Polygon

During a series of in-person Xbox demos at the 2025 Summer Game Fest, I got the chance to play Gears of War: Reloaded on the company’s upcoming handheld: the ROG Xbox Ally X. The 7-inch screen looks gorgeous, and the game’s remaster is a stunner no matter what size screen it’s on (I also played it on some much bigger TV screens). But the most noticeable thing about the ROG Xbox Ally X was, unfortunately, how tired my forearms were after just 20 minutes of playing the Gears of War remaster.

Designing a handheld console is a tightrope walk. If I’m playing at home, I want a device that’s powerful enough to compete with my TV or gaming PC. If I’m lounging on the couch playing your Switch 2 or Steam Deck, there needs to be a reason why I’m not reaching over for the remote and just playing a game on the TV instead. For me, a handheld console also needs to be light enough that it feels truly portable — something you can throw into a purse or backpack and bring with you to a place where it won’t be competing directly with your TV or PC. So it needs to split the difference between being powerful enough to run contemporary AAA games and have them look great in comparison to your TV, and yet not so powerful that it weighs down your travel bag.

Most important of all, no matter where I’m playing it, a handheld needs to be comfortable to hold for hours at a time. The original Nintendo Switch was no trouble whatsoever; it would be ages before you even notice its minuscule weight (although you sure might notice how few contemporary AAA games it can run). On a Steam Deck, I might feel that weight much sooner, the impressive processing power aside. And if it’s the ROG Xbox Ally X — well, I haven’t played it for long enough to know for certain, but I have held it and played a game on it for about 20 minutes, and it was already an issue even in that short time.

Let’s talk ROG Xbox Ally X specs

The Xbox Ally comes in two versions, just like the Xbox Series X and S consoles: There’s a little one and a big one. As a proud owner of the Xbox Series S (which I lovingly refer to as “the baby Xbox”), I’ll probably be fine with the smaller Xbox Ally. But the main reason I’m saying that is actually the weight. Let’s get into the numbers, shall we?

ConsoleWeightNintendo Switch + Joy-Cons (2017)398 g (14.03 oz)Switch Lite275 g (9.7 oz)Switch OLED + Joy-Cons420 g (14.82 oz)LCD Steam Deck669 g (23.6 oz / 1.47 lbs)Steam Deck OLED640 g (22.58 oz / 1.41 lbs)Switch 2 + Joy-Cons534 g (18.84 oz / 1.18 lbs)Lenovo Legion Go (base module)640 g (1.41lbs)ROG Ally X (2024)678 g (23.84 oz / 1.49 lbs)ROG Xbox Ally670 g (1.48 lbs)ROG Xbox Ally X715 g (1.58 lbs)

Looking up all of these numbers after the Xbox event was a comfort to me, because it made me feel like I wasn’t imagining that the ROG Xbox Ally X was the heaviest one I’d ever held. It will be the heaviest handheld on the market, once it reaches all of us this holiday season. (I did talk to an Asus representative at the Xbox event and told him my concerns about its weight, but I fully recognize it’s probably too late for them to change it. Let it be known that I tried, though.)

What’s interesting about this is that it might not actually bother that many other people who aren’t me. This is a pretty subjective problem, and I would say it’s somewhat gendered as well. There were lots of other reporters at this event with me, the majority of them men. I overheard many of them praising the way the Xbox handheld felt in their hands — “just like an Xbox controller.” I can’t disagree there; it’s the right shape and absolutely does feel comfortable in terms of size and layout. But I wonder: Did any of those guys notice the weight? Or is that just a problem for somebody of my stature?

The thing is, people of my stature do actually also play video games. And I play a heck of a lot of them in handheld format; I’d say about 50% of the time I’m on a big screen, the other 50% in handheld. I’m still in LA at Summer Game Fest right now, but the first thing I’m going to do when I get home tomorrow night is open my Switch 2 box and play Mario Kart World — probably in handheld mode. And even though the Switch 2 is heavier than its predecessor, I bet I’m going to feel pretty relieved by how light it feels compared to the Xbox handheld I tried out yesterday.

Inside the ROG Xbox Ally X’s Windows OS

All that said, there’s a lot about the Xbox Ally that’s very impressive. Unlike the Steam Deck, it uses Windows, and the Linux users reading this aren’t going to want to hear what I’m about to say, but that’s going to be a preferable operating system for most people because it’s so much more familiar.

Over the years, I have managed to get quite a few games running on my Steam Deck that were not necessarily intended to run natively on that device, but it’s taken some serious fiddling. By contrast, the Xbox Ally has Steam and Battle.net icons that you can just click on, as well as Discord integration. I can already tell it’s going to be extremely simple to play tons of different games on there, without nearly as much fiddling as it took for me to get my Blizzard games working properly on my Steam Deck.

The Xbox handheld is clearly designed with power in mind. It’s heavy because it has a lot under the hood that helps games look great and run smoothly. That’s certainly going to help it compete with the Steam Deck as well, especially as that handheld is increasingly showing its age. Put all of that together and it could make for an impressive holiday launch, even in the same year as the Switch 2.

But every time I think about this device entering my home, I think about how my arms start to hurt when I’ve been playing the Steam Deck for too many hours in a row. I think about how I sometimes have to rest my arms on a pillow and even then, it’s not quite the right angle, and it’s kind of annoying. It’s not something that most buyers are even going to be aware of until they have the device in their hands, but if they’re anything like me in terms of size and arm strength, it’s going to be the very first thing they notice as soon as they take it out of the box. Microsoft can only hope that doesn’t result in them putting that device right back into that box and slapping a return label on it.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Stig Asmussen can finally breathe. The next game from the director of Star: Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor, one he and the team at his recently formed studio Giant Skull have worked on for more than a year, has been revealed as a giant AAA Dungeons & Dragons adventure. As he puts it, the deal between Giant Skull and Hasbro that finalized the actual direction of his project only just closed.

“It’s a big, big deal for both sides, and it takes a while,” Asmussen tells Polygon out of the 2025 Summer Game Fest. “It’s been a rollercoaster, and I think it was only a week and a half, two weeks ago that the ink was dried. And it was a huge exhale.”

When news broke that Asmussen was breaking out to form his own studio after stints at Sony (directing God of War 3) and Respawn overseeing the Jedi games, fans of his story-forward action RPGs rightfully perked up: a visionary was going off to do his own thing. In 2024, Asmussen founded Giant Skull, with plans to immediately set out to produce a “AAA single-player focused action adventure” utilizing Unreal Engine 5.

Spearheading the deal for Hasbro was Wizards of the Coast president John Hight — who goes way, way back with Asmussen. Hight thinks he met the game developer around 2006, when Asmussen was working on the original God of War. After years at 3DO, ERA, and Atari, Hight came to Sony to work in development on PlayStation Network and indie publishing. He eventually oversaw production on God of War 3, where he forged a creative relationship with Asmussen. When Hight left for Blizzard in 2011, where he worked on World of Warcraft and Diablo III, he always hoped there’d be another chance to work with Asmussen. The chance came when Hight landed at Wizards of the Coast in August 2024, and called Asmussen by December to check out what was cooking at Giant Skull.

“It’s tough when you’re starting a new company to get the team together and come up with an idea — but we had, and still do have, really good momentum,” Asmussen says. “John saw that and he’s like, ‘Hey, can you turn this into Wizards IP?’”

Hight says there were options on the table beyond Dungeons & Dragons — a Giant Skull AAA single-player Magic: The Gathering game was entirely plausible, if Asmussen had sparked to the idea — but the iconography and possibilities of D&D clicked for the Jedi: Survivor director. Asmussen says he’s felt the constraints of canon and lore working on Star Wars games, and there’s little of that pressure going into the D&D game. After a visit to Wizards HQ in February, to learn about future plans for the D&D brand and how his untitled game could sync up, he walked away feeling like he could do just about anything in “a brilliant world that can be dark, but it can also be whimsical, have levity to it.”

