Last year, popular YouTuber and podcast host John Allen made the jump to comics with MrBallen Presents: Strange, Dark & Mysterious, a graphic novel that adapted some of the many true tales of horror featured on the MrBallen channel. Now Allen and his collaborators are back with a sequel called MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live.

With the second graphic novel set to release in stores later this month, IGN can exclusively debut a new preview of MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live. Check it out in the slideshow gallery below:

As with the original book, MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live adapts several of Allen's stories from his YouTube channels, along with several new stories for good measure. Robert Venditti (X-O Manowar) assisted in the adaptation process. All the stories are illustrated by Andrea Mutti (Haunt You To the End), while Rob Prior provided the cover art. The book is published by Ten Speed Graphic, a division of Penguin Random House. Here's the official description for the book:

In MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live, John Allen, known popularly as “MrBallen,” is back with another heart-stopping collection of strange and mysterious stories exploring terrors that lie just beyond our comprehension. From skin-melting encounters in Brazil to a ghost that stalks the English countryside to a bell ringing deep in the Arizona wilderness, MrBallen’s spine-chilling tales—four of which are exclusive to this graphic novel—span multiple centuries and expose bizarre, terrifying, and utterly unforgettable experiences of the unnatural world.

Compellingly creepy, deeply researched, and based on unsettling real events, MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live proves that sometimes our deepest fears are about the things we cannot see. In collaboration with New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Robert Venditti and acclaimed comic book artist Andrea Mutti, this is Allen’s most frightening collection yet.

Welcome. Your nightmares are waiting.

MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live will be released in both hardcover and paperback on September 30, 2025. You can preorder a copy on Amazon.

In other comics news, Dark Horse is releasing The Art of Star Wars: A New Hope - The Manga, and Absolute Batman #12 provides twisted new origin stories for several iconic DC villains.

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

Live and Learn is more than just one of the best songs in Sonic history; it also feels like a philosophy SEGA has taken to heart with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. I've spent over 35 hours drifting, boosting, and gathering rings across an excellent set of tracks that span Sonic's 34-year history. Minutes effortlessly turned into hours, perfecting my drifting technique, customizing my vehicles, finding the optimal race lines in time trials, and frantically competing with friends to be the Grand Prix champion. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds could have been just another pit stop among a Grand Prix of 2025 kart racers, but instead it put the pedal to the metal and refused to let me take my hands off the wheel.

I've played my fair share of kart racers over the past few decades starring Sonic, Mario, Crash, and plenty of other popular characters. While most are amusing enough, only a few reach that upper pantheon of party games that dominate every get together. With 39 tracks, 24 characters, a nice suite of multiplayer options, tons of challenges to complete, and such a long list of unlockable cosmetics that I still can’t see its finish line, CrossWorlds doesn’t just want to be part of the rotation: it has set its sights on taking the top spot for me and my friends.

CrossWorlds’ racing is quick to pick up thanks to its intuitive and straightforward controls, essentially boiling down to four main actions: accelerate, drift, brake, and use an item. Racing feels great whether you're zipping into shortcuts, landing massive trick combos for a big boost, or nailing a complicated drift that asks you to rapidly change direction on a curvy path. I love how the vehicles feel, as every action fluidly transitions from one into the next, allowing me to chain drifts into jumps into tricks into boosts before launching into another drift to repeat the process again… provided my opponents didn’t send any items my way.

Getting hit with items, messing up a turn, or colliding with a wall definitely cost me a few races, but more often than not they felt more like small speed bumps thanks to the generous placement of boost panels and item capsules on most courses. Those hits do reduce your ring count, which in turn lowers your top speed, but it rarely took me more than a few seconds to get back on track – and you can reduce that lag time even further depending on how you tune your vehicle. The type of ride you pick will help you eke out extra advantages: Power vehicles are great at shoving other racers around, Handling vehicles make it easier to nail even the trickiest of sharp turns, and the long-awaited return of Sonic Riders' hover boards enabled me to boost like no other when hitting dash panels or using the boosting Wisp items.

The headlining feature is the fantastic CrossWorlds mechanic that not only keeps every race interesting but also adds a good amount of depth. Outside of Grand Prix Mode, the second lap of each race almost seamlessly transports everyone to a different course, similar to the dimension jumping done in 2021's Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Warping from the naval scenery of Metal Harbor to the prehistoric Dinosaur Jungle or the incredibly curvy Dragon's Road kept me on my toes every race. This was already my favorite part of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’ public test demos before my review, but I began to see the true brilliance of it as I put more time into the full game.

Different vehicle types excel on different tracks, so making the second lap random adds depth when customizing your ride since you need to consider variables beyond just the course you’ve chosen. My speed-focused vehicle would sing on tracks with many straightaways or boost panels, but would often give up a few positions to racers who tuned for acceleration or handling on tracks filled with constant curves and sharp turns. Since some tracks have portions where you transform into a boat or plane, I found myself making one loadout that could adapt to whatever course ended up as the second lap while still maximizing my potential for the first and final lap on the main track.

Transforming into Flight and Water Forms is as simple as passing through a gate with the matching plane or boat icons. Some transformations are required, such as the Water Form swap at the start of Kraken Bay, while others are optional, like the short Flight Form path on Coral Town if you take a specific branching path, but I was never unhappy to seize the opportunity to change things up – in fact, I would have loved a few more CrossWorlds that gave me extended periods of time in the sky. Flight Form in always handled like a dream, letting you drift vertically to reach items, rings, and boost gates at different elevations. However, a few of the Water Form sections can feel clunky until you figure out the correct rhythm and timing to accelerate, drift, and trick on each course. Vehicles with better handling seem to perform the best during these transformations, so whenever I was having a hard time with a specific section , I would practice in one of those vehicles before returning to my preferred Speed type options.

No lap during CrossWorlds feels like another, and though the last lap returns to your original track, there are significant changes during it. Paths that were inaccessible open up, improved item boxes appear with better drop rates for stronger options, and more hazards show up on the course. There are even significant structural changes, like a rocket in Metal Harbor finally launching, which removes two paths and forces everyone into a newly formed spine (or two quarter pipes placed back to back, for those who don't skate).

Even without the CrossWorlds mechanic, the courses available at launch are all excellent. There are 15 tracks that can only arrive during that second lap, and then 24 main courses for them to show up in, with Coral Town possibly being my favorite. Its looping paths create so many routes that I'm still wrapping my head around which one is the most ideal in time trials – I always found myself changing the route I took depending on my position, character, vehicle, and lap number. Other standouts are classic stages like Market Street, which originated as Rooftop Run in Sonic Unleashed, and Radical Highway from Sonic Adventure 2, the latter of which had me riding the main cables to the top using boost pads to leave my competitors behind.

Every course feels perfectly tuned with risks and rewards; different routes have different advantages, with some having more rings to help you reach your maximum top speed, while others have more boost panels to provide some speed in the short run in the hopes you will either get far enough ahead not to need the extra rings or at least have enough breathing room to pick them up later. One course that proved to be my Achilles heel: Pumpkin Mansion. The final third of the track is full of giant pumpkins that vanish as you approach, but until the first person reaches them, they hide a section full of sharper turns. They always affected the timing of my drifts until I took the time to memorize their positions through time trials and figured out which paths I should take.

Finally, a kart racer would just be a basic racing game without items to inject a little chaos into them. CrossWorlds has 24 different items that can be pulled from boxes placed all over each course, most of which had me shouting with equal amounts of either excitement or bitterness depending on if I was on the giving or receiving end of each. The iconic Wisps from Sonic Colors are here and offer items in the form of a boost, laser, and drill, which are all helpful to either catch up or extend your lead. These were always welcome as they enabled me to cut across off-road sections and dodge certain attacks, like the punishing Slime and Weight items, if used with proper timing. There are plenty of other cool options as well, like a bomb that grows in size the longer you hold it, eventually becoming a giant wrecking ball that flattens enemies it collides with until its detonation.

The Tornado quickly became my favorite item because of its ability to negate most incoming attacks while also dealing damage to as many opponents that I could bump into. There is also the Monster Truck, which is sure to be a standout for many, as it transforms your vehicle into a massive machine that flattens opponents, renders you immune to all other items, and allows you to drive off-road without any penalties. By default, you can hold two items at a time, but you can also add the option for a third item or swap between your two items by installing specific upgrades in your customizable Gadget Panel if you really want to lean into the chaos, though I typically leaned toward Gadgets that made me faster, not fiercer.

Gadgets offer a wide range of extremely impactful bonuses, with more than 30 different options to place on your Gadget Panel before a race. Now, they won’t suddenly craft you a win out of thin air, as your racing skills still remain the most important factor – but when utilized to their maximum potential, Gadgets can be the difference between getting first and fourth place. There are Gadgets to alter your vehicle's stats, improve drift performance, increase the rings you can carry, and grant unique starting items that can't normally be found in races, like a Warp Ring that teleports you on top of the racer just ahead of you, causing you to squish them. The tricky part is figuring out what combination to use; each Gadget Panel has six slots in a two-by-three pattern, and each Gadget requires between one and three slots. Building my Panel became a tiny puzzle with no wrong answers, and it scratched the min-maxing itch I love in games.

