News

If you’d have told me that in the fine year of 2026, I’d be back to my hobgoblin ways of racing home to pour hours into a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, I’d probably have laughed you off.

Under the Radar is our way of highlighting great games that might have passed you by. Through a regular mix of news stories and features, we'll cover great experiences that we feel haven't found the audience they deserve. Read the full series here.

However, here I am, watching the clock until 5:30 PM so I can race home and log into Seed, a new life simulator from Klang Games that I think could herald a new renaissance for MMOs.

Summer Game Fest 2026 gave my colleague Dashiell Wood the chance to go hands-on with Seed, and his strong first impression held true when I got my hands on an early access code a little under a month ago.

Co-founded by veterans from CCP Games, the creators of Eve Online, the team behind Seed certainly has the credentials If you love games like Eco, The Sims and Factorio, you’ll be just as hooked as I am.

The game has already attracted a healthy audience, with thousands of active daily players. It’s a promising start, though it has to be said that a lot of work will be necessary to retain that audience and continue to grow in the months to come.

Still, I spend every waking moment craving Seed. In the last month, I became mayor, witnessed the rapture, and built a metropolis with total strangers — and I can’t wait to see what the game throws at me next.

In short, your goal in Seed is simple: work with other real players in your randomly generated society and colonize the planet of Avesta, building a thriving community with a local economy and, later, global trade.

Because servers run 24/7, your playable Seedlings continue working and caring for themselves while you're offline—provided you set them up with balanced automations and basic necessities. There’s even a beta mobile app where you can check in and issue commands via chat; more on that later.

It’s surprisingly challenging, especially if you’re part of a foundling community. Your Seedlings aren’t always easy to keep alive when resources are scarce, meaning access to clean water and cooked food is an urgent undertaking. Seedlings can suffer from various health ailments and even die as they go about their lives; I lost count of how many times mine developed jaundice from compulsively drinking murky water.

It took me a solid week to nail down my Seedling's schedule — balancing needs against production lines, storage, trade, and resource shortages. At times, it’s a rollercoaster ride: the highs of logging on to see tens of thousands in revenue, and the low sof discovering that one misclick in an "if/then" automation halted all production.

All societies live on one sprawling world map, and as you progress, you’ll be vying with other player groups for territory and resources, and for attracting new players (with their wallets) to your town.

For now, at least, that feels like a distant problem; many societies are still developing. That’s part of what makes Seed so exciting as an MMO; it really does feel like the game is going to keep evolving with its player base, and already the choices from other societies have had a direct impact on how we run our own…

For the past month, my society inexplicably elected me mayor — an honor that gave me a front-row seat to Seed’s complexity. Societies evolve in stages based on shared goals, and with each step you gain new roles in government, features like legislation and slots for more Seedlings to join.

My own community has just become a Metropolis, with several of our more active players quickly training up their Seedlings into careers like carpentry, metalwork, tailoring and medicine. We've launched businesses from foundries and chemical plants to hotels and cafes to handle to service the 40+ Seedlings in our group and participate in global trade. It’s tough, but it’s honest work.

I’m also the proud magnate behind a furniture-making business, with my Seedlings specializing in carpentry and tailoring, and I’ve hired several players on the server into the fold to help me haul deliveries and craft furniture both to sell and furnish my two hotel businesses. You’re incentivised to pay your Seedlings well; your society's average salary and the balance of wealth is a key metric by which to attract new players, as are any society-level benefits you offer new players like bonuses, tax legislation, new business grants and even workers’ rights.

Finding the balance between this and also keeping the game fun for all involved is vital — and challenging. As I write this, a disagreement between two of the larger business owners in my society has led to a small fallout and calls for legislation around land ownership. Trust is essential, but hard-won among strangers.

There have already been quite a few exciting dramas in our society.

We founded on the first day of early access, so many players came through our doors to test the waters in Seed, only to then log out and never return. There are no NPCs in Seed, meaning all members of your society are real people — their activities need to be automated within the Schedule menu, or else your Seedlings will just kind of bimble around aimlessly.

We quickly discovered that even with well-populated schedules, those AFK players wreaked havoc in what I've dubbed 'The Great Haulening'. With many of them set to harvest and haul goods, our society was quickly overloaded with piles of resources and overwhelmed storage that disrupted our ability to trade globally by filling up our mailbox with junk.

