Grand Theft Auto VI: Pre-order details released, details of when pre-loading begins

Details have been released of when the pre-orders for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will go live, and also details of what the Ultimate Edition will contain.

Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI, including the Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition, will begin at midnight local time on June 25.

The biggest and most immersive evolution of the series yet, Grand Theft Auto VI features a single player experience launching on November 19 to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

The Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition amplifies this experience with an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia’s story.

Alongside the Standard and Ultimate Editions, all Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders and purchases before November 20 will get the Vintage Vice City Pack, a collection of items that flash back to when the neon burned brightest.

Players who pre-order digital versions of Grand Theft Auto VI will be able to begin pre-loading on November 12 to ensure they are able to play at launch on November 19. The physical version of Grand Theft Auto VI, containing a download code inside the box, will be available starting November 12 to support pre-loading.

This document outlines all available information regarding The Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition, Vintage Vice City Pack pre-order bonus, and details regarding a free month of GTA+ for all digital pre-orders. 

WHAT'S IN THE GRAND THEFT AUTO VI SETS

Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition | Overview

Welcome to Leonida, the state where anything goes. Seize everything this massive world has to offer with the Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition, an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action around every corner, threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia’s story.

Coming November 19 to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition includes:

* '67 Vapid Dominator Buggy and Paradise Garage: A Mud Club monster offering impressive off-road handling for the backwoods of Mount Kalaga and beyond, conveniently stored at a garage in Watson Bay, featuring a weapon locker to customize your loadout for any occasion plus a stash box to deposit stolen goods to be fenced. 

* ’95 Grotti Cheetah: Grotti's signature mid '90s sports car and ode to Shore Drive, the ’95 Grotti Cheetah, complete with a minimalist, retro-futuristic livery and available to punctuate later-stage action.

* Vehicles and Vapid Ganado Retro Build at Jason’s Safehouse: Switch gears and soak up the sun in either an Army fatigue-tinged Dinka Enduro motorcycle and Crest Kayak, or inject some muscle and classic stylings into Jason's well-worn Vapid Ganado pickup with exclusive mods including a cab spoiler, rear aerials, and special livery.

* Vehicle Mod Shops: Two preeminent vehicle customization destinations are exclusively open for business with the Ultimate Edition and feature a wide selection of artistic and performance-based vehicle mods. At Rideout Customs in Vice City, transform vanilla vehicles into magnificent works of art with detailed interiors, exquisite rims, and donk stylings. Meanwhile at One-Eyed Willie’s in Lake Leonida, transform off-road vehicles with exclusive mods and even attain custom hand-painted masterpieces.

* Classic Car Collection: Track down a variety of abandoned classic and work-in-progress project cars and revitalize them to their former glory in this special commission from eccentric collector and local fixer, Wyman. Restore these and make them your own, including four vehicles that are only available in the Ultimate Edition.

* Shitzu Squalo: Perfect for casting in Gambit Bay and reeling in catches of all sorts, this gradient pink and blue Squalo docked at Washington Beach is made open-ocean-ready with an explosives-laden weapons crate.

* Hawk & Little Morgan Revolver: Sourced exclusively from the Vercetti Estate and found at Ammu-Nation stores as Jason and Lucia’s story progresses, his and hers versions of the powerful Hawk & Little Morgan Revolver are available with classic Vice City stylings for both Jason and Lucia, including palm-tree-etched grips, engraved detailing, high-performance scope, and personalized finishes. 

* Personalized Weapon Variants: Personalized sidearms with detailed engravings for both Jason's Girardi ES9 pistol and Lucia's Klose K17 pistol.

* PTT Youngin$ Compound and Scores: One of Leonida’s loudest and most socially active gangs, the PTT Youngin$ grow premium hydroponics in places you’d least expect. Find a way to raid the PTT Youngin$ Illegal Goods Store in Southside Vice City and escape safely to score some special items and distinct contraband.

* Vice City Styles for Jason and Lucia: Whether poolside or side by side, Jason and Lucia can look the part with exclusive outfits, tattoos, and more.

* Goodtime Gear: A capsule collection of apparel and accessories inspired by the Goodtime State’s hit TV show character, Macca the Gator.

