When I played Escape From Tarkov for the first time in 2018, I remember being captivated by its obtuse, insanely challenging structure. Like PUBG was to the battle royale genre, this promising prototype of an extraction shooter had so many unique elements going for it that made me absolutely certain it would be the next big thing, even if it was sometimes completely broken in its Early Access state. All these years later, now finally hitting 1.0, it’s pretty shocking how much has changed while it also remains exactly as exasperating as I remember it. The hands-off approach to onboarding that forces newcomers to beat their heads against its unforgiving mechanics for dozens of hours before claiming even a single victory captures the same relentless challenge I’ve always adored, while other frustrations, like its continued bugs, poor technical performance, and inability to address an abundance of cheaters, remains disappointingly worse than ever. I’ve only spent 30 hours with the 1.0 version so far, which (as any veteran player will surely tell you) is no time at all, but right now it feels like this progenitor may have been left in the dust of the genre it spawned.

Escape From Tarkov isn’t just the original standalone extraction shooter, but also the one most fanatically adherent to the ruthless principles on which the genre was founded. Not only are you thrown into a deadly hellscape filled with lethal NPCs and merciless human opponents, but you’re given absolutely no guidance in your quest for survival and loot. Practically none of the progression systems are explained to you, there’s no map for you to look at while out in the field to indicate where the extraction points are, and you could easily spend tens of hours studying weapon attachments and ammo types just to understand how the heck to use the tools of death you’ll find in your journey.

In some ways, I really admire how unrepentant Tarkov is – its beautifully exacting game design, and the sense of discovery that takes place across hundreds of lessons learned the hard way can be incredibly rewarding. But then there are times where it’s all just so dang frustrating, like how atrociously the UI and menus are organized, as if they were designed specifically to offend you. Whether or not the payoff of finally feeling comfortable enough to bring your best equipment out and try for a proper extraction is worth it will ultimately depend on couple things: your tolerance for pain, and your drive to master something designed to really test your expertise of systems Tarkov refuses to teach you. At least in these early hours with 1.0, I find myself somewhere in the middle of enamoured by its harsh edges and utterly disgusted by outdated design choices.

Unfortunately, the intentionally punishing design is marred by completely unintentional issues that have made this full launch that much harder to enjoy. The servers so far have been incredibly unreliable, with regular disconnects and wait times greater than 15 minutes to get into a match, and cheaters are very prevalent since accounts and items can be sold for real money in the gray market. As a result, I decided to spend most of my time this first week just focusing on the PvE mode for the sake of my sanity.

There’s also the matter of just how bad this thing looks and performs by the standards of the day. I remember thinking Escape from Tarkov already didn’t look great when I last revisited it, and coming back to it again a few years later has not done it any favors. Objects in the environment are blurry and low res, and with the exception of the vendors you’ll chat with as you complete quests, human faces look like they were modeled using the monster-generator that is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’s character creator. It’ll take me a while before I’ve played enough to call this review final, so hopefully developer Battlestate Games will smooth out the worst of these issues before they drive me insane, but it’s been an incredibly rocky start.

Anyway, I should get back to it – between the PvE mode, PvP mode, and Arena, I’ve got plenty more to see and do before I can make a recommendation either way. For now, diving back into this influential, daunting game has been equal parts fascinating and irksome, but I’m looking forward to going as deep down the rabbit hole as I can.

Godfall developer Counterplay Games reportedly shut down earlier this year, so seeing it suddenly reappear with Armatus, a full-blown roguelite shooter coming to PC and consoles in 2026, might be somewhat of a shock.

A trailer, including everything from far-along cinematics and tense gameplay, materialized during today’s November 2025 Xbox Partner Preview. It’s undeniably got that Godfall flair to it, as its main character can be seen smashing and blasting their way through a post-post-apocalyptic Paris.

It’s not often a game developer seemingly closes down only to reemerge months later with a brand-new video game for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S. We sat down with Counterplay studio head and creative director Ming Zhang to learn more about Armatus, its roguelike gameplay, and what it’s been like for the team to continue its work when those rumors were kicked up. You can see the full interview below.

IGN: To set the stage, tell me about Armatus and this trailer we’re going to see. What are players looking at in this first trailer?

Ming Zhang: What you see in this trailer is snippets of gameplay, largely with a little bit of cinematic footage from our game. You know, it’s been a number of years in the making, and this is Counterplay’s next entry in our love of visceral combat. You see some of the abilities, some of the enemies, and some of the cool moves that you’re going to be you’re going to be able to do, in this case.