Then there are the bugs. Oh lord, the bugs. The marketplace where you trade with other societies has been broken pretty much since day dot, and while recent commitments to fix this from the developers are reassuring, it’s certainly created some disparity among the societies that figured out workarounds and those that couldn’t.

My favorite bug though has to be ‘The Rapture’: the servers went down for two hours, which stopped time fully in Avesta for, to my knowledge, the first time.

All automations were paused, however all Seedling needs continued to depreciate, meaning every player with the companion app got a simultaneous notification that their Seedlings were dying and had to log on in a panic (for me, that was at 2 AM) to revive them. Thankfully, a few of our society members were online to run around and resuscitate the 95% of us who had collapsed, but not everyone was so lucky...

While I’m loving the game in itself, another potentially not-so-rosy element to Seed is its divisive use of generative AI.

Now, I’m typically conservative with the technology; I don’t think it should be used unless genuinely additive, especially in gaming, and definitely not frivolously while concerns remain about the impact of AI on our environment.

In Seed, you can use gen AI to chat with your Seedlings, which I’ve used mostly as a way to give them instructions to consume things or do tasks, especially while I’m away from the game and when life-threatening issues arise. You’re also occasionally incentivized to casually chat with them as part of your daily tasks, which is quirky at first but tires quickly.

The second primary use for gen AI is P.A.M, the in-game assistant that can help you learn how to play the game.

With Seed being so complex and in-depth, this is a genuinely useful resource and, by and large, it’s been a helpful companion with all of my requests. It’s a neat way to avoid having a pages-and-pages-long companion guide, but ultimately it’s still prone to getting things wrong, often has broken links and sometimes just gives up and recommends that you ask the World Chat.

It’s not inextricably linked to the gameplay, but it’s also omnipresent, and if you are one to take a bold stance against the use of AI, it’ll potentially put you off this otherwise brilliant game.

That being said, you might also find the pricing structure a turn-off.

You’re given one Seedling slot to play with, which will live for up to 120 real-world days. When they die, you lose everything if you have no other living Seedlings, so you’ll probably want a second Seedling Slot and another Seedling Life — which you’ll have to pay for Pollen, an in-game currency you can earn by levelling up your user profile or with real money.

These come in four tiers, starting with a basic slot that offers 100 real-world days of a Seedling’s life all the way up to Platinum, a permanent slot — full pricing information for all in-game purchases can be found here. This on top of an already $30/€29.99 (roughly £25) game might feel a little too close to a subscription scheme... and it kind of is.

Personally, I enjoy the game enough and understand enough about the costs of server upkeep to justify having spent some of my hard-earned cash on a permanent slot, but for some, the threat of losing everything when their Seedling dies and starting from scratch is disincentivizing. For others, it means an endless opportunity to graft; it’s down to the player to decide what feels more fun to them.

I do share reservations on both the use of AI and the subscription-like costs; but I don’t think either have to define my overarching enjoyment of the game, which has been immense.

I’ve sunk hours and hours into refining my strategy, working with my community towards our shared goals setting up our local economy, and had a good laugh with many of the players I’ve met so far from all around the world.

It’s a real throwback to the heyday of online gaming, and if it sticks, I think Seed could inspire other developers to take a risk on what is, admittedly, a hard product to monetize and upkeep in the increasingly competitive gaming market.

I hope it does, because I’ve definitely got the itch.

4K Blu-ray is a big part of my work at TechRadar. Not only is it my staple source for testing the best TVs and best soundbars, but thanks to its superior picture and audio quality over 4K streaming, the movies themselves have now become one of my main areas of coverage.

As a big fan of 4K Blu-ray, both as a user in AV testing and as a collector, I helped start our Blu-ray Bounty series, where we review the latest 4K releases from each month, scrutinizing their picture and audio quality, back in 2024.

While the 4K Blu-ray market (and the market for physical media in general) has been a volatile one in recent years, the Blu-ray fan base has always been a passionate one. As I’ve been testing more 4K releases, I’ve come to appreciate what the format can do for older titles and general at-home watching even more, and I now include myself in that passionate fanbase.

So, when I was invited to visit Silversalt Restorations, a company whose work ranges from audio restoration, data archiving and restoration and transfer of movies to Blu-ray restoration (including 4K), I jumped at the chance. The company has some big-name clients, having worked with Hammer, Arrow Video, Disney, Paramount, Universal and Criterion, among others. All of those brand’s 4Ks have been featured in Blu-ray Bounty, so I was excited to see how the magic happens.

