Barbie Rewind feels like the equivalent of showing your children the family heirloom rocking horse, and then watching them poke it and ask if they can play Roblox. A weird mix of nostalgia and interior decorating sim, it's home to 17 retro Barbie games and a dreamhouse to arrange Barbie-appropriate furniture in. Now, it's been over three decades since I last smashed a Barbie against a G.I. Joe and made smooching noises, so I called in two gaming experts, Kora (9) and Paloma (5), to assist with this review. Sadly, unlike her looks, time has not been kind to Barbie's gaming legacy.

"That doesn't make sense. Why does she have a scuba mask but not a toilet?" A crucial question from Kora as the girls got stuck into the only bit of Barbie Rewind they actually cared about: the decorating. This might be selling itself as a collection of Barbie games from 1991's NES Barbie through to 2007's Barbie as the Island Princess, but its newly created Dreamhouse mode is the big winner here. There are more than 250 pieces of furniture, and some of them are unlocked by playing the retro Barbie games. The big B and other characters like Ken and Christie give you quests, but they're just to decorate the house, so it's a bit like someone saying "be careful" when you're already falling down the stairs.

The Barbie games themselves got what I would call a polite fiddle. I played all of them before the expert advisors were called in, and Rewind is heavy on minigames of the platforming and "catch the falling coconut" variety. These games haven't been given the Monkey Island-style reboot; they're presented seemingly entirely as is, but with a frame that relates to their various consoles to help smooth over any aspect ratio issues.

It's great as a museum piece, but show it to anyone born after 2010 and they basically look like cave paintings. "Is that meant to be Barbie?" asks Kora incredulously, squinting at Barbie Pet Rescue. Paloma picks up the controller to play one of the minigames, a sort of cat Pong using two paws that is apparently essential to pet care, and watches the ball of yarn awkwardly bounce off the screen. She knows controllers, she plays Lego Batman, but this minigame makes no sense. The ball is slow, the angles are off, and Paloma looks at me exasperated as if I personally offended her.

Controls were an issue throughout, changing between games in a way that meant looking up the button layout for everything they wanted to try. One smart addition is the option to tweak things like your total health in certain games, which makes for a less stressful experience all round. The girls liked the concept of a lot of them – veterinarian duties, horse racing, and the fashion dress-up doll in particular – but these are kids born long after the time when you knew that what you saw on the cover of a game was light years away from how it actually looked. I could burn through pixelated bouncing and stilted dialogue on nostalgia alone, but Kora and Paloma are playing Hogwarts Legacy; they have iPad games, and their eyes know not the trauma of staring into a Gameboy Color in the back of a moving vehicle.

Magic: The Gathering’s Star Trek set is finally here, closing out a particularly packed release schedule for Wizards of the Coast’s long-running TCG.

Star Trek is the seventh set of the year, and it brings with it another four Commander decks to take this year’s total to 17. Still, as we all know, not all decks are created equal - so which one comes out on top?

The Klingons or the Borg? Picard or Spock? Here’s our ranking.

If you’re picking up all four decks because you’re a Trekkie, or you just love new precons, Amazon has cut the price of the bundle again to just $224.97, basically offsetting the “Universes Beyond” tax.

That’s not the Collector Editions, though: Those are well over $100 each. They include the same cards, but all in foil.

Color Identity: Jeskai (blue, red, white)

Reprints of note: Alhammarret’s Archive

Magic loves to put heroic precons in Jeskai colors, and Federation Fleet is no exception - although it does come last in our ranking.

Its primary Commander, Jean-Luc Picard, Luminary, is a four-cost 2/4 that draws you cards as you play historic permanents, which then triggers the Seek Out mechanic. This lets you charge up a Spacecraft and add a counter to another target creature.

It’s not that it’s not a fun, cohesive deck, but it’s definitely just not as interesting on a mechanical level as the others in this set.

Color Identity: Mardu (white, black, red)

Reprints of note: Sword of Light, Shadow and World at War

Worf, Defiant Commander is in charge of the Klingon Fury deck, which makes use of the Battlefront mechanic to encourage players to play aggressively.

