Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is a fresh, reimagined take on Lara Croft’s first adventure. I recently played about an hour of Legacy of Atlantis at Summer Game Fest 2026, and saw first-hand how developers Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog are bringing elements from the original game and its first remake, 2007’s Tomb Raider Anniversary, into the modern era.

The preview took me to the Lost Valley area in Peru, where I was tasked with solving a new version of Tomb Raider’s iconic cog puzzle. Here, two cogs are needed to reconnect a mechanism that can stop the flow of a nearby waterfall, revealing the door that will let her deeper into the hidden jungle. The mechanism sits in a small pond, and while the first cog is easy to come by, you’ll have to discover the second on your own.

This first portion of the Lost Valley contains no combat, instead putting an emphasis on finding your way through an area full of side paths that can lead you to collectibles and hidden items. Pointedly, Legacy of Atlantis provides little guidance on where to find your missing cog. Instead, you have to use clues in the environment to figure out where to go for yourself. It’s an intentional choice that plays into Lara’s character as an archaeologist and explorer — and finding the right path through the area was, at times, pretty difficult.

“If we put you in the boots of Lara Croft, and then hand you a map, or give you Waze directions on where to go, you’re going to feel like, ‘Where’s the challenge in that? Where’s the connection to the character and the headspace that she’s at?'” said Jeff Adams, Experience Director at Crystal Dynamics, during an interview after my session.

But Game Director Raul Siqueira at Crystal Dynamics also noted that the team didn’t want to give the impression that Legacy of Atlantis is meant to be a difficult game. Instead, he said, it’s meant to give players the tools they need to create the experience they enjoy, including the ability to increase guidance, and to set the difficulty of puzzles and combat independent from one another.

Exploring is its own reward, too. You can find caves by diving down into the pool by hitting Circle while you’re swimming, or discover handholds in walls that lead into ruined buildings, and more. Many of the items to be found yielded rare materials that suggested crafting will be a big part of Lara’s experience, too, although it wasn’t part of the demo. 

As in the past, Lara is an acrobatic explorer, hanging off and leaping between ledges with X and using a grappling hook to cross large gaps with Triangle. You’ll even sometimes swing between horizontal poles, timing when to hit X to let go at just the right moment.

Though it took a while of searching, I eventually found my way to the last gear, stuck to an ancient wooden contraption. I found a path to climb up and swing across to the gear so Lara could kick it loose, knocking it down into the stream so it would flow down to the mechanism below. After aligning the cogs, the ancient machine started working, the waterfall closed off, and Lara made her way through the doors.

Moments later, I stepped back into the jungle — only for velociraptors to leap from the foliage and attack. Here, I finally got to fire away with Lara’s classic dual pistols, which unload as you hold down R2. You can either fire the guns one at a time while on the run, or tighten your aim and go full bore by holding L2 while you shoot.

The raptors are quick, fearsome predators, heaving themselves at Lara with vicious attacks, and it quickly became clear that the key to combat in Legacy of Atlantis is to stay mobile and aggressive yourself. When you press Circle, Lara will dive, roll, and cartwheel to deftly escape incoming attacks.

Between the exploration elements like swinging from poles, Lara’s long jumps, and the acrobatic dodges and dives in combat, Legacy of Atlantis takes on a bit of a throwback feel. Lara has a slight floatiness that gives the impression of how she felt to control in older Tomb Raider games. It’s a fun melding of modern game design and old-school game feel. 

“We did look at combat from the lenses of, like, what did we do during the Survivor era [during the last three games] that made sense for Lara at that time in her life, that may not make sense for Lara at the top of her game, which is where we find her in Legacy of Atlantis?” Siqueira told me. “So we were very conscious of, Lara in combat needs to move the same way that she moves in traversal, she needs to move the same way that she does with her puzzles, it needs to be distinctively hers, it needs to have like all the flourishes that you expect, the acrobatics — everything that you want that power fantasy of Lara Croft to be needs to be present.”

