Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: EA Tiburon
Release: August 14, 2025

During each NFL offseason, front offices work to add the pieces necessary to field a better team than the year before. Sometimes, despite making all the right moves on paper, things just don’t come together the way they had hoped. Similarly, the Madden NFL franchise looked to have a terrific offseason, adding several exciting features to its long-running formula, but sadly, despite various important improvements, Madden NFL 26 falls well short of being championship caliber.

On the field, Madden NFL 26 plays as authentic as ever, particularly thanks to improved superstar behavior. Lamar Jackson tucks and runs more than other QBs, Patrick Mahomes exudes confidence in high-pressure situations, and TJ Watt will go for the strip whenever he can. Players like Watt also benefit from improved defensive adjustments, which allow you to change your rush type pre-play, as well as gamble on guessing the route type in coverage. When combined with more true-to-life player performance and expanded playbooks, Madden NFL 26 offers a strong on-the-field product.

Off the field, players have a bevy of options. Card-collection mode Ultimate Team gives you plenty of compelling online and offline opportunities to earn packs and in-game currency en route to creating the team of your dreams, but long-form modes like Franchise and Superstar continue to be my destinations. Franchise effectively captures the thrill of taking the reins of your favorite team in hopes of turning their fortunes around, crafting the next dynasty, or maybe even relocating them. Coaching plays a bigger role this year, with new archetypes to choose from and skill trees to develop, plus better tools for scouting your opponents, new gameplan options, player wear and tear management, and increased coordinator importance.

 

Superstar continues to build on the exciting premise of creating a custom athlete and guiding them through their career. I’m still enamored by my annual tradition of pushing my player up the depth chart to become the franchise QB, and the new Sphere of Influence mechanic adds free-time decisions that impact your relationships with teammates, coaches, and other people.

For example, choosing to go on a podcast instead of getting in an extra training session will please your agent, but upset your strength coach. I love how improving my relationship with my agent gets me access to more sponsorships, while getting in on the good graces of my head coach adds more selectable plays on the field. I enjoy the time-management aspect, but I was frustrated when a wire apparently got crossed and my selection had the inverse impact on the two parties involved, an immersion-breaking mistake that is indicative of Madden 26’s biggest problem.

Unfortunately, this year’s gains are fumbled thanks to a pervasive lack of polish. Certain textures sometimes fail to populate, creating gaps in player’s bodies, and some animations fail to load. This combines with glitchy menus to highlight how unpolished this game is at launch. However, the most egregious problem comes from the game failing to grasp important football strategy and rules, costing me multiple close games in Superstar.

In one instance, I drove my team down the field in a tie game and got inside the five-yard line with 10 seconds left and one timeout remaining before handing it to the simulation. Even a novice football fan would know this is when you drain the clock, call a timeout, and bring your kicker on for a chip-shot. Much to my surprise, we went to overtime. I thought maybe the kicker missed the extremely easy kick, but when I checked the stats in OT, no kick was ever attempted; the simulation just let the clock run out. In another instance, I scored a touchdown as the clock hit zero, bringing me an extra point away from tying the game, but instead, the game just ended, leaving me speechless after a heroic comeback.

This all removed me from feeling immersed in the game’s beautiful visuals and excellent atmosphere, but even when things are working properly, the inconsistent commentary also broke the illusion. I love the idea of multiple commentary teams, but the gulf in quality between the teams is apparent. In that aforementioned heroic drive down the field, I was about to snap the ball, down seven, with two seconds remaining, but rather than acknowledging the moment, the commentary acted like it was just another 2nd and 2 play.

And all these shortcomings are made even more unfortunate by the clear care that went into the rest of the broadcast package. Presentation is a big emphasis in this year’s Madden, with improved in-game weather, better likenesses, authentic celebrations, improved broadcast overlays, the best soundtrack in years, and in-stadium traditions that truly make the atmosphere feel more genuine. These improvements go a long way to helping me feel like I’m in the middle of a high-energy stadium full of screaming fans, but the air in that ball completely deflates each time one of these frustrating issues rip me out of my immersion.

Despite a disappointing launch, Madden NFL 26 isn’t unsalvageable. I would imagine many of these problems will be fixed through post-launch patches, but that doesn’t change the fact that despite how strong its fundamentals appeared to be prior to stepping onto the field, much like a nervous rookie, this entry just wasn’t quite ready for primetime. 

Score: 6

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PlayStation has revealed the games entering its PlayStation Plus Extra catalog this month, and it includes Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, Mortal Kombat 1, and Giant Squid's latest, Sword of the Sea. Plus, retro survival horror games Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis hit the catalog for PlayStation Plus Premium members, too. 

Alongside these new additions, Kojima Productions' recently released Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is getting a Game Trial for PlayStation Plus Premium members, giving players the chance to check out up to five hours of gameplay. If you decide to pick up the game after the trial, your progress and trophies will carry over. In the meantime, read Game Informer's Death Stranding 2 review here. 

This Game Trial and new PlayStation Plus additions will hit the service on Aug. 19. 

Every Game Coming To PlayStation Plus This Month

• Mortal Kombat 1 (PS5) – read our review here.
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (PS5, standard version on PS4) – read our review here.
• Sword of the Sea (PS5) – launches Aug. 19
• Earth Defense Force 6 (PS5, PS4)
• Unicorn Overlord (PS5, PS4)
• Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key (PS5, PS4)
• Indika (PS5) – read our review here.
• Harold Halibut (PS5)
• Coral Island (PS5)
• Resident Evil 2 (Premium classic – PS5, PS4)
• Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (Premium classic – PS5, PS4)

Which of these games are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments below!

Krafton has revealed that Inzoi, its life simulation Sims competitor, will launch on PlayStation 5 in the first half of 2026. This will bring the currently PC-exclusive game to a console for the first time. 

Inzoi launched into Early Access on Steam back in March, surpassing 1 million sales in its first week. Krafton says all of Inzoi's systems and features on PC will appear in the PS5 version, reworked specifically for console. Ahead of the game's PS5 release next year, though, Inzoi will launch on Mac next week on August 20. System requirements include Apple silicon Macs with an M2 chip (2022 models) or newer, and at least 16GB of unified memory.

Inzoi is available on PC via Steam Early Access and hits PS5 sometime in the first half of 2026. 

Are you going to check out Inzoi on PS5 next year? Let us know in the comments below!

Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, iOS
Publisher: Jackbox Games, Inc.
Developer: Jackbox Games, Inc.
Release: 2025

It's been 11 years since Jackbox Games first launched its massively popular Party Packs. Ever since, games like Quiplash, Drawful, Job Job, and more have become party staples, thanks to a combination of easy access and communal participation. After so many entries, it would be easy for new Party Packs to either play the hits or get wildly experimental.

Jackbox Party Pack 11 manages to do both. In a preview session held with other outlets, I got a chance to play a round of each game in the upcoming pack. With a decade's worth of playing Party Pack, I was eager to see if the Jackbox team could surprise me. Turns out, they're nowhere close to being out of ideas.

The five games in Jackbox Party Pack 11 hew close to familiar styles: improv, drawing, social deduction, and trivia are all present here. Some are twisted in clever, simple ways, like the ruination-driven Doominate; others feel like fresh starts on classic archetypes, like the early standout Legends of Trivia. And then there's Hear Say, which has an appeal that's difficult to dictate. I'll try, but it might result in a lot of onomatopoeia.

Jackbox Games, Inc.

Doominate

Our first round was also, conveniently, a pretty solid warm-up game for everyone's comedic muscles. Doominate falls squarely within the prompt-driven improv category of Jackbox games, asking players to take something like "meeting your hero" or "swimming in a pool" and, well, ruin it.

What if you met your hero and they'd read all your worst posts? What if you got a free Switch 2, but now games cost $200? This simple setup works effectively for quick, witty inversions and laughs. As the game goes on, Doominate will ask players to provide their own prompts to ruin, and then eventually un-ruin. It's fast, fun, and easy to get a handle on, making for a neat introduction to the pack.

Jackbox Games, Inc.

Hear Say

Jackbox Games has experimented with audio-driven games quite a bit, but Hear Say is one of the better implementations I've seen. It's prompts and improv, but rather than type an answer, you need to voice it, often within six to eight seconds. Something like "words you never want to hear from your crush" pops up, and you'll have about a minute to concoct a little voice memo response.

Limitation fosters creativity here, as the sound bites can get repeated, remixed, and more by the game's presentation. Ever been hanging out and someone's offhand remark becomes a recurring line that the whole group repeats for laughs throughout the day? Hear Say feels built around those quick vocal hits. I'm curious to see how popular it becomes, as it requires a mic on whatever device you're using, and might not always be as conducive to in-person play as it was for online. But Hear Say is certainly one of the more novel parts of this pack.

Jackbox Games, Inc.

Cookie Haus

The drawing game of this pack is Cookie Haus, a surprisingly cozy face-off for would-be cookie artisans. Customers offer a prompt, and each player chooses a base cookie shape to sprinkle and frost however they want, creating something beautiful or horrifying. It feels like a fun remix of classics like Tee K.O. or Champ'd Up, but some of the limitations with cookie-specific drawing options made it difficult to be as artistic as I'd like. A delicious treat, even if it's not the main course.

Jackbox Games, Inc.

Suspectives

Social deduction games have rarely stolen chunks of time from my Jackbox sessions over the years, so it was doubly surprising that Suspectives grabbed me so much. After answering a short bout of get-to-know-you questions, it's revealed one person is the "culprit," and you must deduce who it was based on details about their answers. Who doesn't know Taylor Swift lyrics, or thinks feet smell better than farts? The questions make for some fun moments, especially when the culprit needs to pretend like they shouldn't be the one under scrutiny.

With strangers, this one could fall flat. For our group of previewers who approximately knew each other, it served as a bit of a fun icebreaker to poke and prod about each others' personalities and interests. But with a good group of pals who have known each other for a while, I could really see this turning into an exciting whodunnit. It certainly made for a fun way to get to know others.

Jackbox Games, Inc.

