It’s genuinely a shame that role-playing game The Outer Worlds 2 developer Obsidian Entertainment operates under the current Microsoft umbrella. This is a company that, in the past couple of years alone, has laid off an unimaginable number of workers, dramatically raised prices on its hardware and subscription models, and completed one of the most costly acquisitions in the medium’s history. That's all on top of cancelling a slew of games and shuttering studios.

It’s precisely this kind of overbearing capitalist mindset that The Outer Worlds 2 has a bone to pick with, and it’s left me with some pretty complicated feelings. On the one hand, the game’s critique of late-stage capitalism is scathing and steeped in the developer’s trademark wit. On the other, I can’t help but feel it all rings a little hollow when the target of said critiques is also the one funding and publishing The Outer Worlds 2.

Ultimately, Obsidian itself deserves praise for crafting yet another brilliant choice-driven role-playing game (RPG). Like Fallout: New Vegas, Pentiment, and Avowed before it, The Outer Worlds 2 provides an absorbing world to explore, chock-full of interesting characters and quests, and countless opportunities to make the most of your chosen build.

Skills in The Outer Worlds 2 aren’t just for bypassing doors or clearing speech checks; like in many of the best RPGs, some can genuinely open up the game in meaningful ways. The Observation skill, for example, is one I can’t do without. Especially not after it guided me to a secret room that revealed a quest to win the favor of a lucrative black market vendor. Even weapon-based skills like Guns or Science! (yes, that is how it’s formatted) are good for more than just shooting, and can be used to intimidate characters during dialog.

One of my favorite things about The Outer Worlds 2, then, is that you actually won’t be able to solve every problem, bypass every lock in a single playthrough. You will have times where an NPC isn’t swayed by your charms, and then stumble upon a quest or avenue of progression that suits your skill set to a tee. It's an ever-so-satisfying gameplay experience.

This interplay between success and failure isn’t quite a perfect balance, however; across my playthrough, I did find that some skills and traits barred progress more than others (for example, Engineering is used to get past jammed doors much more frequently than the Hack or Lockpicking skills are in their respective fields).

There are also some pacing issues through the mid-game, especially as quests tend to stack up on themselves and enemies start having tedious amounts of health to all but the most gun-slinging of character builds.

Minor issues aside, I won’t soon forget my time in the hyper-capitalist nightmare that is the Arcadia system, and chances are I’ll be diving back in again with a completely different approach and ending in mind.

Shoot the moon

In terms of background, The Outer Worlds 2 gives you a bit more to work with compared to its prequel, with your character being an established and respected agent of the Earth Directorate - a sort of task force that prides itself on the very idealistic and somewhat fantastical notion of bringing peace to the galaxy. Turns out, the Earth Directorate might not be very good at their jobs, though.

The opening mission, an infiltration of a space station run by a cultish sect known as the Protectorate, goes horribly wrong when a fellow agent double-crosses us, detonating the station and killing everyone on board save for ourselves and a previously injured squad member by the name of Niles Ibara.

Ten years on, you’re woken from an extended hibernation period by Niles, who informs you that the detonation has caused a rift in the fabric of space that threatens to destroy the entire system in an undetermined amount of time. It’s a race against the clock to track down the double-crossing agent and save the system of Arcadia from a grisly fate.

Your quest for justice (whatever form that may take based on your own choices throughout the game) isn’t one you’ll emerge from without someone’s blood on your hands. Like it or not, you will often have to side with one or two dubious factions in order to get your way. That could be the previously established Protectorate, or Auntie’s Choice - a mega corporation that’s the result of a hostile merger of the first game’s Auntie Cleo’s and Spacer’s Choice companies.

You won’t always like who you’re choosing to work for, but there is at least a good variety of dialog flavor to have your character respond in a way that suits your desired personality - whether that be good-natured or unfathomably cruel, or everything in between.

Choices, so many choices

Like its prequel, The Outer Worlds 2’s explorable planets are smaller, individual biomes, as opposed to having one larger map a la Fallout: New Vegas. For this game, it’s an approach that really works. Each of the main planets has its own central conflict, even if most offer a general theme of Auntie’s Choice and the Protectorate battling it out for control.

Each map is smattered with characters to meet, side quests to take on, buildings to explore, and no shortage of secrets to unearth. Exploration really is the focal point of progress in The Outer Worlds 2. Combat is, of course, one way of getting things done. And in terms of feel and feedback, it’s a huge improvement over the first game, with satisfying gun play and plenty of weapon types - from stealthy knives and silenced pistols to ammo-hungry SMGs and energy weapons.

