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Hornet battles a boss in the new game.
Game Reviews

Silksong Still Feels Like One Giant Mystery Even After Playing It

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Hollow Knight: Silksong has a lot in common with Grand Theft Auto 6. Fans have been waiting on it for years. Each new crumb of information is quickly devoured. Competitors are scrambling out of the way. And after years of fermenting hype, the most wishlisted game on Steam now has to deliver something bigger than the all-consuming cultural distortion field surrounding it. No small task. I’ve now played 15 minutes of the final demo and I still could not tell you which way it’s going to go. That’s because everything that can make a Metroidvania Soulslike like Silksong truly pop is precisely what Team Cherry is keeping most under wraps.

I played the Gamescom 2025 build of Silksong on the Xbox Ally PC gaming handheld during a PAX West-adjacent event at Microsoft and it felt like eating a Dunkin Donuts Munchkin: easy, sweet, and over way too soon. That’s by design. Team Cherry said in a recent interview that the game took seven years to make because of all of the new areas, characters, and secrets it wanted to pack into the Hollow Knight sequel. And it also clearly didn’t want to ruin any of those things by actually talking about them before the game’s September 4 release date on PC and console, or by showing them off ahead of time in the demo.

The only portion of Silksong that anyone has played so far takes place near the beginning of the game. Hornet, the new protagonist, awakes in an underground glen full of bright moss and easy enemies. A short platforming section introduces players to the familiar Bloodborne-inspired combat (you need to deal damage to get health back) and the game’s exploration which has you exhausting dead-ends until you find the path forward. It wraps with a simple mini-boss fight that’s intent on scaring any newcomers away.

Team Cherry

The second section takes you to smoldering caverns with more deadly enemies to navigate. Ensembles of flying, fire-ball-spitting wizards and knights with big shields make you work to survive and gesture toward the ambient, elevated threat level that fills each path you choose to go down with just the right amount of tension.

This is all classic Hollow Knight so far. The only thing that really sets Silksong apart in the demo is Hornet. The character’s a bit faster, has a down diagonal attack to speed up aerial recoveries, and can heal more quickly but only after more energy is gathered from dealing damage. It’s a different, more aggressive flow than the original game’s, and could take on an even more distinct identity once players start unlocking their full arsenals.

Will Hollow Knight: Silksong really cost $20?

All of which is to say that while there were certainly no red flags in my brief hands-on time with Silksong, it’s impossible to know from the 15-minute demo whether Silksong can deliver on what fans have been hoping for over the last eight years. It’s slick and prettier than the original, but what will ultimately matter is the cleverness of its secrets, exploration, and later-game boss fights. One other bit of potential good news ahead of the game’s launch next week is that it might not be very expensive either.

Hollow Knight launched for just $15 back in 2017. You can currently buy it on PC for just half that price leading up to the sequel’s release (act now and you might be able to beat it in time). A leak yesterday on the GameStop website suggested Silksong will be $20, only $5 more than its predecessor at a time when Team Cherry easily could have charged $30 or more. The store listing has since been taken down and might have just been a speculative placeholder.

According to Dealabs‘ own leak, the $20 price for Silksong on PC is accurate. No physical editions of the game have been confirmed yet, however.

All eyes will be on Steam for when the actual price drops. So far Team Cherry hasn’t actually confirmed how much it will cost. Like almost everything else about the game, the small indie team is keeping that close to the vest. Not that it will matter. Just like the lack of reviews ahead of launch, Silksong doesn’t have to play by conventional rules. It’s in a league of its own. In less than a week we’ll finally know if it truly belongs there.



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Herdling review: an emotional trek through magical alps that feels a little too easy
Game Reviews

Herdling review: an emotional trek through magical alps that feels a little too easy

by admin


A powerful, memorable story told not with dialogue but with interaction, movement, and art.

