Screamer doesn’t ease you in. Within seconds of the first race, a car zoomed past me and detonated — parts scattering across a rain-slicked tunnel — because an opponent activated Strike mode and clipped the wall at full speed. That’s the tone of this anime-inspired combat racer, which is kind of like Wipeout meets Mario Kart, but instead of picking up shells to shoot at the competition, every vehicle is equipped with a powerful device called the Echo, which gradually converts defensive energy into offensive firepower. Here, you have to weigh your decisions carefully instead of hoping to drive over a particular item. The satisfyingly complex resource management system underneath gives Screamer a tactical backbone that neither of those games attempted. After a few hours with a pre-release PC build, the arcade racing already has a confident mechanical identity — fast, physical, and surprisingly deep — and while the story mode serves primarily as a tutorial for those systems, the arcade racing is where Screamer’s identity truly shines. What I played suggests that Screamer’s combat racing foundation is strong enough to carry the weight the developer is placing on it.

Sync or Swim

Screamer’s central system is built around two resource meters that sit on opposite sides of the HUD, and the interplay between them sets it apart from the combat racing pack. On the left, Sync — the defensive resource — builds passively over time and actively through skilled play: cornering well, timing gear shifts, maintaining speed through turns. Sync powers your Boost (hold LB for a sustained speed increase) and your Shield (tap RB, which costs one full Sync tank and provides temporary protection against incoming Strikes and Overdrive hits). When you spend Sync on either of those actions, it converts into Entropy, the offensive meter on the right side of the screen.

Entropy is where things get dangerous. Two bars of Entropy activate Strike (press RB), which grants a temporary speed burst during which any opponent you collide with explodes — a full KO that removes them from the race temporarily. Fill all four Entropy tanks and you unlock Overdrive (click both thumbsticks), which turns your car into a flaming battering ram that detonates everything it touches. The catch is lethal: during Overdrive, hitting any track barrier detonates you instead. It’s the most powerful tool in Screamer, and it punishes even a slight misjudgment with the same instant death it dishes out.

The conversion loop is what makes this more than a standard boost-and-shoot racer. Boosting spends Sync but generates Entropy, which means aggressive drivers who constantly burn speed are also passively building toward their combat abilities. Shielding spends Sync and directly banks one tank of Entropy, so even a defensive play feeds the offensive meter. Every race becomes a rolling calculation: do you burn Sync on a boost to close the gap, or bank a Shield to both protect yourself and charge toward a Strike? Do you spend two Entropy bars on an immediate KO attempt, or hold out for the full Overdrive? The system teaches restraint through its own logic rather than through punishment, and even on balanced difficulty, the races produced a rhythm that felt strategic rather than purely chaotic — I felt like I was making real decisions at 200 miles per hour, not just button mashing.

The right thumbstick handles drifting, and this is the control that makes Screamer’s handling feel distinct. Rather than braking into corners, you pull the right stick to execute a drift that whips the car sideways through turns without losing meaningful speed. Once you internalize the two-stick rhythm — left for steering, right for drifting — the movement stops feeling like you’re fighting the car and starts feeling like you’re commanding it. There’s also an upshift system: over the course of a race, you manually shift gears to increase your top speed, which layers a progression curve onto each race rather than just the meta-game. The cars have weight to them, too. Not the sluggish, input-delay kind — more like the satisfying heft of something that wants you to feel every collision and every wall scrape. Consecutive clean upshifts without collisions also accelerate Sync generation, rewarding precision beyond individual inputs. Meanwhile, hitting a barrier at speed costs you momentum but doesn’t destroy you (unless you’re in Overdrive), which keeps the racing forgiving enough to stay fun while the combat systems layer on the tension.

Built Different

Screamer’s initial boot experience demonstrates surprising care. Players can choose between a Quick Start, which throws them directly into the action, or a Guided Setup that walks them through video, audio, and accessibility options. The accessibility suite is particularly comprehensive, featuring: full one-handed control remapping for either the left or right hand, complete with automatic throttle and the ability to reassign every input to a single side of the controller; deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia colorblindness filters with adjustable intensity on a scale of one to ten; independently scalable subtitle and menu text sizing; and a tinnitus reduction filter with configurable frequency (default ten kilohertz) and gain (default negative twelve decibels). This level of audio accessibility is rare in racing games, and its upfront inclusion, rather than being buried in a submenu, is commendable.

Streamers, meanwhile, will immediately appreciate the licensed audio content toggle. A single switch disables copyrighted music before going live, eliminating the need for third-party workarounds. This small inclusion demonstrates an understanding of how people actually play and broadcast games in 2026.

