Warner Bros.' decision to shelve Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s Batgirl movie over three years ago was the shot heard around the world of cinema. The choice ignited a backlash from fans that has so far gone ignored — but one person involved in the film thinks there might be some potential for it to be released one day.

"I got the chance to watch it, and it was a phenomenal film,” Jacob Scipio, one of the film’s stars, told The Direct in a new interview. “Man, I'm really sad the world never got to see it. But you know, you never know. You never know.”

He also noted the story of Warner Bros, film Coyote vs. Acme gives him some hope. "It was great that they saved [Coyote vs. Acme], I'm gonna have a ticket and be buying my ticket and seeing that movie myself. So there's always hope,” Scipio told the outlet. “Hollywood's a funny place, and I think if enough people want it, it can happen."

In 2022, Warner Bros. shelved the Batgirl film as a tax write-off, despite the fact it was nearly finished when the decision was made. The cost-cutting measure not only sparked a backlash with fans but the gutted reactions from El Arbi, Fallah, and star Leslie Grace. DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran went on to claim in 2023 that the movie “was not releasable” and “would have hurt DC.”

But Warner Bros did it again with the well-tested and highly anticipated Coyote vs. Acme in 2023, despite it being finished as well. That backlash was even more intense than Batgirl’s, and over a year later it was saved from never seeing the light of day by Ketchup Entertainment, which acquired the movie after a long period of deal-making with Warner Bros. It is set to finally premiere in theaters August 28, 2026.

Hopefully Batgirl will follow in its footsteps someday soon.

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.

When contemplating the essence of a lighthouse (as one so often does), you might think of words like stoic, isolated, or purposeful. But have you ever thought of them as adorable, quirky, or perhaps even charming? Keeper, the atmospheric puzzle platformer from developer Double Fine, cleverly reimagines the often forgotten seaboard structure, reframing it as a lovably sentient scout on a journey through a living world. Blending a kaleidoscopic art style with nostalgic adventure game mechanics, Keeper hides an emotional story underneath all of its visual pizzazz, delivering a brain-tickling odyssey that’s stuck with me far beyond the credits.

After being separated from its flock while evading a flood of evil batlike creatures, a seabird named Twig is drawn towards a dormant lighthouse that sits on the outskirts of a mythic island. Stagnant and alone, the unexpected visitor awakens the slumbering lighthouse, causing it to shoot out a beam of warming light and scare away the evil swarm. Keeper’s story is built around the soul-stirring relationship that evolves between this unlikely duo as they fight the island’s eerie infection, navigate its curious biomes, and attempt to climb its possessed, claw-like peak. Despite there not being a single line of dialogue across Keeper’s approximately six-hour run time, I found myself wholly invested in their plight – a testament to how dynamic the pair felt in motion.

It also helps that Keeper is one of the most visually interesting games I’ve ever played. The island's topology is wavy and confusing like an ant farm, with the towering summit somehow sitting at the edge of most frames, teasing you with its proximity. Every nook and cranny of its surreal, painterly world hides vast wells of depth with craggy coral, forgotten cave structures, and vibrant twisting vines intersecting like details in a Where’s Wally book. The use of fixed camera angles in Keeper is particularly inspired and evokes a cinematic atmosphere once cultivated by games like Grim Fandango and Silent Hill.

Keeper doesn’t explicitly explain the lore behind its mythical, post-apocalyptic setting, instead relying on visual clues like crumpled houses and rewilded cityscapes to create a sense of danger and scale. It’s helpful that the environments you saunter through blend seamlessly together, too, with a change in the orchestration and colour palette alerting you to a new area or checkpoint more often than a loading screen. This HUD-less approach better allows you to lose yourself in Keeper’s spectacular landscapes, increasing your investment in the twosome and encouraging you to play around with your powers and discover tidbits of lore littered throughout.

Speaking of interacting with the world, your lighthouse powers are relatively limited but smartly utilized. You have the ability to shoot beams of light and run through obstacles to knock them down, as well as send your avian mate to pull vines or interact with levers to open doors. At first, the path forward is simple enough and involves using your light to grow vines into bridges or frighten creatures into dropping key items you need to progress. Gradually, though, Keeper increases its challenge, introducing a healthy mixture of logic and platforming puzzles that require you to weave a few interactions together in order to progress. One such puzzle involved finding and pulling a series of hidden levers to create a path through a rushing waterfall – to sniff out the levers, I needed to bound around the space and use my beam to explode fuzzy brain-like nodes, lower platforms, and grow patches of alien plants.