Video games are good at making us feel things for clumps of pixels, especially when those clumps are in constant mortal peril. Herdling joins a long tradition of extended escort quests that deftly fiddle the heartstrings: everything from Ico and The Last Guardian to the burgeoning library of Sad Dad simulators that define modern gaming.

Herdling review

Herdling has much more in common with its stablemates, the critically acclaimed FAR: Lone Sails and FAR: Changing Tides, than it does with anything else: a bleakly apocalyptic duology that was about caring for machines rather than a herd of weird goat things, but with strikingly similar results. The FAR duology made you care about your motor, grow adept at making it go, and feel a torrent of emotions whenever the thing got lost or damaged, as you were constantly thrown into situations which trapped, damaged, or broke your line of sight from your pride and joy.

Herdling pulls all the same tricks, applying them to a collection of Calicorns, a dozen or so ram-like beasts with beautiful horns and adaptive technicolour coats, vaguely defined magical powers and an admirable gift for following basic instructions (go here, go here slowly, OK STOP, etc). Your goal: shepherd them on an alpine journey from the edge of a dystopic city up to the very tip of the mountains, encountering many challenges along the way, ranging from light puzzles to winged terrors that react to sound. Yes, this is a linear game with stealth sections, or “forced stealth” in the parlance of people who dislike stealth.

Haven’t you herd? | Image credit: Panic

Those people will be pleased to hear that none of the challenges in Herdling are particularly, well, challenging. The aforementioned stealth sections are almost comically forgiving. You need to sneak your flock past a sleeping murder owl, who will startle awake if one of your lumbering charges knocks over any of the dozens of stone cairns dotted about the place. And it’s tense, in no small part due to the creepy creature designs involved: horrid masked birds of prey with the wingspan of a minibus, claws like angry spiders, and a vacant death stare that pierces the soul.

Except it’s a piece of piss to get your herd around the noisemakers as they magically narrow their group silhouette around tight bends. And, even if you knock over two of the stone piles, the birds don’t actually attack. The only time I triggered an assault it was a hard-coded chase sequence that’s impossible to avoid.This is fine – the FAR games weren’t particularly challenging either. What matters is the journey, the emotional resonance, the sense of progress – and loss – that comes with an arduous undertaking. What the FAR games did have, though, were machine puzzles that at least made you feel like a gifted engineer. Even getting the vehicles to move in those games felt akin to operating a steam engine. Grand obstacles in the world required the sussing out of Big Machines and their foibles. Nobody got stuck playing those games, but it was an incredibly sustained illusion.Not so with Herdling.

And let’s be clear, despite the big, obvious differences, this game is so conceptually and visually similar to the FAR series that you can absolutely think of them as a loose, thematic trilogy. And so when encountering the first Machinery Puzzle, I expected some sort of extended sequence of lever pulley with a devious twist. There was a lever, I pulled it, and the job was 75% done.Herdling’s analog of FAR’s plate-spinning vehicle controls is in the unwieldiness you’d expect from fantasy goat herding. Your flock go More or Less where you want them to. They stop More or Less when you ask them to. It’s almost akin to something like Surgeon Simulator, where the challenge sits entirely in the floppy, wooly membrane between the player’s intent and the on-screen consequences. But it’s not remotely that tricky. In fact, after half an hour, it’ll be as second nature as anything else you do in games.

Image credit: Okomotive

This is a road trip without any road blocks. Sure, there are bits that require you to go slowly, or trigger a requisite number of magical plants to unlock the path ahead, but it’s all very rote. Each chapter ends with the shepherd and his flock settling down for the night at a campfire, but in more than one instance I felt as though we’d barely done anything to warrant a kip. And it wasn’t even night time.

