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After Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, gacha master HoYoverse set its sights on the Animal Crossing-like cosy sim genre
Game Reviews

After Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, gacha master HoYoverse set its sights on the Animal Crossing-like cosy sim genre

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Petit Planet – a new cosy life sim from the creators of Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail – has been announced.

The game currently has PC and mobile versions confirmed, with “additional platforms” in development according to the official press release alongside the reveal. Petit Planet has you build up and develop your own tiny planet, eventually venturing out into a galaxy filled with other planets owned by cutesy NPCs.

A reveal trailer (which you can watch below) showcases what the game will look like, with a character building up a nice little home, meeting various animal friends, before hopping in a car and taking to the stars to meet a cast of other furry fellows on their own home planets.

Here’s the Petit Planet reveal trailer!Watch on YouTube

Those interested can pre-register for the game right now on the official website, as well as sign up for upcoming beta tests. There’s no word as to when these beta tests will occur or when the sign ups will close as of writing.

Rumours around a HoYoverse life sim have been circulating for a while, with the internal name Astaweave Haven known thanks to early leaks. However, this recent reveal marks the first official word on the game as well as the first peak we’ve been able to get of polished gameplay.

There is no information on how monetisation will work for Petit Planet, though given this is a HoYoverse game the expectation is that the game will feature gacha mechanics as found in Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero.

This isn’t the only game HoYoverse has in the works. The developer revealed Honkai: Nexus Anima earlier this year, a Pokemon-style creature collector and auto-battler. Petit Planet has entered a somewhat contested genre, interestingly enough. Both Pocket Pair and Nintendo have announced their own cosy farm sims in Palfarm and Pokémon Pokopia.



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hacker hands at work with interface around
Gaming Gear

“It could be catastrophic to the city” – US Secret Service takes down massive million-dollar network of SIM cards it says was capable of taking down comms across New York

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  • A massive communications network was uncovered in New York
  • The network is made of 300 servers containing 100,000 SIM cards
  • Only part of the network was deployed, with more equipment discovered ready to be added to the network

The US Secret Service has uncovered and dismantled a telecommunications network in New York which may have been used by organized criminals to communicate with foreign state-sponsored actors.

The enormous network was made up of over 300 servers that housed a combined 100,000 SIM cards, and allegedly had the potential to disrupt phone networks across the tristate area and facilitate encrypted communications.

The United Nations General Assembly is currently ongoing in New York, and the Secret Service has suggested the network could have been used “to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials.”


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Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit

The 300 co-located servers were all within 35 miles of the United Nations and could have been involved in “disabling cell phone towers, enabling denial of services attacks and facilitating anonymous, encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal enterprises.”

An investigation is currently ongoing and is being conducted by the Secret Service’s new Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit, which is “dedicated to disrupting the most significant and imminent threats to our protectees.”

While the network included 100,000 active SIM cards being used in encrypted communications, the Secret Service also said that there were many more waiting to be deployed.

Image 1 of 5

A photo provided by the US Secret Service showing a modular server box containing 512 SIM cards.(Image credit: US Secret Service)A photo provided by the US Secret Service showing a collection of SIM servers containing thousands of SIM cards.(Image credit: US Secret Service)A photo provided by the US Secret Service showing a room of confiscated communications equipment.(Image credit: US Secret Service)A photo provided by the US Secret Service showing a desk with a collection of confiscted communications equipment.(Image credit: US Secret Service)A photo provided by the US Secret Service showing a wall of confiscated SIM servers, with tens of thousands of SIM cards visible.(Image credit: US Secret Service)

Matt McCool, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s New York field office said, “It can’t be understated what this system is capable of doing. It can take down cell towers, so then no longer can people communicate, right? … You can’t text message, you can’t use your cellphone. And if you coupled that with some sort of other event associated with [the UN general assembly], you know, use your imagination there – it could be catastrophic to the city.”

The Secret Service has been investigating threats against senior US officials from telecommunications networks, which led to the discovery of the SIM cache network.

Multiple US officials have been targeted in impersonation and ‘smishing’ attacks in recent months.

The SIM cards will be analyzed for phone calls and text messages, with the network capable of sending upwards of 30 million messages in a single minute, McCool said, stating the network was highly organized and would have cost millions of dollars to construct.

“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” added Sean Curran, director of the Secret Service.

“The U.S. Secret Service’s protective mission is all about prevention, and this investigation makes it clear to potential bad actors that imminent threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down and dismantled.”