Personally, I preferred a more low-key approach to progressing through the game’s main missions. Problems can be solved with combat, sure, but as the game went on, a frustrating tendency to pad out enemy health bars often made such encounters a tedious affair.

As a result, I rolled a charismatic character able to pass speech checks to bypass combat wherever possible. Some points in Sneak and Observation also helped in stealthily getting through busy areas and finding secret routes. You absolutely can play a passive character in The Outer Worlds 2, and you’re more often than not rewarded for doing so.

One piece of advice I have would be to think very carefully about your specializations while initially creating your character. Get comfortable with the idea that many choices and solutions will be locked off to you, as a trade-off for excelling in two or three areas instead. You’ll have one chance to respec after the tutorial section, but beyond that, no such option exists.

I like this change overall. Not being able to respec on a whim meant that I had to approach most scenarios with my chosen skill sets in mind. For me, this largely meant that going guns blazing was simply off the table. On the other hand, I can see indecisive players - or those who like to take a flexible approach based on the situation - may struggle with this. I certainly restarted the game a handful of times until I settled on skills that satisfied my preferences.

One returning feature from the first game that I really enjoy, though, is flaws. These are reactive, passive effects that you can accrue, and they’re essentially the game’s way of adding additional challenge to your playstyle. Flaws pop up if you adopt a certain way of playing enough. One is based on a hoarder mentality, lowering vendor prices but also reducing money you earn from selling.

Another flaw plays on indecisiveness, letting you only increase the level of skills with zero points, or ones you have the lowest total in, the upside being you’ll get one extra skill point to spend at each level up. Flaws are optional, but if you accept them, they’re with you for good, so think carefully about how useful you think they’ll be in the long run.

Horizon point

I did find that The Outer Worlds 2 started to lose its luster as the campaign went on. It’s not the longest RPG out there, coming in at around 40-50 hours, but it’s definitely one that started to feel a bit formulaic. There’s only so many firefights to endure, air ducts to crawl through, or terminals to hack before the game starts to feel like it’s shown its entire hand. And it does so long before credits roll. It remains an enjoyable game throughout, but I definitely had the most fun solving the problems in the first major biome when it still felt fresh and vast.

That repetition does tend to hurt the game’s overall pacing, too. There are some nice surprises here and there; recruiting new companions for your squad is often something you’ll just stumble upon, rather than being outright told where you can pick them up. And digging into the depths of an installation or base to uncover a cool weapon or decision-making opportunity is always a satisfying reward. But such moments felt few and far between in the midst of trudging from township to outpost, ticking off various elements of busy work in the hopes of expanding my choices for the main quest.

What I can’t fault The Outer Worlds 2 on is its gorgeous visual style. It’s something I found really impressive about Avowed, and it’s much the same case here. Outdoor environments are awash with color and interesting landmarks, while interiors often feel cold and oppressive in the best way possible. While the soundtrack didn’t do much to move me, I did often find myself taking in the impressive amount of environmental detail on offer.

It’s a winner on the performance front, too, and I noticed only a handful of dips at 60fps across both Xbox Series X and PC. Load times can be uncomfortably long on occasion (exacerbated by reloading quick saves to try out alternate routes), but by and large the game’s performance is acceptable.

Should you play The Outer Worlds 2?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

As is the case with many Xbox Game Studios titles, The Outer Worlds 2 offers a solid amount of accessibility options for gamers of all stripes. For starters, you can adjust motion blur and field of view to a granular degree, as well as apply subtitles to general, background, and audio log speech.

There are also two motion sickness modes for reducing on-screen motions to varying degrees. You can also adjust overall text size and HUD scaling, as well as apply colors and outlines to subtitles and their backgrounds.

How I reviewed The Outer Worlds 2

I played The Outer Worlds 2 for 40 hours across both my Xbox Series X Digital Edition and my gaming PC. I was able to transfer my save across both versions thanks to Xbox’s handy Play Anywhere feature. During my playthrough, I opted for a character capable of hacking and uncovering secrets via the Observation skill, with some points in Speech and Guns to get myself out of tight situations in a pinch.

I primarily played on console using the Razer Wolverine V3 Pro Xbox controller, on an LG CX OLED TV display. My audio device of choice here was the RIG R5 Spear Pro, a multiplatform wired gaming headset that delivered exceptional, immersive audio during my playthrough.

