Games and gear for when you’re not playing Silksong.
Switch 2 is nearly three months old now, and we’re on the cusp of the mad Q3/4 rush as publishers gear up to extract your pennies over the holiday season, which is just a few months away.
Switch 2 is slowly, steadily building a library, and there’s still more Switch 1 games coming than we know what to do with. And with the launch Silksong — finally! — there’s loads to be playing even if you haven’t yet picked up Nintendo’s latest system.
Prepare for a deep dive on 007 First Light! During this special State of Play, the development team at IO Interactive declassifies new gameplay on James Bond’s upcoming espionage action-adventure thrill ride.
Catch the show live on PlayStation’s Twitch and YouTube channels on September 3 at 11am PT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST.
In this upcoming State of Play, tune in for over 30 minutes of gameplay featuring a playthrough of Bond’s first mission as an MI6 recruit. The action includes everything from high-speed car chases to on-foot stealth sequences and shootouts. Stay tuned after the playthrough for insights from IO Interactive on the intense espionage gameplay.
We can’t wait to show you what the team has been cooking up on September 3.
Escape from Tarkov is finally emerging from an early access period that will have lasted nearly a decade, when its full release on November 15th rolls around, and you’ll soon be able to grab it on Steam.
Yep, it’s taken yeaaaaarrrssss. Tarkov’s initial alpha release came on August 4th, 2016, just a few days before No Man’s Sky arrived for the first time, and just after a little game called Stardew Valley dropped. Think about what you were doing back then. I was a teenager, still far from the job-having husk I’ve since morphed into.
A nine-minute slice of Battlefield 6‘s battle royale mode has leaked online.
Despite presumably signing NDAs, participants in Battlefield’s closed beta environment, Battlefield Labs, are continuing to share snippets of their experiences. This particular video from Misako_Mikato_01 on bilibili not only gives a good look at what to expect from the mode, but also reveals a couple of gameplay mechanics we didn’t previously know about, too.
As highlighted on the Gaming Leaks and Rumours subreddit, Misako_Mikato’s video confirms players can swim, go underwater, and shoot from within the water, reveals the ladder gadget apparently has two modes — one as a ramp, another as a ladder — and there’s a “massive map.”
The video kicks off from when the player picks their loadout and departs the jumpship, landing in a built-up area on the shore. We see them swimming and later pulling out a sledgehammer to knock down what appears to be a public bathroom in real-time. Apparently the ruckus gets unwanted attention, though, although they seemingly sacrifice themselves to go back into the sky, this time moving in-land and visiting a fancy, if ransacked, villa. Cue the sledgehammer again.
Commenters seem quite impressed by the video.
“I know many Warzone players that will be happy to finally have a serious [battle royale] alternative,” said one viewer. “This could, potentially, pull in a large amount of players. If they stay depends on how good it will be.” Another added: “If this Battle Royale retains the destruction from the base game, it has the chance to be the most dynamic [battle royale] of all time. That destruction will make every game feel different.”
We’re having a great time with what we’ve played so far, writing in our Battlefield 6 review-in-progress: “Right now, even in beta form, Battlefield 6 might be the most fun shooter I’ve played this year.”
Don’t forget that from now until October 7 — Battlefield 6’s launch day — EA has a “wave of content” planned for Battlefield 2042, including a free new pass “celebrating the legacy of Battlefield,” new hardware, and a reimagining of the fan favorite Iwo Jima map. As you progress through the ‘Road to Battlefield 6’ pass, you can expect 50 exclusive cross-rewards, including 20 for Battlefield 6 that will be ready for you on launch day, on which you can also expect big changes to player movement, maps, modes, and player counts.
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.
Stardew Valley will get at least one more significant game update, says Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, mere months after stating that he doesn’t “want to just be the Stardew Valley guy.” It’ll be called update 1.7, and the trimness of the numbering implies that it’ll be a large one. For context, Stardew Valley update 1.6 brought eight player PC co-op, new crops, a lot more NPC dialogue, a mastery system, new pets, and the ability to give those pets hats (which caused a few problems).
Team Cherry have confirmed release times and price points for Hollow Knight: Silksong. It’ll cost $19.99, €19.99 and ¥2300 at launch on Thursday 4th September, with pricing for other regions such as the UK to follow. As an indication, the above pricepoints equate to around £17, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they charged £19.99 for it, purely for the sake of symmetry.