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Build island factory towns for fat cats in Whiskerwood, the latest sooty strategy sim from Hooded Horse and the Railgrade devs
Game Updates

Build island factory towns for fat cats in Whiskerwood, the latest sooty strategy sim from Hooded Horse and the Railgrade devs

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Whenever possible, I like to sucker-punch everybody’s weekend plans by blogging the release of a huge 4X strategy game, factory sim or other managerial timesink last thing on Friday. In this case, I’m ambushing you with the avid rodent carpentry of Whiskerwood, the new city builder from Railgrade developers Minakata Dynamics and Manor Lords publishers Hooded Horse. It’s got 40 different commodities, an elaborate weather simulation, and a demo out now on Steam. Haha, yes! You are welcome.

In Whiskerwood, you are a mouse mayor setting up island colonies on behalf of some bastard fat cats. Yes, this one’s a straight-shooting allegory, but going by the release date trailer, any transferable learnings about the plight of the mouse proletariat come a distinct second to the joy of plaiting conveyor belts.

Watch on YouTube

“Though your ship arrives with an initial supply of resources and a starting band of mice, you must quickly establish core structures, essential services, and production capabilities to ensure continued growth and prosperity,” comments the Steam page. “Establish waste management and healthcare facilities, ensure buildings are properly heated and maintained, and send forth your mice to fell trees, mine mountains, and tend to the fields and fish.

“The cats will demand their due,” it goes on, “and your own citizens will abandon the colony if their needs aren’t met on a daily basis – you must strike a perfect balance between the needs of the mouse and the demands of the cat.” Cue opening bars of the Circle of Life.

Other bulletpoints stress the role of verticality. Given that you’re building on fairly titchy islands, you’ll soon need to layer them up by either plunging underground or stretching your production facilities up mountainsides. It doesn’t seem quite as extreme as All Wall Fall, in which your teetering metropoli are subject to actual real-time physics, but those mice factories do look rather cramped and precarious.

Your mice colonists have distinct attributes that fit certain tasks, together with preferences and weaknesses. Some are cool with labouring underground, others are all fine and dandy with air pollution. Up to a point, anyway. In good news for the bleeding hearts who feel bad about forcing virtual animals to breath smog for 100 hours, the Steam page suggests that you can one day overthrow the cats.

“Come rain or shine, the shipments must be fulfilled to feline satisfaction lest they call upon their henchmen to violently remind you of your duties,” it thunders. “Will you forever serve this oppressive paw? Or will you raise your whiskers in defiance?”

The game simulates a whole kaboodle of things. Different growing conditions per crop, for instance: you’ll want damp caves for mushrooms, good soil and sunlight for wheat, and high ground for potatoes. (I grow potatoes. I wasn’t aware they were best planted on hilltops.) If starting terrain conditions are suboptimal, you can lay hot water pipes to create greenhouse environments. All this and: naval combat! You’ll be able to send forth galleons of nautical nibblers to scout new islands and hopefully not get the shit kicked out of them by pirates.

One comparison is the beaver-powered Timberborn, one of our best building games, but I’m also slightly reminded of fellow Hooded Horse production Against The Storm, sans roguelike elements. Whiskerwood launches into early access on 6th November, and you can find that demo on Steam.



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Jamal Musiala and Jude Bellingham in EA Sports FC 26
Product Reviews

EA Sports FC 26 review: a football sim for all seasons

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We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Release date: Early Access: September 19, 2025 | Full release: September 26, 2025

Developer and publisher EA’s marquee sports franchise is in a strangely privileged position. For years, FIFA fans lambasted the developer for wheeling out what seemed like the same game in a fresh lick of paint, and while the newer EA Sports FC titles haven’t exactly rewritten the FIFA rulebook, they have felt like more complete, harder-to-criticize packages overall.

Why? Because a decade’s worth of minor tweaks is bound to add up to something great. As I wrote in my EA Sports FC 25 review this time last year, “it feels like we’ve reached a point where the overall FC experience is so good that it’s hard to chastise EA for making small improvements to an already excellent foundation,” and the latest entry in this long-running series, EA Sports FC 26, is shielded by the same safety blanket.

FC 26 is not a dramatically different offering from what’s come before, but it is an objectively better game than FC 25 in a few key ways.

There’s a brand new gameplay option for slower, more realism-focused offline play, a clever real-world integration for Career Mode, and meaningful player-requested changes for Ultimate Team (FUT) and Clubs. The graphics have never been better, and, of course, there’s the customary thrill of using up-to-date players, in up-to-date kits, at up-to-date clubs.