First reviewed October 2025

Jurassic World Evolution 3 is a beast of a management simulation game that allows you to manage your own prehistoric park. It’s by far the most creative entry in the series so far, offering you the ability to create your own buildings and scenery from scratch for the first time. The challenge mode, sandbox mode, and innovative campaign are crammed full of things to research and create, not to mention 70 different dinosaur species. But Jurassic World Evolution 3 also sometimes gets in its own way with systems that distract from, rather than deepen, your core objectives.

I should probably mention that I’m a bit of a park management games addict, particularly those developed by Frontier Games. Not only did I write our Planet Coaster 2 review, but I’ve poured a truly disgusting amount of time into some of their other games. My current play time on Planet Zoo totals 1,100 hours – or six and a half weeks solid – so even though I’m new to the Jurassic World Evolution franchise, I’ve invested probably more of my life in park sim games than is entirely good for me.

While Jurassic World Evolution 3 might not offer quite the same absurd open sandbox experience of its sister titles, it does offer far more satisfying and comprehensive management, bringing it far more in line with some of the best simulation games. I could always take or leave park management in the Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo games – which is why I often switched it off entirely. But in Jurassic World Evolution 3, management is much more in its genes.

At the heart of Evolution 3, there’s a really tight management loop. You hire scientists, send them on expeditions to harvest fossils, use them to extract the juicy dino DNA contained within, and then set them to work synthesizing any of the 70 species included in the game. You can then peruse the traits of the eggs this creates and decide which ones to hatch before incubating and releasing them into your chosen exhibit.

Naturally, though, this is only half of the experience. Keen though the game is to stress that you’re running a sanctuary for all these saurians, they sure look a lot like zoos, and, as with any zoo, you have commercial considerations to take into account. You’ll create viewing galleries to allow your guests to spy on your cretaceous critters, tours to get them up close and personal, and amenities to make a fast buck keep them fed and watered.

Simple as this sounds, there’s way more layered on top of this. There’s dinosaur breeding to manage, research to conduct, and diseases to diagnose and treat. And unless you’re quick to tranquilize and return any carnivorous dinosaurs that break out to their pens, they’ll scarf down your guests – bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘paleo diet’.

But it wouldn’t be Jurassic World if you couldn’t conduct crazy experiments that cross a line man was not meant to cross. Before synthesizing species of dinosaurs, you can tinker around with their DNA, adding traits that modify their appetite and thirst, ups their resilience, improve their sociability, or even improve their combat potential. And if that’s too vanilla for you, you can also research awful genetic chimeras, including the Indominus Rex, Indoraptor, and Spinoceratops.

On the campaign tail

In fact, there are so many mechanics at play, I was glad the Campaign was there to hold my hand. It’s the first time I’ve found the Campaign mode of a management sim game to genuinely be unmissable, rather than something I can just dip my toes in. And there’s certainly plenty to get your teeth into here.

After the events of the Jurassic World franchise, you’re leading the Dinosaur Integration Network (DIN), an organisation dedicated to helping dinosaurs coexist alongside humanity. Conveniently, keeping the public safe from vicious man-eaters and helping endangered dinosaurs breed looks a lot like running a certain Jurassic-themed park, so you won’t find much of a tonal shift here.

While the campaign is structured across a series of parks around the world, you’ll work across them concurrently – although you’ll be moved on to new locations as you complete story objectives, as your international reputation improves, further objectives are unlocked in maps you’ve already visited. This feels far more dynamic an incentive to return to former parks than just improving a star rating: I genuinely felt like I was running a global network of sanctuaries that each impact one another, rather than just visiting isolated maps that I was done with the second I moved on to the next one.

The voice acting is generally excellent. Jeff Goldblum is fantastic as always as Ian Malcolm, even if his lines largely are just arch variations on: ‘Welp, here we go again!’ And while I wouldn’t say the story throws that many curveballs, there are just enough elements like interfering corporate interests and human-supremacist saboteurs to add some bumps in the road.

Should you want a more focused test of your skills, Challenge mode provides a variety of scenarios for you to tackle. From containing vicious carnivores with limited fencing to pacifying grouchy giants without tweaking their genome, I found there was a decent variety of trials to help me flex my management muscles.

Jurassic Parks & Recreation

Not everything in Jurassic World Evolution 3 is quite so high-stakes. There’s always the option to just kick back and enjoy the fun of creating your perfect park, whether in the campaign missions or in the dedicated sandbox mode. And this is where the game really shines: designing your dream habitats and getting up close and personal with the prehistoric beasts in them.

