5 Hardest Platformers Ever Made, Ranked by Difficulty

Saros is a phenomenal sci-fi shooter, and it currently stands as my favorite game of 2026. If you've been waiting for the right time to play it--or to play it again--then developer Housemarque has some good news. The new Zenith update is now available for free, adding a boss rush and difficulty options that should appeal to both newcomers and seasoned veterans. First up, the boss rush. Dubbed "Overlord Rush," the mode comes with its own dedicated leaderboards and tasks you with taking out a series of the game's bosses. Rather than starting on the first boss and fighting uninterrupted to the very end, they're divided into separate "sets" that each contain three fights. Overlord Rush is available via the Primary robot in the main hub area. https://youtu.be/X3SsUZ1SFy4 The new settings and difficulty modifiers, meanwhile, allow you to both reduce and increase the game's challenge, customizing it to fit your preferences. The "Slow Game Speed" setting lets you slow down the entire game so you have more time to react to projectiles, and you can tweak exactly how much it slows down and even if you want it to turn on automatically when combat starts. An "Auto-fire" setting also eliminates

The first two Final Fantasy VII remake games made Hard Mode a bonus reward you could only unlock by first beating the game. Final Fantasy VII Revelation dispenses with that approach and will make it an option from the start of the game. Thank the Ancients! “Hard Mode does indeed exist in Revelation, however, it won’t function in the exact same way as it did in Remake and Rebirth,” Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed to Hardcore Gamer at TGS 2026. “In Revelation, we’ve reimagined the high-difficulty experience to align with the new game design.” He continued: Hard Mode is selectable from the very start of this game. Therefore, players who want to tackle challenging battles and high-difficulty gameplay right from the beginning can enjoy that experience from their very first playthrough. This is because, unlike Remake and Rebirth, Revelation offers a wide variety of end-game content even after you’ve beaten the game. Rather than relying solely on the traditional flow of challenging Hard Mode after beating the game, we aimed to create a game where players can enjoy various new content and challenges even after completing the main story.

It'll also let you suck down a Draught of Mind Rebirth Quick! Hit left scratch ear! Hit down rub belly! Slap right bum pats! Annnnd you've died because you failed to parry a paw coming for you with the force of a vampire's claw. This is how I assume things will go if I boot up The Blood of Dawnwalker once its 1.1 update debuts. Devs Rebel Wolves, in their infinite wisdom, claim to be set to add in "directional animal petting" as part of it.

Sam Hill is a news writer at Polygon covering gaming and entertainment. He's a Portland, Oregon–based journalist known for covering gaming, the outdoors, national parks, tech, food, and internet culture. He has written for a range of publications including Outside Magazine, Boston Magazine, Vice, the Seattle Times and Digital Trends. In the 2004 novella adaptation, Depp plays a writer whose quiet retreat takes a disturbing turn

While the video game industry seems to be in free fall, especially at Xbox, the TV-pulled-from-video-games industry is on the rise. Especially at Xbox. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced a new department dedicated to cross-media property development. According to an industry insider, the team may have come from the ashes of a burned deal with Netflix, after Xbox reportedly over-leveraged the value of its intellectual properties. In a report from Puck News‘ Matthew Belloni, a deal was forming between Xbox and Netflix to develop projects based on its extensive gaming portfolio. In a write-up on freshly arrived Netflix executive Peter Rice, it was revealed that the streaming megalith offered newly appointed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma $500 million for exclusive rights to adapt a great deal of their intellectual property over a seven year period. A shiny figure. A healthy chunk of time. But Sharma apparently upped the ante to $800 million, at which point Netflix rescinded the offer. In a statement to Puck, Xbox says that “Netflix is a valued partner,” and that on top of upcoming animated Minecraft and Diablo series they have “received record-breaking interest” in adapting their IP.

Would that make what we're currently in the beforedeath? I have no particular thoughts on what the afterlife may look like, namely because if there is one, and I'm allowed to hang out in it, I don't want to be disappointed. What if I have the expectation that it's a hedonistic paradise and am met with only having a guy named Gary who only eats cheese sandwiches for company? How embarrassing! No, I'll leave the imagining to others on this particular front. Doing so bears some ripe fruit for me occasionally, too, as is the case today with Abelina, a surreal platformer about a man who died and finds himself tending to gardens and carving masks and trying "not to think about what this place might really be. "