* Stock 305 Clothing Store: Exclusively open for business with the Ultimate Edition, Stock 305 is Stockyard’s premiere destination for elevated streetwear. Style various unique and exclusive looks for Jason and Lucia that complement the murals, tags, and artwork that put the neighborhood on the map.

* Sara’s Unisex Salon: Get signature salon hair styles for both Jason and Lucia, including facial hair for Jason and makeup and nails for Lucia.

* Electric Fang Tattoo: Stockyard’s most iconic ink bar, with over 50 exclusive, signature tattoos for both Jason and Lucia — all designed by the artist collective FAILE.  

Ultimate Edition bonuses become available to Jason and Lucia across their story, with new items uncovered behind each chapter. 

The Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition Upgrade will also be available for Grand Theft Auto VI Standard Edition owners to purchase separately at any time.

Pre-Order Bonus: The Vintage Vice City Pack | Overview

Flash back to when the neon burned brightest with the Vintage Vice City Pack, featuring the timeless two-tone ’55 Vapid Stanier sedan and Shore Court Garage alongside the world-famous Ocean Beach, decadent outfits and hairstyles for both Jason and Lucia, and an iconic weapon pattern that echoes the excess of the past. 

The Vintage Vice City Pack includes: 

* ’55 Vapid Stanier and Shore Court Garage: Cruise Shore Drive in the legendary ’55 Vapid Stanier, a Vice City classic meant to be admired, and store it in a new personal garage just a stone’s throw from the glistening sands of Ocean Beach. Like all personal garages in Leonida, you’ll have a weapon locker to customize your loadout for any occasion plus a secure place to deposit stolen goods for the local Fence, who will accept most stolen goods at a reasonably discounted rate.

* Outfits and Hairstyles: Dress for excess with two Vice City luxury looks for both Jason and Lucia:

o Jason: An effortlessly chic linen suit in vintage pastel, complemented by the cut and coif of the decade of decadence. 

o Lucia: The world is yours in a red sequin mini dress and curls.

* Exclusive Weapon Pattern: Channel the original Vice City kingpin, Tommy Vercetti, and his iconic palm tree button-up with a tropical pattern available to adorn most guns.

The Vintage Vice City Pack is included with all digital purchases of Grand Theft Auto VI made prior to November 20, 2026, and with pre-orders of the physical version* of Grand Theft Auto VI while supplies last.

All items will be available to Jason and Lucia as their story progresses. 

*Physical copies of GTAVI will contain a code that can be redeemed for the digital download of the game. A disc will not be included in the box.

Digital Pre-Order Bonus: Free Month of GTA+| Overview

Free Month of GTA+: Experience the dynamic blockbuster GTA Online now with the best way to get the most out of its ever-evolving world. Pre-order any edition of Grand Theft Auto VI on the PlayStation Store or Microsoft Store and get one free month of GTA+ — featuring a recurring monthly GTA$500,000 deposit into your GTA Online character's bank account, access to special Shark Cards with 15% bonus GTA$, access to free and discounted GTA Online vehicles, a rotating selection of classic Rockstar Games titles and other featured games in the GTA+ Games Library, and much more. 

A free month of GTA+ is available to redeem immediately upon pre-order and must be redeemed before the expiry date.  After the free month, memberships auto-renew monthly at the regular monthly price until canceled. Cancel at any time. Limited to one redemption per Platform Account. See the GTA+ Redemption FAQ [URL] for redemption instructions and expiration dates https://store.rockstargames.com/game/gta-plus.

FZ: Formation Z: PS5 Review

Developed by Clear River Games
Published by City Connection
Platform: PS5

Way back in the 1980s, side-scrolling shoot em ups consumed many a gamer's time and money. 

Pouring coins into machines, the games would deliver pretty decent challenges and simple time-consuming fun. One of those to do so is FZ: Formation Z which has been dragged out for the console generation - and for a retro game has infinitely more promise than you'd have expected.

Essentially a mash-up of Transformers and a shooter, this game puts you in control of a mech robot out to deal with an alien invasion. In true Defender style, the bullets fly quick and the invaders maraud everywhere.

But the novelty factor of this Japanese game is that the robots can transform in mid-air while jumping to deal with other challenges. Environmental hazards, tornados, bullets fired into the sky - you name it and there's plenty of it on offer in this smooth-running crisp looking game.

With a rewind capability too, the game makes a great fist of its innate simplicity and is easy to pick up and play. But it offers an escalating challenge and those moments that make you think it's going to be easy are usually the ones that trip you up.

With checkpoints and punishing moments, there's a sense FZ: Formation Z is out to test you - but in a retro fashion, this game offers plenty of simple thrills and a great dollop of "just one more go" addictiveness.

Dark Scrolls: Nintendo Switch Review

Developed by Doinksoft
Published by Devolver Digital
Platform: Nintendo Switch

Essentially a roguelite take on Ghosts and Goblins crossed with the Mario games' coin collecting, Dark Scrolls is the kind of game that will get its hooks into you and leave you both frustrated and clamouring for more.

As one of nine characters, you head out across various levels, shooting and jumping your way past marauding baddies that take the form of zombies, spiders, flying fish, firing blobs and angry bosses and blast your way to the end of each one.

Collecting treasure along the way, and coins to level up, Dark Scrolls is a very easy sell. Whether it's solo or local or online co-op, the game is extremely playable - but also extremely frustrating.

Each of the nine characters come with their own weapons, powers and upgrades, but at the end of the day, this pixel-powered shmup is really about the timing. With the screen permanently scrolling (with the exception of bosses), there's no room for error - and certainly in the single player game, there are moments when timing everything can be extremely tight and nerve-wracking.

From flinging arrows or tossing steaks at the baddies, and upgrading via a honking swan's friend (yes, really), the game makes its accessibility a point of pride. 

Unlocking power ups via the shop points in the game allows you to allocate them to different star levels on your attacks, meaning you can charge up a series of different attacks for every level you carry (to a maximum of five).

But just like Ghosts and Goblins, there are moments when you want to throw it across the room in exasperation.

Whether it's the lack of continue points that prove almost annoying to a single player campaign or the fact upgrades are locked behind coin collection, Dark Scrolls makes scaling up the fight more than frustrating in places. 

Given that your coin spoils can fly off the screen without any warning too, there's a real case for feeling like the game's stacked against you in parts. However, it only succeeds in keeping players engaged because it's so addictively simple and plays so well.

Also some of the initial powers the starting gallery of heroes has are almost pointless. One uses stealth but immediately drops out of it when firing attacks, making the whole idea seem pointless.

The key comes from making attacks your own. Whether it's letting a room full of baddies mount up before unleashing an axe-wielding attack across the board from initial character Grizz or healing via the fairy Quinn's charged-up power, Dark Scrolls has ways to ensure the game can be played in whichever way you'd like.

All in all, this dungeon crawler is colourful enough and well-enough executed that you'll find yourself going "Just one more game" before you know what's happened. Dark Scrolls is Doinksoft (The Gunbrella developer) doing what it does best - making games that are easy to play, and extremely hard to put down.

Starfield: PS5 Review 

Developed by Bethesda Studios
Published by Bethesda Studios
Platform: PS5

Much like No Man's Sky at its initial launch, Starfield felt like it was a game-changer.

But stymied by comments about gameplay, about how it was a wannabe Skyrim in Space, the game seemed to wither, content to reel in only die-hard fans, rather than a wide user base. However, those who stuck with Starfield a year ago, have seen the game blossom into something that was a bit more than just the current fad and develop into something that's an enjoyable exploration experience.

So with the move to PlayStation 5, the game had a lot to live upto - but perhaps hype is the biggest weapon it faces.

It's worth noting that the latest iteration of the game - along with updates and also DLC - now sees it in its most decisive form as well as offering a game that anyone can dive into. 

Very occasionally still, planets feel empty and devoid of life, but for those looking to recapture the highs of space exploration once offered by the likes of Elite, Starfield still offers much to the casual traveller. With graphical fidelity boosted for the PS5 and solid RPG mechanics, it's perhaps unfair that Starfield has suffered by comparison - and it seems almost trite to dismiss it as solid, but that's what it is.