This preview was played on PC at a 3440×1440 ultrawide resolution, where the visual style looked impressive. The arcade modes ran smoothly on medium settings with DLSS set to balanced, delivering solid visuals: neon-soaked tracks popped with color, car models showed visible collision damage, and the sense of speed remained strong even without maxed-out post-processing. The graphics menu is highly granular, offering individual sliders for anti-aliasing, post-processing, effects, shadows, reflections, global illumination, texture quality, foliage, and shading, as well as upscaling options across Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR 4.0, and TSR, with frame generation support for compatible hardware.

One final note: Screamer offers five AI difficulty tiers, ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard, along with driving aids, including arcade throttle (automatic full acceleration), neural throttle and brake assist, neural steer and drift assist, and neural handling for cornering and wall avoidance. While these are useful options, they are hidden within the custom game settings rather than being presented during the initial setup. For a game that otherwise prioritizes accessibility so effectively, burying the driving aids behind layers of menus feels like an oversight that could unnecessarily challenge less experienced players during their initial races.

Full Roster

Each of the fifteen characters is split across five teams of three — one Leader and two Members per squad — and brings a unique passive ability that meaningfully alters their playstyle. For example, Frederick’s Reaper’s Dance empowers his Strike and grants bonus Sync on KO, but makes him explode on contact with track barriers while Striking — a high-risk, high-reward tradeoff. Hiroshi’s Unstable Boost extends boost duration the longer you hold it, rewarding players who can maintain clean racing lines. Roisin’s One More Freckle reduces Strike’s Entropy cost and allows it to chain continuously, turning her into a relentless close-range threat. Only a handful of characters were accessible in the arcade build, but the differences between them were pronounced enough that swapping rosters changed your approach to the same tracks.

The character and world design leans heavily into an anime aesthetic, which sets the tone for Screamer’s hero shooter-esque vibe. Screamer’s opening cutscene uses fully animated, cel-shaded sequences to introduce its tournament cast — veterans and newcomers assembling for the Screamer Tournament, run by a figure named Gage who installs the Echo device on every vehicle. The voice acting, at least in the brief cinematic that played before the crashes began, is standard English-dubbed anime: serviceable, occasionally cheesy, and tonally consistent with the art style.

The Echo system — which in gameplay terms is the Sync-to-Entropy resource loop — is positioned in the lore as the bridge between narrative and mechanics, justifying why these racers can blow each other up. It’s an ambitious framework. However, the preview build’s story mode, which includes six episodes of anime-driven narrative with special race rules, functions effectively as a tutorial for Screamer’s systems but struggles with pacing and presentation. The dialogue frequently interrupts races mid-action to deliver exposition, and at least from my first impressions during the opening segments, the character writing lacks the personality needed to justify the dramatic framing. It’s functional, but the arcade modes remain the stronger draw.

Rules of the Road

Arcade mode, where I spent most of my time for this preview, offers substantially more customization than the genre typically provides. Three preset race types — Free For All (all fifteen racers on the grid), Leaders (just the five team captains), and Members (the ten sidekicks) — each produce distinct competitive dynamics. Free For All is maximum chaos, with fifteen vehicles jostling for position as Strikes and Overdrives erupt across the pack. Leaders is tighter and more personal: a five-racer sprint where every KO matters. Members sits in the middle, offering ten-racer fields with a different tactical flavor, since sidekick abilities tend toward more specialized functions.

The custom ruleset editor is the real surprise. You can adjust lap counts up to nine, set competitor numbers up to sixteen, and toggle from a long list of modifiers that reshape the racing experience: deactivate Overdrive entirely for a pure racing mode; disable all fighting mechanics to remove Strikes; toggle off individual character skills; force permanent Overdrive for every racer from the opening lap; adjust passive Sync generation rates; activate Power Shift (where Active Shifting unleashes a massive speed surge); enable Volatile Ecosystem mode where all racers are permanently vulnerable to KOs; or turn on Gage’s Finest, which prevents vehicles from losing parts on collision — essentially a no-destruction cosmetic mode. I didn’t test every permutation, but the breadth suggests serious potential for community-driven rulesets and custom competitive formats.

