On its release back in 2023, Nintendo kept the Imprisoning War Sages from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom shrouded in a certain amount of mystery. In fact, despite them playing a fairly key role in terms of the overall backstory, we only saw them in the game very briefly.
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing. This week it's not about what we've been playing, but what we hope to be playing on Christmas Day (you're reading this now, but we wrote this back in June or something as we plan ahead).
Right, get ready for some chatter about where the contents of our collective wallets have gone over the past year. Valve's list of the highest-grossing games on Steam in 2025 has emerged from the great mists, and in a nice revelation, features a larger number of fresh releases than last year's ranking. That's alongside all of the moderately to quite old stuff which more folks keep hopping on the train of with every passing 12 month period.
Here we go. The picks of mine which made it into the advent calendar weren’t embarrassing enough, so now I get to flick a few extras at you like discarded bits of liquorice I’ve found down the back of the sofa. Open wide.
Industry leaders have attended a memorial service for Tomonobu Itagaki, the creator of Dead or Alive and the 3D Ninja Gaiden series, who died last month aged 58.
Who would win in a fight? Comics writers know this is what fans argue about, endlessly, and feed those arguments with crossovers and stories like Batman vs. Superman. Usually it's naff stuff where characters just biff each other for a bit and then abruptly form a getalong gang as if they weren't battering each others' faces in just five minutes ago.
In Why I Love, PC Gamer writers pick an aspect of PC gaming that they love and write about why it's brilliant. This week, Jody appreciates Injustice 2's super cast.
The developers of Mortal Kombat obviously weren't going to do anything so weaksauce. In the Injustice games, Superman's gone full evil and started a tyrannical regime straight-up called The Regime, which Batman leads a resistance against. The inciting incident of the whole storyline kills off Lois Lane and the Joker, and it gets wilder from there. By the time of Injustice 2, Superman has been imprisoned for his crimes, Clock King's had his daft head blown up, Green Arrow's been killed and replaced by a version of himself from a dimension where his wife died instead, and Gorilla Grodd's taken over Gorilla City in a bloody coup. Take that, Zack Snyder.
All that stuff is only relevant in story mode, of course, and story modes aren't normally the reason people play fighting games—excepting Tekken's agreeably insane one, with people throwing their family members off cliffs or into volcanos, hurling motorbikes at helicopters, and fighting bears. Usually though, fighting games struggle to tell a coherent story because they've got so many characters to work with. But comic books have been dealing with that problem for decades, and Injustice 2 simply steals the format. In the DC Universe, everyone already has a reason to fight everyone.
Weirdly, the plot's a lot like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Superman's a villain, Harley Quinn's a hero, and Brainiac's the final boss. Only in this version of events, Kevin Conroy's Batman is also on the side of the angels—well, if Harley and Catwoman count as angels—and you only have to defeat Brainiac once instead of over and over again until Warner Bros runs out of seasonal content to sell you.
The performances are much better than they need to be, thanks to facial animation that was well ahead of its time and voice acting by the likes of Jeffrey Combs from Re-Animator as Brainiac, Robert Englund from Nightmare on Elm Street as Scarecrow, Alan Tudyk from Firefly as Green Arrow, and Laura Bailey from Critical Role and basically 50% of all videogames as Supergirl.
Moments that could be ridiculous are embraced and handled straight, like Harley getting a double dose of fear toxin (one isn't enough because, she says, "I used to huff this stuff for kicks"), and hallucinating her greatest fear, which is the Joker coming back and convincing her to revert to the villainous sidekick she used to be. The same goes for Superman and Batman's final confrontation, where they reminisce about the old times ("I miss the people we used to be") before punching each other about the head and face for several minutes.
Where it gets properly over-the-top is in the fights, where suddenly characters can hurl each other into orbiting satellites or through the Earth's crust without anyone dying. The Flash has a super move where he runs so fast he travels back in time, dragging his opponent to distant epochs so he can throw them first at the sphinx then a tyrannosaurus rex, before returning to the moment before he left so he can throw them at themselves.
You go from that to fairly subdued scenes where Green Lantern regrets the fact he initially sided with The Regime and struggles with his anger issues. Then his rage manifests in the form of a Red Lantern whose sidekick is a cat that vomits blood, and also you're in Atlantis at the time. The dial swings between the sublime and the absolutely bugfuck as quickly as it does in superhero comic books, with as much cheerful disdain for tonal consistency as professional wrestling or French movies.
The one downside of Injustice 2 is that if you were depressed about Wonder Woman getting screwed out of a solo game after Warner Bros closed Monolith, unfortunately she doesn't get her due here, being reduced to Superman's second banana. But apart from her and Superman becoming fascists it's full of bang-on portrayals of its huge roster, including the first version of Harley Quinn to not annoy me.
Anyway, the answer to "who would win in a fight" is Swamp Thing.
The Xbox business today is pretty unrecognizable from that of 20 years past, which on this week all that time ago was launching the Xbox 360. There's all the changes to the business, a different suite of executives at the top, and an entirely different first-party portfolio, of course - but when I think of the changes, one absence comes to the forefront of my mind: Japan.
When I look back on most consoles, I'm largely looking back at the games. The PS3 is LittleBigPlanet and Metal Gear 4, as far as I'm concerned, and even the GameCube, that squat, characterful delight, is largely hidden behind Mario Sunshine, Wind-Waker and Animal Crossing. (Even just typing that: cor, what a time that was.)
It's hard to believe it's been over five years since Ubisoft unveiled its troubled - and much-delayed - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, but we're now one step closer to an actual release date, with Ubisoft's latest financial results narrowing its launch down to "Q4" of its current financial year.
Fighting games as a genre is one of the oldest we know, and maybe if you are a person who had the chance to enjoy these while playing arcade games, you will be happy to see that tradition going on today. Some of the games on this list are a direct evolution of an arcade game. So, without further ado, let us discover the best 10 fighting games on PlayStation.
Everything is pacing. That is what Street Fighter 6 accomplishes ups the most. Each stage feels like a whirlwind of offense and counteroffensive, a cadence governed by the Drive System, Capcom’s best combat mechanic since parries in Third Strike. Drive Impact is an element of combat that serves more than one purpose; it’s a psychological weapon. You take damage, smash your opponent’s frame into the wall, and for an instant, every move they make becomes a dilemma. Drive Rush rewards the courageous, permitting aggression to flourish with furious cancels. It’s the sort of system that has you playing at 3 AM, eyes burning, hands aching, chasing that next win. There is also the presentation. Street Fighters 6 is dripping with style. The ink splatters like graffiti, the hard pounding hip-hop beats, and the weight and fluidity with which the characters move feel like everything is alive. Capcom knows that a fighting game is more than just a game of mechanics, it requires an attitude, a characteristic, and a culture. Luke feels like a true rival, Jamie fights like an inebriated kung fu child prodigy, while Chun-Li, has never looked better. Toss in World Tour mode, and you'd expect a game that not only embraces noobs but pulls them into the ring.
Combat mechanics are at the core of what makes a fighting game feel fresh and innovative; with Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO offers numerous refinements while remaining relatively similar to previous Dragon Ball titles. In this regard, its combat mechanics do not drastically differ. Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO emphasizes fast-paced aerial battles similar to its predecessors. Players can chain together attacks, launch characters into the air, and unleash devastating energy blasts with ease, while its intuitive controls enable newcomers to jump right in while offering enough depth for experienced gamers to master intricate combos and master them quickly - much like what Budokai Tenkaichi games strived to provide: accessible fun with layers of depth.
Stellar Blade stands out as being a rare game that successfully blends fast-paced, heart-pounding gameplay with emotional narrative elements to produce something special, so I am beyond delighted about its prospects as I prepare to dive deep into its world, battle its epic enemies, and discover its many mysteries - it promises to be quite an epic ride! So much of its story has yet to unfold, yet that intrigues me even further! From what little has been shown so far, there seems to be this intriguing combination of science fiction elements with deep emotional undercurrents woven through.
This game exudes an almost philosophical air about survival, human rights, and fighting for something bigger than ourselves - topics that I find captivating long after the credits roll have played their course. Plus there's Eve's connection with "Stellar Blade", an iconic weapon that plays such an essential part in Eve's narrative journey; why exactly does she use this blade and how is its purpose tied into Earth's fight being fulfilled are two big questions I hope are eventually answered by future installments in this saga.
This may be the most brutal one yet. Not just in the spine-splitting, head-smashing ways expected of an MK game. Mortal Kombat 11 is methodical, a game where your patience is rewarded and recklessness gets you killed. The dash dashes of its predecessor have been replaced with controlling moves. There is no walking; only Fatal Blows letting comebacks from the dead and flawless block that is demanding precision. Every movement feels like a knit fight in slow motion that is filled with cinematic violence and every mistake is punished to the extreme.
And that violent spectacularness? Absolutely unmatched. The quality of the visuals of the characters In the story mode makes it one of the best visually stunning games. It does not only have the best visuals in fighting games, it MK Amazing is a freakishly high-budget Hollywood movie MK 11 is a heavyweight, every punch landed with a crunch that can be felt in the chest.
The original Dragon's Dogma was praised for its unique combat system, deep customization options, and captivating open world. So the sequel was awaited with great expectations by fans of the genre and not only. The developers will need to balance innovation with nostalgia, ensuring that the game feels fresh while staying true to its roots. If you're a fan of action RPGs and the original Dragon's Dogma, there's a good chance you'll find something to love in the sequel. One of the hallmarks of Dragon's Dogma 2 is the flexibility it affords in managing and customizing your party as you progress, through dismissal or hiring of new Pawns at any point in your journey.
Does Akira Toriyama's artwork feature best in Dragon Ball? Unlike in Dragon Ball Xenoverse, a game where Toriyama only provides inspiration (or is a source of inspiration), he creates this identity instantly through direct drawings for all characters/monsters which allows him to direct drawings directly by Toriyama himself for this series and creates instantaneous visual recognition across its various series he created an instantly recognizable visual identity through direct drawing by Toriyama himself which helps ensure consistency as he makes visual identities for these series that remain. This allows instantaneous recognisability across series! Answering the question, Dragon Quest XI features Akira Toriyama's artwork extensively! No longer bound by pixels and hand-drawn characters of old, the journey remains rich with exploration, character customization, and genre appreciation - which should serve as the ultimate tribute to those artists responsible for shaping our JRPG experiences.
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When you land a Critical Edge in Soulcalibur VI for the very first time, it is not just a move. It’s a moment. The game does not allow you to fight; instead enables you to feel every single swing of the sword, every beat of the heart, as well as every clash of steel. The way Ivy’s whip coils like a raging snake and Siegfried’s blade slices through the air is not just combat. It’s art. The characters are not just fighters; they are legends. The way Nightmare's darkness engulfs or Mitsurugi's precision slice – it is not gameplay. It is history. The stages are not mere backdrops, but narratives. Every single location, from the moonlit courtyards to the fiery pits, feels alive as if it is watching, waiting, and daring you to take a step forward.
When you land a Super Move for the first time in Injustice 2, it’s not just a flashy finisher. It’s a statement. The game does not allow you to simply fight; it encourages you to feel the punches, the kicks, and the bone-crushing impacts. Just the way Batman’s gadgets explode, or the way Superman’s heat vision burns is not combat. It is power. The story mode is not just a campaign, but rather a saga. The drama that ensues when Batman and Superman battle and the world collapses around them is not just drama, but tragedy. The gear system revolves around customization, but it is also evolving. Every piece of armor, every weapon, and every additional upgrade is a step forward and a step closer to becoming the hero or villain you were meant to be.
With your very first Conversion executed in DNF Duel, you do not simply make a comeback; you experience a revolution. The game enables you to alter the rules of fighting. It isn’t just fast; it is a fierce combination, a long flurry of swords, spells, and raw power. The blurring speed of a Striker’s fists or the engulfing fire of an Inquisitor’s flames – that is not fighting, but chaos.
The characters within the game are more than fighters: they’re models. It is not simply gameplay when the Berserker’s rage takes hold of the controller while the Grappler’s slams feel like seismic events; it becomes a question of life. They are no longer mere arenas, but rather stages of battle. The Abyss with its deep silence and Arad with its neon lighted streets serve as venues for something much larger.
And there’s simplicity. The controls of the game are oversimplified: they are self explanatory. They do not make you memorize numerous commands to feel invincible – all it takes is reaction, thought, and feeling.
Pulling off a Magic Burst in Them’s Fightin’ Herds for the first time is something else. The game doesn’t allow you to merely fight, it allows you to hope. The combat is not tight, but rather, it is a little too personal. Imagine a dance of magic, horns, and hooves. The game does not take its characters too seriously and thats where the charm lies. The way Arizona’s lasso sways with the wind or how Tianhuo's flames burst with anger - fighting is simply an expression of imagination.
The magic of the game lies in the characters/fighters. They are more than fighters, they are personas. Thinking of how Velvet's graceful moves clash with Paprika's chaotic style or how Oleander's hardened features hide a soft side - it is not just gameplay but life. The stages are not merely backdrops, but rather plots, every location like a piece of an endless vivid world, from the rolling hills of the prairie to frozen mountain tops.
