2026: The Definitive Review
A.K.A. Tony Coles Hates The World
Fantasy, eh? Do we ever dare to dream anymore? Do we get the time or the opportunity or, dare I suggest, the inspiration to wish for future-games that we long to play? Or was this the preserve of the old generations, where the leaps were vast and the possibilities would explode in your imagination like a million blossoms blooming across the sky. The modern world seems both too broad and yet too constrained to accommodate any wild speculations about what could be when it comes to future videogames. Instead, we seem to be more passive than ever as consumers to be fed product that has been optimised for our consumption, and yet so often the fruits of that optimising are bland, inarticulate money-sinks of splendid assets, rigorously tested interactive inoffensiveness and cinematic everything. Perhaps it’s due to the videogame’s ascendancy across media as a whole - things like A Minecraft Movie singlehandedly saving cinemas last year suggest that the videogame no longer follows its prior media, and instead actively shapes the forms that came before it. For sure, there are elements of Survival Horror culture and its general narrative shortfalls in Lost and Stranger Things, and I was struck by how many bits and pieces of The Mandalorian read like side quests from some un-made KOTOR spin-off. We even reached the point where criminally incompetent and negligent politicians use phrases like “levelling up” as ideas that would be universally understood by the voting populace. But sadly, the deeper videogames spread into popular culture, the less it seems the mainstream big-budget projects are able to define the cutting edge of creativity.
There is a sense across videogames as a whole that the arc of progress is curving flatly into an evermore-gently inclined plateau. It stamps out thinner and thinner margins for deviation between the poles AAA third-person action games with RPG elements and themed combat-heavy Metroidvanias. This is a bite at the culture I often (and baselessly) proclaim is the fault of business, but it feels more tangibly true in the light of things like Star Wars: Outlaws, where some kind of creative paralysis over how to most safely win back the license cost resulted in something that falls short in every marker aside its desperate, cloying aspiration to be a real Star Wars product.1 The key driver of financial growth expectations plays a huge role here; those companies with the most budget and, arguably, the most creative expertise, are the most constrained by risk management and the need to deliver returns. It’s this notion of safest bets that stagnates the monetarily rich end of the culture. Why, for example, do I give so few shits and lacked any FOMO at all about Ghost of Yōtei? Probably because I don’t get what it offers beyond Ghost of Tsushima, a game I didn’t didn’t give a shit about because I fatally exhausted my rōnin appetite banging away at the Way Of The Samurai series and Koei’s Samurai Warriors2 entries. As a result, Sony and Sucker Punch’s ultra-glossy, exorbitantly-produced games fall somewhere between the two, in the safest circle of what exhaustively consulted, mock-reviewed, ultra-balanced, super-refined videogames dare to be. Contradictorily, games like this turn me off because of their over-wrought professionalism, like Marvel movies or Ubisoft in general, where an assumed level of competence is the default, but so little beyond that is offered in terms of interactive design. I suppose its their studious capability and tedious conservatism that makes the grand risks and interesting visual styles of games like Deathloop or Returnal shine all the more brightly.3 My fondness for Deathloop only grows with time as first parties usher more and more ruthlessly capable product into the market, for its peculiarities and hyperspecific glories stand out against the homogeneity of games that seem to strive for little more than to be saleable enough to deliver sufficient return on investment, or even worse, to fulfil a checklist of IP obligations for an audience pleased by seeing such things ticked off in accordance with their beliefs about said IP.
In a world where 007: First Light exists, I don’t have to wonder why I’m not able to play a futuristic Hitman set across space stations, colonised asteroids and interplanetary cruise ships, with all the magnificent opportunities for expanding and improving the Hitman fundament that would bring. Likewise, having all of Arkane’s eggs in the Blade basket means I’m not getting my grand Deathloop vs Prey open-worlder before 2030. I’m also fairly sure First Light is going to be a disappointment (at least, for me if not everyone else). IOI excells at its core concept. It does not need to do driving sequences, or account for canon-correct lore with a beloved and utterly contrived and confused IP, yet expectations are already being voiced. When I think of what could be possible with a James Bond pallette, what’s laid out in First Light feels like the least interesting concept imaginable. But then, it has to be safe. And yet, IOI’s greatest gambit, the original World Of Assassination, wasn’t safe at all. It was a pretty stupendous risk on paper and yet it saved the company and its IP - and funnier still, the most popular maps across all three modern Hitman titles are the first two from the ultra-weirdo episodic pay-per-stage era. Likewise, I’m not going to be getting a revised Ghost Recon: Breakpoint from Ubisoft, set on a Tyrell Corp offworld colony planet, where the team of Blade Runners is taking down an entire population of skinjobs gone rogue after the replicants took over the means of production - the manufacturing of themselves. And even if I did miraculously get such a thing, it’d never let me become sympathetic to the enemy and execute the squad members under my command who didn’t share my sympathies, and then set about freeing that colony from Tyrell rule, would it?