Not every reaction you can elicit serves a gameplay-specific purpose, though, and you can also wield these powers to impact the Seussian flora and fauna around you, using your light to make trees shift in color or shiver with life. Elsewhere, curious critters react with adorable animations along the edges of paths as you walk by. It can’t be overstated that almost every screenshot of Keeper effortlessly looks like a work of art.

While your base skills remain largely the same throughout the story, the world changes in a way that keeps things fresh. For example, your humble torch can eventually activate strange monuments that twist time forwards and backwards, briefly turning Twig into a ghost that can fly through walls and rotate cogs or an egg that can weigh down pressure plates – who says you can’t teach an old building new tricks?

If this sounds a bit surreal, that’s because it is, but somehow it all makes sense in the context of Keeper’s intriguing world. Admittedly, it helps that each new mechanic is so thoughtfully integrated into both the story and the worldbuilding at large, with Keeper peppering in subtle tutorials through a handful of unmissable interactions at the start of each new area. Similar to Cyan World’s groundbreaking puzzle game Myst, Double Fine masterfully teaches you how to solve the puzzles ahead without overexplaining them, which helps maintain a sense of momentum without leaving you totally untethered from the larger plot.

Still, there’s no rush to make it to the top of the mountain. Half the joy of Keeper is in the journey, and there are plenty of jaw-dropping sights to gawk at along the way. Each level is its own microcosm screaming with personality. You’ll visit the ethereal Pollen Fields, which are filled with cotton candy shrubs and cliff faces that look like splodges of paint someone has haphazardly run their hands through, as well as the cleverly named Horologe, a steampunk-esque city that feels architecturally Grecian. These locations are often disorienting, with brush stroke detailing and scratchy textures that reinforce the organic, handmade aesthetic. They are further bolstered by an exquisite soundtrack from composer David Earl, whose twinkling, dreamy arrangements strike a steady balance between calming and eerie, coating the world in a sense of unease.

That’s not all, though, as each area is inhabited by its own creatures, too, which range from towering multi-eyed whales to rocks with legs and narrow cylindrical dragons whose coats look like woven quilts. This smorgasbord of oddities made me feel like a kid at the aquarium, using my lighthouse torch to “tap at the glass” in search of reactions. Even with their uncanny designs, the critters all fit into Keeper’s world as if they evolved there over centuries in order to survive – a theme that bleeds into every corner of this existential story.

The themes at play aren’t overly complex, though understanding them does require you to read between the lines. As a lonely lighthouse, the ideas of evolution and isolation are touched on – but importantly, your interpretation of each conversation-less cutscene or puzzle will surely be influenced by your own experiences in a way that feels intentional. For me, Keeper came across as an exploration of friendship, adaptation, and the inimitable power of self-belief in a world that is struggling to cope under an oppressive force. Maybe it will mean something different to you. While I was occasionally left longing for more concrete answers to its questions, similar to the process of staring at a painting, this tale leaves the door open for you to find meaning in both the artist's intentions as well as your own.

I’ve always considered Double Fine the Willy Wonka of game developers, and Keeper feels like a prime example of why. It walks and talks like a fairly digestible adventure game, but there’s also a sense of experimentation and whimsy that makes it hard to put into any one box. Caught somewhere between the ‘Three Course Dinner Chewing Gum’ and a Ratatouille flashback, Keeper flooded my senses, leaving me open to contemplate its world as a standalone creation as well as a mirror of my own.

Look out below! Team Meat's sadistic meat mascot is finally leaping into the third dimension with Super Meat Boy 3D, scheduled for early 2026 release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC. It's a bold step forward for a series that originally started its life as a Flash-based sidescroller on Newgrounds, translating the blood-soaked precision platforming that defined the original 2010 cult classic into a fully three-dimensional space. Based on our hands-on time with the newest preview build, we can confidently say this isn't just the same old Super Meat Boy. Instead, it’s shaping up to be a thoughtful reimagining that captures the essence of what makes the series beloved while embracing new possibilities that only 3D can offer.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Super Meat Boy is a high-speed platformer that follows the adventures of a skinless protagonist attempting to rescue his girlfriend – Bandage Girl – from the villainous Dr. Fetus… a literal fetus in a jar with a perpetual grudge. Unlike the original game and its 2020 sequel, both of which are legendary for their punishing difficulty and death-defying speed, Super Meat Boy 3D feels less unfairly brutal and more chill while retaining some of the harder challenges for those who want to reclaim the series' hardcore platforming roots in 3D.

