Video games

Video games

A multiplayer, co-op Assassin's Creed game was reportedly cancelled by Ubisoft as part of restructuring efforts at the company. The game, codenamed Assassin's Creed League, was in development at Ubisoft's Annecy team, but was shut down recently. The Assassin's Creed title was not among the six other cancelled projects that Ubisoft confirmed last month, according to a report published in French outlet Origami on Thursday.

Xbox released a lot of big games in 2025. It was one of the only good bits of Xbox-related news from last year. And in 2026, it will release new entries in four of its oldest franchises: Forza, Gears, Halo, and Fable. But new reporting indicates that while these projects, and others including a Fallout 3 remaster, are on track, Xbox is trying to avoid Grand Theft Auto 6 's big launch in November.

Cozy games are all about finding space in the chaos of life--where slow days on the farm, gentle strolls through enchanted towns, or warm chats with your favorite romanceable NPC are the main attractions, and combat and aggression is left at the door. Anyone and everyone can join in, with the slower pace and wholesome stories that usually fit within the "cozy" label.

Here, you'll be able to team up with a couple of friends to hunt killer machines, Monster Hunter style. Guerrilla says it's designing the hunts to be challenging and replayable. "Combat is tactical, reactive, and deeply skill-based, building on the tactical precision of the Horizon games while embracing the dynamics of team play," game director Arjan Bak wrote on the PlayStation Blog. The game also has a more stylized look compared with the more grounded visuals of the mainline games.

The funniest co-op games always seem to involve some combination of chaotic countdown timers, awkward miscommunications, slapstick physics, or out-of-the-box ideas. Whether you're shouting at each other across the room in couch co-op or losing it over voice chat as everything falls apart, these games are designed to make you and your pals laugh, while still providing a solid gameplay experience.

But right now, of all times, feels one of the worst possible moments to reveal Hunters Gathering to a world wide web primed to make a Kombucha Girl face at everything it's doing. The last two years have been littered with the corpses of failed, cancelled, or still dying live service games. A lot of players are, understandably, tired of these things and unsure of whether they should even invest any time into caring, as so many seem to flop or shut down.

Obviously, Escape from Ever After owes an awful lot to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Hell, even the opening splash screen where the characters are lined up is basically a one-to-one recreation of the famous Nintendo title. It's like they ambled into Nintendo, stole Paper Mario, realised they couldn't sell it like that and quickly learned origami so they could toss some new characters in. A bit of paint later, and voila, new Paper Mario game...er, I mean, new game.

Following a leak and with absolutely no fanfare from Ubisoft, The Division: Definitive Edition has been released on Xbox, PlayStation and PC storefronts for £45. The reason for the lack of hype is immediately obvious: it has replaced the existing Gold Edition of the game and only adds a couple of extra items. You get the three paid expansions, the Let It Snow cosmetic pack, the Parade cosmetic pack and a further 6 cosmetic packs.

The next-generation Xbox console is on track to launch in 2027 - at least that's what chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices believes. At its latest quarterly earnings call, AMD said the development on the custom chipset that will power the next-gen Xbox was "progressing well" to support the launch of the console in 2027. Initial reports and leaks placed the launch of the next Xbox, believed to be a PC/console hybrid running Windows, in 2027, along with Sony's PlayStation 6.

For the past 28 years, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has recognized those who have made a significant contribution to the video game industry, from those creating iconic characters and games that have become cultural cornerstones, to those who have inspired others to create games or provided opportunities for the next generation or developers without the necessary resources to shine in a competitive working environment.

Shaking up what fans have come to expect from the series, it tosses out the old formulas of straightforward missions and replaces them with an open-world twist that works shockingly well. In the midst of wandering the hidden corners of Japan, players will find fantastic secrets and evocative battles, but what's gained from this ambitious scope is just as often hampered by a surprising lack of challenge and a deadweight story that completely overstays its welcome.

A cancellation so close to release can be particularly devastating for younger team members who don't have decades of past shipped titles on their resumé. It's tough to suddenly absorb that the past four years of hard work you were proud of, and looking forward to seeing out in the world as your new calling card, will now never see daylight. Words like loss and grieving might seem exaggerated, but artists put their hearts into their work.

Intrepid Studios has shut down in a way that I did not expect. What I can share is what I experienced. On January 28, toward the end of the workday, I was informed that we would be laying off 100 developers. I was devastated - these are hardworking people who were going to lose their jobs. Still, I believed it was something we could face together and find a path forward from.

The Nintendo Switch was a massive success, but it was built primarily on the strength of first-party and less-demanding third-party games. We all knew you didn't turn to the Switch for the visual splendor offered on its competitors. The Switch 2 has brought things slightly more towards parity, and we've seen a few third-party standouts like Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws that push the hardware.

The big new mechanic for this title is that instead of Zone Shots from Mario Tennis Aces, you can equip each character with a different racket, similar to how you can choose between a range of vehicles in Mario Kart. Every racket features a different special ability that you can charge up by rallying back and forth. When the gauge is full, you can unleash a Fever Shot to potentially devastating results.

Square has decided to muddy things up further by giving us Dragon Quest VII Reimagined before the expected Dragon Quest IV HD-2D Remake. What's more, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined utilizes bright, cartoony 3D character models instead of the HD-2D pixel art style of the earlier remakes. Thankfully, the models animate well, and they look particularly cool in battle. Ooooh, let me say that again: Dragon Quest fans are "spoiled for choice these days." Shiver Reimagine Dragons

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was a pretty solid release for Sega in 2025. Certainly the fans seemed chuffed about it, and the critic reviews were good, too. Indeed, Sega's latest financial results are quick to praise the game's Steam user rating and its Metacritic score. But it turns out, they aren't quite so happy with the sales numbers. The document confirms what we heard at the end of 2025: Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has sold 1-million+ copies.

It's Christmas of 1994, and I am 16 years old. Sitting on the table in our family room next to a pile of cow-spotted boxes is the most incredible thing in the world: a brand-new Gateway 66MHz Pentium tower, with a 540MB hard disk drive, 8MB of RAM, and, most importantly, a CD-ROM drive. I am agog, practically trembling with barely suppressed joy, my bored Gen-X teenager mask threatening to slip and let actual feelings out.