There’s no one way to do a D&D game, Hight says, and while the shadow of Baldur’s Gate 3 looms large (“Don’t get me wrong, we are going to do CRPGs that are going to be as serious as BG3”), the deal with Giant Skull is about unleashing a new set of creatives into the sandbox. Being “faithful” to the property is really about doing right by the imaginations of the players.

“We have 50 years of DMs coming together and creating their own campaigns, and we’ve provided templates for hundreds and hundreds of monsters in D&D,” Hight says. “The things that form the dreams and the nightmares of people, from gelatinous cubes to owl bears. So it’s really important that any manifestation of them in a game be as good as what’s in our own minds. That’s a tall order. And I think about what Stig and Patrick Murphy did on God of War 3, taking that pantheon of both gods and the crazy monsters from mythology and bringing them to life. It’s like, wow, what if we could unleash them on D&D?”

So what did Hight see at Giant Skull that inspired a major AAA gamble on a new studio? In his mind, unparalleled precision. While Asmussen’s game is likely years away — and only now will work start on turning it into an extension of D&D —  Giant Skull has already crafted a model for single-player action that has built on all the team’s years honing combat and movement.

“We’re experts at melee combat, so that’s something that John got to see and it translates very well [to D&D],” Asmussen says. For Giant Skull, “momentum” is a philosophy more than a lucky gain — Asmussen is fine to admit that “there’s probably still legacy debt that’s in the Jedi games from bad decisions that we made early on. Some of those bad decisions were based on momentum because we don’t get stuck. We just want to keep on moving forward.” Always refining, always innovating.

“When we started Giant Skull and we started with vanilla Unreal — we couldn’t take what we did with the Jedi games over to a new company,” Asmussen says. “So all of those mistakes that we had made before weren’t there. We had a clean slate and we were able to build very quickly based on all of our learnings over the years before. That’s allowed us to create a motion model that’s so much faster now, so much more fluid. And it doesn’t have points where you get blocked because you don’t understand how to fix jank. It’s buttery smooth.”

Giant Skull has started its new project at the character level, and Hight felt for himself how playing the game would feel in the environments. “It’s this subtlety of control of a character that, honestly, many developers don’t discover until quite late in the finishing process,” he says. “They’ll build out these entire worlds and then you get to move the character around and it just doesn’t feel right. I think from the get go, [Giant Skull] had already been exploring that and it’s amazing.”

Neither Hight nor Asmussen were ready to talk about specific D&D elements to expect from the game or even core mechanics (though Asmussen did promise me you’ll be able to press a button to jump). It’s all too early to say — which is exactly where Hight wants Asmussen and Giant Skull to be at this stage.

“He always goes to find the fun first,” Hight says of his longtime collaborator. “And sometimes people immediately latch on to, oh, here’s the story we have to do and here are all the features that we want in the game. They start building out broadly without discovering: what’s the underlying thing that’s fun?”

In the announcement of their deal with Giant Skull, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast specifically promised that the untitled game would deliver not just “immersive storytelling” and “heroic combat” but also “exhilarating traversal.” Asmussen can’t help but laugh at the hype-speak, but it’s also true — and fundamental to nailing that underlying fun this early in the development process.

“Traversal is really important to us,” he says. “Giving the player a suite of different ways to probe and interact with the environment, and eventually build their character up to a point where they’re dominating the environment. It all has to feel silky smooth.”

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The Crooked Moon, Legends of Avantris’ folk-horror setting for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, became the game’s most successful crowdfunding campaign to date, earning more than $4 million on Kickstarter. Ahead of the book’s June 16 release on D&D Beyond, Polygon spoke with Legends of Avantris lead writer and creative director Mikey Gilder to get some exclusive details on two of the species the Crooked Moon setting will introduce, and hear the latest track in a musical series focused on Crooked Moon’s villains.

The most popular species among Crooked Moon backers and early playersis the harvestborn — constructs crafted by the lords of the rustic province of Enoch to tend to their fertile farmlands.

“There are a lot of standard high-fantasy species options, so when we were going to do a folk-horror campaign, it had to get weird,” Gilder told Polygon in a video call. “Two of the biggest themes and settings in folk horror are agrarian communities and the deep, dark woods, so you had to be able to play a scarecrow.”

A harvestborn’s glowing head might be made from a pumpkin, turnip, or burlap sack, and as constructs, they don’t need to breathe, eat, drink, or sleep. The designers originally imagined them as dark creatures associated with fear, but as they developed the world, they instead opted to connect them more closely with harvests and the cycle of growth, death, and rebirth. That grants harvestborn both a culling power, which can do extra damage to creatures that are already seriously injured, and a healing power, drawing on the strength of the land.

Another spooky option is the ratlike plagueborn from the province of Bubonia, which is covered in a pestilent haze and controlled by competing guilds.

“We really wanted to lean hard into the themes of plague and pestilence and medieval Dark Ages tropes,” Gilder said. “Obviously, people love plague doctors. It’s a classic [thing] that people cosplay as, and also ties into the Halloween vibes.”

Plagueborn are both resistant to poison and able to inflict disease on those they attack.

“This pestilence is part of their soul, and they are able to harness this magic,” Gilder said. “All of these species can be quite dangerous. There’s a lot of different options for plagueborn villains, just as there are for plagueborn heroes.”

Villains are a huge focus for Crooked Moon, which introduces 12 major antagonists for adventuring parties to face, including a group of twisted former heroes based on the player characters of Legends of Avantris’ actual play game Edge of Midnight. One of the many stretch goals unlocked by the wildly successful Kickstarter is a soundtrack composed by The Blasting Company, the band that provided music for the animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall. They’ve put together a series of songs representing these fallen adventurers, each with distinct styles.

“For [the twisted satyr] Gorthos, the Beast of Blight, we went hard into Celtic folk music and classic folk instruments like the nyckelharpa, hurdy-gurdy, and uilleann pipes,” Gilder said. “It very much feels like this wailing song of tragedy. ‘By the Lagoon’ for the magician and trickster Mr. Crossroads is equal parts Delta blues and New Orleans jazz. People make some comparisons to The Princess and the Frogand Dr. Facilier.”

The latest in the series of signature numbers for the villains is “Under Your Shadow,” a haunting song from the perspective of Marius Renathyr, a knight who was tricked by a succubus and transformed into a vampire known as the Crimson Abbott. Performed by Tony nominee Ramin Karimloo, accompanied by a pipe organ and choir, it combines aspects of The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s villain song “Hellfire.”

“I used to take singing lessons, and our warm-up song was Ramin’s recording of [the Phantom showtune] ‘The Music of the Night,’” Gilder said. “He was an idol of mine, so he was the first choice for the song. We knew he could capture the spirit of this character who’s so tortured and conflicted. Ramin just absolutely nailed it, and we couldn’t be happier.”

Music has been a key part of Crooked Moon since the project was revealed with a creepy flipbook-style animated short set to a catchy tune from The Blasting Company. Along with the soundtrack, Legends of Avantris is releasing an album of looping atmospheric background music and a combat-music album.

“Music is so important for immersion, and to set the tone in horror and play with your emotions,” Gilder said. “We had no idea that the Kickstarter campaign would do as well as it did, so it’s been a long process to get 45 folk-horror songs, but it’s been a very joyous process.”

The Crooked Moon is available for $69.99 through D&D Beyond, where it will be released on June 16 ahead of an August print release. Physical and digital copies, the albums, and other accessories can be preordered through Backerkit.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The bad news: Nintendo and Sony Pictures have delayed the live-action The Legend of Zelda movie. The good? That delay is a mere six weeks, and puts The Legend of Zelda right at the beginning of summer blockbuster season, an indication that Nintendo and Sony are confident in Link’s ability to save the summer of 2027.

The untitled Zelda movie was previously slated for a March 26, 2027 theatrical release. Nintendo announced that date back in March. But on Monday, The Legend of Zelda co-creator (and Zelda movie producer) Shigeru Miyamoto said in a statement that the film had been delayed to May 7, 2027:

“For production reasons, we are changing the release date of the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda to May 7, 2027,” Miyamoto said. “It will be some weeks later than the release timing we originally announced, and we will take the extra time to make the film as good as it can be. Thank you for your patience.”