The preview build on Steam opens with an eye-catching menu, and the interface is both immediately functional and slick-looking. One quick tap of the A button on your controller and you’re thrust into the action within seconds – but, if you linger in the main menu a bit longer, you may find yourself wandering into the robust settings menu, which reveals decently comprehensive accessibility options and good flexibility in the graphics department as well. It’s cool to see options to toggle on a ground distance helper, for instance, which projects where you'll land when airborne. There's also a replay character slider that determines how many ghostly versions of Meat Boy appear in the post-level replays, watching your recorded run play back alongside multiple failed attempts in swarms of up to 100 little guys.

The controls translate Super Meat Boy's responsive movement into 3D with surprising grace. On an Xbox controller, jumping, sprinting, wall-running, and dashing all feel snappy and precise. Meat Boy does have a slightly floaty quality in midair that took a few untimely deaths to get the hang of, but a midair dash ability (default mapped to X) allows you to correct trajectory mistakes on the fly – a crucial addition given the added complexity of navigating 3D space. Wall-running and wall-jumping work similarly to the original's wall-slides, letting you bounce between vertical surfaces to reach higher platforms. Interestingly, the preview build lacks the punch ability mentioned in the control scheme and features no combat whatsoever, leaving us curious whether enemy encounters will play any role in the final release or if this remains a pure obstacle-course platformer.

A Bloody Good Time

The level design effectively utilizes verticality in ways its 2D predecessors couldn't, with multi-tiered structures that had us jumping upward off walls, dashing across gaps, and ground-slamming down vertical shafts to avoid descending spike balls. The ground slam (mapped to B) proved more useful than we initially expected, letting us rapidly descend to dodge hazards that dropped from above. Environmental obstacles include classic platformer staples, like buzz saws, bear traps, crumbling platforms, and industrial crushers – alongside new physics-based challenges like the aforementioned spike balls, which drop into peculiarly-located chutes that require you first to bypass other obstacles and then properly time your descent to survive.

True to series tradition, death comes frequently and gruesomely. As one might expect, Super Meat Boy 3D’s cube of exposed muscle tissue is prone to meeting countless splattery ends, immediately respawning him at the level start with the timer reset. The blood trail Meat Boy leaves on every surface he touches paints increasingly macabre patterns across the pastel environments with each attempt, and it's darkly comical watching pristine grassy fields transform into crime scenes. The sound design enhances this with squelchy, splattery audio that recalls Splatoon's ink-based aesthetic, while environmental sounds like the whir of saw blades and the mechanical grinding of crushers create an appropriately cartoony yet threatening audio landscape.

Film Study

Performance is measured purely by completion time and death count, with letter grades awarded based on how quickly you reach each level's exit. An A+ rank requires finishing under a target time with zero deaths, which is a tall order that demands memorization and flawless execution. There's no score system, no collectible currency, just you versus the clock and your own mortality. We did discover hidden collectible band-aids tucked into secret areas behind destructible wooden walls, though their purpose remains unclear in the preview build. Whether they unlock content, costumes, or bonus levels in the full game is anyone's guess.

Speaking of post-game content, the post-level replay system deserves special mention as one of the preview's most entertaining features. After completing a stage, you watch your successful run play back while multiple ghost versions of Meat Boy attempt the same route, most meeting horrible deaths before one mirror-image completes the course following your exact path. It's simultaneously satisfying and hilarious, transforming your hard-earned victories into miniature spectacles of failure. The max replay characters setting lets you crank this up, filling the screen with doomed meat cubes.

Who’s the Boss?

What's less clear is the scope of the full release. The preview build contained no boss fights (though a cutscene showed what appeared to be a giant robot), no multiplayer options, and a theater mode that remained inaccessible. The narrative setup – Dr. Fetus once again kidnapping someone dear to Meat Boy, this time appearing to be Bandage Girl based on her pink coloring – suggests we're returning to familiar story beats, though the series has never prioritized plot, and from what I’ve seen so far, that trend isn’t set to change with its first 3D outing. The linear level structure and lack of significant exploration or secret-hunting may disappoint players expecting more Metroidvania-style progression, though this has always been Super Meat Boy's MO: pure, distilled platforming challenge without excessive baggage.

