I have spent more hours than I care to admit trawling storefronts, comparing editions, and convincing myself I absolutely needed one more game for the backlog. Today’s crop feels unusually strong, mixing genuinely new releases with deep cuts that still punch well above their price. There is a little something here for almost every type of player, from pure nostalgia to shiny modern blockbusters.

Contents

• Retro
• Nintendo
• Xbox
• PlayStation
• PC
• PC Gear
• LEGO

This Day in Gaming 🎂

In retro news, I've cooked a bin chicken feast for the 33rd birthday of Streets of Rage 2, a seminal beat 'em up and massive personal favourite that I played the cartridge pins off. Basically, you and a mate needed to go ever rightward on an ultra-violent rescue mission as one of two loose cannon cops, a spandex-clad wrestler, or the most '90s kid ever (think: backwards hat, rollerblades). Not only were this sequel's fisticuffs more technical than its rival to beat, Final Fight, Streets of Rage 2 also boasted one of the most jam-pumping EDM soundtracks of its era. Seriously.

Aussie birthdays for notable games.

- Streets of Rage 2 (MD) 1993. Get

- ESPN NBA 2K5 (PS2) 2005. eBay

- Army of Two: The 40th Day (PS3/P,X360) 2010. eBay

Nice Savings for Nintendo Switch

The brand new Apple AirPods Pro 3 might be one of the best noise canceling earbuds, but $250 is a steep price to pay. You might be better off saving that money and getting these Baseus Bass BP1 Pro wireless noise cancelling earbuds for just $18.99 after $20 off coupon code "BFBP1PRO". You do NOT have to be an Amazon Prime member to get in on this deal. I own these earbuds myself and I have to say they are definitely worth the price.

Baseus BP1 Pro Wireless Noise Canceling Earbuds for $19

There's always been a console war-esque discussion between LEGO and Mega Bloks, although not nearly as ridiculous. Both toy brands have seen their fair share of licensed sets over the years, and it's rare when they have overlap. Starting February 2026, LEGO will release its first Pokémon-themed sets, but did you know that Mega Bloks has had its sets available for years? Popular LEGO sets often either sell out fast or are hard to find, but the Mega Bloks Pokémon sets are both a cheaper and more readily available alternative, depending on what you're looking for.

The Best Pokémon Mega Bloks Sets Available Now

The newly-announced LEGO Pokémon sets have already fallen victim to eBay scalpers and resellers, with some listings of the massive Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise diorama set (which MRSPs at $649.99) going for upwards of $1,600. Compared to the Mega Bloks version of Charizard by itself, which is going for just $18.65 on Amazon, the difference in price is staggering. Sure, you don't get a Venusuar or Blastoise to go along with the Fire-type starter, but with how similar the designs are, nobody would blame you for skipping the LEGO version entirely in favor of a cheaper alternative. The LEGO Eevee set is currently going for $59.99, sitting in the middle of the two Mega Bloks versions of the same Pokémon, which are $47.79 and $89.99 on Amazon, respectively.

Another issue many fans are having with the LEGO versions is the overall design. Take the Pikachu set, for example. The Mega Bloks version is a fairly faithful recreation of the creature we've grown so familiar with, while the LEGO version is admittedly a bit hard to look at. It's worth noting that the LEGO version is nearly double the piece count compared to the Mega Bloks version - it's made up of 2,050 pieces versus 1,095, so it's interesting to see that LEGO seems to have missed the mark with the design of the most iconic Pokémon to date.

While there are many LEGO purists and loyalists (I probably count myself among them), it's hard to deny the significantly better value Mega Bloks is offering when it comes to licensed Pokémon building sets. I know we've likely only just seen the tip of the iceberg with what Pokémon sets LEGO will release, but even the selection of different monsters Mega Bloks has is better. And as a die-hard Dragonite fan, I'm eagerly waiting for LEGO to catch up.

LEGO Pokémon Sets Up for Preorder

While some preorders are sold out for now, here are the LEGO Pokémon sets scheduled to release at the end of February. And with Pokémon's 30th anniversary on the horizon and a Pokémon Presents showcase likely, odds are we'll see more of what LEGO has in store.