Worf creates Klingon Warrior tokens when it hits the battlefield, and the more opponents you attack on your turn, the more cards you exile from the top of your library, which you can play until the end of your next turn.

It’s not quite cheating big creatures into play, but it should mean you’re well-stocked with options as long as you keep Worf around.

Color Identity: Bant (green, white, blue)

Reprints of note: Ancient Greenwarden, Scute Swarm, Exploration, Heroic Intervention

Commander Spock is the logical choice for a Commander in Bant colors, and Wizards of the Coast has made it so here (sorry).

Landing Party’s Strange New Worlds mechanic helps play cards more quickly if you’ve got more differently named lands in the set. Given there are 40 in the deck, that should be easily done, but this deck also gives you a big bundle of non-basic lands in Bant colors if you need them.

Captain Kirk, Boldly Going, is another Commander option. William Shatner himself is a 3/4 with vigilance who powers up your Spacecraft cards. The card can also grab you land cards or the Enterprise from your library or graveyard.

Color Identity: Esper (white, blue, black)

Reprints of note: Toxic Deluge, Unwinding Clock, Morphic Pool

Our top pick for the Commander precons in the Star Trek set is We Are The Borg. Standing somewhere between artifact synergies and a “what’s yours is mine” deck, The Borg Queen pumps artifact creatures and also assimilates cards to your side of the battlefield.

Unwinding Clock is a very welcome reprint here since it fits nicely into just about any other artifact strategy, and Locutus of Borg can help you pull even more Borg to the table. It’s a deck that’s likely to get out of hand pretty quickly, and for that reason, it’s our top pick.

For more on Magic: The Gathering, check out some of our favorite Commander decks of all time, as well as the latest on reprints of the sought-after Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40K decks, and the most valuable cards to look out for in the new Star Trek Universes Beyond set.

Ubisoft has reportedly given a new entry in the Rainbow Six: Vegas series the green light and a codename.

Details on a long-awaited (and unexpected) return to a fan-favorite corner of the Rainbow Six universe come from an Insider Gaming report. The publisher is said to have given its Ubisoft Montreal team the go-ahead to begin work on a new Vegas installment, with two other projects reportedly also in the works there.

Rainbow Six: Vegas started with the release of the original game in 2006 before it returned for a sequel in 2008. Whether the new game will be called Rainbow Six: Vegas 3 or something else is unclear, though the site's sources say it's expected to be more like the former rather than something like a remake. It also stated that it's being worked on with the apt codename, "Spades."

That's just one of the three games the Montreal studio is reportedly working on. The report wasn't able to confirm much about the remaining projects but said one source suggested at least one other game is planned to take place in the Rainbow Six universe in some capacity.

The Rainbow Six franchise as a whole existed long before popular entries like Rainbow Six Siege or even the Vegas series. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six traces all the way back to the late '90s but has splintered into a wide variety of gameplay experiences and offerings. Siege is no doubt the most well-known iteration today thanks to how Ubisoft has supported its tactical gameplay since its 2015 launch, but the most recent entry actually arrived in 2022 with Rainbow Six Extraction.

Despite nearly 20 years passing since the last Vegas game, it's remained a beloved corner of the universe for many. IGN gave the original game a 7.6/10 when it launched for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. We then gave the sequel's limited edition release an 8.4/10.

Ubisoft seems to be still in the early stages of its unannounced Rainbow Six: Vegas continuation, so don't expect to see it launch for at least a few more years. While that may mean we'll have passed the 20-year mark since the last game, we hopefully won't have to wait quite as long to learn more about it. Until then, it's best to keep expectations low while the publisher keeps its cards close to its chest.

Meanwhile, we do know about a few other projects Ubisoft has up its sleeve. Rainbow Six Tactics, for example, was announced in August and will launch sometime next year. A Splinter Cell remake is also in the works, even if it's been a while since we heard from it.