Super Meat Boy 3D’s decently challenging and often enjoyable gameplay loop settles into a zen-like flow state once you accept the trial-and-error nature of mastery in its colorful world. This is very much a "podcast game" – something you can successfully zone out to while listening to something else, and by the fifth run through the preview build, we couldn’t help but think about how strong a fit it’ll be for Steam Deck owners who like to sneak in play sessions before bed. That's not necessarily criticism; there's value in games that don't demand your complete emotional investment, and this is undeniably one of those games. It’s just a shame that there’s no Switch 2 version currently announced. Half-joking!

Nuts and Bolts

The difficulty, while present, didn’t reach the soul-crushing heights the series is notorious for, at least in these early stages, but that’s not such a bad thing to bring in a broader playerbase – as long as the final version still provides ample challenge to series fans. Whether that manifests in later worlds or if Team Meat has softened the challenge for broader appeal remains to be seen, but I’m hoping it's the former.

Graphically, Super Meat Boy 3D strikes a pleasing balance between the series' cartoonish aesthetic and modern rendering techniques for an increasingly atmospheric experience as the levels progress. The preview build already teases robust graphics options, including a nice list of anti-aliasing methods, post-processing effects, shadow quality, global illumination, reflections, and foliage density. While DLSS remained grayed out in my build, the game ran silky smooth at near-144fps on an RTX 4070Ti, with excellent optimization even at maximum settings on an ultrawide 3440x1440 display. The environments pop with visual personality: grassy starting areas give way to burning forests with spinning saw blades embedded in charred trees, which then transition into grimy industrial zones filled with crushers, spike-dropping machines, and pools of toxic waste. Everything maintains that high-contrast, storybook-meets-nightmare quality that defined the original, but with added geometric complexity and environmental detail that wouldn't be possible in 2D.

Bring the Pain

Comparisons to other modern 3D platformers are inevitable, but may be a bit unfair to the scope that Super Meat Boy 3D is tackling. What we’ve played so far lacks Astro Bot's inventively kinetic mechanics and character-driven charm, Mario Odyssey's exploratory freedom, or even Crash Bandicoot 4's level design variety. Instead, Super Meat Boy 3D feels more akin to Ghost Runner's fast-paced, die-and-retry philosophy mixed with the geometric verticality and graphical style of Pac-Man World II – and then just heavily distilled from there, down to something much smaller and tighter, like a little cube of tightly-packaged meat in a convenience store freezer. There are no rings or coins to collect here: just brutal platforming, and this reinvention does it smoothly enough to feel satisfying even after several back-to-back runs of the same preview content.

Your skills will improve with each run, hitting more A+ ranks as your muscle memory develops. At least that addictive "just one more try" quality that defined the original is totally present here. The question is whether Team Meat can sustain that momentum across a full game, and whether enough content, variety, and surprises await in the final release to justify the journey into 3D.

Super Meat Boy 3D shows promise as a faithful translation of the series' darker cartoon comedy appeal into three dimensions, with responsive controls, strong performance, and level design that embraces verticality while maintaining the tight challenge loops that made the original special. But, at least at this point in its development cycle, significant questions remain about the scope of its content upon release, how well its combat will feel in action, what those hidden collectibles unlock, and if this tight-knit formula can stay fresh throughout a complete game.

Star Trek fans finally look set to discover what happened to Deep Space Nine captain Benjamin Sisko — a mystery left unanswered for more than 25 years.

Deep Space Nine's series finale saw Sisko sacrifice his physical form but seemingly live on as a spiritual entity within a wormhole (it's a long story). While the DS9 crew are left unsure exactly what's happened, Sisko reappears to his newly-pregnant wife in a vision and promises he'll eventually return to his family... someday.

And with that, Deep Space Nine ended. But did Sisko ever return? Was his family ever reunited? Or was Sisko simply suggesting he'll see his family again when they too leave their physical forms behind? Questions around Sisko's fate have long since lingered, and were rekindled in surprising fashion earlier this year when an initial Star Trek: Starfleet Academy teaser trailer suggested answers were on the way.

In the teaser, we see Star Trek: Starfleet Academy character Sam, played by Kerrice Brooks, examining a display titled 'The Fate of Benjamin Sisko'. "Confronting the unexplainable," the display reads. "The fate of Benjamin Sisko, Emissary of the Prophets. Captain Sisko's fate: Did he die in the Fire Caves of Bajor? Did he live on in the Celestial Temple?"

Now, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy showrunner Noga Landau has addressed the tease, and suggested that long-term Trekkies would soon have their patience rewarded.