Myles Obenza is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Bluesky @mylesobenza.bsky.social.

It's been a banner launch day for Hytale, the new sandbox game from the creators of popular Minecraft server Hypixel. In addition to a surge of players and a lot of positive buzz, it's shot up to become, briefly, the most popular game on Twitch, with over 420k viewers.

This was observed first by PC Gamer, who earlier today clocked that it was the most-watched game on Twitch and the second-most-watched category, only behind Just Chatting by about 43k views. At the time this piece was written, Hytale had dropped down to around 260k viewers, but is still the most-watched video game and the third-most-watched category. It's now behind both Just Chatting and football (soccer, for the Americans) league Kings League. And it seems possible that it will surge further in the coming days.

It's a heck of a comeback story for a game that, half a year ago, was thought to be canceled entirely. Hytale, made by the developers of wildly popular Minecraft server Hypixel, was first announced in 2018 with an incredibly popular trailer, and garnered plenty of buzz at the time. Riot Games took notice, invested, and in 2020 acquired it entirely. However, Hytale was delayed several times as its scope grew, and just this past year was canceled entirely by Riot. Then, in November, co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme announced he had acquired the IP rights back from Riot, and in an incredibly fast turnaround, he and the team got the game ready for an early access release today.

In addition to its popularity on Twitch, Hytale has already made enough money to cover two more years of development, and its modding scene is already bustling day one. Someone's even got Doom running in it. Though we're still waiting for confirmation from Hypixel as to how many players are checking it out today, Collins-Laflamme made a bold prediction of one million players on day one. We'll hopefully soon see if that's come true.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Audible's new Harry Potter full-cast audiobook series has already received its third entry. This new form of the Harry Potter books kicked off back in November 2025 with a unique interpretation of The Sorcerer's Stone, and you can now listen to the third book as of January 13.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms debuts Sunday, January 18 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max. New episodes will debut on subsequent Sundays.

Although House of the Dragon largely stemmed the widespread fan disappointment caused by the final seasons of Game of Thrones, it has still generated its own share of frustrations that have kept it from being a full return to glory for HBO’s flagship franchise. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms doesn’t aspire to be the franchise’s redeemer. Still, it is the most purely enjoyable and heartfelt excursion to Westeros in some time, and one that can serve as an entry point to the franchise for viewers who may feel they are too far behind on all the lore to join now.

Set almost 100 years before the events depicted in Game of Thrones and based on The Hedge Knight, the first entry in George R.R. Martin’s novella series Tales of Dunk and Egg, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the towering, dim-witted Dunk (played with lovable oafishness by Peter Claffey), the squire to a recently deceased hedge knight. Dunk travels the backroads of Westeros as he looks to compete in a jousting tourney so that he can become a knight.

Along the way, Dunk encounters Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell, small of stature but commanding in screen presence), a precocious bald child who wants nothing more than to become Dunk’s squire. These two oddballs soon cross paths with an assortment of rough-and-tumble characters bearing some of Westeros’ most legendary surnames.

Dunk initially rebuffs Egg, suspecting the mouthy kid is just a thief, but he eventually sees more of his younger self in this strange boy who’s determined to be his squire. The insolent Egg is mysteriously wise in the ways of knighthood and in how things in Westeros operate for reasons that will not become clear until later in the first season. Dunk and Egg are two young people just trying to find their way in this gloomy, life-is-cheap world where the disparity between the haves and have-nots could not be more, ahem, stark.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms doesn’t require one to know the past Game of Thrones shows, to have read any of the source material, or to have any extensive knowledge of the franchise’s fantasy lore. While dragons remain a not-too-distant memory in this period and the Targaryens still hold the Iron Throne, this is a Westeros without magic, White Walkers, or any of the genre trappings many viewers may have come to expect and appreciate from the franchise. (There may not be any dragons, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms still offers the whoring, violence, dark humor, and occasional full-frontal nudity the franchise is also notable for.)

While that lack of fantasy might seem like a deficit to some, this grounded approach recenters viewers’ attention on the very human characters inhabiting this particular time and place in Westeros.