I think it’s a deflating statement of defeat to admit my gaming dreams won’t come true, and it’s something of a realisation that only really hits home when you’re truly middle aged. I have maybe 3 or 4 more GTAs to despise with every fibre of my being, but I’ll bet none of them will ever stop to implement any kind of reactive psychological effects on the player character from player-led choices made in free play. I’ll bet not a single one will come close to interrogating the problem of masculinity in an urban criminal setting with the heart and soul of Mean Streets or The Wire or Oz. And I doubt Bethesda will ever conjure up one of its glorious open-worlders themed around historically rigorous simulations of partisan survival in the forests of WW2 Belarus. Nor will it offer up an asteroid-hopping Expanse tribute where you play classes of interplanetary criminals taking down a big-pharma conspiracy by force or by subterfuge. I might get a few more Fallouts, though. Possibly a few Elder Scrolls as well. But they will most likely be even safer than the Fallouts and Elder Scrolls that we have now. Hell, we might even get the whispered Starfield 2.0 update that dramatically alters the game’s reputation and fortune, but I don’t expect it to have anything daring or wildly imaginative at its core.
Of course, we can attribute a lot of the above to new year blues and a seasonal affectedness perhaps, only I never really suffer from that. It’s actually down to a stunning sense of ennui about the year ahead. I look at the rosters, the schedules, the breathless 50 pieces of formulaic, generic shit we’re pretending to be excited about in 2026 pieces and find so very little to actually get excited about. I shouldn’t be too aggrieved about this, as 2025 delivered in absolute spades for me. I had a riot, being deluged in open-worldish action RPGs of various flavours, with plenty of glittering sparkles sprinkled across the gaps. My curmudgeonly beef remains true to me, though. I anxiously await the prospect of being proved wrong, but I can tell you a dev-hell Fable and the next Forza Horizon increment aren’t helping my urge to quit Game Pass altogether.4 But of course, I already know what I should turn my 2026 into - the year of catching up on shit I really should have already played.5 That at least carries some hope of discovering magic and maybe, just maybe, will stop me starting my fourth run at fucking Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.6 But at the same time, while I languish in a familiar forest and look down my well-loved sniper scope at some hapless PMC that’s about to be callously killed without any emotion whatsoever, I’ll still dream about this being on Mars or some shit. Guess this world needs its dreamers. May they never wake up. Alright.7
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An interesting conundrum for Star Wars licencees is how much risk to take. Most play it painfully safe, but the fact that Rian Johnson's absolutely appalling The Last Jedi is the most celebrated of the Kennedy/Abrams sequels tells you that even if you do piss on the lore from an astonishing height and have a plot that makes no fucking sense and kill beloved characters for NO GOOD FUCKING REASONS WHATSOEVER, RIAN, WHAT THE FUCK, people will respect "trying to do something different" more than maintaining a pathetically bland status quo.
I did also play an Onimusha or two. There was actually a time where I was asked to look at stacks of Japanese PS2 releases to see if any were worth localising for the EU, and found so many Samurai titles that it felt like they were a monthly staple in the Japanese catalogue. The third-person cover shooter of the PS2 era.
Coincidentally both represent two extremely different answers to the question "what happens if time loops when you die?". Odd that Returnal and Deathloop should both be fucking brilliant too. I should probably mention that Saros is one of the few games that piqued my interest for this year.
Honestly, there are times where my bourgeois guilt pushes me to abandon everything current and build a PC from found parts scavenged from dumps and backstreets, and only play open-source freeware games on Linux.
HELLO, A FUCKING SHITLOAD OF YAKUZA GAMES :D
I joke, but I started my second entire run after Breakpoint appeared on Game Pass via Ubisoft, thanks to the Fucking Awful Price Hike of 2025. It was fucking brilliant to be back and starting from scratch.
My new year's resolution is to never reference a song without attributing it in a footnote. This is Cars and Girls by Prefab Sprout.