"I think we've honored everything that's come before us, the 60 years of legacy that came before us in so many different ways," Landau told Screenrant. "One is with the people we've brought to join these amazing folks. We have Robert Picardo, who's playing The Doctor, the same Doctor from Voyager. We have multiple cast members joining us from Discovery. And you know, when you look at the wall of heroes in our atrium, our giant set, you'll see us honoring so many of the people who came before us, who showed us what heroism is, and who showed us what the values of Starfleet are.

"And there's also mysteries," Landau continued. "Watch out for Benjamin Sisko! We get to do some really cool stuff that hasn't been done in a long time, that I think really honors the fans who've been waiting to see what happens. So we definitely know who we are and the shoulders that we are standing on today."

Could Benjamin Sisko finally be ready to leave his wormhole? It's worth remembering, of course, that Starfleet Academy is set in the 32nd century, the same time period featured in later seasons of Star Trek: Discovery that's 700 years after the events of Deep Space Nine. Of course, Sisko could have been hanging out as a disembodied entity all that time, but it would seem to rule out any reunion with his human family.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is expected to debut in early 2026, which is the 60th anniversary of the original series. What better time to finally answer one of the franchise's lingering questions, and pay homage to one of its best captains?

Image credit: CBS via Getty Images

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

One of last year’s most highly anticipated action titles, Stellar Blade, has seen a price cut at Amazon.

The game has landed within 2 cents of its previous lowest price at the retailer, bringing the character action title from Shift Up down to $49.99 from its $69.99 MSRP - a drop of 28%.

October is an excellent time to watch spooky movies or shows in the lead-up to Halloween, whether you're someone who enjoys putting on a good ol' fashioned horror movie or if you prefer something a little lighter for the season. If you fall into the latter category, it doesn't get much better than the It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown special, and right now its 4K release has received a massive discount at Amazon (see here).

If you're hoping to add this classic to your physical media collection, it's currently marked down to $11.99, 60% off its list price of $29.98. No better time than now to grab it before we hit Halloween in a couple weeks.

Save on It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown 4K at Amazon

The Galaxies Showcase 2025 is nearly here, and it's set to feature more than 50 games, six world premieres, exclusive reveals, demo drops, and so much more. There is a lot to look forward to, and we're here to break down how you can watch the show and what to expect.

IGN will be partnering with Galaxies to carry the stream on our channels, and we recommend sticking around after the show as we'll have our own post-show breakdown of the biggest reveals from the Galaxies Showcase 2025!

How to Watch Galaxies Showcase 2025

You can watch the Galaxies Showcase 2025 (and our post-show after it ends!) on Thursday, October 23, at 12pm PT/3pm ET/8pm GMT on the following platforms;

• IGN.com
• IGN's YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter / X
• Twitch
• IGN mobile apps
• Eurogamer
• VG247
• GamesIndsutry.biz
• Rock Paper Shotgun

What to Expect From Galaxies Showcase 2025

As we mentioned, the Galaxies Showcase, which is being hosted once again by Jane Douglas, will feature more than 50 games, six world premieres, exclusive reveals, demo drop, and much more. While we don't know all the surprises in store for us, we do know the show's partners include NACON, Saber Interactive's 3D Realms label, and Team17. Oh, and Behaviour Interactive will have Twitch Drops as well!

There will be three unannounced title reveals that promise to "define the showcase's biggest surprises," and one is an ambitious open-world survival crafting experience from Unifiq. PlaySide Studios is gearing up to reveal the first Dumb Ways to Die title for PC and console, and the much-anticipated MOUSE: P.I. For Hire will finally be getting its release date.

Team17 will be presenting three new titles from indie developers around the globe, and one will be a world exclusive premiere. We'll also get the release date announcement from Lichthund's Rockbeasts and never-before-seen gameplay footage from Wych Elm's Silver Pines.

NACON will offer up the exclusive first look at gameplay and the release date for Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, Saber Interactive's 3D Realms label will 'bring the heat' with Painkiller's official launch trailer, and Kepler Interactive will have an 'arsenal of announcements' that include an epic new look at Tactical Adventures' Solasta II.

A ton of genres will be on display during the Galaxies Showcase 2025 from a wide array of studios, including Secret Mode, Fireshine Games, Owlcat Games, Noodle Cat Games, Big Fan Games, Crosswind Crew, and more.

While you wait for this edition of the Galaxies Showcase, be sure to check out the first-ever one from earlier this year to get an idea of what you can expect from the new one!

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.

Sony is hoping to start filming of its live-action Horizon Zero Dawn movie in 2026 with a release at some point in 2027, according to a new court document.