None of these upgrades are particularly flashy; they’re more under-the-surface than something you can advertise in a TV spot. But (I promise!) they do bring new, unexpected depth to EA’s tried-and-tested modes – particularly Career Mode, which feels closer to Football Manager than it’s ever been (complimentary).

Keeping it real

Cole Palmer in EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports)

If you pressed EA to tell you this year’s single biggest FC upgrade, it would probably say “the overhauled gameplay experience powered by feedback from the FC Community.” That sounds like marketing mumbo jumbo, but FC 26 genuinely does play better than FC 25 for a number of reasons.

There are fewer bounce-backs this year (read: matches feel less like a game of pinball), dribbling is more responsive, it’s easier to change direction, goalkeepers no longer parry the ball straight into your opponent’s lap (or rather, they do so less frequently), and, mercifully, headers are now scorable again.

These were the five most tangible gameplay improvements I noticed during my short time with FC 26 ahead of launch, though EA also says that tackles are cleaner, interceptions are more controlled, passes are quicker, and skills are easier to perform.

Some of the best players in EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports)

Players with high dribbling stats definitely feel more powerful in FC 26. The likes of Lamine Yamal, Cole Palmer, and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia are now just as fun to play with as they are to watch in real life, and while pace freaks like Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior will undoubtedly remain the weapon of choice for FUT loyalists, it’s nice that more of the world’s best players feel genuinely threatening in-game. There’s a new Gamechanger PlayStyle for flair finishers like Yamal, too, which feels like a cheat code when paired with existing dribble-focused PlayStyles like Technical+.

EA has also rolled a bundle of realism-focused tweaks into an entirely new gameplay preset called Authentic Gameplay. An optional mode in Kick-Off and Career Mode, Authentic is tuned for higher realism and true-to-life match speed; dribbling is slower, tackles are more violent, AI defenders are smarter, and rebounds, blocks, and bounces are more unpredictable. In other words, Authentic is a slower, harder, but (in my experience) more rewarding gameplay experience than Competitive, which is the faster-paced gameplay preset locked to online modes like FUT and Clubs.

Just look – look! – at Marc Cucurella’s in-game hair in EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports / Future)

In Authentic, it’s much easier to keep hold of possession for long spells, and much harder to slip players in behind using L1. It’s also nigh-on impossible to burst away from defenders with pacey players, which – as in real life – encourages you to aim for space (I do expect EA to tweak the latter aspect in the coming weeks, though, as Mbappé should be able to leave Francesco Acerbi for dead, regardless of the game mode).

It’s true that previous FC games (and indeed previous FIFA games) featured a Simulation preset that, in theory, imposed similar realism-focused gameplay changes. But toggling this option always felt like spiking your players with horse tranquilizer. Yes, in FC 26, Authentic Gameplay feels slower than its Competitive counterpart, but it doesn’t throw the whole FC experience out of kilter. I like it a lot.

Board Expectations 2.0

The Manager Live Hub in EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports / Future)

Career Mode is the perfect place to give Authentic Gameplay a spin, and EA has sprinkled some great new features into its decades-old take on Football Manager.

The headline addition is Manager Live, which evolves last year’s Live Start Points mechanic into a series of full-blown, inspired-by-real-life challenges. Manager Live is essentially Manager Career, but you commit to fulfilling certain objectives or storylines in a given number of seasons. The catch? Each challenge imposes a unique set of feature restrictions and operating conditions, meaning it’s harder to cheese your way to victory by buying the best players or never rotating your squad.

For instance, one Manager Live challenge – Winning With Youth – tasks you with finishing at least eighth in any European league while only playing players under the age of 24 and not signing any players under the age of 21. Another – European Royalty – challenges you to win the UEFA Super Cup twice in three years with increased referee strictness and no ability to restart matches. These feats are harder to complete than they sound, and they force you to think more like a real-life manager under similar real-life pressures.

The Icon and Heroes selection in my edition of EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports / Future)

By completing Manager Live challenges, you can earn classic kits and, for the first time, the ability to play with Icon and Hero players in regular Manager Career. I haven’t yet had enough time with FC 26 to complete one of these multi-season challenges, but luckily, my Ultimate Edition version of the game included three Career-ready Icons straight out of the box (you best believe Fernando Torres went straight into my 2025 Chelsea side).

Other neat updates for regular Career Mode include Manager Market and Unexpected Events. The former gives managers their own Manager Profile and Job Security rating, and you can track which coaches are untouchable, under pressure, or seeking new opportunities throughout the season in a dedicated Manager Market menu. Previously, you’d have to hope and pray that your next role of choice would appear in the hard-to-find Vacancies tab, but now, you can track your dream managerial job and react accordingly.