Part of the reason for this is that the creatures themselves are exquisite. Generally speaking, I found the graphics in Jurassic World Evolution 3 to be good, if unexceptional. On Ultra settings, the game ran at a smooth 60 fps on our Acer Predator Helios 300 laptop with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, but from a bird's eye view, it was pretty, but didn’t necessarily blow me away in the way I expected.

However, once you get down to the level where you’re face-to-face with your dinosaurs, the 3D models are beautifully detailed and animated, while raytracing gives lighting effects and shadows a literal glow up. At one point, I watched some sauropods wading across the shallows in front of a guest’s canoe, and the way they were silhouetted against the sun was spectacular. I just wish my parks had quite the same pop when viewed from an overhead perspective.

Fortunately, there are plenty of excuses to immerse yourself in your parks. You view everything from your guests’ perspectives, whether that’s viewing their perspective from ride cameras or walking around in the in-game Google Street View. But, on top of this, you can take the wheel of every vehicle in your park to deliver meds to your dinosaurs or mend fences when the inevitable happens and there’s a breakout.

There’s also the opportunity to channel your inner architect and create your own scenery. Frontier’s games have always been creatively anarchic: you have complete freedom to design whatever you want to decorate your parks and zoos, but the tools at your disposal were frequently chaotic, often requiring all kinds of botches and hard work to make bespoke scenery that looked truly organic.

Up until now, Jurassic World Evolution has been the exception to this rule, limiting you to prefabricated buildings and scenery items.

Well, not anymore. In Jurassic World Evolution 3, Frontier has added the ability to create your own amenities and decorations from scratch, adding an enormous toybox of scenery parts for you to play with. From rock formations and fossils to gantries and girders, it enabled me to build up my own blueprints piece by piece, including aquatic coral reefs and a slightly wonky fountain centerpiece.

But while Jurassic World Evolution 3 has been learning elements from other games in Frontier’s fold, it’s also been refining them.

Path-placing mechanics are far more intelligent – I was able to quickly lay out straight routes and curving arcs simply by placing my cursor where I wanted it to go, rather than messing around with path angles. The part-scaling that was introduced in Planet Coaster 2 has been expanded here, allowing me to tweak the size of almost any model to achieve much more variety in my scenery design. And plants are now fully animated, swaying in the breeze and bending double during storms, making them feel far more alive.

In my opinion, there’s even more Jurassic World Evolution 3 could learn from its sister titles, though. Enclosures still aren’t as flexible as in Planet Zoo – guests really only interact with dinosaurs from set-pieces rather than marvelling over them from every viewpoint, and creature path-finding isn’t as sophisticated, making multi-height habitats impossible. And there’s no way to create raised paths, which makes multistory buildings and bridges over enclosures impossible, so maps are by necessity much flatter than I’d like. I’m not quite as free as I’d like to create sprawling, hyperrealistic dino parks, and that’s a shame.

Micromanageasaurus

Fundamentally, there’s a reason for this more restrictive gameplay. Unlike some of its sister titles, Jurassic World Evolution 3 is a management sim first and a creative sandbox second. And while this often works to its favour, there are points in the campaign where I started to find its mechanics became as gargantuan and unwieldy as the genetic revenants I was managing.

Regularly, while playing Jurassic World Evolution 3, I’d have to drop what I was doing because my prehistoric pets weren’t happy with the flora on offer in their exhibits. With a single species of dinosaur in an enclosure, this is trivial to satisfy – you quickly paint in different kinds of cover, water, fiber, nuts, and fruit until the sliders representing their preferences are satisfied.

But add multiple species to a single exhibit – something that is not only encouraged but mandatory in some scenarios – and requirements quickly conflict. For example, my Apatosaurs love tall leafy plants and pasture, while my Lokiceratops, Houdini, wouldn’t stop perennially trying to break out of her prison until I’d provided ground fiber and a wetland. And this is all exacerbated by the fact that juvenile dinosaurs have different requirements from adults, meaning exhibiting even just two species together means you’ll often have four radically opposed needs to meet.

Satisfying conflicting needs is a zero-sum game: painting in one removes another, and, as you seemingly can’t pin two different dinosaurs’ needs on screen at once, you’ll often come away happy that you’ve pleased one cretaceous critter only to discover the other is now sulking over the lack of swamps.

Even once you’ve reached an equilibrium, laying tours through exhibits will carve swathes through the undergrowth, meaning you need to repaint it all over again. Ultimately, I’d regularly find myself having to expand exhibit sizes after the fact, moving all my guest facilities in the process, just to ensure I could satisfy competing demands that were now impossible to meet within the existing space.

