Category: Video Gaming

Kickstart your weekend with a Wordle win so quick and effortless it almost feels like cheating; just scroll your way down to the September 13 (1547) answer and that’s it, job done. And yes it is almost cheating. If your eyes happen to scroll across Saturday’s winning word while you’re here then that’s just a thing that happened, isn’t it? We won’t tell. Our hints and clues are updated daily too, just in case you need them.

This week featured some bordered lands. Four of them, in fact. A real turn up for the books, that one. Here’s hoping the five people on Earth who aren’t singing songs of silk appreciate a good knob gag, or several bad ones made in quick succession by a rectangular robot. I should de-sark myself. It’s Friday. There’s no place for sentences that mean the opposite.

Here’s what we’re playing this weekend:

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Some week, huh? Yeah. How about some video games? That’ll take our minds off things…well, perhaps not entirely. Our minds may still be trapped in this modern hellscape of our times, but games will hopefully give us hours of fun. And if you happen to find yourself with a comfy 48 hours of time off ahead of you but aren’t sure what to play, that’s where we come in with our recommendations.

Read More: Everything We Saw At The September 2025 Nintendo Direct

Without further ado, let’s dive into what we’re looking forward to keeping ourselves busy with in the days ahead.

Borderlands 4

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Unknown”)
Current goal: Loot more guns and kill more shit

I love all the Borderlands games. Yes, even 3, the one people hate for some reason. To me, the mix of gunplay, co-op, weird sci-fi, and endless killin’/lootin’ is a perfect mixture that rips away days or even weeks of my life in a flash. And Borderlands 4 is maybe my favorite one yet. (I’ve not written my full review yet, so we’ll see where I land in a few days.)

The gunplay and combat are better than ever, the loot is more balanced, the story is less annoying, and the open world is more rewarding to explore. It’s the next step forward for the franchise, and I’m scared of how many hours I’m going to lose to it. Especially as my friends get the game and I start running different characters and builds. – Zack Zwiezen

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch/Switch 2, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Verified”)
Current goal: Die a lot while loving every second of the pain

I have spent an embarrassing amount of time on Hollow Knight: Silksong. Hopefully, goddess willing, I get to spend even more time with it this weekend.

I never played Hollow Knight, but with the sequel, I just got swept up in the collective excitement and let myself enthusiastically purchase a video game–and what a joy it’s been! This game is just beautiful, especially on a quality screen like the Steam Deck OLED’s. The sound design? Ugh, to die for. And the challenge? Well, yeah, that’s awesome too.

As a fitness coach said to me once as I was gasping for air from some ridiculous bullshit he was making me do, “easy things aren’t worth doing.” It was serious and funny at the same time, but the sentiment helped get me through the workout and many more since. There’s something valuable in that kind of experience. Let me elaborate.

Siliksong has been a hit in my local IRL circles. So many folks I know are playing it on their handheld devices and the difficulty, the challenge, the effort it takes to make progress in it have turned this game about strange little bugs into a gravity well of discussion. We empathize with the frustration someone feels when a boss smacks ‘em down for the seventh time in a row. Hearing that someone cleared a particularly hard thing sees folks offer genuine exclamations of “congrats!” Upon departing, we often wish each other “good luck,” referring to the tough challenges that lie ahead.

Are some challenges unnecessary? Maybe. Could there be tweaks that might make the game a touch fairer? Maybe. But at what cost? The runbacks you often have to undertake upon dying seem to be a part of the loop necessary to get you to collect your shards and restock on any beads you may have lost, plus that’s when you should be practicing your attacks! Boss fights aren’t when you should be still figuring out the physics of the diagonal downward strike.

