After another round of price hikes, it's worth paying closer attention to what Disney+ is offering its subscribers. Over the course of November, the streamer will get a selection of holiday-themed picks, particularly from the likes of Food Network, as well as a decent spread of rom-coms. From the MCU, we'll get the streaming release for Fantastic Four: First Steps, while a documentary about James Cameron's Avatar movies should give us a glimpse at Fire and Ash. And, of course, there's plenty of Disney Jr. series too.

Here's the full breakdown of what's hitting Disney+ in November.

Everything Coming to Disney+ in November

Ongoing Series

Several series will release new episodes on Disney+ throughout November. Dancing With the Stars continues in its 34th season, with new episodes streaming on Tuesdays until the winner is crowned on November 25. Disney Twisted-Wonderland, the villain-themed anime, will get new episodes every Wednesday. Subscribers will also sporadically see new episodes from Marvel’s “Amazing Friends” Disney Jr. series.

November 1

• CoComelon JJ’s Animal Time S1-3
• Joy to the World

Starting off the month, the youngins will get several seasons of the animal-themed CoComelon series. Joy to the World, a collaboration with Hulu, kicks off the rom-com holiday season with a classic “pretend to be my boyfriend, oops now we're in love for real” scheme.

November 5

• Fantastic Four: First Steps
• Disney Twisted Wonderland: The Animation (New Episode)

The big MCU streaming release of the month. First Steps introduced us to the MCU’s take on the Fantastic Four in a retro-futuristic version of the '60s. Clint Gage highlights the cast themselves in his review for IGN, describing a certain "charisma to each of them individually and chemistry between them all.” Definitely worth a watch, especially for anyone trying to do their homework before next year’s Avengers: Doomsday.

November 7

• Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films
• Life-Size
• Love+War
• The Worst Trip Around the World
• Seventeen: Our Chapter

It’s documentary time. As you can glean from the title, Fire and Water will take a deep dive into the making of Avatar: The Way of Water while also, I imagine, giving us some fresh information about the upcoming sequel, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Love+War, another documentary from National Geographic, celebrates the work of photojournalist Lynsey Addario.

The theme continues with SEVENTEEN: Our Chapter, which follows the 13-member K-pop boy group preparing for a string of temporary absences. After premiering on November 7, new episodes will be released weekly on Fridays.

November 8

• 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony - 8pm ET/11pm PT

You’ll be able to watch this year’s induction ceremony through Disney+ starting at 8pm ET. Honorees include Outkast, the White Stripes, Soundgarden, and Cyndi Lauper.

November 12

• Marvel’s Iron Man and his Amazing Friends (New Episodes)
• Freakier Friday

The lega-sequel to 1999’s iconic body switch flick, Freakier Friday is coming to Disney+ a relatively standard three months after its initial release in theaters. In her review of the movie for IGN, Petrana Radulovic’s candid take was that "some of it slogs along, but thanks to Lohan and Curtis’s stellar performances and the underlying emotional strength of the story, the movie is a worthy sequel.”

November 14

• Madame Web
• Botched Bariatrics
• LEGO Marvel Avengers: Strange Tails
• A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Oh, Madame Web. Released as part of the Sony Spider-verse, which has reportedly been put to rest, Madame Web achieved near "It’s Morbin’ Time" levels of online notoriety. Francesca Rivera’s review for IGN doesn’t hold back in calling the film a “waste of talent,” but as someone who did pay money to see this in theaters, I think watching it at home with friends and no expectations could be a good time.

We’re also getting a new LEGO Marvel Avengers special. We don’t have too much information about it, other than a promotional image that shows a pretty massive spread of Marvel characters in plastic brick form. And yes, there is a Jo-Bros Christmas movie.

November 18

• Me and Mickey: In the Clubhouse S4 (New Episodes)
• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse+ (New Episodes)

Disney has taken a few different approaches to modernizing its classic Mickey Mouse Clubhouse series. The Me and Mickey series, entering its fourth season, is a more interactive “vlogging” style with shorter-form videos. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse+ was just revived on Disney Jr. this past July, with a similar structure to the original series but with the addition of some new characters and hangout areas.

November 21

• Biography: Dolly Parton
• Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup
• Seventeen: Our Chapter (New Episode)
• Wrath: A Seven Deadly Sins Story
• A Day Late and a Dollar Short
• A House on Fire
• Tempting Fate

This one’s an interesting spread. We get documentaries about country icon Dolly Parton, as well as another update on Gypsy Rose. Otherwise, Disney+ is getting a spread of TV movies, including Lifetime’s Wrath installment in their Seven Deadly Sins series and the network's adaptation of A Day Late and a Dollar Short.

November 22

• Christmas Cookie Challenge

My personal favorite “holiday” series are all the baking and cooking specials, so thank you Food Network for offering up your Christmas Cookie Challenge.

November 24

• Chris Hemsworth: A Road Trip to Remember

Chris Hemsworth and his father Craig take a road trip across Australia, exploring how memories and their bond can help Craig’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

November 25

• Dancing With the Stars S34 - Finale

November 26

• The Beatles Anthology
• Chibi Tiny Tales S5
• Kiff S2 (New Episodes)
• Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends (New Episodes)

Disney+ will be releasing the restored and remastered episodes from the hallmark Beatles Anthology docu-series over the course of three days. The streamer will also be getting new episodes from Kiff, Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends, and the most recent spread of Chibi Tiny Tales shorts.

November 27

• The Beatles Anthology (New Episodes)

November 28

• The Beatles Anthology (New Episodes)
• Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol

The fifth addition to Disney’s Prep & Landing animated TV special series will arrive on streaming the day after airing on the Disney Channel. An elf, Wayne, revisits his career working for Santa after a mission in the North Pole goes off the rails.

November 29

• Holiday Baking Championship

The Food Network series returns for its 12th season, bringing 10 bakers from across America to compete in a series of holiday-themed challenges. This year, bakers will be split into “Naughty” and “Nice” teams.

New Disney+ Streams

Disney+ streams are exclusive to Premium subscribers, offering a 24/7 run of themed episodes or specific series (a full circle to cable, in some ways). On November 4, Disney+ will launch “Seasons Streaming,” featuring a run of both Thanksgiving and holiday-themed episodes and movies. “Throwback” will launch on November 5, featuring a constant feed of Disney’s “greatest hits” from 2010 and earlier.

Reminder: Disney+ Subscriptions Are More Expensive Now

On October 21, all Disney+ plans increased by around $2-3/month, meaning you will see a higher charge on your account in November and going forward. You can check out our full breakdown of Disney+ pricing (including bundles), or see offers through Disney+ below. If the price hike is making you second guess the subscription, I won’t judge you for taking a look at how to cancel.

Playground Basketball is a competitive Roblox experience, where you'll be able to shoot hoops in the city, on the court, or at the park. Whether you're going 1v1 or 2v2, you'll need to create and customize a character. They can specialize in athleticism, dunking, ball handling, and more, all in the hopes of becoming the best player. So while you concentrate on scoring, we'll help you get the codes you need for additional coins.

Working Playground Basketball Codes

The following codes have been tested and are active:

• UPDATE1 - 4,500 Coins
• THANKSFOR2500LIKES - 1,500 Coins

How to Use Playground Basketball Codes

Before you're able to redeem Playground Basketball codes, you'll need to like the game and join the group for Playground Basketball | Community. Then, launch the experience and follow these steps:

1. Look for the icons in the top right corner of the screen. One of these is a blue gift box.
2. Click on the gift box to bring up the codes menu
3. Copy the code from this article and then paste it into the bar
4. Press redeem and receive your rewards!

Expired Playground Basketball Codes

The following codes can no longer be redeemed. Be sure to use the codes above before they expire!

• SORRYFORBUGS

Why Isn't My Playground Basketball Code Working?

Codes for Roblox experiences are usually case-sensitive, so the best way to ensure you've got a working code is to directly copy it from this article. We check all codes before we upload them, so you can guarantee they're working. Just double-check that you haven't copied over an extra space!

When Is the Next Playground Basketball Update?

Playground Basketball is already planning their second update, and like lots of Roblox experiences, it's getting into the spooky season. Update 2 for Playground Basketball will launch a Halloween event, along with new Halloween currency and haunting rewards.

Lauren Harper is an Associate Guides Editor. She loves a variety of games but is especially fond of puzzles, horrors, and point-and-click adventures.