Rather than going the sword & sorcery route, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms instead blends aspects from underdog sports movies, rites of passage sagas, and archetypal badass and child pairings that the likes of Lone Wolf and Cub, Logan and X-23, the T-800 and John Connor, and the Mandalorian and Grogu have all employed to great effect. (Dunk, though, is far from being the badass any of those characters are.)

Dunk is an Everyman looking to make his mark in a field dominated by the Great Houses; all he has going for him is his size and sheer force of will. He is a Rocky-like palooka who can endure a beating and keep going, as evidenced by the show’s violent jousting tourneys, realized with a grimy brutality not seen since Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel.

Thanks to its compact storytelling – Season 1 is just six episodes, with most running roughly 30 minutes long, the first three directed by Owen Harris and the latter three by Sarah Adina Smith – A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms never feels bloated or like it's spinning its wheels waiting to get to some big payoff the way that House of the Dragons and Game of Thrones sometimes did. Some flashbacks aside, the first season takes place over just a few days, so it’s pretty close to a real-time adventure in Westeros, where friendships and rivalries are forged quickly but deeply due to life-or-death circumstances.

Smaller both in scale and ambition than its predecessors, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms never quite plumbs the moral depths – and entirely forgoes the dragon-riding fantasy highs – of the previous two Game of Thrones series. Still, it provides the viewer with core protagonists one can remain emotionally invested in, something the overall franchise has occasionally lost sight of in favor of spectacle.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple premieres in theaters on January 16.

There was a guy sitting behind me at my screening of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple who, when the credits began to roll, stood up and loudly declared to his buddies that “we can put the worst movie of the year debate to bed” because this movie was that bad. Now forgetting for a second that January 12 is a little early to rest your case on that particular argument, he went on to say that a movie about murderous cult followers indiscriminately killing has nothing to do with zombies taking over society. Which means he was not only wrong, because this movie is really good, but he also missed the whole point of the thing.

Picking up where last year’s long-range sequel installment left off, Nia DaCosta’s film is a gruesome and fabulously shot new chapter of the franchise that, with all due respect to the dude sitting behind me, will very much not be the worst movie of the year.

There is part of me that can imagine screenwriter Alex Garland just scripting way too much for 28 Years Later. Maybe he wrote a 300-page script that was all great, so he and his fellow 28 Days/Years creator, director Danny Boyle, decided they couldn’t cut any of it, but Sony made them split it in two. That doesn’t feel quite right, however, because even though The Bone Temple starts immediately after the events of 28 Years (maybe even minutes later) and was filmed back-to-back with its predecessor, the films deserve to be their own stories.

The Bone Temple is concerned with something else. It’s got different aims visually, thematically, even tonally, which makes the choice to hand the directing duties over to Nia DaCosta all the more crucial. DaCosta is a very interesting filmmaker; with her work in horror on Candyman a few years ago, the unconventionally violent Hedda last year and now The Bone Temple, she’s putting together a wide variety of work and all of it is forceful. There are no pulled punches in her films and The Bone Temple is certainly no exception.

I found it to easily be the most gruesome of the 28 Later films and that’s not a low bar to clear. In one especially gnarly scene, the roving band known as the Jimmys take their version of satanic “charity” to an extreme. This is not violence committed against an infected, but instead against their fellow man, which is what made this the hardest to watch of the franchise and, very probably, what set off the dude behind me. And while I don’t want to turn this into an essay about zombies in pop culture, part of the point of the monsters is to mirror the potential for us to become monsters. And that’s one of The Bone Temple’s biggest wins.

Jack O’Connell is magnificent and nearly steals the show as cult leader Jimmy Crystal, a type of role for which he's now in danger of being typecast. His performance and the theme his character represents work hand in hand better than any I’ve seen lately. The Fingers, as they’re called, that form the fist of his followers, are every bit as infected as the zombies, and every bit as mindless. As an American, I had to get educated about Jimmy Savile after 28 Years Later sprung that image on us in its closing minutes, but The Bone Temple, and the things that come to light in the sequel about O’Connell’s villain, makes the choice downright brilliant.

