Table of contents for Christmas 2026 in Edge

From the start of his second term as US President, Donald Trump has used executive orders to attack diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. It’s part of a wider cultural political movement that wants to demonise DEI, most visible in videogames last year through an online campaign of harassment and disinformation targeting consultancy firm Sweet Baby Inc. Looking on with concern is the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Foundation, a charitable organisation serving underrepresented developers and individuals interested in a game industry career, with programmes and mentorships designed to prepare marginalised people for their next steps. Its executive director is Alyssa Walles, whose career in business strategy, sales and marketing has included launching Sony’s PlayStation and relaunching the Atari brand. Here, she tells us more about the foundation and…

Following the Battlefield 6 campaign’s second helicopter crash, former high-school quarterback Haz Carter is wheeled away on a stretcher towards a waiting ambulance. “All your wounds are superficial, so you’re going to be OK,” says Lopez, the unit’s medic. “You know, aside from whatever you picked up swimming in the East River.” There’s a beat before Carter replies: “You should see the one that got away.” It’s the kind of half-sensical quip that characterises a muddled and miserably stoic story. This is a campaign that regularly biffs its character moments, drowns any drama in militaristic jargon and fails to translate almost any of the magic of multiplayer to solo shooting. There was hope, for a while, that things could be different. Past Battlefield campaigns showed flashes of brilliance when…

Developer/publisher Supergiant Games Format PC (tested), Switch, Switch 2 Release Out now The influence of Hades in the years since its release in 2020 may not be as striking as that of, say, Dark Souls, but it’s no less pervasive. Clones aside, the way Roguelike games are structured and their rewards doled out often now follows the Hades model, while Supergiant’s character design and narrative delivery have been studied and reproduced across genres. It’s easy to imagine, then, that the developers of Hades II had a job on their hands replicating its predecessor’s impact with concepts that have since been normalised. But then you start to play – and there’s nothing like the real thing. Hades II clicks the moment we press a few buttons to make new charge Melinoë…

Developer/publisher Sega (Sonic Team) Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now With tongue resolutely in cheek, Sega revived an old TV commercial in its marketing of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, pointing out the difference between its new kart racer and Nintendo’s Switch 2 launch title, Mario Kart World. Had such a move been made at the start of the prior generation, against the all-conquering Mario Kart 8, it would have been ill-advised. But with the premium price point and mildly underwhelming open-world element of World raising question marks over Nintendo’s stranglehold on the genre, Sega might have a point – sticking closer to well-worn racing lines, it genuinely offers what Nintendon’t. The core proposal here is a purer form of the kart racer…

Developer Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC (tested), PS5 Release Out now Resembling a bed-headed blend of Gabe Newell and Teddy Roosevelt, Baby Steps’ protagonist, Nate, is a large man who only just fits into his infantilising onesie. He’s both a potentially sympathetic lead (he clearly needs your help) and a portrait drawn with a clear-eyed cruelty. He mumbles in conversation and oafishly rejects offers of aid from the people he meets. When he starts to sweat, a dark patch forms at the base of his spine and then spreads through the fabric of his clothing. It’s the kind of intimate human detail only the least charitable of artists would include. For all his awkwardness, though, Nate has surprisingly small and delicate feet. So when…

Developer/publisher Q-Games Format PC, PS5 (tested) Release Out now The man in pyjamas may be holding an automatic rifle, but as we keep the trigger squeezed, rattling T out an infinite supply of bullets, Dreams Of Another feels as therapeutic as PowerWash Simulator. As a literal way of exploring the game’s philosophical notion of“no destruction without creation”, it’s our means of making sense of a dream world that begins as an amorphous landscape of clouds. Shooting makes recognisable environments and objects – a house, a door, a vending machine, even other people – materialise. And it’s not only the latter who have something to say. Everything here is rendered with point clouds, reminiscent of pointillist paintings. Yet while those artworks invite you to peer closely to see the dots, the…

