This Week's Games: Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Hellraiser: Revival, Kingdom Hearts

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2026 — October keeps dealing. Four days this week — Tuesday through Friday — carry a release slate that mixes a big-swing Star Wars racer, the entire Kingdom Hearts saga in one box, Clive Barker's first new Hellraiser game in years, and a Dragon's Dogma 2 expansion that gives Capcom's pawns a new island to die on. The week belongs to Thursday, which is absolutely loaded, but Tuesday's double-header deserves your attention first.

Let's start there. Star Wars: Galactic Racer launches Tuesday, October 6, at $59.99 — a runs-based, high-stakes reinvention of racing set in the lawless Outer Rim of the Star Wars galaxy, per publisher listings compiled by Push Square, TalkEsport, and Pure Xbox. Podracing hasn't carried a game since the N64 era, and this is the franchise's biggest swing at the genre in a generation: high-speed circuits, recognizable iconography, and a structure built around runs rather than a traditional campaign.

Sharing Tuesday is Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] at $74.99 — a value-packed bundle collecting Kingdom Hearts -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX-, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind, per Pure Xbox's breakdown. Pre-orders get early access starting Tuesday, October 6, with the full launch on Thursday, October 8. For anyone who has watched this series' release history sprawl across half a decade of hardware, the whole saga in one purchase is the news: years of crossover history, one box.

Thursday is horror day

October 8 is the week's heaviest day, and it opens with the one the horror crowd has been circling. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival arrives Thursday at $39.99 — a first-person action-horror survival game built around a new chapter in the legendary horror series. Per the Xbox store breakdown from NexzyApp, players take control of Aidan as he navigates the Labyrinth using the Genesis Configuration puzzle box. Push Square flagged it as the week's title to keep an eye on, and the positioning is perfect: a Hellraiser game, in October, with Cenobites on the key art and the Lament Configuration front and center.

Thursday is also a banner day for Xbox Game Pass, which gets at least two day-one additions: Echo Weaver, Akupara Games' time-loop Metroidvania ($19.99 for non-subscribers), and Neon Abyss 2, Kepler Interactive's pixelated roguelike sequel — both landing on Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere on October 8, per NexzyApp. Add Gears of War: E-Day, which launched this week at $69.99 day one on Game Pass — our games desk covered the launch and what it means for Xbox — and the subscription's October is shaping into one of its strongest months. Our Game Pass October guide tracks the full month.

Friday: the pawns get a new island

The week closes with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen on Friday, October 9 — a $29.99 expansion for Capcom's open-world action RPG that adds Bitterblack Isle, a new exploration area, along with formidable monsters, dungeons, and equipment, per TalkEsport and Inven Global's coverage. The pawn system — companion characters you develop and share — returns intact, and for players who ran the base game dry, a paid expansion with real new geography is exactly the reason to reinstall.

The undercard

The margins of the week are worth a scan. Wednesday, October 7, brings Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor — the auto-shooter spin-off of the co-op miner — alongside the unpriced curiosities Hidden Dogs (500+ hand-drawn pups across 15 cozy English-countryside levels), Titanic Escape Simulator (investigate a suspicious death aboard the doomed vessel, with Xbox Play Anywhere support), and JanduSoft's Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire ($19.99, discounted to $15.99), an action-farming roguelite about Dracula's rebellious son, per NexzyApp. Thursday adds the PS VR2 survival shooter Into the Radius 2, DANGEN's haunted-house management sim Deck of Haunts ($19.99), and the noir mystery adventure Silver Pines. Friday rounds out with the blackjack deckbuilder Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers and the kids' title Sesame Street: Friends & Fun.

The through-line: October is not letting up. Gears of War: E-Day just kicked the month's blockbuster season open — and Xbox's Free Play Days had Ubisoft's catalog on the house this weekend — and this week's slate keeps the pressure on through Friday. For subscription players, October's PlayStation Plus lineup is already live too, so the backlog math is getting genuinely unreasonable. We'll have impressions on the week's biggest launches as reviews land.

What to watch next

The two biggest swings of the week — a Star Wars racer and a Hellraiser revival — are exactly the kind of licensed bets that live or die on execution. A podracer game has to nail the speed fantasy; a first-person Hellraiser has to survive comparison with every survival-horror benchmark of the last decade. We'll have impressions on both as reviews land this week.

Game Pass subscribers are the week's clearest winners. Gears of War: E-Day is already in the library day one, and Thursday adds Echo Weaver and Neon Abyss 2 on top — three launches in one week for the subscription, which our Game Pass October guide tracks in full. And the density isn't slowing: with GTA VI's November 19 launch warping every publisher's calendar — as we mapped earlier this month — the weeks between now and then stay stacked. Pace your backlog accordingly.