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If you're looking for Infinity Nikki codes, IGN has you covered! In this article, you'll find a list of active and working Infinity Nikki codes that you can redeem for free rewards and bonuses in May 2025, including Diamonds and Energy Crystals.
Below, you'll find all the active and working Infinity Nikki codes in May 2025, the free rewards you get for redeeming them, and their expiry date (if known):
The Infinity Nikki codes listed below have expired and are no longer working as of May 2025:
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The best way to get more Infinity Nikki codes is to join the official Infinity Nikki Discord server. Once you're in, head to the #self-assign-roles channel and opt-in for the Redeem Code role. You'll receive a notification when a new code is released so you can receive your free rewards ASAP!
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Developed by Infold Games, Infinity Nikki is a cozy, open-world RPG. You play as Nikki, as she's whisked away to the world of Miraland, a place where people make Wishes with the help of Stylists. You'll find and create a plethora of outfits and accessories, take on quests, and gather many types of collectibles with the help of Momo, Nikki's adorable feline companion. As you play, you earn Diamonds, which can be spent on Revelation and Resonite Crystals, which are used to pull on the limited time and permanent outfit banners for 5-star and 4-star clothing.
Meg Koepp is a Guides Editor on the IGN Guides team, with a focus on trends. When she's not working, you can find her playing an RPG or spending time with her corgi.
When George R.R. Martin crafted the world of Westeros back in the 90s, he probably didn’t think his words would go on to spawn graphic novels, TV shows, action figures, video games, and more. Moreover, I doubt the author expected his works to be adapted into a mobile-friendly action-RPG built to prioritize predatory microtransactions over the rich lore he’d spent decades perfecting. Yet in 2025, we have Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, a visually striking open-world exploration game that looks compelling in motion, but hones in more on menus and currency than fantasy adventure. And, as you push deeper into its sizable campaign to uncover a plethora of in-game currencies and progress-halting hurdles, the neo-medieval jaunt starts to feel more like a lesson in asset management than a thoughtful RPG.
Kingsroad takes place during season four of the HBO TV series, putting you in the fur-lined boots of a northern-born bastard of House Tyre. With your father sickly and your inheritance caught up in the strict succession rules of the realm, the only hope for the safety of your people is to borrow, beg, and steal your way into the hearts of the lords and ladies of Westeros. Naturally, things aren’t as simple as just asking, and you’ll have to go round the houses (literally) to solve land disputes, find missing soldiers, and knock together the heads of vassal-house warriors on your way to earning your flowers. Alongside a cavalcade of curious NPCs, there are also White Walkers, mythical beasts, and traitorous Boltons to butt heads with. Thankfully, Westeros’ misfortune makes for an enticing landing pad for you to start from.
Before you dive into the cobbled streets and open roads of Westeros, though, you’ll first need to pick a combat archetype to play as: a brutish Sellsword, a skilful Knight, or a nimble Assassin. Fuelled by my love of Brienne of Tarth and Dungeons & Dragons’ Barbarian class, I opted for the axe-wielding Sellsword, whose heavy strikes can easily wind gaggles of enemy forces. Indecisive? Good news: Kingsroad does allow you to switch between archetypes at any time, and your inventory is shared across your three possible characters, so you can boost your alts with your main’s hard-earned loot. That said, I was disappointed to find that once you finalise a character, you can’t delete them and start that class over, or change their name, a feature that bit me in the butt when testing how unsightly I could make my Knight.
With your combat destiny chosen, Kingsroad’s decently impressive character creator lets you use a mixture of face-contorting sliders and colour-pickers to specialise your plucky hero. It doesn’t have the depth of something like Dragon’s Dogma 2 (although that’s an admittedly high bar), but I am glad I was able to bestow my characters with an identity that felt personal to me – which is to say moody, and tastefully adorned with smudgy eyeliner and edgy facial scars.
Kingsroad wastes no time teaching you the basics of its combat and platforming with a tight but comprehensive tutorial, which takes you beyond the wall and back again. That’s where you’ll meet the first of many familiar faces for any fans of the show, as Jon Snow and Samwell Tarley do a decent job of filling in the narrative gaps for those in need of a season four recap. While the digital renditions of these well-known characters aren’t the most flattering, their conversations felt thoughtfully written and helped to establish my lowborn place within the setting.
Soon enough, though, Kingsroad lets go of your hand and allows you to roam free across the countryside, providing a choice of campaign quests and side missions to follow, as well as plenty of points of interest to chase on your map. The open world of Kingsroad gave me the freedom to explore this (mostly) faithfully reimagined Westeros, and I enjoyed riding across snowy plateaus and uncovering the secrets of curious stone architecture nestled on the horizon. But the initial exhilaration of high fantasy galavanting wore off quickly as the edges of developer Netmarble’s fantasy panopticon started to show.
For every delicate snowflake at Castle Black or butterfly dancing in Winterfell, there were plenty more low-poly fruit trees, bouncy grass patches, and possessed weapons to pick at the sheen. I admire the sheer scale of the open world Kingsroad is offering, but it’s lacking the visual consistency to make it realistic and immersive. As I soon noticed those cracks in the facade, Kingsroad started to feel like a game full of pulled punches, despite how promising it seemed at a distance.
This lack of polish extends to your movement on both foot and horseback – ice skating would be the most fitting comparison. When exploring the frosty reaches of the North, this sensation is strangely fitting. However, it became wholly frustrating when it persisted while charting the sunny coastal areas near Highgarden, especially when attempting to complete the occasional platforming puzzles dotted around the icon-covered map. Typically, I was only one slip away from falling down an unscalable hillside, or worse, into a camp of fierce opponents with no way out. Up close, the animations also err on the eerie side in cutscenes. My character would often deliver a wide-eyed death stare, and I couldn't take them seriously as they’d burn holes in the townsfolk’s skulls as they explained their heart wrenching tragedies.
Speaking of the citizens of Westeros, their heads and eyes wobble around like strange marionettes during conversations, which dampens the atmosphere considerably. It’s a shame, because their dialogue does a great job of affirming the grim, corrupt cloud that hangs over the continent as winter approaches. I felt particularly bad laughing when an old lady thanked me for saving her daughter from being eaten by Ramsay Bolton’s dogs. Unfortunately, the most egregious offenders are often Kingsroad’s recreations of characters from the show. Memorable players, like Nymeria Sand and Varys, surface as uncanny valley clones of their likenesses. I’ll be seeing yassifed Cersei in my nightmares for many moons to come…
Beyond exploration, the bulk of your time in Kingsroad is split between investing in complex resource management systems at your homestead and completing multi-stage quests and battles out in the world. As such, you can find a plethora of challenges that boost both of these areas, like dungeon crawls, bandit camps, occupied villages, and giant mythical beasts, all of which reward you handsomely for spilling blood by the gallon. How efficiently you blend your time between these two aspects is integral to maintaining a solid pace within the grind-heavy progression system – alas, a lack of technical balance makes succeeding in this endeavour profoundly painful.
The trouble begins with the combat, which is a total mixed bag. While your actions feel pleasantly grounded, and rugged blows always arrive with flashy particle-heavy animations, the process begins to feel overfamiliar fast. Despite the solid variety of moves available – light, heavy, and special attacks, as well as decent dodge and parry options – inaccurate hit boxes consistently hampered my attempts at strategy. Occasionally, I would need to use my head a little and skulk around an area to remove edge threats, though those tactical moments arrived few and far between. It says something unflattering that Kingsroad feels almost identical at 60 hours as it did at 20.
You can specialise and upgrade your moveset in combat with traits and skill trees, too, but they do little to impact how the combat feels in motion. Kingsroad gives the impression of having useful Traits by putting options like learning to parry and crafting arrows up at the top of the trees, but as you work your way down, many of the lower options offer small percentage-based improvements to defense and attack that barely make a dent. So as your sparkly slashes lose their lustre, you’re often left cycling through the same few enemies and combos until the battle is won. It seems as though the architecture of a solid combat system is there, but much like the rest of Kingsroad, it’s all facade with no foundation.
Still, what hampers the fun of Kingsroad most of all are the frequently appearing and appropriately-named Momentum roadblocks. Similar to Destiny’s Gear Score, Kingsroad tallies up the quality of all your equipment, accessories, and skills into one neat number called your Momentum Score. These pesky little digits are the cruel gatekeepers of story content, forcing you to scour the map for dull side objectives that can juice the numbers and shuffle you towards the next episode.
While I’m more than happy to invest in grind-heavy games like World of Warcraft Classic and no stranger to mobile-minded progress gating, the Momentum system in Kingsroad is a particularly brutish arbiter that doesn’t allow you to get crafty or punch above your weight by taking on more challenging enemies. Instead, imposing forces appear with a skull icon over their head, their damage and health ratings untouchably high. But as soon as you inch over the Momentum line, the fight shifts dramatically in your favour. This black and white process neutralises any sense of gamesmanship, and frequently forced me into hours of toil to get back to the story I was, for the most part, enjoying.
When you’re ready to take some time out from the combat, you can invest more in the slower-paced aspects of Kingsroad, namely the tedious Estate Management side game. As the last remaining heir to Lord Tyre, his homestead, Renan’s Rest, becomes your project. As is to be expected, helping this dilapidated village flourish rewards you with the tools necessary to beef up your arsenal, and gives you a place to spend all those resources you’ve been hoarding by completing missions – though the process of cleaning up this town is about as much fun as cleaning your actual room.
While the jeweller and the forge are convenient additions that allow you to craft wearable items, the most valuable activity is embarking on gacha-based Artefact Expeditions. You’ll spend resources to hire workers and send them into the wild to find more resources, as well as historical items called Relics you can then leverage to further bolster your Momentum. Similar to other gacha game systems, you’re guaranteed a high-quality item after a set amount of runs, but a standard expedition takes eight actual hours to complete, which is a frustrating turnaround when not every run guarantees a good haul. That is, unless you’re willing to pay real money to speed things up.
That brings us to the elephant in the room. Almost every activity in Kingsroad can be expedited with the use of cold hard cash, which translates to Iron Bank Marks in-game. Of course, you can pay to complete an aforementioned expedition early, or buy higher-rarity expedition wagons by the dozen that don’t take time to complete. Stuck behind a Momentum block? Just purchase Gold to speedrun your jewellery maker’s upgrades and smelt higher-rated necklaces and rings to jolt your score. Typically, you can only fast travel by making your way to a special signpost first, and there’s a copper fee for each warp – but you can fast travel from anywhere for free if you pay for the premium option. Behind nearly every aggravating system in Kingsroad is a far more user-friendly one, but only if you’re willing to cough up the dough. It seems intent to toe the line between being intentionally frustrating and passably functional, subtly egging you on to pay up rather than sit through the repetitive, time-consuming activities necessary to proceed.
While it’s to be expected that there will be premium aspects in a free-to-play game available on mobile devices (in addition to Steam), the overwhelming flood of paid subscriptions, resource packs, and confounding currencies feels like a heartbreaking affront to Game of Thrones fans, like myself, who have been begging for a fully-fledged Westeros RPG similar to this. Across the 60 hours I’ve played so far, I’ve felt guilty for slashing down innocent defectors and filled with joy for feeding the starving smallfolk. It's clear Netmarble wants you to feel like you’re making a difference in this world, but it’s also just as keen to remind you that you can make a difference quicker if you’re willing to enter your credit card details first. It’s sad to see so much effort put into the underlying concept of a Game of Thrones adventure like this only for it to be tarnished by microtransactions and the repetitive gameplay loops that enable them.
© Tyler C. / FromSoftware
Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Karate Kid: Legends. The answer is yes!
Well, what do you call it when a movie ends, they cut to a title card, but then they immediately cut to another scene? Let’s call it a starts-credit scene. It would be hard to miss, but if you had to pee and were thinking of leaping out of your seat the second it seemed the movie was over, well, you shouldn’t.
Full spoilers for the entire movie follow!
The prophecy of six movies and six seasons of a TV show – wait, was that a thing? – has been fulfilled, as the Karate Kid franchise returns to theaters in Karate Kid: Legends. Though it is opening just a few months after the conclusion of the hit Netflix series Cobra Kai, the filmmakers have stressed this is a standalone story and that while Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is in both, fans shouldn’t expect the film to continue Cobra Kai storylines, as we shift focus to a new Karate Kid, Li Fong (Ben Wang). Still, it was hard not to wonder if there would be any overt connections between the two beyond Daniel’s presence - or if fans should actually worry that the film would outright contradict the series in any way.
Ultimately, while the movie sticks to that standalone promise pretty strongly, and Daniel actually has a relatively small role, there are two scenes that touch upon other aspects of the larger Karate Kid franchise - specifically tied to The Karate Kid Part II and, yes, Cobra Kai.
Karate Kid: Legends has been marketed as a movie where Li Fong gets trained by two legends from Karate Kid history - Daniel LaRusso and Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han. This is pretty notable because Mr. Han’s only appearance prior to this was alongside Jaden Smith in 2010’s The Karate Kid, a film that was intended at the time to be an outright remake of the 1984 original. And while it changed the character names and locations, it used nearly every notable story beat from the 1984 film. All of which makes it pretty funny that it’s now been retconned to be part of the larger Karate Kid/Cobra Kai universe, since it means we just have to accept Mr. Han and Mr. Miyagi had remarkably similar experiences as widowed handymen who were secretly martial arts masters that ended up mentoring and befriending a bullied young boy who moved into the building they worked in… And then entered them in a tournament where they could face their bully… And one night drunkenly broke down and spoke about their dead family to the kid they were training... And so on…
But hey, the universe works in mysterious ways, and I guess maybe it’s even more cosmic that Han and Miyagi lived such similar lives since it turns out they were really good friends whose families had been bonded together for literal centuries! Legends reveals that the two were longtime pals and we even get a photoshopped image of Pat Morita and Jackie Chan in the mid-1980s together to prove it.