It’s such a wild and unexpected place to take the franchise, and fascinating to watch creators like DaCosta, Garland and Boyle (who with Garland serves as a producer on this installment) pull on interesting threads. There’s a scary amount of freedom sitting down to a blank page with these movies. Anything could’ve happened in 28 years in this world, but they've used such a light touch, and at every juncture made very well-reasoned, logical choices.

Yes, pitting psychotic acrobat zombie killers fashioned after a national treasure who was secretly a sex criminal against an iodine-coated doctor who made an entire temple out of bones is a well-reasoned and logical choice.

Did I mention the movie is funny too? Because it’s downright hilarious at times. DaCosta employs a darkly comedic sense of timing, whether it be punctuating a quiet conversation with a man engulfed in flames, bursting through a door, or interrupting a morning shave with a deer head, there is a gross-funny vibe in this movie that’s pitch perfect. It reaches a level of absurdity that’s absolutely necessary for the film to work as well. For the ideas to really land, the seriously satirical aspect of zombies needs an opposite number in some dark humor. It allows for a distance at which you can see the thematic forest for the trees, unless you’re the guy behind me…

But I’ve come all this way without mentioning Ralph Fiennes and for that I must apologize. This character may be my favorite flavor of Ralph Fiennes. He’s kind and gentle, wise and willing to listen. There’s a pathos to him, a depth that’s communicated simply and truthfully in things like the slump of his shoulders as he sits looking at a river. There’s no colder take than “Ralph Fiennes is great” and that’s not what this is, because he can be great in a bad movie. DaCosta positions his performance so deftly that every time he’s funny, he’s hilarious. Every time he’s sad, he’s unbearably tragic. By the end, it’s all of the above and rolled into one of the best Iron Maiden music videos that’s ever been made.

Fiennes’ Dr. Kelson also develops a remarkably unlikely relationship with 28 Years Later’s returning Alpha infected, Samson. Chi Lewis-Parry is doing some incredible work here as well, going from the rage-fueled heavy from 28 Years Later to a much subtler, engaging take on an evolving zombie. He’s so much more than just a canvas on which to paint Kelson’s charismatic empathy. There’s a real story to tell from both sides of their relationship and it’s told effectively and often wordlessly.

On the other side of the film, you’ve got the rest of the Jimmys, a collection of bloodthirsty true believers following Jimmy Crystal’s lead. Among them is the returning Alfie Williams as Spike, having been recruited into their ranks in the only violent way there is to join them. Spike doesn’t have a ton to do in this movie, but what he does continues his good work from 28 Years Later. This movie is just not his journey.

Erin Kellyman, however, as Jimmy Ink, is the same engaging screen presence as always, and carries more of the weight on the antagonist's side of the plot. She’s curious and questioning, beginning to see things for what they really are and her dynamic with Spike is a great companion to Kelson and Samson’s burgeoning relationship. It speaks to a wonderful efficiency in the film. There aren’t too many characters, but they’re all painted with the same brush, going on different flavors of the same journey that speak to one larger idea. As disparate as they seem on paper, they’re all working together in ways that are simultaneously surprising and organic. It’s always a good sign when an odd couple makes sense together.

Nia DaCosta and Director of Photography Sean Bobbit’s visuals, meanwhile, also could not be better. While they don’t pick up Danny Boyle’s penchant for mixed media filmmaking, there are moments that clearly call back to shots from the original 28 Days Later. Some wide shots are framed through broken glass or dirtied by trees or tall grass in the foreground. It’s a classic trick to make it seem as though we’re looking through somebody else’s POV, like there’s a lurking presence the characters on screen don’t know about.

Some of the imagery is a bit on the nose. Frankly I’ve yet to meet the Christ imagery that isn’t, but that’s mitigated here by the characters pointing it out and making the whole thing so on the nose that it comes back around to almost working again. But there was one moment early on, a single edit that gave me confidence in whatever was coming next. It was a match cut, which is when an edit ties together two images that are different, but more or less the same shape or moving in the same direction so that the combination creates a separate idea. The most famous example is probably the bone turning into the satellite in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In The Bone Temple, it’s a ruined cityscape juxtaposed with the spires of the titular temple.