It’s a bizarre, uncanny sort of experience. And yet, the core conceit works: your herd is special, and dear. You want to protect them from the perils of the world. All of your animals have a sweet individuality to them: some of them love playing fetch, some of them are constantly getting their fur manky with mud and twigs no matter how often you clean them. Others have a stoic beauty about them that implies a quiet, contemplative intelligence working behind the googly eyes.And when you lose one, it is devastating. This is most easy to do during the many traversal sequences where the treacherous ground, rather than the nasty birds, is your enemy. The one time I lost a Calicorn was here, on a spindly bridge across an impossible gorge, as I failed to get to dear Butthead in time and he slid yowling into the depths.

Yes, you can anme them. From then on, Butthead would reappear at certain points in the story as a spectral ghost, snuffling around for ethereal food or running gleefully with his still living siblings as we frolicked across the plains (wonderfully, there is a lot of plain frolicking to be had). In a way I’m glad that my Herdling story was so bittersweet: had I managed to finish the game with all my herd assembled and well, I wouldn’t have experienced the guilt of losing Butthead, and I wouldn’t have yearned for him to move on with his afterlife every time he returned to us: unallowing us to mourn him, hanging around like a stuck sneeze. It’s a wonderful commentary on grief, on how losing a loved one somehow short-circuits your innate sense of causality and object permanence. How a death in the family is not an event, but a state change. Not a moment, but an eternity.

A wing and a prayer. | Image credit: Okomotive

At a slim three hours, give or take, and with very little replay value, Herdling is an almost perfect package of bottled feelings. Personally I would urge you to treat it as a one-and-done, as it’s far more poignant if you have to live with a mistake or two. Those who need some sort of skill challenge to stay engaged may find Herdling a disappointing experience that never quite spools up, but if you just love being absorbed in a world, and throwing yourself into the kind of narrative that only video games can provide – powerful, memorable stories told not with dialogue but with interaction, movement, and art, wordless conversations between game and player that reach far deeper places than you expect – Herdling is a must play.

It’s not as good as FAR: Lone Sails, but what is?

A copy of Herdling was provided for review by Panic.



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FragPunk genius
Esports

Deadpool VR feels like a spiritual successor to one of the most underrated shooters ever

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Deadpool VR is going all-in on the explosive, R-rated humor of the films and comic books and giving the player control to creatively take down everyone in front of them.

From shoving people’s faces into fan rotors to juggling your pistols and landing trickshots, the ability to interact with the world is the main selling point here, aside from Wade himself.

And, though this playground approach to gunplay is a refreshing one, the overall vibe of Deadpool VR harkens back to one of the most underrated shooters of all time.

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Deadpool VR has that same sense of whimsical violence that I haven’t experienced since Bulletstorm, a 2011 cult classic fondly remembered by those with whom it really struck a chord.

Deadpool VR brings back the spirit of an underrated gem

When you think of the term “sandbox” in a video game, you may often think of an explorable open world with tons of things to discover. However, Deadpool VR condenses the concept of a sandbox into the moment-to-moment gameplay.

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It gives players enough tools to fix a car and sets you free as an indiscriminate death dealer, but with just enough whimsy and flair to make it still feel light-hearted. And, with the Gamescom trailer showing off all the heroes and villains you’ll be fighting, it seems there’s some substance here, even if the story isn’t taking itself too seriously.

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This captures the spirit of the films in a way only video games could, giving the player a genuine combat sandbox that lets them be creative and express themselves in VR. It’s a perfect fit.

Someone slice your arm off? Don’t fret, just smack them with it! It’s a weapon now. You can hotswap from kunai to swords to guns to a gravity tether gun that lets you toss people right off a cliff. It’s a very video game-y video game in the best way.

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So often it feels like games nowadays take themselves very seriously. They’re often afraid to let loose a little, try new things, and have a blast. At least when it comes to the AAA space.

However, there’s one game that comes to mind that tried that before: Bulletstorm. Originally released in 2011, it felt like someone played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and went, “What if we made a game that gave you bonus points for shooting a guy in the nuts instead of doing a kickflip?”