Team Race adds another layer. Duo and Trio variants allow mixed teams across factions, as long as a Leader is present, and scoring combines final placement points with KO tallies. Smashing your own teammates hurts your combined total, which creates an interesting wrinkle when everyone is fighting for position in the same pack. The map selection across the preview’s initial tracks — Port, Downtown Run, Route 1N, Stadium Olympus — offers a strong mix of environments, and I even noticed a fifth map unlock as a reward for playing the mode. Tight urban corridors lined with neon signage give way to wider circuits with sweeping elevation changes, and day versus night settings noticeably affect visibility and atmosphere. Repeated arcade play also unlocked a new character, new music, and cosmetic items, hinting at a progression system that rewards continued engagement — though how deep that progression goes remains an open question.

Waiting for Green

After spending a few hours exploring the arcade modes, what emerged is a combat racer with a genuinely clever resource system, meaningful character differentiation, and a custom ruleset editor that could give Screamer real longevity. The Sync-to-Entropy conversion loop forces players to think two steps ahead, spending defensively to build offensively. This tactical layer elevates Screamer’s racing above the typical grab-a-pickup-and-fire template. Milestone’s expertise in crafting racing games shines through in every drift, boost, and well-timed Strike.

However, some big questions remain. It’s unclear whether the writing of the much broader campaign arc ultimately does justice to the character-driven structure, whether the pacing between cutscenes and races ends up feeling earned, and whether the campaign’s special rules add meaningful variety beyond what exists in the arcade mode. These unanswered questions are central to Screamer’s overall appeal, but for now, Screamer’s strong racing foundation warrants attention, and I look forward to its upcoming March 26 release on PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.

Seeing Cthulhu in the title of a game will, fairly or not, stack a pile of expectations on top of it as tall as the walls of R’lyeh. The Cosmic Abyss does meet some of them, focusing heavily on not just the physical danger involved in immersing oneself in the mysteries of lost and cursed history, but the mental toll as well. It exceeds some too, placing the well worn fictional mythos in a setting it doesn’t often get fit into. But the limited time I had with the first couple of chapters was soaked with the sinking fear that even though its puzzles and atmosphere were brain tickling, there weren’t enough moments where the consequences of playing with this eldritch fire felt real or dangerous.

Cthul-clue

In the Lord’s Year of 2026, you’re going to have a hard time adapting HP Lovecraft’s cosmic horror mythopoeia in a way that feels fresh, but developers Big Bad Wolf make a good effort. It follows well worn tropes, like putting players in the shoes of a detective chasing more and more bizarre clues down an inter-dimensional rabbit hole. But the near-future setting, in a world that clearly benefits from advanced technology but still remains recognizable to denizens of our real world, spices things up in curious ways. My favorite is its optimistic take on an AI companion named Key that can actually be a general benefit to society, or at the very least towards your investigative efforts to know the unknowable.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss gives you a million chances to use it in crime scenes, which are dense with dark nooks to shed light on and stones to be turned over. Its key feature, the Vault, takes every clue you find that could be consequential to solving the mystery and puts it in a big board, where you can move them around and draw connections between them, Charlie Day-style. Some of these clues may become a deduction, which asks a question that can be answered by another clue in order to unlock some key breakthrough to help solve your case. These weren’t common, but were always impactful.

The handiest tool in Key’s arsenal is the sonar. After spending energy to scan the chemical makeup of an item or material, you can send a sonar ping out into the wild to find more objects that match that chemical. Pick up a weird rock and think it might have friends? Send a ping! Bloodstained drag marks suddenly and suspiciously end? Send a ping! You can even combine different materials, up to four, to further narrow down a thing you might be looking for, like if you wanted to find a specific sort of metal that is also covered in eldritch mold for some reason. It’s a clever way to help nudge players along who might be stuck, but without completely blowing the answers to some of the more important puzzles along the way.

Key can also be upgraded to give itself bonus abilities, like one where discovering clues has a slim chance to earn back some energy. I wasn’t really moved either way about the offerings available in the two chapters of the demo. When I did take the time to apply these, it never required me to change the way I play, and I spent no time weighing the value between potential opportunity costs of any of my available options. These might be more consequential in the full release, but I found them to be completely ignorable here.

A Policy of Non-Confrontation

Another way The Cosmic Abyss stands out among its peers is that it’s entirely free of combat, relying completely on the investigative and exploration aspects to provide tension and conflict. That’s a pretty bold choice, and puts a lot of faith in the team’s ability to create bad enough vibes that walking into dark rooms can feel like their own sort of boss fight. I’m not sure The Cosmic Abyss crushes this every time, though.

Many of the spaces make great first impressions. In chapter one, you and your partner, Elsa, arrive at the flooded and dilapidated home of a missing agent of your mysterious organization, Ancile. This house is a mess, floor littered with ancient artifacts, archeological relics, notes scribbled with nonsense, and just straight up trash. The rundown walls cast just the right kinds of shadows that make it feel like touching anything might wake the monstrous building itself.