The game is really about travelling to planets, meeting people and creatures and finding your way in the universe and on that front, Starfield really delivers. The exploration's impressive, the mechanics work and the new Free Lanes DLC also helps you go from one setting to the next. Cruising between planets within a solar system brings friendly and hostile contact, but it all adds to the experience.

Perhaps Starfield itself won't ever be seen as a stellar entrant into the pantheon of space RPGs, but in this PlayStation format, the fact that it offers a high-quality game at its very best level following a few years of updates certainly makes it a worthwhile proposition to saddle up for.

Minions and Monsters: Movie Review

Cast: Alison Janney, Zoey Deutch, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, George Lucas, Trey Parker
Director: Pierre Coffin

There's a moment in the latest spinoff for the Minions when the yellow pests are kicked out of 1920s  Hollywood, blamed for ruining the box office and arrival of talking pictures with their gibberish and inability to act.

It's an almost meta and prescient moment that could see audiences feeling the same, given how scattershot and average this homage to old school Hollywood and latest outing for the loveable Despicable Me sidekicks is.

The seventh outing for the yellow perils, beloved by children because of their nonsense language and slapstick behaviour, concerns itself with the story of Minions Henry and James, a pair of outcasts whose desire to tell stories sees them bond.

Loosely, the film celebrates the life of the Minions and how intertwined their world became with Hollywood as tribes of them headed off to find a Big Boss to serve, as all Minions should. But when Henry and James inadvertently lead their masters to their near-death, the Minions clans are outlawed and end up in 1920s Los Angeles, crashing a film shoot being overseen by director Max (Christoph Waltz).

When their antics charm the owners of the Bright Brothers Pictures studio and the masses brought up on silent movies, they become the Hollywood elite association. But their star falls quickly with the advent of talking pictures and soon James has a desire to create a Kaiju-led picture to get them back in the studio good books.

With homages to Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, The Blob and The Day The Earth Stood Still, Coffin's love letter to the Hollywood of the past is clearly a passion project - and one that's well-executed in parts. And while the animation of the Minions is still superlative, the nonsense this time around fails to find a creative boost to justify keep mining their raison d'etre.

It's to be noted most of the younger audience will be less interested in the nods to Hollywood past and will be more concerned with the slapstick - of which there is plenty - but Minions & Monsters seems almost disconnected from the simplicity that the creatures have become known for through the years.

It's self-aware and meta in extremis, but at no real stage is it incredibly smart or clever in its storytelling as the dungaree-wearing menaces barrel from one moment to the next. Sure, you could argue there's an allegory of the Minions serving the evil masters of Hollywood and Irene, the amorphous blob filled with eyes that imperils Los Angeles at the end could be seen as a metaphor for the ever-hungry eyes of audiences, but it's a bit of a surface-level reach from Coffin and his writers.

There's not enough emotional heft here and while the film maxes out at around 90 minutes, it still feels its weight midway.

By the end of Minions & Monsters, you're exhausted - and based on what's on screen, so are the writers when it comes to ideas for what to do next with these pesky critters.

Little Nightmares: VR Altered Echoes: PSVR2 Review

Developed by Iconik
Published by Bandai Namco
Platform: PSVR2

The Little Nightmares series has always been about claustrophobia.

So a VR version would always notch that up a level and add a level of creepiness that would be hard to beat. 

In this Altered Echoes, you take control of Dark Six, Six's doppelganger as they try to escape from various rooms and scrabble to complete puzzles. Across five areas and with different puzzles and boss face-offs, the game builds an atmosphere of unease that's hard to deal with on the VR headset as there's nowhere to escape.

Whereas the game series itself has given you distance from the unsettling goings-on, the virtual version's desire to creep you out close-up can prove to be a little too much. But what it manages to get right is the ideal of how small and insignificant you are as a creature in this world - it's almost overwhelming in some ways, as Dark Six deals with what's ahead and tries to cope with the challenges.

Graphically, the game draws from the same darkened palette that's become the norm for the franchise, but seeing it all in a first-person perspective makes it feel more oppressive and somehow upsetting than you'd expect.

In terms of gameplay, over just five areas, it's a little short - but for a tentative first step into expanding Six's world into a new way of looking at it all, Little Nightmares VR Altered Echoes offers up an intriguing approach - especially if you're a fan of the world already.