While the release date is not a make-or-break factor in a film’s success, Hollywood studios love to release a blockbuster in May. This year, some of the biggest box office draws — Lilo & Stitch, Thunderbolts*, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and Final Destination: Bloodlines — have been May releases.

Sony Pictures may also feel a bit more confident about a May 2027 release, now that Avengers: Secret Wars has been moved from May 27, 2027 to Dec. 17, 2027. That certainly gives Nintendo and Sony a lot more breathing room to give The Legend of Zelda the attention it needs.

Plus, Nintendo and Sony now have a little more wiggle room to finalize Hunter Schafer’s deal to play Zelda, should that fancasting actually come to fruition.

What does give pause regarding The Legend of Zelda’s new date is its proximity to another tentpole Sony Pictures production: Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse is currently slated for a June 4, 2027 bow in movie theaters. Given that the conclusion to Miles Morales’ Spider-Verse saga has already been delayed substantially, keep young Spider-Man in your thoughts and prayers.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is mere weeks away from official release. As such, video game auteur Hideo Kojima showed off some near-final footage at Summer Game Fest on Sunday at the Los Angeles Orpheum Theater.

Joined by host Geoff Keighley and his own translator, Hideo Kojima welcomed the audience before bringing out several special guests, including Troy Baker, Shioli Kutsuna, and Death Stranding 2’s music producer, Woodkid. Elle Fanning, who plays Tomorrow, also appeared via video message.

After talking about the development of the original game, the inspiration behind the sequel, and conducting interviews with the guests, Kojima at last unveiled some gameplay footage. One includes Tomorrow and Sam (played by Norman Reedus) singing to Rainy (played by Shioli Kutsuna) and her unborn baby. Another cinematic showcased Tomorrow’s feral and fast-paced combat abilities (which also hyper-focused on her feet).

Fans are also treated to the opening cinematics of the game alongside Lou and the game’s open world tutorial section in the rocky desert border of Mexico and the UCA. The graphics are photo-realistic, and the mechanics are just as defined as ever. But something else interesting is the utilization of dynamic music: the score will shift and change to showcase that players are moving in the right direction; if combat becomes chaotic, the music will follow suit.

Lastly, we see a new character, Neil (Luca Marinelli), in a firefight against Sam as fireworks light the night sky, showcasing the enemy intelligence, how they flank players like the original, and alert each other to Sam’s position. But the fight doesn’t actually start before Neil puts on a bandana similar to Solid Snake’s beforehand, eliciting the audience’s cheers.

Neil and Lucy (Alisa Jung) are two new characters featured in a trailer shown earlier during Summer Game Fest. They have a relationship that feeds into the narrative of the sequel, and when pressed for more information, Kojima said Neil will be like playing the role Madds Mikkelson did in the original title.

Like the original Death Stranding, On the Beach blends distinctive hiking-based gameplay with dense exposition, Yoji Shinkawa’s bold character designs, and a surreal sci-fi story about forging human connections in a bleak, isolated world where the boundary between life and death has collapsed.

There have already been a few trailers released that help connect some narrative dots. The first trailer shows Fragile caring for Lou, the BB Sam freed and revived in the original Death Stranding. Sam and Lou are attacked in their bunker, forcing them to flee, but Lou is killed and returns as a BT in her old pod.

In the second trailer, this BT version of Lou accompanies Sam on his new journey as a BB again. The game takes place sometime after the original, with the chiral network now fully operational and human porters no longer essential. Sam’s Bridges team has disbanded.

Death Stranding 2 is slated to launch first on PlayStation 5 on June 26. If the sequel is anything like the first, it will come to Windows PC and Xbox Series X eventually.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Mario Kart 8 — especially in its 68-million-selling Deluxe form on Nintendo Switch — is the definitive Mario Kart, and perhaps it always will be. It has the crispness and technicality of 1992’s Super; the rollicking, combative multiplayer of 64; the accessibility and gloss of Mario Kart Wii. Refined and expanded over 10 years, it includes many of the series’ greatest tracks, too. It is the fifth-best-selling game of all time. Nintendo could have been forgiven for just extending it on to the Switch 2 and making it a forever game.

Instead, the Mario Kart team has attempted to follow the unfollowable with a sort of soft reboot. Mario Kart World asks: What if this scrambled carnival of cartoon imagery and looping race tracks was actually a place? The series’ ninth installment is an open-world racing game, where all the action happens on a single, contiguous map, and tracks flow into each other. This is not a new genre, and it has its fair share of classics already: Test Drive Unlimited, 2005’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Burnout Paradise, and most notably, the Forza Horizon series, which these days is the only racing game franchise that can remotely challenge Mario Kart’s mass-market hegemony.

But Mario Kart is not like other racing games (setting aside its legion of imitators). It has a different form and different priorities, which means Nintendo’s first attempt to hammer its anarchic kart-racing peg into the open-world hole isn’t an unqualified success. The good news is that Nintendo has not lost its focus on what makes Mario Kart great — not for a second. At the absolute worst, Mario Kart World is a superb Mario Kart game with an interesting gimmick and a new, chill solo playstyle.

In the game’s reveal trailer and deep-dive Direct, Nintendo oversold how central exploring the world of Mario Kart would be. It’s a surprise to boot up Mario Kart World and find the much-discussed new Free Roam exploration mode left out of the familiar suite of main menu options: solo, multiplayer, and online; Grand Prix, Battle, and Time Trial. Instead, you press the plus button, the menus melt away, and you segue smoothly into the world, a lone karter in a vast, empty racing playground. This is how Mario Kart World relates to its map: It’s inherent, but siloed.

You can’t play Free Roam in split-screen, the way most people enjoy Mario Kart. You can’t fully experience it online, either. You don’t discover and unlock Mario Kart World’s racing action by exploring its map the way you do in Forza Horizon. To race, you do as you have always done: pick a Grand Prix cup — Mushroom, Leaf, Star, Lightning — or jump into an online lobby and hurtle from one chaotic, shell-slinging competition into the next.

But the races aren’t a series of antic non-sequiturs anymore. They do lead into each other. Typically, a Grand Prix cup starts with a traditional three-lap circuit race, but the next three events are cross-country point-to-point stages topped off with a single lap of the destination stadium. Mario Kart’s tight racing circuits and vertiginous theme-park rides are now interspersed — no, integrated – with bustling blasts down highways, along rivers, across wildernesses, and up dazzling escalators of boost pads and sky rings. In Mario Kart World, you’re always going somewhere.

It’s epic, and a different style of racing from what we’re used to. It’s also strongly favored in both the Grand Prix and online racing, perhaps to a fault — a little more traditional three-lap circuit racing would round out Mario Kart World’sdiet, considering the layouts to support it are in the game. Some Mario Kart purists are chafing against the point-to-point races they call “intermission tracks,” bemoaning the long straightways and random hazards that compress the field and take the emphasis off pure driving skill. But in these sections, Nintendo has simply put the demand for technique elsewhere.

Mario Kart World significantly expands the series’ driving vocabulary. New moves elaborate on the already dense system of speed boosts that are just as vital to success as iconic pickups like the Red Shell or the Banana. You can now hold R when driving in a straight line to charge up a jump, which can be used to trigger wall riding and rail riding, both of which offer huge boosting opportunities. And Mario Kart World’s designers have seeded opportunities to use these everywhere. You can even wall ride on the sides of trucks and buses.

The potential for showy stunt combos and sick tech is immense, and the community will be exploring the possibilities for a long time yet. But even more casual drivers will be constantly engaged, picking out their next opportunity to squeeze out some more speed from dozens of options. It also feels as though combat items like shells have been nerfed a little, while the mushroom boosts are buffed. In Mario Kart World, there’s one rule: Always Be Boosting.

