WWE 2K26 is set to release for PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on March 13 — unless you order one of the more expensive editions, which come out March 6. This year’s standard edition features CM Punk on the cover, but three pricier editions are available as well, all of which come with extra stuff. One of them features Triple H on the cover. All are available to preorder now (see it at Target), so let’s dive into what comes in each edition, how much they cost, where they’re available, and more.
The standard edition of WWE 2K26 comes out March 13 and costs $69.99. It’s available for preorder at most of the usual retailers (with the curious exception of Amazon, at least for the time being). Buy it by March 12 and it will include the preorder bonus (see below).
It’s also worth noting here that the Switch 2 version is a Game-Key Card, so it doesn’t contain the game on it — it just lets you download the game.
The Monday Night War edition costs $149.99 and will be available to play March 6. In addition to the base game, here’s what comes with it:
7 day early access
Joe Hendry Pack
32,500 VC
Ringside Pass Premium Seasons 1-6
King of Kings Edition Pack (see above)
Playable Superstar: Triple H ’98
Playable Superstar: Stephanie McMahon ’00
MySUPERSTAR Emote: Triple H Signature Taunt
Superstar Mega-Boost
100,000 VC
MyRise Mega-Boost
Attitude Era Edition Pack
Playable Superstar: The Rock ’99
Playable Superstar: Kane ’98
Playable Superstar: Chyna ’97
MyFACTION EVO Card: Stone Cold Steve Austin
MyFACTION EVO Card: The Rock
Arena: RAW is WAR ’98
MySUPERSTAR Island emote: Undertaker Thumb Across the Neck
MySUPERSTAR Island emote: HBK DX Crotch Chop
Wrestlemania 42 Pack (coming Summer 2026)
Monday Night War Edition Pack
Playable Superstar: Shawn Michaels ’97
Playable Superstar: Macho Man Randy Savage ’98
Playable Superstar: Rowdy Roddy Piper ’98
Arena: WCW Thunder ’98
MySUPERSTAR Island emote: DDP’s Bang!
WWE 2K26 Preorder Bonus
Preorder the game by March 12 to receive the Joe Hendry Pack, which includes:
Joe Hendry as a playable Superstar
Joe Hendry MyFACTION EVO Card
MySUPERSTAR CAS Part: Joe Hendry T-Shirt
MySUPERSTAR Island Emote: Joe Hendry Spin
Note that all editions of the game except the standard edition will still include this pack after the preorder window.
What Is WWE 2K26?
WWE 2K26 is this year’s edition of 2K’s annual franchise, which has kept the party going each year since 2000. This upcoming installment includes the biggest roster of any game in the series, with over 400 playable Superstars and Legends. It introduces new match types, including I Quit, Inferno, and Dumpster. WWE Draft also comes to the sandbox mode Universe, and more.
This edition features CM Punk’s Showcase, which has three different categories of matches: historical matches, fantasy matchups, and “what if” scenarios. This comes with narration from Punk himself, who gives his perspective on things. Historical matches include Wrestlemania 41’s CM Punk vs. Seth Freakin’ Rollins vs. Roman Reigns, as well as Punk vs. Brock Lesnar from SummerSlam 2013 and Punk vs. Rey Mysterio from Armageddon 2008.
More Preorder Guides
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
It’s only been about four months since Magic players last visited the streets of New York City, and in just a short few weeks, swinging through the skies and hotdog carts will be replaced by surfing through the sewers and slices of pizza with the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set of Magic: The Gathering.
Compared to some of the more recent sets like Avatar or Edge of Eternities, from a mechanics standpoint, TMNT is a bit on the light side, opting to bring back keywords—even renaming some—instead of big new systems like how Warp or the bending styles worked. That said, 2026’s debut Universes Beyond set still looks to be bringing some tubular cards and product to the table on March 6.
First up, let’s take a look at the different abilities that will be making up your radical decks with this set, including the likes of “Sneak,” “Alliance,” “Disappear,” and Mutagen Tokens. Both Alliance and Disappear are returning mechanics, originally appearing in Streets of New Capenna and Aether Revolt respectively, though you may recognize “Disappear” under its other name of “Revolt.” Alliance triggers via an ETB effect whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, and Disappear on the flip side triggers when a permanent you control leaves the battlefield (making it great for blink decks).
