Entertainment — GB

PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC; Bit Reactor Split priorities between scripted and emergent story moments hamper an otherwise brilliant Star Wars-themed successor to XCOM Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term “emergent storytelling”, you’ve likely experienced some of the unscripted tales that…

The infamous Japanese noise artist has a vast and forbidding catalogue that commands a cult fandom. Sam Andrews, 18, is vlogging his way through the lot – and taking a stand for deep listening An Instagram Reel that looks like an 80s coming-of-age movie pops up on your feed. It’s four teenage boys…

Last month, Microsoft’s gaming division told its workforce it was cutting 3,200 jobs, which some say will have big ramifications for game development – as well as taking a huge personal toll On the morning of 6 July, an email went out from Asha Sharma, the chief executive of Xbox, to all of the…

The queen of country was interred next to her late husband in an intimate ceremony attended by close family Dolly Parton was laid to rest in a private ceremony in Nashville on Friday, her family has confirmed. The queen of country music, who died aged 80 on 25 August “after bravely facing a brief…

There are juggernauts and indie gems aplenty for when the nights draw in, from an ingenious puzzle game to blockbusters such as Marvel’s Wolverine and Call of Duty • See all of our unmissable autumn arts recommendations here After 20 years away, Capcom’s hyper kinetic action adventure returns,…

(Reprise) The crossover star’s introspective sixth album is full of memories of his mother, who died in 2025, bringing his dextrous guitar to songs rooted in tradition and yearning On the face of it, 2025 was a landmark year for Billy Strings. His fifth album, Highway Prayers, won him his third…

A memorial at the park’s entrance held bouquets, and a child asked his mothers why so many people were crying Becky Bullard was en route home to Austin, Texas, when she heard the news. “As soon as I heard about Dolly, I thought of you,” read a text from a close friend while she waited for her…

The author of The Adversary and Yoga unearths a history that includes the Nazis, Russia, and the Académie Française When Emmanuel Carrère’s mother, Hélène, died in 2023, at the age of 94, President Macron spoke at her memorial. She had been “perpetual secretary” of the Académie Française, in effect…

Musicians and performers pay tribute to the country legend who managed to be a generational talent, a formidable entrepreneur, a dedicated philanthropist and a truly kind person Shirley Collins, singer-songwriter Continue reading...

Parton’s gift lay in uniting everyone from God-fearing country fans to queer devotees. The way she saw me when I met her made me feel like a flower turning towards the sun • Alexis Petridis on Dolly Parton’s peerless career that turned country music cliches inside out •Dolly Parton – a life in…

A terminally ill woman makes a final trip to Egypt in an exquisitely wrought portrait of end-of-life reckoning Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch that it is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. In the shallow and infantilising age through which we are living, Colin Thubron…

A writer and activist links the climate crisis to battles for justice around the world in this vital book It has become increasingly difficult to change our minds, to question our own views or to find common ground with people we disagree with, all of which makes Natasha Walter’s new book both…

A brilliant new biography that does its subject the favour of taking her seriously – even if few else did Barbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls taming wayward…

A Guardian correspondent’s sobering account of the US betrayal of Ukraine – and the possible reasons behind it American presidents have struggled to get the measure of Vladimir Putin. When George W Bush met him in 2001, he reported that he had “looked the man in the eye”, got a “sense of his soul”…

This Booker-listed epic set in Aids-era Kingston is a triumph – bitter, bawdy and ravishingly queer “A sense of sweep,” replied Marlon James, when asked what moves him most in literature. “Sweep isn’t just about external journeys, but internal as well. It can be over years and decades, or across…

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some wonderful new paperbacks, from a short story collection by a literary great to razor-sharp criticism *** Continue reading...

The return of the country’s most incompetent police force fails to bring enough laughs or any real justification for its existence Super Troopers occupies a sacred corner of the millennial DVD shelf, a goofy rebuttal to the endless procession of just-the-facts-ma’am TV cops that reimagined…

‘What if The Purge was for premarital sex?’ is the odd, gimmicky elevator pitch for this slickly made yet ungainly oddity that can’t quite get past the grimness of its conceit Going into a romcom, there are always the same questions. Will there be genuine chemistry? Will the rom and the com be…