As you attack enemies, you’ll earn Focus, which you can then spend by hitting R1. Doing so lets Lara do a gymnastic flip while time briefly slows, allowing you to fire your guns while dodging. Siqueira said the developers used Focus to help give players an advantage over enemies, so they wouldn’t feel like Lara’s distinct, acrobatic movements were leaving them vulnerable.

After pushing down the path and fighting off a few more groups of dinosaurs, things really took a turn. A massive tyrannosaurus rex burst through the trees, triggering a chase scene as Lara and the raptors both went sprinting away from its snapping jaws. While this was a set piece moment, it was still challenging, requiring me to make a careful leap as Lara went sliding down a muddy hill, or to quickly climb a wall, to avoid becoming a snack. The demo ended soon after on a heart-pumping cliffhanger as the T-rex closed in.

During my brief time with it, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis did a lot to capture the old-school feeling of the Tomb Raider series, but with a lot of modern sensibilities. You can leap into Lara Croft’s first adventure yourself when Legacy of Atlantis launches on February 12, 2027.

Summer Game Fest Play Days featured a ton of new titles this year, with developers and publishers giving lots of chances to see, and play, a variety of games coming to PS5. I visited SGF Play Days this year to see these upcoming titles in action, and go hands-on with many of them. Here’s everything I played and saw at Summer Game Fest.

Publisher: Sega | Developer: Creative Assembly

More than a decade after the original was released, Alien: Isolation 2 slithered through a vent to terrify at SGF. I played the game’s prologue, taking on the role of a Weyland-Yutani executive who just arrived on the remote colony planet that serves as the game’s setting. As you’re riding in a rover with two other characters, there’s suddenly a flash and a nearby explosion. The three of you pile out of the rover and you set out into the woods to try to find out what happened.

As you make your way through the barren forest, you soon come across the site of what looks like a crashed ship. Alien: Isolation fans will quickly realize this isn’t a ship, it’s the Project KG-348 lab that Amanda Ripley jettisoned from Savastopol station in the first game. That’s the lab where she trapped the alien that had hunted her for the entire first half of Alien: Isolation before she sent it off into space. Of course, the ill-fated group of humans venture inside.

After you spend some time exploring and restarting the lab’s power with similar chunky, tactile controls as in the original game, like mashing X to start a generator, the creature reveals itself, dropping from the vents above and stomping away, barely missing you.

At least in this prologue, Alien: Isolation 2 feels just like its predecessor. You can crouch to stay tow and quiet with Circle, keep out of sight by ducking behind objects and under tables, and peek around objects to get an eye on the creature by holding L1 and using the analog stick. You can also use tools to distract the xenomorph; in the prologue, I found a couple of flares that could be lit and thrown to draw its attention.

But with no motion tracker, you have to rely on your senses to keep track of the alien and avoid its lethal pursuit. The creature is just as smart as it was before, too — it’ll search for you and listen for your footsteps, and even open cabinets or look under tables if it suspects you’re around. I narrowly missed getting grabbed when the creature decided to duck down and check the table I’d been cowering beneath as it walked by. And just like in the last game, you can’t kill the alien; you can only avoid it and hide from it.

Publisher: Remedy Entertainment | Developer: Remedy Entertainment

Control Resonant takes some big steps forward from Remedy Entertainment’s 2019 game, reframing many of its underlying ideas as a melee-focused action-RPG. I played for about 90 minutes and found it satisfyingly fast and frenetic, and just as fascinatingly weird as its predecessor.

My hands-on demo began at the start of the game, taking on the role of protagonist Dylan Faden. After a stalemate battle during the last seven years, The Oldest House has fallen to the Hiss, and the remaining agents of the Federal Bureau of Control evacuate into New York City to face a new threat.

Despite his past, Dylan pledges to help fight the Hiss and correct the damage he helped cause. He’s also searching for his sister, Control protagonist Jesse. Though she’s not the protagonist, Jesse is a big part of the story, from what I saw. Dylan is in contact with Jesse in a way that seems to transcend physical space, just as characters sometimes do in Control and Alan Wake 2.

