One of Bethesda's most critically acclaimed games, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, is the latest game to receive an upgraded version for Nintendo's new, more powerful console. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim arrived on Switch in 2017, complete with some exclusive items inspired by the Legend of Zelda franchise. Today, Bethesda surprise-launched the Switch 2 version of Skyrim Anniversary Edition.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition gathers the base game and its three official expansions. Today's new Switch 2 edition adds better resolution, faster load times, more optimized performance, and Joy-Con 2 mouse support. Those new features join the existing Switch-exclusive features, including motion controls, Amiibo support, and items from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, including the Master Sword, Hylian Shield, and Champion's Tunic. The Anniversary Edition also includes access to user-generated Creations Club content.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition for Switch 2 costs $60. If you own The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition on Switch, the upgrade to the Switch 2 version is free. If you only own the base edition of Skyrim on Switch, you can purchase a $20 upgrade to the Anniversary Edition to also receive the Switch 2 upgrade.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim originally launched on November 11, 2011. To this day, it's one of the most critically acclaimed video games of all time, with a Metacritic average score of 96, including a 9.5 from Game Informer.

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: Raw Fury
Developer: Lunar Software
Release: December 4, 2025
Rating: Teen

There was a 20-minute period early in my playthrough of Routine where I walked back and forth between rooms and through hallways in this game’s abandoned, defunct, and seemingly malfunctioning lunar station in search of one simple thing: my own ID number. Papers plaster the surrounding walls, explaining that every person on the station must carry their ID badge with them at all times, including me. I look everywhere for that badge, needing to input my ID into a computer terminal to advance forward… well, almost everywhere. Crucially, I don’t look down at my chest, where my ID badge hangs nonchalantly. The ID I searched for 20 minutes to find was with me all along, attached to my moon suit. This admittedly embarrassing lesson reshaped my approach to Routine, paving the way forward for a sublime and highly tactile puzzle adventure that kept me glued to my mouse and keyboard. 

Routine isn’t filled with video game puzzles; it felt less like playing a game throughout my eight hours with it, and more like an elaborate sci-fi-themed escape room entirely based on logic. You won’t discover obtuse and nonsensical solutions like something you’d find in a zombie-infested police station, for example, but rather, codes, numbers, and remedies placed precisely where they should be. In this sense, Routine required me to rewrite my approach to its puzzles. I’m wary of using the word immersive, which varies from person to person, but Routine clicked for me when I placed myself in the shoes of this engineer – a guy whose shift today brought him to a decrepit lunar station to use computers and analog terminals to figure out what the hell went wrong. Of course, the narrative journey he then goes on speaks to something more ancient, more maternal, than the 1980s-inspired tech he interfaces with, but ultimately, Routine is about a strange and bad shift at work. 

Most everything in Routine happens through the lens of your Cosmonaut Assistance Tool (CAT), a square gun-like tool that is able to connect to the technology of this space station in a variety of ways. At first, it does little more than project tabs on marked walls to pull up things like the save button, your objectives, and saved media. To do that, you have to look at your CAT, press a button on it, then aim it at the specified wall to pull up the tabs. It’s the first taste of just how tactile Routine gets, and as you upgrade your tool with more modules, you unlock the ability to shock robotic stalkers, access secure doors, and find hidden messages. 

To do any of these tasks, you must interact with the CAT by pulling it up and pressing a button or pulling a trigger back or slotting in a cassette-like object… or something – there is no automation here. On paper, it’s an exhausting routine of pressing buttons before doing the thing you want to do, but it’s so diegetic that it’s impossible to imagine Routine without this tactility. I loved every puzzle presented to me, which often involved finding hidden codes on walls or in lockers, plugging them into terminals to unlock a new clue, and progressing to the next stage of the puzzle (often a new room or location to explore). 

Though watchful robots that occasionally swarm attempt to get in the way, requiring you to zap them or run, and monstrous creatures try to kill you, this antagonistic behavior is a small aspect of Routine. They aren’t harmless, but if you’re saving often, they do little to set back your progression, ultimately making them feel inessential to what makes Routine great.  

There are no “unlocks” or in-game celebratory moments in Routine upon completing a puzzle – just the dull droning of the electricity powering this station, the occasional beeps from monitors, your breath, and the knowledge that you get to advance forward. And yet, it’s some of the most exciting puzzle-solving I’ve experienced because of how enticing the reward of moving deeper, getting one step closer to the answer to, “What is going on?” 

 

Musical flairs from composer Mick Gordon magnetically mix with the gorgeous late-‘70s future aesthetic, itself flush with crunchy film grain and an intoxicatingly impressive attention to detail; the tactileness of Routine feels like a crucial element to rounding out the atmosphere, and knowing I needed to press a button here and open a secure door with my CATs small security module screen there while an unholy being stalked after me just a few feet behind added a thrill that left my mouse damp with sweat. Gross, like the gaping chest that would swallow me if I failed.