This goes doubly so for chapter two’s undersea mining facility that sprawls like a metal maze of corridors covered in blood and some sort of goop that is somehow more upsetting than blood. Every wing is a new set of uncomfortably disheveled but relatively routine looking things that lead you through a door and into a room where something obviously blasphemous went down.

But it’s really all sizzle that is hot when you’re in the moment but cools quickly. Besides some things falling off of shelves without warning, you’re never actually in danger in the haunted-feeling house of the first chapter. Though the second chapter’s complex heavily implies that there might be a sort of eldritch minotaur trapped in its watery labyrinth, you never get the displeasure of having to directly encounter one. I did a lot of running around and backtracking through the expansive sea base, and besides unlocking doors to get to new rooms, the building itself remained static, not really changing based on my actions or the progression of the plot, which definitely made it feel like I was treading water when trying to solve my way to the next big moment.

The other side of that coin, though, is that a lot of the solutions to the puzzles are hiding in plain sight, with the clever assessment of the clues you encounter and proper use of your tools being all you really need to find answers. It made me feel like a genius when I skipped from point A to point C in a logic path because I came to my own conclusions that let me skip B entirely (or simply got lucky and found a vital piece of a puzzle early). It also made me feel like a real dunce when I would continually miss the solution despite very clear clues that might as well have been neon signs pointing to it. The puzzles themselves aren’t tough, nothing more than just pattern recognition or just good old fashioned problem solving. The Witness, this is not.

Path of Least Resistance

The Cosmic Abyss does create a bit of friction by tempting the players themselves to take shortcuts at the risk of their sanity. Corruption is introduced in chapter two, and wracks your brain anytime you come into contact with some real evil juju, limiting Key’s abilities and possibly having more adverse effects that are unclear in the scope of this demo. The miners under the sea found a mysterious altar, and now they’re all missing. You can follow their footsteps to see how they activated this demonic device, but participating in the same ritual that vanished the people you were down here to find seems like a terrible idea, doesn’t it? Trying to find a relatively safe alternative to that requires taking the deductive reasoning version of the long way seemed the more sensible alternative, which meant me frustratingly spending a lot of time poking every object I could to figure out what I was missing, the lure of just trading my sanity for the quick and easy solution always hanging above me. In this limited demo, taking corruption seemed largely harmless, but as you move from chapter to chapter, carrying the mental scars of your past mistakes with you, I can see how this could hang over you like a long, Cthulhu face tentacle of Damocles.

My biggest fear for Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss was assuaged pretty early – this game does a great job setting Lovecraft’s well-worn mythos in a time and place that feels unique among its many, many contemporaries. It also leans into problem solving in a way maybe other games like it don’t, focusing more on the finding out parts of diligent detective work than the effing around parts of attempting to gun fight a bog monster. And though the puzzles you’ll encounter throughout tend to balance feeling rewarding to solve while being approachable, the tense and slow-burning pace is great for the process of discovery but doesn’t pay off the patience with many scares or really any pushback at all from anything that isn’t a puzzle. That said, I’ve only seen the tip of what it has to offer, so it’s hard to speak to how these elements evolve as you get closer to the real deal monsters, and how systems like Key’s upgrades and clever Sonar expand without playing more, which we will all have the chance to do when Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss releases on April 16th.

While the promise of a Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake disappeared along with several other games earlier this year, Prince of Persia fans still have spin-off The Rogue Prince of Persia — and now its team has unveiled a sizable 2026 spring roadmap.

Via Steam, developer Evil Empire wished its community a happy 2026, and confirmed the addition of a Flaming Horses tool as a nod to lunar new Year of the Horse. This tool unleashes a herd of flaming horses that “charge forward, leaving a burning trail behind them.”

“We’ve always wanted a burning tool that works like Altan’s Bracelets, and the year of the fire horse provided the perfect creative spark,” the team teased. “Plus, when you talk about Persian culture, you have to talk about the horse! From the Nisean Horse and the Royal Road to the legendary Rakhsh from the Shahnameh, horses are legendary.”

That’s not all, though. The “Breathless” update is slated to arrive with a public beta at the end of March, promising a “quicker and more intense” experience. This includes a rework of the game’s first hour, tighter pacing and improvements to when and how you unlock new game content and new mechanics, as well as changes to bosses’ difficulty. “Reworks of the level design of the first few biomes will also highlight our iconic wall-run move and make each biome quicker and tougher,” developer Evil Empire said.