Without fail, LEGO puts out new sets each month, but November is about as light a month as I’ve seen when it comes to new releases. That’s cool, though, because the two sets coming out in November (and their accompanying free Gifts With Purchase) are great. Plus, if you want lots of sets, check out October's LEGO releases, which were numerous. Anyway, let’s dive in to November's fresh new LEGO sets.

LEGO Ideas: The Goonies

The 1985 movie The Goonies is one of those enduring classics that both adults and kids can appreciate equally. On the back side of this set, you get a recreation of the Inferno pirate ship. On the front side, you’ll find the Fratellis’ hideaway, caves, and One-Eyed Willy’s treasure room. As you might expect, these rooms are packed with booby traps and Easter eggs from the movie.

The Goonies GWP - The Walshes’ Attic

And as an added bonus, if you buy this set between between November 1 - 7, while supplies last, you’ll receive The Goonies: The Walshes’ Attic as a free Gift With Purchase (GWP).

LEGO Tropical Aquarium

This set reminds me of the LEGO Botanicals line, because it’s a decorative set aimed at adults, and that it takes a lot less maintenance and upkeep than its real-life counterpart. This sizable build gets you a colorful, three-dimensional aquarium, complete with swimming fish and plenty of underwater flora that move in realistic ways when you operate hidden levers. The best part is, you don’t have to feed the fish or clean the aquarium.

Tropical Aquarium GWP - Fish Tank Filter & Fish Food Set

And once again as an added bonus, if you buy LEGO Tropical Aquarium between November 13 and November 19, and you’ll get a free Fish Tank Filter & Fish Food set as a GWP.

Gift With Purchase - LEGO Disney Classic Animation Scenes

Spend $130 or more on the LEGO Store between now and November 11, and you’ll get LEGO Classic Animation Scenes for free. The set is valued at $19.99 and is an old-school CRT television, complete with knobs and bunny ears. It comes with three inserts you can use for what’s being displayed on the TV. One is the Disney castle logo, which plays before every Disney movie. The other two are miniature scenes from Toy Story and The Lion King. Not a bad freebie at all, but it’s only available during the brief window, and while supplies last.

Double Insider Points on LEGO Ideas: Italian Riviera

Black Friday LEGO Set 2025

Traditionally, LEGO releases a massive set right around Black Friday each year. Last year, it was LEGO The Endurance, which we found to be a fascinating historical set when we built it. In 2023, LEGO released the Avengers Tower set, and in 2022 it was the Eiffel Tower set, which remains among the biggest LEGO sets available. In 2021, it was the massive (and now-retired) Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series AT-AT, while 2020 brought us the Colosseum.

This year’s Black Friday set hasn’t been announced yet, but rumor has it that it will be the Star Trek set LEGO has teased. If you don’t mind possible spoilers, some leaks suggest it will be the USS Enterprise-D, the ship from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

LEGO Sets Available for Preorder

Since November’s pickings are fairly slim, it’s worth looking ahead to sets scheduled to release in the coming months.

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight Sets

LEGO Has announced four new LEGO Batman sets for Legacy of the Dark Knight, a video game launching next year.

LEGO Speed Champions Lightning McQueen

In an age where digital platforms can pull culturally beloved content from their sites and kick films and TV series between each other seemingly at random, there’s never been a better time to commit to physical media. Not only does owning your content ensure you’ll have access no matter what the business papers say that day, but it also means you can tune out and enjoy a viewing without worrying about buffering, system outages, or connectivity issues. So, with a Blu-ray comeback on the menu, and every retailer vying for your previous dollars, we’ve rounded up a list of the best places to buy Blu-rays online.

The Criterion Collection

Ahead of Black Friday, Amazon dropped prices on official Xbox wireless controllers in Robot White and Carbon Black to just $39.99, which is impressive considering the fact that Microsoft raised the retail price of all of its controllers earlier in May. I recommend getting the Carbon Black model because it also includes a bonus USB Type-C charging cable. Not only are these the best controllers for the Xbox at this price, they're also one of the best PC gaming controllers.

Xbox Wireless Controllers for $39.99

Audible's holiday promotion for 2025 is now live. Through December 16, new and returning Audible subscribers can sign up for three months of Audible Premium Plus for just $0.99 per month. You will need to be logged into your Amazon Prime membershp to see this promotion. After the three months is up, your subscription will convert to the standard $14.95/mo, so make sure to cancel beforehand if you don't want to continue with the service. You also get a free audiobook of your choice for each of those three months that you get to keep indefinitely even after your subscription expires.

3 Free Months of Audible Premium Plus

I thought I was only going to play five or six hours of ARC Raiders on launch day before sitting down to write this initial review in progress, but after just a handful of matches, I suddenly couldn’t pull myself away – and before I realized it, I’d been playing for 10 hours. This is without question the most hooked I’ve found myself on an extraction shooter (and I’ve played a lot of them), with clean and tense gunplay, a progression system that’s been incredibly satisfying so far, and a loot game that has me sweating over what to put in my backpack and what to leave behind. I’ve still got loads more to do and see before I can draw any final conclusions, but what I have played has made an incredibly good first impression.

ARC Raiders follows the usual extraction shooter formula of dropping you into a zone to take down NPC enemies and scramble for loot, all while looking over your shoulder for rival crews who would love nothing more than to crack you open like a meat pinata and take everything you’ve collected. From what I’ve seen so far, ARC Raiders hasn’t done much to iterate on those fundamentals, but it does absolutely nail them, and that’s harder to do than it might sound – for example, a big budget attempt like Battlefield 2042’s Hazard Zone mostly fell flat, and the alpha for Bungie's Marathon landed with such a thud it was delayed indefinitely.

One of the main ways it succeeds is in its stressful gunplay, where weapons only have a few rounds in each magazine, take a good deal of time to reload, and the robotic NPCs are either much faster than you or can rain down missiles to take you out in a single blast. This means I’m usually feeling like a rodent sneaking around to scavenge food and supplies from the world before slinking back to base – but when combat does break out, it’s charged with delightful anxiety thanks to the high-risk, high-reward situation of knowing you’re either about to lose everything you’ve fought for or grab some awesome gear off the corpses of those you’ve bested. This includes both AI-controlled and human players, as both can be found and fought out in the world, though it’s best to avoid either of them unless you know you’ve brought the gear and skills required for a fight. That’s because firing a shot has a good chance of drawing all robot enemies and loot-hungry players to your position, taking advantage of your vulnerability to do as much damage as possible.

All four of the maps I’ve seen so far have very cool and distinct vibes to them, from the ruined husk of a waterlogged dam to a city buried in red sand. It’s a good thing that they’re so great to look at, too, because you’ll spend a whole lot of time trekking back and forth across them in search of loot. I still feel like I haven’t seen most of the nooks and crannies of these areas, despite having played on them for dozens of matches already, but they are starting to feel a little familiar to me. Here’s hoping they’ve still got secrets to uncover that expand the amount of time I’m willing to spend on each.

As I work toward exploring every last zone, one thing I’m still looking for is an enemy combatant I haven’t faced yet (aside from the massive tanks, which I’m just steering clear of at this early stage). Most of my NPC combat encounters have been against the small roly poly bots and flying drones that are fairly easy to destroy, with my fellow players being the only proper challenge so far. I’m looking forward to the point where I’m powerful enough to actually engage with some of the chonkier enemies more seriously, but it still would have been nice to have a wider variety of low level AI combatants to shake up the early game a bit.

Thankfully, even as maps and enemies have begun to feel familiar, that hasn’t dampened my desire to play just because of how good the loot and progressions systems are. Every run, win or lose, has me excited to return to the cozy sanctuary of Speranza, where I can chat with vendors, turn in and accept new quests, upgrade my facilities that allow me to craft items and gain access to new upgrades, customize my character’s appearance, and spend skill points that make me slightly better at things like keeping quiet while rifling through loot during matches. There’s so much to do and unlock that I truly feel I’ve only scratched the surface in this regard, and that’s kept me glued to my controller and eager to dive into new matches.

Anyway, there’s still lots to do and robots to slay, so I’ll be headed back out to the wastes for more just as soon as I’m finished typing. You can expect a full, scored review early next week!

