David Arnold is a James Bond expert. In 1997, shortly after scoring sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day, he recruited Pulp, Iggy Pop, Bjork, Chrissie Hynde and Leftfield for the ambitious ‘Shaken And Stirred’ Bond covers album. 007 boss Barbara Broccoli was so impressed, she hired him to work on the soundtrack for that year’s Tomorrow Never Dies. He returned for The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace.

Now Arnold’s back in the world of martinis and MI6 for ‘First Light’, his titular collaboration with fellow Bond superfan Lana Del Rey that serves as the theme song to a bold new video game. “We didn’t set out to just make the next James Bond game, we set out to tell the next James Bond story,” explains Dominic Vega, audio director at developer IO Interactive. “Getting the theme song right was really important to the soul of the project.” When the idea of Arnold and Del Rey working on it was suggested, “it seemed too good to be true,” he grins. But here we are.

First Light, an action-adventure game that details the origins of 007, was first pitched to Arnold by Broccoli at an appropriately high-level briefing. “The meeting took a long time and was very detail heavy. I loved how committed they were,” says Arnold. “But really [I said yes immediately because] it was the opportunity to write an official Bond theme. I’ve never tired of doing that. I really don’t mind if that’s what I’m known for, because It’s always been my dream,” says the composer, who saw his first Bond flick ‘You Only Live Twice’ when he was just eight years old.

The soaring ballad takes Bond into a new era

Rather than rushing off to bash out his sixth Bond anthem though, Arnold spent time with the concept art, script and early development footage of the game. “I’m obviously aware of the 60 years of history – all the songs that have been written as well as all the movies, TV shows and novels that have been [created around this character]. But I had to get a sense of what this Bond was like,” says Arnold, referring to how actor Patrick Gibson has taken on the mantle of the world’s most famous secret agent for this title. He follows Daniel Craig, whose explosive farewell in No Time To Die half a decade ago still smarts for some fans. A fresh face for the films is still to be announced.

Back when Arnold first fell in love with Bond, the suited and booted gentleman was an aspirational figure who could do whatever he wanted in the name of king and country without any consequences. Craig’s era changed all that. “He didn’t just kick someone in the face, say something funny then bugger off. It’s not quite a vulnerability… but more layers have definitely been revealed. There’s room for him to be something different now,” says Arnold, who wanted to explore that within the lyrics.

“It’d be easy to fall back into things that have been done before, and I’m sure there are people who think I’ve done that, but the intent is to move it along every time. Billie Eilish’s ‘No Time To Die’ doesn’t sound anything like Shirley Bassey’s ‘Goldfinger’ or Wings’ ‘Live And Let Die’. Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’ doesn’t sound like John Barry’s ‘You Only Live Twice’ which doesn’t sound like Matt Monro’s ‘From Russia With Love’ but they’re all quintessential Bond songs. There’s just this feeling to them all that makes them Bond – and that’s what I needed to discover [for ‘First Light’]. It’s always the hardest part of the process.”

Lana knew just what was needed

What wasn’t difficult was working out who was going to sing it. Lana’s name sat top of the list of potential suitors – and she needed no convincing to get involved. “Lana pitched a song for Spectre and is very aware of the history of James Bond,” says Arnold. Del Rey’s cut was eventually rejected in favour of ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ by Sam Smith. “For as long as she’s been making records, people have asked why she hasn’t done a James Bond theme yet. There’s just something about Lana Del Rey that makes her [perfect] for Bond – and that’s definitely not true of everyone. She’s just timeless.” And timelessness is something Arnold has always aimed for. “I want people to be able to listen to the songs in 30 years without thinking they sound dated.”

Still, with Del Rey busy headlining stadiums and festivals following the release of 2023’s ‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’, Arnold needed to rely on modern technology to get the track finished. Over the course of several months, the pair traded ideas back-and-forth over Zoom. “She’s charming, funny and brilliant but was also really enthusiastic and engaged with the whole process. All you can really ask for in a collaborator is someone who is as committed as you,” remembers Arnold.

“When you’re working closely with someone, you can forget just how brilliant they actually are. But as soon as she sang that first verse… it was just amazing… Her voice is extraordinary and is always unmistakably her.”

There are clues to the game’s story hidden within

In keeping with First Light being an origin story, Arnold revisited some of author Ian Fleming’s books for inspiration – which is where the dreamy yet haunting lyric about “running towards the sun” came from. “The idea of charging towards an exploding sun seemed to sum up who Bond is [in First Light],” says Arnold. “It’s the perfect metaphor for something unknown and dangerous, but he’s compelled to go towards it anyway. The song feels like a warning.”

“It does a great job of hinting at what path this young Bond is going down. Just like in Casino Royale [where the iconic theme doesn’t play until the very end of the film], the player earns the themes as they play the game,” adds Vega.

The track celebrates Bond’s past, present and future

‘First Light’ also laid the foundations for The Flight’s original score for the game which, according to Vega, has the same texture and feel. “We had conversations to ensure we were on the same page because music’s such a huge part of Bond’s world,” agrees Arnold. “They were asking me the same sort of questions I was asking in 1997 when I did Tomorrow Never Dies.”

A lot of ‘First Light’ and the cinematic title sequence it soundtracks feels like a modern update to classic Bond. “The game shows a version of him we haven’t really seen before in a world that we’re familiar with. We needed a song that moved the sound of the universe forward, but could also exist alongside all the great songs that have come before,” says Vega.

“We wanted to anchor it in what we already know [to show people] it’s part of the same world,” says Arnold. “Music has been so important to the James Bond series. To run away from what’s made it great would have been foolish.”

‘007 First Light’ is released on May 27 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC

The post Inside Lana Del Rey’s era-defining James Bond theme song ‘First Light’ appeared first on NME.

London’s Hammersmith Apollo is a sea of red berets and striped mariniere t-shirts. If you’re a fan of the hit fantasy game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, by French developers Sandfall Interactive, you’ll recognise this mischievously Gallic dress-up as the viral ‘Baguette’ outfit. In recent months, it’s become the unofficial uniform of the game’s sold-out orchestral tour. At tonight’s gig, there’s an excitable buzz in the air as cosplaying punters take to their seats.

• READ MORE: The biggest video game concerts you can’t miss in 2026

The room goes quiet as the seven-piece band and vocalist Alice Duport-Percier walk out to perform achingly beautiful ballad ‘Alicia’. The rest of the Curieux Orchestra soon join them, alongside conductor Daniel Sicard who interrupts ‘The Departure / Taking Down The Paintress’ to deliver a rousing speech about togetherness, unity and strength. It’s pulled straight from the magical game but makes perfect sense amid the throng of passionate fans.

Lorien Testard, the mastermind behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s beloved soundtrack, looks a little taken aback at the deafening screams that accompany his arrival onstage but he quickly eases into proceedings, delivering squealing guitar solos and bouncing across the boards with the same liberated freedom as a kid performing in the mirror.

“It feels like an immense gift for all of us to be playing these shows and I know I’m so lucky to get the chance to do it,” he tells NME a few days later. “It’s really important that people feel like they’ve lived a moment with us, and we’ve shared something special… If that means making jokes onstage or conducting with an actual baguette, hopefully it’ll be something they remember.”

For the uninitiated, Clair Obscur was the breakout title of 2025 – winning basically every Game Of The Year award going and boasting a stonkingly dramatic score that’s so popular (1.2million Spotify streamers per month) it can fill some of Europe’s most famous venues.

And yet its architect’s dream was never to play at being a rockstar. Yes, he picked up a guitar when he was 16. Yes, he played in a few local bands around France. And, yes, he used to teach too  – but all Testard says he’s ever wanted to do was make music for video games.

“I’ve played them my whole life,” he explains, “I love the immersion and imagination of [the medium]. I’ve spent so much time listening to [my favourite] soundtracks that I feel like they’ve become a part of me.”

Now 31, Testard spent years crafting songs at home for his own imagined gaming projects before Clair Obscur came along. Creator Guillaume Broche had grown bored of life at major developers Ubisoft and had recently set up a studio to work on his first solo venture, a love-letter to the turn-based combat games he grew up playing. Broche needed someone to orchestrate the story and discovered Testard’s deeply personal creations on Soundcloud. He reached out.

After hitting it off immediately, Broche showed Testard a “pretty rough draft” of the game. He was taken by its fully-realised universe, the emotionally-charged plot and the ambition of what Guillaume wanted to build. The pair had grown up loving different fantasy worlds (Testard played a lot of The Legend Of Zelda, Guillaume was more of a Final Fantasy fan) but they both knew how crucial music was in making a game feel alive. Testard signed up on the spot. “I didn’t know it would take five years though,” he grins.

Despite this being his first composing job, Testard didn’t look around at what other game soundtracks were doing or go trawling through Spotify for ideas. “I was just so immersed in the world of Clair Obscur, all my inspiration came from concept art, the story or what the team were working on,” he says. “I was completely free to make what I wanted – and I created music that felt right for whatever was happening in the game.”

The end result is an epic eight-hour 156-song collection that encompasses beautiful, orchestral character themes (‘Alicia’), jazzy yet ominous boss battle anthems (‘Une vie a t’aimer’) and funky odes to exploration (‘World Map – In Lumiere’s Name’). Unlike a lot of fantasy role-playing game soundtracks, Testard’s music often features vocals – with the majority delivered by classically-trained singer Alice Duport-Percier. “I love the human voice and how much emotion there is behind it,” he says. “When I heard Alice sing, I could really feel her soul and I wanted to share that with the players.”

It’s perhaps this emotional core that’s helped so many people connect with Testard’s compositions. The game starts with a plucky band of doomed individuals heading out to stop The Paintress from wiping out everyone over a certain age. There’s more than one devastating loss along the way, with those brave adventurers banded together by the motto: “For those who come after”.

Live, Testard isn’t afraid of dragging up these moments of sorrow and there are definitely some teary eyes in the London audience. But the show is also a proud, optimistic celebration of togetherness, from the narrative journey to the moments of crowd interaction that make it feel less like a classical performance and more akin to an arena rock gig. Fans clap along to the cinematic post-rock of ‘Goblu / Rain From The Ground’ like it’s ‘We Will Rock You’ at Wembley Stadium.

What’s really impressive is that when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched last April, there were no plans for a tour. That only changed when promoters from around the world reached out to Sandfall and Testard’s inbox was flooded with praise. “It’s so surreal and immense. I still need to take time to process it all,” he admits.” I feel like I’ve lived 10 years in just [12 months].”

Not wanting to let anyone down, he moved “impossibly fast” to meet demand and in October, ‘A Painted Symphony’ premiered in Lyon’s 3,220 capacity L’Amphithéâtre 3000. “There are a thousand decisions when creating a tour and I wanted to be the one to make them,” Testard says of his hands-on approach, which includes playing guitar onstage every night. He also worked closely with conductor Daniel Sicard to curate a setlist that would tell the story of Clair Obscur without the need for video screens. “I don’t like gameplay footage at concert tours. For me, it’s important to be present with the musicians because it’s such an incredible moment of being together and experiencing something [as one].”

