GameSpot Reviews

It's exceedingly rare for an annual sports game to skip an entire year, but that's exactly what developer Sports Interactive did when it canceled Football Manager 25. With so many changes--including switching game engines to Unity--and numerous delays, the game simply wasn't up to standard in time. Couple this unforeseen gap year with the promise of a brand-new foundation built on an improved match engine and a completely overhauled interface, and Football Manager 26 quickly became the most highly anticipated game in the long-running series. Unfortunately, the end result is a cliched game of two halves. While the match engine...

Nearly 50 years ago, Atari published Breakout, a spin on the ball-bouncing gameplay of Pong where your opponent wasn't another player but rather an increasingly dense wall of bricks slowly dropping down towards you. Arkanoid, released not long after, expanded on its foundations, giving players more ways to play through the introduction of upgrades to your paddle, spawning additional balls, and more.These are two games that Ball x Pit designer Kenny Sun was clearly inspired by, but not the two that this modern interpretation solely borrows from. Instead, Ball x Pit is an intoxicating mash-up that includes elements of Vampire...

"Don't shoot!" I called out to the raider from a nearby bush. "I'm coming out, but I mean you no harm."Clearly startled by my presence and reacting based on what was more than likely a combination of the Rocketeer hovering menacingly close and a history of earlier betrayals, the dusty raider pointed his weathered Ferro rifle my way. He'd already called for the elevator to bring him back to Speranza safe and sound, so it's no wonder that he'd be anxious. He was in danger of losing everything right at the finish line, just before those saferoom doors opened. But...

There's been a veritable cornucopia of Dynasty Warriors spin-offs over the years, including anime adaptations like Gundam, Berserk, and One Piece and video game collaborations with Persona and Fire Emblem. The 2014 collab Hyrule Warriors and its sequel, Age of Calamity, are perhaps the most warmly received of them all, owing to their blend of Omega Force's overblown hack-and-slash action with The Legend of Zelda's iconic characters, locations, and enemies.With Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, the two long-running series are more intertwined than ever, to the point where it feels more like a brand-new Zelda release than just another musou...

Since releasing Atari 50 in 2022, Digital Eclipse has established itself as a champion for game preservation, thanks in large part to its "interactive documentary" approach. The Making of Karateka, Tetris Forever, and Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story have all explored notable names and games of the past with great success. For its next project, the studio set its sights on the history behind one of the most famous properties in gaming: Mortal Kombat.Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection is a loving tribute to the early years of the trailblazing fighting game franchise. Over 20 games from kombats past, across multiple formats,...

When I reviewed Dragon Quest III HD last year, I talked a fair bit about what an important game it was to JRPGs as a whole and why its reissue was a big deal. One thing I didn't mention is part of why it had such a big impact: It was a massive improvement in scope, gameplay, and storytelling over the two preceding Dragon Quest titles. With DQIII HD's sales success and its chronological position as the first part of a story trilogy, Square Enix releasing a similar HD-2D remake of the first two titles made perfect sense.And here we...

If you don't know what The Backrooms are, you probably don't have kids of a certain age. Born as a more specific branch of the liminal-space genre, The Backrooms is the all-encompassing name for a horror lore bible of sorts that's been handcrafted by communities online over several years. Each inhuman monster and each unnerving location becomes a chapter of a horror universe that the internet built together. It's grown so big that it's spawned dozens of related games, an upcoming horror movie from A24, and what feels like an endless stream of YouTube content to watch. But through it...

It's surprising that Plants Vs. Zombies hasn't attracted more imitators. The charming and intuitive strategy game helped make a name for PopCap and spawned a massive franchise including merch, comic books, and interestingly, more competitive team shooters than strategy games. But while it lends itself to comparisons to tower-defense games, its key mechanics are still basically singular to PvZ itself. Plants Vs. Zombies: Replanted brings a nicely modernized facelift to the original game, and while this remaster offers only a few new frills, the game itself is still one of a kind.For those new to the series, or who have...

The Outer Worlds was Obsidian's gutsy attempt at a spiritual successor to its lauded work on Fallout, but the game couldn't completely hide the developer's roots. The spacefaring retro-future was recognizable as a continuation of Obsidian's earlier game, though it had enough of a distinct setting and its own gameplay systems to feel fresh. The Outer Worlds 2 builds on that sturdy foundation, and while it's largely more of the same, it is also a confident and expansive sequel that suggests a bright future for The Outer Worlds as an ongoing series.In Outer Worlds 2, you play as "the Commander."...