Legends actually opens with a flashback scene pulled from The Karate Kid Part II to dive into the bond between the Miyagi and Han families. In Part II, when Daniel traveled with Miyagi to Okinawa, Miyagi explained to him how in the year 1625, his ancestor, fisherman Shimpo Miyagi, got drunk on his boat and woke up to find himself off the coast of China. He would return to Okinawa a decade later with a Chinese wife and two children, also now knowing the secret of Miyagi family karate, bringing karate to Okinawa for the first time in the process.
However, Legends transitions from this scene between Daniel and Miyagi into animation accompanied by a soundalike for the late Pat Morita (is it an actual human or AI? Who can say these days?) that goes into specifics we didn’t hear in The Karate Kid Part II. Here, Miyagi says that it was the kung fu experts in the Han family who Shimpo encountered and learned from, and that is what forged a bond that has lasted to the present day between the two families.
Oh, and a side note fanboy rant: Karate Kid: Legends literally begins with this flashback scene, alongside onscreen text that says “Okinawa, 1986.” 1986 is the year The Karate Kid Part II was released, yes, but that’s not the year that movie took place in! The Karate Kid Part II is set the summer after Daniel won the All-Valley in December 1984 in the first movie. Hence, it’s the summer of 1985. They make sure to get this right on Cobra Kai when referencing Part II’s events (and hell, when referencing The Karate Kid Part III as well, which takes place later in 1985), so it is odd and annoying that no one noticed this error in the entire process of completing this film, when plenty of Karate Kid/Cobra Kai fans can spot it instantly. Sigh… End rant.
Karate Kid: Legends is actually rather misleading in terms of marketing, because yes, Li ends up being trained by Mr. Han and Daniel together for this film’s big tournament, the New York-based 5 Boroughs. But none of that happens – and we don’t even see Daniel outside of that old Part II footage – until the second half of the movie. The first half follows Li moving to New York with his mom (Ming-Na Wen) where, at first, he’s having the traditional Karate Kid new kid in town path of falling for a friendly cute girl he meets (Sadie Stanley as Mia) whose ex-boyfriend (Aramis Knight as Connor) turns out to be a bullying a-hole who’s also a seemingly unbeatable karate champion. But one big difference this time is that Li actually is a rather formidable kung fu fighter already, thanks to the training he received back in China from Mr. Han - he’s just not ready for someone as skilled as Connor yet.
But the other big difference is that the film then takes a huge detour from other Karate Kid films for quite awhile when Li bonds with Mia’s dad, Victor (Joshua Jackson), an ex-boxer turned pizza place owner who’s attempting a boxing comeback in order to quickly make money he needs to pay back a loan from the dangerous O’Shea (Tim Rozon). O’Shea is also the guy who runs the Demolition karate school that trains Connor, so basically think of him as Kreese from the original Karate Kid… if he also had a side hustle as a mobster/loan shark type.
After Li helps Victor fight off some of O’Shea’s goons, Victor is amazed at his fighting prowess and asks the kid to help him train to get back into fighting shape - and pass on some of his kung fu techniques for punching and dodging. Li accepts, and for a surprising amount of the first half of its run time Karate Kid: Legends does a fun twist on the usual underdog story, with the young teen character mentoring the older character on how to fight.
However, in Victor’s big comeback fight, his opponent goes for some brutal sucker punches at O’Shea’s orders, sending Victor to the hospital. With Connor still harassing Li and Li now wanting to help Victor and Mia get the money they still need to pay off Victor’s debt, he is convinced by Mr. Han – who comes from China to see him – to enter the 5 Boroughs tournament, which comes with a snazzy $50,000 prize for the winner. Mr. Han will of course help train him, but he can’t do it alone, because the 5 Boroughs is a karate tournament, not kung fu. So it’s off to Los Angeles and to Mr. Miyagi’s house (AKA Miyagi-Do Karate Dojo to Cobra Kai fans) to recruit a reluctant Daniel LaRusso to help, with Han explaining his friendship with Miyagi - though you’d think Daniel might already know about him?
Soon enough, as Han predicts, Daniel does come to New York and he and Han team up to get Li ready for the tournament in just a few days time, using his foundation of kung fu to build upon to teach him Miyagi karate. Daniel also gives Li a headband he found among Miyagi’s belongings that he believes is connected to the bond between the Hans and the Miyagis and the idea of “two branches, one tree.”
And then Li gets his ass kicked in the tournament and loses to Connor!
Just kidding, Li beats Connor, and it being a Karate Kid movie, he does it using a special move he’d practiced earlier, of course - this one a fancy kick his late brother taught him, with an added second slide move suggested by Daniel, since Connor already has seen and countered that kick on its own in a previous skirmish the two had.
As mentioned above, Karate Kid: Legends does have an additional scene – two, actually – though they appear almost immediately after the film appears to end, rather than true “mid-credits” scenes, since no credits actually run before they appear.
After Li wins, Victor holds him up triumphantly to the cheering crowd and we get the traditional Karate Kid freeze frame on Li and then cut to the movie’s logo filling the screen… Except then, instead of the closing credits beginning, we get the two back-to-back scenes that actually wrap up the story.
In the first scene, Victor is opening a new second location for his pizza place, with Li and Mia assisting. Han is there too alongside Li’s mom, though he mentions he will be returning to China soon, while Li says something about a pizza delivery to a notably far address.
We then cut to Los Angeles and a knock at the door of Mr. Miyagi’s home. Daniel answers and is confused to see it’s a pizza, saying he didn’t order one. However, when he opens the box, alongside the pizza (which we only glimpse, but it does appear to be freeze-dried, thankfully) is a note from Li, thanking Daniel for his help.
Daniel walks inside with the pizza and up to… Johnny Lawrence! Yes, William Zabka does make a cameo in this movie as Johnny, in the one moment at my press screening of Karate Kid: Legends that got a big cheer from the crowd.
The scene is an amusing comedic one, as Johnny first mocks the New York pizza Daniel received, insisting the best pizza is in the Valley’s own Encino. He then suggests to Daniel they open their own pizza place, which he has the perfect name for - Miyagi-Dough. An exasperated Daniel tells Johnny that’s offensive and walks off as Johnny begins brainstorming slogans like “Slice hard, slice fast.”
Pretty much. And obviously the Johnny appearance is not an “important” scene, in that it doesn’t overtly set up anything for the future (unless we get a Miyagi-Dough Netflix series), but it does acknowledge Cobra Kai for the first time in the film. Prior to that, at no point does Daniel mention his wife or kids or that he runs a car dealership and an active dojo or really anything about the characters and events from the series, who we can presume are all simply living their lives off screen. But Johnny finally showing up, as Daniel’s pal, does at least let us know they are reinforcing where the show left off as far as where Daniel is in his life.
If you’re searching for possible connections beyond that, there are a couple of slight/tenuous ones. When Li is explaining how vicious Connor fights, they end up describing him like he’s a tiger, with Daniel suggesting they just need to bait him. He mentions having fought opponents like that before, though it’s up to the viewer to determine if he means Johnny, Chozen, Mike Barnes, Kreese, Terry Silver, some combination of those guys, or someone else entirely.
Then there’s the headband that Daniel says he found among Miyagi’s belongings. Was this something Daniel has had in his possession since Miyagi died or did he find it more recently? The final season of Cobra Kai had Daniel discover a trunk Miyagi had hidden away, containing artifacts from his past, including his headband from the brutal Sekai Taikai tournament. Was this second headband in there too and we just didn’t see it on the show or did Daniel already have it? That’s probably not a question we’ll ever get an answer to on screen, so the answer may be whichever you’d like it to be.
But what did you think of Legends? Let’s discuss in the comments!
With both the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, the visual experience on Sony’s console is incredible, especially when paired with the right TV for gaming. Playing games at 4K resolution and 60fps on that new PS5 Pro is fantastic, but to really get in the game, you need the audio experience to match. You’ll do justice in a home theater setup with the proper 7.1 speakers or a great soundbar, but you probably don’t want to be rattling your walls at all times. That doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice sound quality – one of the most important PS5 accessories is a good gaming headset, and there are plenty out there.
Here, I’ve rounded up my recommendations for the best PS5 headsets you can buy now. I’ve also split my picks into several categories to make the choice easier for you since prices vary and each headset emphasizes different features and qualities that may matter more to you than others. For example, the Pulse Elite is one of the best picks for PS5 since it’s a Sony first-party product that features some nice platform integration. But if you’re willing to spend more for pure audio quality, the Audeze Maxwell is an easy choice. And if you want to ditch having something clamping over your head, the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds elevate earbuds to the headset levels of performance.
It's worth noting that from now until June 11 is Sony's PS5 Days of Play sale, which features several deals on hardware and games. This includes accessories like headsets and controllers; unfortunately, it does not include the Pulse Elite or Pulse 3D headsets. However, you can get deep discounts on the Pulse Explore gaming earbuds, the Sony InZone H9 headset, and the InZone noise-cancelling earbuds, all of which we have reviewed and gave high marks.
When it comes to our picks, you may notice some crossover in our best overall gaming headsets roundup since many of them have PS5-specific models that take advantage of the console’s specific features. There are also a few first-party options that make the most of the PS5 with features like Tempest 3D spatial audio and further customization that’s native to the platform. Regardless of what you choose to pick up, you’ll end up with something great, which I can attest to since I have first-hand experience with every product I recommend. Everything from sound quality and comfort to ease-of-use and feature set are all factors in deciding which headsets get my stamp of approval. Below, you can read my detailed explanations behind each pick to help you decide which one is right for you. As new headsets come out and I test more of them, I’ll update this list to make sure you’re looking at the top picks.
If you're looking for discounts on the best PS5 accessories, check out our picks for the best PS5 deals.
This guide contains contributions by Danielle Abraham.
It seems like everywhere you look for headset recommendations, you’ll come across someone singing the praises of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro – us included. It’s the current top pick in our overall best gaming headset roundup and it’s also tremendous when using it on the PS5. You still get all the great features with some new technology including active noise cancellation and improved audio all around. Using a hybrid noise-canceling system with four mics, you can drown out harsh noises from outside your room to the ambient hum of loud fans. But it's the full compatiblity with the PS5’s Tempest 3D audio that give it the edge, which is one of console-specific perks you should expect from a top-end headset such as this one.
Most importantly, the Nova Pro offers some fantastic sound quality out of the box with bold and balanced audio for those PlayStation-exclusive single-player cinematic experiences. Its positional audio is great as well, so it's easier to hear enemy footsteps around the corner or gauge the distance of action happening in a competitive shooter like Call of Duty Warzone or Apex Legends.
The Arctis Nova Pro represents the biggest design shift since the start of the Arctis lineup. Its telescoping arms on its adjustable headband better accommodate larger head sizes and proper fitment. The earcups are also slimmer and sleeker, giving off less of a gaming headset vibe and more of a look akin to wireless headphones without sacrificing the comfort SteelSeries headsets are known for. And one of our favorite features remains intact with a few upgrades: the hot-swappable rechargeable battery system. This means that when the battery runs low during a gaming session, you can quickly change it out without having to plug in, giving you wireless freedom indefinitely.
The Arctis Nova Pro is one of the best headsets you can buy right now, regardless of platform but especially for PS5. It’s well-rounded with uniquely robust features, great sound quality for gaming, and comfort to keep you going. Take our word for it – in our Arctis Nova Pro headset review, it earned a rare 10 for all the aforementioned reasons and more.
The PlayStation Pulse Elite wireless headset turned out to be an absolute beast when we reviewed it, which didn’t come as much of a surprise considering its more affordable counterpart, the Pulse 3D, was already a fantastic headset. It has some versatility with Bluetooth connectivity, but when connected to the PS5 with the USB dongle, you can access EQ settings and 3D audio natively. Additionally, you’re able to get audio feeds from both the PS5 and a Bluetooth device simultaneously. With a sleek unibody design, its on-device controls are easy to use since it’s easy to distinguish each button.
But at the end of the day, it’s all about audio quality, and the Pulse Elite delivers on that front. The planar magnetic audio drivers help minimize distortion and provide tremendous sound quality that’ll get the most out of your games. There’s strong bass that doesn’t overpower other frequencies, and playing games at loud volumes doesn’t sound harsh when it comes to the mids and highs. Especially when you use the right EQ settings, the Pulse Elite sounds tuned just right for each game. Sony's own Tempest 3D audio is the cherry on top, and a single-player game that takes advantage of this feature gives the experience of an immersive soundstage few headsets can pull off right.
For $150, you’re getting a lot for your money. It’s priced well below other high-end headsets, yet performs on par with many of them. It’s also packed with several extra features that make the most of the PS5 as a platform. For all that and more, the Pulse Elite is one of the best PS5 headsets you can get today.