It’s deeply rewarding technical racing that, in true Mario Kart style, can be relied on to win out over cruel luck and chaos nine times out of ten — well, maybe four times out of five. That holds true even in Mario Kart World’s swarming field of 24 racers, but is tested to the limit by the new Knockout Tours. These are long, battle royale-style endurance races that cross the map, knocking out the last four racers at a series of checkpoints. They can frustrate, but they bring a level of visceral tension that classic racing can sometimes lack — especially in the brutal but brilliant online lobbies.

World is an expansive new Mario Kart, broader and subtly deeper than it was before — and, as befits the $80 marquee Switch 2 launch title and sequel to one of the biggest games of all time, it’s a lavish production, built on flawless tech. I’ve never seen it drop from 60 frames per second in any mode or circumstance. It’s gorgeous, full of tactile textures and toothsome, colorful environments, but always foregrounding the adorable and hilarious character art. The dozens of unlockable costumes, vehicles, and “NPC” characters — Cow, Pokey, Cheep Cheep, Coin Coffer, and co. — are drawn and animated with infectious humor and exquisite detail. It’s a delight simply to browse them.

The musical score trumps even Mario Kart 8’s all-time classic. It’s a scarcely believable luxury: hours and hours of banging new tracks and classic Mario themes in a range of styles that runs from nocturnal elevator music through spring break EDM to groovy samba and, of course, shredding jazz-funk, most of it recorded live by God’s own session band. It’s Koji Kondo by way of Quincy Jones, and the day it drops on the Nintendo Music app should be a public holiday.

Amid all this opulence, Nintendo remains committed to streamlined minimalism in Mario Kart’s structure and interface. It’s a firm choice, and probably the right one, as it keeps the series accessible to its immensely broad audience. But in a game of this scale, it can create friction as well as eliminate it. The Mario Kart community will be unsurprised but a little deflated by the basic online amenities; it shouldn’t be this hard to play ranked modes with a friend in the year 2025. At least the network performance is good.

But the biggest challenge Nintendo has faced is in integrating the deep familiarity and simplicity of Mario Kart with the scope of an open world. It results in a lot of compromises. Because you move through the game by ticking off Grands Prix from the menu in time-honored fashion, rather than through progressive exploration of the map, and because Nintendo includes next to no mapping information in the UI, the world Nintendo’s artists have built never becomes a lived-in space you feel you know and can navigate from memory, the way the greatest video game worlds do.

The “world” of Mario Kart World is a triumph of design  — it’s effectively one giant fantasy race track that’s never not fun to drive, in any direction, and it’s somehow crammed with secrets and off-piste challenges as well as multifarious strategic opportunities for racing. It’s just not really a place. I can’t imagine building an emotional relationship with it the way I have with Azeroth, or Hyrule, or, more to the point, Forza Horizon 4’s Britain.

What’s more, Nintendo has determined that all Mario Kart World’s unlocks — those juicy costumes and vehicles — must be accessible through any play mode by collecting the ubiquitous coins and eating the only mildly scarcer Dash Food drive-thru meal items (which all look delicious, by the way). This means there’s no distinct reward for finding collectables or mastering the P Switch challenges in Free Roam, other than hundreds of nicely designed but meaningless stickers.

Free Roam is the freshest thing in Mario Kart World; it’s a shame that Nintendo seems so scared of it. As a much more chill way to enjoy Mario Kart solo, it’s deeply welcome. It’s also genuinely novel, serving up something more akin to a vehicular Mario platformer than to your typical open-world driving game. I love the brisk P Switch missions, which drop evasive gauntlets, mini time trials, coin collection sprints, rail-grinding trick challenges, soaring aerial routes, and more all over the map.

But Free Roam is a little too unstructured and far too cut off from the rest of the game. You can encounter other characters driving around, but you can’t challenge them to a sprint (or interact with them at all); you can visit a circuit, but you can’t trigger a race from there. You can’t really experience it with other players except as a glorified lobby screen in online multiplayer, and this version of the map has the P Switch missions removed. It feels empty and aimless.

I love Free Roam, and I think Mario Kart World’s map is a marvel. I just wish it could have been integrated at a deeper level with the other game modes in a way that would breathe life into this extraordinary location. And I do think that could have been done without swamping the game in the bloat and complication that bedevils so many open-world games, Forza Horizon included. It’s possible that Nintendo will build up this side of Mario Kart World over time or in a sequel; if Mario Kart 8 Deluxe felt like an endpoint for everything Mario Kart had been, World is a great starting point for its future.

But if I had gotten the open-world Mario Kart I think I want, perhaps something more important would have been lost. Maybe Nintendo had the right idea: Why drive to the next race when the drive there can be the race? Why make the distance between players and this joyous game any more than a single, swift, satisfying button-click? That’s classic Mario Kart, and Mario Kart World is nothing if not a classic Mario Kart game. If the integrity and scope of its open-world ambition have to be sacrificed to stay true to the Mario Kart creed, then it’s a price worth paying.

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Since 2021, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has partnered with iam8bit and Fortyseven Communications to produce Game Maker’s Sketchbook, an annual competition celebrating the brightest artistic minds in the games industry.

This year’s Game Maker’s Sketchbook winners have just been announced, including some pretty incredible works from games like Marvel Rivals, The Midnight Walk, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, among others. Winning submissions are broken up into categories focused on a variety of different skillsets, such as character art, environmental design, and iconography (for those HUD elements and inventory boxes that are just too good to ignore), to name a few.

If you fancy yourself a collector of these sorts of works, iam8bit actually sells many of the winning prints, with the proceeds going to the AIAS Foundation, which focuses on creating an inclusive, interactive entertainment community through collaboration, education, and professional development. Finally you can have Riven’s vexing golden dome hanging on your wall!

The end-product that we see in games gets the lion’s share of attention, with a focus on incredible character models and 3D environments. And yet, it’s important to remember that almost all games have to start in a much more simple place, with just a few sketches of an idea. Despite the mastery at work here, these sketches often don’t get the attention they deserve, so it’s pretty great to see the competition shining a bit of a light on it.

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Xbox and Activision revealed Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 in a dramatic cinematic trailer during the Summer 2025 Xbox Games Showcase. Having two Black Ops games release consecutively is a first for the franchise, and Activision’s Treyarch and Raven studios teamed up to make it happen following 2024’s Black Ops 6.

The Black Ops 7 trailer is a trippy thing, like something you might expect out of Remedy’s Alan Wake series, with scenes of the protagonist appearing to experience a fragmented consciousness, a moment where a cityscape folds in on itself Inception-style, laughing TV sets, red butterflies made of data, and talking robot butlers escorting someone through a suspiciously, eerily calm executive suite. While we’re not entirely sure what’s going on, we do know who’s leading the charge this time: David Mason, the lead from Black Ops 2 whose last appearance was in 2018’s Black Ops 4.

“The year is 2035 and the world is on the brink of chaos, ravaged by conflict and psychological warfare following the narrative events of Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 6,” the game’s official description reads on Xbox Wire. “With cutting-edge technology in hand, the Black Ops team led by David Mason must fight back against a manipulative enemy who weaponizes fear above all else.”

Activision said Black Ops 7 will support solo play and multiplayer squads in a new co-op campaign, and you’ll have “near-future weaponry” to take on the challenge. Black Ops 7 will also include a standalone multiplayer mode with new maps and a zombies mode that continues the Dark Aether storyline.

There’s no Black Ops 7 release date yet, but when it does launch, it’ll be available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.

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Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4 is going to need a lot of pizza, because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Michelangelo, is headed to the skate park. A new trailer, presented by Tony Hawk himself, was shown at the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, providing another peak at the revamped tricks, characters, and locales.

In the trailer, the orange-clad turtle could be seen underneath a skate park in the Los Angeles sewers, examining a piece of pizza and then spinning on his shell before whipping out his own skateboard. The trailer also showed off a look at the return of Bam Margera, guest character the Doom Slayer, and more skaters ripping up the halfpipe. Other skaters to be featured in the game include Nyjah Huston, Riley Hawk, Lizzie Armanto, Leticia Bufoni, Tyshawn Jones, and more. Pro Skater 3 and 4 will have online multiplayer, allowing players to play with seven additional friends in a virtual skatepark. Fans can also expect fan-favorite levels like Rio, Tokyo, the Foundry, Airport, and Canada to return to the game.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4 is set to be released on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Windows on July 11, 2025.

