Hunter: The Reckoning – Deathwish is a first-person action game set in the World of Darkness universe, which also includes franchises like Vampire: The Masquerade. Microsoft opened today's Xbox Partner Preview with this announcement, revealing Deathwish will hit Xbox Series X/S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud in the Summer of 2027. 

This first trailer follows a team of hunters out to take down a dangerous vampire masquerading (wink wink) as a police officer while also teasing some of the other locations you'll explore in the game. If you've been gaming for a minute, you might recognize Hunter: The Reckoning, as it was a hack-and-slash/third-person shooter that launched on the original Xbox in 2002 and the Nintendo GameCube the following year. 

Check out the Hunter: The Reckoning – Deathwish reveal trailer for yourself below: 

You can read more about the game at the Xbox Wire blog post here. 

Deathwish follows last year's Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, the most recent game in the World of Darkness universe, and though they occupy the same world, it remains unclear if they're connected at all. You can read Game Informer's Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 review here, and then check out our Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 hub for more behind-the-scenes information about the World of Darkness from our cover story last year. 

Did you play the original Hunter: The Reckoning? Let us know in the comments below!

Saros is one of the most promising games of the year, especially for fans of Housemarque's previous release, Returnal. Senior associate editor Wesley LeBlanc falls squarely in that camp, so we're glad he was able to visit the studio's headquarters to get his hands on Saros, and even more glad that he was able to bring some footage home to show off to Charles and Marcus. Check out the video below to see two of the game's biomes, a boss fight, and Wes's hands-on impressions.

For more of Wes's thoughts on Saros, check out his written preview and the pieces he wrote about the game's orange-heavy color scheme, Housemarque's thoughts on arcade-style games, and whether Saros is coming to PC.

Platform: PlayStation 5
Publisher: PlayStation Studios
Developer: Housemarque
Release: April 30, 2026

There is a progression of perspective in the best-designed roguelites. The exciting confusion of the opening moments, when everything is foreign to you; when your hands feel broken as you hold the controller while reading a UI that may as well have been written by aliens. And the elation of completing a run, when a once indecipherable language of on-screen notifications and gameplay becomes native, and you have become an expert. Good roguelites understand this – the great ones use this, creating a consonance within the cacophony. Returnal’s Selene struggles as much as you in your first run. Zagreus is as emphatically excited as you when he first escapes Hades. And now, Arjun, the player-controlled protagonist of Saros, joins this echelon… at least, I think he will after playing developer Housemarque’s upcoming roguelite for three hours earlier this month. 

Arjun awakens on the ancient, but high-tech planet of Carcosa, confused but determined. He straps a necklace weighed down by an amulet bearing a foreign sun, picks up his pistol, and ardently charges toward a voice begging for him. I want to know who she is – Arjun already knows, but he wants to find her, and so we both begin a journey through this burnt planet. 

As Arjun struggles to piece together where he is and what these destructive machines are (and why they’re firing at him), so, too, do I. It’s one of the best moments of my time playing Saros. Together, we try to learn a new language: the language of survival, of movement, of oil-ridden murder. 

The action is brand new for Arjun, and actor-gamer Rahul Kohli sells an excellent blend of disbelief and impassioned determination for this character I control. However, it’s not entirely new to me, as I speak a similar language. I played Returnal. 

In Returnal, Selene dashed through lines of explosive orbs, jumping when she must, and shooting through it all. In Saros, Arjun does the same, though it’s a dance here. Arjun wants to kill; he wants to reach the end to find her, whoever she is. Selene just wanted to survive. The most exciting difference in Saros is that dance, and I’m not surprised to hear Housemarque rebuke calling this game a “bullet hell,” opting instead for “bullet ballet.” Based on my playtime, the difference between hell and ballet is hegemony. Selene was constantly on the back foot throughout Returnal. Arjun is the opposite, and Housemarque’s kit for him demonstrates that. 

 

Arjun jumps, long jumps, dashes, long dashes, and most importantly, uses a special shield that not only deflects damage but absorbs it, morphing it into Power that he can use to deal devastating damage to anyone in his way. This drastically changes the relationship between our protagonist this time around and the returning arcade-style cascade of bullets. I’m not interested in dodging them – I want to go straight through them, and Arjun’s shield is the vehicle for that. It’s a familiar defensive mechanic (arguably the most familiar in all of games), but this small change flips this studio’s excellent roguelite formula on its head. I now crave those blue orbs and orange lasers. I die a few times while attempting to learn the language of Saros, but I soon find the confidence/cockiness I took three times longer to discover in Returnal. I save up my Power Weapon, a special move that requires the Power (i.e., energy) only your shield can gather to defeat the boss known as Bastion, a massive mechanical hive-mind in the game’s second biome, itself a sprawling network of pipes, wires, and metal. 

Right on cue, this is the other best moment of my time playing Saros. 

But trust that everything between the opening moment and this victory isn’t throwaway. I witness other ways Housemarque has learned and evolved from Returnal. You can suspend a run (the biggest boon for parents like me); your progression between runs is more apparent and more immediate, with bountiful upgrades to work through by spending the Lucenite you collect on Carcosa; there’s an ensemble cast, adding some warmth to this otherwise alien planet; and there’s teleportation and shortcuts, making it easy to get to exactly where you want to go, though I suspect the most hardcore of roguelite enjoyers will loudly admonish these locomotive efforts. In other words, every issue I wanted changed in Returnal seems to have been addressed in Saros. 

With little time to go before Saros is out, I find myself anxious to return to Carcosa, where harmonies of metals, technology, and extraterrestrial melodies drone over the action Arjun orchestrates with gun in hand. His desperation to find the woman whispering in his ear matches mine. Though we have different reasons, we both intend to reach an end, and I can’t wait to see what awaits us there. 

While waiting for Saros to launch exclusively on PlayStation 5 on April 30, read Game Informer's Returnal review, and then check out this Saros gameplay trailer. After that, read about how Saros will let you teleport straight to unlocked biomes. 

Are you excited for Saros? Ask me any questions you might have about it in the comments below and I'll answer what I can!

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie hits theaters next week on Thursday, April 1, and what better way to get people excited for it than by spoiling what would have been a really cool in-movie reveal... with a poster that does that instead? I'm not sure why Nintendo did this today, but on the official Super Mario Galaxy Movie X account, the company revealed that Fox McCloud, of Star Fox and Super Smash Bros. fame, will be in the movie. 

It did so by releasing a new poster for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie that features Fox front and center, seemingly ready for action or some cooperative fun alongside Mario. I'm not quite sure how Fox will fit into a movie based on Super Mario Galaxy (though trailers have indicated this movie is pulling from a lot more than just that series of Mario games), but fans have long predicted that Nintendo and Universal's ultimate aim with these movies is to have an Avengers moment with a Super Smash Bros. movie. With Fox confirmed for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, that possibility is seeming more and more likely. 

Check out the Fox McCloud poster for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie for yourself below: 

As you can see, there's no mystery here – that is Fox McCloud, and that's his Arwing spaceship in the background. What this means for the rest of the movie, or who else might appear, that's anybody's guess!

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie hits theaters next week on April 1. In the meantime, check out the final trailer for the movie. 

Who else do you hope to see in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? Let us know in the comments below!

Amazon's Spring Sale includes great discounts for Magic: The Gathering newcomers and veterans alike