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And, despite Bulletstorm getting middling reception when it launched, being a fairly short 5-6 hour game, and selling pretty poorly at first, it’s been re-released several times and even has its own VR version. There’s a certain itch this game scratches that no one can seem to replicate. It’s lightning in a bottle in many ways, repetitive and disappointing if you aren’t creative, but infinitely replayable if you are.

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Bulletstorm

For the first time in years, Deadpool VR scratches that itch. Despite other VR games like Boneworks exploring the idea of a combat sandbox, no other game has the level of whimsy and sheer chaos present in Deadpool VR.

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It’s shaping up to be a massive step forward in the incredibly niche genre I’d call a “stunt shooter”, something that feels like a mix of a character action a la Devil May Cry and an arcade skateboarding game.

VR is still a hard sell. But, if Deadpool VR manages to take the chaotic bliss of the demo and turn it into a lengthy and fleshed-out experience, it could end up being the sort of game worth buying a headset for.

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The Fairphone 6 no longer feels like a compromise (except in the US)
Product Reviews

The Fairphone 6 no longer feels like a compromise (except in the US)

by admin


The Fairphone 6 arrives almost two years after the 5, a testament to the company’s approach to the upgrade cycle. If anything, I suspect the company would be frustrated if Fairphone 5 owners were considering a new model already — these are phones to keep, to repair, and to hold on to until the bitter end.

The newest Fairphone continues the company’s commitment to user-repairability, long-term customer support, and ethical production. That means compromises for the consumer: You’ll find more powerful phones with prettier displays and more capable cameras for less money. But this year those compromises are smaller and easier than ever before, while the phone remains a lot better for the planet — you can’t say fairer than that.

$899

The Good

  • Exceptionally user-repairable
  • Ethically produced
  • Decent performance
  • Long-term software support

The Bad

  • Basic cameras
  • Only IP55
  • Expensive in the US

The Fairphone 6 is available now across the UK and Europe. It costs €599 / £499 for a version running Fairphone’s custom Android software, which is fairly close to the stock experience, or €50 / £50 more running /e/OS, a privacy-centric, Google-free version of Android made by Murena. If you’re in the US, that’s the only model available, and you’ll have to buy it directly from Murena for $899, a price that Murena founder and CEO Gaël Duval told me reflects tariffs on US imports. It’s a substantial price difference that takes the Fairphone 6 from competing with midrangers like the Pixel 9A in Europe to flagships like the Pixel 10 or iPhone 16 in the US, making it significantly harder to justify.

/e/OS replaces Google’s Discover feed with a set of dedicated privacy controls. Image: Dominic Preston / The Verge

I’ve been testing the privacy-focused /e/OS version of the phone. It might not look a million miles from stock Android, but the out-of-the-box experience is quite different. It has quick access to options to block tracking cookies within apps, fake your geolocation info, or hide your IP address, along with a “Wall of Shame” listing your apps by how many times they try to track your activity. Murena describes it as “de-Googled,” which means it’s built on the Android Open Source Project, but doesn’t require a Google account to use, includes no Google apps by default, and should share none of your data with Google.

If you’re ready to commit to the Google-free life, there’s an array of relatively simple stock software, like calendar and map apps that look like they’ve been lifted from a decade ago. An app store defaults to open-source options, giving every app a privacy score with details on the trackers it uses and permissions it requires.

You can install open-source apps, or Play Store alternatives like Google and Samsung’s. Image: Dominic Preston / The Verge

The app store also lets you install just about any Android app — even the Google ones — but only if you want to. That’s thanks to microG, an open-source alternative to Google Play Services. The only caveats are that Google Wallet won’t work for NFC payments, and that some apps are a little… janky. Most seem to work, but MyFitnessPal won’t run, and a few others tend to stutter and crash.

