This week on The Game Informer Show, Giant Bomb’s Will Crosby joins us to discuss the recent launch of Gears of War: E-Day. Does a return to the past for Gears mean good things for it? Spoilers: yes, it does.
And after the break, we dip into the latest entry in another long-running series, as Eric shares his review impressions of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. Plus, Charles shares where he’s at in his Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave journey. Grab a cold beverage and stay awhile, it’s The Game Informer Show!
The Game Informer Show is a weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday for chats about video game reviews, news, and exclusive reveals alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from around the industry. Support the show by subscribing to our physical video game magazine!
We’re in the thick of the busy holiday review season, and there’s no shortage of new games trying to capture your attention. As you head into the weekend looking for your next gaming love affair, we’ve got an impressive variety of new titles to keep on your radar.
And if you’re simply looking to catch up on what’s happening in gaming this week, we’ve got you covered on that as well.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer launched this week and it is worth your time, regardless of your thoughts on Star Wars these days. It is absolutely a Star Wars game, with familiar locations, music motifs, and characters throughout, but the IP is honestly the least interesting part. It is a truly fantastic racing game, with a sense of speed and tension that will bring you back to the days of Burnout (and it makes sense, because much of the team over at developer Fuse Games worked on the Burnout series). Don’t let the roguelite campaign scare you; it works really well and moves at a brisk pace that keeps the experience from feeling repetitive. And within that campaign is a great story, better than most in the racing genre. Once you finish the campaign, there’s still plenty of game left for you. With a standard Arcade mode, miniature campaigns in the Scenario mode, and an expansive suite of multiplayer races and tournaments, you’ll likely have Star Wars: Galactic Racer on your hard drive long after you pick it up.
If you’re like me, you’re always on the look for new gear- and ability-gated exploration games that recall the joy of early Metroid and Castlevania games. Echo Weaver offers a new twist on that idea, by keeping the exploration element, but making progression be tied to knowledge acquired over the course of play, rather than new equipment. It’s a clever twist that has me intrigued from the early hours I’ve played.
Our reviewer, Kyle Hilliard, has already had a chance to experience the full game, and had this to say: “Echo Weaver’s unique approach to the Metroid structure is admirable, unique, and well executed. The sense of discovery is fantastic, and though I realistically probably won’t immediately play the game again, the idea that I could start with knowledge of basically all of the abilities to rip through the game at high speed is an enticing one.”
Gears of War: E-Day rewinds the clock to depict the events of Emergence Day, in which protagonists Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago first encounter the monstrous Locusts. The series has referenced E-Day since its first entry in 2006, so fans (including myself) are eager to witness its portrayal in The Coalition’s new release. In his Gears of War: E-Day review, Game Informer executive editor Brian Shea praises the release for delivering “an astonishing collection of shootouts, supported by improved traversal and tactical abilities, masterfully arranged battlefields, stunning visuals, and a strong, diverse arsenal of weapons and equipment.”
Thekla’s new puzzle game is a massive project with hundreds of distinct puzzles that fit together into a larger narrative and puzzle framework. It’s an overwhelming, impressive collection of brainteasers created by integrating several distinct puzzle games into a larger, coherent whole. In my mind, I’ve come to think of it almost like the video game equivalent of a frame story. No matter how you look at it, Order of the Sinking Star is a puzzle game built for experienced, patient puzzle gamers, featuring complex logic challenges that will push any player to think outside the box.
Deadlock
Eric Van Allen
We’ve once again got a great reason to dip back into Valve’s unreleased-but-popular MOBA-shooter Deadlock. The Cursed Apple got a major makeover with its latest update, and a new slate of heroes is looking to join the roster, with playtime counting toward votes on which character joins each week. We’ve already seen the Rat King and the sweet old Baba win the vote, but four more are still on the way. The graphics overhaul is huge, though; not only do the streets and boulevards of this cursed New York look phenomenal, but small UI and indicator tweaks have made Deadlock even easier to read at a glance. Deadlock remains the most impressive game not officially released, and if you can get an invite, it’s worth diving in this weekend to see what the team has been cooking up.
The Old King’s Crown
Matt Miller
One of the most intriguing and tactically rich games of the last several years, The Old King’s Crown is a true triumph for integrating numerous mechanics into a thematically rich narrative framework. Each player takes on the role of a potential inheritor of the monarchy after the old king dies. Using bluffing, card management, and control of the game board, each player controls a faction that is subtly distinct from the others, leading to a fascinating emergent narrative, like a rebellious uprising seizing control from the old nobility. Unfortunately, the biggest challenge for your weekend enjoyment of the title might be tracking down a copy; Eerie Idol’s excellent game is so celebrated it can be hard to find a copy. But if you’re lucky enough to find a way to play, I think you’ll be happy to add it to your shelf. If you can’t, it was just one of the titles that won accolades in our list of the very best board games of 2025, and you could try to snag one of those instead.