You can prebuild five Gadget Panels and then swap between them before each race, which helps you adjust to specific situations, modifying the base stats of your character and vehicle selection as needed. The roster has nearly all the major characters you’d hope to see from each generation of Sonic: in addition to the usual Team Light and Dark, you’ve got characters from the Sonic Heroes, Riders, Advance, Rush, Colors, and even recent newcomers like Sage from Frontiers. It didn't take long for me to find my favorite in Shadow using a modified Speed-type vehicle, so much so that I used him to clear all eight cups on the Sonic Speed and Super Sonic Speed difficulty (the equivalents of 150cc and 200cc in Mario Kart), only needing minor tweaks outside of regularly adjusting my Gadget Panel. While it was rare for most CPU opponents to give me trouble, a few of the Grands Prix still had the ideal amount of challenge thanks to CrossWorlds’ modular rival system.

Before starting each Grand Prix, a random character appears as your rival, and they then act as a supercharged CPU to race against with a challenge level from one to 10, similar to raising the heat level in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate campaign. Your rival isn't just a CPU racer with better stats, they interject with snarky comments of frustration and glee throughout the races, adding a bit of character to what could have just been a slightly more competent CPU racer. While I haven’t tested every combination of racer and rival, the 20 or so I’ve seen so far all had unique voice lines, which really helped breathe even more life into them. Rivals also behave more intelligently, holding onto defensive items until they need them, taking better racing lines as they drift around corners, and even moving to ensure they take items they expect those behind them to go for. I had to use a not-insignificant amount of retries when racing rivals that were level eight or higher, which is just the right amount of pushback.

Thankfully, CrossWorlds does something I wish every other racing game would do with its in-game currency, Donpa tickets. I would usually net anywhere between 10 and 40 tickets per race, depending on my performance and if I achieved certain feats. That includes things like using the most items, choosing which course is selected for lap two by being in first when reaching the travel ring at the end of lap one, or picking up the series’ iconic red rings. Tickets have a variety of uses, including unlocking various car parts or customization options, increasing your friendship with a character for rewards unique to them, and – my favorite use – retrying a race for better placement.

Now, I know what you're thinking: retrying a race is hardly new, but CrossWorlds differs in that you can spend a measly 20 tickets to retry in the middle of a Grand Prix without entirely starting over. So if you get hit with three items on the final turn of the final lap of the final race only to watch your rival and six other racers pass you in the homestretch, you can rewind and try again as many times as you can afford, which cuts down on pointless repetition a lot. Grands Prix also get an exciting and welcome shakeup: instead of racing on a fourth course to end things, the final race is a combination of one lap from the previous three, which tests how well you can adapt to each. That said, I do miss the mission-based Story Mode from Team Sonic Racing, which gave you interesting bonus challenges to accomplish during each stage.

I also have to dig into the friendship system more, as it will take thousands of races to complete if your goal is to maximize your ranking with each character. Instead of funneling tickets into car parts, you can give them to your favorite characters to receive cosmetics like titles, decals, and alternate costumes in return. These specific unlockables get really expensive really fast: it took me 3000 tickets to earn the first four rewards for Shadow, including one alternate costume, and there is still more for me to unlock. It's clear that SEGA is hoping this will be a system that keeps you drawn in, as with 24 characters, that's a ludicrous number of tickets to unlock everything. I have mixed feelings on this because it gives the most dedicated fans something to chase, but the rate for earning tickets currently feels a bit too stingy when compared to the cost of unlocking some cosmetics.

That sticker shock gets even worse when you consider the fact that new characters are already on the horizon, including Hatsune Miku, Joker from Persona 5, and Ichiban from the Like a Dragon franchise, all of which have been announced as upcoming free additions. There will also be characters and tracks for SpongeBob, TMNT, and Avatar: The Last Airbender coming as part of the paid season pass. While I don't necessarily need them since I already have more favorites on the Sonic roster than I do fingers, it is exciting to think of what other characters and tracks could be joining even later down the road. In fact, during my interview with Takashi Iizuka of SEGA at Gamescom, they said they plan to support CrossWorlds with new content like this each month for at least the first year after launch, which is an impressive pace given there’s already plenty of unlockables and alternate modes to keep those who blaze through the cups busy at launch.

One of those distractions is the Race Park, which consists of six different rule sets, but also allows you to create custom matches to fit whatever you and up to three others want to play locally. These are all available online as well by joining the Friend Match option, though they are limited to one player per console, but it at least allows you to race with groups of up to 12 friends. Currently, every mode boils down to a race for points, but the modified rules change how they play out. In addition to the regular 12-player free-for-all race style, there are also special team modes with rules that grant bonuses for grabbing the most rings, colliding with teammates, using the most dash panels, or landing the most item hits on opponents. These modes were a blast with friends, as they didn't fully rely on who knew the courses the best. It's also something worth playing for a bit, as there are eight different rival CPU teams to take down that unlock special vehicles you can then customize with other parts. The custom rule set is a standout feature here for local multiplayer, too, giving you control over how many races you do back to back, which courses can appear as the Crossworld second lap, what items appear in item boxes, and the speed and difficulty level while racing.

The Race Park's one drawback is that, while not necessary, the Gadget Panels can be overly influential to the outcome of races, so it was a let-down that there were no pre-built ones for newcomers. They did have access to everything I had unlocked, but that meant spending time for them to decipher what each one did and figuring out which ones they wanted to set into their Panels. I hope Sega alleviates this with a patch that adds some default Gadget Panels optimized for different vehicle types and playstyles.

In addition to the Race Park, there is also a Time Trial mode that challenges you to race for the best time on both the Sonic and Super Sonic Speed settings. I initially went into Time Trial mode expecting to run through a few tracks just to see what it offered, but it ended up being where I spent more time than anywhere else. After clearing some courses with an A rank (the minimum rank necessary to earn progress towards rewards), I was suddenly hungry for more. Each race, I found myself tinkering with the various car parts and Gadgets, and rewatching my own ghost to see what I could change or where I could improve. What if I save my boost for this turn vs that turn, or what if I sacrifice a bit of my speed to improve my handling stat to nail that hairpin? Before CrossWorlds, I was never a huge Time Trial person, but these hooked me by putting the most enticing thing they could behind them as a reward: my favorite Sonic music to listen to while racing.

A Sonic game would be incomplete without a banger of a soundtrack, and CrossWorlds rarely fails to impress with its nearly 100 unique tracks. The primary songs are excellent, with popular tracks like Radical Highway, Market Street, Ocean View, and plenty of others all getting the CrossWorlds treatment. And for you Sonic Adventure 2 fans, don't worry, because Escape From the City is here, but you will need to clear all 79 time trials with at least an A ranking to unlock it. All the great artists that have created music for Sonic games here are: Tee Lopes, Tomoya Ohtani, Takahiro Kai, and plenty more. Similar to Sonic x Shadow Generations from last year, unlocking this music does more than just let you listen to them in a jukebox; you can also gather your favorites and slot that playlist (or any of the other six premade albums) as the music for each of the three laps of every race. Possibly the most impressive part of that is how seamlessly they all transition into each other, with each song starting at a different point depending on what lap it plays on. I only wish I could create multiple favorites playlists to have even more control.

The last and potentially one of the most critical elements that could decide whether CrossWorlds takes the podium is how online play functions. Ahead of launch, we had a few days to test it and see what it offered. To my enjoyment, it worked as well as I'd hoped, with the caveat that my not-quite-full lobbies were regularly supplemented with CPUs to fill out all 12 spots. Online does have a drawback compared to this year's Mario Kart World since it's limited to just one player per console, but the inclusion of crossplay is a decent trade off, and I saw virtually no lag with my wired connection.

Online functionality is simple but effective – you can see other players on your specific console’s friend list, your CrossWorlds in-game friend list, a history of others you’ve raced against, and your fair play points, which is a 100-point gauge that decreases anytime you abandon an online race. This appears to be CrossWorlds’ method for ensuring players who are behind don’t just up and leave the race entirely, which is an appreciated inclusion even if I can’t yet say how effective it will be. Another incentive is that I unlocked even more Gadget options to alter my driving style as I rose through the ranks from E- to an eventual C- during the short prelaunch review window. And while it's too soon to tell how the difference in ranks will affect queue times, I usually found a match in less than a minute during the review period, which has a much smaller pool of players than will be there on launch.

Also, it’s great that my custom soundtracks and everything I had earned in offline mode carried over, making me all the more prepared for facing real opponents. The good news is that even fans that want to join online races on day one will still be able to earn all the Gadgets I got offline simply by racing, meaning that each online race will not only move you closer to the Gadgets from higher ranks but also the ones that unlock based on total number of races. However, those players will be at a disadvantage compared to others like myself who spent time earning them before going online, which could also be mitigated with preset Gadget Plates.

10 years ago, Metroid Prime series producer Kensuke Tanabe sat down with me at E3 2015 and said he'd like to make a new game in the franchise with a time travel mechanic.

This was, obviously, a long time ago — so long ago that the Nintendo Switch was still only known by its codename NX — but the chat remains one of Tanabe's most forthcoming interviews on the Metroid Prime series' future, discussing the stories of Dark Samus and Phazon, bounty hunter Sylux, and an idea for a new Metroid Prime game that focused on a single planet across multiple points in its timeline.