Silversalt Restorations was founded in 2017 by a team of restoration artists, before being acquired in 2024 by John Gore Studios, another company dedicated to the preservation and restoration of classic titles, especially British cinema. Some of Silversalt’s biggest projects include The Deer Hunter, The Wicker Man, The Dollars Trilogy, The Curse of Frankenstein and the upcoming release of Dracula (the iconic Hammer horror classic starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing).

I was taken on a tour of Silversalt’s studio in Hammersmith, led by Managing Director Mark Bonnici, during which I was shown everything that goes into the meticulous process of restoring a movie.

My journey begins at the film inspection table, where Marie Fieldman, Silversalt’s resident film inspector, is hard at work inspecting an old film reel for damage, including visible scratches, marks, wear and tear, degradation, and even mould on each individual frame, before crafting a detailed report for the respective client. “Some of these haven’t been looked at by a human for a very long time,” Fieldman says, as she shows me an older report she did for 1954’s Men of Sherwood Forest. Here, she’s labelled every single defect she can find, noting the level of damage and the best course of action.

She tells me about what fixes can be implemented, such as the cleaning of mould and even using a blank frame in place of a damaged one, which won’t be noticeable in the final movie, noting that deep scratches can be particularly problematic.

Once she is happy with the state of the film reel, it’s taken over to a cleaning machine. The reel is mounted and travels between Dacron rollers where surface dirt is gently removed with a film-safe solvent. Marie warns, “In some cases the film may need to be hand cleaned, for example if the film has a wax coating”. Once the film is clean, it’s ready for scanning.

Next, Bonnici shows us the two scanning machines Silversalt uses. The first is the Arriscan XT. The Arriscan XT can use a wet-gate system, where the film is immersed in a Kodika, a special liquid which optically minimises scratches and marks as the film is digitised into a digital image sequence, known as a DPX file. The film is scanned in at 6K resolution, before being downgraded to 4K for 4K Blu-ray. “The Arriscan XT was originally designed for new film stock, but was later revised to handle archive/legacy film too,” Bonnici says.

He then shows us a more advanced film scanner, the Laser Graphics Director scanner. This scanner is specifically designed for archival footage which also uses an infrared light to detect marks and scratches on colour film and makes corrections during the scanning process. The Director scans up to 13.5K resolution and can handle 8mm to 35mm film.

Once cleaning and scanning are completed, the DPX files are sent to the restoration artists, who work their magic to restore the uploaded film reel by correcting image instability, removing superfluous scratches and marks that the scanner has picked up from the original film, removing excess film grain, and generally tidying up the image.

The digitised frames are saved to file storage and then the digital restoration work begins. The frames are analysed for film dirt and the results are presented to the restoration artists, they can review these in a red mode, which highlights the differences between the results and the original version and any falsely removed part of the image reinstated. “We spend most of our time putting detail back in that’s been incorrectly removed,” restoration artist Anthony Badger tells me. “The system can sometimes struggle to distinguish between dirt and other textures within the film, like snow.”The artists perform other tasks such as stabilisation, deflicker, scratch removal etc. Anthony shows us various examples of larger fixes performed by the artists.

One of the clips I’m shown shows the red filter picking up what it thinks are marks and scratches. However, it also highlights a section of a character’s trouser leg and attempts to remove it, mistaking it for a scratch, and this in turn takes an odd chunk out of the leg. This is where Badger and the other restoration artists will add detail back in.

During the restoration process, artists will carefully check each frame in quarters, zooming in to see if there are any other areas where the picture can be cleaned up. When it comes to film grain, it can be tricky. “It can be a bit of an ethical dilemma on how much we intervene,” Badger tells me, “but we need to consider if an extreme problem will take you out of the story.” The team’s philosophy is to deliver a great-looking restoration that preserves as much of the original, authentic look of the film as possible which is accessible to the expectations of modern audiences, without reinventing it.

I’m shown another example, from Don’t Look Now, the 1973 thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. As Sutherland arrives in Venice for the first time, Badger points out a large yellow stain that appears on screen. “This appears to be a film lab processing error that would have been in the original negative and all previous releases,” he says. He goes on to say that the client requested that this be toned down as much as possible. With some magic work by the Silver Salt team, involving background replacement, layering and even some rotoscoping, going as far as using an extra in the scene traversing the frame as a wipe to make the transition seamless, the yellow staining is significantly reduced and the picture is beautifully restored.