RuneScape: Dragonwilds strikes a respectable balance between a fantasy RPG and survival crafting game. The variety of environments and hidden lore for those who want it give depth to an otherwise nondescript setting and offer many hours of content for those who can tolerate its crafting system. But, without having an attachment to the RuneScape series, or a love for chopping wood or mining ore, it’s difficult to enjoy past the opening chapter. Though there is fun to be had, I wish certain parts of it didn’t feel as tedious or locked behind a grind for materials.
Dragonwilds expands the RuneScape world and brings back familiar faces to ground players in the dragon-infested continent of Ashenfall. It revolves around the history of Ashenfall’s early settlers and the takedown of Dragon Queen Kuldra, told indirectly through glowing blue books and side quests. Those stories of grief and greed are interesting, but mostly a backdrop for common tasks like plundering temples and stabbing rats.
Most activities tie back to the crafting system, whether that’s foraging for food or smithing swords. You can build tools, weapons, armor, jewelry, furniture, structures, and more. Dragonwilds lets you spend as much time as you want farming materials, though some, like ores, are more necessary than others. Magic spells can speed up some of the monotony, but that also requires leveling up your skills enough to learn those spells.
Even with crafting at its core, Dragonwilds is bloated with workstations and items that are more laborious than fun to collect. I blame the increasingly high number of materials needed to craft higher-level weapons and armor, and the multiple station types that could have been combined into one. As you get stronger, the number of materials you need for your gear increases, too. For example, my gear now needs Fine Cloth woven from threads and gold bars. By the time I reached the halfway point of the game, I had separate stations for tools and weapons, armor, jewelry, bows and arrows, and magical weapons like wands.
Classes don’t really exist in Dragonwilds. Instead of explicitly choosing a class like in a traditional RPG, you swap between roles by switching your gear – like swapping from armor to robes to switch from melee to magic. Changing classes felt pointless because I could force my way through most challenges with a sword, and bows and wands are less effective given the circumstances. Many confrontations involve flanking from multiple sides, so long-range combat isn’t ideal. Magic isn’t bad, but not many creatures have magical weaknesses and melee can easily do more damage with attack speed and buffs.
Dragonwilds is massive. Just the first arc took 20 to 30 hours to finish before I slew my first dragon. Fellhollow, the second arc, took about the same time to complete its story quests, and it didn’t make me any more excited to reach Dowdun Reach because I adapted so quickly to expectations. At the start of each region, I expect to grind for materials for three to five hours before I could expect to survive an “expedition” from my base, let alone bungling around uncharted territory to complete a quest with vague instructions. Thankfully, this steep on-ramp can be smoothed over through a setting that eases the experience grind, but the base way to play encourages the tedium to set in. To its credit, Dragonwilds spices up exploration in each region with gimmicks like “soulrifting” in Fellholllow, which unlocks alternate planes and invisible bridges.
Ideally, you avoid dying in any game, but Dragonwilds twists the knife as much as a Soulslike; when your health depletes, you drop your entire inventory and teleport back to the last place you camped. To avoid the inconvenience of refilling your bag, it’s easier to run back to the gravestone to retrieve your inventory. I’m grateful that I don’t just lose all the items, and that Dragonwilds spawns gravestones outside of dungeons instead of making me go back inside to claim them. Still, it’s annoying to be unexpectedly overpowered and then need to dive back into dangerous territory just to avoid another crafting spree. You can turn this annoying convention off in the settings, but playing the game as intended leads to cumbersome situations.
For better or worse, Dragonwilds brings back the “old school” feeling of discovering what to do without overt handholding. An NPC may suggest a general direction, but won’t tell you that you need an Iron Pickaxe to mine a dragon’s teeth to complete your quest. Players who have trouble understanding these hints could spend hours trying to decipher exactly how to find the items they need to progress.
Dragonwilds prioritizes the journey of completing quests over how easy they are to finish. After all, that means more time in the crafting system and discovering more about your environment, like rocks you didn’t know you could mine or hidden lore from a side quest you might have missed. Alternatively, it could lead to hours of repetitive grinding for materials, trying to unlock new clues or power-ups without getting any closer to the next objective.