What can you tell me, in a little more detail, about its gameplay, its story, and, especially, the world it takes place in?

Zhang: It’s a third-person roguelite shooter, and in order to build the world, what we did, is we took the concept of urban fantasy, which is the grim supernatural underneath the real world, and we took it to the nines. What happens in the post-post-apocalypse of an urban fantasy world? Well, you know, the real world kind of starts to break apart, and underneath, all the supernatural stuff starts to spill forth, right? When you think about, ‘What is a city that evokes classic but also modern, and has all the right tone and tambre, even un-supernatural?’ It would be Paris. Starting from there, we then said, ‘Well, what is the kind of character that we would have bring here? We wanted to create the supernatural character, who was powerful and had access to these celestial abilities that you would be able to use, but we also wanted to take the sound and fury of modern firearms and put that in the hands of this supernatural being. So, you’ve got the magic and the firepower, and put it together.

I saw The Vanishing is what triggered this Paris to look like this. What can you tell me about that event and how it resulted in something like that?

Zhang: There’s something about the word spoiler that is coming up (laughs), so you’ll have to, you’ll have to play and find out, but it is the pivotal event. That kicks off the game.

That’s totally fair. You talked about it a little bit there, but what else is it about Paris that makes it the location you go to for this instead of somewhere else around the world?

Zhang: Paris just has incredible visuals, as a city. Again, when you think urban fantasy, it’s impossible to avoid a lot of the gothic undertones. The architecture of the city already evokes the emotions that we wanted from those from the supernatural side of the world, so combining that real world with the supernatural was a big part of the setting as well.

I’m curious if you can tell us more about the different tools players will have at their disposal. Are there different guns, weapon modifiers, or abilities? What can we generally look forward to?

Zhang: This is a run-based game, and the primary, I say, means of combat that the player has is, of course, your gun. So, you have your gun, you will be able to shoot it, but you also have a melee weapon at your disposal, and you have several locomotion kits and several abilities that you will be able to pick. One of the things that was really important to us was that players do this thing that we internally call ‘creative expression through combat,’ where not only is it that, you have all these amazing tools that you can use in your in your player kit, it’s that you get to customize the player kit that you’re taking on the run as you play each run. Just as it’s important to have visceral fidelity in the gameplay, it was important for us to have the build craft to go along with it.

Armatus is described as a third-person, roguelite shooter. Are there any specific games that inspired Counterplay when crafting its gameplay?

Zhang: We have a lot of references, as all game designers do. I think you’ll have to play and discover all the references, but I think fans of the genre will be very pleased with what we have to offer.

I don’t know if maybe you’d have the same answer, then, for some of the different movies, books, and games or shows that inspired the story and universe this takes place in?

Zhang: Well, one of the things that we always look for at Counterplay, and we’ve done this since the beginning, was interesting genre blends. Without getting you know too nerdy (laughs), we always look for combinations. We always look for the chocolate and peanut butter or whatnot, and so I think a lot of the fun in doing that is for our players to figure it out on on their own, but I think you’ll see the inspirations worn pretty heavily on our sleeves.

Roguelite, I think, is a term that a lot of people hear, and they feel like if they’ve played one, they’ve played them all. What does Armatus do to stand apart from other rogue lights and shooters?

Zhang: I tend to think of roguelite as a design framework. It’d be like saying, ‘If you played one RPG, you played them all.’ The design framework is the thing that you scaffold the game on top of, but it’s not the only thing in the game. As we emphasized, our game really sings when you get into the combat. Creative expression through combat is a core pillar of what we wanted to do. If you came into this game and you just wanted to slaughter demons using abilities and guns and melee, this is the game for you, and if you wanted to be the kind of person who strategically picks every single upgrade in order to hit the perfect combination and eradicate rooms that way, this is also the game for you. So that’s kind of how we think about it.

How long is your average run going to be? Is this the kind of thing where you can play quick run before bed, or do you really need to sit down and lock in for hours and hours?

Zhang: We’re still working on the game, so I prefer not to give a number at this at this point, but what I will say is, like many games that have come before and after, both in the third-person action genre, as well as the roguelite genre, the choices that you make have a big impact on how much you can do.

I think at the end of the trailer, you tease a boss fight. I’m not looking for specifics here, but are bosses something players can look forward to in Armatus, and what can you tell me about them?

