scale courses look every bit as lovely as you’d expect with candy-coloured scenery and cute incidentals to careen around.

Top Ride is my favourite mode in Kirby Air Riders. It feels incredibly nostalgic, retaining that retro flavour of top-down racers of yesteryear, while boasting dazzling modern visuals. You can choose how many racers take part, though I’d recommend the maximum of eight, which gives you all of the competitive action you could want. Any less than that feels like a sidenote.

Playing in single player presents you with a cavalcade of task and rewards to make your time with Air Riders that bit more individual. There’s a large number of tasks to fulfil on each track – such as landing perfectly three times in one race, or being in the lead for longer than ten seconds – and you’ll unlock decals, machines, and riders as well as a host of other customisation options that let you tailor your vehicles and racer license to your own tastes.

Setting decals and messing with colour schemes and patterns is suitably user-friendly, and I can see people honing in on this mode to come up with some really unique and interesting designs.

City Trial is where things come a bit unstuck. Battle modes can be hit and miss in kart racers, and while City Trial presents some interesting ideas, it pumps the chaos up to 11. The camera also can’t quite keep up with the constantly accelerating action, and I found myself repeatedly dazzled by the hyperactive motion, often blinking sensation back into my eyes.

City Trial unleashes you in an arena where you spend your time whizzing around collecting power-ups, while trying not to lose them to your rivals. Once the timer runs out, you’re shown the number and type of power-ups you’ve acquired before then choosing a Stadium finale. You then take part in a minigame that, ideally, plays to your vehicles’ strengths.

Unfortunately, the balance between collecting power-ups and the Stadium finales feels badly paced. I often enjoyed just tootling around, nabbing power-ups while occasionally hitting other players, but it does feel like it goes on for too long, while some of the Stadium events then take all of 30 seconds to complete. It’s not without its charms – unlocking a bunch of new things each time you play definitely helps with that – and there’s the regular events that draw players toward a certain part of the map, but it’s just a bit too drawn out.

Road Trip pulls all of these things together into a journey mode. Along the way, you’ll take part in races, Stadium challenges, or fight bosses in the arena, with a story mode running through that gives you a glimpse into the lore behind Kirby Air Riders, continuing the perpetually perplexing decision to give Kirby a worryingly deep and dark backstory. The cutscenes look fantastic though, and Road Trip does a good job of feeding you events, unlocking rewards and keeping things moving along at a decent lick. I’d recommend playing on Hard, though; otherwise, it’s a little too friction-free.

Kirby Air Riders’ presentation is all very Smash Bros. The chunky menus are clear and easy to understand, and the upbeat soundtrack is head-boppingly cheerful, before it all gives way to chaos. However, just like Smash, in the right hands, Kirby Air Riders becomes more tactical, more skill-based, and the more time you spend with it, the more likely you are to be swept up by its unique charms. It doesn’t have the immediacy of Mario Kart, or the growing collection of recognisable characters from Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, but it’s undeniably charming.