Now, I’ll readily acknowledge the game has mechanisms to ameliorate some of these issues. Once you have unlocked enough dinosaur species, you can select pairings that align better with their requirements. And tweaking Houdini’s genome could have allowed me to make her more relaxed about her environmental requirements. However, these are tools you’ll only research later in a map playthrough, and in the interim, you’re left with a bunch of busywork that commits the cardinal sin in a management game: it’s just not that fun.

This is a real shame because many other tasks in the game are a real blast, and I loved releasing new monsters into my exhibits or building unique scenery. But if I’m going to be pulled away from these enjoyable tasks to fight fires, the mechanics should support me in dousing them permanently, not reignite the same one the second my back is turned.

Should you play Jurassic World Evolution 3?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Jurassic World Evolution 3 has a good range of accessibility options. You can tweak the colors of both the UI and management views for Deuteranopia, Protonopia, Tritanopia, and high contrast. You can also switch on highlight mode for dinosaurs, tweak the highlight color according to these same profiles, and set the highlight distance.

On top of this, you can tweak the size and opacity of subtitles, set different colors for different speakers, and increase the scale of the HUD. There are also options to disable certain effects, allowing you to switch off camera shaking and flashing effects.

How I reviewed Jurassic World Evolution 3

I played Jurassic World Evolution 3 over the course of two weeks. Not only did I play my way through the campaign, but I also experimented with building my own park from scratch in Sandbox mode and explored the challenges available.

I reviewed the PC version, but I also tried it out on multiple platforms, including our Acer Predator Helios 300 gaming laptop and on my Steam Deck, to see how it fared on multiple devices. I also played it using a keyboard and mouse and using a PowerA Moga XP-Ultra multi-platform wireless controller to test out various control modes.

In terms of experience, not only have I been reviewing gaming hardware for around five years, but I've spent my whole life playing simulation games, dating right back to Theme Park on the PC. I've also played many of Frontier Developments' games to date, having played Planet Coaster and Planet Coaster 2 and clocked up a ridiculous 1,100 hours in Planet Zoo.

First reviewed: October 2025

Ninja Gaiden 4 is, without a shred of doubt in my mind, the best action game of 2025. It’s co-developers Team Ninja and PlatinumGames doing what they do best; firing on all cylinders to provide a wicked hard combat experience that puts priority on learning effective combo routes and enemy behavior - as well as spatial awareness - over bloated health bars or other cheap difficulty tricks.

Like the best of its peers, such as Devil May Cry 5 or the Bayonetta games, Ninja Gaiden 4 gives you all the tools you need to make quick work of almost any foe in the game. But getting to that point is a skill that demands utmost mastery at its higher difficulty levels. And embarking on that journey here manages to recapture that satisfaction of the best the character action subgenre has to offer.

If you’re already a Ninja Gaiden head, you’ll be pleased to know that all the staples are here. Multiple weapon types with expandable move sets, dismemberment for instant-kill obliteration attacks, and the need for a careful balance of offense and defense to get the better of the armies of enemy soldiers and daemons standing in your way.

It’s not without its faults. Environments can be quite dull, often lacking in the gorgeous vistas and arena variety of its predecessors - while prior games often had you fighting for your life in claustrophobic spaces, combat areas in Ninja Gaiden 4 are decidedly more open and boxy. There’s also an over-reliance on on-rails platforming sections that are largely scripted. They can look cool, but certainly lack the challenge and thrills of the main combat loop.

These slight hitches aside, Ninja Gaiden 4 provides an exhilarating combat experience with strong enemy variety and tremendous chapter-ending boss fights. And as a bonus, while the main plot isn’t spectacular, series fans can expect plenty of callbacks to Ninja Gaiden’s universe - albeit none that I will explicitly spoil for you in this review.

Raven's call

In Ninja Gaiden 4, the corpse of the colossal Dark Dragon continues to loom over Tokyo, emitting a rain of death and decay that threatens to destroy the city. Our newcomer protagonist, Yakumo, is a ninja of the Raven Clan that forms an uneasy alliance with a priestess named Seori. The goal of the partnership is to actively resurrect the Dark Dragon in order to slay it - body, soul, and all - for good.

Returning series legend Ryu Hayabusa, meanwhile, is none too happy at the prospect of bringing such a great evil back to life. He allies himself with the Divine Dragon Order (D.D.O. for short) - one of the game’s main enemy factions - in order to combat the Raven Clan’s plan.