Challenges can be exciting to think about and talk about with friends. A hard game demands attention, a set of skills for you to build into muscle memory and then use to satisfyingly pull off memorable feats. And when those elements are in a game as pretty as they are in Silksong? Those feats are all the more worth achieving. – Claire Jackson

Shadow Labyrinth

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch/Switch 2,Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Verified”)
Current goal: Defeat the G-Hosts once and for all

This will probably be the last time I mention Bandai Namco’s strange and wonderful Pac-Man-adjacent Metroidvania here because I think I must be near its conclusion and I’m hoping to finally roll credits on it this weekend. This game, which I purchased thinking it might be a pleasantly nostalgic off-kilter diversion that took me 15 hours or so, has proven to be the most captivating game I’ve played all year, uncompromisingly committed to its vision and far more expansive than I anticipated. It’s decidedly “not for everyone” (what game is?) but if you’re open to being thrown into a world that makes itself deliberately hard to understand for many hours and you have any interest in the lore and history of early arcade games, consider getting lost in this maze for a while. – Carolyn Petit

Sword of the Sea

Play it on: PS5, PC
Current goal: Get the Platinum trophy

Sword of the Sea is this year’s Journey and I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about it. Developed by the thatgamecompany alum who cofounded Giant Squid (the indie team behind 2020’s PS5 launch game The Pathless), Sword of the Sea is another beautiful platforming adventure that’s more about cool traversal than interesting friction. You surf across snow, sand, and water like a weightless train gliding along magnetic rails as you collect seeds to bring life back to the ghostly environments.

It’s very short–only two or three hours unless you’re going for a completionist run–and not too demanding. It’s a brief but beautiful adventure that is content to let you have fun performing simple but satisfying tricks on your hoverboard as you shred across dunes and waves. The music and visuals are excellent, the feel of the gameplay is top-notch, and it’s free with PS Plus. I’m not sure if it will make my top 10 list but the experience packs so much evocative energy into such a short runtime there’s no excuse to not give it a try. – Ethan Gach

2XKO

Play it on: PC
Current goal: Figure out what the hell I’m doing

I’m not a League of Legends person. I never even finished watching Arcane despite it being very much my shit. But an invite to the 2XKO beta test just landed in my lap, and I love fighting games, so here I am. I only know, like, two of the characters in the roster, so I have zero perception of how any of these characters will work in a fighting game context. Thus, my goal is to just mess around with these fighters with some friends and figure out if there’s a character or two I really gravitate toward. In most fighting games, it’s not usually a specific predetermined playstyle that pulls me in, but rather I just find characters I like and adapt to playing them. It’s why I play a brawler like Akihiko in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax but a range-based character like Green Arrow in Injustice 2. So who knows who I’ll end up maining in 2XKO? — Kenneth Shepard

And that wraps our picks for the weekend! What games are keeping you busy?

With just two games, the Nioh series has already cemented its place among the best of the soulslike genre, thanks to its uniquely fast-paced action, deeply customizable builds and playstyles, thrilling boss battles, and a certain fluidity to its combat that feels like Team Ninja’s own signature touch. Based on my five hours of hands-on time with a new preview build, the upcoming third installment is shaping up to continue that trend of excellence, staying true to the core of what has always made the series so successful, but shaking up just enough to challenge veteran players to rethink how they approach its many difficult combat encounters.

Much like Nioh 2, Nioh 3 is shaping up to be an iterative sequel that doesn’t change much about the core systems that were established in Nioh 1; instead adding brand new layers on top of that core to reinvigorate the combat system and force players to engage with it differently. Nioh 2 did this by adding in burst counters and yokai shifts, and Nioh 3 does this primarily by giving the player two styles that they can shift between on the fly: Samurai and Ninja style.

When I first played Nioh 3, back when it was offered up as a limited time demo, I was a little unsure of how I felt about this split. Samurai style, after all, is basically just the way you’d normally play Nioh, minus the ability to use Onmyo Magic; while Ninja Style just felt like a much faster and DPS oriented stance that comes with the substantial drawbacks of no longer being able to use Ki Pulses to regain your stamina, and no longer having the three sword stances to switch between, which are both two staples of Nioh’s gameplay. Not to mention that having two different styles means nearly twice as much inventory management, since they both have their own completely separate sets of gear, and if there’s one game series that already has more than enough inventory and loot management, it’s Nioh.