Legends of Trivia 

The last game we played during our preview session was also the longest. Legends of Trivia is Jackbox's latest trivia game, this time twisting it into a tabletop-esque dungeon crawl. What’s nice is that Legends of Trivia is a cooperative expedition; players could certainly vie to perform better, but the party answers questions to deal damage to monsters together. It also means you can collaborate, like a trivia night team, to either focus on an answer you know for sure or split answers to ensure some damage lands. There's gold to earn and spend on health or hint potions, and plenty of fantastic character designs. 

An easy downside in trivia games is that, if they're competitive, players can feel a bit siloed off. Legends of Trivia navigates around this by having everyone work as a team; rather than quietly enter in answers and hope for the best, the whole crew is talking and collaborating. We had moments of deducing answers, or someone triumphantly declaring they knew the right choice, giving them little moments of spotlight without leaving out the rest of the group. All of this mixes with a fantasy setting and incredible animation style, making it feel like the better parts of a tabletop night mixed with bar trivia. Legends of Trivia feels like it could be a breakout of this pack, and with enough trivia and gameplay variety, a new Jackbox night staple.

The Jackbox Party Pack 11 arrives on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and PC sometime this Fall.

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: Remedy Entertainment
Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Release: June 17, 2025
Rating: Teen

FBC: Firebreak launched roughly two months ago to little fanfare and mixed reviews. At the time, I had written a review of my own, singling out the game's slow progression as its main failure, but Remedy released a new update just hours before I posted my review, rendering my verdict obsolete. The patch did improve things enough to smooth over my biggest issues with the game, but didn't do enough to turn a mediocre experience into anything more.

In FBC: Firebreak, a multiplayer spin-off of Remedy’s acclaimed Control, you play as a Firebreaker, a volunteer worker in a haunted bureau of the government tasked with clearing out the Hiss, a malevolent force that possesses people and corrupts the building with mundane-looking powers. Paper Chase, for example, has the players clearing thousands of yellow sticky notes off the walls of an office space. If you don't keep your distance, a swarm of sticky notes will swallow you whole and turn you into a sticky note-clad monster. These missions, known in the game as "Jobs," are repeatable tasks you'll complete over and over again to level your character up. There are five now, with more to come in future free updates.

To complete these jobs, each Firebreaker has a loadout of one gun, a grenade, a selection of perks, and a crisis kit, a set of tools you can use to complete tasks and to fight off the Hiss. Guns feel unremarkable, if a bit weak, but crisis kits are where the game really comes into its own. The splash kit comes with a water cannon, the jump kit comes with an electric tool called the Electro-Kinetic Charge Impactor, and the fix kit comes with a giant wrench. Each kit also comes with a deployable, which is an item you can place in the world to assist in combat, and an altered augment, an extremely powerful ability that charges up over time. These kits are the game's defining feature, and I had the most fun playing in a balanced group with one of each.

Each job has three clearance levels, which grant players access to slightly harder areas of the level. Ground Control, for example, has players load radioactive pearls into a cart that they push through each area. Clearance level two opens a door to a larger area with more pearls to collect, while clearance level three opens a door to a rocket to launch the leech pearls into the atmosphere. Each job also always takes place on the same map. The intent is to offer handcrafted experiences for each level, but it gets old after just a few runs, and I'd easily trade that handcrafted feel for more variety.

Jobs can be completed solo, but it's abundantly clear the game is designed to have three players, one with each kit. The interactions between kits can be fun, like how the jump kit's electricity is more effective after the splash kit douses enemies, but the main incentive is the game's many tasks needed to complete each mode. While any player can repair broken machinery or jump-start fuses, the fix and jump kits can do each respective task with a few clicks of a button, while players with other kits have to do a bumper-based minigame instead. Meanwhile, the splash kit can clean hazards off of allies and heal with its deployable, so it's not only nice to have a team of three – it's basically a balance requirement.

Solo games are especially annoying, as having just one of the kits dooms you to doing each tedious minigame yourself or being more vulnerable to damage and negative status effects. Unfortunately, matchmaking is also a pain. Lobbies are selected based on difficulty, not job or clearance level, so there's a good chance that when you join another player, you'll be playing a game you aren't interested in. I've never had success hosting a party of three, usually getting one other player at best, and often losing them after completing a job or when a third fails to appear. And on the rare occasions I've been in a full lobby (hosted by someone else), I've not only never had all three crisis kits represented, but there's no text or voice chat to ask someone to switch. Even then, that might not solve the problem, since crisis kits have to be upgraded over time, and the kit missing might be one nobody has upgraded.

The ideal way to play FBC: Firebreak is as a group of three friends on a Discord call, coordinating moves and synergizing kits, which is a decent way to spend an afternoon. Unfortunately, it's difficult to achieve anything similar while matchmaking, and even then, there's just not much to do. On paper, I don't mind the lack of story, competitive modes, or procedurally generated content, but when the gameplay isn't engaging or interesting enough to keep me playing, the lack of other game modes is especially glaring. Recent updates have eliminated the tedious grind for upgrades, but the lack of a strong foundation underneath leaves FBC: Firebreak with too little, too late.

Score: 6

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