RuneScape: Dragonwilds freshened my perspective on survival-crafting games with base-building and farming under dragon-dominated skies. I floundered for answers on how to progress to the next story quest without clear direction, and while I could explore in the meantime, other games in similar genres can offer the same thing with more entertainment along the way. In a genre full of compelling modern classics like Valheim, RuneScape: Dragonwilds is a difficult game to recommend.
I played Phantom Blade Zero at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, back in August, which, at the speed of the internet, means it feels like I had my hands on the controller about five years ago. The memory is vague and dreamlike, but it’s a strong one that left an undeniable impression. I also made sure to take thorough notes because I knew it would be some time before I could write about it.
For my Phantom Blade Zero play session two months ago, developer S-Game Studio offered up the opportunity to basically play from the beginning of the game, encouraging a long play session. I played through the intro and initial tutorials, meeting protagonist Soul, and learned his backstory as it relates to training with his brother, Zuoshang, as a young man. Once I had the basics squared away, however, the game fast-forwarded to a balletic clash between Soul and Zuoshang without much context as to why they were now fighting as adults, beyond my basic understanding that they now fundamentally disagree on something.
I am not fully removed from that camp, if I am being honest, but I admit that getting my hands on Phantom Blade Zero and controlling the movement and action did highlight the overall smoothness of playing what is essentially a Chinese martial arts film. It really does feel like you’re playing a game that borrows the beauty of human movement showcased in movies like Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Acrobatic dance applied to the art of swinging a sword.
After completing that opening combat encounter, it is revealed that Soul suffered a heart wound and a healer cryptically named The Flesh Sculptor gave him a replacement: a tainted heart that will only let him live for 66 days. And then I am whisked away to a high-speed carriage ride where the charismatic old man driver warns me that no one visits my destination because of a plague.
Enemies with chain and claw weapons ambush the carriage and Soul ejects the driver from the cart before things get too dangerous, as the driver’s yell of, “You still owe me for the ride!” echoes in the distance. This whole sequence is very “style over substance.” Pulling off counters and delivering sword slices to enemies as they leap from the nearby cliff face walls isn’t particularly challenging, but it looks impressive while feeling closer to a series of QTE moments. There is no QTE, however, to save the horses as the carriage careens off a cliff and crashes in a valley. When Soul comes to following the crash, I am surprised to see the dead horses hanging from the trees. A gruesome image now etched onto the map screen presumably serves as a memorable visual reminder of this location, but I can’t help but feel bad for the poor animals.
The whole sequence impressively sets up a chance to finally explore without training wheels, and I am happy to report that the level design is interesting and circuitous. With such a focus on combat and combat choreography, I was worried the action would be a series of arena fights. But Soul can sneak up on enemies, open shortcuts, and find characters that need help and offer missions. I hesitate to place the game in the Souls-like genre – it seems generally more forgiving – but the level layout recalls that structure in a way I like.
Soul may also be the fastest ladder climber I have ever controlled in a video game. Ladder climbing may be an odd mechanic to highlight, but I have climbed up and down thousands of ladders in my video game career and they always bring pacing to a standstill. You push up on the control stick and wait. If you’re lucky, sometimes you can press the sprint button to make your character climb a little faster, or slide down. That’s been the best-case scenario for decades. Soul, however, bounds up ladders like Spider-Man sprinting up the side of a building. Much like the player eager to get to the next memorable moment, Soul doesn’t have time to gingerly step on or grab each rung one by one. The UI loudly proclaimed that Soul officially only has 65 days to live once he woke up from the crash. There is no time.
And speaking of no time, mine was also literally limited during my Gamescom appointment, so S-Game Studio fast-forwarded me to the incredibly impressive Lion Dance boss. The Lion Dance is a traditional Chinese dance where two performers wear a joined lion costume and perform acrobatic feats often on high pillars. Here’s a good example. Seeing the real-world version of the dance is entrancing, and for Phantom Blade Zero’s Lion Dance boss, the team motion-captured real performers.
Just seeing the technically-two characters move around in the boss arena is impressive, but the second stage of the boss fight (which you jump to if you die – no need to replay the first stage of the boss fight) is where it gets really impressive. Pillars appear from the ground and the Lion dances among the tops of them while shooting fireballs at you. And while that is happening, small lion head minions appear to distract you. However, defeating the last minion means you can grab a lion mask, jump on the pillars yourself, and shoot your own fireballs at the boss.