"Instead of broadening it to more planets I would have one and would focus on the timeline, and being able to change that," Tanabe said to me, at Eurogamer at the time. "That's one interesting idea I have in mind... but I understand many people thought that [Echoes] was too difficult."

By evoking Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Tanabe is referring to its dual-world gameplay that saw players shift between light and dark versions of the same space — a concept that prompted a mix of reactions from players. Still, the idea of time travel appears to have stuck with Tanabe, who has once again returned as the producer of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — a game which contains other similarities to the concept he discussed back then.

Take the bounty hunter Sylux, for example, a character that even fans of the Metroid Prime trilogy might struggle to remember. A rival of Samus, Sylux was introduced in the Nintendo DS spin-off game Metroid Prime Hunters (for which Tanabe was also a producer). As part of the same interview a decade ago, Tanabe confirmed the spaceship seen during the cliffhanger tease at the end of Metroid Prime 3 belonged to Sylux, potentially setting up a rivalry in a future game.

"It was Sylux, another hunter from Metroid Prime Hunters at the end of Metroid Prime 3," Tanabe said to me at the time. "Personally I'd like to create a story centring around Sylux and Samus."

Well, roll forward a decade and Sylux is indeed a major presence in Metroid Prime 4 — and last week the character was even announced as getting an amiibo figurine, too.

As for the idea of a game featuring time travel, fans have long held onto Tanabe's suggestion — and even pointed to the black hole shape seen in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond's logo in the hope that it might mean Samus can create some kind of time-dilating space hole to travel into the past or future.

Now, supposedly leaked box art for the game posted on reddit appears to mention Samus as being stuck on the game's planet of Viewros after being transported across space and time — prompting more chatter that time travel, just like Sylux, has remained part of Tanabe's plans.

"I'm assuming it'll work exactly like how Dark Aether works in Prime 2," wrote Metroid fan Spinjitsuninja on reddit, before the supposed box art leaked. "We see several portals in the recent trailer anyways, so unless those are awkward warp points, I think it shows similar world design. They could always have the game take you to different eras, with more than two 'worlds' to go between? But that might be ambitious."

"Calling it now: you have to hit a certain speed on the bike to time travel, back to the future style," added another fan, Gleethor on ResetEra. "Could even see it near instantly changing the landscape around you when you time travel, which could certainly explain why it's relatively sparse."

Last week's Metroid Prime 4: Beyond trailer finally revealed the game's release date and also showcased a new open-world motorbike for Samus, though the video felt something of a low-key showing within the wider Nintendo Direct. Here's hoping we get to see more of the game before its December 7, 2025 release date — if only we could time travel to that.

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

We love LEGO (who doesn’t?) and we’re always looking for deals on our favorite brick-filled kits across all shapes, sizes, and budgets.

Thankfully, Amazon outlet Woot has deals on plenty of our favorite sets across all aspects of pop culture, although it does appear many are starting to sell out quickly, so you’ll want to move quickly!

Save On LEGO Sets From Harry Potter, Star Wars, and More

Over at Woot, there are some hefty savings to be had, with the first one to catch our eye being the 4,210-piece LEGO Gotham City display set.

It looks just like the skyline from the iconic animated series starring the late Kevin Conroy, and has subtle easter eggs hidden behind a series of panels. There’s even an adorable little Batmobile and four classic minifigures of Batman, Joker, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman.

It’s down to $249.99 from $296.99, a 16% discount off of the MSRP.

From Gotham to Gringotts, the Harry Potter Wizarding Bank set is reduced by $100. It’s still $399.99, but it’s an awesome build with the bank above and the dragon-guarded passages below, as well as minifigs for Harry, Ron, Hagrid, Griphook, Bellatrix and more.

Sticking with fantasy, the Lord of the Rings Barad-Dur set has an 18% discount, bringing it down to $369.99. It’s a 5,471-piece set with ten minifigs and that all-important Eye of Sauron to watch over your home.

Star Wars fans will also be pleased to know that there’s 20% off the ridiculously impressive 7,500-piece Millennium Falcon. It’s now $679.99 and remains one of the best LEGO sets around.

There’s 17% off the Legend of Zelda Deku tree, too, but it appears it’s sold out. Still, if you want to pick one up for $249.99, it’s worth bookmarking in case fresh stock arrives.

Finally, it’s not discounted, but as a big X-Men fan, I just love this 3,093-piece X-Mansion set. It has the mansion (including Danger Room), a Sentinel figure, and ten minifigs including the likes of Wolverine, Professor X, Gambit, Storm, Cyclops, and Magneto, among others.

It’s $269.99 at Woot right now.

Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He's a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife's dismay.

Hollow Knight: Silksong’s storefront-crashing launch may be behind us, but the debate about its difficulty rages on.

Silksong is one of the biggest games of the year, hitting huge player concurrent numbers on Steam alongside a positive reception from critics. But amid the excitement over Team Cherry’s long awaited sequel is a debate within the community about whether the game is too hard — perhaps even unfairly so. It comes as no surprise to see Silksong’s early days mods dominated by those which make the game easier.

IGN has already reported on how some Silksong players had expressed criticism across social media, subreddits, Discords, and Steam reviews about the game’s difficulty scaling and brutal runbacks. There’s one very early miniboss causing a lot of players a whole heap of trouble, too.

“Is it just me, or are some of the things that make Silksong ‘difficult’ just cruel?” wondered redditor Machi-Ato. “The game has artificially inflated difficulty and playtime due to overtuned numbers and menial tasks/runback,” reads a post on Steam.

Now, speaking at the launch of a new gaming-focused exhibition at Australia’s national museum of screen culture, ACMI, attended and reported on by Dexerto, Team Cherry’s Ari Gibson and William Pellen addressed Silksong’ difficulty for the first time since the game came out.

Gibson said that because new playable character Hornet is “inherently faster and more skillful” than the Knight from the first game, Team Cherry had to make enemies tougher.

“Hornet is inherently faster and more skillful than the Knight, so even the base level enemy had to be more complicated, more intelligent,” Gibson said.

Pellen revealed: “The basic ant warrior is built from the same move-set as the original Hornet boss.

“[There's] the same core set of dashing, jumping, and dashing down at you, plus we added the ability to evade and check you. In contrast to the Knight’s enemies, Hornet’s enemies had to have more ways of catching her as she tries to move away.”

Team Cherry thus made enemies more powerful to present Hornet with a challenge, or as they put it, they had to “bring everyone else up to match [her] level.”

Team Cherry also talked generally about its design philosophy for Silksong, insisting that by presenting the player with the choice to constantly divert from the main path, they are able to dance around Silksong’s now infamous steep difficulty curve.

“Silksong has some moments of steep difficulty,” Gibson admitted, “but part of allowing a higher level of freedom within the world means that you have choices all the time about where you’re going and what you’re doing.”

Gibson also reminded players who are struggling against a particular boss for hours on end that “they have ways to mitigate the difficulty via exploration, or learning, or even circumventing the challenge entirely, rather than getting stonewalled.”

Still, Silksong’s first post-launch patch made the early game easier, so clearly Team Cherry has acknowledged the game was at least in partly tuned a little too hard at release. A second patch is out soon.

Playing Silksong? Here are some essential guides for your journey upwards: the Silksong Interactive Map, how to grind for Rosary Beads, our ever-expanding Walkthrough with boss videos and guides, how to get your first life bar upgrade (first four mask shards), and a great guide to the Simple Keys and the doors they open.

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.

With the build-up to the next big Amazon Prime exclusive sale (Prime Big Deal Days, or October Prime Day, as it's better known) well underway, we're already starting to see some notable early discounts that you should absolutely consider snapping up ASAP.

That now includes a handful of new Nintendo Switch 2 games down to record low prices at Amazon, including Donkey Kong Bananza, down to $53.54 (previously $69.99). Other discounted games include Cyberpunk 2077, Mario Kart World, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Breath of the Wild, with the additional discount automatically applied during checkout.

So what's the catch? These are technically sold under Amazon Resale. Now hold your eye rolls, as we've seen deals like this before, and these discounts are some of the IGN Deals team's most anticipated offers going into the biggest sale period of the year.

Most of what I'm recommending in the sale is classified as "Used - Like New," essentially what Amazon deems almost brand new, never used, with small damage to the packaging, but not to the contents themselves. So you're not losing anything, or buying a game that looks like it's been recently run over repeatedly.

We've also already noted some PlayStation deals at Amazon Resale, with the PS Portal dropping to around $140 (but now sold out), and the DualSense Edge controller, also down to around $140 right now (also likely to sell out soon). In case you hadn't already realised, the main with kind of deals is stock tends to be extremely limited, so be fast to the trigger if you don't want the disappointment of missing out.

This is one of the best ways to buy into some of the most expensive new games available, and find rare discounts where you normally wouldn't (I'm looking at you, Nintendo).

Plus, you still get the 30-day Amazon return policy, so it's still a much safer option than just buying a used game off some random on Facebook Marketplace.

Plus, if you're looking for more Switch 2 game deals, we also recently covered discounts on other games sold by Amazon this week (not resale either), including Split Fiction, Sonic x Shadow Generations, Madden NFL 26, and more.