While loot remains an issue, during my playtime, something clicked with me with regards to Samurai and Ninja style. Not only did I gain an understanding of what each style was good for and when I should swap to one versus continuing with the other, but more importantly, I got a grasp of the sheer amount of options that having two hot swappable styles each with their own equipment loadouts and skill trees brings to the table.

While in Samurai style, you of course have access to the three stances – high, medium, and low – and all of the skills that come from each of those stances. You also are able to to use Ki Pulses to restore spent stamina without having to wait for it to recharge, making it great for sustained offense where you’re able to kind of just plant your feet down and stand and fight against a tough enemy. There’s also a new Arts Proficiency Gauge that fills up as you deal damage and successfully guard, but decreases whenever you get hit. Once it’s full, you’re able to use a powered-up version of your heavy attack, which adds a nice little reward for playing well with a careful balance of offense and defense.

Ninja style on the other hand lets you go absolutely wild. Your dashes go crazy far and are super fast compared to the dodges in Samurai style; instead of stances, you’re able to equip up to three ninja tools; you’re able to very quickly dash to an enemy’s backside to deal extra damage; and most of the weapons take advantage of the fact that Nioh 3 adds a jump button, allowing you to even punctuate your ground combos with a jump cancel, letting you tag on even more damage with air combos. On top of all of this, for both styles, you also have your guardian spirit transformations, guardian spirit skills, Soul Core skills, it’s just a lot of tools to take with you into every battle.

Of course, all of these added options in Ninja Style come at the aforementioned cost of not being able to use Ki Pulses to restore stamina, so I did find myself having to rein in my lust for aggression – it is still a stamina-driven soulslike after all – but I felt a level of creative freedom in combat expression that I typically feel in a good character action game, and I eagerly anticipate getting my hands on the full game and seeing what a high-level character can do once the skill trees start getting maxed out.

Wishlist

Soul Cores also return in Nioh 3, but they’re a bit different this time around. They still appear as random drops from enemies and will let you use that enemy’s signature attack, just to give you yet another option when it comes to how you choose to dispatch your foes. However you have two choices of how to equip them. When you rest at a shrine, you can put them in your Onmyo Box in either the Yin or the Yang position. The Yin position is what I just talked about, you’ll gain some stat increases and the ability of the monster to use in combat. But if you place a core in the Yang position, you’ll instead be able to get spells and items added to your inventory that will refresh every time you rest at a shrine. One of the Soul Cores had a fairly underwhelming skill, but when I equipped it in a Yang slot, it gave me invisibility scrolls that I could use to sneak past tough enemies. It’s a wonderful change to an already excellent system, and I can’t wait to mess around more with it in the full version.

The other big new tentpole feature for Nioh 3 is the addition of non-linear open field-type levels, complete with sidequests, a variety of points of interest with unique challenges and rewards, and wide open environments rife with opportunities for exploration. This is in contrast to Nioh’s typical linear levels with the occasional optional branches off the beaten path that ultimately loop back around. I got to experience one of these in my hands-on time – the frozen region of Kamigamo – and while Nioh 3 doesn’t seem to do anything surprising with its more open level design that hasn’t been done before, the shift was a refreshing change of pace. Right away, the first thing I did was a combat challenge called a Crucible Spike. This was a sealed-off combat arena with multiple waves of enemies that I had to defeat in order to proceed. Clearing the Crucible Spike improved my Spirit Force, which is a new resource that governs your usage of Spirit Skills, and also gained a new spirit skill for one of my guardian spirits.

And that’s really what makes me excited about these open field levels, because these Crucible Spikes, along with other types of points of interests, are strewn all over the map, the challenges are fun, and the rewards are great – which is all the incentive I need to seek them out. Every time you complete one of these points of interest, your exploration level will increase, and each time it increases, you’ll get an extra bonus, from more icons being revealed on your map to give you some direction on where to explore, you may get an added stat bonus while you’re in that specific area, or you may get skill points to spend on your Samurai or Ninja skill trees.

