Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: CULT Games
Developer: White Owls
Release: September 26, 2025
Rating: Mature

I repeatedly asked myself one question while playing Hotel Barcelona: Why?

Why is the demonic spirit of a serial killer possessing a timid US Marshal? Why is the promising-looking combat so bland? Why is the storytelling so half-baked? Why does the game look as though it emerged from a time capsule from the mid-2000s? I don’t have the answers to most of these questions, but I know one thing: This collaboration between White Owls, the studio led by Deadly Premonition mastermind Swery, and Suda51 of Grasshopper fame, is a bad time. It also encapsulates the main critique of both creators’ works: an abundance of surreal humor and style, but severely lacking in polished substance.

Hotel Barcelona is a 2D action roguelike that sees players fighting across the grounds of the eponymous cursed hotel. As Justine, you’re a government agent looking to avenge your father’s murder by taking down a powerful witch with the supernatural assistance of Dr. Carnival, a murderous spirit inhabiting Justine’s body. This intriguing setup, and the dynamic between the shy Justine and ruthless Carnival, can lead to mildly amusing moments, but the payoff is neither interesting nor entirely coherent. Unfortunately, the action isn’t much better.

The game’s roguelike runs consist of time-limited romps through four stages of a level, which is assigned a random weather effect and time of day. You have upwards of two or three minutes to explore a stage before exiting one of several doors to the next area, granting bonuses like increased attack speed or health regeneration. I like that runs are mercifully short, because the mediocre combat lacks the punch or finesse to make Justine’s revenge quest satisfying.

Slicing foes apart with various weapons like knives, axes, or buzzsaws, or gunning them down with pistols, shotguns, and other ranged options, feels just south of “fine” even after unlocking combos and other upgrades from a skill tree. To its credit, Hotel Barcelona has a few novel ideas. Weather comes into play by affecting how long it takes to build up Dr. Carnival's special attack, a meter filled by coating Justine in the blood of the foes she slays. Rainy weather rinses the blood off her body, making it tougher to build toward unleashing this screen-filling attack to add a decent challenge.

One interesting concept is playing alongside the “ghosts” of your previous runs through a stage, who can attack any enemies caught in their predetermined path. These can be helpful, but are more unreliable than anything. You can also be invaded and killed by other players (and do the same to them) Dark Souls-style, but this happens so infrequently (possibly due to a low player count) that it’s virtually a non-factor. When someone did arrive and took my life, I cursed them for extending my time in Hotel Barcelona’s world.

The bland assortment of enemies similarly lacks punch, and some unleash infuriatingly cheap attacks that can stun-lock Justine to an early grave. Boss battles, such as ones against a deranged butcher or an alien social media influencer, commit the same sins, and I never looked forward to facing them time and again to farm upgrade resources. While the combat is unremarkable at worst, other gameplay diversions, such as a platforming sequence across a crumbling arena or a QTE-driven surfing segment, are outright terrible due to poor controls and a dated presentation.

Despite Hotel Barcelona seemingly taking the Hades route of advancing the story and unlocking new character conversations between runs, non-critical threads go nowhere, even though some present interesting personalities. I hoped to learn more about Barcelona’s strange patrons, such as an ear-obsessed bartender, a friendly monster living in Justine’s closet, and an unsettlingly chipper receptionist, so I was disappointed that their character development gets cut off at the knees as the game approaches its climax. Justine’s quest to collect the hearts of three bosses to face the witch is shockingly short, padded by an unnecessary and tedious story mission to recollect these hearts by replaying the same (albeit shorter) stages. This culminates in an insultingly abrupt ending that sheds practically no light on the witch’s motives, the larger backstories of the hotel patrons, and Dr. Carnival’s true nature, which is only briefly teased.  

 

Perhaps these threads become more fleshed out after reaching the two unlockable, seemingly optional worlds, but the secret method of reaching them appears annoyingly vague. And believe me, I tried. I even replayed the final section to reach the game’s one big decision, then made the opposite choice I had before, only to find there is no choice. You’re forced into making the same decision no matter what, offering another example of how Hotel Barcelona shoots its promising narrative ideas in the foot at every turn. Whatever remaining secrets may lie beneath, I have no interest in seeing them.

