The immersive sim is a genre that doesn't get enough love, so every time a new one comes around, I'm interested in it simply on the basis of it existing. Of course, beyond that, only the good ones keep me for long. I've put about four hours into Thick As Thieves, the new single-player and co-op stablemate to games like Thief and Dishonored, and while it doesn't yet stand (tip)toe-to-toe with those titans of the genre, it's definitely doing enough right that I'm invested in seeing how it progresses through early access.

Thick As Thieves recently made headlines when it was announced that it would no longer be PvPvE, and instead is meant to be played solo or in two-player co-op, cutting out the competitive side of it entirely just weeks before launch. It felt like a late swerve, but I can't say it's created obvious issues. It's a lot of fun in solo, and though I haven't had a chance to play co-op yet, I can see that, assuming it's no technical hurdle, it could be even better in that case.

Thick as Thieves plays very much like the games that inspired it, albeit with some early-access touches, for better or worse. At launch, there are two maps, with more to come later, and you'll drop into each one from a randomized point on its outskirts. You'll need to stick to the shadows, dodge patrolling guards--including ghosts who can phase through walls--evade security cameras, pickpocket keys, and escape with quest items and other loot. It's the sort of game where you'll spend most of your time crouching, and even on the game's base difficulty, there's a strong emphasis on needing to stay quiet and blanketed in darkness. It's a true im-sim so, naturally, you can also flush the toilets.

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Disney and Fortnite are teaming up to promote the upcoming Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu with a new in-game screening area that will allow players to watch the first 12 minutes of the movie. The map is live right now, and you can find the Mandalorian and Grogu Watch Party Island in the Discover section of the lobby. And the good news is there's more to do there than just watch the clip, since the map is a small open world with quests that players can complete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fZx17yaqmY

The activities around the map, which is set on the planet Nevarra from the show and movie, are similar to the relatively simple quests of Lego Fortnite Brick Life--think fetch quests and defeating stormtroopers. It's not particularly complex, but there's a lot more content here than you'd probably expect. Fortnite has had many watch party islands in the past, but none have really been quite this robust.

This watch party island, made in Unreal Editor for Fortnite, is part of Fortnite's ongoing push for custom Star Wars experiences in Fortnite, like the new modes we tried out at the beginning of May. In that way, this watch party map serves as a pretty compelling proof of concept for a quest-based open-world map--it's not too tough to imagine somebody being able to use a map like this to tell an interesting story, since the environment on this map already looks like it was ripped straight from a AAA game anyway.

In addition to showing the clip from the movie, director Jon Favreau will answer fan questions in a special presentation on May 26, after the movie is out, so he can talk about the making of the film and the story. Anybody who spends 20 minutes in the Mandalorian and Grogu watch party island will be granted a free loading screen.

Disney and Fortnite are teaming up to promote the upcoming Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu with a new in-game screening area that will allow players to watch the first 12 minutes of the movie. The map is live right now, and you can find the Mandalorian and Grogu Watch Party Island in the Discover section of the lobby. And the good news is there's more to do there than just watch the clip, since the map is a small open world with quests that players can complete.

The activities around the map, which is set on the planet Nevarra from the show and movie, are similar to the relatively simple quests of Lego Fortnite Brick Life--think fetch quests and defeating stormtroopers. It's not particularly complex, but there's a lot more content here than you'd probably expect. Fortnite has had many watch party islands in the past, but none have really been quite this robust.

This watch party island, made in Unreal Editor for Fortnite, is part of Fortnite's ongoing push for custom Star Wars experiences in Fortnite, like the new modes we tried out at the beginning of May. In that way, this watch party map serves as a pretty compelling proof of concept for a quest-based open-world map--it's not too tough to imagine somebody being able to use a map like this to tell an interesting story, since the environment on this map already looks like it was ripped straight from a AAA game anyway.

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The second wave of new arrivals to Xbox Game Pass has been announced for May 2026, and following hot on the heels of big releases like Mixtape and Subnautica 2, there's a lot to look forward to. Here's the full list of everything being added starting May 19:

Xbox Game Pass May 2026 Games: Wave 2

• Forza Horizon 6 (May 19)
• Dead Static Drive (May 20)
• My Friend Peppa Pig (May 20)
• Pigeon Simulator (May 20)
• Remnant 2 (May 20)
• Winter Burrow (May 20)
• Luna Abyss (May 21)
• Escape Simulator (May 26)
• Echo Generation 2 (May 27)
• The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition (May 27)
• Crashout Crew (May 28)
• Kabuto Park (May 28)
• Final Fantasy 6 (June 2)
• Jurassic World Evolution 3 (June 2)

Kicking things off with this month's new arrivals is Forza Horizon 6. Microsoft's big racing game franchise is back with a gorgeous tour across Japan, and while there's nothing truly groundbreaking here, it's hard to not smile when you're taking on a Gundam in spectacular showdowns. This marks the global launch of Forza Horizon 6, following its early access release this week.