The city we see in the distance is a wreck, smouldering and dead. It’s a reminder of the civilization that’s been lost. The second half of the match cut is The Bone Temple, standing tall in roughly the same arrangement as the skyscrapers, but gleaming and meticulously cared for even though it too is quite literally dead. An old, destroyed civilization, giving way to a different one built by Kelson’s lonely, painstaking work. It’s a visual statement that says everything about the movie you’re about to watch, and it’s the kind of thing that, and the guy behind me may disagree, makes a good movie great.

Ultimately, as the subtitle of the film makes clear, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a companion piece. It goes without saying to some degree because it’s a sequel, but you really need to have seen 28 Years Later for any of this movie to make sense. Of course you could say the same thing about The Empire Strikes Back or Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, but prior knowledge of the franchise was not a prerequisite for the other 3 films. 28 Years Later, for example, could be the first film you watch in the series and you wouldn’t be lost.

The Bone Temple is much more of a middle chapter, neither a beginning nor end, but the movie also wants to stand alone. Maybe that feeling will go away with the third entry. That story, like the Jimmys were in 28 Years, is set up the old-fashioned way in a mercifully PRE-credits scene, but for now there are parts of The Bone Temple that feel more like an appendix to 28 Years than a part of a new story that stands on its own. It’s a structure that doesn’t break the movie by any means. What it does is move the film squarely into franchise territory, for better or worse, where every movie depends on the one that came before it and isn’t fully realized until the next film. It’s a gutsy choice to which they’re now committed. However, if there’s a creative team I trust to tell a continuously interesting story, it’s this one.

HBO's latest Game of Thrones spin-off series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is kicking off next week (we gave it an 8 out of 10 in our review). Alongside the new series, Penguin Random House has just released a new version of George R.R. Martin's book that features an HBO tie-in. The updated cover features the lower half of Dunk and almost all of his squire, Egg. This edition of the book is only available as a paperback and you can pick it up at pretty much every major online bookstore before the show premieres on January 18.

There are a surprising number of great deals today. I’ve even found discounts that rival Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So, if you’re in need of a new Switch 2 controller or are looking to get into keyboard hobbying, you’re in luck, as some awesome options are on sale. Maybe you’re after a couple of new games to keep you entertained during these long winter nights? Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake for PS5 and The Lord of The Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth board game are shockingly cheap right now. That's not all; below I’ve highlighted all the deals worth checking out today:

If you want to go straight to the deals without any fuss, you can scroll through them in the catalog above. For more info on each one, read on.

Turtle Beach Rematch Wired Gaming Controller for Switch 2 Is Lowest Price Ever

20% Off Coupon Deal for The Lord of The Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth

Razer BlackWidow V4 75% Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Is 35% Off

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake for PS5 Is Nearly Half Off

PlayStation 5 Fortnite Bundle + DualSense Wireless Controller + Charging Station Deal

Save 50% on The Art and Making of Arcane Hardcover

3 for $33 4K UHD Movies

tomtoc Slim Carrying Case for Nintendo Switch 2 Is Down to Lowest Price

$50 Off the AOC Q27G40XMN Mini-LED Gaming Monitor

Best Buy Video Game Winter Sale

The New Year's Sale may be over, and now we’re on to the Best Buy Winter Sale. Luckily, the savings are similar, bringing solid discounts on tons of popular titles. From Borderlands 4 for Xbox Series X getting 40% knocked off its price tag, to NINJA GAIDEN 4 for PlayStation 5 seeing a $30 price drop, there are some pretty awesome deals worth checking out.

From portable gaming handhelds to smartphones, our lives rely on portable, untethered electronics, and it can't hurt to always have a charger on hand. Fortunately, they don't have to be expensive. Case in point, Amazon is currently offering a Baseus Enercore 100W USB Type-C Charger for just $32.99 after you apply coupon code "QZ78ZAQ2". This compact power adapter has plenty of ports and enough power output to fast charge most portable electronics.

Baseus Enercore 100W USB-C Wall Charger for $32.99