All in all, Nioh 3 is shaping up to be exactly the same kind of iterative step above its predecessor that Nioh 2 ended up being. The style switching between Samurai and Ninja is an excellent addition that adds new layers of depth to an already stacked combat system, and the new open fields offer up even more incentive to explore than ever before, with fun challenges, mini bosses, and secret treasures to discover in every corner. It all ran incredibly smoothly as well, making me forget for a moment that this game is still a ways off, with a planned release in early 2026.

Jump Space is almost ready to exit space port and enter early access. Ahead of the game’s debut later this month, Keepsake Games has set the price for Jump Space and laid out the update calendar well into 2026.

On Bluesky, Keepsake announced that Jump Space’s early access release will be available for $20 on Xbox Series X|S and PC on September 19. Chapter 1: The Resistance Coalition will begin at the start of early access, with Chapter 2: Atira Strikes Back launching by early 2026. In a series of short updates in that time frame, Keepsake plans to introduce text chat, hangar vendors, a ship shield revamp, melee weapons, an expanded story, new missions, photo mode, and other additions.

In Q1 2026, Chapter 3: Secrets of the Telmari will bring support for a first-person mode, more sectors, a scanner revamp, voice chat, new enemies, and a ground boss into the game. There are plans for Chapter 4: Heart of Corruption before the game exits early access. However, there are no dates or concrete details about when that might occur.

Until fairly recently, this game was known as Jump Ship before the name was changed over trademark issues. Jump Space is a co-op game that brings together up to four players as the crew of a ship that can control and repair their shared vessel. The gameplay resembles Left 4 Dead and Sea of Thieves, with some additional sci-touches touches like planetary exploration and space walks. It’s a dangerous galaxy out there, and players will run into trouble when enemies appear during on-foot encounters or during space combat when the crew is still on their ship. However, the game is strictly PvE, rather than PvP.

Keepsake Games has previously mentioned that Jump Space will feature several “handcrafted missions with random elements” to keep the game fresh. More than 1 million players have wishlisted Jump Space on Steam. For now, the game will only be available on Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com!

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Hey, everybody! Sid, Tim, and Brett are back this week to discuss the release of Borderlands 4, indie hit Hollow Knight: Silksong, and 30 years of PlayStation memories.

Stuff We Talked About

• Next week’s releases:
  • Borderlands 4 | PS5 (out today)
  • LEGO Voyagers | PS5, PS4
  • Frostpunk 2 | PS5
  • Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree | PS5
  • Dying Light: The Beast | PS5
  • Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter | PS5
• Digimon Story: Time Stranger hands-on — New details revealed on the combat system and tropical Abyss Area.
• Hollow Knight: Silksong hands-on — Discover what’s new in the anticipated sequel, like mid-air healing, mantling on ledges, more challenging encounters, and more.
• Announcing PlayStation 30th Memories — We’re celebrating PlayStation history and you’re invited to be a part of it by sharing your memories. Head to PS blog for more details
• PlayStation Family App — This new mobile app gives parents more tools to guide their family’s PlayStation experience.

The Cast

Thanks to Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music.

[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]

Smile and say AIEEEEE, horror fans! Tecmo and Team Ninja are bringing a “remake” of PS2 survival horror Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly to PC via Steam in early 2026. Why am I brandishing a glyph-covered Canon EOS 90D at you, while singing the Ghostbusters theme? Allow me to explain: Fatal Frame’s signature touch is that you defeat spooks using a magic camera. Naturally, this also means that you have to look steadily and calmly at said spooks while they shimmer and sway towards you. Catch some of that nonsense in the remake’s announcement trailer.

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Yesterday, a coworker shared a link to a little browser game that looked right up PC Gamer’s alley: Doomscroll, a top-down shooter played entirely with a scroll wheel. You move your little Doom-guy facsimile down a hall, automatically shooting forward while dodging flanking sprites. Occasionally, you pass by plaques etched with actual New York Times headlines from the current day, completing the doomscrolling wordplay.

It was kinda fun: I played a few runs, unlocked some upgrades, and experienced brief whiplash after locking eyes with two headlines about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. After, I clicked over to a newsletter the developer wrote about making the game. Doomscroll is a side project of filmmaker and writer David Friedman, who describes in detail how he generated the entire game using ChatGPT.