Games & Gaming 360°

Slowly and surely, draw your plans to watch A foundational alien-invasion movie is currently streaming for free on YouTube

More information about the now-canceled Mass Effect: Universe keeps trickling out following this week’s closure of BioWare and the end of years of development of the next game in the studio’s sci-fi series. After an internal trailer featuring a new protagonist and original trilogy party member Liara T’Soni leaked, more information came out about how the game would handle choices from the previous games, as well as how the galaxy gradually built itself back up after the cataclysmic events of Mass Effect 3. Now, some folks who were working on the game at BioWare have started talking about the game, and while they’re not exactly going full spoiler mode for the canceled game, they are teasing a bit of what they were working on. One such developer is franchise technical director Romain Toutain, who held a stream on Twitch where he watched and commentated over the trailer and gave a few new details about what BioWare was cooking. Toutain speaks in French, but Bluesky user @loustica-lucia posted a clip of some of his commentary with English subtitles. So earlier, my brother was watching Octobinz (Romain Toutain)'s livestream on Twitch.

Terry Terrones is an entertainment writer for Polygon. His work has appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, Parade Magazine, Paste Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The A. V. Club, The Wrap, TV Insider, and other national outlets. He is a member of the Television Critics Association, the Critics Choice Association, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. This Captain Kirk speech says more about what Star Trek stands for than any other line in the original series.

Thomas is a writer and author from Chicago, working out of Washington state, with subspecializations in comic books, horror movies, zombie outbreaks, and tabletop RPGs. His work has appeared in Lifewire, GameRant, Digital Trends, and Prima Games, including several official strategy guides. If you haven't seen Bloodsport, stop what you're doing and watch Bloodsport

Oli Welsh has been covering the business and culture of video games for two decades. He started out writing for Edge and other publications (specializing in MMOs and Blizzard, as cover for his World of Warcraft playtime) before joining Eurogamer, where he worked for 14 years as reviews editor, deputy editor, and editor-in-chief; Eurogamer won many Games Media Awards during his tenure. At Polygon, he writes about film and TV as well as games, and provides news, analysis, and criticism on the entertainment we love and the industries that make it, all from his home in London. He loves role-playing, racing, puzzles, tactics, exploration, storytelling, Nintendo, mysteries, spies, fantasy, reality, cars, and classic cinema. He wanted to be a movie critic when he grew up, and now he’s definitely grown up, and occasionally is one. He considers this a win. Blasts from the past that deserve a comeback

Twenty-five years into Kingdom Hearts, Square Enix has yet to establish a reliable formula for how the games represent various Disney worlds. Some levels simply insert Sora, Donald, and Goofy into a familiar story from movies like Mulan, Tarzan, or Aladdin. Agrabah returned in Kingdom Hearts 2 for a loose adaptation of The Return of Jafar, while Kingdom Hearts 3 used the setting of San Fransokyo to create a bona fide sequel to Big Hero 6. Traditions like a heartfelt romp through 100 Acre Wood with Winnie the Pooh and friends feel mandatory, but beyond those, there’s no telling where Sora might fly his Gummi Ship in Kingdom Hearts 4 — if he has a Gummi Ship at all.

Sony and Nintendo's live-action Zelda movie is building a strong cast Every The Legend of Zelda movie cast member rumored and revealed so far

Sam Hill is a news writer at Polygon covering gaming and entertainment. He's a Portland, Oregon–based journalist known for covering gaming, the outdoors, national parks, tech, food, and internet culture. He has written for a range of publications including Outside Magazine, Boston Magazine, Vice, the Seattle Times and Digital Trends. In the 2004 novella adaptation, Depp plays a writer whose quiet retreat takes a disturbing turn

While the video game industry seems to be in free fall, especially at Xbox, the TV-pulled-from-video-games industry is on the rise. Especially at Xbox. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced a new department dedicated to cross-media property development. According to an industry insider, the team may have come from the ashes of a burned deal with Netflix, after Xbox reportedly over-leveraged the value of its intellectual properties. In a report from Puck News‘ Matthew Belloni, a deal was forming between Xbox and Netflix to develop projects based on its extensive gaming portfolio. In a write-up on freshly arrived Netflix executive Peter Rice, it was revealed that the streaming megalith offered newly appointed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma $500 million for exclusive rights to adapt a great deal of their intellectual property over a seven year period. A shiny figure. A healthy chunk of time. But Sharma apparently upped the ante to $800 million, at which point Netflix rescinded the offer. In a statement to Puck, Xbox says that “Netflix is a valued partner,” and that on top of upcoming animated Minecraft and Diablo series they have “received record-breaking interest” in adapting their IP.