This doesn’t so much set up Hayabusa as the villain as it does provide conflicting ways to solve the problem at hand. It’s the most interesting aspect of Ninja Gaiden 4’s plot, but don’t expect Nier Automata levels of storytelling here. Like other games in the series, the story serves a simple backdrop to the action, not the core focus.

Yakumo himself begins as a fairly one-note entity. I do love his design, emulating a painfully 2010s level of edginess; clad entirely in black and sporting a haircut that threatens to cover his line of sight entirely. But he’s an effective contrast to the more traditional, arguably sensible look of Hayabusa. Something much more rebellious and unpredictable in nature.

Steeped in blood

That chaotic nature plays strongly into Yakumo’s weapons and abilities. While he has access to iconic Hayabusa-brand moves like the gap-closing Flying Swallow and cranium-obliterating Izuna Drop, Yakumo’s very much his own beast with his signature Bloodraven form.

At any time during combat, assuming you have a sufficient amount of gauge, Yakumo can enter Bloodraven stance by holding the left trigger. This powers up his light and heavy attacks, but is also able to break through guarding enemies and interrupt unblockable attacks noted by a handy exclamation point icon.

Shifting between Yakumo’s base and Bloodraven forms is a skill unto itself. It’s certainly fun to rip enemies to shreds with it at first. But as the game progresses, you’ll be pressured to use it only when necessary. Running out of Bloodraven gauge means you won’t be able to effectively deal with blocking enemies or punish charged attacks, and can leave you wide open to heavy damage.

Even without Bloodraven form, you’re still powerful. Hitting enemies with basic combos enough can dismember their limbs, leaving them vulnerable to an instant-kill Obliteration attack. Furthermore, holding the heavy attack button charges up your ‘Ultimate’ technique, which zips you to the nearest enemy for enormous damage and outright killing weaker foes.

Hayabusa, meanwhile, feels suitably distinct. You’ll get control of him around the second half of the game, and he’s a lot weightier and grounded than his edgy acrobatic counterpart. His sections feel a lot more like classic Ninja Gaiden, and feel noticeably harder as a result.

On the defensive side, both Yakumo and Hayabusa are able to block, dodge, and parry incoming attacks. Parries are ultra-satisfying here, creating a flashing glint that lets you immediately hit back with an attack of your own. Dodging is also incredibly useful; when done at the last moment, it creates a Bayonetta-esque ‘Witch Time’ slowdown effect that helps you effectively reposition and get some free hits in.

Slice and dice

You’ll be doing all of this at breakneck speeds in the average combat encounter. When the game starts mixing in multiple enemy types - and even some elites - knowing when to both attack and defend becomes a high priority, and it’s a skill that’s heavily rewarded. Better performance leads to higher stage ranks, resulting in more currency and weapon experience to spend on life-saving consumables and additional weapon techniques respectively.

It’s not all combat, though. Ninja Gaiden 4 occasionally breaks up the pace with avenues for exploration. These often let you tick off specific side missions, or gather hidden collectibles or take part in optional challenges for additional currency and weapon experience.

These are nice distractions, allowing you to momentarily take a breather in between ruthless bouts of combat. Platforming sections achieve this, too, but these do grow stale rather quickly. There’s a good variety, often making use of traversal items like a grappling hook, glider wings, and a surfboard (Joe Musashi would like a word here, I think). However, these often run a bit long and ultimately only serve to pad out any given stage’s run time. I often found myself just wanting to have them over with to get stuck into the next batch of bads.

Level design in general isn’t a particular strength of Ninja Gaiden 4, either. It certainly serves its basic purpose, but there isn’t a strong variety here. Most arenas are large and square-shaped. Some have differing levels of verticality and let you zip about with the grappling hook.

But most arenas feel designed to your advantage. In prior Ninja Gaiden games, you’d often struggle for space in smaller rooms and hallways, or have enemies charge you from either side or via hidden passageways. There’s little in the way of the element of surprise in Ninja Gaiden 4 - nothing to especially catch you off guard during most encounters. The core combat loop remains incredibly strong, but a bit more variety in level design would definitely have been nice.

Thankfully, the game’s incredible boss fights are always worth trudging through the most uninspired levels to get to. Bosses are massive and all feel distinct. They feel like unique challenges in and of themselves, often requiring you to figure out which weapon types are most effective, and having you deal with unpredictable attacks. They’re incredibly thrilling and almost always backed by a superb blood-pumping soundtrack.