Many of the best Black Friday sales won't begin until later in November, but if you're looking to do some furniture shopping right now, Wayfair's early sale has already arrived. These discounts arrive at the same time as Best Buy's early Black Friday sale, signalling the official start of holiday deals shopping for major online retailers.

It's still very early in the shopping season, so I'd expect more official sales to start as early as next week. In the meantime, the Wayfair early Black Friday sale has up to 70% off home office furniture, TV stands, and discounts on Christmas trees. If you're looking for savings on anything for your home, these discounts are worth a look this weekend.

Best Buy is offering a great deal on a high-end gaming PC during its 3-day Halloween DoorBOOsters Sale going on right now. Right now you can pick up a CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme Gaming PC equipped with a Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU for just $1,549.99 shipped after a $350 instant discount. This beats the previous lowest price I've seen for this prebuilt by $150. The Radeon RX 9070 XT is an outstanding GPU that can run the latest and most demanding games smoothly in 4K.

CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme RX 9070 XT PC for $1549.99

Not only does November bring cooler weather, but it also offers an entirely new batch of PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and PC games to entertain us. We're on the tail end of the big games of the fall, but the year isn't done with us yet. This month we get big releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Kirby Air Riders, and perhaps most importantly, Terminator 2D: No Fate. Read on to see release dates for all the biggest games and expansions coming out this month and beyond. Let's have a look.

If you're the preordering type, you can click the links for the platform of your choice to see the game at Amazon (if available).

November 2025 - Video Game Release Dates

• Tavern Keeper - November 3 - (PC)
• Age of Empires IV - November 4 - (PS5)
• Europa Universalis V - November 4 - (PC)
• Football Manager 26 - November 4 - (PS5, Xbox, PC, Mobile)
• Satisfactory - November 4 - (PS5, Xbox)
• Biped 2 - November 5 - (PS5, Switch, Xbox, PC)
• Dinkum - November 5 - (Switch)
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment - November 6 - (Switch 2)
• The Last Caretaker - November 6 - (PC)
• Of Ash & Steel - November 6 - (PC)
• Siberia Remastered - November 6 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Unbeatable - November 6 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Whiskerwood - November 6 - (PC)
• A Pizza Delivery - November 7 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Thrasher - November 7 - (PC)
• Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition - November 10 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road - November 10 - (PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox, PC)
• Lumines Arise - November 11 - (PS5, PSVR 2, PC)
• NASCAR 25 - November 11 - (PC)
• Unpetrified: Echoes of Nature - November 11 - (PC)
• Tombwater - November 12 - (PC)
• Winter Burrow - November 12 - (Switch, Xbox, PC)
• Anno 117: Pax Romana - November 13 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Yakuza Kiwami - November 13 - (Switch 2)
• Yakuza Kiwami 2 - November 13 - (Switch 2)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 - November 14 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)

• Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero - November 14 - (Switch, Switch 2)
• Monster Hunter Stories Collection - November 14 - (Xbox)
• Where Winds Meet - November 14 - (PS5, PC, Mobile)
• Escape from Tarkov 1.0 - November 15 - (PC)
• Unmourned - November 17 - (PC)
• Deadpool VR - November 18 - (Meta Quest)
• Morsels - November 18 - (PS5, Switch, Xbox, PC)
• News Tower (1.0 launch) - November 18 - (PC)
• SpongeBob Squarepants: Titans of the Tide - November 18 - (PS5, Switch 2, Xbox, PC)
• Demonschool - November 19 - (PS5, Switch, Xbox, PC)
• Kirby Air Riders - November 20 - (Switch 2)
• Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster - November 20 - (PS5, Switch, Xbox, PC)
• STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl - November 20 - (PS5)
• Constance - November 24 - (PC)
• Project Motor Racing - November 25 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Terminator 2D: No Fate - November 26 - (PS5, PS4, Xbox, Switch, PC)
• Bubble Bobble: Sugar Dungeons - November 27 - (PS5, Switch, PC)

December 2025 - Video Game Release Dates

• Simogo Legacy Collection - December 2 - (Switch, Switch 2, PC)
• Let It Die: Inferno - December 3 - (PS5, PC)
• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond - December 4 - (Switch, Switch 2)
• Octopath Traveler 0 - December 4 - (PS5, PS4, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox, PC)
• Routine - December 4 - (Xbox, PC)
• Thief VR: Legacy of Shadows - December 4 - (PSVR 2, Quest 2/3, Steam VR)
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 - December 8 - (PS5)
• Yakuza Kiwami 1+2 - December 8 - (PS5, Xbox)
• Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader - December 11 - (Switch 2)

January 2026 - Video Game Release Dates

• Dragon Warriors Origins - January 22 - (Switch, Switch 2)
• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade - January 22 - (Switch 2, Xbox)
• The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin - January 28 - (PS5, PC)
• Code Vein II - January 30 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)

February 2026 - Video Game Release Dates

• Nioh 3 - February 6 - (PS5, PC)
• Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - February 5 - (PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox, PC)
• Mario Tennis Fever - February 12 - (Switch 2)
• Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties - February 12 - (PS5, PS4, Switch 2, Xbox, PC)
• High on Life 2 - February 13 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics (NSO) - Feburary 17 - (Switch, Switch 2)
• Tides of Tomorrow - February 24 - (PS5)
• Resident Evil Requiem - February 27 - (PS5, Xbox, Switch 2, PC)
• Resident Evil 7 - February 27 - (Switch 2)
• Resident Evil Village - February 27 - (Switch 2)

March 2026 - Video Game Release Dates

• Monster Hunter Stories 3 - March 13 - (Switch 2)
• Crimson Desert - March 19 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Dynasty Warriors 3 Complete Edition Remastered - March 19 - (PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox, PC)
• Mouse: P.I. for Hire - March 19 - (PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox, PC)
• 007 First Light - March 27 - (PS5, Xbox, Switch 2, PC)

May 2026 - Video Game Release Dates

• Grand Theft Auto 6 - May 26, 2026 - (PS5, Xbox)

September 2026 - Video Game Release Dates

• Halloween: The Game - September 8, 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)

Upcoming Video Games - Release Date TBA

• The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales - 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Animo - 2026 - (Xbox, PC)
• Aphelion - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• ArcheAge Chronicles - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Ark 2 - TBA - (PC)
• At Fate’s End - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Atomic Heart 2 - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Ballad of Antara - 2025 - (PS5)
• Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes - Early 2026 - (PC)
• Beast of Reincarnation - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Black Myth: Jhong Kui - TBA
• Blackfrost: The Long Dark II - TBA
• Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• The Blood of Dawnwalker - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement - 2026 - (PS5)
• Borderlands 4 - TBA - (Switch 2)
• Bubsy 4D - TBA - (PS5, Switch, Xbox, PC)
• Cairn - 2026 - (PS5)
• Chronicles: Medieval - 2026 - (PC)
• Chronoscript: The Endless End - 2026 - (PS5, PC)
• Clockwork Revolution - TBA - (Xbox, PC)
• Coffee Talk Tokyo - 2025 - (Switch, PC)
• Contraband - TBA - (Xbox, PC)
• Danganronpa 2x2 - 2026 - (Switch, Switch 2)
• Directive 8020: A Dark Pictures Game - H1 2026 - (PS5)
• Dreams of Another - 2025 - (PS5)
• The Duskbloods - 2026 - (Switch 2)

• Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition - 2026 - (Switch 2)
• The Eternal Life of Goldman - Holiday 2025 - (PS5, Switch, Xbox, PC)
• Everwild - TBA - (Xbox, PC)
• Fable - 2026 - (Xbox, PC)
• Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition - 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Remake - Early 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave - 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Forza Horizon 6 - 2026 - (Xbox, PC, PS5 later)
• Frostpunk 1886 - 2027 - (PC)
• Game of Thrones: War for Westeros - 2026 - (PC)
• Gears of War: E-Day - TBA - (Xbox, PC)
• Hail Macbeth - Q1 2026 - (PC)
• Hela - 2026 - (Switch 2)
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction - TBA - (PS5, Switch, Xbox, PC)
• ILL - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet - TBA - (PS5)
• Invincible Vs - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• John Carpenter's Toxic Commando - Early 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Judas - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Jurassic Park: Survival - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)

• LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight - 2026 - (PS5, Switch 2, Xbox, PC)
• Little Devil Inside - TBA - (PS5, Switch, Xbox)
• Lord of the Fallen II - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Marathon - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra - 2026
• Marvel Cosmic Invasion - 2025 - (PS5, Switch, Xbox, PC)
• Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls - 2026 - (PS5, PC)
• Marvel's Blade - TBA - (Xbox, PC)
• Mio: Memories in Orbit - 2025 - (Switch)
• Mixtape - 2025 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection - 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Mortal Shell 2 - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Mudang: Two Hearts - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• OD - TBA - (Xbox)
• Okami 2 - TBA
• Onimusha: Way of the Sword - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Persona 4 Revival - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Phantom Blade 0 - 2026 - (PS5)
• Phantom Hellcat - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Pokemon Champions - TBA - (Switch, mobile)
• Pokemon Pokopia - 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Popucom - Holiday 2025 - (Switch)
• Planet of Lana 2: Children of the Leaf - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC)
• Pragmata - 2026
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Professor Layton and the New World of Steam - 2026 - (Switch, Switch 2)
• PVKK - Summer 2026 - (PC)
• Replaced - 2026 - (Xbox, PC)
• Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Rhythm Heaven Groove - 2026 - (Switch)
• Road Kings - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Romeo Is a Dead Man - 2026 (PS5)
• Saros - 2026 - (PS5)
• Scott Pilgrim EX - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC)
• Screamer - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Sea of Remnants - 2026 - (PS5)
• The Sinking City 2 - 2026 - (Xbox, PC)
• Slay the Spire 2 - early access in 2025 - (PC)
• Sleight of Hand - 2025 - (Xbox, PC)
• Solo Leveling Arise Overdrive - 2026 - (Xbox, PC)

• Splatoon Raiders - TBA - (Switch 2)
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake - TBA - (PS5)
• State of Decay 3 - TBA (Xbox, PC)
• Super Mario Bros Wonder: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park - Spring 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Super Meat Boy 3D - Early 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Styx: Blades of Greed - Fall 2025 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Terminator: Survivors - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• There Are No Ghosts at the Grand - 2026 - (Xbox, PC)
• Tides of Annihilation - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream - Spring 2026 - (Switch)
• Turok Origins - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Valor Mortis - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 - 2026 - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy - TBA (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 - 2026 (PC)
• Witchbrook - 2026 - (Switch, Xbox, PC)
• The Witcher 4 - TBA
• The Wolf Among Us 2 - TBA - (PS5, Xbox, PC)
• Wolverine - Fall 2026 - (PS5)
• World of Warcraft: Midnight (expansion) - 2026 - (PC)
• Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver - TBA - (PC)
• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book - Spring 2026 - (Switch 2)
• Zero Parades - 2026 - (PS5, PC)

For more release date fun, check out our ongoing list of 4K UHD and Blu-ray release dates.

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.

Ahead of Black Friday, Best Buy is offering an exclusive Halloween "DoorBOOsters" deal on a massive 77" LG B5 4K OLED Smart TV. Right now you can pick one up for just $1,499.99 with free delivery after a hefty 50% off instant discount. The B5 is a current generation 2025 TV that can play PS5 games to their fullest potential. It's typically less expensive than the LG C5 or G5, but it still usually sells for $2000 or more. This is easily the best price I've seen since release.

77" LG B5 4K OLED Smart TV for $1,499.99

Ahead of Black Friday, Amazon has slashed prices on the officially licensed Seagate Storage Expansion Cards for the Xbox Series X and S consoles. The 1TB model is down to $109.99 and the 2TB model is $189.99. Both sizes are sold by Amazon direct (not a marketplace reseller) with free delivery. The Seagate Storage Expansion Card is the best SSD for the Xbox, which isn't surprising since your options are pretty limited. The other recommended model - the WD Black C50 - is considerably more expensive at the moment.

Seagate Storage Expansion Cards for Xbox Series X

So, you're ready to ditch cable and embrace the future of streaming. Live TV streaming services make for a great replacement, allowing you to watch your favorite TV shows, movies, and live sports without being tied to a long-term contract. The best part? You can stream at home or on the go from your mobile phone or tablet. Plus, streaming services tend to be much more affordable, with no extra fees or hardware to worry about.

But with so many options out there, you might not know where to start. Don’t worry—we’ve done the heavy lifting and narrowed down the best live TV streaming services for you to try in 2025.

DirecTV Stream

Best Cable Alternative

Warning: This article contains spoilers for IT: Welcome to Derry Episodes 1 and 2!

Fans of Stephen King’s novels will know that these tales of small-town terror and tortured souls aren’t simply standalone stories. They’re all part of a larger storytelling multiverse, and crossovers can and do frequently happen. That’s certainly true for IT: Welcome to Derry – not only is this series a prequel to the It movies, it also includes nods to other King characters and storylines.

With the first two episodes having premiered on HBO Max, we figured now is a great time to break down the key Stephen King easter eggs in Welcome to Derry and explore how the series is taking advantage of the King multiverse. Keep checking back, as we’ll update this piece as more episodes air.

What Is Bill Skarsgård’s Villain Pennywise?

With Welcome to Derry taking place 27 years before the events of 2017’s It, it should come as no surprise that there aren’t many returning actors for this prequel. In fact, the only confirmed veteran of the series is Bill Skarsgård, who is once again playing the demonic, shapeshifting villain, It (whose favorite form is Pennywise the Dancing Clown). We don’t actually see Skarsgård in Episode 1, but the character’s nefarious influence is certainly felt. If there’s any takeaway from the pilot, it’s that Derry was a cursed place long before the Losers Club clashed with Pennywise for the first time.

With Pennywise being such an important part of the series, it’s worth taking a step back to explore what exactly this character is and how he fits into King’s monster multiverse. The It novel establishes that It is an alien entity created in the void outside the universe. It eventually crashed on Earth via an asteroid millions of years ago, at which point it took up residence in the area that would become Derry, Maine.

Ever since people began to settle in Derry, It has shown a pattern of emerging for a year or two to seek victims and feast on their fear; it is essentially a psychic vampire. After gorging itself, It then goes into hibernation for 27 years before reawakening and starting the cycle all over again. It tends to target children because their fears are more primal and easier to exploit.

It/Pennywise is easily one of the most terrifying creatures in King’s massive library, but it’s not necessarily unique. King’s Dark Tower novels establish that the multiverse was once bathed in a mystical energy source called the Prim. When the Prim receded like an ocean tide, it left behind a great many supernatural creatures embedded in the worlds of creation; Pennywise is just one of many of those monsters. One of the Dark Tower books even introduces a cousin of sorts – a similar psychic vampire who feeds on laughter rather than fear.

The Hanlon Family

Welcome to Derry may not feature many returning characters, but it does feature one family that should be very familiar to fans of the films. The first episode introduces Jovan Adepo’s Leroy Hanlon; Leroy is the grandfather of Mike Hanlon, who was played in the films as a child by Chosen Jacobs and as an adult by Isaiah Mustafa.

Welcome to Derry shows us how the Hanlon family first came to settle in Derry in 1962. Leroy is a decorated and well-respected Air Force major who is recruited by General Shaw (James Remar) to work on a top-secret program. Even at this early stage, Leroy is becoming exposed to the darkness lurking beneath the idyllic facade of Derry and the racism still rampant in the ranks of the military. In Episode 2, Leroy learns that Shaw is working to harness a weapon that can instill absolute fear in America's enemies. Apparently, Shaw wants to weaponize It.

Episode 2 introduces Taylour Paige as Leroy’s wife, Charlotte, and Blake Cameron James as his son, Will, neither of whom seem particularly enamored with their new home. But however bad things get this season, it’s not going to drive this family out of Derry.

The Shining’s Dick Hallorann

Welcome to Derry is going to draw on more than just the It movies and novel; that much has been apparent ever since an earlier trailer included a shot of a Shawshank Prison bus. But in what is easily the most significant King easter egg so far, the series’ cast includes a major character from The Shining: Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk).

Fans of The Shining and its sequel, Doctor Sleep, will remember that Dick is the head chef at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Because he has the psychic aptitude known as “the shine,” Dick is more sensitive than most to the many ghosts haunting the Overlook’s halls. Dick becomes rightfully concerned when he senses that young Danny Torrance, the son of winter caretaker Jack Torrance, shines especially brightly, and is therefore a ripe target for those ghosts. Eventually, Dick is forced to brave the harsh Colorado winter in order to rescue Danny and his mother from the hotel’s wrath.

Welcome to Derry takes place nearly two decades before The Shining; at this stage, Dick is serving on the same Derry air force base as Leroy Hanlon. We only catch a brief glimpse of Dick in Episode 1, but he seems intently interested in Leroy, as if he can sense something is supernaturally amiss with the major.

Episode 2 provides more context for Dick's presence in Derry and his interest in Leroy. Dick is using his psychic abilities to help the Air Force dig up and harness the slumbering It. Dick seems to sense that Leroy is special in his own way. A bullet to his brain has robbed Leroy of the ability to feel fear, which may make him the only person capable of standing up to It.

We fully expect Dick to play a central role in battling It in this series. Just as at the Overlook, Dick’s powers will make him more aware than most adults of the danger lurking underneath the town. It may even target Dick specifically, hoping to draw extra sustenance from his psychic abilities, much like the vampires in Doctor Sleep.

The Shining's Calumet Baking Powder

Episode 2 incldues another fun The Shining Easter egg, as we see a stack of Calumet Baking Powder cans in the grocery store, all displaying that iconic logo of an Indian chief. These cans were also seen in Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of The Shining, part of the Overlook Hotel's extensive larder.

The exact significance of the cans and the Indian logo has been the source of much debate over the years, with some arguing (like in the documentary Room 237) that Kubrick was trying to include subtle commentary about American imperialism and the genocide of Native Americans. The Indian chief image may also speak to the ancient history of the supernatural terrors in this world. Again, It has been in Derry for a very long time.

Juniper Hill Asylum

Episode 2 also introduces another iconic King landmark in Juniper Hill Asylum. We learn that Susie (Matilda Legault) was previously committed there after the death of her father, and she's forced to return at the end of the episode after suffering through another of It's terrifying hallucinations. That means we'll surely see inside its dark halls as the season unfolds.

Juniper Hill appears in the original IT novel as well as numerous other King works, from Insomnia to Needful Things to The Dark Half. It's a place every bit as twisted as you'd expect from a mental institution in Stephen King's multiverse.

The Importance of the Turtle

Welcome to Derry’s first episode includes another important, albeit more subtle, easter egg in the form of a charm on Susie’s bracelet – a turtle, a creature with deep significance in King lore.

Getting back to It’s cosmic origins, this demon was created at the same time as a benevolent turtle entity; the Turtle is It’s polar opposite and a sign of strength to the members of the Losers Club. The Turtle is also one of the 12 animals featured in the Dark Tower books who guard “The Beams,” invisible energy forces that lead directly to the titular tower at the center of existence.

We’d expect to see multiple turtle references in this series, all meant to serve as reminders that there are other forces at work in Derry beyond It/Pennywise…and not all of them are so sinister.

The Second Hand Rose

Episode 2 establishes a key throwback to 2019's IT: Chapter Two with the scene at the Second Hand Rose thrift shop. In the movie, that shop is run by Stephen King's character (that same character cameos as a younger man here), and it's where Bill Denbrough buys his beloved Schwinn bicycle. Back in 1962, it's where Leroy purchases a telescope for his son Will.

Like the turtle, the rose is an image with special significance in King's work, and it also ties back to the Dark Tower books and their central protagonist, Roland Deschain. The rose is a symbol of goodness and purity, though we definitely get a slightly creepy vibe from the shop in this series. If anything, we can't help but be reminded of Needful Things and its infamous shop of horrors.

For more on IT: Welcome to Derry, check out our review of the series premiere and see director Andy Muschietti break down the shocking ending to Episode 1.

Note: This article was originally published on 10/27/2025 and updated on 10/31/2025 with the latest information about IT: Welcome to Derry.

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

Best Buy’s holiday sale event has officially begun. As detailed in an earlier announcement regarding Best Buy’s Black Friday schedule, the first event is the DoorBOOsters sale, which runs this weekend (October 31 - November 2). Best Buy is highlighting eight doorbusters in particular, within a variety of tech categories. We have a couple of TVs on sale, a Windows laptop for just $299.99, a pair of earbuds, and more.

Best Buy’s DoorBOOsters Deals Are Live

The LG B5 OLED 4K TV is a solid pickup at $529.99. It’s a bit on the smaller side at 48 inches, but that fits some rooms just fine. And while LG’s C5 series offers higher quality in terms of brightness and certain gaming features, the B5 series is no slouch. It’s a new 2025 TV, and this really is a terrific price, seeing as the MSRP is $1299.

Aside from that, you can grab a cheaper 40-inch QLED TV from TCL for just $99.99, or a Dyson V9 cordless vacuum to clean up before your holiday guests arrive. Ring doorbeels are on sale, as is an ultra-widescreen 49-inch Samsung Odyssey gaming monitor.

Best Buy Black Friday Schedule

Even if none of these deals appeals to you, you won’t have to wait long for more money-saving opportunities, as this is just the tip of the Black Friday season iceberg. Best Buy will be offering more doorbusters each Friday through Black Friday, with other items on sale throughout the month of November. The official Best Buy Black Friday sale runs November 20 - 29, followed by the “Cyber Sunday & Monday” sale November 30 and December 1.

And if you don’t get all your shopping done then, Best Buy is kicking off a “Last-Minute Savings” promotion that runs December 15 - 24. But do yourself a favor and try to get most of your gifts purchased before then. That’s around the time when brick-and-mortar stores are uncomfortably crowded and shipped items arriving before Christmas starts to become a dicy proposition.

For more, check out when to expect Black Friday sales at all the big retailers.

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.

When it comes to the horror genre, we’re all probably familiar with the likes of Stephen King and Shirley Jackson, but if you’re looking for something a bit different or a brand new release, we’ve put together some of the best horror books of 2025.

Perfect for Halloween and the spooky season, these are the stories that you won’t want to miss, with plenty of chills, thrills, guts, and ghouls.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

When I load up Europa Universalis 5, Paradox's latest and most ambitious grand strategy game, I am reminded of a news report I once saw about a man who grew up in a tribal village seeing an airplane for the first time. This can't possibly be real, right? This giant piece of metal can't fly through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour? Attempting to conquer the 500-year period from 1337 to 1837 CE while modeling every single individual person in the world – yes, you heard that right – at a level of detail that's completely unprecedented, seems unbelievable. But it really does all of that. And it's generally quite engaging and enjoyable for a genre veteran like me. As for whether it can soar? Only just. There is a lot of turbulence, and I wouldn't stake my life on it getting me to my destination without crashing.

First, let me say that this review is mostly based on a version I received on October 16th, and to a lesser extent on a medium-sized patch that came out on the 22nd and fixed a lot of bugs that were bothering me. There was an even larger patch on the 29th, but I was not able to do more than kick the tires on that before I locked in this review. And there's even one more big patch scheduled before launch. Overall, I think these patches have been improving the balance situation I'm going to talk about later, but there's no way I can say if they will have cleaned up all of the annoyances by the time you get your hands on it. I can only speak to what I played.

From a systems perspective, EU5 is an unambiguous wonder. Paradox keeps pushing the envelope on how much they can simulate in fine-grain detail, and I could even accuse this absurdly huge historical epic of taking things too far. It's certainly unwieldy in its bulk, and I fear especially that this will make it very difficult to balance. Fix one small thing and the ripples it sends out through the various interlocking mechanisms for economics, geography, demographics, and politics could possibly create 300 more. There's a certain hubris to it, if I might be so dramatic, and I've already seen some evidence of the problems it can cause.
But damn. DAMN! It is incredible to have the entire world depicted in this level of detail in a video game. For every one province in its predecessor, Europa Universalis 4, there are roughly seven individual locations in Europa Universalis 5. And while each space on the map could only have a single, monolithic religion and culture in EU4, EU5's population mechanics represent the culture, religion, and social class of every living human individually. Having to think about population creates a rich relationship with each location in my country, and acts to balance so many things in a naturalistic way, without abstract currencies like "Administration Points." In EU4, terrain type was a single modifier. In EU5, topography, climate, and vegetation are all separate factors that can affect everything from agricultural output to combat.

It is history nerd nirvana to simply scroll around the map and marvel at the amount of work that went into this. It's pretty slick-looking, too. I don't think it's necessarily Paradox's prettiest map. You will see some weird artifacts around areas of rough terrain and intricate coastlines that are a bit unsightly. For my money, Crusader Kings 3 and Victoria 3 are a bit nicer to look at. But it is certainly the most detailed. And especially with the ability to render units moving around with varying cultures, social strata, tech levels, and even degrees of professionalism modeled in their uniforms – up to 30 in one formation depending on the number of troops – it's never boring to zoom in on.

This does all mean that EU5 is for certified grand strategy sickos – and aspiring grand strategy sickos – only. Not for lack of providing a tutorial. That's here, and it's actually surprisingly good at getting you off to at least a walking start. Automation lets you hand off certain things to the AI until you're ready to micromanage them. The nested tooltips are very helpful, too, at least until you discover one of the many edge cases where they aren't. But I have over 2000 hours in EU4. It's my most-played game on Steam of all time. And even then, it took about an hour before I even felt comfortable unpausing EU5 – and dozens before I thought I knew what I was doing.

And for me, that's not a bad thing! I think that trial-and-error learning period is part of the fun of this type of grand strategy game, and part of developing a relationship with it. But it takes a lot of patience, and I don't think Paradox is going to be expanding its audience much with this one. EU5 knows exactly who it's for, and it caters specifically to those people – people like me – very unapologetically.

Getting into the groove of managing a nation can be incredibly engrossing. Planning out the site of a new market town, how it's going to connect up to my road network, and how I'm going to exploit the local resources in my workshops to turn a huge trade profit, is better than drugs. Control and proximity are brilliant new mechanics that model how you can’t necessarily govern something just because you painted it your color. And combined with a reworked estates system, there is an almost endless number of projects to do and challenges to face without ever leaving your borders. The geographic granularity here adds so much to nation management and warfare, which has evolved excellently with the new terrain modifiers and logistics systems.

That is, when everything is working correctly.

Major bugs were infrequent and generally not game-ruining for me. Most of EU5's current problems are in what I'd call tuning. The numbers, the balance, and the AI simply aren't quite dialed in yet to provide a satisfying or historical-feeling experience. I saw weird stuff like Bohemia with one port on the Baltic colonizing half of Canada. The Holy Roman Empire entirely failed to consolidate. There was no clear victor in Turkey. Bordergore is everywhere. China is… horrifying. And weirdest of all, the Europeans colonized most of Australia, but never even discovered India for some reason. It's hard to say how much of this is typical, but I didn't have thousands of hours to play a statistically significant number of campaigns.

This is kind of the vibe across the board. Nations will behave very strangely compared to what you'd expect. Borders become way too static after about 1500, even with the Protestant Reformation trying to mix things up. Historical countries don't often form. There are a lot of interesting situations and flavor events, but they don't result in a globe that reads as authentic. Also, despite efforts to slow down colonization, I still saw stuff like all of South America filled in with formal states by 1700, and the entire Kongo Basin speaking Italian. Either they invented Duolingo way early or cured malaria. Not sure which. And that stuff really bothers me. I don't need history to play out exactly as it did in our world, but some of this is just silly. I want it to look kind of plausible by the end. Historical-ish.

I did also run into inconsistent crashes on one of my two full playthroughs. I had only four crashes across the entire 500 years I played as the mighty Norse colony of Greenland in my first run. My second run, as Portugal, I would sometimes get more than that in a single decade. I was able to find some workarounds after consulting Paradox about the issue, so it was playable, but very annoying. (Pro tip: turn off the buildings tab in the outliner if this is happening to you a lot. Worked wonders.) Paradox has a history of supporting their grand strategy games for many years after launch, with one recent exception (the tragic Imperator: Rome), so I do have a pretty good amount of faith that this stuff will get worked out. But I wouldn't blame anyone for waiting six months for a little more polish before diving in. And the sheer complexity of EU5's simulation does stoke some fears in me about if it's even possible to get it to behave nicely at all.

What I didn't really have to worry about was performance, thankfully. For such a CPU-intensive game, I was apprehensive about that. But I tried it out on three different processors: A Ryzen 7 3700X, a Ryzen 7 5800XT, and a Core i7 13620H laptop. Most of my playtime was on the 3700X, because that's my main desktop, and I didn't find slowdown to be much of an issue, despite being below Paradox's recommended specs. It was measurably slower than the i7 especially, but I still found the speed to be very playable, only seeing significant sluggishness if there was a massive war going on in the last 100 years or so.

Days at the start of a run took less than a second to tick by on the 3700X, and it only got up to maybe around two seconds at worst by the 1800s, with a bit of extra lag at the start of each month when there are more things to calculate. An entire playthrough took me about 60 hours while playing at the fastest speed, including slowing down on purpose for most wars. It never ground to a halt or turned into a slideshow like Victoria 3 or Hearts of Iron 4 sometimes can in the late game, and the interface remains sharply responsive even when the simulation is chugging a little, which makes such a massive difference to me psychologically. Overall, I found the optimization to be almost astounding for the number of things going on.

Three weeks ago on this day, I featured Mega Evolution in my weekly Crashers and Climbers article, which focused on the set doing the typical evening out after the drop of a new set. Some cards were going up, some were going down, business as usual. Damn sneaker heads!

Fast forward to today, after a seemingly massive print run, everything is crashing. Literally every card you can pick out of this set is seeing new lows. For me, this is a market correction after a year of inflated prices both on the sealed and single card markets for a variety of factors I've discussed before.

Mega Evolution: All Crashers And Zero Climbs

Whilst I don't think we're seeing the bubble burst on the market just yet, we're seeing a massive market correction that could see a decline in scalped product and more availability across the board.

If you can't tell by now, I won't be including a "Climbers" section today, but I'll be diving into just how much values have crashed in the last three weeks and bag my readers a few bargains in the process.

Here's the top cards from Mega Evolution at a glance, and we're seeing between 8% and 33% drops in just three weeks. Full disclosure, the "Original Prices" on these cards are what I recorded on 10th October, just so we're on the same page.

Bulbasaur - 133/132

Bulbasaur - 133/132 (Mega Evolution Stamp)

Mega Kangaskhan ex - 182/132

Mega Absol ex - 180/132

Alakazam - 003 (Staff)

Mega Latias ex - 181/132

Mega Venusaur ex - 177/132

Mega Gardevoir ex - 178/132

Mega Lucario ex - 179/132

Mega Gardevoir ex - 187/132

Mega Lucario ex - 188/132

The Witcher Season 4 is upon us, and as fans know, the series has strayed away somewhat from the books upon which it is based, which has sparked a backlash among some fans.

Showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich, however, has defended the approach taken for The Netflix show, which replaced Henry Cavill with Liam Hemsworth following the former Superman actor’s exit at the end of Season 3.

In an interview with Dexerto, Schmidt-Hissrich insisted that the Netflix show exists in addition to the books and CD Projekt’s much-loved video games, which still exist for fans to enjoy.

“You have book fans, you have video game fans, and then you have fans that knew nothing about this world until the show existed,” she said. “And the truth is we can’t choose one audience. We have to remember what we are doing, which is a television show.

“It is different than any other genre in any other form that you could tell this story, and we have to make the choices for that. We have eight hours every season to tell these stories, and we’re never going to be able to tell everything from the books.

“I also think that there have to be changes that you make for adaptation just to make this story keep going forward. Season 1’s the perfect example. Obviously we leaned into the two books of short stories, but you can’t just tell unrelated adventures in a season of television.

Every now and then, some suit at a publisher looks at a beloved series they own, realizes they could make it into a live service co-op game, and says, out loud, “I know this has never worked for anyone else, but it might work for us.” It never does, of course; it makes the original fanbase angry, and oftentimes the franchise is old enough that new players don’t even know what it is. The result is a game for no one, a whole lot of nothing driven by market forces and the deluded belief that somehow, some way, this time the idea is just better than all of the previous times it’s been tried. This time, they, chosen by God, will be immune from whatever effects have frustrated lesser mortals. The latest game in this doomed genre is Painkiller, a reboot of People Can Fly’s 2004 cult classic, and the result is the same as it ever was. It’s fitting that it takes place in Purgatory. When it is consigned to the graveyard of history, its headstone will read “Here lies Painkiller, neither good enough to get into heaven nor bad enough to be damned to the inferno. You’ll wish you’d just played the original and called it a day, or simply booted up the Judas Priest song instead.”

This new Painkiller is one of those co-op games. You know the ones; a brief tutorial frontloads the meager plot, shows you the ropes and unlocks your base of operations. Once established, you pick from one of four visually-distinct-but-aside-from-one-passive-ability-virtually-identical-characters, all of whom come with pre-packaged quips that mostly sound like they were written by Dollar Store Joss Whedon. After selecting your weapons and loadout, you choose one of several missions, where you go to a place and kill a lot of bad guys, then return to your base with the spoils, where you can upgrade your stuff, and do it all again. You have seen all of this before, and I’m already bored describing it.

The story here is basically nonexistent. You are one of four souls stuck in Purgatory – Ink, Void, Roch, and Sol – approached by the disembodied voice of the angel Metatron to stop the demon Azazel, another faceless voice, from Doing Something Bad. Go on mission, go home, spend spoils, repeat. To Painkiller's infinite credit, there is no paid currency or battle pass here, just a Season Pass with skins and the like, But the loop never varies – once you get New and Better Stuff, it's just time to go do whatever Metratron determines needs doing next.

“That really doesn’t sound like Painkiller,” you might say if you played the original – and you, reader, you win the solid gold Kewpie doll, because it isn’t like Painkiller at all! If you squint, you can see the inspirations, though I use this term loosely. There are tarot cards, though you “win” a selection of them by spending gold in the Tarot Lottery because everything about video games is gambling now (even if you’re not spending real money), and equip them before missions for bonuses like +50 health and 30% more damage. Once the mission is over, your tarot cards are used up and you either have to spend more gold in the lottery or Ancient Souls, which you earn during missions, to restore one you’ve previously used. You can also use these currencies to buy and upgrade weapons, and you generally won’t have enough to do that and have tarot cards early on.

Speaking of, much of the original game’s iconic arsenal has been resurrected here like the Stakegun and Electrodriver, complete with their amusing alt fires. However, the titular Painkiller (which you always have) is now doing its best impression of Doom Eternal’s chainsaw, there to get you more ammo when your other guns run out. Sometimes, levels will lock you into a large, usually circular or rectangular space and make you kill a lot of enemies, though none of them are as visually striking or bats**t insane as the original rogues’ gallery. The similarities end there. This is not a Painkiller game; it is Warhammer 40,000: Darktide wearing a Painkiller skin suit, and hoping nobody cares enough to notice.

Painkiller looks good, but its problems really come down to mission design. Environments feel samey even when they look different, and each of the three acts (which are three levels apiece) finds a single gameplay idea and never lets go of it. Your progress will be stopped by something and the only way through will be Doing That Act’s Mechanic: in the first, that means filling barrels with blood by killing enemies near them and then slotting those into the proper place; in the second, you’ll need to find and use soul containers to power things; in the third, you’ll have to stand on ritual markers to activate dreamcatchers.

Occasionally, Painkiller will mix it up a bit – I actually liked the spots where my team had to use the soul containers to power a large cart we had to escort, but moments like that are rare. Mostly, you do the same things over and over again, moving through the environments, collecting gold, finding hidden chests, and picking up consumables –one plops down health; another plops down ammo; the third is a mostly useless decoy you will never pick up unless the other two are not available; and the fourth is an extra life; that’s it. You’re then locked into a combat arena until you either get enough blood canisters/soul containers/dreamcatchers to proceed or everything barring your path is dead.

Even the combat isn’t as satisfying as it should be. Most enemies are cohorts, harmless by themselves but potentially dangerous in large numbers (and they always come in large numbers) that die easily. There are also larger, more dangerous demons you can stagger by pouring on alt fires or kill outright, and the end of act Nephilim, who serve as bosses. None of these are all that engaging aside from the Nephilim, and while there are several different kinds of cohorts and a handful of demons, none of them have much of a unique visual identity. There are no Psychonuns or Hell Bikers or Evil Samurai or Freaks, nothing that made the original game’s wacky evil ensemble memorable. No, this is Purgatory by way of a heavy metal album cover if it were generated by AI. If you’re going to do Painkiller, it could at least look like Painkiller, you know?

Perhaps most infuriatingly, Painkiller isn’t out and out bad. The movement is fast, precise, and a hell of a time – you can slide, dash, air dash, dash through enemies, bounce off walls for a double jump, and use the Painkiller to grapple to various anchor points (or enemies!). All six of the guns, whether it’s the Electrodriver, Rocket Launcher, Hand Cannon, Stakegun, Shotgun, or SMG, feel great, and I liked messing around with the various alt fires. A shotgun that freezes enemies so I can shatter them? Neat. A Stakegun that’s also a grenade launcher or can create a gravity well? Love it. Turning the Rocket Launcher into a minigun that shoots rockets that freeze? Sign me up. And getting a new upgrade on a weapon’s branching paths feels meaningful and changes how you play. Yeah, a lot of it is “we have Doom Eternal at home,” but if you’re going to steal, you might as well steal from the best.

I even came to enjoy the characters, particularly Sol, a haughty, eternally youthful priestess, and Void, a straight man with a self-described fishbowl for a head and no memory of his past. Even Ink’s sarcasm and self-loathing and Roch’s tragic backstory aren’t poorly written, really. (The bad stuff is reserved for in-combat dialogue.) The issue is you rarely get to hear them finish telling each other their stories because you’ll run into some enemies and the background heavy metal (which is good) will kick in, or another character will spout some inane combat dialogue and the story dialogue you were hearing will just stop dead and never resume. Yeah, you can read it in the codex at your home base, but it’s not voiced, and the voice cast does admirable work with what they have. Bummer.

The boss fights against the Nephilim are pretty good, too. They’re not groundbreaking – you’ve seen a lot of these mechanics before – but they’re engaging to play and they look cool, whether it’s a massive blood rat, a big statue hiding a secret, or a literal dragon. These are the best parts of the roughly four or so hours it takes to play straight through Painkiller’s Raid (read: campaign) mode, and a nice change of pace from the “we’re not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with us” standard encounters.

Painkiller is designed as a three-player co-op game, and that’s the best way to play it, but if you’re short on friends or nobody’s around online, the bots are pretty good and respond well to player commands. Ordering them to stand on a switch to open a secret area is less intuitive than one of your co-op partners seeing the switch and just doing it, but it works, and I didn’t mind playing with bots when no one else was on.

Disappointment still manages to creep in, though. I figured Painkiller’s blink-and-you’ll-miss it plot was setting us up for a showdown with Azazel when we finished all nine levels, but nope. You just get access to his empty tomb where his voice offers you the chance to work for him. Your character naturally declines and he pivots to offering, and I kid you not, this is an actual line of dialogue, “a higher difficulty” and the opportunity for more violence and chaos. Sure, Azazel, why not? I’m already having so much fun.

There is also a roguelike mode to try out, and I enjoyed it because, unlike the Raid levels, there’s a lot more variety, and you can take your rewards back with you. You might navigate a platforming segment between fights that hurts you for as long as you’re in it or have to bring soul canisters up to the top of a ziggurat. Even the “we’re gonna lock you in a combat arena until either everything else is dead or all of you are” bits are more fun here just because you haven’t seen these environments before, and the randomized nature of your weapons, alt fires, and tarot cards feels more natural. It’s like this is what the Painkiller reboot was supposed to be before someone decided it should have a campaign, too. Unfortunately, during my first roguelike run, my game crashed. Talk about being damned.

I've got a banger of a deals article just in time for payday weekend. Sick of your kids saying "Six Seven?" Well if you can stomach typing that in as a discount code for cheap Xbox Controllers and RTX 5070 12GB GPUS, we've got an epic sale to let you in on.

Still looking for MTG Avatar: The Last Air Bender preorders? Amazon just got them back in stock for decent prices at that. I've also got an amazing deal on the cheapest RTX 5090 gaming PC on the market right now, so good infact I don't think they'll be a better deal on Black Friday.

TL;DR: Deals for Today

Fancy a new pair of headphones? How about Beats Studio Pros for $99? They're reconditioned, but they don't get this cheap even on Black Friday. With a solid deal on PS5 Dualsense Edge controller to boot, let's get into today's deals and save you some cash:

MTG: Avatar Preorders Back In Stock

Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender is back in stock for pre-order at Amazon, and pricing is either at or below market value. So it's worth getting a pre-order in for Amazon, especially as they don't take payment until your order ships, so it gives you three weeks to get the money together with no penalties.