Sneak, while new, feels like the estranged sibling of Ninjutsu—the Venus de Milo, if you will. Similar to Ninjutsu, whenever a creature isn’t blocked, you are able to swap out that creature with a card by casting its Sneak cost from their hand, with sorceries and other non-creature spells featuring this new keyword this time around. Cards like “Michelangelo, Improviser” take advantage of this to great effect, allowing you to not only bring him out, but also any other creature or land out all for only 2GG, and will be great additions to any decks that rock Whispersilk Cloaks, Rogue’s Passages, or any of the other plethora of cards that make creatures unblockable.
As someone who has built a counter-focused deck running things like Parallel Lives and Doubling Season, the new Mutagen artifact token is particularly exciting. Based on the ooze that turned simple baby turtles and a rat into ninja masters with an unhealthy obsession with pizza, each Mutagen token can be sacrificed to put a +1/+1 counter on a target creature. It’s only appropriate then that “The Ooze” cards allow you to create more of these tokens whenever a creature that has +1/+1 counters on it already leaves the battlefield, or allow you to tap the card to exile a card from a graveyard and create a token too. My counter deck will no doubt be dining on turtle soup with cards like that once the set releases.
As mentioned earlier, this is the second time a set will be set in the real-world New York City location, so I was curious how the team was approaching its depiction here with heroes in the half-shell compared to the webhead and his rogues’ gallery.
Speaking with Crystal, the narrative lead for the set, she explains the approach was “the New York you visit (Spider-Man) versus the New York you are from or live in (TMNT).” Spider-Man showed off the more inspiring and beautiful sides of the city, with its sprawling skylines and towering buildings, while a big focus of TMNT has been showing off the beloved city in a more homey and lived-in state, where spaces are repurposed with a heavy emphasis on really nailing the lighting. Treatments like the Vanish Lands, depicting areas the brothers were just at, or the beautiful full-art rooftop lands showing them leaping from one rooftop to the next in the shadows, are particularly striking. The artists on this set have aced the assignment.
One of my biggest surprises from the preview came from the inspiration behind the lone Commander deck, the five-color “Turtle Power” pre-con. Among the many types of media that the turtles have battled Shredder and the Foot Clan across, my personal favorite has been the video games, and it is this legacy of media that Wizards have used as the main inspiration for the deck. Cards like “Level Up,” “Arcade Cabinet,” “High Score,” and the nightmare-inducing “Electric Seaweed” from the original NES title being featured in the decklist are just some of the new cards that drive home this nostalgic trip to the past from when video rental stores were still commonplace.
This precon also lets players pick from the largest number of possible commanders in potentially the entire product line’s history, with you able to pick from either a single five-color card featuring all four of the turtles, or a combination of Leonard and any of his brothers or his master as a companion. It’s just a bummer that TMNT is only getting a single precon (seriously, where is my Foot Clan / villains deck?!), but there are a good number of new goodies crammed into this deck with 40+ brand-new cards, and at least we are getting one at all, right? (looks at Avatar).
Aside from the Commander deck, the turtles’ lineup is packed like a Pizza Hut during “Book It” month from the ’90s. Along with the standard fare of Play and Collector boosters and bundles, a special bundle coming in a pizza box will also be released that comes with the special pizza-themed lands, but players will also be able to snag a brand-new sort of product that lets up to four players don the colored bandanas of the brothers to deal with the likes of Krang and Shredder in a cooperative battle.
In the Turtle Team-Up box, each brother has their own unique deck along with the chosen boss, with unique cards that are only compatible in this mode, but cards like “Turtle Tracks” are more selective group hug, which reads “Any number of target players may each search their library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield under their control, then shuffle.” The goal is to provide a new way to introduce new players to the game, allowing experienced players to serve as a sort of Splinter-mentor figure in a more welcoming cooperative sewerscape to learn in. I enjoy playing two-headed giant games with my friends, so I hope this product does well and we get more in the future, allowing me to build a solid deck around this more targeted group-hug style of gameplay.