Robert Anderson is Senior Commerce Editor and IGN's resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter/X or Bluesky.

Borderlands 4 developer Gearbox has said improving the performance of the game on PC is its “top priority,” with a patch due out today, September 18.

In a statement issued on social media, the developer said it was aware of the feedback from players on Borderlands 4 across PC and console, with patches coming to improve matters.

Meanwhile, Gearbox said a field of view (FOV) slider for consoles is in testing.

All eyes are on Gearbox right now to see how it deals with an internet backlash to the performance of Borderlands 4 — which has come despite huge player numbers on Steam. The studio released an update for the game on PC over the weekend — without patch notes — that didn’t seem to fix much of anything, so hopefully this new patch is meaningful.

Borderlands 4 is still on a mixed Steam review rating, with most of the negative comments revolving around performance. The tech experts at Digital Foundry have said their initial analysis of Borderlands 4 on PC shows significant stutter problems, and have advised against running the game on its ‘Badass’ graphics setting, which suggests there are indeed problems with the Unreal Engine 5 title.

Meanwhile, IGN has reported that console players have seen Borderlands 4 performance get worse the longer they play, particularly on the more powerful PS5 Pro. Some have said this is the result of a memory leak. Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford has suggested quitting and restarting the game as a workaround.

pic.twitter.com/nR8veTbStq

— Borderlands (@Borderlands) September 17, 2025

Gearbox has posted a Borderlands 4 Nvidia Optimization guide on Steam, advising players how to optimize their graphics settings for “better performance and framerates” on PC with the Nvidia app, although users report mixed results.

Gearbox has also issued a piece of advice to PC gamers that to me reads like an effort to prevent players from making knee-jerk reactions to the game's performance as soon as they’ve changed their settings: “Please note that any time you change any of your graphics settings, your shaders will need to recompile. Please keep playing for at least 15 minutes to see how your PC's performance has changed.”

Pitchford has hit the headlines for his determination to address player complaints about Borderlands 4 on social media this week. Since Borderlands 4’s huge Steam launch, the outspoken developer has issued confusing comments on why the console version of Borderlands 4 lacks a field of view (FOV) slider, promised that it would have been impossible to break the Borderlands 4 servers through sheer weight of player numbers alone, told people to “code your own engine and show us how it’s done, please,” and declared Borderlands 4 “a premium game made for premium gamers.” He's even started telling Borderlands 4 players to refund the game on Steam if they're that upset.

If you are delving into Borderlands 4, don't go without updated hourly SHiFT codes list. We've also got a huge interactive map ready to go and a badass Borderlands 4 planner tool courtesy of our buds at Maxroll. Plus check out our expert players' choices for which character to choose (no one agreed).

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.

Tencent has hit back at Sony's lawsuit that claimed upcoming game Light of Motiram was nothing more than a "slavish clone" of Horizon Zero Dawn — and highlighted concerns within the PlayStation maker that its own game was too similar to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

In a fresh response to Sony's legal action, Chinese tech giant Tencent branded the lawsuit as an "impermissible" attempt to claim ownership of "well-trodden" tropes — such as a red-headed heroine fighting robot dinosaurs — and a bid by Sony to gain a monopoly over an entire genre.

In addition, Tencent highlighted past comments made by Horizon Zero Dawn developer Jan-Bart Van Beek, where the art director admitted concerns within Guerrilla that its concept was too similar to Ninja Theory's 2013 game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West — another example of a red-headed heroine fighting robot beasts.

In a legal filing reported by The Game Post, Tencent described Sony's move as an overreach, and highlighted other game franchises with similar elements to Horizon Zero Dawn such as The Legend of Zelda and Far Cry. It was "startling," Tencent said, that Sony was now attempting to claim Horizon's concept was original, rather than an idea based on "ubiquitous genre ingredients."

"By suing over an unreleased project that merely employs the same time-honored tropes embraced by scores of other games released both before and after Horizon — like Enslaved, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Far Cry: Primal, Far Cry: New Dawn, Outer Wilds, Biomutant, and many more — Sony seeks an impermissible monopoly on genre conventions," Tencent wrote.

Sony's claim that Horizon was an original PlayStation concept was also "flatly contradicted" by remarks made in a behind-the-scenes documentary by Van Beek, Tencent stated, claiming that Guerrilla had briefly shelved work on Horizon Zero Dawn due to internal concerns it shared too many similarities with Enslaved.

"Long before this lawsuit was filed, the developers of Horizon Zero Dawn publicly acknowledged that the very same game elements that, today, Sony claims to own exclusively, were in fact borrowed from an earlier game," Tencent argued.

"Mr. Van Beek warned, 'I don’t think we should do this; it touches too much of these other points,' referring to prominent elements of Enslaved. Sony shelved the project — only to revive it later with full awareness that the idea was far from novel. When Horizon Zero Dawn finally launched in 2017, the gaming community noted its striking resemblance to Enslaved and other genre staples."

Tencent's rebuttal attempts to dismiss other elements of Sony's lawsuit, too, by stating that its work on Light of Motiram was unconnected to a failed pitch meeting with Sony for a Horizon spin-off. Tencent has also claimed that Sony's entire lawsuit is invalid because the company had named the wrong parts of Tencent in its initial complaint.

Still, while attempting to defend itself from Sony's legal action, it is notable that Tencent has also seemingly made adjustments to the work-in-progress Light of Motiram itself. A glance at the game's Steam page shows it has been scrubbed of screenshots and logos that depicted its redheaded star and those robot dinosaurs. The suggestion here is that Tencent plans to ultimately release Light of Motiram without the elements Sony has deemed most similar to Horizon. It'll be interesting to see how Sony responds to these apparent alterations when it issues its rebuttal.

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

Matt Reeves has explained his thinking behind which villain to go with for the hotly anticipated The Batman 2, teasing it’s “never really been done in a movie before.”

The Batman 2, which starts filming early next year, currently has a release date of October 1, 2027. If it makes that date, the sequel will arrive five-and-a-half years after The Batman. We know Robert Pattinson will reprise his role as the moody Caped Crusader, and Colin Farrell will once again play crime boss Penguin, although it sounds like it's a minor role.

But who will play the main villain this time around, and which character from Batman’s rogues' gallery has Reeves plucked from the comics to bring to live action?

In an interview with Josh Horowitz, Reeves kept his cards close to his chest, but did explain his thinking on the new villain, and issued a tease that has sparked all sorts of speculation among the fandom.

“I had a lot of ideas, and then Mattson Tomlin, who's my writing partner, we began the process of this by doing another deep dive into the comics, exploring the ideas that I had had,” Reeves began.

“He gave me some ideas that he had had. And we sat together and we watched a lot of movies, honestly, and not all movies that are from the realm of Gotham, just to explore where this story… because I knew that the way the movie ended it was leaving us on the precipice, and also the way events sort of happen within the show [The Penguin], that there is an exploration to be had. And one of the explorations for me was to do something that pushes even further into the character of Bruce Wayne, because the first story is so much about the Batman.

“Let’s say we get to make 3 — I have no idea — but if we get to make 3, I always wanted the movies to be focused on his character. Once you get past the origin tale, which we didn't quite do but we did something that referred to his origins, then you start telling the rogues' gallery story and that character's arc. And I never wanted to lose Rob at the center of these stories. And so that is really what we set our aim on.

“And so picking the right villain that digs into what that does, that goes into his past and his life, that was what drove that discussion. I won't tell you where we ended up, but we're super excited about it. And I will say it's never really been done in a movie before. So we're excited.”

Fans are coming up with all sorts of obscure Batman villains in response to Reeves’ comments, but it’s worth pointing out that he isn’t necessarily saying it’s a villain we’ve not seen in live-action form before, rather he may be making the point that we’ve never seen them realized in this way before. So, perhaps we’ll see a different take on Mr. Freeze, or Bane, or Poison Ivy, or Hugo Strange, or Scarecrow, or Two-Face. Will Barry Keoghan return as Joker in The Batman 2, after his cameo at the end of the first film? It really is hard to say at this stage.

Here’s what we do know: Cristin Milioti, who won an Emmy for her role as Sofia Falcone in The Penguin, is not in The Batman 2. “We were so far along in the story, it might upset the apple cart given where the story goes and what we’re exploring,” Reeves explained.

Clearly, it’s been quite the struggle for Reeves to get The Batman 2’s script into a place he was happy with. “It’s been a journey that is taking longer than I would’ve wanted for a lot of reasons, a lot of personal reasons,” Reeves recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “But [the] most important reason is getting it to a place where I just felt like it was the best script we could possibly write.”

Reeves also spoke about where the HBO spinoff series The Penguin stands in terms of Season 2. “We’re in discussions. [Showrunner] Lauren [Lefranc] is thinking hard and we’re talking, so we’ll see,” he told Variety. “We love the show, and we think our cast is so incredible. The work that Lauren and the writers did was incredible. Our passion was in it, but never in our wildest dreams could we imagine it would have been received in the way that it was.”

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.

A U.S. House committee has called on the CEOs of a number of online platforms to testify at Congress following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer asked the bosses of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit to testify at a hearing scheduled for October 8, citing the "radicalization of online forum users."