Once the DPX files have been restored and the team are happy, the film is then sent off for grading, including HDR (if relevant). As Mark takes us up to one of the grading suites, he recalls Silver Salt’s first 4K HDR Dolby Vision grading project. “It was The Deer Hunter, which was a significant milestone for us and set the standard for future releases,” he says. He particularly remembers the opening scenes in the steel mill, with molten iron serving as an excellent showcase for 4K and HDR grading. “If you can ooze more detail out of it, why not?” he says.

Next, he takes us into another grading suite, where we meet Ray King, Head of Film at Silversalt, and one of the main graders. As we enter, King is working on Dracula, the iconic 1973 Hammer flick starring Christpoher Lee and Peter Cushing. He talks about his process, and what type of film he prefers working with. “You’ve got to get a feel for the film,” he says, emphasising the importance of experimenting with color grading and detail to get the best results. “It helps bring the movie to life when you have the original elements,” he adds, saying he prefers to have the original film available.

As King works on a few scenes, he explains some of the details he works on, including skin tones and primaries, and points to a scene in which Cushing’s skin takes on a red hue. “Because of the old stage makeup and lighting they used in some older movies, when you’re changing the color grade, skin can take on this red tone.”

With a few quick adjustments, King reduces the red tone in the skin without compromising on the superb color he’s brought out in the surroundings, with vibrant, gorgeous reds in the velvet curtains being one particular highlight. Suddenly, there’s a wonderful richness and depth to the picture, with accurate colors and crisp textures that give this horror classic the distinctive '4K treatment' look that I’ve seen in so many great Blu-ray releases. “Once we’re done, some of these movies look like they could have been filmed last week,” King says proudly.

As he shows me his grading work on Dracula, he highlights that the original negative has faded over time, some colours more than others. To illustrate this fading, Ray showed us the red green and blue waveforms in the individual colour channels in his grading system and with the final results after his corrections on the grading monitor, the result I’m seeing is excellent. “Night time scenes can be very difficult to do,” King adds, pointing to a scene with a dark, shadowed forest that could easily show signs of black crush if not graded correctly. Ray mentions that he can use soft edges to remove black crush and again, the results I’m seeing are superb.

The above really is just an overview of the fantastic work Silversalt Restorations does — the process of restoring a film is so intricate and laborious that it takes these talented artists and technicians countless hours of careful work to bring new life to a movie on 4K Blu-ray, especially the older, classic titles from studios like Hammer.

As a 4K Blu-ray collector and fan, it was such a great experience to see the hard work — and, frankly, wizardry — that the Silversalt team can perform. While I’ve always marvelled at how good 4K Blu-rays can look, now that I’ve seen the restoration process in action, albeit briefly, I appreciate the format even more — and I especially appreciate the amount of work that goes into making many of our favorite movies look so good.

Founded in 2014 by competitive Starcraft 2 players Ian Ang and Alaric Choo, Secretlab has steadily grown from one of Singapore’s countless plucky start-ups to one of the most recognizable gaming chair brands in the world.

The award-winning Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 is its flagship product (named one of the best gaming chairs on the market in our review). The brand also manufactures a successful line of desks and this year branched into the productivity-focused task chair market with its new Atlas model.

Special edition gear has steadily become a key part of the offering as well. Shoppers can scoop up officially licensed products tied to some of the biggest games like Overwatch and Cyberpunk 2077, massive multimedia franchises including Pokémon and Warhammer, popular esports teams, or even luxury car brands McLaren and Lamborghini.

But it all began with a certain caped crusader.

“I chose Batman at the start,” Choo, who also heads the company’s partnerships, explains as I relax on a sofa in his corner office at the brand’s HQ. A pile of material samples amassed over years of research and development sits on the glass coffee table in front of me: strips of bright orange fabric designed to look like Dragon Ball hero Goku’s iconic robes, a moulded plate inspired by the front of a supercar, a detailed print of the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter, and countless other items.

“We were much smaller back then, so we didn't have many options, but Batman was such a huge IP, and I just felt like it made sense for us,” he continues. This was nine years ago and, although other gaming furniture brands have embraced similar collaborations in the years since, Choo says a crossover gaming chair was a novel idea at the time.