Control Resonant gets you right into the action, using Dylan’s parautilitarian abilities and his shapeshifting weapon, the Aberrant, to take the fight to the Hiss. After just a few minutes, I unlocked some powerful movement abilities: hitting Circle lets you dash twice before touching the ground, and X lets you double-jump. Holding X allows you to levitate briefly in the air. All those abilities together make you incredibly mobile, able to leap up to rooftops, cross huge gaps, and chase down enemies.

Combat is both easy to pick up and seems to offer a high skill ceiling. Hitting Square swings the Aberrant for your standard strike, while Triangle activates a secondary form you choose, so you can build combos. Other powerful paranatural abilities are mapped to L1, R1, and R2. Battles are often about darting around, taking down enemies quickly with your attacks, while you work to dodge incoming strikes and use your ridiculous mobility to control the flow of combat. As in Control, you’re rewarded for your pure aggression; enemies drop healing items as you defeat them to keep you going.

The demo concluded with a boss fight against a huge head cobbled together from road signs, steel girders, and chunks of concrete, using them as projectiles or swinging debris to take Dylan out. It highlighted both the scale of what you’ll face and how your quick reactions and smart use of Dylan’s abilities will let you take on any threat.

Publisher: Capcom | Developer: Capcom

Capcom provided a new chance to go hands-on with Onimusha: Way of the Sword at SGF, with this look showing off the game’s more open areas, as opposed to the more linear demo we saw previously.

This demo takes protagonist Musashi to a temple and the surrounding village in Kyoto, where he encounters people with strange injuries and big smiles. Turns out, people are visiting the temple to ask for changes in their fates, but whatever’s answering their prayers is twisting their wishes. One man asks to be free of knee pain, and loses his leg — no knee, no pain. Musashi and his talking, supernatural Oni gauntlet quickly surmise that a demonic Genma is impersonating the temple’s deity and set out to cleanse it.

In addition to giving another chance to practice Onimusha’s intense sword combat, with its many defensive maneuvers that allow you to break an opponent, deflect or parry their strikes, and execute them in brutal fashion, this demo puts an emphasis on exploration. The area around the temple includes a number of side paths where you’ll encounter enemies and can search for crafting materials or other items to strengthen Musashi.

The demo culminates in a tough boss fight with the Genma, who reveals they’re using wishes to harvest body parts from the unsuspecting, enthralled villagers. Like all the toughest fights in Onimusha: Way of the Sword, the fight relies heavily on perfectly dodging with Circle, parrying with L1, and deflecting by holding L1 and pressing X. The boss brings some intense attacks of its own, like using supernatural tentacles that will grab and drop boulders and even whole houses on Musashi.

Capcom also showed off more of Onimusha in a hands-off theater presentation, which put Musashi in another area he was free to explore, larger than the temple area, complete with a variety of activities to seek out and complete. In that demo, we saw Musashi take on what looked like a side mission to clear the demonic corruption that had overtaken a kabuki stage, battling a pair of tough bosses along the way.

From what I played and saw, it looks like Onimusha: Way of the Sword will offer a game world that will be full of things to discover and tough battles that will test your skills.

Publisher: Capcom | Developer: Capcom

The next game in the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil Veronica, continues the publisher’s long list of remakes of classic titles in the series, this time modernizing 2000’s Resident Evil: Code Veronica.

First and foremost, Hirabayashi confirmed that Resident Evil: Veronica will be a third-person game. While the Veronica trailer revealed at SGF plays from a first-person perspective and Capcom’s last Resident Evil game, Requiem, featured both first-person and third-person options, it sounds like we can expect RE: Veronica to stick close to the original when it comes to how you’ll play it.

Capcom didn’t show anything of Resident Evil Veronica at SGF beyond its announcement trailer, but it did offer a presentation from Producer Yoshiaka Hirabayashi, who provided a little more insight.

Hirabayashi confirmed that Resident Evil Veronica will be a third-person game, it’s being developed by the team that remade Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4, and emphasized that Capcom sees Veronica as just as critical to the series as the numbered titles. That’s particularly true, he said, because the story involves so many characters who are important to the series — namely, protagonists Claire Redfield and her brother Chris, and antagonist Albert Wesker.

We can also expect Resident Evil Veronica to retell the story of the original Code Veronica while bringing it more in line with the series’ overall lore and storytelling, Hirabayashi said.

“The original Code Veronica was released in the year 2000, so since the year 2000, of course, there have been many entries in the Resident Evil series, and the history of the world, the lore, and the story of Resident Evil have proportionally increased,” he said. “So, as you might have noticed in other remake titles, when we do revisit those older titles, we do kind of retune some things, so that there’s more continuity and there’s more of a connection to the overall lore of the universe that’s been established. So that’s true for other entries, and that’s going to be true for this one as well.”

We’ll have to wait for more concrete details on Resident Evil Veronica, but if the launch trailer and past Resident Evil remakes are any indication, horror fans have a lot to look forward to.

Publisher: Bloober Team | Developer: Anshar Studios, Broken Mirror Games

Publisher Bloober Team surprised lots of fans with the announcement of SAW: Genesis, a three-versus-one asymmetrical horror game from Anshar Studios and Broken Mirror Games. In a hands-off demo, Bloober and Anshar explained how Genesis channels the SAW franchise for a different approach to battles between killers and survivors.

First and foremost, the “one” in this asymmetrical horror game, the Judge, isn’t a killer, per se, and is actually at a disadvantage against the other players, known as the Accused, in a direct confrontation. Instead, the Judge is a mastermind, moving around the procedurally generated map to set traps for the other players. The Judge has access to hidden areas like tunnels and balconies the other players can’t get to, and while the Judge doesn’t know where the other players are, they can figure it out by listening for telltale signs like footsteps.

The goal of the Judge is to isolate players, ambush and immobilize them, and dump them down chutes into deadly Retribution Traps. These are the sorts of elaborate torture devices the SAW series is known for, and to escape, players will either need the help of their fellow Accused, or to sacrifice a part of their body to stave off death. But those sacrifices will have consequences; if you give up some fingers to escape a trap with your life, you won’t be able to do things like turn valves that might open doors, and your friends will need to help you.

Meanwhile, the Accused must survive and escape, and the best way to do that is by working together to save each other from traps and minimize how much each player is hurt individually. Finding items like weapons can give the Accused an edge if they catch the Judge in the open, or if the Judge summons a powerful accomplice character to help them.

SAW: Genesis also adds new lore to the SAW franchise; it’s set in the 1920s, and its Judge character is the person who inspired SAW’s iconic, trap-deploying villain, Jigsaw. Bloober said it intends for SAW: Genesis to be completely canonical to the SAW movies, so for fans, SAW: Genesis looks to be a fascinating addition to the series’ lore, as well as a scary good time with friends.

Publisher: Daybreak Game Company | Developer: Cold Iron Games

Set five years after the events of the Aliens: Fireteam Elite, the sequel continues to capture the feeling that you’re seconds from being overwhelmed by hordes of sleek, deadly xenomorphs, just like in the 1986 movie from which it draws inspiration. We played a mission from the middle of Fireteam Elite 2’s campaign, in which we were tasked with making our way through a derelict spaceship overrun by aliens and aggressive Weyland Yutani androids.

Fireteam Elite 2 expands your cooperative third-person shooter squad from three to four, but you’ll face huge hordes of creatures as you make your way through missions. Our fireteam faced off against some familiar enemies, including standard xenos, huge and powerful Drones, and hidden, stalking Prowlers, as well as baton-wielding synthetics and more capable synths equipped with rifles or riot shields. But we also faced a few new enemies, including xenomorphs with huge acid sacs growing from their heads whose goal is to get close and explode on you, and armored, spider-like robots that take quite a bit of firepower to put down.

To aid in your battle, you can find weapons and items as in the last game, like sentry turrets and health packs. Scour each mission and you can also nab new ammo types, such as incendiary rounds, cryo rounds, and electrical rounds, which make your weapons more effective against certain enemies — at least until they run out.

Developer Cold Iron Studios has made some changes to character classes, but it sounds like they’ll be even more customizable than they were in the last game. I played a medic, which had the capability of dropping a portable healing device that could help my teammates deal with their injuries, but only temporarily since it dispensed health that would slowly decay over time, and an Overclock ability that sped up the reloading and weapon switching of anyone nearby. I saw a few other abilities in action, too, like the Machinist’s deployable flying drone, as well as grenades that could freeze enemies or hit them with electrical bursts.

It sounds like Fireteam Elite 2 is making a lot of changes that were requested by fans of the first game, while maintaining the first’s white-knuckle action and challenge. fully expect to get overrun by the universe’s greatest killing machine when the Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is released.

Publisher: Sega | Developer: Sega

Crazy Taxi World Tour revitalizes Sega’s beloved arcade driving franchise, and it even brings back at least some of the killer ’90s bands that helped define the series. In a hands-off presentation from Director Kenji Kanno, we got a few more details about what looks to be a big expansion on the ridiculous original.

The main focus in Crazy Taxi World Tour is on its story mode, which spans five locations in five different countries — hence the “world tour.” While Kanno wouldn’t share many details, we do know that the story kicks off when the protagonist Axel’s car is stolen, kicking off his globe-trotting adventure to retrieve it. With World Tour, the development team is taking the opportunity to build on the characters of Crazy Taxi, expanding on their personalities and backstories, as well as the lore of the series overall.

As in the original games, a big part of the action will be picking up passengers and delivering them to their destinations, with the speediest, most ridiculous driving you can manage. Your taxi is decked out with new abilities, like boosting and reversing with the quick back dash. But there’s more to the experience than earning CRAZY money. You’ll also meet different characters and help them out with special activities, like helping deliver a huge stack of pizzas without losing them all over the street, and using your taxi to help a fisherman cast his line ridiculously far, and then hitting reverse to haul in some monster catches. Some of those activities will be silly, and others will be a little more serious, but they all play into Kanno’s vision of creating cities that feel alive with people as you drive, drift, and crash through them.

World Tour is also helping the Crazy Taxi developers realize some features that never made it into past games — namely multiplayer, which they couldn’t manage in Crazy Taxi 2 or 3 because of technical limitations.

Though there’s a lot we still don’t know, the presentation did show off a few other elements we can expect, like odd jobs to complete and a progression system that’ll have you leveling up as you complete fares and tasks. And Kanno also confirmed that this time, you can drive in the ocean.

Publisher: Epic Games | Developer: genDesign

The next title from acclaimed developer Fumito Ueda received a second trailer during the SGF Showcase, but it’s still just as cryptic as when it was announced last year at The Game Awards. I got to see a little more than what appeared in the trailer in a hands-off demo, and spoke to Ueda about what players can expect from the new game.

In gen Atlas, you awake on a world filled with technologically advanced ruins, with hulking, destroyed mechanical figures scattered across it — a world seemingly abandoned by humanity. What happened here and why everyone is gone is up to you to discover, and as the trailer shows, part of how you’ll do that is by uncovering the head of a giant robot. From what we’ve seen so far, the robot will help you to get around and explore the world, and sometimes allow you to commandeer titanic robot bodies to use for various functions, including solving puzzles and fighting other colossal machines.

Ueda wouldn’t share too much about the action-adventure game, but did say there are a number of different ways you’ll get around and engage with the world, both with and without the help of the robot, striking a balance between exploration and solving puzzles.

While Ueda’s previous games — Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian — formed a sort of trilogy, with similar settings, characters, and ideas, you shouldn’t expect gen Atlas to be another riff on similar ideas. In fact, Ueda said the sci-fi setting and the focus on giant robots were the result of him trying to do something new, different, and unexpected.

“If I put myself in the shoes of the player or a fan that’s been following my own games, I think I would actually want something of a surprise or something that is unexpected of an Ueda game, and I feel the same way,” Ueda said. “If I deliver something that’s sort of on the extension of what I’ve made, I might actually not be as excited, to be quite honest. So I want to keep that sort of excitement and even try to deliver beyond people’s imagination and expectation.”

Ueda said he hopes to be the kind of creator whose audiences can’t predict what he’ll make next. With that in mind, we’ll have to wait to see exactly what kind of experience and mystery Ueda delivers in gen Atlas.

Publisher: Annapurna Interactive, Konami | Developer: Screen Burn Interactive

Developer Screen Burn didn’t provide a chance to play Silent Hill: Townfall at SGF this year, but it did offer a hands-off demo that gave a pretty good sense of how you’ll make your way through its foggy, frightening Scottish town.

Central to the first-person experience in Townfall is its portable TV set, Screen Burn’s riff on Silent Hill’s classic, staticky radio. In past games, the radio’s white noise grows louder as enemies draw close, giving you a sense of when you’re about to be attacked as you make your way through the town’s thick fog. In Townfall, the TV helps you deal with enemies, while also providing you with navigational clues and other useful information.

In the live demo I watched, protagonist Simon could tune the TV to find signals within the static, including a message from a woman called Zoe, which draws him on through the town. The signal provided still images of locations and objects nearby, giving Simon clues as to where he should go. Zoe’s message was coming from a nearby house, and to get there, he followed the images past some stalls and a tree planted in the middle of the concrete walkway, before finding an alley shown in the images and making his way to the house’s back door. Inside, we saw that Simon will be working to solve puzzles in true Silent Hill fashion, including working to reset an electrical breaker.

Later, Simon used the TV for a different purpose: to spot one of Townfall’s hideous, fleshy monsters. Tuning the TV to an enemy’s signal lets you see it through walls, allowing you to gauge where it is in the fog so that you can sneak by. Evasion will be a big part of how you make your way through Townfall — using peek controls to carefully check around corners will be an important way to avoid getting got as you explore.

Soon after, Simon found a plank of wood to use as a melee weapon to show off Townfall’s melee combat, which is fast and brutal. While it’s possible to block incoming attacks as you fight, it took only a few hits for Simon to fall, suggesting that fights like this are extremely risky and might be best avoided.

While my look at Silent Hill: Townfall was brief, it looks like an intriguing and frightening take on the franchise’s formula, and I can’t wait to see more.

Publisher: Sega | Developer: Teco Park Inc.

The next entry into the Pico Park series sees Sonic and his pals teaming up for some cooperative multiplayer chaos. Along with three other journalists, I played the eight quick stages that make up Sonic Pico Park’s tutorial, which showed off how you’ll control Sonic characters and cooperate to solve various deceptively simple-looking puzzles.

When you jump into Sonic Pico Park with three friends, you’ll each play a different character from the Sonic universe: Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Sonic the Hedgehog himself. All of them are speedy runners and can spin dash when you hit Circle.

Working together is key, since the screen only advances forward when all four characters head to the right, and some obstacles will require all of you to surmount them. We quickly ran into walls that were too high for a single character to climb, requiring us to jump on each other’s heads to make a tower to get one person over, or bridges that would collapse if we didn’t all quickly sprint across them at the same time.

One puzzle needed a character to spin-dash up a ramp to a high platform, and three of us needed to form a wall by standing on each other’s heads so the fourth could use us to dash up. In another, the only way to cross a long gap was with Tails’ flight ability. Tails can carry another character if you hit X to jump up and catch him, and other characters can hold onto the first one — but with all four characters weighing him down, Tails starts to lose altitude from the strain, so we had to quickly cover the gap before we fell.

Classic elements of Sonic games make appearances in Sonic Pico Park’s puzzles. We needed to use spring launchers to cross a big gap in one puzzle, while avoiding the ones that were facing in the wrong directions and could send some of us bouncing off each other. And in true Sonic fashion, sometimes, the solution to the problem is speed.