Creating something that’s become so much bigger than himself is perhaps why Testard isn’t bothered about being ignored by the Grammys earlier this year. Fans were outraged when the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtrack wasn’t nominated in the Best Video Game Score category and eventual winner Austin Wintory even dedicated his trophy to Testard’s music. “Don’t worry, it’s okay,” he says today about the perceived snub. “The biggest gift I could receive is seeing how loved the music is.”

‘A Painted Symphony’ has dates booked until the end of July and the website promises more will be announced soon. “I really don’t know what the future will be [beyond that],” says Testard. “I love doing the concerts. I love performing with the orchestra and the singers. I don’t know how long the tour will be… but let’s see.”

Like a lot of the team behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, he still finds the game’s continued success “overwhelming” but mostly there’s “a profound sense of joy” about what they’ve created. As red and white confetti rains down inside Hammersmith Apollo during majestic encore ‘Maelle’, he’s certainly not the only one feeling joyful.

The post How the ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’ soundtrack became a breakout smash hit appeared first on NME.

Laufey has spoken to NME about her new collaboration with Fortnite, the “honour” of performing at Coachella and having fun with proving people wrong.

• READ MORE: How Laufey defied expectations on her third album ‘A Matter Of Time’

Earlier this week, Laufey was announced as the headline act of Fortnite’s musical spin-off game Festival, following in the footsteps of Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, The Weeknd and more. As part of the collaboration, a number of Laufey tracks have been added to the rhythm game (which now includes a karaoke mode) and fans can unlock emotes and cosmetics inspired by Laufey and her ongoing ‘A Matter Of Time’ arena tour. They can also play as Laufey in the hugely popular online battle royale mode.

“It’s a collaboration you might not expect from me,” admits Laufey. “When I started out, I was known as this jazz girl and people assumed I was timid and soft.  Running around with a gun [in Fortnite] is absolutely the best way to show that there are so many more layers to me.”

Her ‘A Matter Of Time’ era has been all about toying with those expectations. Speaking to NME last summer, the Icelandic-Chinese star explained that “there are parts of me that come out in this album that I didn’t dare to put out in the last few.” She doubled-down on that with a pop-spectacular arena tour that showcases her love of ballet and last weekend, Laufey performed at Coachella Festival for the first time.

“Playing Coachella is such a great honour and directly aligns with my goal of bringing my music, which is steeped in older styles, to something that feels very current,” Laufey told NME ahead of her set at weekend two. “It can be scary bringing a string quartet onto a stage that’s just had a K-pop act performing on but hopefully [me playing Coachella] will turn more people onto classical or Jazz music.”

“With both Fortnite and Coachella, I’ve wondered if people are going to like [me being there],” she continued. “But the only thing I can do is continue with what feels right.”

Hey Laufey! How are you feeling about entering the world of Fortnite?

“It does feel very special. I woke up to so many people tagging me in videos where they’ve won [matches] playing as me. Fortnite added a Laufey emote a couple of months ago and the response to that was so crazy, I’ve been hoping to do more. But to do it with a concert-inspired experience that’s very true to my world is beyond my dreams.”

Are you much of a gamer?

“I didn’t grow up playing video games but I recently got a PS5 via my boyfriend and we’ve been playing a lot. He’s British so there’s been a lot of FIFA. He’s been playing those games since he was a kid, I kind of have no clue what’s going on. I love Fortnite though, especially because music is such a big part of the game. I didn’t realise how much of it was connected to music [at first] but it’s really cool.

How involved were you in the creation of your Fortnite collaboration?

“I wanted it to feel really authentic, so I worked closely with my twin sister and creative director Junia. She was very, very involved in every aspect [of the collab] to the point where she was helping me do the dances that are mimicked in the game. It’s very important that every part of what I do is a reflection of my world and my storytelling.”

How does Fortnite fit into your shared universe ‘Laufey Land’?

“Fortnite is just so fantastical. It’s something that you’d never see in real life but if you closed your eyes while listening to my music, it’s the world you might dream up. It’s uber romantic and very expressionist, in a way. I want to encourage my fans to be the biggest version of themselves. Inside a video game, you’re free to be the most [authentic] version of yourself and not feel like you’re being judged.”

‘A Matter Of Time’ features emotions you’ve shied away from sharing in the past and now we’ve got this Fortnite collab. Why start showing the different sides to Laufey?

“After my first two albums, everybody thought I was this very romantic, polished, goody-two-shoes type of girl. With ‘A Matter Of Time’, I really wanted to show that I have anger, anxiety and all these feelings that are perhaps a little less polished. I just wanted to show that there’s so much more to me. It’s nice for me to be able to embrace [those different emotions] but I also want to show the fans that they can embrace those feelings as well. There’s a mess within me, there’s a mess within everybody too.”

Were you ever afraid of challenging people’s idea of you?

“Absolutely. People really want to be able to digest artists in one sentence but [with ‘A Matter Of Time’], you can’t peg me down as one thing. I was a little scared that people would lose interest but I’ve been in this industry for a while now and I can really see that I succeed the most when I’m being authentic.”

Because of your love of classical music, you’ve had to deal with naysayers since the very start of your career – do you enjoy proving them wrong?

“I’ve done enough now to prove that there is an audience for [this type of music]. There are always going to be naysayers and the only real power you have against them is believing in what you’re doing. It’s great because the more I succeed, the more confident I get and the quieter those nays get.”

Lady Gaga and Chappell Roan have previously been Fortnite Festival headliners and at Coachella, you’re performing on the same stage as David Byrne and Turnstile. Are you experiencing imposter syndrome this week?

“I’ve tossed the idea of imposter syndrome around to try and see what it means to me. I take it as a great honour to be part of an initiative that Chappell Roan and Lady Gaga have gotten to be a part of – they are such singular artists that march to the beat of their own drum. It just feels a little crazy. It’s the same with Coachalla. It feels like such a beautiful opportunity so I better rise to the fucking occasion.”

You teamed up with other celebrities who have Asian ancestry, Hudson Williams, Alysa Liu, Lola Tung and Megan Skiendiel, for the ‘MadWoman’ video. Why was that representation so important to you?

“Growing up in Iceland, I never saw anyone that looked like me, aside from my twin sister at all. So for me to join forces with all of these artists that do different things on such a high level with so much poise, it just felt magical. We got to spend the day slapping each other with fish and dancing. I often get mixed up with some of the girls in the video or we’ll get tagged as each other on red carpet photos, so it was funny to come together in this world where you don’t usually see Asian faces. It was the best hangout of my life. There was so much Asian representation behind the camera as well and I feel so lucky we could pull it off. Representation is so important, but you need to take active steps towards it. It’s not something that just happens naturally.”

Is that one of the reasons you wanted to get involved with Fortnite?

“Absolutely. Representation is something that’s always running through my mind. I know a huge part of my audience plays Fortnite and it’s how they connect with their friends.“

And your collaboration comes alongside Fortnite Festival’s new Karaoke mode…

“The fact people can actually sing along to the songs is so cool because in my opinion, there is nothing more soothing than singing. Whenever I’m down in the dumps, I’ll sing to myself and it’s an instant healer. Singing is very primal. It’s the instrument of your body so I will always champion anything that [encourages] people to sing.”

You’re touring until September. What comes after that?

“I’m always making music but I need to live a little life before I’m able to write. I also really want to become a student again. Not necessarily going back to school or anything like that, but I’m really interested in things I’m bad at. I love the slow-burn of learning something. I want to go back to practicing more cello, taking guitar lessons, reading and studying. Being an artist at this scale is a lot of people making you feel like you’re the best at something – and that’s a dangerous feeling if it goes on too long. So I need to feel like I’m the absolute worst for a while.”

Laufey plays Coachella Festival this Sunday. Her ‘Fortnite’ collaboration is live now

The post Laufey on her unexpected ‘Fortnite’ collab, Coachella and the joy of proving people wrong appeared first on NME.

If you’ve been looking for a gritty crime game to pass the time until Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out in November, might we suggest Samson: A Tyndalston Story? From industry legend Christofer Sundberg (Just Cause, Mad Max), it’s brutal and unforgiving with plenty of vehicular chaos to be found on the streets of the grubby fictional city – but there’s also a concise, emotionally-charged tale driving all that overblown violence forward.

You play as titular ex-convict Samson, who’s fresh from prison and has returned home to pay off a debt to the mob bosses who organised the failed heist that got him banged up in the first place. To make matters worse, they’re charging a hefty daily interest rate and have also kidnapped his younger sister by way of collateral. To save her, you’ll need to make a lot of cash fast. Fortunately, that’s very possible in Tyndalston if you’re willing to break the law a little – gather evidence against double-crossing gangsters, shake down shady night club owners or drive down hot-headed rivals who have got on the wrong side of your temporary employer.

Helping ground the bloody ‘90s gangster drama is an original, pulsating trip-hop soundtrack from acclaimed composer Jesper Kyd (Assassin’s Creed, Warhammer 40K Darktide). The moody electronic anthems channel the fury of Nine Inch Nails, the enthralling fantasy of Massive Attack and the urgent sense of movement that pulses through Portishead albums.

“The music needed to have attitude to fit with the character of Samson and his flirtations with crime. It also needed to feel dirty and brutal because that’s the grim world he lives in,” Kyd explains. “Whenever you play, I want you to be reminded about where he’s come from.”

The soundtrack is rooted in the Danish rave scene

Kyd first got involved with Samson’s adventures in Tyndalston two years ago and has been working closely with developers Liquid Swords as the game’s music director ever since. “For this project, there really were no guidelines and everyone was looking at me to come up with the ideas [for the sound of Tyndalston]. It took me a long time to write the actual music because of how much freedom I had. It was not an easy or a quick project, but it was really refreshing.”

To put Samson in the right period chronologically, Kyd took a trip down memory lane. The composer turned 18 at the start of the 1990s and began working on video game scores shortly afterwards. “I went to a lot of raves back then. Dance music was becoming commercial thanks to Orbital, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and Underworld. There was just so much new music being invented that we’d never heard before,” says Kyd. Naturally, it influenced his own art.

It’s filled with brooding trip-hop beats

He went through sugary boy band music, snarling grunge bands and swaggering hip-hop groups but nothing felt right for the game until he landed on the dark, atmospheric electronic music of trip-hop. “Tricky, Massive Attack, Earthling… there were just so many amazing bands.”

“The music needed to sound pissed-off with an edge of anarchy… but also needed to take players back in time 30 years,” says Kyd. “When you listen to rock, it’s all about the melodies or the cool riff but electronic music can really transport you somewhere else. That became the cornerstone of the game’s sound.”

Massive Attack inspired Kyd’s DIY approach…

As we’ve mentioned, Kyd absolutely adores trip-hop music. His favourite album of all time is Massive Attack’s groundbreaking 1998 record ‘Mezzanine’. “It’s a masterpiece and still feels so fresh.” But rather than take direct influence from it, or any of the other amazing records that established the trip-hop genre, Kyd copied their “overall approach” to making music. “I didn’t want it to sound like a knock off of your favourite bands, it had to be able to stand apart as its own thing,” he explains.