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Perhaps because he's so cute and marketable, Yoshi's adventures have been designed for a younger and younger audience for the last several years. 2006's Yoshi's Island DS was not out-of-step with the difficulty of a mainline Mario game, but since then, the challenge of mainline Yoshi games has been slowly softened to target younger audiences. With Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Nintendo has made the gameplay even more gentle for gaming novices--but what it lacks in difficulty, it mostly makes up for in creativity and a playful gimmick built around discovery and exploration.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn't a typical platformer. You don't move left to right to reach a finish line, Yoshi can't die, and there aren't enemies to overcome in a traditional sense. Instead, the stages are little biospheres teeming with natural flora and fauna. Rather than fight them, you're there to study and document them--Yoshi is less of an adventurer this time around, and more of a research assistant.

You're conducting research inside the pages of Mister Encyclopedia, aka Mr. E, a conscious compendium of all life on a remote, unnamed island. The Yoshis volunteer to jump into the pages of the book and document their findings, putting each of the creatures there through their paces. That usually includes documenting how they taste, what happens if you throw them, how they interact with their environment, and even how they interact with each other. This transforms stages into little standalone playgrounds where you experiment with a new creature and see what it can do. The play is about the discovery itself, as you observe different reactions and the game gently guides you to try new things.

https://youtu.be/1d7IdzUK2MM?si=_8yC48jkJYyAqeXC

It's surprising how well this works. Instead of reaching a goal line, the stages conclude when you make some pre-defined, especially significant discovery. For a set of flowers called ​​Crazee Dayzees, for example, it's using them to grow large flower buds. For Shy Guys, it's finding all of their hiding spots. For Casterway, a creature with a fishing pole, it's catching a huge lunker of a fish lurking in the water below. I wasn't sure how well the game would approach guiding you towards your goals when no two goals are exactly the same, but it works remarkably well. You can always ask Mr. E for a hint, but I rarely needed to. The rhythms of the stages and cascading discoveries often just led me to the right conclusion.

Years of Mario platformers, of which Yoshi owes its lineage, makes the general controls feel natural and fluid. You can run, jump, swallow things with your sticky tongue, and throw eggs using the left stick for aiming. But Yoshi and the Mysterious Book also gets a delightful amount of variety out of both its differentiated goals, and its myriad strange creatures. A Snurfboard creature functions like a surfboard, letting you ride on it and do tricks. Meanwhile, a Slugarang, a bug shaped like a boomerang, lets you toss it away as a projectile to mow down grass and trim trees, allowing you to make new discoveries. Each world has at least one creature like these two examples, and their inclusion mixes up the gameplay in some new and surprising way, which helps maintain a brisk pace of variety. And as you get deeper into the game, you start to find creatures that interact with other, earlier ones you had already discovered. You can go back and spend coins to buy hints for interactions you may have missed in a previous area if you want to see them all.

I should say here, by the way, that each of these creatures can be named however you wish. You're the archeologist discovering them, so Mr. E lets you name them. I didn't use this functionality much, preferring to hear their canonical names per Mr. E's suggestion, but it's a cute touch that I'm sure kids will enjoy.

The story is light to the point of being almost non-existent. Somehow, Bowser Jr. and Kamek have found themselves in the titular book as well and they're searching for a rare species. You restore the pages of the book to unlock new areas, and naturally that means you're on their trail, but you aren't given any particular motivation otherwise.

That said, the main story culminates in a plot twist, of sorts, that is so bizarre and left-field that you really need to see it to believe it. The story was too bare-bones to evoke a strong emotional reaction from me, but I was still amused that such a cute game had such a dark idea lurking inside it.

Speaking of seeing and believing, the visual style in Mysterious Book is gorgeous. Inside the book, the whole game has a visual layer that makes it look like illustrations on a page, with a colored pencil aesthetic and skipped frames to accent the effect. Especially when played in TV mode, Yoshi is full of expressive reactions to everything he sees, and in particular, everything he tastes. These playful cartoon expressions help to even further accentuate its appeal for younger players.