Pro Skater 3 and 4 is a remake of the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 which was first released back in 2001, and Pro Skater 4, which debuted in 2002.

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Double Fine Productions’ Keeper was revealed Sunday at the Xbox Games Showcase and will launch Oct. 17 for Xbox Series X and Windows PC. It’ll also be available day one on Xbox Game Pass.

In Keeper, you’ll play as a weathered lighthouse aged by time. It sprouts legs, and you and a bird companion will then explore various environments together. The trailer showcased a forest, an illuminated cave, and a village populated by robotic characters on wheels. Double Fine’s games are known for being full of heart, and judging by its reveal trailer, Keeper will have plenty of it.

Double Fine is perhaps best known for 2021’s Psychonauts 2. It had previously set aside Keeper in favor of completing development on Psychonauts 2. Polygon enjoyed Psychonauts 2, calling it “one of the most imaginative platforming games out there, with an absolute flood of joyous ideas and images” in our review. Its development was featured in the Double Fine PsychOdyssey documentary, one of the best and most honest looks at the process of large-scale video game development.

Double Fine was acquired by Microsoft in 2019 and is known for developing artistically and narratively unique games such as both Psychonauts titles and Broken Age, as well as remasters of games that founder Tim Schafer originally worked on in the 1990s, like Grim Fandango Remastered and Full Throttle Remastered.

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Microsoft brought out some big guns at its annual Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, revealing a new Xbox-branded handheld, an important update on Hollow Knight: Silksong, Double Fine’s new game Keeper, the Persona 4 remake, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. There were also plenty of low-key surprises, including the reveals of some sharp-looking indie games.

If you couldn’t watch Xbox Games Showcase 2025 live, here’s a recap of all the game announcements, release dates, trailers, and other highlights from Microsoft’s big games showcase.

Persona 4 Remake

One of Atlus’ more poorly kept secrets is now confirmed. Persona 4 is getting a remake in the vein of Persona 3 Reload.

Hollow Knight: Silksong

After years of silence (and delays) from developer Team Cherry, we finally (finally!) got a new look (technically!) at the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong. Did we finally get a release date though? Nope! But Silksong is going to be out sometime this year, Microsoft says.

Game Freak’s Beast of Reincarnation

Pokémon developer Game Freak revealed Beast of Reincarnation, an action game previously known as Project Bloom, coming in 2026. Beast of Reincarnation is set in post-apocalyptic Japan, “a land ruined by corruption and crawling with monstrous beasts,” the developer said. Players will explore “ what it means to be human in Beast of Reincarnation, an expansive one-person, one-dog action RPG built around demanding, technical combat.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

This year’s Call of Duty has been revealed: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 stars David Mason, who leads the Black Ops team “against a manipulative enemy who weaponizes fear above all else.”

Clockwork Revolution

inXile Entertainment revealed fresh gameplay of its upcoming time-manipulating shooter (with strong BioShock vibes) Clockwork Revolution at Xbox Games Showcase.

High on Life 2

Squanch Games’ wacky first-person shooter High on Life is getting a (quick) sequel. High on Life 2 is coming to a long list of platforms this winter.

Ninja Gaiden 4

Team Ninja keeps the year of the ninja going with Ninja Gaiden 4, which now has an Oct. 21 release date on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.

Gears of War Reloaded

Here’s a new look at Gears of War Reloaded gameplay.

Super Meat Boy 3D

Super Meat Boy is back in bloody action in Super Meat Boy 3D, a proper 3D action-platformer coming early 2026.

Grounded 2

Obsidian Entertainment’s ant’s-eye-view survival adventure game Grounded is getting a sequel. And soon! Grounded 2 is out July 29.

Aphelion

A new sci-fi action-adventure game from Don’t Nod, Aphelion was developed in cooperation with the European Space Agency, so that’s pretty cool.

New Double Fine Productions game, Keeper

Psychonauts developer Double Fine Productions revealed its next project, Keeper, at the Xbox Games Showcase. In it, you control a lighthouse on a stylish 3D adventure.

No Ghosts at the Grand

A “spooky, cozy, musical mystery” that also involves a Renovation Gun, No Ghosts at the Grand casts you as the reluctant heir to a dilapidated hotel that was once renowned for its charm and hospitality. “As you go room-to-room solving restoration puzzles, you’ll also end up uncovering some surreal, supernatural secrets of the hotel’s past,” the game’s official description promises.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLC

Bethesda and MachineGames’ DLC for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — The Order of Giants — was revealed with a Sept. 4 release date. This new story chapter takes Indiana Jones to the ancient streets of Rome “where forgotten catacombs twist into something far more sinister. Indy must outwit a dangerous cult and decipher puzzles designed by emperors to uncover the dark legacy of the Nephilim giants.”

Cronos: The New Dawn

Developer Bloober Team’s new sci-fi horror game Cronos: The New Dawn is out this fall, and every new trailer looks more enticing than the last.

Invincible VS

Robert Kirkman’s Invincible is getting a brand-new fighting game, Invincible VS, a 3v3 tag fighter in the vein of Marvel vs. Capcom.

At Fate’s End

Spiritfarer developer Thunder Lotus Games revealed its next game at Xbox Games Showcase: At Fate’s End is a gripping action-adventure game in which players face their estranged siblings in intense duels.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy

Asobo Studio and Focus Entertainment revealed Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, a prequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence and A Plague Tale: Requiem coming in 2026.

Final Fantasy on Xbox

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is coming to Xbox, and Final Fantasy 16 is out now on Xbox.

Planet of Lana 2

Planet of Lana 2: Children of the Leaf is coming to Xbox and PC in 2026, promising “an ambitious cinematic puzzle adventure that doubles the size and scope of the original.”

Aniimo

Aniimo is a new free-to-play, creature-catching open-world action-RPG coming to mobile, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X in 2026. It looks adorable!

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Skybound Games revealed Invincible VS, an original 2D tag-fighting game, on Sunday at Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase. Invincible VS will bring together heroes and villains like Omni-Man, Invincible, Atom Eve, Thula, and Bulletproof for highly destructive, three-versus-three action when it’s released in 2026 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.

And, yes, as demonstrated in the reveal trailer for Invincible VS, Skybound’s new fighting game will be just as bloody as the Robert Kirkman-created Invincible comic book and animated series from which it’s adapted. Based on the game’s debut trailer, it also appears that some voice actors, like J.K. Simmons, will reprise their onscreen roles.

Polygon saw Invincible VS in May and spoke with the developer behind it; we’ll have more information on the game in coming days.

Skybound Games has released only a handful of games based on the Invincible property, including Invincible Presents: Atom Eve, a visual novel that lets players explore the life of Atom Eve, and Invincible: Guarding the Globe, a squad-based idle role-playing game for mobile devices. Invincible’s Omni-Man has appeared in Mortal Kombat 1 as part of that game’s first Kombat Pack, and in Fortnite as a guest character alongside Invincible and Atom Eve.

Skybound’s reveal of Invincible VS comes just days after the reveal of another superhero tag-based fighter, *Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls,*which ups the ante by being 4v4 tag-fighter.

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Atlus announced a full remake of its ever-popular role-playing game Persona 4 at Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase. The new version of the role-playing game is officially named Persona 4 Revival and will be released on Windows PC, Xbox Series X, and other platforms.

Microsoft and Atlus did not reveal a release date for Persona 4 Revival.

Although details are scarce, many believe the remake will follow in the footsteps of Persona 3 Reload. That Persona remake included improved graphics, enhanced audio, and a reworked combat system alongside expanded gameplay and story moments. Although the narrative remained the same, some of the social simulation aspects received more content alongside a few quality of life changes to make the game more modern.

This could explain why several of the original voice actors for Persona 4, including Yuri Lowenthal, the English-language voice of Yosuke Hanamura, have come out on social media recently saying they were not asked to reprise their roles for the remake.