That meant a lot of time researching the genre before tracking down the same analogue synthesisers and vintage drum machines electronic bands in the ‘90s would have used, such as the Akai MPC 2000XL, the Minimoog and the OSCar. “You actually have to perform on those tools [rather than pulling up a list of pre-programmed beats], which makes the music livelier and gives everything this organic feel,” says Kyd. “I really tried to put as much authenticity into the music as I possibly could, because I know gamers and music fans would be able to tell [if we faked it].”

…which is a protest against AI-created art

Making music with real instruments and performing on synthesisers instead of just sequencing everything on a computer may have been time-consuming, but it was really important to Kyd. “In this day and age with AI, we should be doing everything we can to make music that sounds as authentic and real as possible, like there’s actually an artist behind it.  Maybe if you’re creating music for a game that takes place in the future, you want something that sounds as polished as possible but this was not the game for that.”

It also gave Kyd freedom to bend the rules. “I figured if I had the same equipment, I could do my own thing and it would still be faithful. I wanted to create something that could live in that trip-hop era, but I still needed to update things so it wouldn’t feel dated,” says Kyd, who used modern mixing and production tricks to create a “hybrid”, inter-generational sound.

Samson could be the first of many Tyndalston projects

Despite the early-day comparisons to Grand Theft Auto and Sundberg’s own history with Just Cause and Mad Max, making Samson felt like a “brand new project” for all involved. “It was important for all of us to build this world from the ground up as a whole new thing,” says Kyd. And it probably won’t end with Samson. Apparently, Sundberg has 400 years of Tyndalston history mapped out, alongside ideas for games, films and TV shows with Story Kitchen (the studio behind upcoming Life Is Strange, Tomb Raider and House Of The Dead adaptations) already involved in early chats.

“I’ll think about that when I need to, otherwise my brain will explode,” laughs Kyd. He’s currently working on a “historical inspired” score after another project, the blockbuster Wonder Woman game at Monolith Studios, was scrapped last year. “We were doing something really out there for that, and it felt like it was going well [until it was cancelled].”

“There are so many exciting things happening in gaming right now with all these different genres being rebooted, rediscovered and reimagined,” says Kyd, who picks projects based on passion rather than how much they pay. It’s an outlook he first learned as a teenager as part of Denmark’s lawless underground “demoscene”, which blended music, visual art, sampling and computer programming. “It was always about who can do something unusual, who can surprise people and who can blow the lid off stuff,” says Kyd. “Samson: A Tyndalston Story was my chance to do that [again].“

‘Samson: A Tyndalston Story’ is out now for PC and the soundtrack is available to stream here

The post How Danish raves and Massive Attack birthed Jesper Kyd’s trip-hoppy ‘Samson’ soundtrack appeared first on NME.

It’s easy to see why Xbox Game Pass continues to be so popular. The subscription service lets Xbox owners play online and gives them access to a mammoth, constantly-growing library of games.

• READ MORE: 14 unmissable games to look forward to in 2026

Even with the controversial price hike, Xbox Game Pass can still offer incredible value for money. From blockbuster titles released on the same day they’re launched to indie gems, cult classics and forgotten greats, there truly is something for everyone.

The single-player games that will take up all of your free time

Xbox Game Pass has plenty of epic, single-player games just waiting for you to plough hours of your spare time into. Why not relive the second season of Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout by diving into the brilliantly surreal Fallout: New Vegas or, if you fancy something a little more fantastical, there’s Wuchang: Fallen Feathers which looks gorgeous and has a wonderfully frustrating string of baddies to obliterate.

The best single-player titles on Xbox Game Pass:

• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Atomfall
• Avowed
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Dishonored
• Fallout: New Vegas
• Far Cry 4
• Grand Theft Auto 5
• Indiana Jones And The Great Circle
• Mass Effect
• Resident Evil 2
• Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
• Star Wars Outlaws
• The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered
• Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

The co-op games perfect for a cutesy night in

We think the best thing about Xbox Game Pass is how the service introduces gamers to new experiences. From a no-pressure opportunity to try out an entirely different genre to the many couch co-op games that provide a perfect entry point for newcomers, it’s all about taking a chance. If you’ve got a video game sceptic in your life, why not invite them over for a session with the charming It Takes Two or the manic kitchen drama Overcooked! 2. They’ll be hooked in no time.

The best co-op titles on Xbox Game Pass:

• A Way Out
• Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled 
• Diablo 4
• It Takes Two
• Kingdom Two Crowns
• Moving Out 2
• Overcooked! 2
• PlateUp!
• Unravel
• Ultimate Chicken Horse

The multiplayer games that’ll have you sweating

An Xbox Game Pass subscription gives you access to a range of competitive multiplayer titles – and a never-ending stream of opponents to go up against. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 is a fast-paced shooter that requires skill, cunning and, most importantly, a super-quick trigger finger while chaotic sci-fi sports game Rocket League is hideously addictive. It might be best to clear your diary now.

The best multiplayer titles on Xbox Game Pass:

• Borderlands 3
• Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7
• GoldenEye 007
• Halo Infinite
• Forza Horizon 5
• Need for Speed Unbound
• Rocket League
• Star Wars Battlefront 2
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege X

The best games for a quick 30-minute blast after work or school

As great as a sprawling and intricate story-driven game can be, sometimes you just want to blow off some steam and not think too hard about it. Luckily, there’s plenty in the impressive Xbox Game Pass library that offers just such a quick fix. The remastered Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy brings together three of the greatest platformers ever released while Doom: The Dark Ages drops you in the middle of an alien warzone, sufficiently equipped to cause as much mindless destruction as possible. The only problem we can foresee is that you’ll have too much fun.

The best pick-up-and-play titles on Xbox Game Pass: 

• Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
• Ball x Pit
• Farming Simulator 25
• Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
• DOOM: The Dark Ages
• EA Sports FC 25
• Gears Of War: Ultimate Edition
• Disney Dreamlight Valley
• Minecraft
• The Sims 4
• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4
• Vampire Survivors

The hidden gems

Xbox Game Pass is filled with modern day blockbusters and legendary classics. However, the service also hosts a whole load of cult brilliance that’s just as entertaining, engaging and exciting as anything else in this list. Balatro is a fiendish evolution of iconic card game poker that’s as smart as it is fun while Hi-Fi Rush provides fast-paced rhythm-based action set to a killer soundtrack. Prepare to have your mind blown over and over again by the below…

The best hidden gems on Xbox Game Pass:

• Balatro
• Blue Prince
• Control
• Crime Scene Cleaner 
• Hollow Knight
• Hi-Fi Rush
• High On Life
• MIO: Memories In Orbit
• Psychonauts 2
• South Of Midnight
• Subnautica

The recent additions

Microsoft is constantly adding new titles to Xbox Game Pass and typically announces them in two waves every month. This is what has been added to the service recently:

• Atomfall (PC, Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Master Crafted Edition (PC, Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• Final Fantasy (PC, Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• Star Wars Outlaws (PC and Ultimate subscribers)
• Resident Evil Village (PC, Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• MIO: Memories In Orbit (PC and Ultimate subscribers)
• Final Fantasy 2 (PC, Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii (PC, Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• Madden NFL 26 (PC, Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• High On Life 2 (PC and Ultimate subscribers)
• Kingdom Come Deliverance (PC, Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora (PC and Ultimate subscribers)
• Avowed (Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Premium and Ultimate subscribers)
• Final Fantasy 3 (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• To A T (Premium subscribers)
• EA Sports F1 25 (Ultimate and PC subscribers)
• Planet Of Lana 2: Children Of The Leaf (Ultimate and PC subscribers)
• DreamWorks Gabby’s Dollhouse: Ready To Party (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• South Of Midnight (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• The Alters (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Disco Elysium (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Absolum (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Nova Roma (Ultimate and PC subscribers)
• The Long Dark ­(Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Barbie Horse Trails (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)
• Final Fantasy 4 (Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers)

The post Xbox Game Pass 2026: what’s new and what’s worth playing? appeared first on NME.

Music makes video games better – that’s just a fact. Whether it’s the majestic orchestral soundtrack to fantasy role-playing game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the snarling industrial metal of DOOM: The Dark Ages, the world’s biggest pop stars gatecrashing Fortnite or the eclectic jukebox of new artists that can be found on EA Sports FC 26, an excellent score makes all the difference.

• READ MORE: Every band wants to be on the ‘EA Sports FC’ soundtrack

Live gigs featuring your favourite gaming bangers are becoming more popular as well. In 2025, NME went to gigs as far afield as Los Angeles (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater) and Prague (Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2) to hear our favourites performed live. We’d hate for you to miss out this year, so here’s a round-up of the must-see concerts happening across the UK and Europe in 2026.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 UK and European tour

The hottest ticket in gaming circles, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s ‘A Painted Symphony’ is hitting the road this March after smashing a number of UK Chart records. Original composer Lorien Testard will be joined by vocalist Alice Duport-Percier for the entire run, alongside the Curieux Orchestra.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s ‘A Painted Symphony’ will play:

MARCH
18 – Tempodrom, Berlin
19 – Terpodrom, Berlin
25 – La Rockhal, Esch-Sur-Alzette
26 – Cirque Royal, Brussels

APRIL
5 – De Doelen, Rotterdam
6 – De Doelen, Rotterdam
8 – Eventim Apollo, London
23 – Zenith, Strasbourg
24 – Arena, Reims
25 – Zenith, Nantes
30 – Arkea Arena, Bordeaux

The Best Of The London Video Game Orchestra

The London Video Game Orchestra is teaming up with the Hesperos Choir for a run through of gaming music’s greatest hits. Taking over the gorgeous Cadogan Hall in central London, punters can expect tracks from Mario Kart, Kingdom Hearts, Halo, Final Fantasy, Alan Wake and many more. Organisers have also teased “interactive” gaming fun. “Whether you’re a casual gamer, a die-hard fan or brand new to the beauty of video game soundtracks, this concert is a celebration of creativity and community,” the official listing reads.

The Best Of The London Video Game Orchestra takes place:

APRIL
17 – Cadogan Hall, London

Final Fantasy’s Nobuo Uematsu’s ‘Tiki’ show

While the long-running ‘Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds’ tour enters its 19th year on the road with a US and Australia jaunt, composer Nobuo Uematsu is playing a one-off ‘Tiki’ show in Paris. He’s been involved in almost every Final Fantasy game and has promised the evening will feature deep cuts that don’t usually get performed.

Nobuo Uematsu’s ‘Tiki’ show will take place:

MAY
9 – Salle Pleyel, Paris

BAFTA Games In Concert

A “fabulously immersive” show designed to celebrate the brilliance of video game music, the BBC Concert Orchestra – under the direction of composer Austin Wintory – will perform tracks from (deep breath) Baldur’s Gate 3, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider: Legend, Cuphead, Hitman: Contracts, Journey, Helldivers 2, Fallout 4, Disco Elysium, Ori And The Will Of The Wisps, Returnal, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Far Cry 4, and Virginia. Sounds like an award-winning night to us.