This clear targeting of younger gamers has its drawbacks, though. Most notably, while this is a game that seems aimed at early- or pre-readers, it's absolutely chock full of text to read, and there is no voice acting or spoken dialogue to make the experience more accessible to the audience that will likely be enjoying this game most. Mr. E speaks in simlish-like vocalizing but the dialogue has to be read. Discoveries pop up as text as well. The hint system is all text too. A younger player without strong reading skills might be able to play with the systems and make discoveries, but it may be hard for them to progress without someone around to interpret the text for them.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

For older players, there is a little more complexity hidden behind the first ending. It's actually one of the coolest features the game has to offer, which makes it strange to rope it behind game completion. Once you finish the main story you open up a modular UI, with "Exploration Tools" that can be bought in exchange for the Smiley Flowers you've been gathering throughout the journey and then mapped to a grid overlay. These tools are unlocked in a particular order so you can't select which ones you want, but a few of them include a Bioscanner to track nearby creatures, thermometers to track temperature, and more. There's even a lifebar for Yoshi, which confusingly doesn't seem to do anything since you can't die--but when Yoshi gets low enough in health he visibly reacts. Presumably this system was running under the hood the whole time but I never even noticed until unlocking the tool.

Those tools can be applied to extra biomes that open up after the first ending as well. That extends the adventure into new areas with new creatures, as well as allowing you to discover how those creatures and your new Exploration Tools interact with all the ones you've already found.

How much mileage you get out of those extra stages, and in fact out of the entire game, relies largely on your level of curiosity. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is fundamentally a game about poking and prodding at the world and seeing what happens. It won't test your precision platforming skills, but it serves as a gentle introduction for novices, and an experiment for even experienced gamers to see an audacious, expanded idea of what a platformer can be.

Perhaps because he's so cute and marketable, Yoshi's adventures have been designed for a younger and younger audience for the last several years. 2006's Yoshi's Island DS was not out-of-step with the difficulty of a mainline Mario game, but since then, the challenge of mainline Yoshi games has been slowly softened to target younger audiences. With Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Nintendo has made the gameplay even more gentle for gaming novices--but what it lacks in difficulty, it mostly makes up for in creativity and a playful gimmick built around discovery and exploration.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn't a typical platformer. You don't move left to right to reach a finish line, Yoshi can't die, and there aren't enemies to overcome in a traditional sense. Instead, the stages are little biospheres teeming with natural flora and fauna. Rather than fight them, you're there to study and document them--Yoshi is less of an adventurer this time around, and more of a research assistant.

You're conducting research inside the pages of Mister Encyclopedia, aka Mr. E, a conscious compendium of all life on a remote, unnamed island. The Yoshis volunteer to jump into the pages of the book and document their findings, putting each of the creatures there through their paces. That usually includes documenting how they taste, what happens if you throw them, how they interact with their environment, and even how they interact with each other. This transforms stages into little standalone playgrounds where you experiment with a new creature and see what it can do. The play is about the discovery itself, as you observe different reactions and the game gently guides you to try new things.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Mortal Kombat 2 Steelbook Edition (4K Blu-ray)

$38 | Release date TBA

Preorder at Walmart

Mortal Kombat 2 Standard Edition

$28 | Release date TBA

Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Walmart Preorder at Gruv

While Mortal Kombat 2 only recently premiered in theaters, preorders for the bigger--and bloodier--sequel's Blu-ray release are already live at online retailers. While no release date has been confirmed, multiple home video versions of the movie have been announced, including a Walmart-exclusive steelbook 4K edition that's available for $38, and a standard edition that's available in 4K UHD, regular Blu-ray, and DVD formats. Here's a breakdown of each edition available so far.

Mortal Kombat 2 Steelbook Edition (4K Blu-ray) $38 | Release date TBA

Walmart's exclusive steelbook edition features a striking selection of images, starting with the film's primary antagonist Shao Kahn on the front and his adopted daughter Princess Kitana on the rear. Open the steelbook edition up, and you'll find a screenshot from the film, featuring Liu Kang facing off against the resurrected Kung Lao. At the time of writing, exact tech specs haven't officially been revealed yet for any of the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2 editions, but this version does include a standard Blu-ray copy and a digital streaming key.

Like previous releases, this will likely be a native 4K release with support for the usual features, like Dolby Vision, HDR10, and Dolby Atmos. As for the special features, a handful of them will accompany Mortal Kombat 2. These include documentaries on how the storyline was shaped, the expansion of the realms, and a closer look at each warrior featured in the movie.