Persona 4 was originally released in 2008 for PlayStation 2. An updated version, Persona 4 Golden, was released in 2012 for PlayStation Vita and quickly became the definitive version of the game. Golden has long been hailed as one of the greatest RPGs of all time, with a splash of school life social simulation added to the mix. The mysterious plot entails finding out who’s killing local townsfolk, while you and your friends jump into a metaphysical shadow world, confronting and accepting the flaws that define you.

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Spiritfarer developer Thunder Lotus Games announced its next project during the Xbox Games Showcase Sunday, At Fate’s End. It’s an action-adventure game where you’ll fight family via emotional sword-fighting and dialogue duels. At Fate’s End is due out sometime in 2026 for Windows PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Game Pass. Notably, neither the Nintendo Switch or the Switch 2 were listed as platforms, though that may change in the future.

In At Fate’s End you’ll play as princess Shan, who wields the God Sword Aesus (which already sounds like a very cool sword). She’ll fight her siblings in duels “where combat is waged not only through swordplay, but through dialogue, psychological insight, and hard-won knowledge of shared history,” according to the press release revealing the game. It’ll feature various endings, meaning your family’s future sinks or swims depending on your choices.

Creative Director Nicolas Guérin said the developer is pushing everything it learned from crafting Spiritfarer further. “This is a more intense, more action-driven game, but no less intimate. It’s about how families break apart — and how they might come back together.”

Thunder Lotus Games is perhaps best known for its 2020 management sim Spiritfarer, which cast players as Stella, whose job it is to help spirits find comfort while guiding them toward the afterlife. Thunder Lotus’ previous titles also include Jotun and Sundered, and it launched 33 Immortals into early access earlier in March 2025.

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Game Freak, best known for its work on Pokémon games, unveiled a new look and title for its upcoming project on Sunday during the Xbox Games Showcase. Beast of Reincarnation is headed to Xbox Series X, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5 sometime in 2026.

Beast of Reincarnation has you playing as Emma the Sealer in the far-off future of 4026 as “humanity awaits its inevitable extinction,” according to the trailer’s voiceover. Emma is “the blade that will destroy the Beast of Reincarnation” through some sick-looking, action-focused gameplay.

Emma battles both oversized creatures and robots in the trailer. The combat and parry mechanic shown off resemble what you might expect from a Soulslike, though we’ll have to wait for details to see how Game Freak officially describes Beast of Reincarnation. Both its imagery and environmental themes give off heavy Studio Ghibli vibes.

Beast of Reincarnation was originally revealed in 2023 and called Project Bloom at the time. “We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to create new IP that is bold and tonally different from our prior work,” Game Freak director Kota Furushima said at the time via a news release. The developer is of course synonymous with the Pokémon series, having developed the original Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow in the ’90s and many, many more Pokémon titles since.

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Squanch Games is keeping the party going — it announced Sunday that High on Life 2 is coming in winter 2025. The reveal went down at the Xbox Games Showcase, with a glimpse at some of the gameplay in the second installment in the wacky intergalactic franchise.

The comical trailer shows off the protagonist skateboarding in a futuristic building as Tobacco’s “Constellation Dirtbike Head” blares in the background. Scenes switch, with the player skateboarding and blasting through a couple of robotic monstrosities, all with the handy, talking alien gun. Additionally, scenes show off strange weaponry, such as a flame-spewing lizard and a pair of reality-bending pistols.

High on Life 2 is set to be released on Windows PC and Xbox Series X.

High on Life, released in 2022, was recently ported over to the Nintendo Switch in 2025. That game featured a character who is fresh out of school and unemployed when Earth is hit with an alien invasion. The main character becomes an intergalactic bounty hunter, teaming up with talking guns to stop these invaders’ machinations.

The original High On Life is also playable on Windows PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X through Game Pass.

Now, the story continues this winter with a sequel to the comedic shooter.

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Congrats, patient bug lovers: Hollow Knight: Silksong will be out later this year, Microsoft confirmed Sunday at its Xbox Games Showcase. Microsoft’s Sarah Bond announced that release window alongside the reveal of Xbox Ally, a portable gaming device coming as part of a collaboration with Asus.

Bond said that Hollow Knight: Silksong will be released and playable for the launch of the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, two handhelds that will launch sometime in holiday 2025. Silksong was prominently featured in a reveal trailer for the Ally handhelds.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is also scheduled to be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. It will be available on Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription from day one.

Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced in February 2019, with a playable demo at that year’s E3. It remained under wraps until a new gameplay trailer debuted at Microsoft’s Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase in June 2022. At the time, developers announced that the game would be complete within the following 12 months. But in May 2023, Matthew Griffin of Team Cherry said the game had been delayed indefinitely. In the intervening years, Silksong’s protracted development and the agonizing wait for the game have become a meme.

Originally conceived as a downloadable add-on for 2017’s critically acclaimed Metroidvania Hollow Knight, the developers ultimately reimagined Silksong as a full-on sequel. Silksong stars Hornet, the princess of Hallownest and one of the Hollow Knight’s speedy adversaries in the original game.

According to Team Cherry’s announcement blog in 2019, the game will take place in “a whole new kingdom haunted by silk and song,” which is populated by more than 150 new enemy types. Hornet will also have a different moveset; she is more angular and acrobatic, with nimble, dance-like moves.

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Xbox announced two Asus ROG Xbox Ally variations during the summer 2025 Xbox Games Showcase, both of which include more powerful AMD processors and a native Xbox app, among other things. Both Xbox handhelds will launch in the holiday 2025 window, though Xbox didn’t mention pricing during the reveal.

The ROG Xbox Ally X comes with:

AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme GPU24GB RAM1TB onboard storage

The standard ROG Xbox Ally comes with:

AMD Ryzen 2A16GB RAM512 GB onboard storage

The ROG Xbox Ally comes with a native Xbox app that lets you access your Xbox games and cloud libraries, and you can swap between associated apps as well, such as Discord, Battlenet, and “other leading PC storefronts,” Xbox said in an Xbox Wire post.

The news comes after Xbox console games began showing up in the Xbox PC app, prompting speculation that Xbox’s long-rumored plans of creating a single platform that lets you access your Xbox games from console and PC and potentially from Steam as well. It’s also in line with Xbox’s recent push to make accessing Xbox Studio games easier by publishing them on non-Microsoft platforms, such as putting Forza Horizon 5 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PlayStation 5.

Polygon previously reported on leaked images of an Xbox  handheld that appeared in Federal Communication Comission filings. The images in the official filings showed what was essentially just a black Asus ROG Ally, but with an Xbox button included. It turns out that was mostly correct, though the ROG Xbox Ally includes a few additional features as well, such as longer hand grips that more closely resemble a standard Xbox controller and impulse triggers. Xbox introduced impulse triggers with the Xbox One, individual motors that can be programmed to vibrate at specific points during gameplay.

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Asobo Studio — the developer behind A Plague Tale: Innocence and its sequel, A Plague Tale: Requiem — has revealed the next game in the A Plague Tale franchise: a prequel called Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. The news was shared during the Xbox Games Showcase via a reveal trailer that gave players their first look at the game.

Set 15 years before the events of the first game, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy naturally features a new protagonist. Resonance follows the story of Sophia, a treasure-hunter who is determined to discover the secrets of her past, despite being on the run from an army of mysterious pursuers.

“We wanted to expand and explore the world of A Plague Tale with a character — Sophia — that is very close to our heart, but within a much more action-oriented experience,” Asobo Studio chief creative officer David Dedeine explained in a press release. “This fresh approach comes with intuitive and rewarding combat, as well as a brand-new manifestation of the Macula, the ancient evil. Resonance embraces themes, places and eras that we had never explored before.”

Sophia’s attempt to escape the enemies who are hot on her heels eventually leads her to Minotaur’s Island, a strange environment full of ancient puzzles, mazes, and trials. But she’s not alone — the army has kept tabs on her, and Sophia will routinely have to fight them off as she explores the island.