Kirk, an ally of President Trump, was fatally shot at a Utah university on Wednesday, September 10. His alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, 22, appeared to take responsibility for the shooting on Discord, a company spokesperson confirmed to the BBC.

Star Wars: Starfighter director Shawn Levy has shared a fresh production photo featuring the upcoming film's stars Ryan Gosling and Flynn Gray, standing on some kind of sci-fi boat.

Gosling is pictured leaning against one set of controls, sporting tousled hair and a bruised cheek. He's dressed in a loose-fitting shirt that looks like it could have come from Harrison Ford's wardrobe, and thick gloves.

Gray's character sports a similar look, with scruffy clothes and gloves. The two certainly look the parts of uncle and nephew, though the finer details of who either actor is playing remain under wraps.

Put Jordan Peele’s name on the poster as a producer and you’re guaranteed butts in seats. However, Justin Tipping’s Him doesn’t have nearly the thematic ambition of the Peele-directed Nope and Get Out. The sports-centric thriller occasionally verges on horror territory, but it never tips over into the eerie (let alone the terrifying) despite numerous attempts. While it has a few fun visual flourishes, it’s a barely-competent movie, held together only by its lead performers who function less like MVPs and more like an injured athlete’s sports tape.

The film is at its most intriguing in its opening prologue, when tethered to reality, as it introduces legendary quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) and his fictitious team, the San Antonio Saviors. During a high-stakes game, White suffers a horrific injury as a young Cam Cade watches eagerly on TV, surrounded by Saviors merchandise. The boy’s military father points to White’s dangling leg and tells his son: “That’s what a real man looks like.” This no-pain-no-gain philosophy carries over into Cade’s adulthood, when he’s played by Tyriq Withers, as he rises to the rank of college prodigy. White, in the meantime, has not only recovered, but has become one of the most revered sportsmen of all time, setting up an impending rivalry between the young graduate and his hero.

As the prospect of Cade being drafted to the big leagues looms — which is to say, the notoriously litigious NFL, which is never mentioned by name — the film introduces a handful of strange, phantasmagorical happenings, like a rattling goalpost and an infinitely spinning ball. Cade, distracted by these oddities, is attacked one evening by a mascot figure, leaving him with scalp staples that resemble a football’s stitches. In spite of his injury and concussion (not to mention infinite pressure from the media), he perseveres, to the point that White handpicks him to train at his isolated ranch for a week-long bootcamp, even as rumors of Cade replacing the legend swirl.

It's here that the movie starts to break down. Cade’s arrival at White’s museum to himself reveals, at worst, an idiosyncratic celebrity ego. About two eerie things happen throughout the runtime, between a Saw-like scenario where Cade’s failures on an indoor field lead to a teammate gladly accepting physical punishment, and a White super-fan sneaking in to berate Cade for potentially replacing her idol. Everything in between smacks of half-baked conception. The hallways of White’s sprawling bunker are awash in shadow, but lurking in the darkness is only ever the occasional vision of a paparazzo, a likely outcome of Cade’s brain trauma.

As viewers, we’re left at an arm’s distance from Cade, so his visions aren’t so much dangerous as they are amusing, as they force anticipation for something more effective. The movie is filled with disconnected symbols of Christian and pagan significance, but apart from gestures towards the cult-like nature of American football fans, these don’t amount to much beyond fleeting texture. What’s most disturbing about Him is the actual football, which Tipping shoots like a visceral and uncomfortable display of aggression, emphasizing contact with disturbing “crunches” as he occasionally cuts to imaginative X-ray footage of what each hit does to the body and brain. However, despite Wayans’ pseudo-religious sermonizing, these hits never amount to much by way of Cade’s own sacrifice to be deemed worthy of the coveted “GOAT” (or “Greatest of All Time”) label.

The dangers of blinkered masculinity hover in the backdrop, as Wayans delivers a powerful performance as a kindly mentor overcome by the thrill of violence, and Withers searches for sure footing amidst a confusing scenario, to say the least. However, the movie’s themes are seldom expressed through anything more lucid than stray words and background symbols. Some dialogue gestures towards a playfully alluring homoeroticism, but the images are too bland to feature any kind of flavor (let alone something subtextually queer). The movie’s highlight may very well be Australian comedian Jim Jeffries in a small but creepy part as White’s health specialist, who injects Withers with a mystery fuel, but his role also ends up more lightly symbolic than tangibly meaningful.

Amazon is offering a great discount on one of the best budget headphones you can find. The JLab JBuds Lux Over-Ear Headphones drops to just $48.99 after a 40% off discount, but it offers a wealth of features that you'd typically find in a headphone that costs hundreds of dollars. Most importantly, sound quality is well above the standard for its price.

JLab JBuds Lux Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones for $49

If you're seeking the absolute best of the best in PC gaming performance, look no further. Alienware has just dropped the price of its flagship Alienware Area-51 prebuilt gaming PC equipped with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card starting at $4,299.99 with free shipping. This is the lowest price I've seen for an Alienware 5090 gaming PC and is reasonably competitive compared to other boutique PC builders. The GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card is currently the most powerful GPU on the market, and by a wide margin.

Alienware Area-51 RTX 5090 Gaming PC From $4,299.99

The RTX 5090 Is the Most Powerful Graphics Card Ever

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has emerged as the most powerful consumer GPU on the market. Although Nvidia has prioritized software updates, AI features, and DLSS 4 technology to improve gameplay performance, the 5090 still boasts an impressive 25%-30% uplift over the RTX 4090 in terms of pure hardware-based raster performance. The 5090 also has more (32GB vs. 24GB) and faster (GDDR7 vs. GDDR6) VRAM compared to the 4090.

Check out more of the best Alienware deals

Check out our Best Alienware Deals article with all of Dell's currently ongoing deals on gaming laptops and desktop PCs. Not everyone is the DIY type. If you're in the market for a prebuilt gaming PC, Dell is one of the best brands we'd recommend. Alienware desktops and laptops feature solid build quality, top-of-the-line gaming performance, excellent cooling (further improved on the newer models), aggressive styling, and pricing that is very competitive with other pre-built options. Best of all, there are plenty of sales that happen throughout the year, so it's not difficult to grab one of these computers at considerably less than their retail price.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

Meta held its annual Meta Connect event keynote today, hosted by Meta CEO and standard human Mark Zuckerberg. Included in its event were new smartglasses, including the new Meta Ray-Ban Display smartglasses that actually feature a built-in display, along with a pair of Oakley-branded “Meta Vanguard” smartglasses that wrap around your face and feature a dead-center camera.

The Ray-Ban Display features a heads-up-display embedded within the right-hand lens. The company teased them at the start of the presentation, seemingly livestreaming a video from Zuckerberg’s point of view as he walked to the event stage, with overlays showing things like his currently playing music and people sending text messages and images to him. Describing them later, he said they're the first smartglasses with a high-resolution display – they show images at 42 pixels per degree, a measure of pixel density in VR headsets – and that it's large enough to watch a video or read messages. Things like text messages will appear for a few seconds before disappearing, and you can look at pictures you've just taken with them. Naturally, they're AI-powered, so you can chat with Meta AI through them. They’re not full-on AR, so you won’t see the words on street signs morph or peoples’ names appear above their heads, Cyberpunk 2077-style, but they’re a step in that direction.

Fair warning: There is something deeply dangerous about opening up my deal pages with a full wallet and an empty weekend. Every time I tell myself I am just browsing, my cart ends up looking like a collector's backlog starter pack. Today's list is especially spicy, stacked with cult classics, fresh hits and a few games that gave me late night obsessions I still regret nothing about. End warning.

Contents

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

This Day in Gaming 🎂

In retro news, I'm using a rolling Katamari that accidentally scooped up a campfire to light 16 candles on a cake for Katamari Forever, the PS3's wonderfully weird puzzler. At the time it felt like proof that video games didn't always need grit and guns to hook you in. Sometimes all you need is a booger sticky sphere and a bloody awesome soundtrack.

I remember firing this up and thinking it was basically a "best of" mixtape for the series, with old levels remixed, new cel-shaded flair, and the King of All Cosmos still being his gloriously unhinged self. The joy was still in the nonsense. One minute you're hoovering up erasers and pigeons, the next you're big enough to snatch skyscrapers. Timelessly entertaining stuff.

Aussie birthdays for notable games.

- Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee (PS) 1997. Redux

- Resident Evil 5 (PC) 2009. Get

- Katamari Forever (PS3) 2009. Sequel

- Crysis Remastered (PC,PS4,XO) 2020. Get

Nice Savings for Nintendo Switch

• Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 (-12%) - A$79 Two classic 3D Mario adventures bundled for Switch. Still worth it for fans of Galaxy's inventive platforming and gravity-defying levels. Nintendo magic never ages.
• Hades (-75%) - A$9.30 Superb roguelike dungeon crawler with addictive combat and Greek mythology flair. A steal at this price, especially if you enjoy replayable action games with style.
• Persona 5 Tactica (-71%) - A$27.80 Turn-based tactics spin-off from Atlus' beloved series. Vibrant visuals and quirky Persona flavour make this a fun detour from the usual RPG grind.
• BioShock: The Col. (-61%) - A$35 Three groundbreaking narrative shooters in one package. Explore Rapture and Columbia at their atmospheric best. A great way to experience the full saga.
• Ori and the Blind Forest: Def. (-75%) - A$7.40 Stunning hand-painted visuals and tight platforming. Ori’s first outing is equal parts emotional and challenging. A beautiful must-play indie.
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps (-75%) - A$11.20 A refined sequel that builds on its predecessor with fluid movement and deeper combat. Gorgeous and heartfelt, one of the best metroidvanias around.