The official PlayStation headset that launched alongside the PS5, the Sony Pulse 3D was specifically designed to show off the console’s next-gen audio capabilities. Even several years removed from its release, it still does that very well, particularly when it comes to the PS5’s Tempest 3D AudioTech, the virtual surround sound system designed to enhance positional audio feedback – think enemy fire coming from a certain height and direction, or an NPC talking to you from behind.
Even without that 3D audio, our review of the Sony Pulse 3D revealed it to performing headset with a wide soundstage alongside solid overall sound quality. The rounded, well-padded leatherette ear cups are wider than they look, although they can get a tad warm after continuous use. It’s lightweight, too, and the slick white-black color scheme perfectly fits the PS5 hardware. However, I do find the headset to clamp a bit tighter than most, so that's one thing to take note of.
A pair of noise-canceling microphones are built into the headset’s ear cups. They work fine and audio comes through loud and clear, though they struggle to completely isolate and eliminate background noise. For the most part, that won’t be a problem. Also, remember to charge this headset at the end of the day or have a very long USB-C cable to plug it in mid-session since it's battery life is on the shorter end.
The Pulse 3D headset is an incredible value at $100, giving you a great option for PS5 audio with all the Sony-specific bells and whistles you'd want if you're not willing to shell out the extra money for the Pulse Elite.
Although our overall top pick is the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro with the Pulse Elite not too far behind, I still find the Audeze Maxwell worth its price tag and a surefire recommendation for those who want the absolute best audio quality. It sports a sleek, non-descript design akin to many audiophile-style pairs of headphones and performs just like one as well. Sometimes I need to break away from the misconception that wired is always better for sound quality, especially when the Audeze Maxwell proved me wrong.
Its 90mm planar magnetic drivers jump out from the spec sheet – and while bigger drivers doesn’t always mean better, this is one case in which the audio experience matches the boastful driver size. Overall clarity, balance across frequencies, and a rich natural audio profile make this high-end headset stand out from the rest of the pack. While the aforementioned headsets on this list are fantastic in their own right, especially for their robust features, it’s hard to compete with the Audeze Maxwell purely in the audio department.
That said, while the Maxwell is comfortable, it does land on the heavier side of gaming headsets. It’s built like a tank, but if you’re okay with that, then it’s more of a non-issue. When you get a great mix of sound quality, battery life, and features such as a mic with pinpoint noise isolation, it’s easy to justify its high price. I praised it for all that and more in my Audeze Maxwell review where it earned a 9 on our scoring scale.
Years of solid headsets proves that Turtle Beach knows what it's doing, and its high-end offerings have been competitive options for a while now. But as I go down the pricing hierarchy, there are still impressive headsets like the Stealth 500 that punches above its weight. Although it’s quite bulky in its physical build, I find the Stealth 500 to be smartly designed with a super flexible headband that's durable and lightweight, which also translates to solid comfort that’s easy on the ears.
What's most important is sound quality, and what you get from the Stealth 500 is nothing to scoff at. While it may struggle in higher frequencies, which tend to sound a bit crunchy at louder volumes, its strong bass and clear mids make games sound full without coming across as artificial. With the Swarm II software’s Signature Sound profile, you’ll be set without having to fiddle with too many settings. Its positional audio was great as well, which I sussed out while playing ranked matches of Counter-Strike 2, so you don’t really need to shell out the big bucks to get that kind of advantage in competitive games on PS5.
Even at this price point, you get Bluetooth capabilities and can swap between devices with the press of a button. While the mic isn’t anything to boast about, it’s serviceable and can be customized in the software as well. It’s no surprise that there are compromises that need to be made in budget-level headsets, but it gets the essentials right, which earned it an 8 in my Stealth 500 review.
No matter which version of the HyperX Cloud headset you go with, you get a quality product. If you’re running on a budget and want to get the most bang for your buck, I always recommend the wired HyperX Cloud III, which can often be found below its $100 base price. It punches above its weight with impressive sound and mic quality and great comfort. Plus, it’s built like a brick house so it’s not going to fall apart through years of use.
Out of the box, the Cloud III impressed me with its build and durability – its aluminum frame can be flexed and contorted in any which direction without ever feeling like it’s going to break. Stretching the headset out to fit on your head is super easy and you can toss them on your desk without worrying about damaging them. It's built for comfort as well with dense foam earpads wrapped in a leatherette (just be aware it tends to get a bit sweaty), although its clamp force may be a bit much for some.
At the end of the day, it’s all about sound quality and the Cloud III handles various frequencies wonderfully. In my Cloud III headset review, I felt comfortable tracking enemy footsteps while playing a ton of Valorant and enjoyed the balanced audio in Final Fantasy XIV, which this more budget-friendly headset handled gracefully. Assuming you’re on a budget, you probably don’t want to spend extra on a decent microphone – luckily, the mic clarity on the Cloud III was equally as impressive.
While there is a wireless version of the Cloud III available, the wired model presents some of the best value and performance. Something like the Beyerdynamic MMX 300 Pro is a current analog favorite, but since you're plugging into the DualSense when you're using a wired headset on PS5, it somewhat limits what you can get out of said headset. Thus, the Cloud III strikes the better value proposition.
Over the years, Alienware's forte has been custom built PCs and has explored gaming peripherals since. It rethought its design philosophy and came out with the Pro headset earlier this year with great success, as I detail in my Alienware Pro headset review. I love its slim and sleek design (somewhat matching the design philosophy of Sony's PS5 products), which also makes it easily double-up as a casual everyday pair of headphones, and that really makes its active noise-canceling features sing.
As a gaming headset, it brings booming bass to support all the other frequencies so PS5 games are going to have a powerful low-end to give a proper cinematic experience, but it's also tuned to be fit for competitive games as well. When it comes to comfort, its memory foam earbuds get the job done even though they don't look impressive at first glance. The flexible headband lets the Alienware Pro headset clamp easily on my head to help it stay comfortable for several hours of play.
If you're looking for good ANC above all else, I can easily recommend the Alienware Pro headset since it's very good at drowning out ambient noise and retains solid battery life even though ANC tends to drain battery rapidly. That good ANC extends to the microphone as well, so while the overall microphone quality isn't that impressive, it's fantastic at isolating your voice.
If the name wasn’t a dead giveaway, our hands-on review of the Turtle Beach Atlas Air confirmed it is a well-cushioned, surprisingly lightweight headset you’ll be happy to have on your noggin for hours. The earcups are stuffed with memory foam and are are almost "floating" for multidirectional movement to limit pressure and improve weight distribution. The headband is made of super flexible mesh with an adjustable velcro strap, aiding in the feathery feel. If that’s not enough to convince you this is one of the comfiest headsets out there, the open-back design provides more airflow and breathability, ideal for gaming marathons.
Turtle Beach makes it simple to connect the Atlas Air to the PS5, with an option for a wired or wireless link, including a USB dongle for a low latency connection. Buttons on the earcups also make it easy to switch between different connectivity modes. Beyond being great for the PS5, this versatile option is one of the best gaming headsets for PC, as well. Plus, when using it wirelessly, the 50 hours of battery life is a massive boon, so recharging is less of a hassle.
Perhaps most important is how the Turtle Beach Atlas Air sounds, and it doesn’t disappoint. The open-back design makes for a more natural sound and better directional audio, though you’ll have to deal with some leakage. The 40mm drivers support 24-bit audio with booming lows and crisp highs that put other gaming headsets to shame. It’s also chock full of features to tweak your sound like Waves 3D Audio, 10-Band EQs, and even "Superhuman Hearing." However, not all these features will be available on the PS5.
Rounding out this absolutely stunning gaming headset is a highly capable unidirectional detachable boom mic that’ll keep you coming across clear to teammates. It’s hard not to fall for this light, flexible, great-sounding headset.
Gaming earbuds are a fairly recent trend with the notable peripheral companies like Razer, Asus, and PlayStation making their own that are suited for games. It's tough because of the limited driver size and battery life, earbuds tend to make sacrifices in one way or another. But the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds are so impressive because of how uncompromising these little rounded buds are.
On top of having solid foundations of sound quality, battery life, and long-term comfort, SteelSeries has one of the most robust software suites, which is easily controllable through a mobile app. This takes out the inconvenience of having to flip through PS5 menus to customize the earbuds, while also letting you access its 100+ custom-tuned EQ profiles easily.
Although there are a few minor inconveniences with how some of its quality-of-life features work (autoplay when taking it on and off, connecting through Bluetooth reliably), the GameBuds do all the important things extremely well. While you should definitely use these as your primary earbuds to listen to music on your phone, they really shine in games with the kind of bold audio experience you expect from a headset. For all that and more, I gave a 9 to the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds in my review, and they'll pair nicely with your PS5.
At $160, these have cheaper base price than the Razer Hammerheads I previously recommended. While I still think the Hammerheads have a very slight edge in sound quality, it's the battery life, software support, and overall comfort that make the GameBuds the best all around.
There are ways to extract audio data from a headset to get a look at how they handle various frequencies, like artificial ear and audio analyzing software, but that alone won’t be able to tell you what the actual audio experience is like. Admittedly, it can be quite abstract to have someone describe what games, music, or movies sound like. Paying attention to descriptors like distortion, drowning, cleanliness, or balance when talking about frequencies are common ways to explain the sound quality of a device, and at some point you need to trust the reviewer’s trained ear.
There’s also the factor of driver size, the actual hardware that delivers the audio. Generally, bigger drivers means better potential for cleaner and bolder sound, but again, that alone isn’t going to determine whether or not a headset sounds good. Quality can also come down to spatial or positional audio which gives the impression of sound effects having distance and direction – it’s important for competitive settings but can make for audio more suited for cinematic games.
As I talk about further down, the PS5 in particular has embraced 3D audio in a way other platforms have not. It may seem like a gimmick at first glance, but when done right, it can give you a genuinely immersive experience – not just for direction and distance, but also verticality in the sound design. This gives headsets like the Pulse Elite and Pulse 3D an advantage when picking out the best PS5 headset since 3D audio definitely affects how good games can sound.
Gaming headsets tend to pack additional features that support the actual gaming experience, some of which may be gimmicky, but many that I would call essential. Not everyone wants to have a standalone microphone, for example, but the key feature that separates a headset from headphones is a built-in microphone. While most headset mics are passable in terms of clarity that can suffice for in-game communication, some go the extra mile to provide better clarity or mitigate ambient noise spilling through.
Good gaming headsets are generally tuned to pick up on certain sound effects and have a more intimate sound profile since you’re an active participant in the experience rather than a passive observer (especially in competitive games). When it comes to wireless capabilities, most gaming headsets come with 2.4GHz USB dongles for the lowest latency possible – something that wireless headphones rarely include. As you’ll see in the next section, software suites for USB-based headsets (wireless or otherwise) have gotten sophisticated and sometimes offer a level of customization for specific gaming scenarios.
Of course, it depends on your needs. On PC, I still gravitate towards wired headsets and headphones since I tend to prefer the sound profiles of a properly-tuned analog audio device (I also tend to forget about charging devices until it’s too late, but that’s a me-problem). However, battery life and latency of modern gaming headsets have come so far that you rarely, if ever, see them being issues on the latest releases. Good software suites and apps can also help you get more out of your headset by letting you customize EQ settings or swap sound profiles for certain games.
Wireless headsets are also sometimes capable of multi-device connectivity and simultaneous Bluetooth, which makes them versatile and opens them up to more use-cases (especially swapping to a mobile connection within seconds). Even though they tend to be more expensive, there’s a lot of upside to going with a wireless gaming headset, just be sure you know what you’ll be getting out of it.
On PS5, you're better going off with a wireless headset, though. Since 3.5mm analog wired audio devices have to go through the DualSense controller's, there's an upper limit to how good they can sound. Don't get it twisted, though – headsets and headphones can still sound great when fed through the DualSense, but it'll be diminishing returns when using audiophile-type gear. After all, the console experience is best when free of wires.
Made specifically for the PS5, Tempest 3D AudioTech to simulate 360-degree audio in supported PS5 games. That means you can tell the direction the audio is coming from, be it a helicopter overhead or enemy fire coming from whichever direction, it's an experiential marvel more so than an advantage. It’s similar to Windows Sonic on the Xbox Series X/S, but Sony has embraced it to greater extent and its implementation on the PS5 is a really neat perk. And to boot, plenty of the best PS5 headsets support Sony’s 3D audio, including the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P, Sony Pulse 3D, and PlayStation Pulse Elite wireless headset.
The Sony Pulse 3D does a good job showing off the PS5’s next-gen 3D audio tech, whereby noises and sounds are emulated to appear in a 360-degree space around your ears, and even expressing a greater level of verticality to positional sound in some instances. It’s straightforward to set up, comfortable, and surprisingly affordable for an official PlayStation headset, and a great choice if you want to see exactly what the PS5’s 3D audio can do.
If you're hoping to connect wireless headphones and headsets to your PS5, you will need a compatible Bluetooth adapter. The PS5 does not currently support direct pairing with any Bluetooth headphones for audio output. However, when it comes to latency, you're best served using headsets with 2.4GHz dongles, which all our recommended headsets come with.
PlayStation Link is Sony’s latest wireless connectivity standard that provides a lightning-fast connection, lossless audio, and ultra-low latency with easy switching between different devices. The PlayStation Portal is the only gaming device with the technology built-in. So, you’ll need the PS Link USB dongle when using the PS5, PS5 Slim, PS5 Pro, and PC. Still, at the moment, only a couple of Sony’s peripherals have this technology, including the PlayStation Pulse Elite wireless headset in this guide.
Ariana Grande is continuing her acting run with a starring role in Meet the Parents 4 alongside Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro.
Details on Grande’s latest flick come from THR, who says the pop artist-turned-Wicked star will be a part of the comedy run’s newest installment. Universal is currently set to reunite the Focker and Byrnes families on November 25, 2026.
Stiller and De Niro have both signed on in what will be their fourth film butting heads as in-laws. Blythe Danner and Teri Polo, who both starred in Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, and Little Fockers, are expected to return but remain in the negotiations phase, according to THR’s sources. While most story beats remain a mystery, the site says one plot point will center on Polo and Stiller’s son, who “gets engaged to a ball-busting woman who seems all wrong for him.” Its sources say Grande will be the one to play the fiancée.
Behind the scenes, fans of the 2000s comedy movie series can expect Meet the Parents 4 to be written and directed by franchise veteran John Hamburg. Original trilogy director Jay Roach has boarded the project as a producer, with De Niro and Jane Rosenthal also producing through Tribeca Productions. Stiller is also producing with John Lesher through Red Hour Films, while Hamburg will produce via Particular Pictures. Universal’s Matt Reilly and Jacqueline Garell will oversee Meet the Parents 4 for the company.
Grande is perhaps best known for her work as a musician, having contributed seven studio albums to the music world. The most recent addition to her catalog is 2024’s Eternal Sunshine, a 13-track record that preceded her supporting role in Wicked, which premiered last fall. The Wizard of Oz musical movie adaptation was met with glowing reviews from critics and fans alike, earning Grande an Oscar nomination for her supporting role as Galinda / Glinda. She’ll reprise her role in a sequel, Wicked: For Good, November 21, 2025.
For more, you can read up on our list of the biggest films coming in 2025. You can also check out our original Meet the Parents review, where we gave the film an 8/10 upon its premiere in 2000.
Image credit Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
Elden Ring Nightreign is upon us! Time to choose your Nightfarer and set out into Limveld in hopes of defeating the Nightlord before you’re lost to the rains. We’ve teamed up with Maxroll to bring you a variety of guides to help you get started, introduce you to each of the Nightfarers and help you navigate the dangers of Limveld.
Maxroll’s Nightreign beginner's guide goes over everything you need to get started: an introduction to each of the 8 playable characters, an explanation of the game's central hub, nagivating Limveld, the basics of combat, and how to handle the Nightlords, before wrapping everything up with a bit of information on Nightreign's metaprogression systems.
Learn more about each of the game’s Nightfarers, how their skills work, and some additional information about each of their unique playstyles.
Wylder is a well-rounded character, suitable for beginners. His Sixth Sense passive allows you to cheat death and stay up through one instance of fatal damage. As a generalist, he doesn't excel with any specific weapons, but can use most martial armaments. His favorite weapon is the Greatsword.
The Guardian is Nightreign's tank class. He's most comfortable wielding a large shield and a weapon that can be used while guarding, such as a Halberd, Rapier, or Hand Crossbow. The Guardian deals less damage than the other Nightfarers, but has immense durability and multiple ways to disrupt foes.
Ironeye is the bow specialist, though his high Dexterity makes him proficient with a variety of other melee weapons such as daggers and curved swords. Unfortunately, his low durability makes him a poor choice as a front-line fighter, so use melee weapons with caution. Overall, his abilities are simple to use, making him an excellent choice for beginners.
The Duchess is a dagger-wielding Nightfarer who excels at evasive action to weave in and out of combat. Her starting weapon comes with a potent character skill, enchanting your blade with the Magic affinity for extra damage. In addition, she can adeptly wield Glintstone Sorceries due to her high intelligence, and she has decent Faith scaling for Incantations as well. For the Duchess, look out for weapons with the Magic or Frost Affinity, and those that can trigger statuses like Frostbite or Blood Loss.
The Raider has high Strength and uses large/colossal weapons to smash his foes. While he can use a variety of martial armaments well, his FP is extremely low, making it difficult to use weapon skills. The Raider's inherent durability makes him difficult to stagger, helping him ensure that his blows connect.
The Revenant is a support class, though her high Faith allows her to use offensive Incantations with ease. However, her ability to deal damage is limited as she has no method of FP recovery. Her passive ability summons the shades of foes to fight at your side, distracting enemies and dealing damage.
A spellcaster adept who can use her character skill to restore FP, the Recluse excels at unleashing devastation from afar. Her stats favor Sorceries and Incantations, but she can use Magic, Frost, Fire, Holy, and Lightning affinity weapons. This character is a bit more difficult to play as you don't have as many defensive options, and need to manage FP in addition to your Health and Stamina. However, if you do everything correctly, she deals significant damage.
The Executor excels in single combat. He has high Dexterity and Arcane, giving him access to a majority of the game's smaller weapons. Look out for Katanas in particular, as these scale off of Dexterity while also triggering the Blood Loss status to enemies. Position carefully because the Executor has low durability.
The Limveld map is teeming with points of interest to explore. Maxroll’s Limveld Map & Key Locations guide teaches you about the various encounters, what mob types to expect, and the rewards you can earn for clearing them.
As you explore, you'll encounter random events known as Raid Events which often involve fighting a challenging foe. If you clear the raid, you earn a valuable Power for the remainder of your run; learn more with Maxroll’s Raid Events guide.
Defeating Nightlords unlocks Shifting Earth events. Each of these events transforms a quadrant of the map into a unique zone, frequently filled with lots of bosses to fight - and similar to Raid Events, they award a special power when cleared. Learn more with Maxroll’s Shifting Earth event guide.
Explore Roundtable Hold, Nightreign’s main hub area. Here, you can switch your characters, perform Relic Rites to prepare for the next expedition, test things in the Sparring ground, read up on the game with the Visual Codex, explore your character’s story at the Journal, and set out from the Table of Lost Grace to do battle against a Nightlord. Learn about all this in Maxroll's Roundtable Hold guide.
Relics and Vessels are part of Nightreign’s metaprogression system. At the end of each run, you earn Relics and Murk, which you can spend at the Small Jar Bazaar. Some Relics have random affixes that may or may not be useful, whereas others (often earned through character quests or by defeating bosses) have fixed stats and are quite powerful. As you progress in the game, you also unlock additional Vessels, letting you equip a different Relic combination on your Nightfarer. Learn more about this system with Maxroll’s Relics and Vessels guide.
Many of the Sorceries and Incantations in Nightreign belong to a specific Spell School. The Spell School determines which modifiers buff your spells - for example, a Glintstone Sorcery won't benefit from bonuses to Godslayer Incantations. This isn't very clearly explained, though, so if you’re curious on how to buff your Spells, check out Maxroll’s Sorcery and Incantation School Guide.
Browse Maxroll’s Elden Ring Nightreign Database to learn more about the Weapons, skills, spells, Relics, Vessels, Relic modifiers, Talismans, passive traits, and Nightfarers available in the game. Each item has a page with expanded tooltip information, which you can use to discover hidden secrets about Nightreign’s weapons (or just look for fun lore tidbits).
Written by IGN Staff with help from Maxroll.
King of the Hill enjoyed a long, respectable run on the air, spanning well over a decade and 13 seasons in total. But fans still crave more propane and propane accessories, and creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels aim to deliver. We’ve just gotten our first look at King of the Hill Season 14, a streaming revival debuting on Hulu on August 4.
King of the Hill is hardly the first animated sitcom to rise from the grave in the streaming era, but perhaps more than any other revival, it’s one with a lot of storytelling potential. In fact, Season 14 has an opportunity to address the original show’s greatest flaw. Let’s explore what that flaw was and why things are so different now.
King of the Hill is similar to its animated sitcom contemporaries like The Simpsons and Family Guy in that the series features a mostly static and unchanging continuity. These shows are procedural comedies, not episodic. The sleepy town of Arlen, Texas remained largely the same from the premiere to the series finale. Hank Hill (Judge) was always the stalwart family man who struggled with displays of affection and connecting with his oddball son. His wife Peggy (Kathy Najimy) was always the ambitious overachiever who overestimated her own abilities. Their son Bobby (Pamela Adlon) was always the precocious preteen who strove to live up to his father’s rigid expectations.
In some ways, that eternal, unchanging continuity could be an asset. It made King of the Hill an easy series to watch and enjoy. You never had to worry about missing an episode and losing track of the tangled web of the characters’ kooky lives. The series was animated comfort food, like a burger cooked with the clean-burning power of propane.
But the problem with staying on the air for 14 years and never changing is that the formula, no matter how good, inevitably grows stale. That was certainly a problem that increasingly came to dog the series in its later seasons. How many episodes revolved around some variation of this theme - Bobby finds an unlikely hobby he excels at, and Hank comes to grudgingly approve of his son?
At some point, the unchanging nature of the series became grating rather than comforting. Will Hank ever get in touch with his repressed emotions? Will deranged conspiracy theorist Dale (the late Johnny Hardwick) ever wake up to the truth about Nancy (Ashley Gardner) and John Redcorn (Jonathan Joss), who had an affair right under his nose for much of the original series? Will Bill (Stephen Root) ever fill the gaping void in his life? Because the counter always reset to zero at the end of each episode, the answers to all of these questions remained “No.”
King of the Hill may be similar to The Simpsons and Family in this regard, but there was never any reason that needed to be the case. This is a much more low-key, character-driven alternative to those shows. King of the Hill’s genius was always in how it found depth and nuance in these goofy protagonists while never punching down or settling for cheap “Look at these dumb hillbillies!” humor. But the series also held itself back by not allowing for more evolution and change over time.
As it is, there were occasional instances in the original series where time did pass and things did change slightly. Early on in the series, Bobby and his friends aged up a year, allowing them to deal with the throes of puberty. Hank’s cantankerous father Cotton (Toby Huss) was eventually killed off. Luanne (the late Brittany Murphy) eventually married and gave birth to a daughter. Those were all moments of genuine change and progression. But ultimately, they were just the exceptions that proved the rule. Nothing ever really changes that much in Arlen.
Until now. Having been off the air for 15 years, King of the Hill is finally coming back and actually reflecting that large gap in time. We know that Bobby is 21 years old now, suggesting there’s about eight years separating the timeline of Season 13 and Season 14. Here’s Hulu’s official summary of the new season:
“The season 14 revival picks up several years after we last saw the Hill family - Hank and Peggy Hill are now retired and return to a changed Arlen after years of working in Saudi Arabia; and Bobby is 21 and living his best life while navigating adulthood as a chef in Dallas.”
The newly revamped intro sequence hints at some of the major changes that have unfolded in those eight years. We see Hank and Peggy make their big move to Saudi Arabia. The street deals with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. A new neighbor moves in and takes Hank’s place. Dale apparently runs for mayor (whether he was successful or not will surely be revealed in the premiere).
Right away, there’s a lot of meat for the writers and actors to chew on now that time has genuinely passed. Presumably, Hank and Peggy’s struggle to reintegrate into Arlen life is going to be a big focus going forward. Saudi Arabia seems like the last place the stuffy Hank would ever want to live. How did that experience change him? Is he more open to new people and new experiences after having spent significant time halfway across the world.
And what of Bobby? How has he fared after moving to Dallas, pursuing his dream, and no longer living under his father’s roof? Has he found his calling in life, or is something still missing?
Dale is also a subject of intense curiosity, and not just because Huss will be taking over for Hardwick. There’s, of course, the big elephant in the room in terms of his relationship with Nancy and whether he ever put two and two together about John Redcorn. Honestly, it’s debatable whether the series could ever deliver a satisfying conclusion to that love triangle. But beyond that, how is Dale faring in a world where ridiculous conspiracy theories have become the norm? Is he thriving in this post-Pizzagate climate, or does he view his fellow conspiracy nuts with disdain? And is there a sliver of a chance that he’d actually make for a decent politician?
There are so many other questions that the revival can explore now. Did John Redcorn ever achieve any resolution with Joseph (Breckin Meyer)? Did Strickland Propane crash and burn without Hank around to put out Buck’s (Stephen Root) fires? That’s to say nothing of how Judge, Daniels, and the writers intend on handling the fates of Luanne and Lucky (the late Tom Petty) and their daughter, Gracie.
Clearly, there’s no shortage of compelling material for the revival to mine in Season 14. The series wasted so much potential in its original run by refusing to progress the story. Finally, that’s no longer an issue.
There are a great many questions that need to be answered in these ten episodes. And with any luck, there will be more new seasons to come. But the danger here is that King of the Hill could stick around long enough to fall back into old habits. Once the new status quo is established, the series could become just as resistant to change and the passage of time.
Let’s hope that won’t be the case. Let’s hope the series is now more willing to maintain an overarching continuity that evolves with time. The show doesn’t need to suddenly become deeply plot-driven or progress in real time, but some connective tissue between episodes would be ideal. After so many years of watching life in Arlen revert back to normal each week, let’s see what happens when Hank and the gang actually have to contend with change on a regular basis.
For more, check out the biggest TV shows coming in 2025.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
It’s been exactly two years since we said goodbye to Succession. Now, series creator Jesse Armstrong is back to fill that Waystar Royco-sized hole in your heart. Mountainhead, a new movie starring Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Jason Schwartzman, and Cory Michael Smith, hits HBO and Max this weekend.
The film tells the story of four ultra-rich tech titans who huddle up for a luxe mountain weekend as the world reels from the AI-induced consequences of one of their creations. Smith portrays Venis, the Elon Musk-esque richest man in the world and head of the catastrophe-causing social platform in question. He says the immature mogul bears a striking similarity to one of his previous characters.
Speaking with IGN Smith, who also played The Riddler in the series Gotham, agreed when co-star Youssef asked him point-blank: “Are you The Riddler of this group?”
“I think there are some similarities,” Smith says. “I really appreciate how insular both of those characters are. They're really sort of stranded away from people and alone and backed in a corner, and all their behavior is sort of born from that. They're incredibly narcissistic people."
But that’s where the similarities end. As opposed to The Riddler, Mountainhead’s Venis doesn’t come across as overtly malevolent. And that may be even scarier. “It's like it doesn't feel evil," Smith continues. “It just feels like a kid who's out of control.”
Smith’s co-stars tried to bring some of that innocence to their own characters, who are hell-bent on upending the global order for the sake of their own bank accounts.
“In a lot of ways it was just this 14-year-old version of me,” Youssef says of his character, Jeff. “(He doesn’t) know when to stop joking about something that was annoying. The whole thing kind of does feel like a bunch of high schoolers. They're still underdogs in their own mind and they never developed emotionally. They're actually incredibly adept at pushing technology, but they don't understand people.”
Armstrong wrote, produced, shot, and edited Mountainhead in just a few months. And that urgency feels particularly relevant in a time when AI is threatening to burrow its way into every aspect of daily life. The speed in which the movie was made proved to be beneficial to the actors on set.
“Everybody felt very present the whole time,” Carell says. “Excited, happy, energized, and prepared. It was like a perfect experience. I was surprised how quickly and how efficiently something can be made. Jesse Armstrong just knows what he's doing. Everybody trusted one another. And I think my biggest takeaway was sometimes it's best not to overthink or second guess."
Schwartzman says shooting on location helped the cast immerse themselves completely in the story. “What Jesse did was (set up) the house like a (real) house. You could go anywhere you wanted, you could open a pantry, (and) there was food in it. Everything worked. You could (go to the bowling alley in the basement and) bowl (with) fruit. He made it available to us. It almost was not like a movie. It was like we were in this house and they were filming us.”
Carell, for his part, agrees. “We forgot we weren't billionaires.”
Mountainhead premieres May 31 at 12:01am PT / 3:01am ET on Max and 8pm PT/ET on HBO.
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© Grinding Gear Games
Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Bring Her Back. The answer is no, there are none.
Warning: The rest of this article contains full spoilers for Bring Her Back.
After making a distinct impression with their critically and commercially successful 2023 debut feature Talk To Me, all eyes were on twin filmmakers Danny and Michael Phillipou as they prepared their next project. That wound up being Bring Her Back, now premiering in theaters, but that wasn’t always going to be their second film. They were actually in talks to direct a live-action Street Fighter movie, but that fell through because of scheduling issues, leading the twins to refocus their efforts on their comfort zone: discomforting, low-budget horror films. Reviews for Bring Her Back, including IGN’s, have skewed positive, although with maybe not quite as unanimous praise as Talk To Me received.
Starring Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt and newcomer Sora Wong, Bring Her Back is high on gore and unsettling implications, but it also leaves a few too many things unexplained. Let’s dive in and explore all the details and questions we have about Bring Her Back.
If you’ve ever had concerns about the foster home system, Bring Her Back isn’t going to allay them. The film stars Sora Wong as Piper and Billy Barratt as Andy, an Australian younger stepsister and older stepbrother duo who are placed in foster care after the death of their father. Despite originally intending to place them in separate homes, Andy succeeds in convincing their caseworker Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) to keep the pair together by emphasizing Piper’s blindness. With only three months until he turns 18, Andy plans to apply for guardianship of Piper once he comes of age so the pair can live on their own. Seems easy enough, until Sally Hawkins’ Laura comes into the picture as their new foster mother.
Initially presenting herself as a kind, temporary solution to Andy and Piper’s problems, Laura has several red flags flying over her head. She’s taking care of another child, Oliver, who doesn’t speak and seems to have unresolved violent tendencies. She is constantly dismissive of Andy while doting on Piper. She lets the kids get drunk after their father’s funeral just because it will be fun. And it quickly becomes clear she’s trying to mess with Andy’s mind by pouring her own urine onto his sleeping body so he thinks he’s wetting the bed. Anyone who’s seen a movie before will be able to tell Laura is bad news within her first few minutes of screentime, and if you were waiting for a twist on that… well, no, there isn’t one.
The big reveal here is that Laura is performing some kind of Satanic ritual she got off a VHS tape (do they just sell those at the corner store down in Australia?) that will allow her to resurrect the soul of her deceased biological daughter Cathy. Apparently you need three bodies to do it: the body of the person you’re trying to resurrect (Cathy, being kept in a freezer in Laura’s shed), the person you’re going to put the soul into (Piper, who is blind just like Cathy), and an intermediary in which to store the soul until the transfer is ready (Oliver, which is why he’s mute and also voraciously hungry). The movie is fuzzy on the details, but it appears that the intended vessel to take in the soul needs to be similar to the deceased and also needs to die in the same way, here, meaning drowning in Laura’s pool. But Laura first needs to get rid of Andy, so she frames him for attacking Piper in her sleep.
Despite having a troubled past, Andy insists to Wendy that Laura is up to no good. Wendy and Andy go back to Laura’s place, where Oliver has gone off the rails with hunger. He’s eaten all the food in the house, chowed down on the wooden countertop, and even taken bites out of Laura’s arm (and his own, for good measure). Wendy notices that Laura is bleeding when she arrives, leading Laura to freak out and demand that Wendy let her finish what she’s doing so Cathy can be resurrected. When it becomes clear that Wendy and Andy will expose her, Laura runs both of them over with her car, killing Wendy instantly, and then drowns an incapacitated Andy in a puddle in her driveway.
Laura goes to perform the ritual, which involves Oliver eating pieces of Cathy’s corpse that seem to contain her soul (?). Laura then takes Piper and tries to drown her in the pool. But she stops at the last second because a struggling Piper calls out “Mom!”, apparently awakening some level of remorse in her. Piper escapes, running out to the road where some passersby find her. Oliver, who is a missing child that Laura kidnapped, vomits up some brownish fluid (the soul, we guess) and returns to normal as police find him. Laura then takes what remains of Cathy’s body and cradles it in the pool as the authorities raid her house. The end.
As mentioned above, Bring Her Back has no mid- or post-credits scenes. You're free to leave the theater once the credits start rolling. Those expecting some sort of final twist or even a tease for the Phillipous' next project (similar to what Osgood Perkins did in The Monkey), may come away disappointed. That's all there is.
The biggest surprise of Bring Her Back is that there isn’t much of a surprise at all. Just going by the premise and title, the exact movie you’re likely expecting is what takes place. A dark maternal figure is driven to incredible violence by her grief over a lost child, intending to resurrect them even if it means killing other children. The film doesn’t elaborate on Laura much outside of her past as a counselor, which is a detail that’s seemingly only there so we can have a scene where Andy lowers his guard and tells more of his backstory to her. Andy and Piper’s father being abusive and Andy hitting Piper once when she was younger are also just thrown in but not fully dealt with within the narrative.
We’re also curious about what this ritual entails and how it all works. We can broadly guess at the mechanics based on evidence in the film, like Oliver not being allowed to leave an area designated by a white painted circle around Laura’s property. But why is Oliver so hungry, to the point of chomping down on wood and a steak knife? Doesn’t he just need to eat part of Cathy to get the soul? Speaking of which, why does he only eat a small part of Cathy and not the entire corpse? And if he’s so violently hungry to the point of attacking Laura and even eating part of his own arm, how has Laura kept him under control all this time? And if he’s so important to Laura’s plans, why did she ever leave Oliver home alone with Andy? That last one was seemingly only done so that Andy (and the audience) can learn how messed up Oliver is by trying to eat the steak knife, but it makes no sense given Laura’s motivations.
Perhaps these questions were answered in deleted scenes, or maybe we’re thinking too hard about it. After all, it seems that Bring Her Back is more interested in freaking its audience out than making sure all of its logic is consistent. Either way, the movie is creepy and gory enough that we’re curious to see what comes next from these up-and-coming horror filmmakers.
What did you think of Bring Her Back? Let us know in the comments!
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
Directed by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, Mountainhead exists in the same “eat the rich” satirical mode as the hit HBO series but hits a wall at every turn. A contained, stage-like production, it follows the reunion of four tech industry leaders and rips its plot from contemporary headlines about deep fakes and AI. However, it doesn’t engage with its characters, or its political material, beyond glancing blows. The result is a film that – despite its strong performances – constantly meanders, and feels distinctly malformed.
In a lavish mountain mansion above Park City, Utah, tech up-and-comer Hugo (Jason Schwartzman) – aka “Souperman,” or “Soups” – plays host to a gathering of his old friends, collectively known as the Brewsters. Eager to please, Hugo slots comfortably into the backdrop. Schwartzman is impressive at making himself feel small, though the flimsy writing leaves Hugo feeling like a vestigial tail, lacking any real purpose in the story.
Schwartzman’s co-leads, on the other hand, play immediately more well-rounded startup moguls, though this doesn’t necessarily make their characters good fits for Mountainhead either. Corey Michael Smith plays Venis, a character who skillfully hides the way critical news headlines affect him. Before he even arrives at the snowy getaway, he learns that his social media website has platformed so much misinformation that it’s led to violent outbursts worldwide (an allusion to Facebook’s admission that its lack of moderation resulted in real-world violence in Myanmar), allowing Smith to capture a mounting pressure en route to a potential explosion.
The oldest member of the closed circle is Randall – played by an intentionally distracted, disconnected Steve Carell – a successful investor whose secret illness shifts all his concerns towards uploading his consciousness to the Cloud (a technology still far in the future). And the fourth and final member of the group is Ramy Youssef’s altruistic Jeff, an unexpected arrival – given the words he and Venis have indirectly exchanged in the media – whose AI company excels at separating fact from fiction, potentially holding the keys to Venis’s problems.
As the quartet catches up – exchanging profanity-laced barbs that struggle to be snappy or amusing – global news headlines pushed to their phones and broadcast on television hint at a growing financial crisis, owing to violent hate crimes in volatile regions and a slew of other causes that feel tossed into the mix at random. What’s happening on the other side of characters’ screens isn’t as important as the impact it has on them – which is to say: their public image and their bottom lines. However, Mountainhead’s alignment between how the characters see the world and how the camera presents it to us – Hugo’s diminished importance, the half-baked news items, and so on – leads to a near-constant disconnect. In crafting a flimsy world outside the characters’ windows, Armstrong seldom clarifies the impending domino effects for them, resulting in empty drama when they begin making rash decisions.
Rather than letting the characters' thoughts, actions, and flagrant regulation-skirting speak for themselves, the mounting absurdity of their denial and desperate financial decisions is generally explained away in dialogue – as is the Randian significance of the title. Laying one’s thematic cards on the table isn’t inherently a bad thing, but in Mountainhead this usually takes the form of Jeff’s moral sermonizing, as though he were an embodiment of the movie’s conscience, directing us towards exactly how to feel about the unfolding turmoil. Any reaction shot that might’ve been given room to breathe (or to be awkwardly funny) instead finds its emotional pause filled with Jeff’s didactic explanations of why the other characters are in the wrong.
Beyond a point, it’s hard to wonder why Jeff is even part of this story – both as a character who, in all likelihood, wouldn’t associate with any of these people (or lead the kind of industry he does), and as a piece of the dramatic puzzle. It’s hard to truly classify Mountainhead as a satire, given how much it over-explains itself. It’s more of a straightforward PSA – but at least it has a fun musical score to prevent things from getting totally boring.
Armstrong may be a prolific writer and television showrunner, but this is his first real directorial effort beyond two short films in the 2010s, and his inexperience shows. Cinematographer Marcel Zyskind’s camera may be loose and free-flowing, but the filmmaking lacks the energy and urgency needed to make a story like this one click. The drama rarely contains a sense of clashing perspectives, or any real shared history beyond a few allusions to Venis and Jeff’s past disagreements. It plays, on the surface, like a late Succession episode in which existing tensions come to a head, only without the all robust pre-existing relationships to make the financial jargon interesting or the moral conundrums remotely challenging.
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To fixate only on Wes Anderson’s whimsicality, as detractors and fans alike so often do, is to miss the moonrise kingdom for the trees. Yes, the man loves his fancifully artificial worlds, but they are not as airtight as they appear: The darkness of real life keeps breaching their colorful dollhouse walls. That was true of The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs – delightful capers that smuggled in timely warnings about creeping fascism. And it’s true, in a wry and almost perverse sense, of the writer-director’s latest concoction, The Phoenician Scheme, the first Wes Anderson movie in ages that feels less than the sum of its meticulously arranged parts. Though set, like many of his other films, in a hyper-stylized recreation of the past, this zany comedy feels awfully topical in its focus on a wealthy mogul pursuing profit without scruples, screwing over business partners, and subjecting the markets to his whims. What could be more provocative, right at this moment, than asking audiences to root for one of the richest men in the world?
Not that there’s anything terribly modern (or Muskian) about Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda, the dashing, amoral 1950s Euro industrialist Benicio del Toro plays with a deadpan squint in this spinning top of a movie. Our contemporary, real-life robber barons, the titans of tech, have no style or mystery to speak of. Korda has both to spare. He is a classic Andersonian protagonist: incorrigible, inscrutable, impeccably dressed, an absentee father of the kind Bill Murray and Gene Hackman memorably devised for Anderson. He may well be immortal, too. The Phoenician Scheme opens with a dramatic attempt on his life and premature report of his death – a plane crash that leaves him battered, bruised, but still breathing. It won’t be his last close call over the 100 minutes that follow. Unsuccessful assassination is a running gag.
Korda emerges from the hospital temperamentally unfazed but with a sudden conviction to pass down his empire to his only daughter, Sister Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who he shipped off to a convent when she was young and who has devoted her life to the church. Can this novice really accept an inheritance of blood money, especially given the rumor that her father murdered her mother (and his other ex-wives as well)? Dramatically speaking, The Phoenician Scheme should really revolve around their tense reunion, and the clash of her moral principles with his lack thereof. But the relationship gets a little lost in Anderson's busy and, truth be told, rather arbitrary plot: an episodic road trip in which Korda dodges hired guns while attempting to rescue his business interests (including an investment in a fictional Middle Eastern territory called Greater Independent Phoenicia) from a cabal of price-fixing competitors working together to sever his hold on the economy.
Got all that? One could go on. The Phoneician Scheme certainly does, into bartering and banking and accounting. International finance is about as odd a fit for Wes Anderson as it was for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Truthfully, Korda’s quest to piece together enough investment money to stay afloat is really just an excuse to arrange variably amusing cameos from the director’s ever-growing troupe of regulars; there’s a diverting “who’s next” quality to this parade of familiar faces, as Anderson cues up appearances by Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade, Riz Ahmed, and a mightily bearded Benedict Cumberbatch. (While the costuming is as outrageously ornate as we've all come to expect of an Anderson production, this is among his more restrained dioramic recreations of a half-imagined past.)
Of the newcomers, Michael Cera makes the most memorable and funny impression as a lovestruck, goofily accented Norwegian entomologist moonlighting as Korda’s traveling assistant. Can this really be his first trip to Wes World? The Scott Pilgrim actor has an exaggerated neurosis that’s a perfect fit for Anderson’s gallery of melancholic cartoons, and he gets a fuller arc than most of the other there-and-gone caricatures. Meanwhile, Threapleton, a scion just like her character (she’s the daughter of Kate Winslet and filmmaker Jim Threapleton), pouts and glowers radiantly; if Liesl is the moral voice of this pop-up book, the young actress playing her complicates any saintliness, managing to make her religious conviction look at once earnest and inextricably tied to her resentment for her estranged bad dad.
For all the balls it puts in the air, The Phoenician Scheme is fairly straightforward, even a little flimsy compared to this great director’s body of drolly singular comedies. I found myself missing the intricacy and structural sophistication of his other recent work, like the movingly meta Asteroid City or the under-appreciated omnibus The French Dispatch. If there's a tension, it's between Anderson’s affinity for silly slapstick (including a hilarious game of horse in an underground train tunnel) and his more macabre sensibilities. Somehow, this is both his breeziest confection in years and his darkest, treating sudden death as comic punctuation. Is that a reflection of the ruthless worldview of a man like Korda, who sees almost everyone as expendable to his appetites and ambitions? Or is Anderson simply getting in touch with his creative debt to the morbid illustrations of Edward Gorey (emphasis on gory, given one splattery sight gag)?
Korda keeps disappearing into afterlife hallucinations – little defend-your-life tribunals that Anderson shoots in milky black-and-white and populates with more of his favorite actors. Not just an eccentric flourish, these moments are meant to offer a window into the tycoon’s conscience, maybe his soul. There might lie the problem. It’s one thing, even a gutsy thing, to engender sympathy for the oligarchic devil when so many men like him are presently waging class warfare in broad daylight. But Korda, as del Toro plays him with a perpetual poker face, never reveals any hidden layers, any reason to hate or love him. He’s too thin a character – a Royal Tenenbaum without that crucial spark of son-of-a-bitch moxie and mischief. And so The Phoenician Scheme remains an amusing lark, and little else.
“For all the little boys and girls who look like me, watching tonight, this is the beacon of hope and possibilities. This is proof that… dreams do come true. And ladies, don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime. Never give up.”
38 years after her first lead role, this is how Michelle Yeoh began her Best Actress Oscar acceptance speech for Everything Everywhere All At Once. A historic moment as Yeoh is the first Asian actress ever to win the award, as well as her first Oscar win.
Many considered her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once as a breakthrough for Yeoh, catapulting her into the upper echelons of Hollywood stardom and making her a household name — but in my household, the question of “Do you know Michelle Yeoh?” to my Chinese immigrant parents never created any confusion. “Oh yeah, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon!"
They are, of course, referring to Ang Lee’s 2000 wuxia epic, which Yeoh starred in alongside Chow Yun-Fat, Zhang Ziyi, and Chang Chen. 25 years ago, way before Everything Everywhere, the movie broke records to become the highest-grossing foreign-produced film in American history. Critically acclaimed and winner of numerous awards, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon not only introduced the wuxia genre to western audiences, but also challenged the status quo of what was “successful” in Hollywood.
By the time the dust settled, Crouching Tiger won 4 Academy Awards and 2 Golden Globes, and proved that there was an audience in the US for a foreign language film in a wuxia genre (a fantastical, high-flying Chinese martial arts fiction genre with often supernatural elements) that was already a cornerstone of Chinese media and culture for over half a century. There’s no doubt that the success of the film sparked a change, paving the way for the success of following films like Hero and House of Flying Daggers, while its stars would go on to appear in Hollywood blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean and Rush Hour. But despite Crouching Tiger opening the door towards change, real progress has been slow. In a 2022 interview, when asked about Crouching Tiger’s groundbreaking success, Michelle Yeoh cut to the point: “It didn’t change things for us.”
Despite the numerous accolades, none of the actors were recognized, “Were we not participating? Are we invisible? It’s very interesting. And it’s happened again and again”, referencing a similar situation with Parasite in 2020 where the film was lavished with praise but none of its actors were nominated for top acting prizes.
25 years after Crouching Tiger, Yeoh’s point stands. Despite being cast in several Hollywood blockbusters, Chow Yun-Fat’s Captain Sao Feng is a villainous side character whose death serves to progress the character development of Kiera Knightley’s Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, while Zhang Ziyi’s Hu Li is a “crazy-ass bitch” who blows herself up in Rush Hour 2. Combined with Yeoh’s own numerous roles as the token mother/grandmother/mentor figure, these types of stereotypical Asian roles were still the norm until 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians became the first majority Asian cast film since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club, 25 years ago. Despite Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon seeming like it was ushering in a new era of Asian representation — and by all counts should have launched a meteoric rise of its stars’ careers — Michelle Yeoh wouldn’t win her first Oscar until 25 years later.
In a marginalized community that’s starving for recognition and representation, we feel an almost-familial sense of pride for those who’ve made it, and once word of such success spreads, the community really shows up in support and passion, regardless of any other context. All of a sudden, every Asian person I know wants to see a film, any film, because it has an Asian character who does more than just exist as a foil to another character, who doesn’t lean into old, tired stereotypes, that has AANHPI talent behind the camera who created something beautiful, or simply looks familiar to us.
My self-proclaimed “not-a-superhero-movie-fan” mother and all her friends went to see Shang-Chi in theaters with Mandarin subtitles. She could tell you where Nomadland director Chloé Zhao grew up, but she couldn’t tell you who the star of the film was - legendary, multi-award winning actress Frances McDormand. My entire family watched Crazy Rich Asians, and we even visited a couple of filming locations when we travelled to Singapore. These films spread like wildfire to the furthest reaches of the community because they make us feel seen — we understand the cultural context, we relate to the common struggles, and we share the experience of watching stories about our community unfold on screen, with those in our community. We grasp onto them with almost a desperate, protective fervor, because they’re so few and far between that every one of these experiences is a bridge between us and the rest of the world.
Though there’s still a long way to go and a lot of work to be done, it does feel like recent years have seen a significant increase in AANHPI representation in Hollywood, and studios are slowly starting to recognize the value of diversity in storytelling. From being pleasantly surprised at Park Seo-joon in the MCU’s The Marvels and Choi Soo-young in the John Wick spinoff Ballerina, to rejoicing in Manny Jacinto’s viral portrayal of Qimir in the Star Wars franchise’s own wuxia-inspired The Acolyte, there’s been more to celebrate in Hollywood than ever before as an Asian American. Rich storytelling comes from diversity - the lived experiences of people different from yourself, told by those who lived it, both in front of and behind the camera.
I look forward to a future where Dev Patel doesn’t have to make and fight for Monkey Man himself to be an action star, or Manny Jacinto collaborating with Filipino writers himself to ensure his career moves forward, and I didn’t have people tell me all the time that I looked like Lucy Liu growing up because she was the only prominent Asian actress at the time, even though we look nothing alike. As Michelle Yeoh said in that 2022 interview, “We don’t want to be unnoticed anymore. We’ve waited for such a long time, there are so many stories to be told. We want to see our faces on screen[.]” I hope it doesn’t take another 25 years.
Sarah Wang is a Senior Account Executive at IGN. She is an Adventure RPG and FPS enthusiast, passionate fangirl, foodie, and massive supporter of women's sports. She is also a huge nerd for Legos, puzzles, and boardgames.
Rogue Factor has revealed the PC system requirements for third-person action-adventure game, Hell is Us. And, from the looks of it, this will be a really heavy game, especially on Ultra Settings. So, let’s take a closer look at the PC specs. For those unaware, Hell is Us is a third-person action-adventure game and according … Continue reading Hell is Us PC Requirements revealed, requires an NVIDIA RTX 4090 for 4K/Ultra/30FPS with DLSS →
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Roblox farming simulator Grow a Garden is attracting millions of players across PC, mobile, and console devices, eclipsing numbers achieved by some of the most popular games on any platform – so what exactly is it?
If you load up Roblox at any time on any day in the next week, there’s a good chance around 2 million people will be playing Grow a Garden in some capacity. That’s according to the official user tracker found on all Roblox experiences, which plants the colorful free-to-play game firmly atop trending charts in a variety of categories. These are numbers that see the free-to-play game leaving other Roblox projects in its dust, with the second-most-popular “Playing Now” experience, Brookhaven RP, showing 590,000 players at the time of this piece’s publication.
Pulling 1.5 million players is an impressive feat, and it’s also on the low end for Grow a Garden.
The farming simulator peaked at more than 8.8 million active users last weekend, annihilating only competing experiences but multiple active user records, starting when it crossed the 5 million active users mark earlier this month. The 16-year-old behind Grow a Garden released it March 25, 2025. It has since been visited 3.4 billion times.
For comparison, Counter-Strike 2, currently the most popular Steam game, reached its all-time peak just last month at just under 1.86 million players (via SteamDB). PUBG: Battlegrounds holds the trophy for the highest-ever active player count on Valve’s PC storefront, and even its peak topped out at 3.25 million players in 2018.
Grow a Garden is still trailing behind the free-to-play battle royale megaton that is Fortnite, which boasts a peak active player count of 15.3 million from an event held in 2020. Grow a Garden isn’t quite at the top of the mountain, but it is climbing – and fast. It’s at least another significant piece of evidence that the Roblox platform is one to be taken seriously, as millions continue to flock to the dense forest of content it offers.
In Grow a Garden, you – if you can believe it – grow a garden. There’s little complexity to the gameplay formula currently setting Roblox ablaze. It’s not yet another anime tie-in or tower-defense experience but instead a straightforward farming game with a tutorial that lays out everything you need to know in just a few seconds.
Each player is plopped into a server with a handful of other Roblox users, with everyone granted their own plot of land to begin their garden on. While new players are gifted 20 Sheckles, Grow a Garden’s in-game currency, to purchase simple seeds for vegetables like carrots, it’s also almost immediately clear how far you can take the premise, as other players’ fenced-in areas will often be brimming with towering trees, bamboo, lively fruits, and more. Growth takes time, but gardens will continuously flourish, even when a player is offline, until picked.
Grow a carrot and sell it, and you’ll profit a few Sheckles. Rinse, repeat, and earn enough for blueberries, then mangos, then orange tulips, then grapes, then peppers, and so on. The satisfaction comes from the tangible growth you can see in your garden – and money – in real time. It’s a far-from-unique cycle distilled into its purest form, though there is more to do for those looking to dig for it.
Customizing a garden can be as simple as organizing your yard by color, height, or type, or flavor can be added with optional cosmetic items, tools, and pets. Updates and events keep players coming back for more, as do weather modifiers that can potentially increase the value of your crops. Every gameplay wrinkle is part of the formula that has seen Grow a Garden’s player base balloon to levels unheard of in Roblox’s blocky world. Not everyone understands it, but the success is undeniable.
The 16-year-old who first broke ground with Grow a Garden remains creatively involved in what it’s become but is no longer the only name attached. Sharing responsibilities are Roblox experience management company DoBig Studios and popular developer Janzen Madsen (a.k.a. Jandel) and his network of creators at Splitting Point. These are major players in the space, but Grow a Garden stuck out to Madsen before it exploded.
“The game was developed by a 16-year-old in a few days, and we saw the game when it was on about 1,000, 2,000 CCUs,” Madsen tells us, describing Grow a Garden’s active players, “and we just partnered with that developer, built in a live-ops plan, did some general updates to the game, and, pretty much, the rest is history.”
It was here the now-gargantuan farming experience began to plant its roots, as the 20-person team at Splitting Point began to help create a foundation for growth. That’s not to say the original, anonymous developer stopped being involved.
“I actually think they’re, creatively, pretty incredible,” Madsen said when describing how development responsibilities are shared. “I think they bring a pretty unique perspective to the game, and I think there’s maybe a generational gap between me and them. Everyone has… I would say it’s almost equal, honestly, in terms of, we get on a call, we plan an update – it’s probably not what you’d expect. Sometimes we’re planning the update week to week, you know?”
Madsen can’t nail down what triggered Grow a Garden’s meteoric rise, mostly because “it happened so quickly,” but points to tight update strategies and events as reliable draws for Roblox players. Recent examples include bringing in a DJ for entertainment and organizing a mass dance party in hopes of breaking a world record. Every update presents an opportunity to create a moment that sucks players in while making them feel involved in the journey.
This goes out to all the haters at GDC from 2022-2024 if you aren't taking Roblox seriously then you are getting left behind! pic.twitter.com/6MeE1vVABL
— Jandel - Roblox (@jandelRblx) May 17, 2025
The small free-to-play project with humble beginnings eventually exploded into the biggest game in Roblox history. There’s a full-on operation maintaining its success to ensure its millions of fans continue showing up, and the developers aren’t tending to it for free. Although Madsen declined to share the details regarding Grow a Garden’s earnings past an acknowledgement of Roblox’s previously established cut of in-game spending, the experience offers more than a few clear ways for players to spend real-world cash.
Nearly every item of interest can be purchased with the Roblox premium currency known as Robux, Grow a Garden’s primary source of income. On PC, $5 translates to 500 Robux, with seed prices ranging from seven to 715 Robux and decorations like crates and campfires asking for 119 and 149 Robux. There are also seed packs and eggs that can be purchased one at a time or in packs, essentially serving as loot boxes containing special crops and pets, respectively. Most these items can still be purchased with in-game Sheckles, even if the price tag can sometimes reach numbers higher than Grow a Garden’s player average player count. It’s unclear how much players are spending to kit out their farms, but with at least 1.5 million users playing at any moment, we can guess it’s probably a lot.
Grow a Garden is pulling attention the likes of which Roblox has never seen, but success is far from a foreign concept on this platform. New experiences flood in every day, and while many of them never reach the top of trending charts, plenty of others, such as Blue Lock: Rivals and Dress to Impress, still boast hundreds of thousands of engaged players months after release. Roblox isn’t a gaming fresh phenomenon – it’s been here for years, and it’s only attracting more attention.
Still, reaching around nearly 9 million active users is so unbelievable that many have questioned the legitimacy of Grow a Garden's success. Some have suggested bots have played a role in inflated numbers and fabricated popularity, but Roblox says this isn’t the case.
“Grow a Garden's global success is fueled by exceptional user retention, vibrant social interactions — with friends driving play — and strong Robux engagement,” a Roblox spokesperson told Game File. “Our preliminary analysis confirms genuine popularity, not artificial inflation, validating the game's authentic community-driven growth.”
While those on the outside raise eyebrows at Roblox's attraction to gamers, Madsen says he has worked to legitimize the platform he calls home for the majority of the time he’s been in this space. He sees Roblox as both a slice of gaming that’s gone ignored and a hub for creativity.
“Most people’s first impression of Roblox is, ‘This is a silly platform for kids, and there’s no depth to the gameplay or games,’ and I think legitimately some of the best game designers in the world are on Roblox making games,” Madsen explained. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, they look simple, but they’re actually like… they’re solving hard problems there in the platform. They’re pushing the boundaries.’
"Look at AAA. No one takes big risks, you know? Every day on Roblox, there’s a new concept or a new game out – I think it’s kind of cool. I think it’s easy to judge from the outside without really taking a few weeks to look at it.”
Even if Grow a Garden has already bloomed to its fullest extent, it’s no doubt planted the seeds for other Roblox experiences to reach or even exceed its high bar. While we wait for it to grow, you can read up on all active Grow a Garden codes here.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
Today, over 300 unionized quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Media, who work on everything from The Elder Scrolls to Doom, have announced they have reached a tentative deal with parent company Microsoft on their first contract since forming their union two years ago.
ZeniMax Workers United, which is unionized under Communications Workers of America (CWA), said the agreement includes "substantial across-the-board wage increases," minimum salaries, protections against arbitrary dismissal, grievance procedures, protections around use of artificial intelligence that could impact workers, and a crediting policy to ensure QA workers are appropriately credited in games they work on.
ZeniMax Media owns publisher Bethesda Softworks and development studios Bethesda Game Studios (The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield), id Software (Doom, Quake, and Rage), Arkane (Dishonored, Prey, and Redfall), MachineGames (Wolfenstein, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle), and ZeniMax Online Studios (The Elder Scrolls Online). Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media for $8.1 billion in March 2021 and operates it under the Microsoft Gaming division.
“Video games have been the revenue titan of the entire entertainment industry for years, and the workers who develop these games are too often exploited for their passion and creativity," said Jessee Leese, a member of the bargaining committee.
"Organizing unions, bargaining for a contract, and speaking with one collective voice has allowed workers to take back the autonomy we all deserve. Our first contract is an invitation for video game professionals everywhere to take action. We’re the ones who make these games, and we’ll be the ones to set new standards for fair treatment.”
ZeniMax QA workers first unionized in January of 2023, following groups at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany, after Microsoft made a public commitment to labor neutrality. However, the road to a contract has been challenging. In November of last year, workers went on a one-day strike, citing a lack of progress at the bargaining table over remote work protections and allegations that Microsoft was outsourcing QA work without bargaining with the union. Then, in April, workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, again citing concerns over remote work and low compensation.
The tentative contract is contingent on ratification by the union members in a vote which is expected to be concluded by June 20.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
IGN is proud to celebrate AANHPI Heritage Month (also known as AAPI Month), a national cultural event which recognizes the Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander community in May. In addition to celebrating this historic event each May, we also have a mission to celebrate our own Asian heritage and AANHPI people at IGN and Ziff Davis at large.
With the explosion of AANHPI representation in media from both the United States and abroad, we asked the AANHPI community on staff what their favorite movies and TV shows to watch are, with Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander voices in mind. So, in no particular order, here are some of our favorites available to stream in the U.S. right now, spanning genres and services. Take a look and help us continue to celebrate AANHPI voices all year round!
Based on a true story and real-life couple – played by K-pop idol IU and actor Park Bo-gum – from Jeju Island in South Korea, this new Netflix show brings a sweet love story to life throughout chapters of challenges and changes.
“The show is a slow and sweet reminder about the importance and appreciation of family and love.” – Aimee Carr, Ziff Davis Sr. Manager of Client Services
Although it's a longer movie clocking in at nearly 3.5 hours, this iconic sports action-comedy is filled with tons of fun special effects with hilarious fight scenes. Shaolin Soccer is a unique combination of kung fu and soccer, and if you're a fan of either of those or just great comedies in general, it's worth adding to your watch list.
Another perfect watch for action-comedy fans, Kung Fu Hustle stars writer-director Stephen Chow who plays Sing, an aspiring gangster trying to be part of the Axe Gang. His fighting tactics and attempts to intimidate lead to a chain of events that will keep you entertained. Check it out on Amazon Prime to rent or buy the English subtitled version.
Directed by Wim Wenders, this drama centers on Hirayama, a toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose mundane life reveals hidden depths everywhere. See how his routine is broken with new surprises and how he continues to find beauty in the world. Actor Koji Yakusho won the prestigious Cannes Award for Best Actor for his performance.
Kim’s Convenience is a delightful family comedy where a Korean-Canadian family navigates the daily life of running a convenience store in downtown Toronto. The show stars Simu Liu (Marvel’s Shang-Chi) as Jung Kim, one of the actor’s first big roles, in the show. You can catch all five seasons of the sweet sitcom on Netflix in the U.S. Fun fact: Did you know the series is based on a play? Ins Choi is the writer behind it!
Ne Zha is an action-packed adventure featuring a strong boy who must learn how to harness his powers, whether for good or for evil. Although the sequel was in U.S. theaters for a couple of months – and shattered global box office records – it is not yet available to stream in the U.S. Stay tuned!
Directed by Soi Cheung, this neo-noir martial arts film is filled with turf war crime action. Taking place in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City in the 1980s, there’s historic tension that has left the underworld on edge. The tension bursts when a fighter goes against a Triad boss, resulting in what could only be called a bloody and thrilling gang war.
The Nambi Effect is a biographical film about Nambi Narayanan, an aerospace engineer at ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) who is accused of espionage after a series of strange events. The movie begins with a present-day interview diving into Narayanan's past and significant moments in his studies and career leading up to the investigation.
Reply 1988 is the third installment of the Reply series, a South Korean TV drama. Following not one, not two, not three, not four, but five families who are neighbors in Seoul, the impressive cast brings these characters to life as they look back to what 1988 was like on their street. Actor Park Bo-gum from When Life Gives You Tangerines also stars in this heartfelt show.
“One of my favorite K-drama series!” says Dean Kim, Software Architect from the Ookla team, while Karen Oh from Ziff Davis leadership also says: “It’s the best! I tried the other spin-offs from it (and they are worth watching), but this is still my fave.”
The best Studio Ghibli movies offer gorgeous hand-drawn animation and heart-tugging stories, mostly from the imagination of Hayao Miyazaki. The good news is that almost all of 25 Studio Ghibli movies are available to stream online. You can see what the IGN team at large voted as the 10 best Studio Ghibli movies ever.
One of our team members, Ziff Davis recruiter Kunie Prak’s faves include:
“Sometimes I just like the formulaic format of procedurals, but this one is unique in that it highlights the Ocean Safety Hawaiian lifeguards, which isn't commonly featured. The show stars a bunch of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander actors/actresses, which are still underrepresented even amongst other Asian heritages.” – Sarah Wang, Ziff Davis Senior Account Executive
When you take 100 Korean cooks, pitting 20 celebrity chefs against 80 "unknown" chefs competing under alises, you get one fierce cooking battle called Culinary Class Wars. Exclusive to Netflix, this is an exciting show for anyone who enjoys food competition TV.
“If you want the class war of Squid Game mixed with the high-stakes kitchen contests of Top Chef, don’t miss Culinary Class Wars.” – Matt Kim, IGN Sr. Features Editor
If you haven’t been living under a rock, then you have heard of the CBS TV series and franchise, NCIS. With 22 seasons in the original series, NCIS: Hawaii came in 2021 as the fourth series in the police crime franchise. Although it only lasted a few seasons, this series is still worth the watch. NCIS: Hawaii has an incredible and diverse cast, starring Vanessa Lachey as Jane Tennant, the first female Special Agent-in-Charge in the Hawaii Field Office and the first female-led cast in any NCIS show at that time.
“I’m still mad this was canceled by CBS because it had the most diverse cast of the NCIS franchises, was set in Hawaii and showcased local culture, and was one of the higher rated shows for CBS." – SW
From IGN India’s movie synopsis from their top movies of the year in 2024: “Laapata Ladies, also known as Lost Ladies internationally, is a Hindi comedy-drama that combines humor with a sharp societal critique. Directed by Kiran Rao, the film explores the lives of women in rural India, addressing hefty themes of individuality and marriage in a light-hearted yet impactful manner. With witty dialogue and likeable characters, Laapata Ladies delivers comedy while also highlighting the struggles and resilience of women in the context of gender roles and freedom in India. It’s an important film in Indian cinema this year, effortlessly mixing poignant moments with entertainment.”
“I love the movie as it has fun take on mistaken identity and walks us through an innocent bride's journey of learning about independence and self-discovery.” – Alekhya Pulavarthy, Ookla Product Manager
CNET's Senior Producer Numi Prsarn says: “Rookie Historian on Netflix was kind of a comfort show for me (after the first watch, I'd put it on in the background while I work). Historical romance that somehow also turns into an office comedy with nice little touches of history, like Dutch being the only Western language they'd know because of traders. It's cute.”
Consider this an honorable mention because it's not currently available to stream, but it's been streamable in the past and have a good hunch it'll be available again in the future. Directed by Ang Lee, this Oscar-nominated film explores the complicated family dynamics between three women who live at home with their widowed father in Taiwan. With each character battling their own version of loneliness, self-expression, and/or survival, the family must find hope and strength in themselves and in each other. The father is an incredible (retired) master chef, giving the viewer something to drool over as he prepares fabulous meals for his family (even in the opening scene, for example). There are so many layers to this film, you may end up watching it multiple times to take it all in.
For more streaming recommendations, check out: Raya and the Last Dragon: Creating Disney's First Southeast Asian-Centered Movie, Upcoming Disney and Pixar Movies, and how to watch the Pixar Movies in Order.
