PAX West 2025 kicked off with a bang, and Day 1 was filled with exciting reveals, hands-on demos, and surprising tech. From long-awaited sequels like Hollow Knight: Silksong and Ninja Gaiden 4, to inventive new titles such as There Are No Ghosts at the Grand and SWAPMEAT, there was no shortage of variety on the show floor. We even got a look at some fresh gaming gear with San Sound’s innovative earbuds. Here’s our full round-up of the standout games and tech from Day 1 of PAX West.
San Sound: SANWEAR-GAMETYPE
I always try to make an effort to check out some neat-looking tech at PAX, and this year SAN Sound’s SANWEAR-GAMETYPE earbuds caught my eye.
SWAPMEAT
Have you ever wanted to be the best version of yourself? Giant mantis legs, a skeletal torso, and an eyeball brain for a head, maybe? Or perhaps the perfect “you” is some wheels for legs, a big meaty torso, and a tin can for a head? That’s the kind of yearning question SWAPMEAT asks of you as you and three friends drop onto a planet and tear through its denizens to take their body parts to make yourself a better you.
In SWAPMEAT, you’re an employee of Rangus Meats, and you’re tasked with dropping onto planets to harvest their meat to create the perfect protein. You’ll do this by dropping in and completing a wide variety of objectives, from simply smashing egg pods to rescuing researchers and more. The creatures of the planet aren’t too keen about you, however, so you’re constantly staying on your toes as hordes of enemies chase after you; at points, the crowds chasing me got so cartoonishly large I started having Serious Sam flashbacks.
Killing these creatures is how you feed into the game’s main loop: kill enemies to acquire new body parts and become the ultimate meat-harvesting killing machine. As you kill enemies, they have a chance of dropping a body part of theirs—so the bug aliens might drop their wings or spidery legs, or a gross meat monster might give you some indiscernible chunk of flesh. You can pick up three body parts: a head, a body, and legs, and each comes with an accompanying new ability. The tall mantis’ legs, for example, could give you multiple jumps, while this ninja head I acquired allowed me to fire shurikens, or one body part gave me a deployable turret.
Once you’ve completed all the objectives on a planet, it’s time to harvest the planet’s meat core, where you’ll defend some machinery from increasing waves of enemies before it’s time to dip and move on to the next planet. In motion, it’s all really silly, and while my demo only allowed me solo play, I can’t imagine how much more fun it’d be with friends. Thankfully, we (hopefully) don’t have to wait too long to find out, as it’s due to be released sometime by the end of 2025.
High on Life 2
High on Life 2 comes only a few years after its debut in 2022, and it’s just as ridiculous as it was before.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
I wish I had more to say about Hollow Knight: Silksong, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2017 game, and while Silksong releases in a little less than a week, my demo still left me curious for more.
Invincible VS
If you show me a tag-team fighter, I’m sitting down, no questions asked. You might’ve heard of Invincible in the last couple of years, the highly popular animated superhero show, and it’s getting the fighting game treatment. I’m (admittedly) two seasons behind on the show, but after the few matches I played, I immediately wanted to go home and catch up on what I’ve missed.
Led by members of the 2013 Killer Instinct, Invincible VS plays similarly to any tag fighter you might’ve played in the past (think Marvel vs. Capcom or Dragon Ball FighterZ), albeit with simplified controls. There are your usual light, medium, and heavy attacks, but your directional input changes what that move will be, and the same applies when pressing the special button. I’m not normally a fan of the easy-combo system, but here it was actually working pretty well, and I was quickly sliding into combos and having a lot of fun.
My demo let me play with Atom Eve, Battle Beast, Bulletproof, Invincible, Omni-Man, Rex Splode, and Thula, and I made sure to swap between them all in my matches. I was having a hard time deciding what combo of characters I wanted for my three-person tag team. I eventually settled on Rex, who had some nasty explosive blasts that set up nicely into a launcher; Thula, with her long-range whip for when I wanted to play keep-away; and then closing with Omni-Man, who was just a blast to play with how much of a pure brute force he is.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the game’s story mode, but we were told there was one, and I’m eager to see how that goes when the game releases next year in 2026.
Super Meat Boy 3D
Fifteen years is a long time to wait for a proper follow-up to a game, and considering this one is made of meat, we might want to check the expiration date on that weird, toothy-grinned guy. If we ignore 2020’s Super Meat Boy Forever, which turned the infamously difficult 2D platformer into an auto-runner, Super Meat Boy 3D could be considered the proper follow-up to that original game.
As you can assume from the title, this game takes that lovable sack of meat out of the realm of 2D and into 3D, and the transition works so much better than you’d expect. Dressed in a gorgeous art style, the colors of the world pop out in a way that almost makes me wish I could slow down and enjoy the scenery, but unfortunately, there are whirring blades of death I need to avoid.
I only had a short ten minutes with the game, so blitzing through levels was the name of the game. I immediately fell back into that formula of figuring out the optimum path through a stage, making a multitude of mistakes on my path to eventual success, and was treated to a replay featuring all of my deaths. Because of the transition to 3D, there’s a definite feel of things being more dramatic, as levels can change in real time in ways you couldn’t do in 2D; a forest stage had me bouncing between giant trees as chainsaw-wielding robots smashed them to bits. It’s a change for the better, as it just adds extra flair to levels.
However, as with all games of this “difficult platformer” genre, I did inevitably hit a point in the demo where I reached one of those “this is just mean level design” stages and wanted to strangle that little meat dude. It was a fun time regardless, and I’m looking forward to its release sometime in 2026.
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand
From its first few seconds, There Are No Ghosts at the Grand immediately hooked me in with its Caribbean-inspired music and Powerwash Simulator levels of satisfying gameplay as I got a quick run-through of its hotel renovation gameplay.
Ninja Gaiden 4
Thirteen years is a long time to take a break from demon killing, and Ryu thankfully hasn’t lost his edge. It’s been a while since the somewhat mixed release of Ninja Gaiden 3, and PlatinumGames is taking up the reins to deliver some adrenaline-pumping ninja action.
New, however, is newcomer Yakumo, with Ryu nowhere to be seen. My demo had me learning the ropes with Yakumo as I battled my way through a rocketing train on my way to infiltrate a facility to kill a priestess. The series’ notoriously difficult combat had me humbled off the jump before I got back into the groove of things, as I started pulling my weight—bouncing off enemy ninja heads and slicing them apart with Yakumo’s “Bloodbind Jutsu,” which transforms your weapons into blood-dripping, souped-up versions that devastate your foes. PlatinumGames did a great job keeping the feeling of those original Ninja Gaiden games while still leaving their very clear fingerprints all over the place. The gameplay is fluid and tight in a way they’ve perfectly mastered over the years.
My train ride ended spectacularly as it exploded off its rails, and Yakumo dropped into the facility below. I began my assault on the place, slicing my way through goons and coming away from fights with fewer scratches as I gained more confidence with how Yakumo played with every fight. My demo unfortunately had to be cut short soon after that, as I ran into a general that seemed outside Yakumo’s league, and I escaped the facility—but my time with the game wasn’t over just yet. I got to play around a bit in the game’s combat trials menu, where you can relive story missions and bosses, one of which slapped me around silly and made me glad nobody was watching with how poor a performance I put up.
Ninja Gaiden 4 did what every demo should do, which is leave you hungry for more, and I can’t wait to dive into the full course when the game launches later in October.