It’s traditional among games journalists to illustrate pricepoints in terms of high street chain cups of coffee. But this is Silksong, a game anticipated as fervently as the ancient Mayans once anticipated the coming of an eclipse, so I will resort to more ornate means of comparison: Silksong will cost you 4200000th as much as a B-52 Stratofortress. It will cost you three-sixteenths of your soul on a rainy Friday, or two-sixteenths if the sun is out. It will cost you considerably less than they could probably charge for it. I’m not saying we should be grateful, mind, but we can breathe a sigh of a relief that this isn’t being published by EA, Take-Two or Microsoft.
We are mere days away from the Switch 2’s next big port, with Star Wars Outlaws gearing up for a hyperspace exit on 4th September. Ubisoft has been pretty shy with Switch 2 footage so far (bar a sizzle reel appearance in the console’s reveal Direct, and another brief look back in July), and if initial impressions are to be believed, there might be a good reason for that.
Outlaws’ Switch 2 port has arrived at PAX West, giving all those in attendance the first chance to see how Kay Vess’ planet-hopping adventure fares on the new Nintendo hardware. One such person to go hands-on with the game was GVG‘s Steve Bowling, who, despite revealing that Ubisoft allowed no direct-feed capture or over-the-shoulder recording during the preview, assembled his thoughts into a YouTube video. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t sound great.
The fate of PlayStation’s upcoming live-service game Fairgames is once again under scrutiny as its creative director, Daniel Drapeau, has confirmed he has left Haven Studios to join Warner Bros. Games Montreal.
“As of this week, I joined WB Games Montreal Inc. as creative director,” Drapeau announced in a LinkedIn post. “I can’t wait to start this wonderful adventure with all the great people here at the studio. I also want to particularly thank Yves Lachance, Logan A. Lesage, and Bryan Theberge for their trust and support throughout the process. Now, let’s do this!”
The news follows a rocky time for the game’s development, and incorrect industry speculation surrounding its future. Last month, analyst Michael Pachter wrongly claimed the game had been canceled, though was later forced to walk back his statement and admit he had “no info on the game at all.”
Neither Haven nor Sony have commented publicly on Drapeau’s departure.
Firewalk, you’ll remember, was the studio behind Concord, one of the biggest disasters in PlayStation history. Just a couple of weeks after it launched to eye-wateringly low player numbers, Sony decided to kill the game entirely and shortly thereafter shut down its development studio.
The Concord flop came after Sony had already canceled Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game. And earlier this year, Sony reportedly canceled two unannounced live-service games, one a God of War title in development at Bluepoint, the other in the works at Days Gone developer Bend.
On the flip side, Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2 has been a breakout hit, and became the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks.
Fairgames — stylized as Fairgame$ — is described as “a competitive modern heist game where you team up to break into exotic locations and steal the cargo.” The twist is that you not only need to outsmart guards and security systems, but you also need to compete against other teams, too. There’s no word yet on when it’ll launch.
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.
And I looked, and behold a pale hornet: and the game that came with her was Silksong, and release delays followed after. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of Steam, to kill with needle, and with thread, and with parrying, and with the bugs of the earth.
This week, the Maw has the great pleasure of dining upon the frenziedly awaited sequel to Team Cherry’s metroidvania Hollow Knight. James saw it at Gamescom and deemed it “faster, prettier, and harder” but also, “safe”. FOOL. There can be no safety in the time of Silken singing. The past month has been a steady avalanche of new PC games noping the heck out of early September to avoid being stung to death by this deceptively tiny predator. Here are the projects that are standing their ground.
While there’s been a lot of rumors over the last few days — including a $20 price on Gamestop (since removed) that was later corroborated by noted leaker Billbil-kun — developer Team Cherry has now confirmed it, revealing the game will retail for $19.99 in the U.S., €19.99 in Europe, and ¥2300 in Japan.
That’s not all, either. The team also revealed exactly when we’ll get to play it, too: 7am PT, 10am ET, 4pm CEST, and 11pm JST.
Team Cherry finally revealed a release date for the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong at gamescom: September 4, 2025. We learned the news via a nearly two-minute new trailer dropped by Team Cherry, which showed a ton of new footage from the game. We see Hornet exploring, loads of new insectoid NPCs, dreary graveyards, swamps, a bustling city, new enemies, new bosses, an Ori-style escape sequence, and more. It’ll be available on PC, Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is currently the most wishlisted game on Steam, but is it actually fun to play? We tried out two levels from the Hollow Knight Silksong demo at gamescom 2025, Moss Grotto and Deep Docks. One was easy one, and one was very challenging, but does it live up to the hype? Find out in our Hollow Knight: Silksong preview from the show floor.
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.