Where Sonic Pico Park got really fun was in the chaos that four characters trying to work together can create. Even in the first few levels, we saw plenty of trouble as we knocked each other into pits or spikes in goofy fashion, and I can only imagine how more complex levels will create even more ridiculous situations.

Publisher: Sega | Developer: RGG Studio

The Virtua Fighter series is more than 30 years old, but it’s getting an entirely new spin with Virtua Fighter Crossroads. The new title combines what fans love about the series — its pitched, 3D fighting game battles — with the storytelling and worldbuilding developer RGG Studio is known for.

Sega brought journalists in for a hands-off presentation with Creative Director Riichiro Yamada that expanded on the trailer launched during SGF. Crossroads takes place 10 or more years in the future from Virtua Fighter 5, and features four protagonists, each a fighter living in the fictional South Asian country of Vilaspara. We’ve primarily seen Cielo, the Paraguayan-American fighter who serves as the beginning, relatable protagonist in the story. But while Cielo’s story is one of personal growth as he works to make a name for himself as a fighter, expect to see the story take darker turns and change tones with the other characters.

Player choice is going to be a major part of the single-player experience, with a branching narrative that can change depending on the things you do, the choices you make, and the relationships you build, like those between Cielo and his friends. And while you’ll meet other legendary Virtua Fighter characters along the way, they may be friend or foe — how they treat you and what happens with them might be dependent on your actions. Above all, though, Yamada said the team wants Crossroads to be grounded and believable within the Virtua Fighter universe.

Combat in Crossroads takes on the classic Virtua Fighter flare, flipping to a side-on camera perspective when you start throwing punches and kicks. You’ll fight in both one-on-one battles and against groups of enemies, but Yamada said the team has worked to mix action-adventure combat with Virtua Fighter’s approach, and to modernize it.

In addition to the single-player campaign, there’s also a one-on-one player-versus-player mode, and Yamada said part of the idea behind Crossroads is to create ways for players to develop their fighting game skills in the campaign, so they can take them into battle with their friends. Above all, he said, the team wants the game to be fun and approachable, whether they’re long-time Virtua Fighter fans or just coming to the series for the first time.

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We’ll add even more games to this list over the next few days, so stay tuned.

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Hey, everybody! Tim, Kristen, Brett, and I are back this week to discuss the latest State of Play, along with some of our favorite announcements and what we can’t wait to get our hands on. This episode also includes a special interview with the Head of Creative at Santa Monica Studio, Cory Barlog, and God of War Laufey Director Ariel Lawrence.

Stuff We Talked About

Tim Turi – Content Communications Manager, SIE

Kristen Zitani – Senior Content Communications Specialist, SIE

Brett Elston – Manager, Content Communications, SIE

O’Dell Harmon Jr. – Content Communications Specialist, SIE

Thanks to Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music.

[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve begins with a losing war. After a lightning strike by the Republic of Sotoa, the armed forces of the Federation of Central Usea are struggling to survive — and as an FCU fighter pilot, you’re joining the remnants of a military that’s barely holding on.

After playing through several of the campaign missions in Ace Combat 8, I got a sense of how developer Project Aces is telling its story of a desperate aircraft carrier crew trying to keep the battle going, and how you’ll rise to become a hotshot fighter ace, and a source of hope, for the embattled FCU.

A propaganda campaign is at the center of Ace Combat 8’s story. When you first arrive aboard the aircraft carrier Endurance, you’re introduced to the plan to keep the FCU going: a social media blitz focused on a legendary pilot known as the Wings of Theve, named for the FCU’s capital city. But in truth, the Wings is just Rex, an amiable but ordinary pilot whose job is to serve as a figurehead and whose exploits are greatly exaggerated. His true orders are to make an appearance in every engagement, and then run away and stay alive.

You join Rex as his navigator, but things don’t go well during that first mission; you’re shot down by enemy aces, and Rex is killed. But after you’re rescued, to keep the lie alive, you’re tasked with taking on the “Rex” callsign and playing the role of the Wings of Theve.