I know the charm of Swery games (and, to a lesser extent, Suda51 titles) is how utterly bizarre they are, but any chuckles Hotel Barcelona’s quirky sense of humor may elicit were drowned under a sea of head-scratching and outright bad design and storytelling decisions. No matter how many secrets it may have or surreal moments it assaults players with, it’s all wrapped around a dull, limited, and flawed core gameplay experience. You don’t have to go home, but you shouldn’t stay here. 

Score: 5

About Game Informer's review system

After a few years in a console's life cycle, its common to see dips in price for its older games and hardware, but in 2025, the opposite has been true. The latest culprit of the rising cost of gaming is Xbox Game Pass, which we learned today would be getting new features, but a massive increase in monthly fees. Ultimate, the highest tier of the service, will cost 50 percent more, going from $19.99 a month to $29.99 a month. A breakdown of the new tiers is included below.

Click image to enlarge

Game Pass Essential (formerly Core)- $9.99 a month

• 50+ games now playable on PC, console, and cloud
• Unlimited Cloud Gaming
• In-game benefits, including for Riot Games
• Online console multiplayer
• Play and earn up to $25 a year in the Store with Rewards

Game Pass Premium (formerly Standard) - $14.99 a month

• 200+ games now playable on PC, console, and cloud
• New Xbox-published games within a year of launch
• Unlimited cloud gaming with shorter wait times
• In-game benefits, including for Riot Games
• Online console multiplayer
• Play and earn up to $50 a year in the Store with Rewards

Game Pass Ultimate - $29.99 a month

• 400+ games now playable on PC, console, and cloud
• 75+ day one games a year, including all Xbox-published games day one
• Ubisoft+ Classics and EA Play included, with Fortnite Crew coming in November
• Unlimited cloud gaming at our best quality, with the shortest wait times
• In-game benefits, including for Riot Games
• Online console multiplayer
• Play and earn up to $100 a year in the Store with Rewards

Xbox justifies the increase with a new lineup of upgrades. An Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription now includes Ubisoft+ Classics (a $7/month fee that includes access to select Ubisoft games) and Fortnite Crew (which offers monthly skins and V-Bucks), along with an upgraded version of Xbox's cloud gaming service. It also retains its previous benefits, including day 1 releases, a library of 400 games, EA Play, and online gaming.

Lower tiers, however, are relatively unchanged, save for their names: Game Pass Standard is now Game Pass Premium, but remains $14.99 a month, while Game Pass Core, now Game Pass Essential, is still $9.99. New games also come to each service today; you can read that full list here.

Just last year, Game Pass Ultimate increased in price from $16.99 to its current $19.99, and that change was signaled two months in advance – these latest changes go into effect today. This also comes following last week's news that Xbox's ROG Ally handhelds will be $599.99 and $999.99, and two weeks after we learned Xbox consoles are getting their second price increase this year.

Summerfall Studios (a developer founded in part by Dragon Age writer David Gaider) made its debut with Stray Gods, a musical game starring modern-day adaptations of the ancient Greek pantheon. Its next game, Malys, is a massive departure in both tone and gameplay. Earlier this April, Summerfall announced a Kickstarter for this new project, but unfortunately, it failed to reach its funding goal. However, the game still entered early access this past June, and now, just a few months later, it's hitting 1.0, launching on Steam on October 24.

This deckbuilder tells the story of Noah, a demon hunter, on his quest to slay the Malys, an evil creature with the city in a chokehold. The game's combat encounters are exorcisms, and you'll play and burn cards in order to expose demons' true names and expel them from their hosts. According to a blogpost on Summerfall's website, the 1.0 update will also include "cloud saves, a fully playable story, all three regions and the final boss fight, as well as a full scale music update across the game."

The blog post also mentions that the price will increase slightly at launch, so if you're interested in grabbing it cheaper (it's currently $9.99 in the US), make sure to do so before October 24.

Harmonix has announced that Rock Band 4 is being delisted from digital storefronts due to expiring music licenses. The removal will occur on the day of the game’s 10th anniversary.

On October 5, Rock Band 4 will be pulled from PlayStation and Xbox digital stores. Harmonix posted a message on its Discord explaining that this is due to the game’s original licenses to the core 65-song soundtrack expiring. Those who own the game will still be able to download and play it, and any purchased music can still be downloaded and played on any compatible devices.

Here is Harmonix’s full message:

On Sunday, October 5, 2025, Rock Band 4 turns 10. What a ride it’s been.

