PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC; Bit Reactor
Split priorities between scripted and emergent story moments hamper an otherwise brilliant Star Wars-themed successor to XCOM

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term “emergent storytelling”, you’ve likely experienced some of the unscripted tales that can bubble up out of a game’s systems. Perhaps you’ve led a scheming dynasty in Crusader Kings, or watched a favourite hero succumb to madness in Darkest Dungeon. Maybe you’ve surrendered yourself to the infinite yarn-spinner that is Dwarf Fortress – or read about it from the mid-00s forums where users helped popularise the term “Let’s Play” by chronicling their games in descriptive posts. Or perhaps you’ve played Firaxis’ XCOM, the alien invasion tactics hit that several key members of Zero Company studio Bit Reactor had a hand in.

Zero Company hinges on a concept as simple as it is perfect: take the complementary class abilities, tough dice rolls, and permanent character deaths of XCOM, and house them in a sci-fi setting known for spaghetti western blaster duels, last stands and heroic sacrifices. As creative director Greg Foertsch puts it, “Star Wars is about loss.” Which losses you end up mourning in Zero Company depends on you.

Fear, fights and feverish fanservice collide in this celebration of Resident Evil’s recent and retro legacy
PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2; Capcom

There’s often an undercurrent of existential fatigue in games that look back at their legacy. Dark Souls III’s dying kingdom, Metal Gear Solid 4’s decrepit Snake. So when Capcom showed us an ageing Leon Kennedy entering the ruins of the police station that marked the start of his journey from rookie cop to hardened veteran, it felt tinged with ennui as much as nostalgia. That self-reflective swansong for this 30-year series may still happen one day, but Requiem isn’t it. Even at its dourest and most pensive, this is less a song for the dead, more a knees-up in honour of the rocket launchers and typewriters that came before. Leon may be getting on a bit, but this is Capcom as energised, devious and goofy as ever.

Leon’s old scars will have to wait, anyway. Requiem’s new blood is FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft. Equal parts tenacious and nervous, she’s a fitting lens on the horror portion of Requiem’s split focus between disempowered terror and cathartic action. The story opens with Grace – more acquainted with desk work than field ops – tasked to go over a crime scene at a gutted hotel. She knows the place well, since it holds some horrific memories for her. Still, she heads off with little more than a flashlight and a pistol you’ll never find quite enough ammunition for to feel safe.

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Switch 2; Tarsier Studios
Childhood terrors come to wretched life in a grim fairytale of a puzzle-platformer that’s as beautifully macabre as it is hard to put down

“I thought you were dead,” are the first words you’ll hear from the child protagonists of this horror puzzle-platformer. It’s your first sign that things were going badly long before you got here. Exploring dark waves and desolated urban environments in a rowboat, they’re on a search for their lost friends across a world of rabid, malformed entities. As the children struggle with their outsize fears, so will you, but you’ve at least got the option to play co-op if you want someone on the couch to brave the horrors with.

In the early 2000s, irreverent gaming blog Old Man Murray pioneered the “crate review system”. The rubric was simple: the sooner the player encountered their first wooden cube of heinous mediocrity, the more uninspired the game. Updating this method for 2026, we’ve got a few new contenders: how soon before you shimmy slowly through a gap, boost a companion over a high ledge so they can pull you up or tediously rotate some mechanism with the analogue stick? Reanimal pulls out all these hits within the first 20 minutes and, by the time the credits roll, six hours in, it feels as if developer Tarsier has wrung the final drops of interactive novelty from its formula of light exploration puzzles, tense but simple stealth and ghastly chases. And yet this grim fairytale is still difficult to put down.