It’s rare for a licensed video game to feel like the ultimate adaptation of the franchise it’s based on. I’ve seen it happen before with 2005’s Star Wars: Battlefront II and Marvel’s Spider-Man in 2018. This year, Dragon Ball finally got that treatment when Bandai Namco revived the Budokai Tenkaichi series with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. This bombastic 3D fighter embraces everything that makes Dragon Ball special and is all the better for it. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero normally retails for $70, but this Cyber Monday you can find it discounted by 29% on Amazon and Buy at Amazon .
When I played Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero at Summer Game Fest earlier this year, I suspected it could be the ultimate Dragon Ball sandbox. I was relieved upon its release to see that this was truly the case. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is a 3D fighter with a massive 182-character roster of iconic Dragon Ball characters (and forms of them). Players can construct teams of up to five characters and then duke it out across a variety of locations from the Dragon Ball series.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero provides players with all the action figures and play sets they would want, and then lets them freely mash them all together in explosive fights. It’s exhilarating to fly around the battlefield as Goku, pull off a powerful Kamehameha, and watch as entire buildings or cliffsides collapse as the opponent is knocked back to them. Shonen franchises like Dragon Ball are typically very over-the-top, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero wholeheartedly embraces its maximalist design.
It’s also more approachable than the 2D fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ, which is equally pretty but a lot more technical to learn. Any Dragon Ball fan can easily pick up and get the hang of Sparking! Zero. Considering it has modes where players can construct their own match scenarios or change what happened during important moments in the series’ history, Sparking! Zero leans into its sandbox nature as well.
If you’ve ever considered yourself a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise, you need to pick this game up. It’s unlikely we’ll ever get another Dragon Ball game with as many playable characters and attention to detail as Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. This is the first time we’ve seen its price drop under $50, so it makes sense to pick the game up this Cyber Monday.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.