The reports from everyone who has had a chance to play Phantom Blade Zero have basically been universally positive, but I still went into the demo expecting a potentially forgettable, but well-executed action game. It ended up being one of my favorite hands-on experiences at Gamescom, despite the long wait to talk about it. The game feels great to play; I am eager to explore the levels; and the Lion Dance boss, in particular, showed me that the boss encounters (unless the Lion Dance is the notable exception) will be full of unexpected surprises and impressive animation.
2K Games has surprise-dropped a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S update for Mafia III that adds 60 FPS performance to the game alongside other technical improvements. If you already own the game on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, the update is free; if you don’t, 2K is currently selling it on digital storefronts at 80% off.
The publisher has also revealed Mafia III: Definitive Edition for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S as well, and it includes the base game, all story DLC (Faster, Baby!, Stones Unturned, and Sign of the Times), and bonus packs (Family Kick-Back Pack and the Judge, Jury, & Executioner Weapons Pack) bundled together. This definitive edition is also available in the recently released Mafia: The Omerta Collection, which features Mafia, Mafia II, Mafia III, and Mafia: The Old Country.
Check out Mafia III in 60 FPS in the new trailer below:
Alongside today’s update, the Steam version of the game is getting a massive patch with all kinds of fixes, improvements, quality-of-life updates, and more. You can read those patch notes here.
2K Games has surprise-dropped a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S update for Mafia III that adds 60 FPS performance to the game alongside other technical improvements. If you already own the game on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, the update is free; if you don’t, 2K is currently selling it on digital storefronts at 80% off.
The publisher has also revealed Mafia III: Definitive Edition for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S as well, and it includes the base game, all story DLC (Faster, Baby!, Stones Unturned, and Sign of the Times), and bonus packs (Family Kick-Back Pack and the Judge, Jury, & Executioner Weapons Pack) bundled together. This definitive edition is also available in the recently released Mafia: The Omerta Collection, which features Mafia, Mafia II, Mafia III, and Mafia: The Old Country.
Check out Mafia III in 60 FPS in the new trailer below:
Alongside today’s update, the Steam version of the game is getting a massive patch with all kinds of fixes, improvements, quality-of-life updates, and more. You can read those patch notes here.
Forza Horizon 6, the latest open-world racer from developer Playground Games, was set to launch on PlayStation 5 this year but has since been delayed to 2027. Fortunately, it launches early in the year, specifically on January 26.
If you pay for the more expensive Premium Edition of Forza Horizon 6, you can start the game five days early on January 21, which is the same day the game’s first premium expansion goes live on all platforms (including PS5); despite Playground Games dubbing the expansion a “premium” one, the developer writes that it will be a free content update for all players in a blog. A physical version of Forza Horizon 6 will be available on disc for PS5 at launch from retailers. Developer Panic Button, which is the studio behind the PS5 version of Forza Horizon 5 that launched last year, is behind this PS5 port of Forza Horizon 6.
You can check out Forza Horizon 6 running on PlayStation 5’s 4K/30 FPS Quality Mode in the trailer below:
Playground Games says a 60 FPS Performance mode will also be available, though it hasn’t shared details on how the game might run on PlayStation 5 Pro.
If you preorder the game, you will get the pre-tuned Ferrari J50 added to your garage in-game after completing the prologue.
Forza Horizon 6 on PS5 will support cross-platform and cross-save with the Xbox and Steam versions. Plus, the game’s user-generated content is cross-platform, so PS5 players will have access to a large, growing collection of community-created content at launch. That content includes player-made EventLab races, Prefab vehicles, Garages, Estages, Liveries, and Tuning Setups.
Forza Horizon 6 hits PS5 in early access on January 21, ahead of its full launch on January 26.
Paramount Pictures is making a live-action Cyberpunk 2077 movie, according to a Deadline report. The publication says the movie is set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe, which began with CD Projekt Red’s RPG of the same name and has since expanded into novels, comics, and anime like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (which is getting a sequel this month).
Transformers One producer Lorenzo di Bonaventure, who has also produced multiple Transformers films, Snake Eyes, Madame Web, and more, is producing this Cyberpunk 2077 live-action movie. Beyond that, little else is known.
With Cyberpunk 2077 rich with stories, whether that’s the main story about V and Johnny Silverhand and their attempt to bring down Arasaka Corporation, the spy-centric Phantom Liberty expansion, or any of its myriad side quests, Paramount has plenty to draw on for this film. It sounds like this movie is still early in development, possibly even before pre-production, so it could be a while before we learn more.