With this milestone comes one big change: the original licenses for the core soundtrack are expiring. Because of that, Rock Band 4 will be removed from the PlayStation and Xbox digital stores. If you already own the game, nothing changes—you’ll keep full access and still be able to download the game and songs to any new, compatible devices. The same applies to downloadable content: songs will come down as they hit the 10-year mark, but anything you’ve purchased will remain in your library.

We’re so grateful for the passion this community has shown. From the team, it’s been a special experience to serve you with Rivals challenges, a super deep downloadable content library and a best in class band sim. If you’ve been meaning to grab a few last songs, now’s the time. Thanks again,

—The Rock Band Team

The move comes after Harmonix ceased DLC support for Rock Band 4 back in January 2024, with over 3,000 songs released weekly since the game's launch on October 6,  2015.  Rock Band 4 was well-received at launch, scoring an 8.75 out of 10 from Game Informer, and is the final traditional entry in the series, as 2017's Rock Band VR followed it. The game received a single paid expansion, Rock Band 4 Rivals, in October 2016, which added new game modes (including a story mode) and, eventually, additional songs.  

Despite Rock Band as a franchise dominating the early 2010s, the series' availability has gradually diminished due to expiring music licenses and the shuttering of online services. We'll be sad to see Rock Band 4 go, but those interested in picking up the game still have time to purchase the $9.99 Rock Band 4 Rivals bundle on PlayStation and Xbox stores before it's pulled for good. 

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X/S
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: EA Canada
Release: September 26, 2025
Rating: Everyone

Outside of the name change to EA Sports FC, EA Sports’ football series had stagnated. With each passing entry, the community has grown increasingly concerned about the lack of significant changes to the annualized franchise. But after spending several hours with EA Sports FC 26’s many modes, I emerged impressed by the strides EA Sports took with this year’s entry. 

Sports games are driven by their communities, and EA Sports turned to community feedback to inform this year’s iterations of the studio’s titles with varying degrees of success. EA Sports FC 26 builds on this by overhauling gameplay with authenticity as its primary goal. Newly introduced for FC 26, the “Competitive” and “Authentic” gameplay presets enable players to choose how they want to play. The former’s arcade style is the perfect mode of play for FUT and the online suite, and the latter imbues career modes with a level of realized play that rewards your time on the pitch. 

Authentic mode allows players looking to immerse themselves in the most beautiful game to experience the chaos of scrambles in the box, the value of playing positionally, and the importance of winning every header. With its responsive gameplay, FC 26 is the closest attempt to pure simulation that the franchise has taken in years. But with authenticity comes a more methodical and slow-paced approach to matches, which you can easily feel from the moment you step onto the pitch.

Authentic and Competitive mode choices allow EA Sports FC 26 to develop gameplay that is closest to simulated, deliberate play. However, the most crucial element is that the jarring experience of switching between FUT and other solo-player modes is in your control, with gamble play pacing at your discretion. If you’re a fan of the fast-paced, high-scoring nature of FUT games, you can have that in your career modes. You’re in control of the pace, and that allows you to chart your time in FC 26 your way.

 

Regardless of which gameplay style you choose, goalkeeping receives a significant boost. Bad goalkeeping drastically impacts your love of the game, so thankfully, I can’t recall any goals that clearly should have been saved or cheap rebounds. This keeps scores lower, works to impact authenticity further, and helps make scoring more dynamic. 

You can feel the most significant difference in goalkeeping while playing FUT, but even as you progress through a career, the keepers you are playing against all feel different. Keepers matter, not just when their overall stats are in the high 90s, and that forces you to plan your attacks instead of just taking every shot on goal. One of the elements that most impacts goalkeeping is the fact that keepers now block with different animations for different saves, which makes it more difficult for strikers. 

The enhancements to goalkeeping are a good starting point, particularly because of save percentages that come close to the completion percentages we see in EA Sports College Football’s robo-QB problem, which can push challenging into frustrating, especially in close matches. Better balancing is essential to make this quality-of-life enhancement for a core position a shining star. 

Despite the gameplay enhancements, EA Sports FC 26 sometimes shanks the punt thanks to technical issues, including menu crashes and server disconnects. These aren’t constant, but when they do happen, they not only remove you from the immersion – they remove you from the game itself. What starts to wear on you is how frequently your account will disconnect from EA Sports servers, which, depending on the mode, will force you to stop playing, even if the game technically hasn’t crashed. 