Human enemies aren’t the only ones after Sophia, however. Minotaur’s Island was named after a myth, but based on the enormous minotaur featured in the trailer, that myth appears to have some basis in fact.

“Expanding the world of A Plague Tale with Sophia — a character already close to our heart since Requiem — is exciting, and we can’t wait to hear what our fans think!” Focus Entertainment managing director John Bert said of the upcoming prequel. “Blending myth and combat in this new opus promises to be a great opportunity for all to embark on a new adventure.”

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is set to launch sometime in 2026 and will be available on Xbox Series X Day One with Xbox Game Pass. It will also be available for PlayStation 5 and Windows PC (via Steam).

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Microsoft’s 2025 Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday promises a look at new and upcoming games from Xbox Games Studios — including studios like Activision Blizzard, Bethesda Softworks, Obsidian Entertainment, and Playground Games — and third-party partners from around the globe.

This year’s Xbox Games Showcase will dedicate a separate presentation to first-person sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian Entertainment will offer a deeper look into the sequel to the award-winning Outer Worlds after the main show.

For every big announcement at Xbox Games Showcase 2025, including new trailers and major game announcements, check out Polygon’s StoryStream below. You can also watch the Xbox Games Showcase 2025 and Outer Worlds 2 Direct live right here.

Summer games fest 2025 schedule: All conference dates and timesUbisoft teasing a big Splinter Cell announcement ahead of Summer Game Fest

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Australian director Sean Byrne is one of horror’s premiere mixologists. His debut, 2009’s The Loved Ones, meshed teen romance with gruesome Hostel-style extremism. 2015’s The Devil’s Candy put a heavy metal spin on the haunted-house romp. His new film, Dangerous Animals, in theaters now, raises a question no one was asking about a classic B-movie subgenre: When is a killer shark movie not a killer shark movie?

Answer: When the killer shark is just a weapon in a human killer’s hands.

Despite arriving just in time for the 50th anniversary of Jaws, Dangerous Animals has less in common with it (or with The Shallows or 47 Meters Down) and is more in line with Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Saw (or one of Australia’s modern horror successes, Wolf Creek). Hassie Harrison (Yellowstone) stars as Zephyr, an American surfer floating around the Australian coast looking for the perfect waves — and maybe the right romance. She does not find it in Tucker (Jai Courtney of Terminator Genisys), who abducts her off the beach before dawn and locks her up with another tourist, Heather (Ella Newton), on his shark expedition boat. Tucker is a mega-creep who gets off on shark attacks. Zephyr and Heather are his latest chum.

At 90 minutes, Dangerous Animals is lean and mean fun. Zephyr is no damsel in distress, and quickly plots an escape from what looks like an impossible situation. Tucker has driven them out to the middle of the ocean where he can gets wasted on cheap liquor, dance to disco tunes, and prepare to ritualistically dunk his prey into shark-infested waters. He’s an absolute psychopath, and Byrne lets Courtney completely off the possible-Hollywood-leading-man leash. The actor is frothing at the mouth and twitching in his eyes throughout the deranged picture, with a level of egolessness that manifested slightly when he played [checks notes] Captain Boomerang in Suicide Squad. This is better.

Harrison summons her own power in the face of Courtney’s towering physique in Zephyr’s multiple escape attempts. Byrne takes full advantage of the claustrophobic setting of the boat — and the vast emptiness of the sea surrounding it. It’s a geographically coherent but unsettling maze for a cat shark-and-mouse game that rarely succumbs to contrivances to ratchet up the tension. Getting off a boat surrounded by sharks just seems really tough! And for as blockheaded as Tucker seems, he’s devoted much of his life to building the ultimate floating prison.

While Dangerous Animals never goes full Deep Blue Sea with far-fetched shark kills, Byrne, by way of Tucker’s fetish, still sets up some nightmarish attacks. Tucker doesn’t just like to watch sharks tear his victims to shreds, he also videotapes them on a 1990s-era camera for future VHS viewing. So the deaths are slow and savage, with Courtney’s wide-eyed gaze committing as much violence as the razor-sharp shark teeth. There’s blood in the water, and all over this killer’s hands.

In the days of so-called “elevated horror,” Dangerous Animals delivers earnest thrills with a simple-yet-innovative slasher premise. In my mind, the freshest horror movies find a kernel of specificity in a timeless premise. Byrne’s movie isn’t far off from the Halloween formula — big guy hunts down indomitable woman with scary weapon of choice — but whisking us to Australia, sending us to sea, and the what-if of a sightseeing tour guide with a hard-on for shark attacks is the focused lens a filmmaker needs to deliver something new. Sick, but new.

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Mario Kart World‘s rewind feature is quietly one of the racing game’s most useful features for learning how its new tricks, jumps, and grinds work. The Nintendo Switch 2 launch game sets you loose to discover rewind on your own, though, with no tutorial or anything explaining how the tool works or when you might want to use it.

Below, we explain how to rewind in Mario Kart World, which modes let you do it, and when you’re better off just taking a mistake on the chin.

How to rewind in Mario Kart World

Press “down” on the direction pad to rewind the previous five seconds and start again. Rewind is useful if you’re trying to learn how to time a jump correctly so you can drive along the wall, if you miss a shortcut, or if you just make a big mistake and would rather not lose eight places after crashing into a wall. It’s handy for evading an incoming obstacle in Battle Mode, too.

GiantBomb’s Jeff Grubb discovered you can even use rewind to escape a blue shell. If you rewind right before the shell makes contact, it’ll explode even without you there to suffer from it.

Bear in mind that rewind doesn’t affect the timer if you’re completing a Free Roam challenge or mode or activity with a timer, such as Time Trials. You’ll start in your previous position, but the timer won’t rewind, and you’ll probably fail the challenge. The better option for fixing a mistake in Free Roam mission scenarios is opening the pause menu and choosing the “retry” option.

Rewind also has no effect on computer-controlled characters, whose positions won’t rewind to match yours. Still, for learning tough courses such as Rainbow Road, it’s worth rewinding and coming in last if only to get the hang of difficult curves without having to start an entire cup over again.

What modes can you use rewind in?

Rewind is only usable in single-player modes and Free Roam, though you can use it in a multiplayer lobby as well – just not in a multiplayer race. The list of modes that let you use rewind is:

Grand PrixBattle ModeVs RaceKnockout TourTime Trials

Did you just get a Nintendo Switch 2? Are you trying to unlock every character and outfit in Mario Kart World? Or maybe you’re trying out The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the first time and you need a walkthrough for those pesky stoplights in the Forsaken Fortress? Either way, we have your back when it comes to helping you sort stuff out.

We have guides explaining how to set up your console (moving data from your original Switch to your Switch 2) as well as guides for things like getting external storage sorted out.

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The nightmare was real, the situation was not.

Revenge of the Savage Planet, an adventure spread across a number of distant — and quite savage! — planets, invites nonlinear exploration. To complete its missions and discover all of its secrets, you must leap into an unknown where the otherworldly flora, fauna, and even the inorganic material are primed to kill you. So, shortly after assembling an underwater scooter that allowed my robot sidekick to whisk me through the depths of alien oceans, I descended into a series of caverns under the Zenithian Rift to see what was going on down there. The specters of death I encountered below weren’t even designed to haunt me.

In Raccoon Logic’s sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet, players are tasked with scanning every object in every nook and cranny to assemble an exhaustive log of materials located on each planet. At first, the task is a walk in the (overgrown killer) park: find a tree, scan a tree. Find a slobbering beastie, scan a slobbering beastie. But a counter on the map charting your scannables becomes the most daunting subtask — can I really find every single micro scannable? I found myself longing after completing the core missions. To really 100% this, there was even more reason to venture into the most uninviting spaces, including a dark underwater cave on Zenithian Rift that absolutely did not look like it contained any scannable items. But I couldn’t not go in there.