Like most games born of Metroid, Echo Weaver’s inspiration is obvious. You explore and fill out a large, continuous map in a mysterious location and your abilities expand as you progress. Its other presumed inspiration, however, Outer Wilds, only makes itself apparent as you dig deeper into the unique structure of the game. You are stuck in a time loop in Echo Weaver, and it dictates what you can do and what you know about your suite of abilities. You don’t unlock new traversal moves and expanded weapons as much as you remember you literally had them all along. It makes the reward of discovery powerful in Echo Weaver, but it also creates frustrating barriers to progress.
As the titular Weaver, the character basically knows as much as the player holding the controller. You have a boomerang-like glaive you throw primarily to solve puzzles, and though it can be used to attack enemies, you won’t encounter very many. You also quickly learn that every few minutes, a vague calamity strikes, and you are forced back in time to start over. You keep your map progress and obviously everything that you’ve learned, and that’s more than enough to make death or resets not feel too unfair.
What really sets Echo Weaver apart is that many of your most useful abilities are not ones that you unlock, but rather ones you learn exist at some point along the way. For example, you can set your glaive on fire from the moment you start the game, but you won’t learn how until you’ve made significant progress. Mechanically, this is basically how every Metroid-inspired game works: Make enough progress and you will be able to do a new thing. But learning the often complicated procedures necessary for these later abilities that you could always do makes the reveal all the more rewarding. You weren’t given the ability to set your glaive on fire – you figured it out yourself. And that’s a good feeling.
This all plays into the time loop structure, too. The shortcuts needed to get to certain areas so you have more time to explore them were there all along – you just didn’t know how to see them. It’s why Echo Weaver feels more like a complicated puzzle box than a search action game where you’re killing the same creatures over and over, and I appreciate how that sets it apart from other games in the genre.
When you’re figuring things out and making good progress, it feels like you’re working in tandem with the time loop. But on the occasions when you’re not solving the puzzles you need, which is frequent, it can be frustrating. Running out of time when you’re trying to explore or just figure one last thing out becomes a burden, and the best course of action is often to just reset the time loop (essentially killing yourself), which feels like giving up in a moment that you don’t want to.
The worst moments of the time loop coming to a close are when you’re engaged in a complicated platforming gauntlet. Echo Weaver’s greatest shortcoming is that its jumping doesn’t feel great. Leaping is solid for general exploration, but when you’re trying to make it through thickets of thorns and endless pits that steal your health (and time), the action struggles to keep up with the demand. And when you’ve finally made it through and time loops just before you hit that checkpoint, it can be incredibly disheartening. Though resetting and trying again is built into the game’s design so it doesn’t become too much of a burden, I did hit a handful of distracting bugs primarily related to areas not loading properly when I fast-traveled to them.
Echo Weaver’s unique approach to the Metroid structure is admirable, unique, and well executed. The sense of discovery is fantastic, and though I realistically probably won’t immediately play the game again, the idea that I could start with knowledge of basically all of the abilities to rip through the game at high speed is an enticing one. Developer Moonlight Kids puts a lot of trust in the player to figure out how it all works, and the reward is palpable. That trust leads to some frustrated, aimless wandering, and the platforming challenges occasionally venture into feeling unfair, but by the end you will feel like a genius. That’s a good feeling to leave a game with.
While listening, I used my phone’s Shazam feature to create a list of all the songs I heard in the previews. Below, I’ll list each station and the songs I caught.
Cocotea FM
EoO – Bad Bunny
Si Es Trucho Es Trucho (Remix) – Axel Rulay featuring Farruko & El Afla
Canalla – Romeo Santos & El Chaval de la Bachata
Back Country Radio
Need a Little Time Off for Bad Behavior – David Allan Coe
Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ – Loretta Lyn
The Conversation – Hank Williams, Jr & Waylon Jennings
AfroBank FM
Joha – Asake
Gye Wani – Pat Thomas featuring Ebo Taylor
Shay’sana – DJ Lag & Robot Boii featuring Kamo Mphela
The Chamber 106.6
I – Black Sabbath
I’m Broken – Pantera
Raining Blood – Slayer
Flash FM
Good Ones – Charli XCX
Electric Feel – MGMT
Midnight Sun (Girls Trip) – Zara Larsson & PinkPantheress
Dirty South Classics
Like a Pimp Mix – JefeEdai
Who Dat – JT Money
Born N Raided – DJ Khaled (featuring Pitbull, Trick Daddy, & Rick Ross)
And those are all the songs I heard on these stations.