BAFTA Games In Concert will play:

MAY
23 – The Glasshouse, Gateshead
31 – Beacon, Bristol

JUNE
4 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
5 – Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
6 – Symphony Hall, Birmingham
7 – Aviva Studios, Manchester

Game Music Festival 2026

This year’s Game Music Festival is taking over London’s Fairfield Halls and Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall for a string of brilliant gigs. ‘The Infernal Symphony’ will showcase three decades of menacing Diablo soundtracks and ‘Ballads Of The Underworld’ is a symphonic concert dedicated to the pulsating music of Hades and Hades 2.

Elsewhere ‘The Colors Of Harmony’ will celebrate 40 years of Hitoshi Sakimoto soundtracks, with music from Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy 12 set to be performed by London Mozart Players, ‘Persona Grooves’ will see the Bartosz Pernal Jazz Orchestra join forces with the London Mozart Players to recreate music from Persona 3, 4 and 5 and ‘The Art Of Game Music: Live’ will feature tracks from Journey, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Sword Of The Sea before Austin Wintory creates a song from scratch, with a little help from well-known video game actor Troy Baker. What could go wrong?

The Game Music Festival 2026 takes place:

JUNE
6 – The Infernal Symphony (Diablo)
13 – The Colors Of Harmony: Hitoshi Sakimoto 40th Anniversary Celebration
19 – The Art of Game Music: Live With Troy Baker And Austin Wintory
27 – Ballads Of The Underworld (Hades)
27 – Persona Grooves (Persona)

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The Music Of Square Enix: Magic, Memories And Melodies tour

All-new symphonic concert series ‘The Music Of Square Enix: Magic, Memories And Melodies’ will, according to a press release, “celebrate the unforgettable worlds and iconic soundtracks that have defined generations of video game storytelling and adventure,” and feature music from beloved video games Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Legend Of Mana, NieR, Octopath Traveler and more.

The show will premiere in April and our expectations are high, especially because the team previously created ‘Distant Worlds’ and the concert series for beloved action role-playing series NieR – both of which were incredible.

‘The Music Of Square Enix: Magic, Memories And Melodies’ will play:

JUNE
21 – OVO Arena Wembley, London

Undertale

Toby Fox may be busy with the final three chapters of role-playing game Deltarune but he’s found time to return to the world of Undertale for a new orchestral tour. The global jaunt is being organised by the team behind the beloved Stardew Valley concert series and will feature a 25-piece orchestra playing new arrangements of the Undertale soundtrack, accompanied by footage from the hit game. Cosplay is encouraged.

Undertale: The Determination Symphony will visit

SEPTEMBER
26 – Eventim Apollo, London
27 – O2 Apollo, Manchester
28 – B:Music Symphony Hall, Birmingham
TBA – Glasgow

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

After the success of 2025’s 10-year anniversary concert tour for The Wither 3: Wild Hunt, organisers have announced a victory lap for late 2026. The run of shows will see a skilled orchestra joined by Polish folk metal band Percival for a rowdy night reliving the bruising titular warrior Geralt’s epic adventures.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 10-year anniversary tour will visit:

OCTOBER
21 – Vicar Street, Dublin
22 – Vicar Street, Dublin
24 – O2 Apollo, Manchester
25 – Barbican, York
26 – Glasgow, Scotland
27 – Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
28 – Civic Hall, Wolverhampton
29 – Eventim Apollo, London
30 – Beacon, Bristol

NOVEMBER
2 – Annexet, Stockholm
4 – Berlin, Tempodrom
5 – Ergo Arena, Gdańsk
6 – Tauron Arena, Kraków
7 – MVM Dome, Budapest
8 – O2 Universum, Prague
9 – Kia Arena, Nuremberg
10 – Incheba Arena, Bratislava
11 – Stadhalle, Vienna
13 – Le Grand Rex, Paris
14 – Capitole, Belgium
15 – Muziekgebouw, Eindhoven
16 – Mitsubishi Electric Halle, Dusseldorf
18 – Radiant-Bellevue, Lyon
19 – Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt
20 – Rockhal, Esch-sur-Alzette
21 – The Hall, Zurich
22 – Teatro Arcimboli, Milan
28 – De Doelen, Rotterdam
29 – Martiniplaza, Groningen

Hatsune Miku

Virtual pop star Hatsune Miku isn’t a video game character, but she’s been involved in enough gaming collabs that she belongs in this rundown. The digital diva is hitting the road for her biggest European tour yet, including a massive show at London’s O2 Arena – making her the first ever digital musician to play the iconic venue. The latest ‘Expo’ tour has been inspired by steampunk, with illustrator Suzunosuke creating unique visuals for the show to go alongside Miku’s cheery electro-pop.

‘Hatsune Miku Expo 2026’ will visit:

NOVEMBER
12 – The O2, London
14 – ING Arena, Brussels
15 – AFAS Live, Amsterdam
17 – Velodrom, Berlin
20 – PSD Bank Dome, Dusseldorf
22 – Accor Arena, Paris
25 – Palacio Vistalegre, Madrid

Resident Evil

It’s a great time to be a Resident Evil fan. The survival horror franchise is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and Requiem, one of the best user-reviewed games of all time, just proved there’s plenty of life left in the zombie series. We’ve also got Zach Cregger’s original movie set within the universe to look forward to.

Before that though, there’s an orchestral anniversary tour that will offer you a “musical journey through one of the most influential horror universes in pop culture history.” The ‘Symphony Of Legacy’ tour will include music from across the series alongside specially-created visuals. “This concert tour revives the myth of Resident Evil in a powerful new form: live, immersive, and utterly captivating,” promises a press release.

‘Resident Evil: Symphony Of Legacy’ will visit:

DECEMBER
1 – Forum Karlin, Prague
6 – Zenith, Paris
7 – Eventim Apollo, London
15 – Wiener Stadhalle, Vienna

The post The biggest video game concerts you can’t miss in 2026 appeared first on NME.

“KPop Demon Hunters was a launchpad for me to be more confident in telling authentic stories, which is something I’ve always struggled with,” says Kevin Woo, who played villainous group Saja Boys’ smirking backup vocalist Mystery Saja in the Netflix hit.

Born and raised in California before moving to South Korea aged 15 to train as a K-pop idol, Woo never felt like he “belonged” in either country. That changed after the award-winning animated musical, which is also the most-watched Netflix original of all time, was embraced by a global audience. See, KPop Demon Hunters may feature all-singing, all-dancing monsters and a plucky girl group out to protect the world using the power of their voices, but co-writer and director Maggie Kang wanted to make the movie feel “as Korean as possible” – from the synchronised “Kalgunmu” dance routines to the bricks that make up Bukchon Hanok Village, which is where the members of HUNTR/X meet for the first time.

The positive reaction to KPop Demon Hunters inspired Woo to pursue authenticity with his latest project, a collaboration with multiplayer survival horror game Dead By Daylight. Launched back in 2016, Dead By Daylight players can take on the role of a killer and hunt down innocent victims to appease a malevolent force known as The Entity – or they can work with other survivors to escape a grisly end. Woo voices new survivor Kwon Tae-Young, but he’s also recorded an intense new anthem to celebrate the crossover.

‘No Escape’ is a high-tempo dance track that’s as catchy as it is terrifying. “I wanted to implement everything that I love about K-pop, electronic music and horror,” Woo tells NME over Zoom. “We want it to feel like you are in the game when you are listening to the track,” with Woo making sure his vocals sounded like he’d just been running for his life before delivering the ominous chorus: “There’s no escape / save your breath.”

Recorded in Los Angeles with super producer Damon Sharpe (Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue), ‘No Escape’ introduces players to Dead By Daylight’s new K-pop-inspired ‘All Kill: Comeback’ update. “We really wanted to bring the K-pop feel with this song,” says Woo, who debuted as part of boy group XING in 2006 before joining U-KISS two years later and going solo in 2018. “It needed to sound like what other groups from South Korea are making. I made sure to put in Korean language lyrics as well because I strongly believe in staying true to myself as a Korean-American.”

His tech savvy survivor Kwon Tae-Young also has English and Korean dialogue in the game. “I love how K-pop has become this global genre but there are a lot of songs that are completely in English. It’s something I’ve done as a solo artist too but when we’re creating worlds that are reaching audiences who don’t know much about Korean culture, it’s important we stay true to its roots,” he explains.

The most challenging part of working on Dead By Daylight was all the screaming. “I’m used to perfecting my vocals to create a pleasant-sounding K-pop song,” grins Woo. “With Dead By Daylight, it’s the imperfections that are key to bringing this story to life. I had to learn how to strip things back and exist in that vulnerable state of pain and suffering.”

Woo first got involved with Dead By Daylight in 2021 when he was hired as a consultant on the game’s first K-pop-inspired ‘All Kill’ chapter. He helped with dialogue, in-game locations and the creation of the knife-wielding menace The Trickster. “I was involved in shaping his emotional identity – his ego, his obsession with artistry, and the narcissistic rage simmering beneath his polished idol exterior,” Woo told IGN recently.

The fan-favourite baddie was a K-pop idol who used samples of tortured civilians to create hits after his former bandmates perished in a fire. “I wasn’t playing Dead By Daylight before but as I got into the world-building with the team, I became a huge fan. I love all things horror.” He still plays it regularly but also fires up Mario Kart when he needs a breather from murderous multiplayer games.

In the new update, his character Kwon Tae-Young gets transported to the world of Dead By Daylight after creating virtual KPop idol MiNA, who’s heavily inspired by The Trickster. “To be chased by someone you’ve studied deeply, it’s horrifying,” says Woo. “It’s such a compelling backstory though,” exploring the ambition, intensity and constant drive for perfection that defines K-pop.

The experience has inspired his own solo material. “I normally take influences from R&B, pop, dance and KPop but after ‘No Escape’, there was something about electronic music that spoke to me,” says Woo. “Ever since KPop Demon Hunters and [Saja Boys’ sugary] ‘Your Idol’, I’ve also been more interested in exploring darker themes and stories. People seem to really connect to those heavier songs and I’ve felt really inspired to play around with that. I wouldn’t be doing that without those projects.” Woo also wants to experiment with more “upbeat” electronic dance songs, inspired by his love of DJ titans Steve Aoki, Tiesto, Calvin Harris and the newer generation of club heroes – John Summit, Luxxury and Meduza.

Kevin Woo’s Dead By Daylight collab comes as KPop Demon Hunters fever shows no signs of slowing down. The film picked up two awards at the Oscars over the weekend and a sequel has just been green-lit.

“It’s been a whirlwind and we’re still riding it,” says Woo. “I’ve been in the world of K-pop since the early 2000s and I’m surprised by how far the movie has taken things. It felt like with BLACKPINK, Stray Kids and BTS, we’d reached the [peak] of K-pop’s popularity around the world but Demon Hunters has taken it to a whole other level of exposure. It’s been pretty mind-blowing. “

“We’re seeing more authentic stories in film, TV, music and gaming – and I want to keep pushing those boundaries,” says Woo, who also starred in Anderson .Paak’s 2026 comedy drama K­–Pops! alongside the musician and his son, Soul Rasheed. “Everyone is aware of the music but with K–Pops!, we get to see how the genre evolved through the decades, how it was heavily inspired by Black artists in the hip-hop and R&B scenes, and how there’s just so much crossover between the two cultures,” says Woo. “Anderson did such a wonderful job of blending those two worlds with so much heart. The music is the backbone of the movie but it’s really a film about family, love and following your passions.”