Expiring Recent Deals

• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (-25%) - A$59.90
• Super Mario RPG (-25%) - A$59.90
• Sonic Frontiers (-40%) - A$59.60
• Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled (-34%) - A$46.30
• Civilization VII (-24%) - A$68

Or gift a Nintendo eShop Card.

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Exciting Bargains for Xbox

• Hogwarts Legacy: Del. Ed. (-80%) - A$23.90 Open-world wizarding adventure packed with spells and secrets. The deluxe extras add flair, though the main draw is exploring Hogwarts and beyond.
• Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (-43%) - A$57.20 A tough but rewarding platformer that respects the series' roots while innovating. Expect challenging levels and cheeky marsupial antics.
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands: Next-Level Ed. (-91%) - A$9.90 Borderlands-style looter shooter with a D&D fantasy twist. Over-the-top humour, chaotic combat, and lots of loot at a bargain.
• Doom Eternal (-27%) - A$39.90 Rip and tear through hordes of demons in id’s frenetic shooter. Fast-paced, heavy metal action that rewards aggression.
• EA Sports FC 24 (-88%) - A$12.90 Rebranded FIFA entry with the same addictive football gameplay. Huge roster of clubs and modes, great value for soccer fans.

Xbox One

• Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (-53%) - A$27 Retro-inspired platformer bundle including all expansions. Polished controls and charming pixel art make this a modern classic.
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 (-65%) - A$24.50 Faithful remakes of the iconic skateboarding sims. Nostalgia meets slick new visuals and gameplay refinements.
• Kingdom Hearts III (-79%) - A$20.60 Disney meets Final Fantasy in this flashy RPG conclusion. Big worlds, bigger keyblades, and plenty of heart.

Expiring Recent Deals

• 1TB Expansion Card (-30%) - A$215.60
• WWE 2K25 (-54%) - A$55
• EA Sports FC 25 (-26%) - A$29
• Dead Island 2 (-70%) - A$20.90
• Cyberpunk 2077 (-65%) - A$31.40

Or just invest in an Xbox Card.

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Pure Scores for PlayStation

• Star Wars Outlaws (-67%) - A$36 Open-world Star Wars adventure focusing on smugglers and scoundrels. A fresh angle on the galaxy far, far away.
• Borderlands 4 (-17%) - A$99 Chaotic looter shooter returns with more mayhem, bigger guns, and over-the-top humour.
• Dead Space (-78%) - A$24 Remake of the survival horror classic. Chilling atmosphere, grotesque necromorphs, and tense gameplay.
• Stranger of Paradise FF Origin (-70%) - A$30.30 Dark, action-focused spin on Final Fantasy lore. A divisive oddity with brutal combat and meme-worthy dialogue.
• One Piece Odyssey (-72%) - A$28 JRPG based on the legendary anime. Great for One Piece fans keen to explore a fresh island story with the Straw Hats.

PS4

• Persona 5 Royal (-46%) - A$54.40 Expanded edition of the stylish JRPG. School life meets dungeon crawling with unmatched flair.
• Red Dead Redemption (-53%) - A$34.90 Rockstar’s Western masterpiece finally on modern consoles. Slow-paced but immersive tale of loyalty and betrayal.
• Far Cry 5 (-66%) - A$34.10 Open-world shooter set in rural America. Explosive action and cult takedowns in Ubisoft’s sandbox formula.

Expiring Recent Deals

• Split Fiction (-37%) - A$44
• Ghost of Yotei (-21%) - A$99
• Star Wars Outlaws (-67%) - A$36
• EA Sports WRC (-68%) - A$24
• Octopath Traveler (-60%) - A$36.30

PS+ Monthly Freebies
Yours to keep from Sep 2 with this subscription

• Psychonauts 2 (PS4)
• Stardew Valley (PS4)
• Viewfinder (PS5/PS4)

Or purchase a PS Store Card.

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Purchase Cheap for PC

• Ni no Kuni: WotWW (-85%) - A$11.20 Charming JRPG with Studio Ghibli visuals. Heartfelt story and whimsical adventure.
• Children of Morta (-85%) - A$5.30 Family-driven roguelike about legacy and sacrifice. Gorgeous pixel art and cooperative gameplay make it special.
• Street Fighter 30th Ann. Col. (-72%) - A$12.50 12 classic fighting games in one collection. Perfect for old-school arcade fans.
• Hades (-75%) - A$9.10 Addictive action roguelike with sharp writing and evolving gameplay. Replayability is unmatched.
• Civilization VI (-95%) - A$4 Legendary turn-based strategy game. Build an empire, outwit rivals, and shape history.

Expiring Recent Deals

• Assassin's Creed Shadows (-65%) - A$34.90
• Pico Park (-100%) - A$0
• Titanfall 2: Ult. (-85%) - A$5.90
• A Plague Tale Bndl (-65%) - A$19.40
• Outward Def. (-88%) - A$7.10

Or just get a Steam Wallet Card

Legit LEGO Deals

• The Mandalorian Ambush (-50%) - A$17.60
• Minecraft The Creeper (-44%) - A$39
• City 3in1 Helicopter (-37%) - A$63.20
• Star Wars Home One Starcruiser (-35%) - A$71

Expiring Recent Deals

• City Go-Karts and Race Drivers (-47%) - A$8
• Captain America vs. Red Hulk (-37%) - A$57
• Botanicals Lotus Flowers (-35%) - A$15
• Statue of Liberty (-33%) - A$99.90

Back to top

The Tomtoc Slim is one of the best compact Nintendo Switch 2 cases you can get and it's on sale today. Amazon is offering the Tomtoc Slim in Black for just $29.59 after a 20% off instant discount. Several other colors are also on sale, including the rarely discounted dazzling color fade models like Matcha Green, Ocean Blue, Iris Purple, and Cherry Blossom. This is a much better deal than the official Nintendo Switch 2 case which currently sells for $39.99.

Tomtoc Slim Nintendo Switch 2 Carrying Case From $29.59

ABC has suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! following comments its titular host made during his Monday night monologue about the death of conservative activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated last week in Utah during a public debate appearance.

The network has pre-empted Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” after Nexstar, which owns 28 ABC affiliate stations across the United States, “said it will pre-empt the series for the immediate future,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

THR adds that there were rumblings that other TV groups were taking issue with Kimmel’s comments and that ABC feared “an affiliate revolt.”

In his monologue during Monday's episode, Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Andrew Alford, President of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, issued the following statement Wednesday to announce the company’s decision to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live!:

“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located. …

Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”

Kimmel’s comments also sparked the ire of Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, a Trump Administration appointee who suggested on a podcast that the broadcast licenses of ABC and its affiliates could potentially be revoked over the matter.

THR points out that Nexstar’s move to pre-empt Kimmel’s show “comes as the broadcast station is seeking FCC approval for its $6.2 billion mega deal to acquire TEGNA.”

The Kimmel show’s suspension comes on the heels of Comedy Central pulling a planned repeat of a recent South Park episode that parodied Charlie Kirk but that aired before his murder.

Editor's note: The original version of this article mistakenly said Kimmel's comments were made on the Tuesday broadcast. They were made during Monday's episode. We regret the error.

Nintendo recently raised the price of the new Nintendo Switch 2 Pro controller from $85 to $90, but here's an opportunity to get one for less than either price. AliExpress is currently offering import model Switch 2 Pro controllers for $80.06 after you apply $20 off coupon code "AEUS20" during checkout. Your order ships free locally from the United States.

This is a brand new, genuine model, most likely from Hong Kong, China, or Japan. All Switch hardware (including the Pro 2 controller) is region unlocked, meaning you can use the controller with any US-based Nintendo Switch console without any additional steps. The only caveat is that imported peripherals don't come with a Nintendo warranty but AliExpress offers a 15-day free returns window in case you get a lemon.

Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller for $80.06

Warning: This review contains full spoilers for the first three episodes of Gen V Season 2. You can also check out IGN’s spoiler-free review of the entire season.

As has become tradition for The Boys and its spinoff, Gen V Season 2 returns to Prime Video with a three-episode block. It’s just as well the streamer opted for that approach with Season 2. As entertaining as the series still is, there’s a certain loss of momentum early on as the new season walks back some of the consequences of the Season 1 finale and reverts to the traditional superhero college formula. Fortunately, there’s still plenty to love here regardless.

The Season 1 finale certainly teased a very different tone, ending with Marie (Jaz Sinclair), Andre (Chance Perdomo), Jordan (London Thor and Derek Luh), and Emma (Lizze Broadway) imprisoned inside a Vought facility while Sam (Asa Germann) and Cate (Maddie Phillips) emerged as the undeserving heroes of the Godolkin U. campus massacre. Season 2’s first order of business is to put the toys back in the basket, as it were. No sooner are Jordan and Emma released than they find themselves returning to God U. to rematriculate. Even Marie, whom we learned already escaped beforehand, undergoes a short detour in these episodes before also finding herself back at school.