The Game Post said it had spotted the revelation in a court document filed as part of Sony’s ongoing legal tussle with Tencent over Light of Motiram, which it accuses of being a “knock-off” of Guerrilla’s video game, Horizon: Zero Dawn.

In the legal document, PlayStation Productions boss, Asad Qizilbash, said the Horizon Zero Dawn movie now has a working script and Sony is on the hunt for a director. The plan is to start filming next year and release the movie in 2027.

“We are in development for a film based on Horizon in partnership with Columbia Pictures,” Qizilbash said in his declaration. “We already have a working script and are actively searching for a director, with the goal of shooting the picture in 2026 and releasing it in 2027. The live-action film follows the recent collaborations between Columbia Pictures and PlayStation Productions on the 2022 film Uncharted and the 2023 film Gran Turismo.”

Qizilbash also described Horizon protagonist Aloy as a “key icon in the anticipated film” and emphasizes her importance “to the flywheel of franchise building.”

Sony announced the Horizon movie back in January during Sony's CES 2025 press conference. Columbia Pictures produced the successful 2022 Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland as Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Victor Sullivan, so it’s no surprise to see the collaboration continue here.

Sony has asked the courts for a preliminary injunction against Light of Motiram maker Tencent to stop the Chinese megacorp from commencing pre-release promotion of the upcoming adventure game, filing its opposition to Tencent's motion to dismiss the high-profile copyright lawsuit.

It comes after Sony accused Tencent of developing a "knock-off game [of Horizon Zero Dawn] so blatant that the public loudly decried the obvious and pervasive copying of Horizon’s protected elements," claiming the release of Light of Motiram "jeopardizes Horizon's continued success, including current expansion plans for the franchise."

Sony claimed Tencent's upcoming game Light of Motiram was nothing more than a "slavish clone" of Horizon Zero Dawn, and filed a copyright lawsuit in a California court at the end of July, outlining numerous similarities and comparing various marketing screenshots from both games, as well as their descriptions. As we explained at the time, just like Horizon, Light of Motiram takes place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by giant robot dinosaurs who roam large, natural environments such as tropical forests, deserts, and snowy mountains. Both games even feature red-haired women protagonists that wear very similar outfits and styles, and devices similar to Aloy's "Focus" earpiece.

Just days after Sony filed its lawsuit alleging the upcoming game was a "slavish clone" of Horizon, Tencent quietly updated its Light of Motiram Steam page and swapped out a number of screenshots, including its cover image, before responding to Sony's lawsuit by claiming it was only making use of "well-trodden" tropes and suggesting the PlayStation maker's own game was too similar to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

Tencent then hit back by describing Sony's lawsuit an overreach, highlighting other game franchises with similar elements to Horizon Zero Dawn such as The Legend of Zelda and Far Cry. It was "startling," Tencent said, that Sony was now attempting to claim Horizon's concept was original, rather than an idea based on "ubiquitous genre ingredients."

Now, as reported by The Game Post, Sony has dismissed Tencent's response as "nonsense," insisting "the damage is done – and it continues" and accusing the Chinese company of trying to minimize its involvement by using "shell" entities even though the Chinese firm remains "at the helm."

"The copying was so egregious that numerous journalists and Horizon fans called Light of Motiram 'a major Horizon rip off,' 'an obvious knock off,' a 'copycat' with a main character that 'resembles Aloy to a tee,' and ‘extremely similar to Horizon Zero Dawn'," Sony wrote.

That's not all, though. As spotted by Games Fray, Sony has also filed for a preliminary injunction in a bid to prevent Tencent from using a red-haired character in Light of Motiram, as well as other visuals or storyline elements close to that of the Horizon franchise. It hopes for the injunction to be enacted by the end of the year.

Tencent, however, maintains that with a scheduled release date on Q4 2027, Sony "cannot possibly hope to demonstrate the ‘immediate threatened injury’ that is the prerequisite of a preliminary injunction" given the game is so far from release. It attached declarations from a number of key stakeholders, including Guerrilla's head of music, Lucas van Tol, and artist Jan-Bart Van Beet who both claim they were "shocked" when they saw Light of Motiram, with Van Beet writing: "Tencent’s promotional material presents a visual setting almost identical to SIE’s Horizon promotional material."

"After spending over a decade creating and developing the Horizon franchise, it was disappointing to see our work copied to such a significant extent," he wrote. "Instead of spending the years and money that we invested into creating the Horizon world, Light of Motiram simply copied it, sidestepping the investment we made — and significant risk we took — in developing Horizon."

He continued: "There is an even greater risk of harm to the Horizon franchise if Light of Motiram, once released, does not have the same high quality as the Horizon games. The confusion caused by Light of Motiram promotions has already interfered with our existing Horizon development strategy, as there is a risk that future expansion could be incorrectly interpreted as copying Light of Motiram."

Van Tol wrote: "I have reviewed the music and sounds in Light of Motiram's promotional materials. I found striking similarities between their promotional trailer and the Horizon music. Light of Motiram's promotional materials contain the same core features of the Horizon sound, including the pillars, instrumentation, intimacy of the lead female voice, melodic composition, and rhythm, creating a similar overall feel."

The case continues.

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.

While 2023's The Flash marked what will probably be the final time Michael Keaton dons the Batsuit, the world of Tim Burton's Batman movies lives on in other media. Not only has DC Comics published two sequels in the form of Batman '89 and Batman '89: Echoes, Penguin Random House is also expanding this universe through a series of novels by John Jackson Miller. The second of those, Batman: Revolution, is nearing release, and IGN has an exclusive excerpt.

For those not up to date on the steadily growing Tim Burton Batman universe, Revolution is set between the events of 1989's Batman and 1992's Batman Returns. It introduces the Burton-verse version of Riddler, a character who previously cameoed in 2024's Batman: Resurrection.

Before we get to the excerpt, PRH also provided IGN with a "Riddle Me This" puzzle featured in the book. In the Burton-verse, Riddler is actually Norman Pinkus, a newspaper copy editor whose prodigious mind is responsible for this popular word puzzle game. Check it out below and see if you can deduce any clues for what's to come in Batman: Revolution:

For more Batman fun, check out the top 27 Batman graphic novels of all time.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Much like the thought of becoming an actual vampire, there are some things I really like about Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, and some I really don't care for. Developer The Chinese Room has undeniably done a remarkable job breaking out of its typically slow-paced and linear realm to give us a streetlight-soaked, open world Seattle that's enjoyable to explore, with a side of positively exquisite writing and voice acting. But combat never rises much above the level of being merely pretty good, and a lack of payoff for both mechanical and story choices hold this nocturnal sojourn back from greatness.

The slice of Seattle that serves as a hub for Bloodlines 2's searching, stalking, and politicking is impressive to behold, though don't expect GTA scale here. At around five by five blocks with most buildings climbable and rooftops fully navigable, there’s quite a bit more room to prowl than in Bloodlines 1's Santa Monica, with several distinct and memorable areas from the charming Pioneer Square to the lantern-lit Chinatown. Moving around it by clamoring, leaping, and gliding is some of the most fun I had.

This is also where your semi-customizable elder, Phyre, will hunt their prey, in the form of hapless humans who can be provoked, scared, or seduced depending on your hunting style. I appreciate that feeding is a major, unavoidable part of the nightly routine, but I think it could have been done better in a couple ways. For one, you only need to feed to recharge your combat powers. In the tabletop game, you get thirsty upon waking up every night, and in Bloodlines 1, your blood pool would steadily drop over time. I don't think this needs to be a hardcore survival game, but something like that would have helped sell that vampires need blood like we need food and water, adding a sense of desperation, because right now it’s just something you need to top up before going into battle.
For another, there just isn't enough variety in the NPC models and voices to keep me fooled across the 30-plus hours my first playthrough took. I probably fed on one specific woman wearing the same exact hat at least a couple dozen times.

You are required to maintain the Masquerade while at street level, meaning no using your powers or feeding in front of normies, which is appropriate. You can't have a Vampire: The Masquerade game without, well, the Masquerade. But I did find it was a bit too easy to shake off any suspicion if I messed up.

The key component of Vampire: The Masquerade lore that is almost completely missing (outside of one cutscene that happens no matter what you do) is The Beast, the dark and ravenous voice inside each vampire that drives them to do terrible things and can provoke an uncontrollable state called Frenzy. The absolute best mechanic in the 5th Edition of the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop game, upon which Bloodines 2 is based, is an increasing hunger track that makes your character more likely to behave in a monstrous or unpredictable manner the longer they've gone without feeding. I get that people don't usually like losing control of their character. But this is so crucial to the vampire fantasy that its absence is an almost fatal flaw. It's the one choice that really consistently made me feel like I was playing some generic vampire game, not a Vampire: The Masquerade game.

At least the combat is challenging, pulse-pounding, and overall pretty decent. It can get a little disorienting, and I really wish there was more of a "hard" lock-on ability given it's all in third-person and both you and your opponents are constantly zipping around at high speeds. But there are some exciting nuances to master like the various kicks, parries, and telekinetic grabs. At least for a melee build, it could be really exhilarating once I got the hang of it.

Stealth is satisfying and rewarding as well, though it's limited in certain segments like boss fights in a way that can come across as punishing you for deciding to focus on it. Some of the more esoteric fighting styles like Tremere Blood Sorcery are absolutely sick nasty amazing the first few times you pull them off – boiling someone's blood from the inside is every bit as bombastically brutal as you'd imagine – but can come to seem like more of a gimmick than a playstyle after a while. Overall, though, the frantic and action-packed sequences that combined my abilities to use the environment, my movement powers, and even my enemies against each other were some of the high points of Bloodlines 2.

Where it falls down the most, unfortunately, is as an RPG. You are playing as an elder vampire, so it's not exactly a typical zero-to-hero story. But just to give a representative example, the damage your melee attacks do at the very beginning is exactly the same as it will be in the final boss fight. You awaken new powers called Disciplines, like being able to turn invisible or smooch an enemy to turn them to your side, but you'll get all of them for your chosen clan within the first eight hours or so, after which point anything else is mostly a sidegrade. You can upgrade your health track by finding hidden symbols painted in blood across Seattle, but overall there isn't much of a sense of power progression throughout most of the campaign.

This is further limited by the fact that you can only equip four Disciplines at a time, and only one from each category – so, for example, you can't mix and match two different clans' movement abilities to create your own hyper-mobile playstyle. I don't see the wisdom in these restrictions at all. I also don't really enjoy that each Discipline can only be used once in battle before having to feed again, since they each have their own separate pool of power points, instead of having them draw from a common pool of stored blood that I could spend however I like. Sometimes restrictions are good. I just don't think any of these ones are. I'm a dang vampire. Just let me do what I want.

I did really appreciate the options Phyre has for visual customization. Each clan has four different outfits to unlock from the punk rock streetwear of the Brujah to the sharp business attire of the Ventrue. NPCs will actually react differently to you based on what you're wearing, such as being easier to seduce if you show a little more skin. That is honestly amazing. But what we're missing is a weapon slot, and that is definitely not amazing. I get that Phyre is an elder and a living weapon herself. She can telekinetically use a gun as a sort of one-off combat consumable, or throw a fire extinguisher across the room. But melee is always a hand-to-hand affair. And again, this is just cramping my style from a character customization angle. Do I need weapons to kill these chumps? Nah. But a vampire with a trenchcoat and dual pistols or a sweet-ass katana is just too cool and iconic to not allow in your vampire RPG. It's part of character creation and self-expression in the tabletop game. What are we doing here?

The story about solving a series of dramatic murders and navigating court politics is overall extremely well-written and voiced by a fantastic cast, from the sarcastic Nosferatu Tolly to the self-indulgent queen of seattle herself, Lou Graham. It's so good, in fact, that for the last few hours, I was ready to throw the windows open and start yelling into the night that everyone needed to experience this.

But then it absolutely broke my cold, dead heart. I'll do my best to avoid spoilers here, but you can skip ahead to the verdict if you're really sensitive to that kind of thing.

Basically, every interesting decision I made throughout the entire chronicle was unceremoniously chewed up and spit onto the pavement before being crushed under the uncaring bootheel of anticlimax. All of the machinations I had put into motion, the allies I had made, the chess pieces I had manipulated, all of the awesome vampire elder shit I had been vibrating about in the magnificently inspired lead up to the finale… were resolved in a 30-second epilogue voice-over that completely denied me the real showdown I had been dreaming of all this time. I was devastated. This might be worse than the original ending of Mass Effect 3. It's like they ripped out the last chapter of the book and burned it.

There's also the fact that you play maybe about a third of the story through the eyes of the Malkavian film noir detective Fabien, who somehow ended up in Phyre's head. And I love Fabien. I really do. He made me cry at one point. His segments are just as skillfully penned, and give you an interesting look into the history of Seattle. But his mind-altering Malkavian powers, like getting someone to recognize you as a different person or reading their surface thoughts? Cool idea, but every time you are allowed to use them, it is for a railroaded story beat. There is never a point at which they can be combined or deployed in a clever way that would make me feel like I solved the case, which is another huge wasted opportunity.

At the end of the night, this is a story that seems almost annoyed by the fact that it has to offer you any kind of choice at all.