After being a no-show in Fallout: Season 1, the Deathclaws finally appeared in Fallout: Season 2. These fan favorite bipedal beasts were first glimpsed at the end of last week’s episode. Still, it’s not until Episode 205 (now streaming on Prime Video) that gamers get to see these monstrous Wasteland dwellers fully realized in live-action.

Fans of the video game franchise know the Deathclaws are the genetically engineered product of US government experiments on various animal species during the Great War, experiments intended to yield replacements for human troops in costly operations. Following the nuclear apocalypse, the Deathclaws spread throughout the Wasteland, multiplying their numbers as they went. Season 2 will fill in viewers on this backstory.

With the Fallout television series set two centuries after the war and several years after the events depicted in the game Fallout: New Vegas, audiences see in Episode 205 how the Deathclaws have impacted the current state of New Vegas when the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) and Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) arrive in town and quickly realize they are no match against the Deathclaws.

Similar to how the T-Rex was brought to life in 1993’s Jurassic Park, Fallout’s Deathclaws were realized using a mixture of large-scale puppetry and cutting-edge visual effects from ILM. This blending of old school practical effects and digital creations is a hallmark of the Fallout series that Executive Producer Jonathan Nolan is especially proud of.

“It's always an interplay of some of the creatures or as practical as we can get them, and it's a balancing match – or maybe a wrestling match – between our practical effects, special effects teams, and our visual effects teams, headed up by Jay Worth, who is incredible,” Nolan told me during a recent interview.

“We always endeavor to give Jay as little to do as possible. With the Deathclaw, we took a kind of a hybrid approach, where we tasked Legacy, who was the vendor who had built the power armor for us for the first season and a new version of it for the second season, which we're very excited about, but knowing from the beginning that we wouldn't be able to do something on the scale of the Deathclaw from the game unless it was a hybrid approach, meaning we're going to build the head, the face, the claws, some of the key aspects of it, and have it puppeteered on our set to give as much reality to it as possible and as much reality for our actors to react with.”

That reality – or, as Walton Goggins put it to me in a separate interview, “this tactile kind of analog experience” – is indeed something Goggins responded well to on set.

“It can take up to five people to operate this [Deathclaw] puppet. One person wears it, two puppeteers on the arms, one puppeteer on the neck and head, and then there’s also a puppeteer that controls the jaw,” Legacy Effects’ Jamie Siska explained in an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of Episode 205, which you can watch below.

Watch this exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the Deathclaw in Fallout: Season 2.

“It’s a lot of art and science, engineering, all in an effort to keep it light so that someone can wear it. With the tail and everything, I want to say (the Deathclaw puppet’s) like 13 feet long, nine feet tall,” David Monzingo of Legacy Effects revealed in the exclusive video above.

“It's exhausting and it's [long] hours. You think our job [is tough], those guys work really, really, really hard,” Goggins explained to me. “I think that's what all of us [cast members] enjoy so much about the show is that we don't spend a lot of time looking at a tennis ball. We're looking at something that's real, and that's why it resonates so deeply with me.”

The puppet makers and ILM took great pains to create what Nolan deemed “a very faithful version of the Deathclaw from Fallout 4.” Nolan was especially “delighted” to see that Jonah Lobe, who designed the Deathclaws for that game, posted such a positive reaction to the show’s faithful adaptation of the creatures he created.

Nolan added, though, that there are “little tweaks here and there, [and the] question of the horns. The horns signify a sort of different station within the family of Deathclaws. We were careful with the approach there. Then, the wizards at ILM came along to help complete the vision of the Deathclaw on our set. So it was really a team effort.”

The Fallout games would eventually introduce intelligent Deathclaws capable of speech, and even ones that had been tamed. Might those incarnations make their way into future seasons of the show? Executive Producer/Creator/Showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet didn’t say no.

“I mean, nothing's off the table,” Robertson-Dworet told me. “The intelligent Deathclaws are obviously favorites, and I find, though, all the Deathclaws sympathetic, just because their creation is a human-influenced thing. It wasn't something they asked for. They're not just a product of natural evolution. This is the fault of human error and human hubris. So I feel like even if they're attacking you, it's kind of your own fault in a way.”