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Switch, Switch 2, Xbox Series Original release 1997 You have to wonder about the internal processes at Square Enix when it comes to rereleasing its Y back catalogue. We wouldn’t be shocked to learn that decisions governing when and in what form a past gem will be thrust into the spotlight again are made by lottery. Final Fantasy I–VI get pixel remasters, VII gets a mega-budget trilogy. Dragon Quests I–III? The HD-2D treatment. Dragon Quest VII? A 3D reimagining. And so we come to The Ivalice Chronicles, a new outing for 1997’s Final Fantasy Tactics, for which the roulette wheel stops at the lower end of the revamp spectrum. There are enhancements here, some immediately obvious…

On the morning of September 25, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, sent an email to his employees around the world. In careful prose he announced that the company had “ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel Ministry Of Defense”. The move followed an investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call that found Israel’s cyber-intelligence unit, 8200, had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud to store and analyse intercepted Palestinian phone calls – “a million calls an hour”, in the unit’s own phrase. Investigators alleged that the technology helped identify targets for air strikes in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel now stands accused by the United Nations of committing genocide. The announcement marked a startling reversal. In an earlier statement, the company…

With Endling – Extinction Is Forever, Barcelonabased Herobeat Studios served up a portentous tale of environmental decline, as we took on the role of the last mother fox on Earth trying to raise her cubs amid worsening pollution. In its next game, Rewilders: The Lost Spring, ecology is still a central concern, but now we’re offered the agency to fight back. “Instead of witnessing the consequences of destruction, the player becomes an active force for change,” Herobeat CEO and co-founder Javier Ramello tells us. The game’s murky biomes can be revitalised through your efforts, with cleansed areas embracing colour and nature once again. Switching to a fantasy setting enables Herobeat “to tackle complex ecological themes in a more emotional, symbolic way,” Ramello says. “It opens the door to larger-than-life ideas.”…

The Cosmonaut Assistance Tool, or CAT, is a multifunctional electronic device, housed within a large, rectangular, white plastic casing. Its battery life is short; using the CAT for even its most rudimentary applications will quickly drain its power supply. The viewfinder screen, which is mounted on the rear, is roughly the same size as – and has a similar image resolution to – Casio’s 470 portable television, released in 1991. If you aim the CAT and move it from side to side, it produces a delay effect on the monitor, as the device’s sluggish internal processor struggles to quickly convey images from the lens to the display. Any environmental magnetism will also significantly disrupt the device’s capabilities, meaning it has to be manually degaussed regularly. Slow, hard to work and…

NEAR MISSES Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 PC, PS5, Xbox Series We had hoped to review The Chinese Room’s latest in this issue, but code arrived too close to deadline, leaving not enough time to sample all of the game’s bloody tricks and treats. Our early forays into the Seattle night suggest something more akin to a narrative adventure than an RPG, with combat and traversal techniques sucked from the veins of Dishonored. Fortunately, the story manages to intrigue, with a smart script for its main players, both living and undead. More will have to wait until E418, once we’ve had a chance to really sink our teeth in. The Jackbox Party Pack 11 PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox Series Jackbox returns with fresh twists on all…

Developer PlatinumGames, Team Ninja Publisher Xbox Game Studios Format PC, PS5 (tested), Xbox Series Release Out now One of the most notorious, and astonishing, sequences in Ninja Gaiden 2 takes place on a flight of wide stone steps. As you ascend, you’re accosted by a mob of enemy ninjas. Start to cut through the group and more appear, and more, and more, streaming down the stairs until the game engine wheezes and you’re caught in an incomprehensible melange of limbs – some still attached – and weapons. Not that you’ll keep count, but it feels like you’ve butchered about 100 by the time that the storm finally subsides. It leaves you breathless and agape, invigorated by the audacity of the sequence. During the first stage of Ninja Gaiden 4, we’re…

Developer Dotemu, Guard Crush Games, Supamonks Publisher Dotemu Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Switch Release Out now No sooner have we said that nobody beats Supergiant at its own game, Dotemu and Guard Crush Games arrive to give it a run for its money. Absolum may lack the narrative sophistication of Hades II, and some of its aesthetic punch, but it deploys the now-familiar Roguelike template with broad vision and unmatched technical depth. Here is a fighter in every sense of the word – a beat-’em-up that, in its shifting, branching structure and buffet of combat techniques, can stand toe to toe with any champion. Certainly, in the wake of Hades II, Absolum’s writing and character design have the air of the first draft. Its warrior wizard heroes, setting out…

