I first experienced the sensory overload of being close to a Formula 1 car going full speed during a test day for the British Grand Prix last summer. The rumbles from the cars as they pull out of the pits feel like they’re shaking your bones loose, and each crescendoing shriek as the vehicles streak through your field of vision is like the shrill fizz of a firework that’s almost grazed your ear.

In releasing the trailer for its upcoming film, F1 The Movie, Apple has tried to recreate some of this sensory experience in miniature for anyone with an iPhone. The trailer taps into the device’s Taptic Engine to vibrate at different frequencies during the scenes featuring the F1 cars. Is it a little gimmicky? Sure. But it’s also clever and fun, and the perfect way to build excitement among F1 fans such as myself who are also suckers for immersive experiences.

To try out the experience, you’ll need an iPhone running iOS 18.4 or later. You can find the trailer with the Apple TV app on your phone.

F1 The Movie will debut in UK theaters from June 25 and head to US theaters on June 27, and I’m excited for a few different reasons. I’m a huge Drive to Survive fan, for a start, and last year, during that same test day when I was at Silverstone, the movie’s cast and crew were on site shooting a couple of scenes. While I didn’t see Brad Pitt, I got to observe his car and the inside of the fake garage the team had set up while wandering down the pit lane.

There would be no way to make a truly convincing movie about F1 without fully immersing the shooting within the existing traveling circus that is the F1 world. I was impressed with the level of detail I observed — if you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have been able to pick out the fictional F1 team from the real teams in the pit.

This movie is a big-budget, star-studded effort from Apple. Its main challenge will be bringing the same tension and drama that F1 fans are used to seeing from the races and drivers in real life.

During this year’s Summer Game Fest event, the kickoff showcase teased and then announced Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth installation in the mainline Resident Evil series. During the media-only Play Days events, members of the press were able to sit down to a guided presentation of the upcoming horror game. However, a very select few, myself included, got the opportunity to go hands-on with the demo and fight for our lives. Unlike the run-and-gun horror of Resident Evil Village, Capcom’s next entry in the franchise feels like it’s going for the slow and vulnerable terror of Resident Evil 7.

Resident Evil Requiem is set in Raccoon City in the wake of nuclear destruction wreaked by the US government trying to clean up the zombie plague after Resident Evil 3. The preview began with Grace Ashcroft, the new protagonist for RE9 seen in the reveal trailer, strapped upside down to a gurney and looking extremely haggard. She’s clearly been through a lot, which is evident from the various needles and medical equipment she’s hooked up to as well as the impressive graphics tech on display when showing off her character model. The sweat she’s soaked in, the details on her hair and face, were all very impressive.

As the opening cutscene continued, Grace was able to break a bottle to cut herself free and tip over the gurney before standing up and giving control to the player. The demo for the game, which is set in first person, has you begin to explore this dirty room and the very dark hallway connected to it. During the theater presentation an audible «nope» was shouted from one of the attendees at the thought of venturing forth.

This early section of the game is set in some kind of abandoned hospital wing as a storm rages outside, complete with unsettling thunder and flashes of lightning through the windows. The only light inside is a few sparse red bulbs which doesn’t help ease the tension. The first fork in the road leads to either a pitch black room or a long dark hallway. People were audibly squirming in their seats when I watched the presentation — it was very similar to seeing a scary movie in a theater with an engaged audience. Turning the light on in the hallway reveals an odd horse statue at the end of it that, due to the distance and its unnatural shape, almost felt like a minor jump scare.

It’s one thing to watch a theater presentation of someone walking down a spooky hallway, it’s another to have to be the person doing it yourself. And although I mostly knew the big set pieces of this experience from beforehand, it still raised my heart rate when I was the one having to poke around in the dark and hope I’m safe.

You then search through a couple rooms, and there’s a few items to be found like an empty, throwable bottle and, more importantly, a lighter. However, unlike the most recent Resident Evil Village, there wasn’t a gun to be found. It feels more like Capcom is channeling the terror of the helplessness you feel in the early section of Resident Evil 7, including its emphasis on puzzles. The end goal was a locked gate but we needed to find a fuse, which happened to be behind a screwed-shut panel a little behind us.

Backtracking to the pitch dark room, now with a tiny lighter to protect us, it was possible to explore the pitch dark room from the forked-path earlier. Opening the single door at the end of the room led to the biggest jump scare in the demo, and thus, the biggest screams during the theater presentation. A dead doctor immediately falls out of the door next to Grace where she remarks how he’s been «infected.» Thankfully he wasn’t a zombie at this point since, other than a bottle, I hadn’t been able to find anything resembling a weapon.

Then we got to the best part of the demo. Without the camera moving, a massive beast-like claw came into view and grabbed the corpse. The camera turns to follow the body and you see a huge animal and human hybrid monster scream and devour the body before getting far, far too close to the camera to show off its bloody teeth and horrible face. Another great example of just how good and gross RE9 looks. The audience screamed.

I’m very glad I saw the theater presentation before going hands-on since it gave me some tips on how to proceed and where to run and hide from the creature. However, I won’t go into detail on the creature’s weaknesses — you’ll have to wait to find out for yourself. Running away through the hallways (at a far too slow of a pace in comparison to my heart rate) and avoiding the monster gave me access to the room it emerged from. Here you can move an unfortunately noisy rolling cart in order to reach a screwdriver on top of a shelf. As you move the cart, the creature hears and walks by the adjacent window, upping the tension.