Mortal Kombat 2 special features

• Mortal Kombat 2; Evolving the Saga
• Building the Realms of Mortal Kombat
• Mortal Kombat 2: Choose your Fighter
• Klose Quarters Kombat
• A "Boon" to Gamers Everywhere

Preorder at Walmart Mortal Kombat 2 Standard Edition $28 | Release date TBA

Mortal Kombat 2 will also launch in a standard edition available in 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD formats. Like the steelbook edition above, the 4K and regular Blu-ray versions of Mortal Kombat 2 include a digital streaming key and the same selection of special features. Here's where to preorder each version:

Mortal Kombat 2 Standard Edition preorders:

• 4K UHD -- $28
  • Amazon
  • Walmart
  • Gruv
• Blu-ray -- $23
  • Amazon
  • Walmart
  • Gruv
• DVD -- $18
  • Amazon
  • Walmart

Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Walmart Preorder at Gruv

Continuing shortly after the events of Mortal Kombat, the sequel sees the battle for Earthrealm finally begin. Outworld emperor Shao Kahn will stop at nothing to win the Mortal Kombat tournament so that he can finally invade Earth, and it's up to a handful of chosen champions to step up and thwart the tyrant's schemes. Mortal Kombat 2 features an expanded cast with new and familiar faces in the roster.

One of the big additions to the roster is Karl Urban--who portrays former Hollywood action star Johnny Cage--and several other fan-favorite characters like Kitana, Baraka, and Noob Saibot also appear in the movie.

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Nintendo has a new mobile game on the way, which will turn your selfies into quirky WarioWare-esque minigames. The game is called Pictonico!, and will release on May 28 for Android and iPhone.

Pictonico! was co-developed by Intelligent Systems, the studio behind the WarioWare series of games, and that influence is clear from the minigames Nintendo has teased so far. The main difference is that Pictonico’s minigames pull faces from your photos, warping real people into its absurd minigames.

https://youtu.be/Pl-Y_BMRL_w?si=t8Ri6NKV6l_2kBWB

When setting up the game, you can either snap a photo in the moment or pull an existing picture from your gallery--meaning friends, family, or even your favorite celebrities could be subjected to the indignity of starring in a WarioWare-style game.

Pictonico! will feature 80 minigames at launch, and is described by Nintendo as “free-to-start.” Free play is limited to just a few minigames, with the rest of the games available to purchase in two separate sets. Volume 1 will cost $8, while Volume 2 goes for $6--refreshingly offered as a single purchase, not an ongoing subscription.

There will be multiple ways to play Pictonico!, from a stage-based progression mode, to the “Score Attack” challenges that include increasing difficulty, a high speed mode, and a sudden death challenge.

Pictonico! is set to release on May 28 on both Google Play and the App Store.

Nintendo has a new mobile game on the way, which will turn your selfies into quirky WarioWare-esque minigames. The game is called Pictonico!, and will release on May 28 for Android and iPhone.

Pictonico! was co-developed by Intelligent Systems, the studio behind the WarioWare series of games, and that influence is clear from the minigames Nintendo has teased so far. The main difference is that Pictonico’s minigames pull faces from your photos, warping real people into its absurd minigames.

When setting up the game, you can either snap a photo in the moment or pull an existing picture from your gallery--meaning friends, family, or even your favorite celebrities could be subjected to the indignity of starring in a WarioWare-style game.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Tactical deckbuilding in bite-sized sessions. Launch dice to create magical chain reactions. Choose from distinct hero classes with unique abilities. Build synergies between dice, relics, and runes to defeat challenging bosses.

The adventure begins with the origins of Batman as a young Bruce Wayne trains with The League of Shadows, and throughout the story-led campaign, players will build a family of allies with well-known characters including Jim Gordon, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Catwoman, and Talia al Ghul to help confront an ever-growing threat from a Rogues Gallery of DC Super-Villains, facing the likes of The Joker, The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Ra’s al Ghul, Bane, and more. The game takes place against the backdrop of Gotham City, an open-world LEGO playground full of crimes to stop, puzzles to solve, rewards to collect, and surprises to discover around every corner, down every alleyway, and on every rooftop. Players can grapple, glide, or drive through the environment, zipping from building to building with Batman’s grapple launcher, soaring over the city with the Batglider, or cruising around in style with a range of Batmobiles and Batcycles. The Batcave can also be customized to display vehicles, trophies, and collectibles, plus an assortment of wearable Batsuits based on past Batman related media.