Developer/publisher Onion Games Format PC (tested), Switch Release Out now For the past decade, Onion Games’ output has been bite-sized, expressed in quickfire arcadey puzzlers and shooters and through the constraints of Dandy Dungeon’s five-by-five grids. In comparison, Stray Children is a giant, a return to the full-length RPGs that Yoshiro Kimura made at the start of his career. In harking back to cult PS1 game Moon, which he and other Onion Games staffers, including character designer Kurashima Kazuyuki and composer Hirofumi Taniguchi, originally worked on (and released worldwide in 2020), it also gives the impression of a swan song – Kimura’s final fantasy, if you will. It begins with a child – with the face of a dog, a sort of Snoopy in a hoodie – being sucked into…

Developer Kenny Sun Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC (tested), PS5, Switch, Xbox Series Release Out now Fire and petrol. Coke and Mentos. Beans and toast. Of all the potent combinations to emerge throughout recorded history, Kenny Sun’s Ball X Pit offers one of the most devious concoctions yet: Vampire Survivors and Breakout. Every battlefield in the game scrolls vertically, with blocks of wriggling monsters at the top of the screen marching toward your character down at the bottom. You’re lobbing balls onto the field, most of them ping-pong-like ‘baby balls’ that damage any foes they bounce into before eventually returning to you to be thrown again. Some, though, are special, hand-selected bruisers that you earn by vacuuming up experience-point gems from fallen creatures. The fireball sets foes aflame, while the…

Developer To The Sky Publisher Thunderful Publishing Format PC (tested), PS5 Release Out now Debuting with an action Roguelite is a bold move for To The Sky. In a field crowded with so many entries grasping for attention – Hades II and Absolum among them – it’s not easy for a new IP from a small developer to stand out. It’s laudable, then, that Godbreakers manages to differentiate itself. The game’s structure is undeniably familiar, including currency earned during runs to eke out permanent upgrades. These upgrades do not include health and damage boosts, however, since those, along with your weapon, are fixed according to your selection of ‘Archetype’, or character class. Though there are only six to choose from, all are viable options, sufficiently varied in terms of power,…

MARVEL’S WOLVERINE Developer/publisherSIE (Insomniac Games) Format PS5 Origin US Release 2026 Potentially even more violent than 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Insomniac’s Wolverine also appears to represent a severe tonal shift from the studio’s family-friendly Spider-Man sandboxes. Notable from the recent trailer is a moment when our super-antihero jams his claws through the underside of a henchman’s jaw. Co-written by Spec Ops: The Line auteur Walt Williams, this is an original story, independent of the films and comics, set within Insomniac’s own Marvel-verse. So far, the exploration looks more linear than in Spider-Man, while the combat mechanics resemble Arkham Asylum and old-school God Of War. SPELLCASTERS CHRONICLES Developer/publisher Quantic Dream Format PC Origin France Release TBA Developed alongside the forthcoming Star Wars: Eclipse, Spellcasters Chronicles is Quantic Dream’s first attempt at competitive multiplayer. It’s a 3v3 action and strategy hybrid in which,…

Thomas Grip, co-founder of Frictional Games and the designer behind genre icons such as Penumbra, Amnesia and Soma, has a peculiar piece of advice for horror game creators: make it boring. “It’s critical it’s not too engaging,” he says, “because then it’s like playing Tetris while you’re in the spooky mansion. The ghost is standing behind you, but you don’t notice because you’re too involved in the game of Tetris. You kind of want gameplay that is dull, repetitive or simplistic.” Brian Clarke, creator of 2022’s The Mortuary Assistant, and now the in-development Paranormal Activity game, has a similar ethos. Explaining the tactics for building an effective scare, he says the goal is to focus the player on something innocuous and then suddenly break the silence. “The key is that…

Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Developer/publisher Red Barrels Origin US Release 2024 By the time Outlast 2 was finished and shipped, everybody at Red Barrels was tired. It wasn’t just the climactic few months of crunch that had sapped their energies. With the original Outlast, the Whistleblower DLC and now the full sequel behind them, the entire studio – in the words of co-founder and game designer Philippe Morin – was feeling “fed up and uninspired”, and even considered ditching the horror genre completely. But although they craved fresh artistic inspiration, the Red Barrels team, wholly independent and self-funded, also had to mitigate risk; the studio was still only six years old at this point, and straying beyond the established Outlast brand could have doomed the whole…

Developer/publisher EA (DICE, Ripple Effect Studios, Criterion Games, Motive Studio, Ridgeline Games) Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series Release Out now For almost as long as Battlefield has existed, it’s been hampered by an unhelpful line of thinking: because the series is competing with Call Of Duty, it should play like Call Of Duty. Most recently, this impulse resulted in Battlefield 2042, a game which – at launch – was defined by systems that undermined teamwork and encouraged players to think more individualistically. Fans could spend hours preening their specialists, gradually adding to a nest of unlocked weapon attachments, plastic explosives and recon drones until they had assembled a build that was entirely their own. It might have been an alluring progression system worthy of Treyarch or Infinity Ward, but it…

Ask why Bayonetta is lauded as a peak character action game and most people would refer immediately to its combat system. Its sense of control, grace and style has few rivals, and combines with room for individual expression through loadout choices, combos and other techniques. That’s far from the only reason PlatinumGames’ crown jewel holds together, though. Equally impressive is how it portions out its bouts of sublime scrapping and manages their pace with so many other distractions. The homage to Space Harrier is the boldest, of course, but even minor interventions – a sudden escape sequence, a QTE – have their positive impact, ensuring you aren’t merely ambling from one battle to another. You might say the perfect action game is as much about the notes not played, or…

Developer Supermassive Games Publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now One of our most persistent, and horrid, assailants in Little Nightmares III meets a sticky end. The terminus comes after a chase sequence, during which we’re never more than a few feet and inches away from being slaughtered, until we enter a certain room and, well… let’s just say the roles are reversed. It’s a moment that unavoidably reminds us of our encounter with the hunter in Little Nightmares II. In that case, pursued by a maniac with a shotgun, by chance our pair of diminutive heroes end up holding a shotgun of their own, wrestling with its weight as the killer closes in and then: boom! The danger is…

Developer/publisher Xbox Game Studios (Double Fine Productions) Format PC, Xbox Series Release Out now Keeper’s central themes are all extravagantly laid out in its opening scene. You play as the semi-eponymous walking, sentient lighthouse – or more specifically the rotating light at the very top of the tower, brought inexplicably to life by sheer will, and now able to move courtesy of four ungainly arachnoid legs, held together with old rebar. When you, the player, first gain control of your in-game ‘body’, it’s also the first time that the keeper, your character, has ever tried to stand up. The fragmented, precariously stacked stone cylinder that represents your corporeal self flounders perilously from side to side and you have to pull hard on the analogue stick to keep from toppling…

Developer/publisher Draknek And Friends Format Android, iOS, PC (tested) Release Out now Alan Hazelden has spoken of the grave need to attract a broader audience without compromising A on what his studio does best. That explains why this Halloween-themed spinoff from 2017’s Cosmic Express launches such a powerful charm offensive. A set of amusing comic-book panels – aided no end by a witty, jaunty theme song – introduces the concept of a rail service that welcomes all cryptids great and small. Why, Spooky Express posits, should these creatures of the night miss out on the joys of public transport just because they might scare off their fellow travellers? As subsequent puzzles explore this idea to lengths beyond our expectations, we’re treated to some of the most appealing character designs we’ve…

Developer/publisher Capcom Format PS1 Release 1996 Resident Evil feels like a horror game. You don’t have many bullets, you can’t carry many guns, and each zombie, Cerberus, Hunter or Chimera has the power to kill you quickly, and often unexpectedly. In addition, you can only save your game a finite number of times and in specific locations. Given these stressors and pressures, you are directed to avoid rather than embrace action, to stay out of combat and use brains at least as often as brawn. Sit idle on the main menu for long enough and there’s a short clip of in-game footage with an accompanying, advisory message: “Be smart! Fighting foes isn’t the only way to survive this horror!” Not much ammo, dangerous enemies, the risk of losing progress –…