There are changes for established players, too, including a new Freeze element, which is coming with a new weapon, the slingshot, arenas — “zones that lock you in, and the only way out is to defeat wave after wave of enemies!” — and weapon affixes which can “make each weapon that appears in your run much more interesting and varied, giving you some difficult choices to take…”

Here’s the full update:

The “Breathless update” will arrive with a public beta around the end of March! As you can guess from its title, this update means making the whole experience quicker and more intense, leaving you… breathless!

We have done a big rework of the pacing of the first hour, including when and how you will unlock new game content and new mechanics, as well as the bosses’ difficulty. Reworks of the level design of the first few biomes will also highlight our iconic wall-run move and make each biome quicker and tougher.

For veteran players who have been looking forward to new toys to play with, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! First up, we’re introducing a new element – freeze – which is coming with a new weapon, the slingshot!

Next on the list is the arenas – zones that lock you in, and the only way out is to defeat wave after wave of enemies!

Most importantly, weapon affixes are coming too!! These affixes will make each weapon that appears in your run much more interesting and varied, giving you some difficult choices to take…

End Game Update

That’s it for the first update, let’s quickly talk about the second one!

We’re planning for it to land in early May, and some of the content may change, but we know what we’d like to do… It will focus on the End Game, plus bringing more challenges like Speed Run mode and Daily Awakening.

You’ll be able to really test your skill and push the limit with this update coming! Speed, precision, and strategy—show us what you’ve got.

From 2025 to 2026

Looking back on 2025, it was a big year for The Rogue Prince of Persia. We finally graduated from Early Access and increased the game’s Steam review score from 70% upon Early Access release to 88% so far with your support and help!

Of course, we’re not just on Steam, we’ve also successfully brought the game to Switch, Xbox, and Playstation! Right now, we are almost at the point of having 1 million people who’ve played our game!

Even though we are only in the second month of 2026, the game has already achieved something else: we have been included in the Bafta awards longlist and gained 4 nominations at the french game awards ceremony PEGASUS, including best game. We’re crossing all the fingers and toes we have until March.

Following the awards season, vinyl and physical collector editions are also on the way! We believe it will be a great year for the rogue prince of persia, and we can’t wait to make this game better with you guys in 2026!

Ubisoft began this year by announcing a sizable company restructure, resulting in the cancelation of six games, including its Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake, and a delay to a further seven titles. Two Ubisoft studios will close completely as a result of the changes, while others are subject to further layoffs.

Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner recently reacted to Ubisoft’s cancelation of its Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, describing the loss of any project as a “brutal experience” for developers. “A cancelation so close to release can be particularly devastating for younger team members who don’t have decades of past shipped titles on their resumé,” he said. “It’s tough to suddenly absorb that the past four years of hard work you were proud of, and looking forward to seeing out in the world as your new calling card, will now never see daylight.”

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Surprise! Japanese studio CyberConnect2 is marking its 30th anniversary with the announcement of a new .hack game: .hack//Z.E.R.O.

To whet our collective appetites, we’ve even been treated to a teaser trailer, which you can watch below.

.hack is a series of action RPG games that explore a virtual game-space called The World, with action taking place both there and in our real world, branching off of a multimedia franchise that extends to a collectible card game, a Japanese-only MMORPG, plus animated movies, manga, and live-action TV shows.

Today, February 16, 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of CyberConnect2.

To commemorate, we will begin development of .hack//Z.E.R.O., a new original game. This title will be fully self-published by CyberConnect2, from planning to development to release.#hackZERO #dothack pic.twitter.com/J5nrgnXU83

— CyberConnect2 Official (EN) (@cc2information) February 16, 2026

It’s been the best part of ten years since we last had a .hack game — the last was .hack//G.U. Last Recode in 2017 — but don’t let that put you off: Hiroshi “Piros” Matsuyama recently told Famitsu that the new release won’t link directly to any previous title, so you don’t need to come into the game with any prior knowledge.

Although .hack has always been developed by CyberConnect2 and has usually been published by Bandai Namco, Bandai Namco has given CyberConnect2 permission to “manage the entirety of the project from planning and development to release.”

As for what to expect? “World-renowned violinist Taro Hakase has penned the music, kick-starting the project to the dexterous tune of his violin. .hack//Z.E.R.O. will be a novel RPG experience that blends the series’ trademark duality of fantasy (game world) and reality (real world) with modern expectations, infused with 100% pure CyberConnect2 spirit.

“The game will be enjoyable for both veteran fans and new players alike,” the team said. “Please look forward to this newest iteration of .hack.”

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.