“DC was kind of like, 'we have a lot of license categories. We have everything. We have figures, we have statues, we have cups, we have shirts and bags, but we've never done a chair.’"

In such uncharted territory, Choo reckons that it took a whole year to work out how to approach the product’s design. “It sounds obvious now: a Batman chair is black, right? But do you go with the iconic Batman, where it's a yellow logo and retro? We were coming off the armor and whatnot — the [Dark Knight] movie was out at the time, so we went that direction.”

“We were thinking about what Batman would sit in; what chair would he have in his bat cave?” reveals Choo. The final design is sleek and understated, adorned with a subtle bat emblem and a carbon-fiber-like pattern. It looks like something that could exist in the world of comics, and this approach immediately resonated not just with franchise owner Warner Bros. but also with consumers.

Warner Bros. entered Secretlab in the 2021 Licensing International Excellence Awards, where it won ‘Best Licensed Product’ in the home décor category, and the chair remains one of the company’s most popular designs. It even caught the attention of Batman artist Jim Lee, who snuck the Secretlab logo onto the hero’s personal seat in Batman comic book issue #159.

“It was crazy. [A picture of the panel] was just sent to us randomly,” laughs Choo. “I bought three copies: I kept one for myself. I sent one to the guy that's in charge of Warner Bros. in Singapore, and then the third one I showed my mom.”

The success of the Batman chair gave Secretlab plenty of reason to pursue future collaborations, and informed how it approaches each one to this day. “We don't want to just put logos on things and call it a day. We want to go in depth. We want to know the lore,” begins Choo.

Whether it's poring over comic book panels, diving into video games, or watching all the movies or cartoons in a particular series, the team isn’t afraid to go deep into the source material of any intellectual property they are working with. “If we weren't originally fans of the IP before, we become experts,” he adds.

Choo does admit there are occasions when this isn’t possible though, like the build-up to a new release where details are kept under wraps: “Sometimes we're designing stuff with very little information. We don't like to do that, but sometimes we have to do it.”

Walking around the company’s global headquarters, it’s easy to see that employees are encouraged not to shy away from the properties they love. Desks are covered in figurines and other collectibles based on a wide range of games, comic books, manga, movies, and more. Even Choo’s own space is adorned with nerdy memorabilia.

“All the IP that we work with, even currently, a lot of it is stuff that we are very, very passionate about. “I'm a Pokémon fan, so I don't just want to put whatever on a chair. I want to go deep into it with them; I want to collaborate at a high level. I want to come up with, like, assembly manuals that have custom art and that kind of thing,” he continues, gesturing to a colorful Genshin Impact print.

Secretlab currently has three separate Pokémon chair designs inspired by Pikachu, Gengar, and Eevee. You might assume that choosing which characters to base designs on is a simple popularity contest. Still, Choo argues that the team is actually more concerned with coming up with ideas that are unique and fit Secretlab’s premium brand image.

“Sometimes a popular Pokémon doesn't have a good color scheme, for example, and it would be off brand for us. We also need to think about Pokémon's guidelines as well; it's one of those things where there are so many rules,” he explains. “If it's all color, then it's too loud as well. Only a kid would want it. How do I make it tasteful in a way where an older fan can have it in their house, and it will be a good fit?

Secretlab collaborations are characterized by a careful attention to detail, with intricate design elements that often incorporate new materials and manufacturing techniques.

“I think we've always gone all out on all of our collabs,” says Choo. “We have certain manufacturing methods that have become more viable to use. One of the things that we talk about a lot is the embroidery. It's something that I think companies don't like to use because it's very expensive. It's very time-consuming. We have certain panels that can take seven, eight hours to do.”

We've always gone all out on all of our collabs

Alaric Choo, co-founder and technical & partnerships director at Secretlab

Secretlab’s crossovers with luxury car brands stand out as perhaps the most materially complex in its portfolio. The most premium Automobili Lamborghini editions, for example, are decked out in the same Dinamica microsuede material found on high-end car dashboards and lightweight carbon fiber plating.

“Lamborghini is one of the greatest luxury names, so we were thinking about how we can elevate the partnership,” Choo explains as I examine a sturdy black panel from the table. “When we look at Lamborghinis, there is a lot of carbon fiber usage. The weave that they use and how they put it together — carbon fiber is a pain in the ass to work with. It's like you're layering different sheets, and it bubbles very easily.