Was this shift back to the status quo inevitable? Probably. Did it need to happen? Hard to say, but either way, there is a bit of an adjustment here. The return to the college format robs the series of its early narrative momentum, and it takes a while to rebuild in these early episodes. Season 1 promised one thing by making Marie and her friends prisoners of Vought, and Season 2 - at this stage, anyway - doesn’t seem fully intent on delivering. There are certainly worse ways to justify Marie’s return to school than a brief team-up with Erin Moriarty’s Starlight, but even so, I would have liked to see the series focus more on her fugitive phase.

There is a huge ray of light in all of this, however. Returning to God U allows the series to focus a great deal on the school’s new dean, Hamish Linklater’s Cipher. With his predecessor exposed and brutally slain in Season 1, Cipher arrives to inaugurate a new era for the school, one in which humans are treated as second-class citizens. The Boys and Gen V both have never been shy about satirizing the current political climate, but here Gen V actually seems slightly ahead of the curve. With real-world American universities currently capitulating to the Trump administration and tamping down on free speech, it’s a little eerie watching a series where a college dean puts his school on lockdown and declares #MakeAmericaSuperAgain.

Cipher himself is simply a blast to watch. As I said in my full Season 2 review, he’s easily the best villain the franchise has produced this side of Homelander. That much is readily apparent even in this early batch of episodes. Linklater brings a unique combination of charm and outright menace to the role. It’s clear from the outset that Cipher is not all right in the head (is anyone in this world?), and that becomes even more apparent in the tense, thrilling scene where he nearly liquifies Cate’s sole remaining hand. It doesn’t hurt that Cipher, true to his name, is a real enigma. We know so little about his background, powers, and true goals, leaving plenty of room for Season 2 to drop some big reveals as it moves along.

The narrative momentum may be sluggish in these early episodes, but you can’t fault the main cast. Broadway’s Emma is easily the standout here, as she brings both a vivacious charm and a sense of pathos to the screen, but most of the main crew get their chance to shine. Phillips also deserves plenty of credit as Cate. Given where the character ended Season 1, it would be easy to loathe her, but Phillips helps ensure we still sympathize with Cate and what is clearly a very delicate situation for her. If this is Cate winning, I’d hate to see what losing looks like. Only Germann’s Sam feels a bit short-changed here, as he doesn’t enjoy as much screen time as the rest of the gang.

Finally, it’s worth taking a moment to acknowledge how Season 2 handles the Chance Perdomo situation. Perdomo died in 2024 while travelling to shoot Season 2, forcing the Gen V crew to halt production and write Andre out of the series. Their solution is to reveal that Andre died heroically during an earlier escape attempt at the Vought facility. That’s about as elegant a solution as could be hoped for, given the circumstances. I’d rather see Andre respectfully written out rather than a recasting, and this at least gels with the ongoing subplot involving Andre and his father Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas) struggling with the lethal nature of their powers.

Speaking of which, Andre’s death allows Polarity to step forward and play a bigger role in Season 2. Polarity is now a grieving father who wants revenge against God U and its ruthless new dean. Thomas delivers a compelling portrait of a father mourning his son, but there’s also room for some levity as he finds himself reluctantly paired with a drugged-out Emma for a high-stakes heist mission. Who knew that pairing would work so well?

The Witcher 3 is one of the best-selling and most acclaimed video games of all time, yet for all the countless play-hours that have been poured into its narratives and subsystems, there’s one in particular that stands out: Gwent. This is a mini-game within the game which sees the player collecting cards from diverse sources, building a deck and seeking out opponents, sometimes for money, often just for fun. Players loved it, swapped tips on where to get the best cards, how to beat the hardest foes, spent entire sessions just playing Gwent instead of furthering the game’s main plot and innumerable side-quests. Perhaps inevitably, it has now arrived in a stand-alone, physical version.

For clarity, there are actually two different versions of Gwent. There’s the one from The Witcher 3 game and a separate video game called Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, which is run by the gaming platform GOG and differs considerably from the original, leveraging online matchup play to let players go head to head. This physical card game is a faithful replication of the original Witcher 3 version, not the GOG version.

What’s in the Box

Just as the protagonist, Geralt, collects cards to play Gwent in the video game, so Gwent: The Legendary Card Game, is a box full of cards. It’s important to note that it contains versions of all the cards from the video game, plus its downloadable content, which amounts to almost 450 cards in total. They’re also very similar to the ones you’ll see on-screen, using the same layout, artwork and iconography.

While this is a little frustrating – some cards have explanatory text, which is very helpful, while others just have icons even though there’s room on them for a description – it does allow you to admire the art. Among the gorgeous polygons on the video game, it’s easy to overlook how good and how varied the card art for Gwent is. Here, it’s front and center, and it’s delightful, full of life and detail, and every card is different, even if they’re functionally identical copies.

Aside from the cards, there’s a tiny punchboard of tokens and a paper play mat to organize your cards during the game. These are both terribly disappointing, flimsy and prone to wear and tear. The play mat doesn’t lie flat easily, and the creases make the cards slide. Among the tokens is a score tracker and it’s often easier just to use that and organize the cards during play yourself.

Rules and How It Plays

Gwent is actually a pretty weird game, although you might not immediately pick that up from scanning the rulebook, which is overly terse and offers little in the way of examples. It’s played over three rounds and the first player to win two wins the whole match. At the start of the first round, you draw 10 cards and – this is the odd and critical bit – that’s all you get for the entire game. You don’t draw any more cards in rounds two or three. Your initial 10 has to last you the whole match, and learning when to dole them out and when to retain them is a central plank of the game’s strategy.

Gwent is actually a pretty weird game, although you might not immediately pick that up from scanning the rulebook.

Your play area is divided into three rows, for melee, missile, and siege units. Most cards have a symbol indicating which row they’re played into. Playing a card is often as simple as placing it into its marked row. Such cards generally have a strength value, and you’ll add that value to your growing total of strength in play. This continues until one player passes instead of playing a card, whereupon their opponent can carry on playing cards until they, too, pass. Then, the player with the highest strength total wins the round.

While this sounds simple, it immediately throws down some challenges for the players. In the first round, either player can likely win if they just keep on playing cards, but doing so leaves them less likely to win the other two rounds and thus the game. So, you’re trying to read each other, considering the cards in your hand and deciding when to pass and when to push. There’s a Poker-like element to this, muddied by the fact that there’s no statistics to rely on in terms of predicting what your opponent is holding, which means there’s no real bluff element. In fact, if they’ve built the deck themselves, you might have no information at all. There’s a definite thrill of venturing into the unknown with each decision, but your choices to pass or play are being made in a frustrating vacuum.

To combat this, the game offers various cards with special abilities, which are denoted by an icon on the card rather than text, a minor speedbump to overcome while learning the game. They’re mostly very simple. Tight Bond multiplies the strength of the card by the number of other cards on your side with the same name. Cards with the Spy ability are played into your opponent’s half of the field, adding their strength to their side, but allowing you to draw two new cards in return. A Medic lets you retrieve and play a card from your discard, and so on.

These muddy the waters somewhat. You won’t want to play a Medic on the opening turn, for a simple example, as there probably won’t be any discards available.

In addition to unit cards are various categories of special cards. The easiest to handle are heroes, which behave largely as units do but are immune to special abilities, making them harder to destroy or nullify. Weather cards are played to the side of the board and affect both sides, reducing the strength of all cards (except heroes) in one of the three areas to one. These can produce huge swings, as can some other special cards like Commander’s Horn, which doubles the strength of all cards on its row, or Scorch, which sends the highest-strength cards in the game to the discard pile. These add to the excitement and anticipation of the pass-or-play mechanic and also give some tactical structure to play around. If your opponent is laying down ranged combat cards and you’re holding a Fog weather card that’ll reduce that row to strength 1, you can save your own ranged cards for next round and hope to spring a nasty surprise.

While the full span of card types and powers do make your turn to turn decision making more interesting, and up the stakes considerably given that some of them can be game changing, you’re still very much making decisions in the dark. That Fog card, for instance: the strategy is pretty basic, and isn’t actually all that useful if your opponent only has one ranged card in hand and it’s useless if they also have a Clear Weather card to counter it. You have no way of knowing what’s in their hand or deck. Gwent is an exciting game, but it’s not a particularly strategic one.

It is, however, a deck construction game, and deck construction games mostly draw their strategy from deciding which cards you’re going to include in your deck before you play. There are various rules about what you can include. A legal deck includes a single leader, who offers a special ability you can use one time during play, at least 22 unit cards, and up to 10 special cards like heroes and weather. There are five factions included in the game, each of which has a particular play style and set of powers, and you can only build with cards from your own faction. Nilfgaard, for example, specializes in card draw while the Skellige deck includes berserkers that can be triggered and replaced with much more powerful alternatives. And since you have all the cards from the video game at your disposal, you have a lot of deck-building options.