Ace Combat 8 conveys all this story through immersive, first-person cinematics that are a new choice for the series — one that Brand Manager Kazutoki Kono said was inspired by the team’s work on the PlayStation VR modes in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown. The perspective adds a lot of emotional weight to Ace Combat 8, capturing the sense of struggle aboard the Endurance and the pressure of carrying the war’s morale on your back and commanding Joker Flight, Rex’s four-fighter team.

Though your job as the Wings of Theve is initially just to stay alive, your presence and skills quickly change the tone for Joker Flight. When enemy fighters show up on your first mission, you quickly prove that the Wings of Theve can be more than just an inspiring ghost story.

The Ace Combat series does a good job of keeping complex flight controls simple and easy to learn, so it doesn’t feel like you need flight sim-level knowledge to become a top gun. Fans of Ace Combat 7 will be right at home with Ace Combat 8, which maintains the experience from the 2019 game, but with some new bells and whistles thanks to the PS5 Dual Sense controller. Resistance in the haptic triggers adds intensity to accelerating with R2, decelerating with L2, and executing high-G turns by holding both, telegraphing through your hands how powerful your aircraft really is.

Whether attacking other planes in the air or strafing targets on the ground, your goal is often to keep enemies in your sights long enough to lock on and fire missiles or special weapons with Circle or your machine gun with X. You can quickly swap lock-ons with Triangle to find new targets and swap weapons with Square. The controls are easy to pick up, but there’s complexity in flying your plane, and you’re going to need to build your skills to survive some of Ace Combat 8’s later sorties.

Project Aces has very much avoided fixing anything that isn’t broken when it comes to gameplay, with battles feeling fast and chaotic as you dodge incoming missiles and try to line up your guns against enemy planes. With your comrades at your wing, you can also issue orders with the directional buttons, sending them to attack a specific target, allowing them to scatter and engage at will, calling them back to cover you, or telling them to switch to any special weapons you’ve equipped them with and go on the attack.

At some points, you can also make story decisions about how the team will proceed. During one mission I played, you engage an enemy squadron filled with friends of Rex’s wingman, Professor. He asks you to avoid killing the pilots as you shoot them down, and you can choose whether to agree to that request. It doesn’t seem that your decisions will greatly alter how the story plays out, but Kono said choices like this, as well as how well you fare when you’re tasked with defending allied forces such as naval ships, can affect which characters survive into future missions and story beats.

Ace Combat 8 shines in conveying the stakes of the war you’re fighting as your successes cause the legend of the Wings of Theve to grow — along with the hopes and expectations of your fellow soldiers.

In one mission I previewed, the ragtag FCU forces work to take down a ridiculously huge, incredibly dangerous Land Battleship. The ship, which is basically a navy destroyer combined with a tank, is nearly indestructible, and the FCU plans to use trucks loaded with bombs to try to take out its treads. Your mission is first to protect the trucks, then attack the treads.

Even on Ace Combat 8’s normal difficulty, the mission was tough — the Land Battleship is decked out with powerful rail guns, as well as anti-aircraft cannons and deployable drones. The fight takes place in a massive city center, so you not only have to dodge all sorts of incoming fire, but do your best not to crash into the buildings as well. The only hope to defeat the land battleship is for the FCU to demolish skyscrapers in the ship’s path, slowing it down and eventually trapping it.

The mission really ratchets up the scale of the war and channels the emotions felt by the FCU’s forces. Radio chatter is nothing new to Ace Combat 8, but in all the missions I played, that chatter captures the chaotic and often desperate tone of the moment, as commanders, officers, soldiers on the ground, and your wingmen all fill the airwaves, issuing orders and reacting to what’s happening.

As we arced around the land battleship, fighting interceptors and protecting the trucks, Ace Combat 8 not only used the chatter to convey critical mission info in the moment, it sold the story of frightened soldiers doing everything they can to stop an overwhelming force as they fought for their home.

It’s that storytelling, coupled with fast-paced battles and memorable characters, that make grabbing the stick in Ace Combat 8 an exciting prospect. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve hits PlayStation 5 on October 2.