2015 was the year massive, open worlds became the norm for AAA gaming. A few years in to the latest generation of consoles, developers were ready to flex the new hardware with game worlds that were immersive, dynamic, and beautifully rendered. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt tamed its immense scale with a narrative that felt both epic and personal. Its ending called back to notable choices that players made throughout the story, solidifying a cohesive sense of agency that is hard to pull off for a game where you can spend this much time aimlessly wandering around and slaying monsters.
The game leading up to that satisfying conclusion is a challenging blast, as well. Warsaw-based developer CD Projekt RED has been working on the series non-stop since the first game in 2007, and all of that passion is reflected in this refined culmination of the trilogy. The basic experience remains the same: you are Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster hunter who slays beasts and seduces sorceresses in a medieval high fantasy world with Slavic inclinations. The main story revolves around Geralt’s daughter-figure Ciri being pursued by a band of inter-dimensional elves for her immense power. Its side quests range from standard fantasy RPG fare to grittier territory involving abuse, serial killers, and genocide. That emotional gravity is balanced out by the right amount of humor, and a lot of good old-fashioned monster slaying.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt tamed its immense scale with a narrative that felt both epic and personal.
The character progression system is the most flexible and intuitive yet for the series. Combat is fun and challenging, replacing the flashy sword heroics of other RPGs with a tense, positional dance that puts your timing and tactics to the test in any fight against more than a handful of grunts. High-level monster contracts can be especially tough, giving you more incentive to do your research and prepare with the appropriate oils, spells, and weapons for the extra edge they afford you. Inventory management can be clunky, but that’s a common and mostly forgivable sin for the genre.
While no one element of Wild Hunt stands out as particularly innovative, CD Projekt RED has put together a stunningly large, studied, and cohesive RPG that sets a high watermark for modern fantasy.
In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain you can approach any objective from any angle, with any combination of equipment and support you want. Stealth is encouraged, but you can still come in guns blazing. Trouble behind the scenes rears its ugly head in some of the game’s structural elements, unfortunately, likely due to the abrupt departure of series creator Hideo Kojima during development. The game is a delight, but still feels like a missed opportunity for true greatness.
Fallout 4 is the most refined Bethesda RPG. Boston is the setting, full colorful characters and interesting details that compel you to aimlessly explore. The new leveling system is simpler and more flexible than previous versions, allowing for a great degree of control in how you want to play. New item-modding, crafting, and base-building systems—features are also a perfect fit. Fallout 4 has a bright future ahead of it too, with no level cap and the promise of mods and DLC.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”