Speaking of which, Woo is also working on a feature-length version of his 2025 short film Seoul Switch, which was written by Liann Kaye. “It’s a story about my upbringing as an insecure Korean-American boy,” says Woo, who plays both the uncertain college student and the superstar K-pop idol who agree to switch places and explore what it’s like living in each other’s shoes for a bit. A few years ago, he’d have never pursued the project “but the success of KPop Demon Hunters has really helped me be [comfortable] in my own skin.”

“Now, I just want to see more representation. For anyone who wants to showcase their culture, I feel like now is the time.”

‘Dead By Daylight – All Kill: Comeback’ update is out now

The post Kevin Woo on why Korean culture must “stay true to its roots” after ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ appeared first on NME.

Music has always been as important to the Life Is Strange video game series as the coming-of-age stories it explores. In fact, there are only three people that have worked across every title and two of them are responsible for the soundtracks.

For more than a decade, Music Supervisors Ben Sumner and Glenn Herweijer have brought together cult guitar classics and undiscovered gems from a new generation of bedroom pop stars to create the perfect mixtape for our in-game hero’s headphones. It also amplifies their fraught journey into adulthood and across seven titles, the pair have nailed that much-needed blend of sincerity, vulnerability, angst and optimism.

• READ MORE: ‘Life Is Strange’ announces full ‘Reunion’ soundtrack featuring Holly Humberstone, Foals and more

The original Life Is Strange was released in 2015 and followed 18-year-old Max Caulfield as she dealt with visions of a terrible storm destroying her suburban hometown of Arcadia Bay. Witnessing the death of childhood friend Chloe Price activated Max’s ability to rewind time, with the third-person adventure game then letting you choose what happened next – all soundtracked, of course, by emotionally evocative tracks such as Foals’ ‘Spanish Sahara’, Bright Eyes’ ‘Lua’ and Mogwai’s ‘Kids Will Be Skeletons’.

Life Is Strange 2 switched the focus to fugitive Sean and his telekinetic younger brother Daniel. As they trekked their way to Mexico, the siblings’ moving story was accompanied by Bloc Party, Phoenix, Sufjan Stevens and other alternative noughties heroes.

Later, in 2021, True Colors picked pop star and LIS megafan mxmtoon to provide the singing voice for wannabe rockstar and psychic empath Alex Chen, who set out to solve the murder of her estranged brother Gabe. The game also featured Radiohead, Phoebe Bridgers and Gabrielle Aplin needle drops.

“It’s really hard to explain what makes something perfect for Life Is Strange but I’ll know it as soon as I hear it,” Sumner tells NME from the west London studio of his and Herweijer’s acclaimed agency Feel For Music. “It’s pretty much always guitar-driven. It usually has a female vocal. And it has to be something emotional. It’s probably bittersweet, introspective and melancholic as well.”

Next week, Reunion will return to original protagonists Max and Chloe after each character went solo (Chloe in 2017 prequel Before The Storm and Max in 2024’s Double Exposure) – and show players the “end” of their story. “It’s a full circle thing,” explains Sumner, with more than a whiff of nostalgia. Alongside new music from Holly Humberstone and Etta Marcus, the Reunion soundtrack includes a couple of familiar tracks in “an ode to all of the Life Is Strange games.”

“The music is as much a lead character as Max, Chloe or any of the others,” Sumner continues. “There is a specific Life Is Strange sound and it’s one of the only common denominators across all the games.”

The game’s authenticity came from its music

French studio Dontnod Entertainment started working on Life Is Strange in early 2013 after their previous game Remember Me struggled to make back its budget. Hereijer and Sumner got involved a few months later. “They had really strong ideas about what they wanted, so our job was to help them realise that vision,” explains Sumner, who was told that music would be integral to the Life Is Strange experience. A dream come true for a music supervisor. Developers listened to the game’s work-in-progress soundtrack on a loop while they worked. “Life Is Strange has always been about difficult emotions – and the honesty of indie folk just felt like the right accompaniment for that.”

Angus & Julia Stone’s dreamy gem ‘Santa Monica Dream’ and José González’ acoustic ‘Crosses’ were early lock-ins for the soundtrack, which helped lay the blueprint for the game’s indie sound. “The guitar just feels authentic,” explains Tessa Rose Jackson, who’s behind a lot of the music for the three most recent Life Is Strange games. “It’s the instrument a teenager would have in their bedroom to pour their feelings into.”

It was an unlikely hit

Released in five chapters across 2015, Life Is Strange defied all expectations by selling more than one million copies in its first year. By 2023, more than 20million people had played through Max and Chloe’s story. “We literally had no idea that it would be so successful,” says Sumner. “We were doing a lot of work on Assassin’s Creed and other big games at the time. Life Is Strange was just this really interesting indie game that became a thing everyone was talking about.”

“It was just a special idea,” he continues. “The DontNod guys were very passionate and very enthusiastic. We can only make magic happen when we’ve got [people] who really understand the power of music.”

Still, getting the songs they wanted for the first Life Is Strange game was a “real struggle,” because it was a brand new game, says Herweijer. Luckily they had a secret weapon – DontNod’s co-director Raul Barbet. “Whenever there was a song they really wanted, they’d write a letter to the artist saying how much they loved the tune, where it would fit in the game and why it would be amazing. That really helped.”

Ever since, Feel For Music have been constantly pitched tracks that label bosses and artists believe are perfect for future Life Is Strange games. It’s why Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Death With Dignity’ is in Life Is Strange 2 and Researcher’s ‘Slow Wave Pulse Code’ is part of the True Colours soundtrack. “We get most of the things we want now,” grins Sumner.

They’ve protected that musical identity carefully

Deck Nine took over developing the Life Is Strange franchise for 2021’s True Colors. “It was DontNod’s baby and there was definitely more pressure on us after that,” says Herweijer. There have been “little tiffs” between Feel For Music and franchise newcomers over the years but publishers Square Enix have put “real trust” in the team that they know what they’re doing.

“I’m a huge believer in games having an identity and I love it when people are brave. With all the commercial pressures of making games, it’s very easy to just copy what other people are doing but we really stuck our flag in the ground with the Life Is Strange music,” says Sumner. “Can you imagine Life Is Strange with a hip-hop or heavy rock music? It’d just be weird.”

See, most narrative driven games have an orchestral soundtrack but Life Is Strange has always stuck to its indie rock guns. “It still occupies a unique space and you don’t want to dilute that. We feel quite protective [of] it,” Sumner adds. “We know what is and isn’t a Life Is Strange song. I feel like we’re the guardians of that.”

The soundtrack focused on songs, not scores

The original Life Is Strange and its 2018 sequel featured licensed music alongside an original score composed by Jonathan Morali, who also fronts alternative rock group Syd Matters. Wanting to blur the musical lines even further, Feel For Music reached out to shoegaze trio Daughter about creating a whole album for prequel Before The Storm. “They weren’t familiar with the game but as soon as they understood the vibe of it, they were all over it,” says Sumner. “I’ve always felt Life Is Strange was more about the songs than the score and blurring those lines between the two helps with the immersion, which is the end goal, right?”

Daughter’s acclaimed ‘Music From Before The Storm’ album has racked up millions of streams and is still the “quintessential” Life Is Strange sound, according to Herweijer. “We still reference it all the time.”

“I hope some of that music makes it into the TV show,” adds Sumner though he “couldn’t possibly comment” if Feel For Music were involved in the upcoming Amazon Prime Video adaptation.

 After that, more artists got involved

Angus & Julia Stone reunited to create a full soundtrack for True Colors, with Welsh ethereal rocker Novo Amor writing the main theme ‘Haven’. As the singing voice of main character Alex Chen, mxmtoon recorded covers of Radiohead and Violent Femmes. Alt pop artist Tessa Rose Jackson joined the team at Feel For Music to create the score for Double Exposure, while Dodie and Chloe Moriondo provided original songs. Reunion features new music from Jackson, NME cover star Holly Humberstone and Etta Marcus.

“Those artists just bring another layer of authenticity to the game. It’s the type of music the characters would be listening to,” explains Sumner. “Having those alternative, female voices represented is really important.”

“Especially in a very male dominated industry,” agrees Jackson. “Life Is Strange has female lead characters that aren’t designed around the male gaze, which feels really badass. It’s why it’s such a standout game for so many people.”

Reunion is the emotional end of an era

Like the name suggests, Life Is Strange: Reunion brings Max and Chloe back together for the first time since 2015’s debut.

“It’s partly about looking back, but there’s also an optimism about reuniting with someone that you really cared about – and all the emotional complexities that come with that,” says Sumner. It’s why old favourites Foals’ ‘Spanish Sahara’, Sparklehorse’s ‘Piano Fire’ (featuring PJ Harvey) and Lanterns On The Lake’s ‘A Fitting End’ are featured in the new game. “It’s about Max and Chloe’s journey – and we wanted to nod towards all the powerful musical moments that have come before.”

“It also felt like there was a lot of tenderness with the music. At the core of it, Reunion is a love story,” says Jackson, who leaned into the gritty, dark and psychedelic for Double Exposure while the music of True Colors came out poppier and more optimistic.

Reunion is a big deal for Life Is Strange fans, but the team at Feel For Music are sure they’ve got the final chapter of Max and Chloe’s story just right. “I didn’t see it as pressure, it was just really exciting” says Sumner, who has a massive playlist of potential tracks ready to go. “Glen and I both started out as DJs and curating game soundtracks is an extension of that – [it’s all about saying:] here’s an awesome piece of music that you might not have heard, but I know you’re going to love it.”

‘Life Is Strange: Reunion’ is out March 26 and you can check out every artist featured on the soundtrack here

The post How ‘Life Is Strange’s main character became its charming indie rock soundtrack appeared first on NME.

Call Of Duty made its debut in 2003, and for every year since, we’ve dutifully picked up a new game in the series. Activision Blizzard‘s first-person shooters have become a mainstay in autumn’s busy release season, and now with a whopping 22 games in the series, most generations can point to their favourite COD game with ease.

• READ MORE: Why is ‘Call Of Duty’ the best-selling game every year – and how long can it continue?

While some Call Of Duty games are looked back on as classics, not all of them have lived up to the hype – in short, there have been a few stinkers (spoilers – one of them is Ghosts). Below, we’ve ranked the 22 “mainline” Call Of Duty games -meaning no Warzone, sorry – to work out which is which and definitely not cause any arguments.

From the very first Call Of Duty to last year’s Black Ops 7, read on to find out where your favourite COD sits on our ranking – and more importantly, which Call Of Duty game we consider the all-time greatest.

Words: Jake Tucker, Andy Brown, Ali Shutler

22. Call Of Duty 3 (2006)

Console-only, Call Of Duty 3 was a mess of ideas that was hugely overshadowed by what came next, Modern Warfare. Featuring class-based multiplayer, vehicles and even scorestreaks, it was a very mid-2000s Xbox 360 shooter that didn’t really compete with what Battlefield and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas were doing at the time.