Trying to leave the room causes the monster to reappear at the only exit. Stealth comes into play more here as I had to shut my lighter and hide under a table before sneaking past the monster and out the door. With the screwdriver in hand I made my way back to the locked fuse panel. Unfortunately the monster smashes through a wall and appears right before me. If you get grabbed (which I did a few times) the beast will pick Grace up and take a massive bite out of her shoulder. You can only withstand one of these before the second attack will kill you. Luckily this hospital had a single health pick up to help you sustain a couple maulings.

During the theater presentation, after kiting around the enemy again, the developer paused the game and went into the settings. They proceeded to the display options, as the crowd began to murmur about what was happening. 

Then came the big reveal: The developer switched the camera position from first- person to third-person. The audience roared in cheers. We were then told the game can be played in either point of view for the whole game and switched on the fly. The remainder of the presentation was in third-person.

There wasn’t much left to the demo after this point. You’re able to collect the fuse and then open the gate and escape just before the monster reaches you. Overall, this sequence was plenty scary when I watched it first, but was even more tense as I played it myself.

It was a really fantastic demo and had a few clever puzzles for the player to deal with. If you’re able to fully explore the limited space, you’ll uncover clues and hints to aid you on your escape. I personally really enjoyed the cinematic and terrifying way they introduced the beast. It was a fairly limited demo, but it definitely built a ton of anticipation for the game. Capcom seems to be set to put out another solid entry in the franchise once again.

Resident Evil Requiem is scheduled to release on February 27, 2026 for Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5 and PC.

Capcom had one of the best showings at this year’s Summer Game Fest. Despite Resident Evil 9 Requiem’s very exclusive demo, the publisher’s other hands-on preview, Pragmata, was much more open. This is an upcoming action shooter that impressed me with its unique gun-hacking mechanic.

My hands-on demo started with the game’s protagonist, Hugh Williams, regaining consciousness on a space station with the help of Diana, an android companion that looks like a young girl with long blonde hair and, for some reason, no shoes. We’re quickly attacked by a robot that is slowly walking toward us ,and our pistol is doing little to no damage. This is when Pragmata introduces the hacking element to its combat, a unique mechanic you perform while fighting. This was a lot to juggle at first, but it becomes easy and fun pretty quickly.

While you can aim with L2 and shoot with R2, like a typical shooter, you must utilize Diana’s hacking ability to open up weak points on each enemy. When targeting an enemy, a grid appears, called the Hacking Matrix, on the right side of the screen. From there, you must use the face buttons to move an icon through the grid in order to reach a specific point.

The face buttons work like a D-pad: triangle goes up, square moves left, and so on. There are also unique points within the grid that must be avoided or optionally passed through for additional benefits. Reaching the end of the grid will open up an enemy’s armor, allowing you to do much more damage with your weapons. It’s a unique combat mechanic I hadn’t seen before in a shooter and was quite easy to wrap my head around, making for a very fun gunplay loop. 

After fighting the first enemy, I was able to proceed to the adjacent hallway with more obstacles and enemies. Hugh can jump with X and also hover if the button is held down. This was useful for crossing over large gaps or to evade damaging lasers. This came into play when I encountered a door that required me to search and hover around to find five locks to hack open and proceed. Several new enemy types appeared, including flying drones. The drones would easily dodge my fire, but a quick hack stunned them in place while making them susceptible to attacks. A walking tank-like enemy also appeared just as I unlocked a new weapon: the shockwave gun.

The shockwave gun functions like a shotgun, allowing me to deal much more damage to one or more enemies once hacked. In addition to this, I also unlocked the final weapon for the demo, the stasis gun. This fired similarly to a grenade launcher, with an arched shot, but would put down a bubble that would trap enemies inside and stun them. It’s super useful when dealing with more than one opponent at a time, especially since each enemy requires careful hacking to be done — sometimes more than once.

As we approached the final room of the demo, we were able to pick up a hacking node. This is a limited-use item that would slot itself into a random space within the hacking grid that appears when targeting an opponent. Moving my cursor over these nodes and then reaching the finish line in the hacking mechanic would cause a buff to deploy. This node lowers an enemy’s shields further, allowing our shots to do more damage once vulnerable. 

To make things more interesting, the game mentioned you could stack these nodes and pass through more than one before finishing to get more and more benefits. Keep in mind, however, that you can’t move your cursor over a square you’ve already passed, so don’t get yourself cornered hacking while in the middle of a gun fight, which could result in having to restart the hacking matrix.

In a surprising decision, just as the final boss of the demo appeared, our hands-on preview ended. For whatever reason, Capcom didn’t allow anyone to fight the big baddie. This is especially odd, since the vast majority of demos and previews usually end after an exciting climax, like a boss battle. It was also a real shame since I had had a good amount of practice navigating the Hacking Matrix while dodging and shooting opponents, and I wanted to put my new skills to the test. If anything, it got me even more excited to get my hands on Pragmata again to play more and see what Capcom has come up with for its unique combat.

Pragmata is coming in 2026 to Xbox Series, PlayStation 5 and PC.