It took about two seconds for me to realize… I had made a horrible mistake. While the cave was easily accessible from the water, there were no enemy or collectible breadcrumbs to suggest this was a place the folks at Raccoon Logic intended for me to. I was lured in by curiosity, but the joy of discovery in Revenge of the Savage Planet got the best of me. Now I was stuck. I had stumbled into a graphical anomaly, an in-game black hole that had an entrance but no apparent exit.

In Revenge of the Savage Planet, you can’t beam back to starting locations on the fly or off yourself in order to respawn from your last save. In a clever but likely divisive design choice, the game forces you to navigate to transporters spread across the worlds in order to beam off to your next desired location, which forces traversal and new encounters. But it meant that while bumbling around in the dark, hoping to find a way out of my watery grave, I couldn’t simply die and move on. I was actually trapped, and in a scenario I haven’t experienced in quite some time, feeling IRL like I was actually trapped.

I already don’t do well with underwater levels out of an intense fear of drowning. Luckily for me, most games will throw me the lifeline of a visual countdown to illustrate oxygen levels, ensuring (1) I surface in time and (2) I don’t hyperventilate over the stress of surfacing in time. Revenge of the Savage Planet doesn’t need that because there’s no punishment for enjoying the waters; you’re already in a spacesuit and the challenges you encounter via underwater scooter require a bunch of time-intensive back and forth. Doing it all on limited air would simply not be fun. But that meant, stuck in this tight underwater cave, I would never die. I was in limbo. Or maybe I was in hell.

I spent far too long searching for a route out. Streaks of light bled in from a theoretical escape that I could never reach — any time I thought I was close, I bumped into a new rock and found myself jetting in the opposite direction. Not since I watched The Rescue, the riveting-yet-terrifying documentary about the team of divers who squeezed through cave passageways to free 12 trapped Thai soccer players, had my apparent claustrophobia had its way with my nerves. I can’t quite explain why I pushed myself over the edge to find an in-game solution to this unintentional challenge, except to say that I really wanted to do a good job at Revenge of the Savage Planet.

Most glitches are considered errors by programmers, annoyances by players, and occasionally shortcuts for the speedrunner crowd. Revenge of the Savage Planet’s death cave might fall into the first two categories, but it’s a harrowing experience I ultimately appreciated, a unique screw up that could only happen in a game. I have never felt truly trapped in a film, despite the best efforts of 3D stereoscopic effects and 4DX rumble seats. After finally rebooting Revenge of the Savage Planet, I had to give myself a few minutes to let my heart rate die down before I grabbed the controller. But I got right back to it. Sure, this was a glitch, but in a game where exploration is everything, leaping into a true unknown — one that the creators of the game clearly didn’t intend me to find — was its own form of success.

Revenge of the Savage Planetis currently available for PC, Playstation, and Xbox, and it’s currently on Game Pass.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The tracks in Mario Kart Word are the real stars in the game and the shiniest one is the Rainbow Road track. The mesmerizingly colorful track is something out of this world — literally. Unlike all the other tracks in the game, Rainbow Road is a secret one, but luckily the path to find it is pretty straightforward.

Below, you find all you need to know to unlock the Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World.

How to unlock the Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World

The Rainbow Road becomes available only after you have unlocked the Special Cup in the Grand Prix mode. It appears as an option for you after completing all the other seven cups. Here’s a list of all cups you need to finish:

Mushroom CupFlower CupStar CupShell CupBanana CupLeaf CupLightning Cup

It doesn’t matter what CC you play the cup on, and it doesn’t matter if you even place in the race. You just need to play each cup.

Like the other cups, the Special Cup has four tracks: Acorn Heights, Mario Circuit, Peach Stadium, with Rainbow Road being the last one.

How to play Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World

Once you have raced through Rainbow Road once and beat the Special Cup, you might want to give the course another try. We have tested and can confirm that you can enjoy this track by replaying the Special Cup in the Grand Prix mode or selecting it in VS Race mode.

According to some Reddit users, Rainbow Road can also appear in online play if you’re lucky. In online races, you can vote for one between three tracks randomly selected by the game, or you can pick “random.” If Rainbow Road comes among the first options, you can just select that — but the track may not be picked, since the game chooses randomly from what the players voted for.

If you are really burning to race Rainbow Road in an online lobby, your best bet is to vote “random” if Rainbow Road doesn’t come up as an actual option, since this can roll maps that weren’t among the initial voting options.

Did you just get a Nintendo Switch 2? Are you trying to unlock every character and outfit in Mario Kart World? Or maybe you’re trying out The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the first time and you need a walkthrough for those pesky stoplights in the Forsaken Fortress? Either way, we have your back when it comes to helping you sort stuff out.We have guides explaining how to set up your console (moving data from your original Switch to your Switch 2) as well as guides for things like getting external storage sorted out.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Pokémon Go is continuing its hype lead-up to the yearly Go Fest event with the “Instrumental Wonders” event that runs from June 7-11.

This event encourages players to raid, with the main perk of this event being an extra 5,000 XP per finished raid. Just like the last event, there will be bonuses with Max Particles as well. You can grab up to 1,600 per day and 800 from Power Spots — which is timed nicely, as Gigantamax Cinderace will be making its debut during the weekend portion of the event.

Below we list the other perks of Pokémon Go’s “Instrumental Wonders” event, including the premium research, Collection Challenges, spawns, and more.

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders’ premium Timed Research and reward

Just like the last event, there’s another ticket you can buy for $1.99 to get a Timed Research. If you’re stocking up on raid passes ahead of Go Fest, this ticket is actually a decent buy — so long as you finish the research before the event ends on June 11.

The other thing that may tip the scales in the value of this pass is if you’re shiny hunting for Ferroseed and Falinks, two Pokémon with increased shiny rates during this event. If you want one of those, then this pass ain’t too shabby!

If you complete the research, you’ll also get doubled raid Stardust until the event ends.

Step 1 of 2

Catch 10 Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Use 5 berries to help catch Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Transfer 5 Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Catch 20 Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Use 10 berries to help catch Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Transfer 10 Pokémon (Ferroseed encounter)Spin 3 PokéStops or gyms (Ferroseed encounter)

Rewards: Ferroseed encounter, 2 Premium Battle Passes, 500 Stardust

Step 1 of 2

Catch 10 Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Use 5 berries to help catch Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Transfer 5 Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Catch 20 Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Use 10 berries to help catch Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Transfer 10 Pokémon (Falinks encounter)Spin 3 PokéStops or gyms (Falinks encounter)

Rewards: Falinks encounter, 3 Premium Battle Passes, 500 Stardust

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders’ event Collection Challenges

The following Collection Challenges will be live throughout the duration of the event:

‘Instrumental Wonders’ Collection Challenge 1

Catch a TadbulbCatch a HoppipCatch a Galarian StunfiskCatch a Beldum

Rewards: 2,000 XP, Falinks encounter

‘Instrumental Wonders’ Collection Challenge 2

Catch a GolettCatch a FerroseedCatch a ChimechoCatch a Falinks

Rewards: 2,000 XP, Ferroseed encounter

‘Instrumental Wonders’ Collection Challenge31

Catch a FerroseedCatch a Galarian StunfiskCatch a FalinksCatch a Beldum

Rewards: 2,000 XP, 1 Premium Battle Pass

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders’ event Field Research and rewards

Spinning a PokéStop during the event period may yield one of these tasks:

Catch 7 different species of Pokémon (Ferroseed or Falinks encounter)Catch 10 Pokémon (Meowth, Chimecho, Ferroseed, or Falinks encounter)Explore 2 km (Ferroseed or Falinks encounter)Win a raid (2 Rare Candy)

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders’ event boosted spawns

These Pokémon will spawn more frequently during the event period:

MeowthHoppipChimechoBeldumFerroseed*Galarian StunfiskGolettFalinks*Tadbulb

*There is an “increased chance” of finding this shiny in the wild as part of the event.

Pokémon Go ‘Instrumental Wonders event raid targets

The following changes to the raid schedule will take place as part of the event:

One-star raidsThree-star raidsMeowthGalarian StunfiskBeldumFalinks*Ferroseed*

*These Pokémon have an “increased chance” of being shiny when raided.

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