Lenovo Xbox Controller and RTX 5070 12GB Sale

By using the discount code 'SIXSEVEN' (Sigh) you can get a small fortune knocked off a range of special edition Xbox Series controllers, including the standard Robot White. There's also significant discounts on two SKU's of Nvidia RTX 5070 12GB graphics cards, so this is 100% a sale you don't want to sleep on.

Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 Intel Core Ultra 9 285K RTX 5090

Beats Studio Pro

PlayStation DualSense Edge Wireless Controller - Midnight Black

Black Bolt Elite Trainer Box

STAR WARS The Black Series Gaming Greats Kyle Katarn

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners MADNESS Volume 1

Pokemon Halloween Calendar 2025

Meta Knight & Shadow Star amiibo

8BitDo Ultimate 2 for Switch / Switch 2 / PC

Creative Stage V2 2.1 Soundbar with Subwoofer

Shin Godzilla - Limited Edition Steelbook

INIU Portable Charger

JVSCAM Cordless Electric Air Duster

2 Pack Hand Warmers

Paladone Nintendo NES Cartridge Retro Drink Coasters

10Pcs Model Tools

Team Rocket Tin

Best Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution Deals

There's some crazy hype behind Mega Evolution right now, and for good reason. Gold rare Mega Lucario and Mega Gardevoir exs are fetching around $400 at the time of writing, and the artwork on the Secret Illustration Rares and Illustration Rares is phenominal (Looking at you Mega Lucario ex SIR). All of these deals are at market value or below, and in some cases knocking big box retailers like Amazon out of the Poképark.

Best Deals on Sealed Pokémon TCG

I've found some banger Pokémon TCG sets in todays deals, kicking off with a Prismatic Evolutions Booster Bundle for $59.98. Still collecting Black Bolt and White Flare? How about a White Flare Booster Bundle for $48.99? All of these deals are well worth a good look, and you very well could pull something crazy like a Umbreon ex SIR from Prismatic Evolutions or Vicitini Black White Rare from White Flare.

Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of "Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior". Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.

We're almost at the end of 2025, and one of the few certainties we have to close out the year is a new batch of arrivals on all of your streaming services. The cold is ideal for binge-watching anyways.

Netflix added a spread of spooky-themed movies in October, but you just know the streamer was itching for the holiday season. You will see so many Christmas rom-coms that look identical, and I completely respect it if you enjoy all of them. The streamer will also get some of the later movies from the DCEU, Netflix original movies like Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and, of course, the final season of one of the biggest Netflix series of all time.

Let's get into it.

Everything Coming to Netflix in November

November 1

• A Very Vintage Christmas
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
• Baby Driver
• Back to the Future
• Back to the Future Part II
• Back to the Future Part III
• Broadchurch: Season 1
• Broadchurch: Season 2
• Broadchurch: Season 3
• Charlie's Angels
• Crazy Rich Asians
• Dear Santa
• Doctor Sleep
• Don't Worry Darling
• Dr. Dolittle
• Dr. Dolittle 2
• Elvis
• Frances Ha
• Game Night

With all the indie titles being released on Steam every week, it can be hard to make your game stand out. Italian developer Fix-a-Bug accidentally gave its 2D dungeon crawler a big prelaunch popularity boost in Japan by accidentally naming the game “Shitty Dungeon” in Japanese.

Although the game’s English title is The Crazy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles, its Japanese language Steam Store page ended up displaying the title as Kuso Danjon. This means “Shitty Dungeon” or “Crap Dungeon,” if you want to be slightly more polite.

In a recent interview with Game*Spark spotted by Automaton, developer Paolo Nicoletti explained that the ‘shitty dungeon incident’ occurred back in August this year, when the team was releasing a demo version of the game and had yet to get a professional Japanese translation.

When they realized their mistake, Nicoletti says, "Everyone was cracking up, and honestly, I also laughed a lot about it. It was completely unintentional.” However the mishap did not flush the rogue-lite dungeon crawler down the toilet, rather, “It ended up bringing the game a lot of attention and the number of Wishlists soared." Nicoletti said the name change was “the best accidental marketing” the developer could have hoped for.

According to an earlier report by Automaton Japan, the Japanese language Steam page for The Crazy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles was named Shitty Dungeon back on August 8. By August 13, Japanese speaking users had begun discussing the topic on X and had reported it on the official Discord server.

It’s still not clear how or why this mistranslation happened, but it’s worth noting that the pre-release Japanese language demo of the game had some awkward machine translations when it was picked for Tokyo Game Show’s ‘Selected Indie 80’ in September. The developers announced that these issues would be fixed in the full release, and it appears the ‘shitty dungeon incident’ occurred around this time.

This amusing mistake made the indie game stand out from the crowd of new Steam releases. It soon became a topic of discussion on Japanese social media. According to Nicoletti, this contributed to an increase in Wishlist numbers for the then-unreleased game. After all, a title that seems to proudly proclaim it's bad can make people curious as to whether that’s really the case.

However, the quality of the game did not stink after all, and The Crazy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles currently has a 'Mostly Positive' rating on Steam. Reviewers have been praising its funny dialogue, satisfying gameplay loop and the overall care put into its development.

Japanese speaking commenters on X have also praised the demo and the full game for being surprisingly better than its initial Japanese title suggested. “Humor that lives up to the name,” and “great, detailed pixel art,” are among the plaudits given to the indie title. One Japanese language review on Steam noted that, “Despite the title Shitty Dungeon making me think it was a joke, it is actually quite well made.” The reviewer said that because they'd made a blind buy, “It wasn’t quite what I expected but the combat system is pretty interesting.” They also praised the game’s balance between humorous dialogue and tense combat.

Although good localizations are preferable, translation errors have produced some weirdly memorable dialogue over the years. If it hadn’t been for mistranslation, such lines would never have become so iconic. Lines like Zero Wing’s “All your base are belong to us,” and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night’s “What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets,” have endured beyond their source games to become well-known memes.

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

Should there be a Shaun of the Dead 2? Not now, not ever, director Edgar Wright has insisted — and his explanation for why he has such a hard line on it makes perfect sense.

2004’s Shaun of the Dead, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, is considered by many fans to be the perfect zombie comedy film. It sees Pegg’s washed up Shaun go from zero to hero as a zombie apocalypse explodes around him and his friends in the Crouch End area of London. Many of its lines are often repeated by fans online ("Let's go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over”), and it spawned Wright and Pegg's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, which includes 2007’s Hot Fuzz and 2013’s The World's End.

Over the years (21!), fans have wondered whether Wright and Pegg would return to Shaun of the Dead for a sequel. While Pegg has made clear his feelings that a sequel or reboot should never happen, now Wright has added his thoughts.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he told Polygon he’ll never return to make Shaun of the Dead 2. Why? Because the characters go through their journeys in the first movie, and there’s not really much left to say.

"We weren't really interested in doing it because we didn't think there was any more story to tell," Wright said. Apparently he was asked to make a sequel after Shaun of the Dead came out instead of Hot Fuzz, but he refused.

"There are a lot of franchises where the sequels don't really earn their keep because all the story has been told in the first movie," Wright added. "When a character has gone through a massive change, it's very difficult to have a second installment. Shaun of the Dead has him going from being a kind of sad sack to being a hero by the end of the movie. So it's very difficult to start the next movie when there's no obvious arc. We are very happy with it being a one and done."

With any luck, that’s where Shaun of the Dead will stay: as a perfect movie of its time that still stands up today. No sequel ‘getting the band back together,’ and no remake with ill-judged recasting.

It’s worth noting at this point what Pegg has said in the past about a potential Shaun of the Dead 2. In May, he said that while he’s working out a project to do with Wright, it’ll be a surprise. “It’s lovely to be asked, and the following that film has is the best you can hope for as a filmmaker, but ‘Shaun’ is a story with a beginning, middle and end, and it’s a story that to add it it — like Alien 3 did to Aliens — might end up detracting from the original,” Pegg told Variety. “So certainly when Edgar and I make our next film, we’re gonna really disappoint everybody.”

In the short term, Wright has a reboot of his own, although this one is an adaptation of a novel: The Running Man.

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.