Routine is a survival-horror game in the lightest of senses. There are robots and creatures to run/hide from occasionally, and you have little in your arsenal to fight back, but that genre tag is a misnomer – this is a puzzle experience drenched in tension and terror. With your CAT tool and the wits you’d hope appear if you, yourself, were placed in this terrible situation, a seductive Pandora’s box of escape rooms awaits you.  

Score: 8.5

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The Game Awards airs this Thursday, December 11, but we now know that one of the big reveals will be related to Tomb Raider. This announcement was first revealed in Fortnite (yes, Fortnite) before the franchise’s official X account shared the news to a broader audience.

The announcement consists of a piece of art (posted above) that shows a silhouette of Lara Croft atop a pedestal bearing the words "Announcement December 11”. The Tomb Raider X account then posts the following message:

As just revealed in The Game Awards Vote in Fortnite map portal, tune in to @thegameawards on December 11 for a look at the future of one of gaming's most iconic franchises @tombraider

While the announcement doesn't explicitly promise a new game reveal, it’s been known since 2022 that Crystal Dynamics, which has developed every mainline Tomb Raider game since 2006’s Tomb Raider: Legend, is working on a new entry in the series. At the time, the studio announced it was being developed in Unreal Engine 5, but little else is known about the project other than it will be published by Amazon Games (even after this division suffered mass layoffs in October). The development of the game was reportedly also unaffected by the rounds of layoffs that hit Crystal Dynamics in August. 

The last mainline Tomb Raider game was 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Since then, fans have been treated to two remastered collections of the first six games in the series: Tomb Raider I-III Remastered in 2024 and Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered earlier this year. Meanwhile, Season 2 of Netflix's Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft animated series is set to premiere on December 11 – the same day as The Game Awards. Thursday is shaping up to be a big day for Lara Croft fans. 

For more on The Game Awards, here's the full list of award nominations. 

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, PC
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Sam Eng
Release: December 8, 2025
Rating: Everyone

You are a demon made of glass and pain. Literally. Looking to escape from Hell, you sign a contract with the Devil to devour the moons illuminating the realm’s many layers. Your steed is a skateboard, a forbidden object you’ll use to kick and push through the Underworld, acting as the Silver Surfer to your own Galactus. Skate Story’s strange premise and surreal art direction are equal parts alluring and head-scratching. While the gameplay is a mixed bag, I enjoyed this fascinating blend of extreme sports and biblical poetry.

Skateboarding enthusiasts shouldn’t expect to catch big air on halfpipes or memorize a lengthy list of tricks. This is a story-driven experience drawing narrative inspiration from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. The skater’s descent into the depths of a humorously bureaucratic Hell is laden with quirky, tortured souls I liked interacting with. The story itself is a mesmerizing and poetic onslaught of strange moments and dreamlike destinations every player will interpret differently, but I enjoyed how its effective throughline of hope and perseverance shines through. Best of all, you get to do a bunch of sick stunts along the way. 

Skating is fun and easy to grasp thanks to simple and tight arcade-style controls. Moves are introduced at a good pace, allowing me to master relatively basic tricks like ollies, varials, grinds, and kickflips without overwhelming me. The small, skatepark-like hubs making up each layer of Hell are decent playgrounds to freely practice chaining moves to create combos. Small environmental interactions, like performing varials to cut grass or hitting ollies over special manholes, reward currency to purchase new skateboard cosmetics, such as decks and wheels. I appreciate how this structure encourages and rewards hitting tricks non-stop, but the hubs never offer more than a few simple ramps and railings, so they don’t remain exciting for long. By the second half, I lost the desire to mess around in these spaces and skated straight towards the more enjoyable main objective of filling my crystalline belly with moons.

Capturing a moon requires completing simple quests from the strange and tortured denizens. Finding cubes of wisdom for a sentient marble bust or helping a pigeon finish its manuscript by collecting scattered letters (a cheeky nod to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater) aren't the deepest activities, but the sheer strangeness of the situations makes them more compelling than they would be otherwise. Skate Story thrives on its surreal vibes, chiefly its captivating art direction, which offers one of the most whimsical and imaginative interpretations of Hell I’ve ever seen. It trades grim fire and brimstone for a kaleidoscopic, cosmic film grain aesthetic that’s arguably worth the price of admission just to admire.

Gameplay picks up in the linear high-speed skating sequences where you traverse tricky courses and dodge obstacles across multiple checkpoints, often with a time limit. These segments are a blast thanks to a great sense of speed and how the psychedelic soundtrack swells as your skating becomes ever faster and more perilous; I strongly recommend wearing headphones. I would easily trade the comparatively flat hub exploration for a larger playlist of these white-knuckled sprints. 