While the overall look of levels are a bit dull, I can’t fault the game for its visual fidelity. Characters and weather effects especially look stunning. And as you might expect from these developers, animation and combat feedback are satisfyingly on point.

It’s a winner in the performance department, too. For me, Ninja Gaiden 4 ran at a near-immaculate 60 frames per second on both Xbox Series X Digital Edition and PC via the Xbox app. It’s worth noting that this is a ‘Play Anywhere’ title, too. Meaning if you buy on Xbox, you’re free to play your copy on PC, too, and vice versa (so long as your purchase was done via the Microsoft Store). It’s also available day one on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, so it’s definitely worth checking out and downloading if you’re subscribed.

Should you play Ninja Gaiden 4?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

There's a very robust amount of accessibility options in Ninja Gaiden 4. For starters, if you're not overly keen on its crushing difficulty, 'Hero' mode offers optional toggles for easier combos and auto dodge and block mechanics. Other game related options such as auto healing and quick-time events can also be enabled here.

For vision-related accessibility settings, players can enable color highlights for both player characters, enemies, and objects in the world, helping them stand out against the background. You can also enable a high-constrast background. On the controls front, options for left-handed and single-handed play are available, too.

How I reviewed Ninja Gaiden 4

I played Ninja Gaiden 4 for around 18 hours across for this review, completing the main campaign once. I went back and forth between playing on Xbox Series X Digital Edition and my gaming PC thanks to Xbox’s Play Anywhere feature. On Xbox, I primarily used the Turtle Beach Stealth Pivot and Razer Wolverine V3 Pro controllers for play, while on PC, I went with the old reliable 8BitDo Ultimate 2.

I also hooked my controllers up with the RIG R5 Spear Pro HS wired gaming headset for more immersive audio, with my LG CX OLED TV for display while playing on Xbox Series X. I also played through a good chunk of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black on via Xbox Game Pass to get a grip on how this new game feels in comparison to the remastered classic.

First reviewed October 2025

There’s always been one big problem with Ubisoft’s flagship dance party series since it made the jump to modern platforms. Without the motion sensing capabilities of the Kinect, Wii Remote, or PlayStation Move controller, it’s just been a pain to control.

Sure, those playing on Nintendo Switch have benefitted from the option to use a single Joy-Con in one hand, but if you were on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X and Series S you’d have to rely on awkwardly waving your phone around with the Just Dance Controller mobile app open on screen. The results weren’t particularly accurate or reliable, making chasing high scores far more awkward than it ever should’ve been.

With Just Dance 2026 Edition, however, it feels like the series has once again found its footing. This annual expansion introduces camera scoring letting you simply prop up your phone to record your actions and it’s something of a revelation.

Pair this brilliant feature with a fantastically varied song selection that contains some of the most visually stunning music videos yet, heaps of content, and a neat new mode, and you have by far the best instalment in years.

Break it down

If you’ve played a Just Dance game before, then you know the basic thrust here.

You pick a song from a selection and a stylized music video begins on screen. Your goal is simple, match the moves of the on-screen dancers as closely as possible - racking up points for every successful move as you go. Your score is then added to a leaderboard, measured against your previous attempts, or those of other players if you prefer. It’s a simple but effective formula, especially when you factor in the countless cosmetic unlocks awarded for hitting various goals and used to decorate your online profile.

Well-implemented local co-op makes it a great pick for livening up parties for up to four friends, while solo players can use an on-screen calorie counter to turn their dance into a workout. These aren’t entirely new features as Just Dance 2026 Edition is the fourth entry since the series made the transition to more a live service model, releasing as song packs alongside meaty updates rather than entirely new games, but there’s still a lot that’s new and exciting here for returning fans to enjoy.

The big new inclusion is the camera scoring system, which has been added to the existing Just Dance Controller mobile app. Whenever you start a compatible song you’re asked whether you want to play with the old motion scoring, or camera scoring. If you select camera scoring you’re instructed to prop up your phone on a surface a few meters away from your play space and line yourself up with an on-screen silhouette.

I normally play in the very compact area around my desk, so I was a little sceptical that I would have enough room but I was thankfully proven wrong. Propping the phone up on my bookshelf, it detected me immediately and never lost track of where I was. Playing without the weight of a phone in your hand is liberating and makes it so much easier to follow the choreography. Worrying about accidentally catapulting your pricey device out the nearest window every time a move has you swing your arms is finally a thing of the past.