The campaign has its moments, particularly by forcing you into hand-to-hand combat sequences that felt cinematic for the time, and could see players using the Sixaxis movement sensing on the PlayStation 3 controller to beat enemy soldiers to death. Grim.

Call Of Duty 3 was developed in just 8 months and was no doubt hurt for being wedged between Call Of Duty 2 and Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – but it has some nice ideas that were incorporated into better, later, COD games.

Platforms: PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii.
Best map: Most of Call Of Duty 3’s maps are reskins of COD and COD 2 maps, but Stalag 23 is all-new and lets players charge around a PoW camp while one tower overlooks it all.
Bonus celebrity voice: American TV mainstay Mark Deklin stars as Maj. Gerald Ingram.

21. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 (2018)

Despite Black Ops being one of the most beloved single-player Call Of Duty campaigns, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 ditched the single-player campaign and its ’70s setting to go for a near-future multiplayer shooter that, frankly, sucked.

The story was delivered instead in the game’s multiplayer, although you would be forgiven for missing it as you ran around at 500 mph, desperately trying to avoid getting killed by the all-new specialists and their ridiculous signature weapons.

It’s mostly notable for Blackout, a battle royale mode that was an early attempt at Warzone, and for Specialist Ajax’s 9-bang, a flashbang that detonates multiple times and served as a tremendously funny fuck you to camping enemies.

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Best map: Contraband is one big bridge that holds a constant running firefight while flankers are funnelled into two wide-open areas to fight for dominance.
Bonus celebrity voice: This one is light on star power, but Black Ops mainstay James C. Burns returns as Sgt. Woods.

20. Call Of Duty: Ghosts (2013)

The United States is no longer a superpower. That’s the horrifying world portrayed in Call Of Duty: Ghosts, a fairly meh entry in the series that commits the cardinal sin of being nearly completely unmemorable, with a single-player campaign that ends with a miserable cliffhanger that will never be resolved. There’s also a dog, and a cool bit where you defend a space station from enemies before scuttling it.

The multiplayer is fairly underwhelming but a load of stuff has been done on the technical side: this was the first game to have sliding, leaning and animations for when you’re clambering around the environment, creating a more dynamic feeling COD. It also has a very fast time to kill (TTK) and bigger maps than before, hinting at a Call Of Duty that was trying to reinvent itself. The coolest part though was the Field Orders, which were a special pick-up from the first death of the match that would bestow upon its owner a special mission. Complete the mission and you’ll get a resupply and other powerful rewards, but die and you’ll drop a pickup for another player to have a go. This could lead to map-destroying events such as a mortar strike or even blowing up an entire baseball field.

Sadly, Ghosts failed to hit the mark as the first indicator that the Call Of Duty series was folding under its own weight, which led to serious changes in how the games were developed.

Platforms: PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC
Best map: Warhawk drops you in a town in Nebraska with plenty of buildings for snipers to set up in, but alleyways are often filled with stealthy players setting up ambushes and flanks
Bonus celebrity voice: Stephen Lang plays retired U.S Army Captain Elias Walker, but you can call him Scarecrow. Cringe.

19. Call Of Duty (2003)

Sorry, but it’s true. Call Of Duty’s very first entry had real promise but it’s nowhere near the CallOof Duty you’ll recognise today, playing like a very basic WW2-themed Quake 3. Which, it basically was, being built on the same engine.

Still, it’s hard not to appreciate how early the team at Infinity Ward locked in core components for Call Of Duty: there are different viewpoints, celebrity voices and a push towards realism by adding iron sights – allowing players to aim down sights for one of the first time in video games. There was even a shellshock mechanic, which messed you up if you were near explosions in the single-player campaign.

Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Best map: Carentan, later recreated as Chinatown in Modern Warfare,  is a French town with roads, buildings and backyards, while mounted machine guns provide solid anchor points. It’s also the only COD map to get namechecked in The Office.
Bonus celebrity voice: Jason Statham shows up as your commander Sargeant Waters, and the campaign is greatly improved for him growling in your ear during the British campaign.

18. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023)

The latest Call Of Duty, to enter our rankings, this dull reimagining of Infinity Ward’s original Modern Warfare trilogy felt utterly phoned-in. Despite the return of series villain Makarov, Modern Warfare 3‘s single-player campaign is both lifeless and shockingly short. Meanwhile, Zombies took COD fans’ favourite undead-blasting game mode and turned it into a limp extraction shooter.

The fact that Modern Warfare 3 continued on from 2022’s Modern Warfare 2 meant that multiplayer was a surprisingly balanced affair from day one. Yet even the return of iconic maps from 2009 couldn’t stop this entry from feeling like it should have been an expansion, not a full game.

Platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Best map: Airport shoot-em-up Terminal, though this one’s cheating because MW3 launched with the same maps as 2009’s Modern Warfare 2.
Bonus celebrity voice: Shadow And Bone star Julian Kostov drops by to play ultranationalist baddie Vladimir Makorov, but cheesy writing leaves him sounding like a Marvel villain.

17. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 (2015)

A mind-bending story and a stellar voice cast are huge wins for an otherwise forgettable Call Of Duty entry. The addition of cybernetics, robot combatants and even the cybercore abilities layer in a lot of systems to the single and multiplayer aspects of the game, but it often feels like there’s just too much going on and so little freedom.

By the end of the game you visit the Battle Of The Bulge for some reason (despite the sci-fi setting) and there’s a horde of zombies to defend yourself from. The tonal whiplash and the fact these elements aren’t handled that well puts a dampener on a campaign with solid ideas.

The multiplayer adds in unique operators but is bland and disinteresting. If you haven’t played this already, you haven’t missed much.

Platforms: PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Best map: Micro is not the best map in the game – sorry – but the most interesting, this shrinks down your soldiers and throws them into a pitched battle for dominance of a picnic table. Shoot ants to see them explode.
Bonus celebrity voice: Ben Browder, star of Farscape and the later Stargate SG-1 series’ is the voice of the male player character. Sci-fi legend Kate Sackhoff appears as Sarah Hall.

16. Black Ops 7 (2024)

After the runaway success of Black Ops 6 in 2024, Activision decided to follow it up with Black Ops 7 twelve months later. You can tell developers were going for bigger = better but it mostly felt like a tired rehash of what had come before. The warning signs were there from the start, as Activision flip-flopped over the ability to bring paid skins from Black Ops 6 into the new game and constantly tweaked how online matchmaking would work in multiplayer.

The co-op campaign was a bizarre mashup of grounded military missions and psychological sci-fi horror that punished those playing alone. The backlash was swift. Call Of Duty reported a “dissappointing” 2024 and issued a groveling apology that promised the end of back-to-back releases. All eyes are on Call Of Duty 2025 now.

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Best map: Toshin
Bonus celebrity voice: Milo Ventimiglia as David Mason, Kiernan Shipka as tech baddie Emma Kagan and Michael Rooker returning as Mike Harper

15. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) 

Modern Warfare 3 was the first of Infinity Ward’s Call Of Duty games after co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella left the company and Activision, taking with them a host of the core team that made Modern Warfare and its sequel possible.

Modern Warfare 3 fares fairly well when you consider all of the dramatic occurrences going on behind the scenes, but it mostly coasts on the Modern Warfare name. Modern Warfare 3 hits the same notes as MW2, even including a playable terror attack on civilians that can be skipped. This is the end of the original Modern Warfare trilogy, meaning a lot of players might have gone through this just to find out what happens with Captain Price and pals.

There’s a wealth of content for players who want to stick it to the AI, with survival mode and spec ops letting players team up and batter enemies. The multiplayer is fairly average too, slightly worse than its predecessors, but interesting enough for the time. MW3 is an iterative entry rather than anything really interesting.

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii
Best map: Hardhat: this construction site is full of unfinished buildings, but the best scraps are to be had in the central building that occupies the center. Furious close-quarters action is here, with a multitude of angles ensuring every firefight is a chaotic mess. It’s fun, though.
Bonus celebrity voice: Idris Elba, Timothy Olyphant, William Fichtner all star, while Billy Murray returns at Captain Price and Craig Fairbrass is in yet another Modern Warfare voicing Walcroft, this time.

14. Call Of Duty: World at War (2008)

A love letter to World War 2 films, World at War follows up the franchise-defining Modern Warfare by taking a giant step back into the past.

You’ll storm the beaches of Normandy like in Saving Private Ryan, crawl through the streets of Stalingrad Enemy At The Gates-style, and take orders from Kiefer Sutherland and Gary Oldman. World at War does do a surprisingly good job at being scary, with some sections merely being downright unpleasant and others channeling some genuinely spooky energy into their warfare.

However, gruelling difficulty spikes and a German army outfitted with an unlimited supply of grenades make actually playing the campaign frustrating. Elsewhere, the multiplayer has the same compelling Modern Warfare feel, but things are slightly off. This also marks the introduction of the attack dog care killstreak, one of Call Of Duty‘s most infuriating additions.

Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii, DS
Best map: Banzai: one huge bridge is the focal point for most of the combat, but below that there are scores of paths cutting their way under and around the bridge, giving players a way to rustle out the snipers hiding in the map’s dense vegetation.
Bonus celebrity voice: Gary Oldman plays the role of Sgt. Reznov, your Russian combat dad in the campaign. Kiefer Sutherland is Sgt. Roebuck, U.S combat daddy.

13. Call Of Duty: WW2 (2017) 

WW2‘s biggest issue is that it’s set in…well, you know. The French locales and the WW2 setting make the game feel jaded, but it actually had some fresh ideas, most of them in the campaign.

The knee-slide that has cursed modern COD games was replaced with a button to throw yourself prone and AI squadmates will even keep you supplied, handing you grenades and ammo during big assaults. For the six to seven hours that you’re tangled up in WW2’s story, you’ll enjoy every second, but once you’re done you’ll struggle to remember what you got up to.

The multiplayer was a bizarre experiment from Sledgehammer, a soft reboot of sorts just before Modern Warfare came along. A social area for WW2 has players crowded around the beach at Normandy, as loot boxes fall from the sky to bestow gifts upon players. It would be grotesque if it wasn’t so outright bizarre.

Elsewhere, multiplayer is decent but feels too modern, a trap that every World War 2-set Call Of Duty seems to fall into since 2007’s Modern Warfare: everything feels slick and modern, with red dots and lasers strapped to 1940s weaponry. Wouldn’t it be better to get some gunplay with a bit of heft to it? Still, it’s possible to have a great time if you load dragon’s breath rounds into your shotgun and go to town.

A strong entry, but not quite strong enough to land it in the big 10.

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Best map: Ardennes Forest: a battle of the bulge set three-lane classic, this is what COD maps are all about. Good sight lines mean scrappy running firefights.
Bonus celebrity voice: Josh Duhamel – soon to appear in The Callisto Protocol – starts as technical sergeant William Pierson

12. Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016)

One of the best Call Of Duty campaigns ever made collides full-body with a terrible multiplayer offering. Infinite Warfare takes Call Of Duty into space, with your character throwing down against some Martians – human colonists determined to take earth – with all sorts of hard-fiction gadgets.

