Features

Silent Hill: Townfall hands-on report

The line between supernatural horrors and the psychological struggles of characters is often blurred between Silent Hill games, but it might never have been as hazy as it is in Silent Hill: Townfall. I recently played about four hours of the first-person survival-horror game, in which protagonist Simon finds himself in a foggy Scottish town full of horrors, but seemingly can’t quite make out what’s real and what’s only in his mind.


My preview began at the start of Townfall, with Simon apparen...

13 ways Halo: Campaign Evolved modernizes the iconic FPS

Halo: Combat Evolved is a landmark game that helped define the experience of early console first-person shooters. But with Halo: Campaign Evolved, Halo Studios has introduced a number of changes to bring the game into the modern era. Halo’s debut on PlayStation uses new mechanics, tweaked controls, haptic feedback, and adjusted weapons to make this a fresh spin on a shooter icon.

Here are 13 ways from throughout the 10 missions of the Halo campaign, as well as its three new bonus missions, th...

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Turns Bosses Into Friends

Belmont’s Curse looks to add a lot of good ideas to the Castlevania series’ formula.


Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is another in that recent lineage of search action titles, taking the solid foundation of Konami’s storied vampire-hunting, monster-killing franchise, and enhancing it with some of the smart elements like parries, dodges, and Estus flask-like healing abilities, that have become common in recent genre entries, as well as new ideas of its own. I recently played about three hours of...

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Turns Tough Bosses Into Powerful Friends

Fans of side-scrolling metroidvania games have been eating pretty well for the last few years. Games such as Hollow Knight: Silksong and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown have provided solid entries in the genre, each offering fascinating worlds, expansive maps, and deep combat. What’s more, the rising tide of good metroidvania games is raising all boats, as developers draw on one another’s good ideas to enhance their work and find new ways to push the envelope.


Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is...

In The Blood of Dawnwalker's Vampire Story, Death Is Not Always The End

The Blood of Dawnwalker‘s best feature might be that it sometimes takes choices away from you.


In this story-driven action-RPG, you play a vampire, but even the most good-guy vampire ever still has an insatiable hunger for human blood. Sometimes in Dawnwalker, that hunger can get the best of you, even if you’re actively trying to resist it. Whether you’re talking to your best friend, working to bandage an injured comrade, or battling opponents to save your father’s life, when the hunger takes...

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis hands-on report

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is a fresh, reimagined take on Lara Croft’s first adventure. I recently played about an hour of Legacy of Atlantis at Summer Game Fest 2026, and saw first-hand how developers Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog are bringing elements from the original game and its first remake, 2007’s Tomb Raider Anniversary, into the modern era.


The preview took me to the Lost Valley area in Peru, where I was tasked with solving a new version of Tomb Raider’s iconic cog puzzle...

Summer Game Fest 2026: Hands-on and more details on 11 upcoming PS5 games

Summer Game Fest Play Days featured a ton of new titles this year, with developers and publishers giving lots of chances to see, and play, a variety of games coming to PS5. I visited SGF Play Days this year to see these upcoming titles in action, and go hands-on with many of them. Here’s everything I played and saw at Summer Game Fest.


Publisher: Sega | Developer: Creative Assembly


More than a decade after the original was released, Alien: Isolation 2 slithered through a vent to terrify at...

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Revamps DMZ With Story Missions And Dynamic Ops

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 brings back DMZ mode, Infinity Ward’s take on the extraction shooter genre first introduced with Modern Warfare 2 in 2022. That original mode was considered something of a beta, with Infinity Ward testing the concept and adding elements to it over time. Modern Warfare 4’s take is much more fully realized, and its additions sound like they could make it more inviting for new players than most other entries in the genre.

Infinity Ward Makes Key Improvements To The Formula With Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4

After back-to-back Black Ops games both from developers Treyarch and Raven Software, studio Infinity Ward returns to the helm for this year’s entry in the Call of Duty franchise. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward says it’s entering a new chapter–both for the series that helped catapult Call of Duty into its status as a household name, and for the studio at large.


For Modern Warfare 4, that new chapter helps redefine where the series is headed. In 2019, Infinity Ward rebooted...

007: First Light hands-on report — using stealth, action, and charm to become a legendary spy

When it was first announced that Hitman: World of Assassination developer IO Interactive was taking on the James Bond franchise with 007: First Light, it sounded like the perfect match of license and studio. The Hitman games focus on stealth, cunning, planning, and improvisation — a perfect fit for the legendary spy.

I recently went hands-on with 007: First Light across three missions, and saw first-hand how IOI has created a Bond game that combines action with a more thoughtful spy experienc...