Zhang: Yeah, bosses are definitely a part of the game. Thank you for that. Bosses are definitely a part of the game, and we call them Greater Demons. What they represent is, if you think of the demonic incursion that’s happening in Paris, in the post-apocalypse that we talked about, the Greater Demons are the ones that anchor. They’re more solid than the other ones. They’re bigger, they’re scarier, they are figures of nightmare, and I think players will have a great time being killed and killing them as well.

So would you call Armatus a particularly difficult game, then, or is that in the hands of the player through different options?

Zhang: I think that’s going to be up to the player, but I guess you’ll have to wait and see on that one, too.

What are some of the lessons the team learned from, specifically, Godfall, because it’s really easy to compare these two, that the team brought into the development of Armatus?

Zhang: I think the biggest one is this: Coming out of Godfall, one of the things we consistently received feedback on, and it was almost all positive, but basically the big discussion point was the starting point in the game felt almost primordial. Then, as you unlocked moves in the skill tree, suddenly you were doing this and you were doing that. The combat in that game felt like a conversation with the developers. Again, I’m paraphrasing, you know, one or two reviews here, but that was a major source of feedback we got across the board. Fans really resonated with the dynamic combat that we had in Godfall, and they really liked this conversation with the developer-style of play that they had. So as we moved into our next project, we said, ‘Hey, we did it for melee. Can we pull it off for shooters as well?’ So we took that, and that’s where this emphasis on build craft comes from.

I saw a lot of rumors earlier this year that Counterplay had shut down, and sitting here now, that’s obviously not the case. So, I’m curious if you have any comment on that situation you’d like to share, and more specifically, what it’s been like for the studio to see those rumors swirl while knowing full well that Counterplay’s next game is very much still in development, despite that.

Zhang: I think most of the studio was too busy working on the game (laughs) to really pay attention to rumours that don’t really apply to their day-to-day. I think the only comment I really have on it is, the announcement and future release of Armatus is a celebration of Counterplay Games, of our camaraderie, and this team that has gone through thick and thin together. It means the world to us that players are going to be able to see this game. They’re going to play it, and we think that people are going to have a lot of fun. So, my comment is, go play Armatus, and then you can tell us how you feel about, right? (laughs)

Moving back to the game itself, I couldn’t tell based on the trailer alone. Is this an entirely single-player experience, or are there any multiplayer elements, even scoreboards, or anything like that?

Zhang: It’s a single-player game, and as for features, again, we’re, we’re still in development, so wait and find out.

I get it. It’s hard to talk about these things when the pieces are always moving, I’m sure.

Zhang: I think it’s harder not to talk about these things, right? That’s kind of the challenge here.

PC, PlayStation, and Xbox versions are on the way, but I also saw that a Nintendo Switch 2 version is in development. Were there any challenges in bringing Armatus to that console, and is the Switch 2 version expected to launch at the same time as other platforms?

Zhang: Yes, they are all expected to launch together. The challenge with these things is always optimization, but if you’ve seen Godfall, a PlayStation 5 launch title, you know that, if there’s one thing that we do well, it’s optimizing game systems.

Is there anything about Armatus that you want to talk about or that you want players to know now that they’re finally seeing what this looks like?

This game is a love letter to action combat in all its forms. It’s a love letter to the urban fantasy, gothic horror inspirations that we see in so many games and fiction all over, and the thing that is most important to us here at Counterplay is for players to see this letter that we’ve written. So, I can come up here and yammer about systems and features all day long, and all I would be doing is making promises to the audience, but the promise I will make is that if you play our game, you’re going to have a really great experience of butchering all these demons.

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).

Reanimal, the upcoming co-op horror game from the creators of Little Nightmares, now has a release date announced at the Xbox Partner Presents. It’s coming out on February 13, 2026 for Xbox, PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

We got a look at a new trailer today during the presentation, which showed off the pair of siblings you play as traveling through some new locations.

Reanimal is incredibly unsettling, as is fitting for the Little Nightmares folks. First announced at Gamescom 2024, you play as a brother and sister trying to rescue their missing friends. You’ll solve environmental puzzles and travel both by land and boat on this quest, haunted by horrible monsters and pieces of the childrens’ past.

The good news is, if you don’t have a friend to play with, you can play Reanimal in single-player, as well as with both local and online co-op.

You can catch up on everything announced at today’s Partner Showcase right here.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.