There are so many highlights: the freedom to tackle the campaign in your own way, the fact that you have a combat robot programmed to spew one-liners to help ingratiate himself with the team, and even Kit Harrington taking a genuinely chilly turn as Admiral Kotch. Did I mention the zero-gravity firefights on deep-space capital ships? Honestly, at moments this is the best Call Of Duty has ever been.

The multiplayer, however, is terrible. Everyone moves too fast, but combat inversely feels too slow, with a long TTK and weapons that feel ineffectual. Even a futuristic Terminal reskin can’t save this from just feeling a little bit disappointing.

Even now, the campaign is worth your time. We don’t get enough hard sci-fi shooters and Infinite Warfare shows how much of a shame that is.

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Best map: Retaliation takes you to a war-ravaged Geneva, with a giant main building for close-quarters combat, with plenty of places for longer-range fighting and wall-running outside.
Bonus celebrity voice: Kit Harrington is in this and he is a right baddie.

11. Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014)

Another stellar campaign, Advanced Warfare feels like playing the best action movie you can think of. In one segment you’re executing a high-stakes raid on Camp David to rescue the President, in another you’re bounding down the Golden Gate Bridge, bounding over trucks to take out clusters of enemies. The kineticism at the heart of Advanced Warfare is a large part of its charm, and often feels like more of a Titanfall sequel – before we actually got one of those – than something in Call Of Duty.

It’s a Call Of Duty that actually says something, too: a condemnation of private military companies and the influence they can wield, although sadly that has been eroded by the fact that leading Advanced Warfare‘s military company is the disgraced Kevin Spacey, whose heel turn later in the story is now overshadowed by his acts in the real world.

Elsewhere, quick-time events and a lack of freedom really marred the experience. The multiplayer has wall-running and a lot of mobility, but somehow still feels approachable, with clean maps that make the game feel like a tighter Titanfall rather than the mess of high-speed shootouts you might see in Infinite Warfare or later Black Ops entries.

Platforms: PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Best map: Riot has two big open areas, three lanes and a mix of cover, high jumps and vantage points. Advanced Warfare is big on mobility, and this plays into that in a big way.
Bonus celebrity voice: Kevin Spacey is in this, as the giant gross elephant in the room.

10. Call Of Duty: Vanguard (2021)

Vanguard hits a lot of the same notes as the other recent World War 2 Call Of Duty games, but gets a higher position due to its inclusion of the Gunsmith customisation system and a fairly robust destruction mechanic that allows players in campaign and multiplayer to absolutely shred the world around them.

You join the world’s first special forces team, a force made up of Nazi-punchers from different nations. Sadly, you join them during their ultimate mission, so most of their tale plays out through origin stories and flashbacks set long past the point of frustration.

However, the performances are good and you get to do a lot of fun set pieces, it’s just a shame the campaign doesn’t really spend a lot of time exploring how this team works together and instead has characters blubbing over the death of friends, family and commanding officers until it all comes to a satisfying conclusion.

The multiplayer is good fun, albeit with the same problem as WW2: using modern customisation options with era-inappropriate options, giving players the option to create some truly cursed guns without really adding any mechanical support to the fact we’re in WW2.

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Best map: Eagle’s Nest is an all-time great Call Of Duty map, encompassing one long building and two winding paths that led around it. Grab a shotgun and head inside for a fun shootout, but the outside paths offer interesting options.
Bonus celebrity voice: British TV actor and Banshee star Chiké Okonkwo stars as Arthur Kingsley, and he’s brilliant.

9. Call Of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War (2020)

I love a spy story, and with Raven‘s first campaign for Call Of Duty, the developer tells a masterful one with a few interesting mechanical quirks: trying to solve puzzles in an ’80s safehouse in Berlin is memorable, and shootouts inside locations like a Russian recreation of small town America are some of the best moments Call Of Duty has to offer.

The campaign, sadly, is short and vanishes before it wears out its welcome. This is one of the bigger reasons Cold War doesn’t rank higher in the list – that, and the multiplayer lets things down. Coming directly after 2019’s Modern Warfare reinvented the wheel, Cold War‘s multiplayer often feels infuriating and never delivers the same serotonin hit as either version of the Modern Warfare franchise.

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Best map: Miami has the benefit of actually feeling like Miami, with a beach and hotel both providing memorable battlegrounds. Hunkering down and sniping from the hotel balcony is a great time, until you get flanked.
Bonus celebrity voice: Not strictly a voice, but Bruce Thomas – the motion capture body for Master Chief in Halo 4,5 and Infinite – appears here as Russell Adler.

8. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 (2012)

Remember that incredible Black Ops 2 commercial? Starring faces like Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black and FPSRussia, it was the most 2012 commercial ever and it was awesome.

Black Ops 2 examines America’s behind-the-scenes scraps and scrapes, and does some fun stuff: a shootout in a club full of civilians – soundtracked with dubstep because it’s 2012 – feels tense, and there are elements of real-time strategy, narrative branches and stories taking place in 1986 and 2025, giving you a good mix of different elements. The story itself is pretty gross, with some dodgy character motivations and even Michael Rooker showing up to spew exposition everywhere.

The multiplayer is better for getting rid of the ridiculous movement mechanics, with high-tech gadgets like thermal scopes that are fun to play with, but the real draw is that the levels blend retro style with the near future.

The character customisation is solid in multiplayer too, with create-a-class becoming the pick-10 system, which let players pick 10 things to use rather than just picking perks, weapons and attachments. Longer sight lines in the maps mean you often have a little more time to prepare for fights and the skill ceiling feels higher than many of the newer games in the franchise.

This was the last phenomenal Call Of Duty game before 2019’s Modern Warfare – after this, the multiplayer started to unravel.

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U
Best map: Grind drops you into a skate park and has players charging around the place trying to navigate a world of half pipes, ramps and some brutal sniper positions to punish anyone who tries to climb either.
Bonus celebrity voice: Michael Keaton gives a memorable performance as Jason Hudson, taking the reigns from Ed Harris who – spoilers – plays the role in Black Ops.

7. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022)

The sixth greatest Call Of Duty, 2022’s Modern Warfare 2 followed fan-favourite tough guys Soap, Ghost, Gaz and Captain Price as they romped across the world on a hunt for stolen missiles. It’s got no shortage of blockbuster setpieces, but Modern Warfare 2‘s campaign truly shines in its moments of restraint – like a stealthy crawl through an occupied Mexican town, or a sniper-fuelled spiritual successor to COD 4‘s All Ghillied Up. Within these quieter missions, Infinity Ward explores its characters with more charm than we’re used to seeing from Call Of Duty – and Modern Warfare 2 is all the better for it.

As for the multiplayer, Modern Warfare 2 offers a big step up to 2021’s Vanguard: weapons feel responsive and deadly, while new game modes like Prisoner Rescue offer a compelling middle ground between high stakes Search and Destroy games and more traditional death matches. While some disappointing map design cast a damper on Modern Warfare 2, the rebooted sequel is proof that Infinity Ward remains one of the best FPS developers in the business.

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Best map: Embassy is the best of a bad bunch – two buildings of an embassy have several routes to explore and a central area where all parts meet in repeated grisly bloodshed
Bonus celebrity voice: Barry Sloane returns from 2019’s MW1 to voice Captain Price, but video game fans will likely recognise Warren Kole – who voices Graves – as bad dude Rafe Adler from Uncharted 4. He’s also “Galaga Guy” from the first Avengers movie.

6. Call Of Duty: Black Ops (2010)

Black Ops is a worthy successor to the 2007 Modern Warfare and is one of the best settings for a Call Of Duty game, letting players explore America’s secret wars through the eyes of a few celebrity cameos.

The campaign is good fun although weirdly paced. You’re hurled between assassinations, invasions and wars throughout history with barely enough time to catch your breath, in a story that rips stuff from Fight Club. It’s not high art, but it does mean a lot of time riding around in Chinooks getting your hands on a variety of ’70s weaponry.

The multiplayer is exceptional too, taking what made Modern Warfare work and lacquering it with Cold War-era cool. It’s not quite as much fun, but killing an enemy with a ballistic knife – a knife you shoot like a gun – or even rinsing enemies in Search and Destroy with a FAMAS, ensures this is a game many players will be fond of.

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, DS
Best map: Nuketown has become a Call Of Duty icon, but it’s easy to forget quite how well-designed it is. A cul de sac of carnage, two houses face each other with scant cover and nowhere to hide.
Bonus celebrity voice: Ed Harris, Gary Oldman and Sam Worthington star, but Ice Cube’s turn as Joseph Bowman is the most memorable.

5. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)

Building on Modern Warfare‘s reinvention, Modern Warfare 2 is a confident, stylish romp. It may lack the substance of its predecessor but it made up for that with flash. Iconic moments are nearly constant: watching Soap tackle a man from the roof of a favela, skulking through a military base in a snowstorm by using a heartbeat sensor, and the famously maligned but actually quite tame airport section which sees you gunning down an airport full of civilians in a sequence that was seemingly designed solely for edge 16-year-olds.

As the story gets sillier and sillier, it never really stops being fun. There aren’t many games that would have you holed up in a burger restaurant, trying to kill invading Russian troops as an invasion force rolls across a car park, but no matter – Modern Warfare 2 has already nailed it. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, mind, but by the time you’ve seen the flaws you’ve already bought in.

The multiplayer is famous for the sheer variety of completely broken, rage-inducing, combos. Modern Warfare 2 is a game where you can be killed by sentry guns, riot shields, sawn-off twin shotguns or even a throwing knife that has bounced down from a rooftop to kill you instantly – likely just in time for it to be the game-ending killcam, embarrassing you for years as part of someone’s frag video forever more.

Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Best map: In a game filled with top-notch maps, Terminal takes the prize. A map so beloved it’s even a popular GMOD fixture, this is an airport turned into a shooting gallery
Bonus celebrity voice: Lance Henriksen takes a break from starring in every horror movie ever to appear as the villainous Lieutenant General Shepherd.

4. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)

Call Of Duty was in a bad spot when Modern Warfare’s reboot came in 2019. Sales were down and while it was still the biggest game in the world, it wasn’t all that exciting. This game mixed things up, and made everything feel fresh again: gone was the boiling world war that ended the original trilogy, and in its place was a quiet skulk through a house in Camden, looking for terrorists in the wake of a terrorist attack.

It’s still jingoistic. A war crime perpetuated in the real world by American forces has been rewritten to make Russia the baddies, and the franchise still goes all-in on how amazing the unaccountable special forces are, but generally the story is engaging and introduces a likeable cast.

Then, there is the cracking multiplayer. Gunsmithing makes Modern Warfare‘s arsenal feel huge and lets you personalise guns to your own needs, while the maps are excellent. Firefights around the stalled busses in Piccadilly Circus, or through underground caves, all feel solid, while the fidelity afforded to these means that firefights feel close to overwhelming sometimes.

Modern Warfare‘s team had an impossible mission: to make Call Of Duty cool again. They pulled it off.

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Best map: Shoothouse is a rat run of slaughter, with three lanes crisscrossed with flanking routes and cover placed smartly to encourage a cornucopia of violence
Bonus celebrity voice: Claudia Doumit – Victoria Neuman from Amazon’s The Boys – appears as Farah Karim.