Choice continues to guide EA Sports FC 26 in Player Career mode with the introduction of archetypes. At first glance, archetypes may seem familiar to those who also play EA Sports’ American football games. However, FC 26 isn’t copying anyone’s homework and instead has introduced a robust archetype progression system that adds much-needed depth to developing your player.

Inspired by the real-life greats, the Archetype system is more realized than any other EA Sports has put together. Replacing the Player Growth System of the past, everything you do as a player matters. From on-pitch goals to hit, set forward by your manager, to the choices you make off the field, player development isn’t just about looking at stat lines. Instead, you’re developing an entire identity and personality. 

Archetypes are broken into three identity categories: Virtuoso, Heartbeat, and Maverick. Are you looking to be the driving force of your team? Are you looking to play all 11 positions on the field? The important thing here is that you get that choice. This is made even more critical as you begin to specialize your player within the Archetypes. 

How you respond to your fans on social media, how much you praise your team, and as you start to build your nest egg with your weekly salary, the off-the-field activities also impact how you develop. Each of the choices you make about how to respond after losses, or if you book activities for your fans, shapes how the team views you. As you develop each of these three categories, you unlock different abilities that impact how you play, with the number of slots locked to progression, and from there, the abilities locked by how far into each of the three identity branches you have progressed. 

As you begin to specialize and define your player through their playstyle, specializations like Recycler, Maestro, and Spark for forwards, or Progressor and Marauder for defenders, give you control in charting your path and taking advantage of the nuances in how you play. Are you more of a Rapinoe or a Morgan? A Sun or an Mbappe? These specializations work to build that path. Archetypes are the core progression system, and they work exceptionally well to push role-playing expectations and immersion in sports titles. 

Much like other RPG choice systems, how you respond, the actions you choose to buy, all contribute to how fast you can unlock Virtuoso, Heartbeat, and Maverick abilities. Additionally, the ability to become a hybrid between all three isn’t easily obtained, pushing you to pick a specialty to get the full benefits. While you can split your identity between two branches, taking the time to read through what you can unlock in the future is essential to building a player you will be happy with. From a gameplay perspective, restricting branch movement is a crucial key to balancing players against one another. This is especially important for building characters within online clubs. 

The level of role-playing elements introduced for clubs and Player Career mode is one of the most in-depth overhauls in a sports title yet. It boosts immersion to a point that begs you to engage with your career as more than just scoring goals or landing a new contract. Modern sports titles are, in actuality, one part sport and one part RPG. It’s why we spend much time building Online Dynasties, Franchises, and, for FC 26, clubs. Stepping back and looking at the three standard bearers of the EA Sports catalog, FC 26 offers the most robust RPG experience that the studio has put forward. 

EA Sports FC 26 also features the largest roster of players, clubs, and stadiums yet. While this is vital to driving authenticity, it’s also key to immersion. Playing with a newer club, like my home team, Austin FC, as my male pro and the Houston Dash as my female pro, showcased how much investment has been given to both men’s and women’s soccer. Playing through parallel careers, there weren’t many moments that felt like either side was less than the other. 

While contracts for both women and men are drastically different, with my Austin FC pro making around $14k a week and my Houston Dash pro making only $1.4k, both players still had access to the same activities, with the prices adjusted to the salary you were locked into – a slight nod to authentic pay disparity without penalizing the player. 

The game wants to put you in your player’s shoes, and when you score a goal, you’ll experience a replay of the moment from the first-person perspective. While this feature is fun and has no significant impact on gameplay, the POV feature often suffers from visual issues, including awkward hair clipping through the frame. This stands out even more when compared to the visual successes of character models during cutscenes and gameplay, as well as the immersive stadium presentations.

Even with its issues, EA Sports FC 26 offers a level of player development and immersion that you just don’t get in other sports titles. On the surface, it’s easy to describe the gameplay overhaul as simple quality-of-life updates, but this year's changes tackle several player frustrations (particularly around goalkeeping), ultimately improving the franchise for the long haul.. EA Sports FC 26 is a robust step forward for a franchise I had lost faith in, and now, I can’t stop playing.

Score: 8

About Game Informer's review system