My older brother and I grew up with our toy boxes full of Ninja Turtles, and I have fond memories of having my friends sleep over and renting the best TMNT game, Turtles in Time (SNES). It’s still wild to me to see the brothers jumping around Magic cards now, but I’m also still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have a kid while I sit and theorycraft my next Magic deck. This new set looks chock-full of fun for fans of any generation of the turtles, and the new Turtle Team-Up game looks to be a great new way to teach hesitant friends what’s so great about this hobby of ours. And isn’t hanging out with our friends what Turtle Power is all about at the end of the day? That and pizza.
Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.
Embark Studios is keeping its promise to take action against players who took advantage of duplication exploits and other glitches in Arc Raiders by issuing warnings and suspensions.
The developer behind the popular survival shooter offered an update for its ongoing cheater crackdown with a blog post on its website. While its efforts to stamp out nefarious Raiders began last month, the message arrives as a sign that it shows no signs of slowing anytime soon.
Embark promised to subject those who utilized exploits to “further review and possible penalties” with the launch of last week’s 1.15.0 update. Today’s message follows up on that promise, offering a detailed explanation as to why it’s taken the team some time to issue a response. Now that reports of exploit usage have been confirmed and their impact on the in-game Arc Raiders economy has been measured, the studio is ready to act.
“We want to act once, with intention, and with confidence that we’re doing the right thing,” Embark said. “This is the first time we’ve handled an incident of this nature at such scale in ARC Raiders. Rather than rushing, we chose to take the time needed to fully understand the situation and make sure our response was consistent with our values and expectations.”
Players who took advantage of glitches such as the dupe exploit to a limited degree could find a warning on their accounts as soon as today and through the next week. At least one Reddit user has already shared such a notification, telling them that “continued use of exploits could lead to a suspension.”
Embark added that any Coins tied to dupe activity have also been removed. For “severe cases,” or instances where exploit usage had a notable impact on other players’ experiences, players could receive an immediate ban. It’s unclear how many warnings or suspensions Embark plans to deal through the week, or how long suspensions will be. The Arc Raiders team tells players to report new exploits and glitches on its official Discord.
“It’s our hope that this response provides a platform for future action, and we’ve already improved our detection and tracking, internal review tools, and safeguards to limit the impact of similar exploits,” the message continues.
“We take this incident seriously, and we’re approaching it as both a corrective effort and a learning opportunity to strengthen the systems that support fair play.”
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
Early copies of Resident Evil Requiem have been glimpsed in the wild — meaning it is now time to take action to avoid spoilers, fans have warned, such as the ultimate fate of Leon S. Kennedy in Capcom’s hugely anticipated game.
Requiem has been pitched by Capcom as a special title in the series — one that returns to the franchise’s origins to wrap up long-standing plotlines and feature fan-favorite characters — such as Leon, of course, but also what appears to be Sherry — as part of a much-anticipated return to Raccoon City.
As the franchise celebrates its 30th anniversary, Resident Evil Requiem is believed by some fans to likely be the final time we see or play as some of these characters, as Capcom moves its franchise forward. (Also, hot uncle Leon is one thing, but hot grandad Leon seems less believable.)
All of which is to say that there’s a particular level of concern around Resident Evil Requiem plot leaks — with some fans now saying they will be avoiding social media fully for the foreseeable future.
“I can personally verify there is at least one person out there who bought Resident Evil Requiem from a store selling early,” wrote noted Resident Evil leaker Dusk Golem, who repeatedly stated that Leon was in the game months before Capcom made it official. “Funnily enough someone I vaguely know & have talked to a few times, no spoilers out there yet but brace yourselves.”
The account then shared a link to an image of a boxed PlayStation 5 copy of Resident Evil Requiem, seemingly out in the wild.
I can personally verify there is at least one person out there who bought Resident Evil Requiem from a store selling early, funnily enough someone I vaguely know & have talked to a few times, no spoilers out there yet but brave yourselves.https://t.co/xoDURKOWVw
— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) February 17, 2026
As ever, the best advice to avoid spoilers is simply to avoid the internet as much as you can before next week, but particularly to be careful of YouTube and Twitch comments where people spread spoilers in chat. Muting keywords on social media is also recommended.