On the hardware side, the Fairphone 6 is smaller and lighter than the 5, with a brighter and smoother 6.31-inch 120Hz display. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset isn’t flagship hardware, but it’s smooth enough most of the time, and with 8GB of RAM, it’s powerful enough for anything except serious gaming. The 4,415mAh battery lasts more than a day, and the 30W wired charging speed is fine but unimpressive, with no wireless option.

The cameras remain a big downgrade compared to the competition. The 50-megapixel main lens and 13-megapixel ultrawide are fine for the basics — and exceeded my expectations every now and then — but they struggle in the dark, in complex lighting, or with fast-moving subjects. If you just need your phone camera to be good enough then these definitely are, but you can get much better cameras for the same money (or less) elsewhere.

1/13The Fairphone 6’s main camera does the basics well.

The other big addition to the Fairphone 6 is a range of semi-modular accessories, similar to those offered with Nothing’s CMF Phone 2 Pro. There’s a lanyard, a card holder, and a loop grip, but the clever thing is that all three screw onto the phone’s rear, becoming integral parts of the hardware. I hope more options are coming.

More important is the phone’s ability to last for years. Whether you buy from Fairphone or Murena, you’ll get an extended five-year warranty. Fairphone also commits to eight years of software updates and seven Android version updates, though Murena only promises five years of software support for its version — worse than the likes of Apple, Google, and Samsung.

The Fairphone 6’s cameras aren’t anything to write home about. Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

I’m a fan of this slight dent on the phone’s back, which becomes a natural place to rest your little finger. Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

That blocky yellow button turns off the camera and mic on /e/OS phones, but switches between customizable modes to control notifications and distractions on the regular model. Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

The phone is made from fairly sturdy plastic, with Corning Gorilla Glass 7i on the display, and feels tough. There’s one big durability downside, though: it only has an IP55 rating for dust and water protection — good, but not great — which is the drawback of a repairable design that swaps glue for less watertight screws. So while the Fairphone 6 is more repairable than other alternatives, there’s a slightly higher risk of needing that repair in the first place, at least when it comes to sand and water.

Speaking of: you only need a single Torx T5 screwdriver to strip the phone down to parts, which connect and disconnect with a simple push, clicking into place. You can replace the battery, display, rear cover, each individual camera lens, speaker, earpiece, USB-C port, and SIM tray (which doubles as a microSD slot for expandable storage). Spare parts are sold by Fairphone and iFixit, with a promise to stock them for years. In the US, Murena should stock them, but at the time of writing, the parts aren’t on its site yet.

A Torx T5 screwdriver is all you need to take the phone apart. Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

Replacing the backplate — and swapping in accessories — involves just a couple of screws. Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

Replacing the battery requires a few more… Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

And taking the whole thing apart requires a little commitment, but it’s easy work. Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

I wanted to confirm if any idiot could pull off a repair, so I took apart every bit of the phone I could and put it back together again, which took a little over an hour and left me with a perfectly functional phone on the other side. Fairphone has some good YouTube videos to run through any given repair step by step, and it couldn’t be much easier, so long as you pay attention to screwing everything back in the right order (ahem, not a mistake I’d ever make…).

The “fair” bit of the name applies to production too. Fairphone claims to use as many recycled materials as possible, and to work with mines, recyclers, component factories, and assembly lines with fair working conditions, from living wages to worker representation. There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, but Fairphone claims to get as close as it can.

I’ve been cautious to recommend previous Fairphones. The elevator pitch is great, but paying a premium for underpowered hardware is still a hard sell. But pure power isn’t the differentiating factor it once was, so even if the Fairphone 6 is less powerful than its counterparts, it’s still powerful enough for most of us. Still, improvements in software support and durability from other manufacturers have made Fairphone’s offering less unique — though no one offers repairability like this.

Up against midrange alternatives, as it’s priced in Europe, the Fairphone holds its own. There are small compromises, but it remains a fair choice for just about anyone. In the US, where it costs more than some flagships and comes with the de-Googled /e/OS whether you like it or not, it’s only for those truly committed to the cause.

Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge

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