“When we did it, we looked at the shape of the carbon fiber on Lamborghini cars, and we were like, ‘We think that this is it.’ We had to come up with a mounting method and learn to use carbon fiber. Obviously, we used it sometimes in certain prototypes, but we hadn’t actually mass-produced it, so it was a first for us.”

Creating new manufacturing processes and tools can be expensive, but Choo isn’t worried that the added cost could hurt profits. “It may not always directly translate financially, but we don't think about things in so much of the short term,” he says. “In the overall term, it pays off that when we do something, we do it properly. I think that's the main point for us: if we're going to do it half-assed, let's not do it at all.”

He thinks that consumers appreciate the overall “consistency” and have come to expect a lot of effort from the brand: “Holding yourself to a very high standard pays off over time.”

A privately held company, Secretlab can afford to invest in developing this kind of relationship with consumers in a way that some of its biggest competitors perhaps can’t. With the company’s value estimated to be nearing the billion-dollar mark back in 2021, Choo’s long-term thinking is obviously paying off.

I’ve played a lot of Battlefield. Across the series, I’ve spent more than 1,500 hours running and gunning through its virtual combat zones* — that’s about 0.7 per cent of my entire life.

And as our Battlefield 6 review details, 2025’s flagship first-person+ shooter from Battlefield Studios has put the long-running franchise back in the spotlight after an extended off-season. It even beat Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 to become the best-selling FPS game of 2025.

However, Battlefield 6 didn’t release with a huge amount of content, and not everyone loved the game’s compact maps, weapon balance, or seasonal update cadence. I myself felt let down by the glacial progression system.

To its credit, Battlefield Studios announced a roadmap in April 2026, led by a third season designed to stir nostalgia for Battlefield’s previous present-day installments, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4.

Having spent a cool 675 hours in-game, Battlefield 4 is one of my most played titles of all time — for comparison, I’ve put 135 hours into Battlefield 6 since launch. It seems Battlefield Studios is keen to remind us of the good old days, so when Season 3 came around, I plugged in my PS4 to see how far my favorite shooter series has come.

(*675 hours in BF4, 510 hours in BF1, 135 hours in BF6, 50 hours in BFV, and an estimated 200 hours in BF3. Sheesh.)

With my bipod knife equipped, I was ready to jump into Battlefield 4 — but finding a game in 2026 isn’t as easy as pressing ‘Quickmatch’.

Amazingly, there are still a few official PS4 servers, but they’re always empty. The server browser is the best way to find a game via community servers, which means dealing with smaller map rotations, unofficial rules, and the occasional power-tripping admin.

Battlefield 6 has the opposite issue — a server browser is on the way, but for now, your only option to find a game is to quickmatch into a lobby full of randoms. That’s a win for Battlefield 4; I’ve always enjoyed learning the ebb and flow of a server and its residents over the course of a few matches.

Once I got online, I was genuinely surprised by how the game felt. It’s much slower-paced than I remembered; the sliding and vaulting and diving that defines Battlefield 6’s movement system is totally absent, maps are larger and sparser, and it takes longer to get in and out of combat.

All of this speaks to how Battlefield 4 is designed — compared to the infantry-focused corridors and choke points of Battlefield 6, older Battlefield games were built from the ground up as huge clashes between coordinated squads of troops, armored ground vehicles, and air support.

Furthermore, certain weapons are class-locked in Battlefield 4, meaning you can’t use, say, a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher at the same time. It asks for a bit more thought in how you approach your in-game role, which makes laying down suppressive fire as a Support class or rushing objectives as an Assault player feel more considered and rewarding.

As I settled in on classic maps like Dawnbreaker and Siege of Shanghai, I found myself choosing fights carefully and wordlessly working with my teammates to take objectives. In contrast, matches in Battlefield 6 can often feel determined by the skill of each team’s best individual players.

Another thing you notice pretty quickly about Battlefield 4 is just how much stuff the game has to offer.

The Premium edition, which includes all five paid DLC packs released in the year or so after launch, has a total of 33 maps and 107 primary and secondary weapons, more than any other entry in the series.

The differences between each weapon are less noticeable than in future games, but this means that gunfights aren’t always decided by who happened to pick the right weapon for a certain engagement distance, or indeed whose split-second reactions were fastest.

And then there’s the destruction that Battlefield 4’s maps offer — while Battlefield 6 will let you knock through a wall or blow up the odd building, Battlefield 4’s maps come with ‘Levolution’ gimmicks that range from leveling a skyscraper to flooding the entire map.

Some of these maps are amongst the most creative in the series history – the jungle terrain of Guilin Peaks, locked-down streets of Propaganda, and crashing waves of Paracel Storm are as inventive as Battlefield gets.

Battlefield 4 looks pretty good for a game released in 2013. The game’s art direction shines on maps like Hainan Resort and Giants of Karelia, but its low-poly terrain and flat lighting are getting harder to ignore as time goes on.

There’s no real contest with Battlefield 6, which is simply one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. Season 3’s revamp of Battlefield 4 map Golmud Railway is a great example – its vibrant fauna and detailed villages provide a great contrast to the carnage.

The way I remember Battlefield 4 looking is the way Battlefield 6 actually looks — playing both games in sequence makes it clear just how far we’ve come graphically in the past decade.

Somehow, Battlefield 6’s campaign kicks it up another notch – an early-game paratrooper sequence had my jaw pinned to the floor. From a writing standpoint, though, that campaign is more of a mixed bag, with a noticeable lack of real-world grounding.

Battlefield 4 saw the USA, Russia, and China locked in a tense conflict. The characters in its campaign always felt secondary to the overarching geopolitical threat — a smart choice when you’ve only got a few hours to develop your story.

As such, Battlefield 4’s online matches gain another layer of emotional investment from its worldbuilding.

In contrast, Battlefield 6 features a vaguely American NATO, and the fictional Pax Armata private military company engaged in seemingly random skirmishes across the globe, which doesn’t have quite the same gravitas.

Battlefield 4 is still the quintessential Battlefield experience, the benchmark from which the series’ future efforts are measured. Despite its slower gameplay and aging visuals, it still offers a rewarding mix of arcade and tactical shooter elements that subsequent entries haven’t quite matched.

I’m still a huge fan of Battlefield 6’s faster, more constrained experience, and I’m keeping a keen eye on upcoming seasons, which promise five new maps and the introduction of naval combat by the end of 2026.

I think it’s important that Battlefield Studios makes this mix of vehicle and infantry a priority. There’s no denying that the rebooted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series had a massive impact on the series’ latest entry, and with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 set to land later this year, Battlefield would be best served by updates that emphasise its difference from Activision’s champion franchise.

If you’ve yet to experience Battlefield 4, I’d suggest picking it up as soon as possible – the multiplayer servers for spin-off Battlefield Hardline shut down on 22 June, and while Battlefield 4 is still supported, there’s no knowing when that could change.

If you haven't secured yourself a Google Pixel 11 preorder, then I've got one more potential option to throw in the ring. In fact, it might be the best option if you're looking to buy an unlocked device outright.

Amazon currently lists the Google Pixel 11 for preorder with a $100 gift card on all colors and storage sizes. That's a gift card to spend anywhere on Amazon, so it's definitely a very handy little bonus, even if it's not an outright discount.

The closest deal I've seen to this gift card is a bundle deal over at the Google Store, which gets you $200 of store credit with either the Pixel 11 Pro or Pixel 11 Pro XL. It's technically a better deal, but the fact that you can't get it on the standard Pixel 11 — and the fact that the Google Store's inventory is more limited than Amazon's — makes it more restrictive.

Amazon also has a trade-in program that can get you up to $600 off, in addition to the $100 gift card offered here. This is definitely worth exploring, but the discount isn't as good as those you'll find at the major carriers right now. If you're interested in comparing, I've attached a few more of this week's best Pixel 11 preorders below.

Pixel 11 with $100 gift card: was $999 now $899
Amazon's opening Google Pixel 11 promotion throws in a $100 gift card with all devices — a very handy little bonus, indeed. Available in all colors and storage sizes, this could be a good option if you're looking to buy a device outright. Note that you can also trade in for an additional discount of up to $600, but it's not the best rebate you'll find on the market right now. As expected, the big carriers have better rebates with associated cellular lines.View Deal

• See more: check out all of today's deals at Amazon

Google Pixel 11 series: get a device included with an eligible plan at T-Mobile
As expected, T-Mobile has a flexible array of deals for its opening promotion on the Pixel 11 series. Depending on the plan, it's entirely possible to get a device included with a new line or upgrade right now. According to the T&Cs, you can get a Pixel 11 included without a trade-in with a new line on the Essentials plan, which is a good option for those on a tighter budget. Alternatively, you can get up to $1,100 off with a trade-in and new line on the mid-tier Experience More plan, or up to $1,300 off with a trade-in on the Experience Beyond plan. That's enough to cover the cost of a Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL, respectively.View Deal

Google Pixel 11 series: up to $1,100 off with a trade-in, or plan and phone for $45/mo at Verizon
Verizon's opening Google Pixel 11 deals lean heavily on the carrier's new 'Simplicity Plus' plan, which lets you bundle a Pixel 11 Pro with an unlimited data plan for just $45/mo without a trade-in. Alternatively, you can trade in for an excellent discount of up to $1,100 with a new line on one of the carrier's older myPlan unlimited plans. On top of that, Verizon is also offering a new Google Pixel Watch 5 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE as bonus gifts if you take out a service line for these accessories.View Deal

Google Pixel 11 Pro: get a device for $0 with any trade-in and a new line at AT&T
My favorite opening Pixel 11 deal at AT&T has to be the carrier's preorder promo on the Pixel 11 Pro. Right now, you can trade-in any Google Pixel phone in any condition to be eligible for a discount of up to $1,100. That's essentially a Pixel 11 Pro for $0 - although, you will obviously still need a new unlimited data plan to be eligible for a discount. View Deal

Google Pixel 11 series: up to $600 off with a trade-in, or up to $1,339 back with a plan at Google
Google has a few decent options if you're looking for a new device today. First up, you can trade-in for a rebate of up to $600 - which isn't bad for unlocked devices. Alternatively, you could consider a new line on Google's Fi prepaid carrier, which will entitle you to a massive $1,339 rebate if you stick with a line for the duration of 24 months. As a side bonus, you can also get 250 off the new Google Pixel Watch 5 or $200 in Google Store credit with the Pixel 11 Pro or Pixel 11 Pro XL. View Deal

• USS Theodore Roosevelt is now the Navy’s first carrier ready for MQ-25 operations
• US Navy spent years developing infrastructure needed to operate unmanned aircraft aboard carriers
• Ronald Reagan is expected to join the MQ-25 carrier fleet in August 2026

The US Navy has completed a major step toward operating unmanned aircraft from carriers with dedicated facilities for controlling them.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt is now the service’s first carrier with a fully operational Unmanned Air Warfare Center supporting MQ-25 operations.

Another carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, is expected to have its own center ready for operational deployment by August 2026.

The Unmanned Air Warfare Center combines equipment required to control and manage unmanned aircraft operating from an aircraft carrier.

The Navy says its systems include the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System and MD-5E Ground Control Station.

Those systems provide the command-and-control functions required for operating Boeing’s MQ-25A Stingray unmanned aerial refueling aircraft.

The USS George H.W. Bush became the first carrier to receive and test the center during August 2024.

However, Theodore Roosevelt is the first carrier where the capability has reached fully operational and deployable status.

According to a Pentagon acquisition document dated April 21, 2026, the Theodore Roosevelt “became the first fully operational/deployable MQ-25 capable aircraft carrier.”

The development gives the carrier force a dedicated infrastructure for unmanned aviation rather than treating drones as temporary additions.

That distinction matters because the MQ-25 requires specialized equipment alongside existing systems used for conventional carrier aviation.

The Navy expects the Ronald Reagan facility to become operational and deployable toward the end of August 2026.

The carrier infrastructure comes as the MQ-25 program advances after several years of development and testing.

In May 2026, the Stingray reached milestone C, allowing the program to move from development toward production and deployment.

The milestone followed nearly eight years of work since the Navy awarded Boeing an $805 million contract in 2018.

That contract covered four aircraft for design, development, fabrication, testing and delivery under the original program.

At that time, Navy estimates put the eventual cost near $13 billion for a planned fleet of 72 aircraft.

The program nevertheless experienced delays, including a first flight that occurred later than earlier schedules.

On April 25 2026, the Stingray completed an approximately two-hour flight near Mascoutah, Illinois, advancing its testing program.

The aircraft is intended primarily to provide aerial refueling, reducing the burden currently carried by F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

That change could allow more Super Hornets to remain available for strike missions rather than supporting carrier refueling requirements.

The MQ-25 therefore depends on both the aircraft itself and carrier infrastructure capable of controlling unmanned operations.

With another carrier approaching readiness, the U.S. Navy is now moving from isolated testing toward a broader carrier-based unmanned aviation capability.

Via Defense News