Better still, if you already own Just Dance 2025 Edition you’ll be able to play all of those songs with this new control mode, giving you a fantastic excuse to revisit them. The only minor letdown here is that you can only use camera scoring when you’re playing alone. This is presumably some technical limitation and not a huge dealbreaker, but is worth bearing in mind if you were planning to pick up the game just for co-op play.

It can also be a little bit tricky to keep your phone stable. I reliably managed it with some books, but you might want to invest in a cheap phone stand if you intend to set it up directly in front of your screen.

Backing track

It wouldn’t be a new Just Dance edition without a heap of fresh songs to play, and this year's entry doesn’t disappoint. Your enjoyment of any line-up is always going to come down to personal preference, but I found the 40 or so tracks this year to be fantastically varied.

Where previous years have been dominated by one or two big artists or themes, 2026 Edition has everything from recent hits like Chappell Roan’s ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ and Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Feather’ to long-awaited party titans like Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’.

K-pop fans can feast on Babymonster’s ‘Drip’ while TikTok addicts will have plenty of fun with viral sensations like Doechii’s ‘Anxiety’. Just Dance titles also offer their own original songs which for the last few installments have basically boiled down to generic pop with slightly cringeworthy lyrics. One of this year’s however, the cutesy ‘Sokusu’, is genuinely very catchy with an easy to learn but hard to master dance that has you hopping across the screen.

Each track is accompanied by a gorgeous music video which all stand apart as some of the most attractive and complex that the series has had yet. They look stunning with a wide range of colorful visuals and themes. Some also break away from the conventional Just Dance aesthetic in innovative and interesting ways. Take this year’s inevitable kids song inclusion, a Bluey-inspired medley that’s animated exactly like the hit children’s TV show or the spooky claymation style of ‘Born to Be Alive (Reborn Version)’.

A few songs have engaging alternate versions too, whether that’s relaxed drag show performances or intense sports routines designed to test your fitness.

If all of this somehow isn’t enough, you can add to your library by picking up previous Edition releases (which are available pretty cheaply now) or subscribing to Just Dance Plus to stream hundreds and hundreds of songs taken from across the series.

All versions of Just Dance 2026 Edition include memberships of varying length (which you can activate at any time from an in-game menu) and it only costs $24.99 / £19.99 to add on a whole year - a very reasonable price for what you get.

Personal highlights for me include the energetic ‘Love Ward’ from Just Dance 2018 and the utterly ridiculous Angry Birds ‘Balkan Blast Remix’. The only thing that could possibly make it better would be if some of the best tracks from the more obscure entries came over.

Where’s Koda Kumi’s ‘Cutie Honey’ from the Japan-exclusive Just Dance Wii, Ubisoft?

Lab rats

Just Dance games rarely ship without some kind of new mode, and Just Dance 2026 Edition is no exception. This year you get a new co-op Party Mode themed around a mad scientist’s lab. It lets you play any of your owned songs in short bursts with weird visual effects overlayed on top.

This could involve an animated dinosaur appearing on screen and blocking your dancer from view to being forced to clap for points.

The effects themselves are amusing but not particularly game changing, though the fact that the mode can draw from your entire song library is great. If you’re playing with a Just Dance Plus subscription then there’s a strong chance that you haven't played whatever comes up before, forcing you to adapt not only to the special challenges but an unfamiliar routine.

It’s a great way to find new songs to play, and I've picked up a few new favorites that would have otherwise been completely overlooked given the sheer size of the roster.

It also helps avoid the struggle to pick which song to play when you’re joined by friends, leading to a much more frictionless experience and helping everyone get straight to the dancing rather than faffing around in menus.

I can't think what else you could possibly want from a dance party game.

Should I play Just Dance 2026 Edition?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

There is unfortunately no dedicated accessibility menu in Just Dance 2026 Edition. The game supports scoring via both holding your phone in your hands or using its camera but each method requires a substantial range of motion across your whole body. The user interface can be tweaked somewhat, for example disabling visual score feedback or song lyrics.

How I reviewed Just Dance 2026 Edition

I played almost 10 hours of Just Dance 2026 Edition on PlayStation 5. For the controls, I relied on my Porsche Design Honor Magic 7 RSR Android phone using the official Just Dance Controller mobile app.

During that time I played the songs that appealed to me from the overall line-up, chasing high-scores in both motion control and camera control modes. I compared my experience to my hands-on testing of previous Just Dance games on a wide range of platforms including Just Dance VR.

First reviewed October 2025