Would that make what we're currently in the beforedeath? I have no particular thoughts on what the afterlife may look like, namely because if there is one, and I'm allowed to hang out in it, I don't want to be disappointed. What if I have the expectation that it's a hedonistic paradise and am met with only having a guy named Gary who only eats cheese sandwiches for company? How embarrassing! No, I'll leave the imagining to others on this particular front. Doing so bears some ripe fruit for me occasionally, too, as is the case today with Abelina, a surreal platformer about a man who died and finds himself tending to gardens and carving masks and trying "not to think about what this place might really be. "

Curl up with these oddly-comforting horror stories Autumn feels cozy and nostalgic, even as the spooky season rolls in. Horror can be an unlikely source of comfort during colder months, and cozy horror books are no exception. Although the definition of “cozy” can be subjective, these books usually balance their frightening elements with low-stakes events and (mostly) happy endings.

Sam Hill is a news writer at Polygon covering gaming and entertainment. He's a Portland, Oregon–based journalist known for covering gaming, the outdoors, national parks, tech, food, and internet culture. He has written for a range of publications including Outside Magazine, Boston Magazine, Vice, the Seattle Times and Digital Trends. Ahead of The Rings of Power season 3, fans can own the first 2 seasons

You know, I think at this point in my life there is a non-zero chance I will die before anyone is able to settle comfortably on what defines an immersive sim. I'm not going to even try to! The idea is too annoying and I'm sure someone will disagree with some aspect of it. And if you ask New Blood boss Dave Oshry, when it comes to trying to flog an immersive sim, it's probably best to not even refer to it as one. "Is it a good marketing term? No. It sucks," Oshry told PC Gamer in a recent interview. "It's awful. " For those unfamiliar with New Blood, they're a publisher of some pretty cultishly popular games like ULTRAKILL, as well as immersive sims like Gloomwood and Fallen Aces. Ironically, though, it's through publishing Gloomwood and working with lead dev Dillon Rogers specifically that he even heard of the term. "He's like, 'That's what these are called'. I'm like, 'I have never heard that before in my life. What the fuck are you talking about?'"

A new weekend has arrived, and today, you can save big on Persona 3 Reload, Pikmin 4, The Adventures of Elliot, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Star Wars Zero Company, and more. Check out our top picks for Saturday, October 24, below. Persona 3 Reload (Switch 2) for $24.99Persona 3 Reload - Nintendo Switch 2Persona 3 Reload Switch 2 copies are available at Amazon for $24.99 this weekend. This is a pretty great price for an expansive RPG that you can easily sink 100 hours into. The Switch 2 version had a rocky launch with frame pacing issues, but those have been resolved. Atlus also did add support for 60 FPS in docked mode. The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales On Sale for the First TimeThe Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales - Amazon Exclusive Edition (Nintendo Switch 2)The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales was released this June, and for the first time, you can pick up a copy of the game on sale! Amazon has copies for all platforms discounted to $44.99 today, which is a great price for this action-based HD-2D game.

October is, unambiguously, the best time of year to love horror. Whether you lean toward horror movies, games, or both, there’s no shortage of ways to get scared this season. But what if you love everything about Halloween but the scares? Plenty of people love the aesthetics and vibes of the Halloween season, but could do without the terror. If that describes you, have no fear (get it?). We’ve gathered five games that pack in spooky art styles, eerie atmospheres, and fall visuals, but stop short of leaving you with nightmares.

From mind-bending mysteries to dystopian futures, these Netflix sci-fi gems pull you in from minute one Not every great sci-fi show needs to start with a bang, but the best ones know how to grab your attention from the very first frame. Whether it’s a gruesome public execution in the middle of a cultural revolution, a child stepping into a smoke-filled battleground littered with corpses, or an alien organism mutating a host in seconds, the most compelling series understand the power of a great first impression. Such shows offer something tangible enough to keep you glued to your seat before the opening credits even roll.

Eiji Aonuma, the longtime producer of The Legend of Zelda series, has ensured that the hero of time will rise to combat evil since Ocarina of Time. Now Aonuma himself has received a hero’s title, albeit without getting to pick up a cool sword. This week, the French Ministry of Culture invited Hyrule’s caretaker to receive the honors of being knighted. Hailed by Minister of Culture Catherine Pégard as “a storyteller who always leaves room for the player’s imagination,” Aonuma was given the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.

Ashely currently works as a news writer for Polygon. After getting her Translation degree, she was hired as a guide and news writer for GameRant and TheGamer. She enjoyed working as an author for these sites for six years, and in 2026, she started at Polygon, where she is able to continue to do what she loves: writing about video games. Fortnite's next mini-season is a week away. The minor teasers that have surfaced thus far have made it clear that the upcoming season's theme will be an anime-pirate mash-up, and its main focus will be treasure hunting. That's about it. Epic Games has finally decided to pull the curtain back on the mini-season, and it's everything fans have been waiting for.

This intense, genre-bending Clint Eastwood Western is currently free to stream Throughout the 1960s, Clint Eastwood made the difficult leap from being a supporting player in a TV show to starring in movies as a headliner. That TV show was the Western series Rawhide and those movies were also primarily Westerns, most notably the three films which comprise “The Man with No Name Trilogy” — A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Yes, I'm doing it, I'm writing about a megastructure game for the second time this week because come on, HELENA : Cloud District just looks stunning, don't it? Admittedly there's a chance you've not heard of it, that be the way of things in this algorithmically dominated world, but allow me to tell you about its big, scary world and the strange camera you're equipped with to capture all the sights it holds. In the world of HELENA : Cloud District, you have come across a rotting megastructure that appears to be long abandoned, all sorts of strange flora dotted throughout it. In one part, it's something of a precision first-person platformer, as you navigate its intricately layered world with drops so steep you'd probably die before you hit the bottom. At the centre of it all is a computer, and it's here where you must bring all of your photographs in order to learn more about the history of the place.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 dropped just yesterday. As players soldier ahead, the game’s creators are already on the defensive front. While kvetching is inevitable, the latest Call of Duty has shipped with seemingly limiting matchmaking features, instead revolving entirely on algorithmically decided skill-based matches. In response to criticism, one of the game’s directors has decided to be frank: the matchmaking system you’re waiting for probably doesn’t exist. “I don’t know if there’s perfecting it,” Joe Cecot, multiplayer creative director, tells IGN. “We can look at the data and how it affects things, and we can quantify how it affects a certain group of players or a large percentage of them in a negative way. And so, though we’re not talking about exact specifics on matchmaking, our end goal is that every match is a good match.” While open matchmaking systems will prioritize immediacy in setting up a game, skill-based matchmaking (or SBMM) will balance internal data to pair players of similar efficiency. This system has existed in some form in the game all the way back to the first Modern Warfare in 2007, the game that made the series an institution.

Ashely currently works as a news writer for Polygon. After getting her Translation degree, she was hired as a guide and news writer for GameRant and TheGamer. She enjoyed working as an author for these sites for six years, and in 2026, she started at Polygon, where she is able to continue to do what she loves: writing about video games. The community comes together in an attempt to save Mass Effect

PlayStation Asia has reportedly leaked details of an unannounced update coming to Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, 2.1, next week. As shared on the Stalker subreddit, a graphic listing the update's highlights, called The Zone Lookout, was posted to PlayStation Asia's Twitter/X account.

Elijah is a freelance news writer at Polygon. He was an associate editor at The A. V. Club and Paste, and has been featured in outlets like Game Informer, Fanbyte, Unwinnable, and more. He loves media in all forms, from fighting games and horror flicks to slow cinema and visual novels. He's from the Greater Boston area. Prison Break: Black Creek is now in production

The first HD-2D game in Square Enix's long-running RPG series, Final Fantasy Resonance, has finally arrived on consoles and Windows PC. Resonance is a love letter to the franchise, and it's jam-packed with cameos and references to Final Fantasy heroes old and new. Once you've had your fill of this new adventure, you might find yourself itching to revisit the olden days — or dive into a newer installment you may have missed. Here are three games that comprise a mini Final Fantasy retrospective, spanning the various phases of the franchise's history. Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X Sad to say, but we're probably not getting a remake of Final Fantasy 6. Back in 2024, FF6 director Yoshinori Kitase said a FF7 Remake-style reimagining of the SNES game would take "around 20 years" to make. (We'd happily take an HD-2D version instead, but Square Enix seems determined not to give us one.) So now's as good a time as any to take the Pixel Remaster version of the game for a spin FF6 departs from the rest of the series by not featuring one lead protagonist like Cloud or Noctis, instead shifting the focus over a large ensemble cast.