Resident Evil Requiem’s February 27 release date is now just 10 days away, and we’ll be keeping spoiler free here on IGN as much as possible.
“After getting hands-on with a total of about four hours of Resident Evil 9 Requiem at this point, and sharing that experience with colleagues, I’m more excited for the series than I have been in recent memory,” IGN wrote after going hands-on with Resident Evil Requiem recently. “It’s the old mixed with the new, but all in a modern package with two protagonists I already like a lot.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
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.
I felt like I was making real decisions at 200 miles per hour, not just button mashing.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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…”
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!
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#dothackpic.twitter.com/J5nrgnXU83
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.
We already knew that Activision had decided to walk away from Warzone Mobile — the publisher admitted last May that it “unfortunately has not met [Activision’s] expectations” — but now we have a specific date as to when the smartphone battle royale will be taken offline.
In a brief statement posted to its official website, the team thanked players for their “dedication and passion,” and said “as a final step in the previously communicated service changes to Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, the servers for Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile will go offline on April 17, 2026, after which the game will no longer be available for play.”
Up until that time, players can still play and “engage with existing content,” but refunds are not available for any unused COD Points or previously purchased in-game content, so you’re advised to use them up before the game shutdowns in April.
Mobile fans are encouraged to migrate to the free-to-play Call of Duty: Mobile — a different game, albeit with a confusingly similar title — “which offers franchise-favorite game modes, including Battle Royale, Multiplayer, and Zombies, as well as the new extraction-based DMZ: Recon.
“The standalone Call of Duty: Mobile delivers frequent seasonal content updates that include Ranked Play, Events, and the tier-based Battle Pass rewards system offering,” the team explained. “Call of Duty: Mobile is available to download through Google Play and Apple’s App Store. Additionally, Call of Duty: Warzone is available on PC and console and is also free to play.”
Warzone Mobile launched in March 2024 on iOS and Android as a Warzone-specific Call of Duty mobile experience that offered battle royale for up to 120 players, with cross-progression to the PC and console versions of Warzone, Modern Warfare 2 and 3, and, later in the year, Black Ops 6. It struggled right out of the gate, though, and failed to make a mark with “mobile-first players like it has with PC and console audiences,” leading to Activision’s decision to cull it just a little over a year later.
IGN’s Call of Duty Warzone Mobile review returned an 8/10. We said: “Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile includes all the best elements of Warzone, while speeding up and streamlining matches and using cross-progression to make this a meaningful extension of the traditional experience.”
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.
It’s been almost a year since Assassin’s Creed Shadows released, and Ubisoft is not done updating its feudal Japan-set stabathon. This month brings the addition of a manual jump option, alongside two other fan-requested changes.
As part of the 1.1.8 update going live today, February 17, Ubisoft will add a manual jump option to the game (if you’ve toggled on your Advanced Parkour setting), which returns from previous titles in the series.
Two other small additions are also set to become available: a detailed stat page so you can analyze your build in granular detail, and some visual improvements to when you make a critical hit. All of these changes had been requested by fans, so are likely to be positively received.
That said, this is a pretty small set of additions that look like the game’s only major update across the first three months of this year. Update 1.1.7 launched back in December, capping off a first nine months of post-release additions that had arrived pretty much every month.
Today’s update to Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the first notable addition to the game of 2026, and according to a Winter Roadmap released by Ubisoft looks to be the only one coming ahead of the game’s March 20 anniversary, which the company will celebrate with a livestream and giveaways. Here’s hoping we hear more of what’s coming to the game in its second year then.
The only other item of note before then is the Switch 2 launch of the game’s Claws of Awaji expansion, which caps off the game’s main narrative and now looks to be the only major expansion the game will get. It’s hard not to compare the level of support for Shadows with that for the series’ previous game Valhalla, which received three major expansions, an Odyssey crossover DLC, an epilogue DLC and several major new modes, and feel like Shadows has been underserved in comparison.