Ever since Sydney Sweeney showed up taking a sexy bath in an ad for small brand Dr. Squatch’s body wash back in October 2024, fans have wondered how far the actress would go in her collaborative endeavors. Now we know that she really will do whatever she needs to do to get her bag — and good for her, honestly. The Euphoria and Madame Web star is collaborating with the brand again, this time on a soap that allegedly contains her bathwater. Yes, you read that right.
"You kept asking about my bathwater after the @drsquatch ad… so we kept it," reads a post on Sweeney's Insta account. "Introducing Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss! A very real, very limited-edition soap made with my actual bathwater."
Naturally, the internet has all kinds of opinions on the new product, which is limited to a 5,000 bar run, at least for now. “Legally you can't actually sell sanitary products unless they are well... clean so it's just an ad hook. Tho I'd imagine she helped pick the scent,” one fan commented on a Reddit post about the new product on r/Entertainment, while another noted, “Realistically its bathwater that'll be purified to the point that its just ‘normal’ water. A gimmick that's going to sell millions of units.”
Other fans started to think about the logistics of making this kind of product. “Also… I’m just imagining her needing to like, siphon the bath water into buckets with lids after every bath to be picked up by some guy every other week and driven across state lines to a soap making facility,” one Redditor wrote in the comments. “Do people really think that’s going to happen?” Another fan hilariously quipped back, “Of course not. She bathes at the factory.”
“It could also just be a medicine dropper full for an entire 1,000 gallon batch or something,” one user wrote in a more serious manner. Another fan did some math: “Since it’s limited to 5,000 bars it would only be one bath, assuming she’s using 2 oz of water per bar of soap. 302 liters per bathtub, ~34 oz per liter.”
That said, some folks chose to be a bit more realistic about the whole thing. “There is zero chance it actually has bathwater in it,” one Redditor wrote. “It's a joke brand, they always make crazy claims like this with their soaps.”
Fans have long been curious about Sweeney’s penchant for seemingly lucrative brand deals, something she’s been very open about pursuing pretty much since she rose to prominence. “Ok, for real tho, did she just get addicted to the hustle? Or is she drowning in debt?” one user questioned in the comments.
But another user had a really good point about the state of the business for stars these days: “There are no more true movie stars anymore. The only ones are the same ones from 30 years ago. These celebs have extremely short shelf lives, especially ones like her. She’s gotta capitalize now before the next one pops up.”
That said, some people seemingly don’t understand how these kinds of arrangements could be smart business for her. “Yeah, this seems like something a has-been D lister would do, not someone who I thought was at the top of her game?” one fan questioned, while another noted, “I’d have to guess that D-lister hustle with A-lister appeal generates way more money.”
Ultimately, though, many fans recognize that Sweeney is simply capitalizing on the audience she already knows she has — and they recognize that that’s a win for her. “She ain’t stupid and she knows her audience,” one user wrote, while another added, “I mean why not sucker money out the simps. It’s pretty funny.” A third fan also noted, “Probably worth it in the end, so many weirdos in the world, she's about to be a multi-zillionaire.”
Many, many people are probably going to try to get their hands on this soap, but the fact remains that only a few thousand will get to experience Sweeney’s bathwater in soap form. And some fans think that those who do get their hands on the product are going to, uh, misuse them. "Millions of people are going to be doing the ‘Tim Robinson apologizing for being a bad boy in Friendship,’” one user wrote — and if you’ve seen the movie, you definitely know what they’re talking about. Another fan added, “People are gonna eat the soap, aren’t they.” Yeah, buddy, they probably are.
At the end of the day, it seems as though Sweeney’s fans are generally excited about her taking advantage of her hotness factor — so much so that different versions of this joke appeared several times on Reddit alone: “That’s disgusting! Where?”
In case you too are looking to get your hands on some, the soap — which is officially called Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss — will be available on June 6 on the brand’s website.
Image credit: Dr. Squatch.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
Mike Judge and Greg Daniels’ King of the Hill revival series has cracked open a first look at its new time-lapse intro, along with a Hulu and Disney+ release date of August 4.
The official X/Twitter account shared the news today, posting what appears to be the entire opening credits sequence for the first King of the Hill episodes to release since 2010. While the audience has aged, so too have Hank, Peggy, and Bobby, as the clip below shows the Texas family seemingly move away and eventually return to Arlene.
Better than an Alamo and almost as good as propane. An all new season of #KingOfTheHill drops Aug 4th on Hulu and with #HuluOnDisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/U8wAkHHg7E
— kingofthehill (@kingofthehill) May 30, 2025
"After years working a propane job in Saudi Arabia to earn their retirement nest egg, Hank and Peggy Hill return to a changed Arlen, Texas to reconnect with old friends Dale, Boomhauer and Bill," an official description from Hulu says. "Meanwhile, Bobby is living his dream as a chef in Dallas and enjoying his 20s with his former classmates Connie, Joseph and Chane."
While an aged-up Bobby and Dale Gribble’s mayoral campaign are two topics hinted at in this refresh of what has become a classic sequence in TV history, we don’t know much about what Judge and Daniels’ comedy revival will tackle. Details about a potential return to the life of Hank Hill were first shared by THR in 2022 before Hulu acquired the rights to stream what would eventually become Season 14 in 2023. King of the Hill, known for its iconic time-lapse intro, was confirmed to pick up after a significant time-jump later that same year.
Much of the original cast has returned to the animated Hulu revival, including Judge as Hank Hill, Kathy Najimy as Peggy Hill, Pamela Adlon as Bobby Hill, and Stephen Root as Bill Dauterive. Dale Gribble actor Johnny Hardwick died at 64 in August 2023 but managed to record some material for the new show before he passed.
King of the Hill will take viewers back to Arlene’s famous picket fence this August. While we wait, you can check out another early look at an older Bobby that was revealed late last year.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
In The Fantastic Four: First Steps we’ll no doubt get to see Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and The Thing show off their powers as they battle to defend Earth against the might of Galactus. But could we also see Franklin Richards get in on the action, too?
In an interview with Empire Magazine, Vanessa Kirby, who plays Sue Storm, dropped an interesting tease that’s set tongues wagging within the MCU fandom: “It’s not just adults that have superpowers.”
Kirby’s Storm is pregnant in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which means the MCU will introduce Franklin Richards at some point. This is a huge deal for the MCU, as IGN has explored. As we said in April:
Anyone familiar with the Fantastic Four comics will know that this is a big deal for the team. Marvel Studios is about to introduce arguably the most powerful mutant in existence. And maybe his super-genius sister for good measure? Let’s take a closer look at why Sue’s pregnancy has major implications for the MCU and the Marvel movie multiverse.
Franklin is easily one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe. He has the ability to warp reality and matter at will, a power that even allows him to create entire pocket dimensions out of nothing. This power also manifests in other ways, giving Franklin everything from telepathy and telekinesis to the ability to project his consciousness across the astral plane.
Essentially, Franklin is the one being on Earth whose power is so great it rivals that of cosmic entities like the Celestials and Galactus. And he’s destined to only grow more powerful with age. The FF have met multiple adult versions of Franklin from the future, suggesting that he’ll one day grow to become an immortal defender of the entire Marvel Universe.
So, with this in mind, could Franklin be the one to fend off Galactus? Kirby’s comment certainly suggests we’ll see the character demonstrate his powers to some degree.
The cast of The Fantastic Four are of course set to star in next year’s Avengers: Doomsday alongside other established MCU characters. Perhaps Franklin will play a key role in the battle against Doctor Doom.
Earlier this week, we got a confirmed runtime for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is the longest MCU film since 2023's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Last week, we got our best look yet at the film's version of Galactus, as played by Ralph Ineson, via a Snapple promo that leaked the character's design. That followed a revealing Funko Pop! spoiler for The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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Ubisoft's heading into the weekend dropping a big tease about Splinter Cell.
As for what it's teasing, who knows? The Splinter Cell series has been sadly dormant for years now, the last game being 2013's Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Since then, we've heard very little until Ubisoft remembered Splinter Cell existed by adding Steam achievements to a 12-year-old game just a couple of weeks ago.
If we're honest, today's tease doesn't provide much more information — we've got a close-up of Sam Fisher's face and a hashtag, Splinter Cell — but interestingly, the alt description is a little more revealing.
"Close-up of Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, showing a stern expression with focused eyes, short dark hair, and a rugged beard, set against a blurred high-tech background," the description explains. "He's locked in."
👁️👄👁️#SplinterCell pic.twitter.com/Uh47DxdNQu
— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) May 30, 2025
It's also interesting that Ubisoft specifies this screenshot is from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and not from the upcoming Splinter Cell Remake, so make of that what you will.
The Splinter Cell series is set to sneak back into action with a remake of the classic first game in the franchise, Splinter Cell Remake. We still don't know very much about it other than the new version will be built from the ground up using the advanced Snowdrop engine. Our last meaningful update came in 2022 when IGN met with Ubisoft Toronto developers to discuss their design philosophy behind the game.
“20 years later, we can look back at the plot, the characters, the overall story of the game [and] make some improvements — things that might not have aged particularly well,” said creative director Chris Auty at the time. “But the core of the story, the core of the experience will remain as it was in the original game.”
Perhaps Ubisoft is priming fans for a Summer Game Fest announcement, but without confirmation, it's hard to know for sure. On the plus side, we don't have too long to wait — Summer Game Fest and IGN Live are right around the corner. The Last of US Season 2 will be at IGN Live, as well as Sonic Team, Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles 2, Norse: Oath of Blood, and more.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
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No matter which platform you prefer, there's an excellent variety of video game deals to check out right now. Whether you're gaming on PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, or PC, we've rounded up the best offers to help you get more for your money. This includes a variety of deals for PlayStation fans from Days of Play, like the new PS5 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 bundle and a discount on the PS5 Pro.
On top of that, PC players can also score discounts right now on Doom: The Dark Ages at Fanatical and GMG and Elden Ring Nightreign at Fanatical, which is out today. These deals just scratch the surface of what's available, though. Have a look through our favorite video game deals at the moment below.
Disc Edition - $449.99 (was $570)
Digital Edition - $399.99 (was $420)
The Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 bundle runs for $399.99 for the digital console bundle or up to $449.99 for the disc console bundle. With each of these deals you're saving $119.99 compared to buying each item separately, which is a very nice offer to take advantage of while it's still available.
The PS5 Pro has received a $50 discount in the Days of Play sale, dropping its price from $699.99 to $649. If you've been looking for a performance boost and have had your eye on this console, now is a good time to pick it up. Our PlayStation 5 Pro review from IGN's Michael Higham called it, "an impressive console with noticeable boosts in performance and graphics for games that take advantage of its powerful hardware."
PC players have some great deals to take advantage of right now, including a nice little discount on Elden Ring Nightreign, which is out today! Alongside that we've also found discounts on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered and Doom: The Dark Ages. You can see even more of our favorite PC game deals below.
More PC Game Deals:
May's Humble Choice lineup features some exciting titles that are worth adding to your PC library. Leading the charge is The Thaumaturge followed by Amnesia: The Bunker and Evil West, plus five more. This month also comes with one month of IGN Plus for free, which is a great bonus on top of the collection of PC games you get to add to your library. You can see the full lineup below:
If you've been waiting for a good time to pick up a new controller (or an extra for co-op), now's your chance. Thanks to Days of Play, several different colors of DualSense Controller are marked down at the moment. The DualSense Edge has also received a discount, which you can see below.
If you're looking to save on physical games right now, there are plenty of deals worth checking out across PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. We've included just a few of our favorites above, but if you'd like to see more game deals for each platform, check out our individual roundups for these consoles: the best PlayStation deals, the best Xbox deals, and the best Nintendo Switch deals.
The PSVR2 Horizon: Call of the Mountain bundle has received a $50 price drop as part of Days of Play, bringing its price down to $349. This package is a great value for everything you're getting (the PSVR2 headset and controllers alongside the Horizon Call of The Mountain game), and pushes the PSVR2 as a strong contender against budget-friendly VR options like the Meta Quest, delivering a premium virtual reality experience without the eye-watering cost.
Sony also gave the PSVR2 a new lease of life by adding PC VR support, allowing owners of the second-generation headset to play PC VR games like Half-Life: Alyx, provided they have the Sony-made adapter.
Outside of games, there are plenty of Xbox accessory deals that are worth your time and money as well. At the moment, one of our favorites is on the HyperX CloudX Flight Wireless Gaming Headset, which has received a 40% discount at Woot. If you're looking for more storage, the Seagate 1TB Expansion Card is also down to $129.99 right now at Amazon.
PS5 games continue to grow in size, and with SSD prices climbing, finding the right storage at a great price is more important than ever. We've listed our favorite deals just here, but you should ensure you're checking back here for more updates as often as possible, as new SSD deals pop up all the time.
Keep in mind that not all SSDs are compatible with the PS5. To ensure optimal performance on the best PS5 SSD, you'll need a PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 drive with a minimum read speed of 5,500MB/s to match the console's internal storage.
Do you prefer to play on a dedicated PC tower? Navigating the options online can be quite the ordeal. Desk space, portability, and price point are often factors in the decision. However, there are some great PC deals that pop up every now and again that are worth jumping on. One of our favorite deals at the moment is on the Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 5070 Gaming PC (32GB/2TB) for $2,199.99. To see even more PC deals, check out our roundup of the best gaming PC deals.
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Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.
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