3. Call Of Duty 2 (2005)

Call Of Duty 2‘s campaign is good fun, but hard to distinguish from Call Of Duty‘s – although the romp through Africa as British Desert Rats feels ahead of its time. Infinity Ward also does D-Day again, having originally tackled it in Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault. Now, it’s memorable for its non-linear levels, which was a bold move before Call Of Duty slid deep into scripted events and blockbuster explosions.

But if you have fond memories Of Call Of Duty 2 it’s more likely to be for its online elements. On PC Call Of Duty 2 has 64-person multiplayer, and it’s gloriously clunky with weapons being tricky to use. Persevere with it and the reward is firefights that feel just the right side of unpleasant, and combat that requires genuine thought to improve at. Picking your way through ruined buildings with a single-shot rifle while watching out for an ambush from the 32 enemy players out to ruin your day is a feeling that no Call Of Duty has ever successfully emulated.

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360
Best map: Lots of excellent Call Of Duty maps come back from Call Of Duty 2, but El Alamein is a new addition that might be the best of the bunch, filled with trenches, sniper spots and inky nighttime for stealthy players to take advantage of
Bonus celebrity voice: Band Of Brothers’ Michael Cudlitz gets back into WW2 character as Sgt. Glenn Hawkins.

2. Black Ops 6 (2024)

The first Call Of Duty game to be launched on Xbox Game Pass ended up being the perfect reintroduction to the long-running franchise. After several entries that offered nothing but needless tweaks to try and recapture the magic of 2019’s Modern Warfare reboot, Black Ops 6 was a back-to-basics version of the shooter that focused on high-octane gameplay, a paranoia-fuelled campaign and loads of celebrity skins.

The new omnimovement system meant players could live out their ‘90s action hero dreams by sliding, diving and jumping about the place while unloading rounds into enemy soldiers. The twisting single-player story, which involved a combat mission behind enemy lines in snowy Russia, the most daring casino heist you’ll ever attempt and a sneak-attack on Washington D.C.’s political community, was an enthralling lesson in trusting no one. The whole thing was familiar enough to keep the diehards happy, but feel exciting enough to captivate a whole new generation.

Platforms: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PC
Best map: Babylon
Bonus celebrity voice: Karen David as badass assassin Sev and Y’lan Noel as the Black Ops’ new leader, Troy Marshall

1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)

Admit it, you were expecting this. Much has been made of Modern Warfare for the way it shaped the franchise into what it is today. The praise is well-deserved. Combat in the campaign is pacey and engaging.

It’s easy to forget how innovative Modern Warfare actually was, too. So many of its innovations are now commonplace not only in the Call Of Duty franchise, but across contemporary shooters in general. The tutorial is an SAS shoothouse set as the player passes selection, while the opening level is an assault on a cargo ship as rain whips around the deck. ‘All Ghillied Up’ remains an all-time best FPS level as you sneak around an irradiated Chernobyl, and ‘Aftermath’ even offers a bleak look at the horror of nuclear attacks by letting you experience death by nuclear fallout, moments after a nuke is detonated at the end of a campaign mission.

‘Aftermath’ works best when you play it directly. Even years later I think about the struggle directly before that level as your character, Sgt. Paul Jackson, fights through the streets of Basrah trying to rescue a downed pilot so she isn’t captured by the enemy. It’s all heroism and derring-do, soldiers bravely risking themselves to make sure everyone comes home. Moments later it’s all irrelevant, and every single soldier you encountered in the American portion of the campaign – including the pilot – is obliterated. As Jackson, you might as well be the last person alive in the whole of Iraq, and you control him for a minute or so as you try to make sense of what the game wants you to do before you perish. There is no objective here. No hope for survival.

Games have played with this since, but in 2007? In a jingoistic military shooter? It was unthinkable. Revisited in Modern Warfare 3, you get to see the other side of the coin as the ultranationalist Makarov orders the detonation of the nuke, but this was at its best for new players in 2007, trying to get their heads around what they had seen.

The quiet black-and-white horror of ‘Death From Above’ is the shooter’s most effective moment. Your character sits quietly in the skies in an AC-130 while a colleague dispassionately comments on the slaughter you’re bringing to the ground below. It’s almost humorous, if not for the Wikileaks Apache footage that emerged in 2010 showing just how true to life ‘Death From Above’ actually was.

The multiplayer was revolutionary too: regenerating health, create a class, the perk system. That all came with Modern Warfare. The prestige system allowed players to start the levelling grind all over again in exchange for a new emblem on the player screen and this became an early status symbol for online gaming. It also meant getting your favourite weapon at level 36 (it was the G36, it’s okay to admit it) before packing it away again at level 55 as you started anew like a beautiful, combat-fuelled, butterfly.

This is the best Call Of Duty has ever been, and probably the best it ever will be.

Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
Best map: Shipment might have had more of an impact, but Crash is the real winner, encompassing the town around a helicopter crash, this might just be the best COD map ever created.
Bonus celebrity voice: Billy Murray from cop show The Bill plays Captain Price, while walking embodiment of the cockney accent Craig Fairbrass plays Gaz.

The post ‘Call Of Duty’ games ranked – what’s the best Call Of Duty of all time? appeared first on NME.

Since cat-and-mouse gameshow The Traitors hit our screens back in 2022, it’s become a global phenomenon. Based on the Dutch original De Verraders (and taking heavy inspiration from party games Mafia and Werewolf), The Traitors sees 22 strangers take up residence in a luxury castle and complete gruelling challenges to earn money towards a communal prize pot. To win the cash, the ‘faithful’ contestants must find and banish the ‘traitors’ hiding in their midst while avoiding the nightly ‘murder’. America, New Zealand and Australia have launched their own versions of the hit reality series and earlier this week, The Traitors Ireland finale was broadcast in the UK to millions of viewers, after a successful run on RTÉ late last year.

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There are plenty of strategies to win. Betraying a close friend was the name of the game for traitor Harry Clarke in season two, Stephen Libby and Rachel Duffy proved that teamwork makes the dream work in season four while faithful Oyin Adeyemi won The Traitors Ireland by being really great at spotting who was up to no good – and who was playing as part of a team.

Along the way, we’ve seen mediums, murder mystery writers and police detectives talk a big game about their years of experience in seeking out liars – before swiftly being given the boot from the castle. So what’s the secret to Traitors glory? If you ask self-confessed console warriors Adeyemi and season four’s unshakeable faithful Jade Scott, they’ll tell you it’s gaming.

And it makes sense. Video games teach you how to work with others, pick up on clues and sharpen your critical thinking, which are all key to cutting through the deliberately deceptive drama.

The Traitors is one giant social deduction game – so it helps if you’ve played them before

There was plenty of beef on The Traitors Ireland, which featured the most chaotic group of contestants yet. Within the first few days, all the traitors had publicly turned on each other and the faithful managed to banish four in five nights at the roundtable – but that only seemed to cause more confusion.

“We were like uncontrollable school children,” says Adeyemi. Still, while the contestants tied themselves in knots with fake accusations, the eventual winner shared surprisingly accurate assessments of what was really going on with those closest to her – biding her time before dropping destructive truth bombs that cleared the path to victory.

“My plan was to listen a lot more than I spoke because I didn’t trust myself to be constantly yapping while still picking up on things,” she explained. “When I did speak, I wanted it to be something substantial instead of a theory that just caused more confusion.”

“I think a lot of my success was down to being a gamer,” says Adeyemi, who preferred her pink Nintendo DS to a bike as a kid. During lockdown she played a lot of Among Us, the cutesy multiplayer game that replaces faithfuls and traitors with hardworking crew members and murderous imposters. It was the perfect trial run for her appearance on the show. “I love puzzle and rhythm games, so my attention to detail is sharpened. I also like horror games and being in The Traitors felt like a lowkey nightmare at times.”

A co-op mindset is key in the castle

At 23, Adeyemi was one of the youngest contestants on The Traitors Ireland, and with just a few days to prepare after another player dropped out at the last minute, she went into the game feeling very unsure of herself and her social skills. She doesn’t feature much in early episodes because she would take herself off to quiet corners of Slane Castle, struggling to cope with the stress. Adeyemi admits she was physically shaking during the first roundtable. “It all felt a bit much.”

That changed quickly. Adeyemi spent her youth playing Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. with siblings – and quickly found the team-based setting familiar. “A lot of people were playing the game differently, which was frustrating, but I knew we needed to be united. Most of us were working towards the same goal.” After nailing a couple of traitors, she was unstoppable.

“Being a gamer really helped with my deduction skills and being able to join up patterns. I learned long ago that a game developer isn’t going to put anything in their game that didn’t serve a purpose and it was the same with the traitors,” she explained. “I knew everything was happening for a reason – the people that were killed off, the dramas that were going on – so I just needed to figure out the reason behind it.”

It’s important to fine-tune your strategy like a good gamer

Season four fan-favourite Jade Scott is a big button masher and applied to take part in The Traitors because she loves “anything that’s like a real life video game.” She prepared by playing indie multiplayer game Dale & Dawson Stationery Supplies and survival adventure Project Winter. “I was in full social deception mode…  In hindsight, that might not have been the best idea.”

See, her strategy was to act suspiciously enough to draw attention, therefore making it unlikely that the true traitors would murder her. But she overcooked it and became a main suspect throughout her stay in the castle. “I figured I could control when I lost, because I could sit and defend myself at the roundtable whereas if you’re up for murder, you can’t do anything about it.

“I just did well arguing with people,” she says of surviving all the way to the final. “I’m quite a critical thinker, so I could bring up perspectives that the other players hadn’t considered and I just got really good at defending myself.”

She admits the plan did “backfire” though because she exerted so much energy defending herself that she couldn’t focus on working out who the traitors were. “I just spent a lot of my time on the back foot.”

Jade says her success was down to Minecraft and Counter-Strike

Scott got into gaming via sandbox titles Minecraft and Garry’s Mod after a stint noodling about in virtual dollhouse The Sims. She soon moved onto online multiplayer shooter Counter-Strike 2 and strategy battle arena game DOTA, where trolls sometimes take advantage of the chat functions to abuse other players.

“Those experiences definitely helped how I communicated with others in The Traitors,” she says. “But it was mostly people having a go at me because I was a woman – or they weren’t very good and wanted someone to blame. I don’t have the time of day for people like that any more.” She was also wary of telling her fellow contestants about her love of gaming. “I didn’t want to be seen as really clever and super strategic… or as someone who sits alone in their room, not talking to anyone.

Post-Traitors, Jade’s avoided social deception games and has focused on story-driven titles instead – The Outer Worlds, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince, Slay The Spire. “It gives me a good escape from daily life,” says Scott, who’s still juggling Traitors fame with working on her PhD at Warwick University after earning a Master’s degree in Biomedical Science. She’s also started backing herself more (“I go into my lab meetings with way more confidence”) and has returned to streaming on Twitch. “I know The Traitors finale was watched by 9.6million people but I was [just as] proud of playing Cult Of The Lamb with 50 viewers last weekend!”

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