 

Quick restarts soothe the sting of a wipeout, and I love how satisfyingly the glass skater shatters into pieces after an errant trick. Less cool are the occasional collision issues where the Skater clips through objects and, although less frequent, becomes stuck inside them. The most egregious example was in the final scene of the game, when I became trapped under geometry during the cinematic finale and had to restart it a few times, dampening an otherwise cool moment.

Devouring moons is also a highlight. These encounters play out as celestial boss battles where nailing tricks drains the moon’s health bars based on the quality of the combo, acting as intense exams of your speed and dexterity. The bouts remain consistently entertaining as new wrinkles are introduced. One chaotic battle pitted me against the laser-shooting demons of the Underworld’s law enforcement agency. Another challenged me to chase the moon and nail tricks within its constantly moving shadow. These battles are strong exclamation points to a level, and I always looked forward to them. Thus, it’s a shame that there’s no way to replay previous chapters to enjoy these segments again; you can only load your most recent checkpoint or restart the game from scratch, wiping your original save data in the process.

As Skate Story’s credits rolled, I wasn’t totally sure what to make of it. Despite its imperfections, I knew I liked it, but I struggled to articulate why. I won’t pretend that every metaphor or symbol resonated with me or even made sense. It’s a deeply poetic journey, and the way to enjoy any good poem is to focus more on how it made me feel rather than any literal interpretation. In that sense, I’ll fondly remember the awe I felt admiring this imaginatively conceived underworld, the adrenaline rush of barreling through courses as a shining beacon of defiance and perseverance, and the thrill of hitting stunts so sick that entire celestial bodies shatter at my awesomeness.

Score: 8

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Longtime Tekken director and series producer Katsuhiro Harada has revealed he will leave Bandai Namco at the end of 2025. Harada, whose credits include not only Tekken but the SoulCalibur series, Pokkén Tournament, and more, said he wanted to reach the Tekken series' 30th Anniversary, which happened last December, as a major career milestone and is ready to move on. 

He says he will leave Bandai Namco at the end of the year, but has been asked by the publisher to appear at the Tekken World Tour Finals at the end of January, and he will be attending as a guest. Alongside this news, Harada has released "TEKKEN: A 30-Year Journey – Harada's Final Mix" on SoundCloud, as he has always wanted to perform as a DJ at a tournament but never had the chance. 

"So instead, I will be releasing – for the first and last time – a 60-minute Tekken DJ-style nonstop mix (DJ mix), personally edited by myself, together with this announcement," Harada writes in his announcement post on X. "Listening to it brings back many memories. Thank you again, sincerely, for all these years." 

In Harada's announcement post, he talks about his love of arcade fighting games, his journey with Tekken and game development, and how he sought the advice of longtime mentor Ken Kutaragi, former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, commonly referred to as "The Father of PlayStation," and "received invaluable encouragement and guidance," noting that "his words quietely supported me in making this decision." 

Alongside news of Harada's departure, the Tekken X account released a statement that says the following regarding Harada's upcoming leave: 

"Katsuhiro Harada, who has long led numerous projects including the Tekken series, will be leaving Bandai Namco. This comes as the Tekken series finishes celebrating its 30th anniversary, a milestone he deeply contributed to as executive director and executive producer on the franchise. Harada-san is making an appearance and meeting with the Tekken community at the 'Tekken World Tour 2025 Global Finals' Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ) and Top 20 finals, held in Malmo, Sweden, on January 31 and February 1, 2026." 

The statement also includes words regarding the future of the Tekken series, and they read as follows: 

"To our fans, rest assured that we are fully committed to future development and content plans for Tekken 8. We will continue to take community feedback on the game and its content to heart to ensure that we uphold the vision and spirit built by Harada-san, dedicating our utmost efforts to ensure the legacy of the Tekken series continues as a fighting game franchise beloved worldwide. We express our deepest gratitude for Harada-san for providing us with vision and continued success over the years." 

On that note, Harada mentions in his announcement that, "Over the past four to five years, I've gradually handed over all of my responsibilities, as well as the stories and worldbuilding I oversaw, to the team, bringing me to the present day," so it sounds like the Tekken series is in good hands. 

Harada's Tekken journey goes all the way back to the beginning, where he was a voice actor for Marshall Law, Yoshimitsu, and Kunimitsu in the first Tekken. In Tekken 2, he voiced Marshall Law and Yoshimitsu once more. With Tekken 3 in 1997, not only did Harada voice Yoshimitsu and newcomer Forest Law, but he also directed the game. Since then, he's been a creative lead on the series through 2024's Tekken 8.

You can read Game Informer's Tekken 8 review here. 

Do you have any favorite Harada memories? Drop them in the comments below!