Pragmata: All the ways the Shelter expands gameplay and story

The Cradle, a massive lunar base that serves as the setting for third-person hacking shooter Pragmata, is a dangerous place to be. It’s crawling with killer robots, often popping up with little warning as you explore its many facilities and passageways. Luckily, there’s the Shelter, a tucked-away location that provides a place where you can build your arsenal, restock, heal up, and take a break.


The Shelter is more than just a place to prepare, though — it’s also where you can build the relat...

Samson’s Crime Story Helps It Stand Out From GTA, But Jank Is A Problem

Like a lot of crime stories, Samson: A Tyndalston Story is about desperation, but it's the first game about jacking cars, punching gangsters, and stealing money that I've ever seen really turn that desperation into a gameplay loop.Developer Liquid Swords' dark and dingy third-person action game puts you in the title role as a low-level thug and expert wheelman who is way down on his luck. As is often a trope in stories like this, the protagonist owes a lot of money to bad people. Samson smartly...

Magic: The Gathering's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Is The Most Video Gamey Set Ever

The echoing, digitized delivery of the phrase "Big Apple, 3 a.m." is something that's burned into my brain. My friends and I blasted through that first level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time hundreds of times, beating up foot-clan dorks, grabbing pizzas, and falling in open manholes. So when Wizards of the Coast released its Magic: The Gathering TMNT set as part of its Universes Beyond brand, finding the card named Big Apple, 3 a.m. scratched exactly the nostalgic itch I was h...

Marathon Review - Incredible Highs, Painful Lows

We started on Perimeter, the map tuned to provide the "easiest" experience in Marathon, and spent the next 15 minutes trapped in the very first building we entered, fighting every single team of player "Runners" in the match.It was GameSpot senior producer Jean-Luc Seipke's very first match in Bungie's online first-person extraction shooter, and it was nothing if not a trial by fire. Together with our matchmade teammate, we battled down hallways and around corners, flanking and catching opponent...

Damon and Baby: hands-on with the ridiculous twin-stick shooter, out March 26

Arc System Works and Executive Director Daisuke Ishiwatari are known for fighting games, and their upcoming game, Damon and Baby, is a huge shift. It’s an action-adventure game that’s defined by an overhead viewpoint, twin-stick shooter mechanics, a lighthearted, cartoonish art style, and a wry, satirical wit — a departure from series like Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.

Damon and Baby is an expansive game that packs a surprising amount of depth and challenge. I recently played through the first 10...

Invincible Vs open beta runs April 9 to 11, Training Mode details revealed

You’re about to experience more than a fraction of the power of Invincible’s characters. The upcoming Invincible Vs, a 3-on-3 tag-team fighting game based on Robert Kirkman’s comic series and the Amazon Prime adaptation of it, will hit PlayStation 5 on April 30. But before then, you can try the game with an open beta that’ll include 10 of its superpowered characters, running April 9 to 11.

Executive Producer Mike Willette sat down to tell us a little more about what players can expect in the...

Le Dino Labo Launches Today on Meta Quest | Meta Quest Blog

Imagine building the skeleton of a T-Rex bone-by-bone — and then seeing it at life-size, standing before you. That’s what’s offered by the puzzle-building experience Le Dino Labo, and it’s available today on Meta Quest.Le Dino Labo’s premise is simple: get your hands on a dinosaur skeleton. The game provides you with a bag of fossil bones you can dump out in your own space. Then, it’s a matter of piecing the skeleton together by figuring out where each bone connects with the others to build the...

Mouse: PI For Hire hands-on report — classic FPS action meets rubberhose animation

Mouse: P.I. For Hire‘s rubber hose cartoon art style brings it a whole lot of absurd, slapstick humor, which pairs perfectly with its “boomer” shooter gameplay. But underpinning it all is a noir detective story that can be dark and adult as well as goofy and comedic, giving Mouse a fascinating depth that goes beyond its toon inspirations.


I recently went hands-on with an early level from Mouse: P.I. For Hire and got a sense of its fast-paced combat, twitchy boss battles, and underlying narrat...

Magic: The Gathering's TMNT Set Nails The Feeling Of Getting Pummeled By Combat Cold Cuts

The opening scene of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze illustrates one of the things that's so fun about the movie. After the first TMNT film in 1990, parents reportedly pushed back against the heroes' use of weapons like katana, sais, and nunchuks. As a result, when the sequel rolled around in 1991, the titular turtles spent the whole movie not using their signature gear.It's a restraint that's pretty dumb in hindsight, undercutting a major element of what makes the turtle...
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Iron Banter Column

A weekly column covering all aspects of Destiny 2, published at GameSpot.

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