The trouble is that, however you choose to construct your deck, the game is eternally held back by that sense of randomness. You can put all the work you want into your carefully-curated cards but if your opponent just happens to have a card that counters your best abilities, you’re probably screwed. Or not, if they just happen to play it at the wrong time because they’re as clueless about what you’re holding as you are about their hand. Worse, it seems fairly clear that some cards and factions are better than others. That 10-card limit over the entire game is so brutal that the two extra cards drawn by a spy can be absolutely game-changing. Thus, factions that are good at generating card draws – Northern Realms, Nilfgaard, and Monsters – are better than those that don’t. And within those factions, you’ll generally want to include abilities that draw cards over those that don’t.

In addition, there’s a considerable frustration around tracking the game state. You’re given counters to mark your strength total in tens and ones, which is fiddly to start with. But as soon as you get effects like commander’s horn and tight bond, strength totals can rise and fall explosively, and there’s no way to mark this other than recalculating your total strength with each and every card play. In the original video game this was all done automatically, making it easy, but here’s it’s a right royal pain, especially given the way card effects can pile on card effects, making it easy to miss something and calculate a wrong total.

Where to Buy

• Get it at Amazon
• Get it at IGN Store
• Get it at Hachette Boardgames
• Get it at No Loading Games

The PlayStation Portal was released back in November of 2023, but I still haven't ever seen a discount on a brand new unit, even during Sony's Days of Play Sale back in June. Fortunately, there is a way to get a used one at a huge discount. Amazon Resale just dropped the price of the "Used: Like New" PS Portal to $140.41 after a 25% off coupon that's automatically applied during checkout. Amazon Resale is Amazon's official outlet for used items. "Like New" items are usually brand new and never used with damage to the packaging but not to the contents themselves. You still get the 30-day Amazon return policy so it's a much safer option than buying a used controller off Facebook Marketplace.

PlayStation Portal (Used: Like New) for $140.41

I don’t think there’s ever been a fighting game that I have played more of so long before release than 2XKO. Between three Evo demos and two “alpha lab” tests, Riot’s exciting League of Legends-themed 2v2 tag fighter has repeatedly popped into my life for a couple days, then faded from existence until the next time I get to throw down with my buddies Ekko and Ahri. But finally, with the recent closed beta, 2XKO is here to stay (if not fully available to everybody yet), which means it's time for some extended thoughts on why I’ve been looking forward to this exciting tag fighter.

There’s a whole lot to unpack, so let’s start with the focus on simple controls. Unlike most fighting games that offer at least the option of using traditional command inputs for special moves (like those dating back to the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat’s arcade cabinet days), 2XKO simplifies all of its special and super moves to single or simultaneous two-button presses. So instead of doing a quarter circle forward motion for a fireball, all you have to do is press the S1 button; If you wanna do a super, you press an attack button and one of the special buttons at the same time; and if you want to do your ultimate attack, you press both special buttons at the same time.

This is a double-edged sword, because while it does make it a little easier for a complete newcomer who has trouble with quarter-circle or Dragon-Punch inputs, it also turns what should be a four-button game – with light, medium, and heavy attack buttons, plus a tag button – into a six-button game, at minimum. Most people will be using a dash and parry macro as well, putting every single button on a standard controller to work.

As a result, I’ve felt my hands getting lost on my controller in 2XKO moreso than any other fighting game I’ve played because my brain has to parse which special move is tied to which special button, and which direction I had to hold for it. Ultimately, it’s just easier for me – someone who has committed thousands of hours to train my muscle memory on how fighting games have always worked – to compartmentalize a punch or kick related special move input to the punch or kick button than it is to try and remember whether they’re arbitrarily placed on S1 or S2. It’s a learning curve that I was eventually able to overcome, but one that nonetheless made me yearn for a classic/modern control scheme split like what Street Fighter 6 uses.

The second big thing is that 2XKO uses an active tag system much like what’s been used in games like BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle and Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. The idea is that every character has two assist moves that they can be called in to execute, and once they finish the attack they’ll remain in a pose for a few seconds before retreating back off screen. At any point while the assist character is on screen, you can press the tag button to swap control to them. This opens the door for potential tricky mix-up opportunities, especially when you’re able to sandwich your target between your assist and point characters.

That system works incredibly well here in 2XKO, especially since so many of the characters have special moves that seemed designed specifically around it. Vi and Ekko for instance, both have specials that allow them to cross to the other side of their opponent, with the downside being that they are typically punishable. But if you cover them with an assist, not only do you make the crossover safe, but you get a free left/right mix-up opportunity by swapping to the other character. This is just a basic example and, once you start digging deep into the tech of some of these characters, you can find some absolutely dirty stuff that you can do to your opponent.

And all of that is before even bringing fuses into the mix. Much like Grooves in the Capcom vs SNK series, Fuses are an extra little bonus that you take with you into a match that allow you to break one of the established rules. For example, typically, once you use your super, your combo is over. But with Double Down you can do a super, then tag in your partner character for them to do their super to add on extra damage, and switch characters in the deal. You normally are only allowed one active tag per assist call, but with the Freestyle fuse you can call in your assist, active tag to them, do a couple of hits, and then active tag again back to the point character. These Fuses can totally change your approach to how you use your team and spend your meter, and experimenting with each to try and find which one fits my playstyle and my team best has been a lot of fun.

If you don’t want to learn two characters and instead just want to focus on one, there are also two Fuses that allow you to do just that. Juggernaut and Sidekick both have you playing as only one character with just one life bar, but to make up for that they have increased health, higher defense, start with two bars of super instead of one, and can have a maximum of five bars of super instead of three.

Juggernaut also has the added advantage of being able to forcibly swap an opponent’s character to focus on the one with less health and prevent them from regaining gray life, while Sidekick gives you the ability to reduce the amount of damage you take by timing button presses with enemy attacks. You can also charge up your assist moves by holdingthe tag button, letting them travel a distance before actually committing to their attack. You do lose the ability to do active tags, which is one of the most fun aspects of 2XKO, but nonetheless, I love it when tag fighters find ways to let us just focus on mastering a single character instead of having to be equally good with two or three.

Perhaps the best unique feature of 2XKO, though, is the fact that it’s a fighting game that can be played cooperatively with a friend. In Duos mode, each person controls their own character, with the off-screen player being the one that can call the assist, and the other being the one that has to do the active tag to give up control to their partner. It works both as a fun way to experience a fighting game with a similarly skilled friend that doesn’t involve having to beat each other up, and also as a way to introduce someone new to the genre and be able to give them real time feedback.

If there’s one glaring weakness of 2XKO right now, it is its slim roster size. There are currently only nine characters, and Riot has promised just one more to be added for launch. Ten isn’t even a lot even for a 1v1 fighter, but even worse for a tag fighter where you need to find two characters that fit your playstyle (unless, again, you decide to go with Juggernaut or Sidekick as your Fuses). And while that does suck, and leads to a lot of repetition where you’re fighting against the same characters and the same teams over and over again, it is a blow that is at least softened by the excellent design of that handful of characters. Whether it’s Ekko and his tricky clone mind games, Yasuo’s wild combo routes that have him stance-cancelling his way into bouncing his opponent all over the screen, Vi’s insane movement and whiff-punishing ability, or Illaoi’s tentacle set ups, these are some of the most fun fighting game characters I’ve ever played around with. And the beauty of it is that due to the flexibility of 2XKO’s combo and Fuse systems, rarely do I ever see any of these characters being played exactly the same way by two different people.

All that said, It’s still too early to call this a proper review of 2XKO because of all that we haven’t seen yet. There’s ranked mode, for instance, and that final tenth character on the launch roster – and I’ll definitely want to see how the free-to-play progression feels once the shops are more fully populated with cosmetics to purchase with in-game currency. But for now, 2XKO is shaping up to be one of the most exciting fighters on the horizon, during a time when there are a lot of exciting fighters on the horizon.

Mitchell Saltzman is a senior guides producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit

Paramount+ has had a pretty significant sale on its annual plans this month. Until September 18 (tomorrow, by the way), both new and existing subscribers can save 50% on a full year of the plan of their choosing. You can either grab the Paramount+ Essential annual plan for $29.99 (regularly priced at $59.99), or the Paramount+ Premium annual plan for $59.99 (regularly priced at $119.99).

50% Off Annual Paramount+ Subscriptions for New and Returning Subscribers

Unlike most streaming deals these days, the discounts apply to both new and returning subscribers. So, if you do happen to be enjoying the monthly plan and have some extra cash, it’s well worth considering grabbing the annual discount as an upfront cost.

What’s on Paramount+?

Paramount has a bit of a unique library compared to the likes of Disney+ or Netflix, but I’d like to think there’s a little something for everyone in there. Right now, it’s where you’ll find new episodes of South Park the day after they air (and cause whatever controversy) as well as the new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

The list of Paramount movies is pretty much endless, but some highlights there include Gladiator, the Transformers movies, and the Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy. The studio will also be developing the live-action Call of Duty movie.

Paramount has been slowly expanding its live sports offerings. It's where you can watch the NFL on CBS as well as the UEFA Champions League. Most recently, the service signed a deal to acquire the streaming rights to the UFC franchise, which will be moving away from the PPV model used by ESPN starting in 2026. In other words, if you subscribe with the deal now, you’ll get to watch all the fights your heart desires next year.

Blythe (she/her) is an SEO Coordinator at IGN who, when she isn't following streaming news, spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles.