Gaming fans are on top of the world right now thanks to the recent release of 007 First Light. The new James Bond game stars Patrick Gibson as the iconic spy, and after selling three million copies during its first week, a sequel to the game is all but guaranteed — the closing title card promised that “James Bond will return.” 007 First Light wasn’t the first big AAA game of the year, though; that title belongs to Crimson Desert, the open-world RPG developed by Pearl Abyss. Looking forward, fans have a lot to be excited about this summer, including a pair of big games launching next month. Set to be released on July 9 is the highly anticipated remake of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, which is launching on the same day as the next College Football game from EA Sports.

George R. R. Martin’s fantasy fingerprints are still all over some of the biggest stories ever told and, while most fans know him best for Game of Thrones, his work on Elden Ring helped give FromSoftware one of the most detailed and epic fantasy settings in gaming. The Lands Between already made the jump from massive open-world RPG to a film being shot now, but it's expanded through different games and spin-offs and now it's getting another life in a very different format.

Dune fans have been as satisfied as fans of any sci-fi franchise in the last few years. Back in 2021, Denis Villeneuve launched the official reboot of the franchise with Dune, which has since been retitled Dune: Part One following the release of Dune: Part Two. The film was a smash hit by every metric, winning six Oscars and grossing over $400 million at the box office against a $165 million budget. The momentum continued into 2024 with the highly anticipated premiere of Dune: Part Two, which was pushed back slightly due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Dune: Part Two earned even better review scores and made more money than its predecessors, but the film didn’t find the same success at the Academy Awards. The Dune trilogy will be complete at the end of this year, following the premiere of Dune: Part Three on December 18.

The wait for Hogwarts Legacy 2feels like we've gone into the vanishing cabinet for Borgin and Burke's alongside Montague and we've been stuck here for months, if not years, with no sign of light at the end of the tunnel. The sequel is already one of the most anticipated games in the Wizarding World, if not the whole world, and we're already waiting for concrete info on what to expect. If it links into HBO's new series, expands the world down to London, Godric's Hollow or more remains to be seen, but thankfully, another new Wizarding World RPG is now on the way, and this one is taking fans back to Hogwarts in a very different form.

It's never a cheap time to be a Pokémon fan, let's be real. And with this year being the official 30th anniversary, there's so much cool merchandise out that we're having to remortgage our home in Pallet Town just to scratch the surcafe. Gotta buy 'em all, right? LEGO is one of the biggest culprits in bankrupting us with collectibles, and wouldn't you know it, there's more.

The wasteland has no time for subtlety, and to conquer it, it needs power, it needs to defeat Deathclaws, Radroaches, bandits, you name it. Fallout is the definition of go big or go home, and Prime Video's adaptation of the games got the point exactly as it turned it into one of streaming's biggest hits. So it just feels right that one of its main characters is getting a collectible that's just as massive as the show.

It's the world we live in when one of the most famous video games of all time is getting a limited release for free, purely because it's collaborating with a soft drink that was developed in Germany as a replacement for Coca-Cola during World War II. And yet, here we are! With the franchise celebrating its 25th anniversary, Xbox is going big on Halo: Campaign Evolved, and apparently, that now includes Master Chief-adjacent orange soda.