The Manager Market interface in EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports / Future)

Unexpected Events are exactly what they sound like: random scenarios (positive or negative) that test your adaptability as a manager. Events like Abrupt Retirement, Urgent Family Leave, and Budget Malfunction bring new dynamism to long seasons, where previously, you’d only have the odd player injury or contract negotiation to contend with. Again, this is another small-but-welcome change.

No more rage quits?

Live Events are a new addition to Ultimate Team in EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports)

For FUT fans, those aforementioned gameplay tweaks will prove the most meaningful change (the improvements made to goalkeeper parries, in particular, should reduce the number of rage quits considerably). But EA has also reintroduced Tournaments under a new Live Events banner in FC 26, while Gauntlets force you to rotate your FUT squad in every round, encouraging you to build two competition-ready XIs. During my pre-launch testing, I only had one live Live Event available – the Early Access Elimination tournament – but three more were listed as ‘upcoming’ post-launch.

Other changes include the removal of Rivals qualifiers, the addition of a second tier of Weekend League, and – finally! – fairer consequences if your opponent disconnects from a match by any method: yes, you’ll be awarded the win if the score is a draw.

Best bit

(Image credit: EA Sports FC 26)

Hitting my first trivela assist with Lamine Yamal after beating three defenders using the Technical+ playstyle. These types of moments felt harder to pull off in previous games, but FC 26 actively encourages them.

Those Live Events now feature in Clubs, too, as does a new Archetypes system for developing your Pro, which encourages you to pick a specific style of play (Magician, Creator, Engine, and so on) and run with it. You can choose more than one Archetype (once you’ve unlocked more), but each Archetype progresses separately, so you’ll need to play multiple matches with each one to level them up.

Honestly, I’m not too sure about this new system. Previously, you were able to change your Pro build on the fly to suit the needs of any given position, or just to mix things up. In FC 26, you’ll be able to get really good at being one type of player, but then be forced back to square one if you join a squad that necessitates a position change.

I’m intrigued to see how longtime Clubs fans take to this new progression system – though any annoyances might be offset by the long-awaited ability to join multiple clubs in FC 26.

 Should I play EA Sports FC 26?

Ronaldo Nazário in EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports)

 Play it if…

 Don’t play it if…

 Accessibility

The Accessibility menu in EA Sports FC 26 (Image credit: EA Sports / Future)

EA Sports FC 26 offers a comprehensive suite of accessibility options, including settings for subtitles, button remapping, color blindness, and increasing the size of the player indicator. It also introduces a dedicated High Contrast Mode for low-vision and cognitively disabled players. All of these accessibility options can be found in a dedicated Accessibility Settings tab. The game has six difficulty levels – Beginner, Amateur, Semi-Pro, Professional, World Class, Legendary, and Ultimate – and features support for 21 languages.

 How I tested EA Sports FC 26

I played EA Sports FC 26 for five days ahead of its official release. During that time, I had access to all modes and features and was able to compete against real-world players who also had early access to the game (before the start of EA’s Early Access promotion).

I played on PS5, using a standard DualSense controller, on a Samsung QN95A Neo QLED 4K TV. I’ve played every EA Sports football title since FIFA 13, and also reviewed FIFA 22, FIFA 23, EA Sports FC 24, and EA Sports FC 25 for TechRadar Gaming.

First reviewed September 2025.

EA Sports FC 26: Price Comparison



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Fata Deum is here to "revive" the god sim genre, and especially the holy ghost of Black & White
Game Updates

Fata Deum is here to “revive” the god sim genre, and especially the holy ghost of Black & White

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This news story about Fata Deum is written in homage of a random early access Steam reviewer who remarks that if you’ve never played a god sim before, they’re kind of like idle sims. My word, the casually ferocious and embittered atheist poetry of that. Consider my fedora tipped, milords and ladies. I’m off to read the Screwtape Letters again.

Fata Deum isn’t just any born-again idle sim. It pays overt homage to Lionhead’s Black & White, with higgledy-piggledy 3D island maps and a familiar hand cursor, used to carry believers to safety or lob them into the sea. There are some significant differences, however.

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For one thing, you don’t get a Creature avatar to first mold in your holy image and then end up squabbling with when you decide to do an Old-New Testament of sorts, flipping from Benign to Vengeful or vice versa midway through a campaign.

Ah, I remember how my Lion Creature kept extinguishing the houses I smote with thunderbolts, exactly as I’d taught him when he was a cub, and I was a smiling beard in the sky rather than a cosmic arsonist. I’m sorry to see less of that in Fata Deum, but the upside of not having a Creature is that you’ll spend less of this god sim cleaning up godbeast turds.

Another difference is that Fata Deum operates around a day-night split encompassing two genres of godliness. By day, you’re more of an indirect presence, influencing villagers through visions and blessings. By night, you can intervene directly to make them build stuff and, if you like, raid the dominions of rival gods.

There’s a familiar spectrum of Nice and Nasty divine behaviour. You can sacrifice villagers to raise demons or turn the corpses into zombies. Or you can pat them on the head and have them throw wild parties. Or you can mix it up – a little from column Altruism, a little from column Bastard.

There are other gods to worry about. They include deities of Violence, Deceit, Fertility and Pleasure. Each god’s behaviour is reflected in the appearance of the terrain. I don’t see one for Idleness in the trailers or on the Steam page – I guess I’ll have to thrash that one out myself, by leaving the PC running for 10,000 years.

Developers 42 Bits Entertainment plan to keep this humming along in early access till late 2026. “We firmly believe that reviving the god game genre is a rather difficult task that can only be successfully accomplished through intensive dialogue with the community,” they note. Do you consider the god sim in need of reviving? I thought last year’s Reus 2 did a pretty fine job of it myself.



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D.C. AG accuses Bitcoin ATM operator of actively enabling fraudsters
NFT Gaming

DOJ pursues $5m in Bitcoin tied to SIM swap fraud and laundering scheme

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DOJ prosecutors trace a path of stolen Bitcoin from hijacked phones through a complex web of wallets, culminating in a series of circular transactions at an online casino designed to mask the illicit funds’ origins.

Summary

  • DOJ has filed civil forfeiture to recover $5 million in Bitcoin stolen via SIM swap attacks.
  • The department traced the stolen crypto through multiple wallets and circular transactions at an online casino.
  • Attacks targeted five U.S. victims between October 2022 and March 2023.

According to a September 9 press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia, the Department of Justice has initiated a civil forfeiture action targeting a specific cryptocurrency wallet containing 117 BTC.

The complaint alleges the funds are the proceeds of a series of SIM swap attacks that targeted five victims between October 2022 and March 2023. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro stated that after the initial thefts, the perpetrators moved the Bitcoin through a maze of digital wallets before consolidating the entire $5 million haul into a single address that funded an account at the online casino Stake.com.

How the SIM swap scheme unfolded and the DOJ’s response

DOJ investigators say the perpetrators used SIM swap attacks to bypass standard security measures and gain control of victims’ mobile numbers. With the stolen numbers, they intercepted two-factor authentication codes that allowed them to log in to the victims’ crypto wallets and transfer assets into accounts under their control.

The Justice Department explained that the perpetrators attempted to obscure the origin of the funds by repeatedly cycling the bitcoin through deposits and withdrawals at the casino.

 “Many of these transactions were circular in that they eventually returned funds to their original source, and consistent with money laundering utilized to “clean” proceeds of criminal activity,” the statement read.

The laundering pattern, prosecutors say, made it appear as though the funds were legitimate business activity rather than proceeds of theft. This high-profile case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Jessica Peck and Gaelin Bernstein of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS), alongside Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the District of Columbia.



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Screenshots from 2K sports game NBA 2K26
Product Reviews

NBA 2K26 Review: a basketball sim with a starring role for attacking play

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We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

When five-time NBA champion Dennis Rodman was interviewed during Netflix’s Last Dance documentary, he explained how he’d have friends shoot hoops from all angles well into the morning just to more accurately track rebounds and work out where he needed to be to scoop up possession.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PS5 (on PS5 Pro)
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC
Release date: September 5, 2025 (Early access one week prior)

Why do I bring that up when talking about basketball game NBA 2K26? Because, as much as rebounds are less show-stopping than acrobatic dunks, they’re the basis on which successful teams build attacks, and every single late-night session predicting angles and flight paths led to Rodman becoming an NBA legend.

  • NBA 2K26 at Amazon for $59.88

While NBA 2K26 may not hit those heights (at least not yet), what’s here plasters over some of the cracks in last year’s game to offer the best digital basketball experience in years.

No More Bricks

(Image credit: 2K/NBA)

I enjoyed my time with NBA 2K25, but I know I’m in the minority for that. A big reason that the community found itself divided by last year’s game was 2K’s commitment to revamping a core part of the experience, which we’ve been used to over the last decade and change: the shot meter.

While last year put an awful lot of emphasis on the ever-present danger of shooting a brick and fluffing your lines, this year it’s much more forgiving. It’s not quite a walkback to earlier games, but it feels like Visual Concepts has done an awful lot to rework the act of shooting the basketball, or driving to the rim, this time around.

You’ll still throw some absolute honkers if you’re not careful, but you always feel more in control, whereas last year things felt a little too random.

Last year, it took a major shine off of the otherwise stellar animation system that did a better job of making players feel like they were moving more realistically, and in vastly improving offense this year, the whole game feels like it’s faster. It’s not quite arcadey, but it’s a more exciting sim than it’s been in years.

Now, you’re not missing easy layups or having to spam dribbling moves to find a tiny opening, because all players feel much more capable of scoring points from anywhere, and player locomotion feels just a little slicker.

That also ties into the long-running player builds system. Last year, unless you invested a ton of stat points into your player (or real currency), you’d find yourself missing simple shots. This time around, the new ‘MP’ (your in-game avatar in MyPlayer) feels much more like the talented prospect they’re supposed to be at the start of the story.

Rags to Riches (Again)

(Image credit: 2K/NBA)

That brings us nicely to MyPlayer, the mode from which many of NBA 2K26’s others flow. Let’s start with the good: Visual Concepts’ commitment to having a single, central created player remains something I wish rivals would adopt.

It’s awesome to be able to build up your version of MP in one mode before taking them online, and while the story here is pretty predictable, it remains a fun way to build your player’s legend from high school to the NBA.

Cutscenes look better, although they naturally pale in comparison to the on-court action, but what’s here is more of the same.

There’s a downside to that, too, and it’s VC. You’ll earn currency through playing, but as with any NBA 2K instalment, you can spend plenty of real cash to grow your player quickly and into one of the in-game archetypes.

My Small Forward has enjoyed a meteoric rise (at least according to the MyPlayer storyline), but he’s still nowhere near as impressive as anyone who’s thrown their currency of choice at the game.

Elsewhere, MyGM remains one of my favorite ways to play despite not having any major improvements this year after its re-emergence in 2K25. There are fresh long-term goals called Offseason Scenarios, and they feature real-world examples like a Bulls rebuild or weighing up how to follow up the Warriors’ Steph Curry era.

Best Bit

(Image credit: 2K/NBA)

Jettisoning the controversial shooting meter from last year, NBA 2K26 feels like a game full of subtle changes that make scoring points more fun than ever, whether you’re in the paint or shooting from distance.

They’re not the kind of things that you’ll necessarily be entirely drawn into, but they’re a neat addition that gives you something to strive for. Still, for a longstanding NBA fan, the continued support for MyNBA Eras remains something that puts rivals to shame. You can now copy a MyPlayer into a classic era of the NBA, letting you rub shoulders with Larry Bird or Michael Jordan.

Speaking of dream scenarios, MyTeam is back and, as always, it’s very easy to throw VC points at pack openings. I do appreciate that the mode is pretty rewarding when it comes to offline play. I’m decent at 2K, but the game’s fervent community could slap me six ways to Sunday, so it’s nice to be in control of what I play if I want to push for better players for my squad.

This year sees the debut of the WNBA in the mode, which is a huge move that’s been a long time coming. EA FC has seen plenty of success by adding the women’s game into Ultimate Team, but the nature of basketball as a sport where height makes a big difference means that it’s not uncommon for one player to absolutely tower over another.

It perhaps wouldn’t be a huge issue if you could rotate your squad to place smaller, faster players in more attacking roles rather than expecting them to stop a 7ft 7 juggernaut, but that’s at odds with having players with roles and positions assigned to them when they’re fresh out of packs.

Back to the city

(Image credit: 2K/NBA)

Look, I’ll be honest: I’ve never really enjoyed The City. The mode has always felt like a good idea that’s had too much executive input, designed to draw players in to drop their VC to build their player and buy clothing and shoes.

Last year took the smart step of finally shrinking the playspace, and NBA 2K26 goes one step further with interconnected areas that make it much easier to get to where you need to be.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about The City is that performance is vastly improved. Last year’s game got a PS5 Pro update, but it always felt laggy on Sony’s newest system. This year, it’s still not as responsive as playing on the court, but it’s noticeably easier to navigate.

That brings us, finally, to NBA 2K26’s presentation. Put simply, this is the best-looking sports game around, at least on PS5 Pro. When Visual Concepts boasted about being able to see the pores on players’ faces ahead of launch, I scoffed. As it turns out, you really can see the pores on player faces, as well as stitching on shoes, and those all-important reflective surfaces like the shiny court.

Should you play NBA 2K26?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

NBA 2K26 has a few accessibility features. You can adjust shot timing windows and visual cues, while there are difficulty settings, too. Vibration and DualSense triggers can be tweaked, too.

Perhaps most impressively is that the shot meter, which can be tricky to spot in the chaos of an ongoing match, can be customized with a variety of options. It’s not strictly there for accessibility purposes, but that customization could be a huge boon for those who need extra visual clarity.

(Image credit: 2K/NBA)

How I reviewed NBA 2K26

Having reviewed multiple NBA titles across different platforms in recent years, I played this one on my PS5 Pro, with the standard DualSense wireless controller, the Astro A50 X headset, and on a Sky Glass TV.

I’ve most recently played NBA 2K25 in the last couple of months, so I have a good grasp of what’s changed. I built up a decent starting line-up in MyTeam during this current review period and spent some time working my way through the ranks in MyTeam.

I also explored The City, was destroyed by other players in pick-up games, and began the journey to take the Chicago Bulls back to a new era of dominance.

First reviewed August-September 2025

NBA 2K26: Price Comparison



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Pete Hines, Vice President of Bethesda Softworks, speaks during the Bethesda E3 conference at the Event Deck at LA Live on June 10, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. The E3 Game Conference begins on Tuesday June 12. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
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Former Bethesda marketing VP says he fought against reusing the Prey name for Arkane’s 2017 immersive sim: ‘I definitely pissed some people off internally over that’

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Arkane’s 2017 immersive sim Prey is a genuinely great videogame, with a genuinely weird name—shared with a pre-existing shooter and a famously cancelled sequel that it has absolutely nothing to do with. Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio said a few years ago that he really did not want to call it Prey, and it turns out he was not alone on that: Former Bethesda marketing and communications boss Pete Hines said in an interview with Dbltap that he was dead-set against it too.

“I definitely pissed some people off internally over that because I fought so hard against using that name,” Hines said. “I’m the head of the spear, but I had a lot of people across my team—brand, PR and community—and we feel like we’re burdening it with a name where we spend more time explaining why it’s called Prey than we do talking about the game.”

The reason for all that time spent explaining, as previously noted, is that the whole thing was so odd. Prey—the original—was developed by Human Head Studios and released in 2006, and it was quite good. A sequel was planned, although it was more of a spinoff, following the adventures of a completely different character in a completely different setting: A great cinematic trailer set a bar that the planned sequel couldn’t quite clear, and it was ultimately scrapped.


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Years later, Bethesda decided to resurrect the title for a completely unrelated project, and thus one of the best immsims of all time was hung with a needlessly confusing name. Explanations as to exactly why were never entirely convincing, and according to Colantonio, the Arkane founder, nobody at the studio wanted it—and being forced to use the name was part of why he decided to leave Arkane just a couple months after Prey (2017) was released.

Hines told Dbltap he regrets losing his battle against calling the game Prey, but added that “nobody on this planet could have put more of a good faith effort into changing minds on that.”

“My whole point was, look how much time we spend talking about what the game is versus why it’s called this and like, that is wasted energy. That is wasted excitement,” Hines said. “We could be turning that into something positive.”

I sure don’t disagree. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that recycling the Prey name was responsible for its unfortunate underperformance, but it surely didn’t help—and with the option to call it literally anything else on the table, I will never understand why Bethesda was so determined to stick with it. Regardless of that, though, it really is a phenomenal game, and if you haven’t played it yet it’s your lucky day, because it’s currently on sale for 80% off—just $6—on GOG.

This wasn’t the only interesting reminiscence in the interview: Hines also shared some fun memories of the great Fallout 76 canvas bag debacle: “When the fuck did we add a canvas bag to this collector’s edition?”



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Star Trucker's anniversary update adds wheel and joystick support to the space lorry sim, plus speed cameras
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Star Trucker’s anniversary update adds wheel and joystick support to the space lorry sim, plus speed cameras

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Star Trucker, Raw Fury’s answer to what Euro Truck Simulator might look like in the year 3000, is now a year old, and has celebrated that fact with an update that finally lets you whip out your wheel and pedals.

Ever since I gave it a go with a controller prior to letting my Game Pass subscription crumble into dust, this is a day I’ve yearned for. After all, what good are truck sims, be they Euro, American or something more Snowrunnery, if you’re not operating the controls of your great metal haulage beast by flicking flappy gearbox paddles, or sawing away at a circle clearly designed for something a bit sportier?

That’s what this anniversary update for the interstellar hauler delivers, with wheels like the Thrustmaster T128 and flight sticks like VKB’s Gladiator NXT EVO being early additions to the devs’ handy tracking sheet of tested peripherals. There’s also a guide and FAQ rundown from Raw Fury to help folks get their hardware up, running, and fully bound to all the inputs space trucking requires.

Gear recognised by the game should set itself up with default bindings automatically, but I usually find creating my own basic set of essential buttons not that time-consuming, as long as the game wants to acknowledge your wheel exists. Just remember to bind a pause button, and stick the handbrake somewhere your finger can easily hold it when you want to see if your rig can finish a delivery with a 10/10 skid.

As a counterweight to all the wheel and pedal lorry mischief I planned the minute I clocked this update, it also comes with new speed checks. Yep, cameras, fines, the works. These camera checkpoints along the trails of the galaxy will even show you what speed you’re doing as you pass them, though the notes don’t mention if you get shown a little smiley face for not blasting through a Jupiter school zone at 120mph. You can also disable these checks via the settings, if the threat of having to attend a speeding course with the crowd from the Mos Eisley cantina is just too much.

Aside from that, there are a couple of updates to trailers, and a couple of optional truck goodies to commemorate the game’s first birthday. The latter includes a hologrammatic image of a cake you can display in your cab. Just remember to eat plenty before your next long haul.

If you’ve not given Star Trucker a go, our Nic dubbed it “a game that’s much more about the ‘trucker’ of it all than the stars, but the trucker of it all really does shine” in his review, writing:

When you exit the airlock to patch up hull breaches, little white spanner icons mark the offending damage. The symbol that marks the airlock to return to your truck is a home. I noticed it early, and then I kept noticing it. The more I did, the more perfect it felt.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to oversteer that home into an asteroid belt.



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Build your own spaceship body as you fly in Jitter, an asteroid-heavy physics-based survival sim
Game Updates

Build your own spaceship body as you fly in Jitter, an asteroid-heavy physics-based survival sim

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I guess the simplest way to describe Jitter is that it’s Heat Signature, the hectic spaceship hijacking game from Suspicious Developments, but you are the spaceship, not the hijacker, and also, you can glue pieces of other ships onto yourself, like in Captain Forever, and also, this looks a bit like Lemmings on the Game Boy. Boil that down, and we have a brand new subgenre, the Hot Lemming Boy Foreverlike, which… let’s maybe forget I wrote the words “Hot Lemming Boy Foreverlike”. Let’s proceed without further reflection to this video showcasing the combat.

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If the above description confuses and alarms you, there’s a cleaner one on the game’s Steam page. “Jitter is an immersive sci-fi exploration and survival game set on a mining colony and its outskirts in the Main Asteroid Belt,” it reads. “You assume the role of an experimental AI that maintains ship functions and engages with the crew on board. As you explore the mining colony, you will take on new missions, expand ships and bases using various modules, add survivors to your crew, engage in space fights, and repair the damage left by enemy fire and onboard accidents.”


Cue impressive scenes of your greenish top-down AI core chewing through asteroids like a lemming through a baguette. Shoo, lemming! That’s my lunch, not an asteroid, and since when do lemmings eat asteroids, anyway.


No time for lunch, though, because it’s time to talk about simulation systems. As in FTL, you’ll organise the generation and flow of power and oxygen around your craft as you expand it, ensuring that you still, for example, have the means to swiftly fix hull breaches while adding gun turrets to the design. It might sound like it requires a shedload of menus, but the largely mouse-based controls are quite simple for a game of this fiddliness. There’s a demo on Steam, if you’d like to try for yourself.


If the idea of playing an AI seems dry, may I draw your attention to the line above about your crew. It consists of named humans with fetching character portraits and bespoke abilities. You’ll shepherd them through boarding actions, opening airlocks and tactically clicking rooms to have them survive against greater numbers. Beware: if you lose one of the story-critical ones, it’s game over. This seems to rule out the possibility of being an Evil AI, alas, though there’s definitely scope for venting the odd humanoid in a fit of cybernetic pique.


I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played of Jitter, though it’s a bit too processing-intensive for my work laptop, with all manner of physics-enabled celestial body bouncing around the playing field. There’s no release date yet, but developers Berko Games posted in June that they’re now focussing on “the final major updates before our Early Access release”.

Their practical difficulties include living in Ukraine, a country that has been fighting off a Russian invasion for three and a half years. “It’s not easy working under drone and missile strikes, but your attention and support should remain focused on the game itself,” the developers comment briefly in a recent update about the game’s NPC vessel behaviour.



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