For more Fallout coverage, read our Fallout: Season 2, Episode 1-6 review and dive into all the video game references and easter eggs in Fallout Episode 203 and in Fallout Episode 204.

Emilia Clarke has admitted feeling "really pissed" at the expert who developed Game of Thrones' fictional languages, after reading that he thought her Dothraki pronounciation "sucked."

David J. Peterson, who HBO hired as a full-time linguist on its hit fantasy show, has now responded to Clarke's comments, saying that the actress had misunderstood what he meant, and that she "never had to be good at it," as his intention had never been that Daenerys Targaryen would speak Dothraki flawlessly.

The topic came to light this week as Clarke appeared on Late Night With Seth Myers, where the Game of Thrones star admitted being hurt by Peterson's comments in an article years prior.

Some spoilers follow for Primal, though really nothing that the creator of the show doesn’t want you to know already! New episodes of Primal Season 3 are dropping weekly on Sundays on Adult Swim and Mondays on HBO Max.

With the return of Primal for a third season, creator Genndy Tartakovsky has done what seemed impossible – our favorite animated caveman Spear (sorry Captain Caveman) is back, despite having died in the Season 2 finale of the show. And not just that, but in doing so, Tartakovsky has also brought back from apparent near-death one of the greatest animated series of the 21st century.

Primal, of course, is about Spear (Aaron LaPlante), a Neanderthal living in a strange world where man, proto-man, dinosaur, and magical creatures all co-exist. On the dinosaur side, that includes Spear’s best friend Fang, the T-rex who he partnered with for Seasons 1 and 2. But Fang moved on after Spear’s death, which means our now-zombified hero is all alone. But for how long? Can Spear and Fang be reunited?

I spoke to Tartakovsky about that and much more, so read on for our full chat about Primal Season 3. Or watch the full conversation in the video above!

IGN: It felt like Season 3 was something that maybe wasn't going to happen for a while there. How did you come to the decision to bring the show back?

Genndy Tartakovsky: Well, I always wanted to do another season, but I always talked about an anthology type show, and Adult Swim was supportive of it. And so I started to develop it and I had all these ideas, but nothing was feeling right and I trust my instinct when it comes to that. So something was off. And then I started to think, “Oh, I just spent 20 episodes having these characters bond and having the audience like these characters and then I kind of end the show.”

And sometimes when you're making a show, it takes me two years and then you watch it in a week. So I suddenly started to have this awareness – “It's still so fresh.” Then all of a sudden this idea popped up of making Spear a zombie, and then all these story ideas and character things and emotional things came up. And then I wrote down like eight episodes instantly of what can happen. And when that happens, I know that there's something juicy there.

IGN: Can you pinpoint where that idea came from?

GT: I think because in the first season we did an episode called “Plague of Madness” where we had kind of a zombie dinosaur. And the whole world has magic and all this pulp to it, and what's more pulpier than a walking zombie caveman? So it felt right.

IGN: Do you think there are any dangers in depicting Spear in this way? Because when you look at the poster, he doesn't seem human. I think when you watch the show, you probably find that that's not the case. But were there concerns about that?

GT: Yeah, for sure. I thought – you know that term jumping the shark – I was like, “Oh, did I do that maybe?” But it felt so right. And then when I talked to our other team members, they were like, “No, this is awesome.” And then when I talked about what we would do with it and the emotional journey that he's going to take, then everybody got really excited about it.

IGN: I've seen the first episode and I loved it, but is there a danger of undercutting what you did in the first two seasons and how you ended the story in Season 2?

GT: I hope that when you watch it and you … realize the timeline, especially in later episodes, it doesn't. It just becomes part of his weird journey through time here.

IGN: Yeah, he's been through so much, this guy, right?

GT: Yes. And that was the whole idea, is that you want to cheer for him like, “Oh no, now he's dead and he can't even be peaceful in death?” He's got to be like this now so you cheer for him to come back, if he does.

IGN: Can you talk about the actual animation of him, because he moves in a different way than the living Spear does. How much did you guys put into figuring that out?

GT: A lot. Because especially in the beginning he doesn't know who he is, right? All of his motor skills under a normal scenario aren't there, so he's like a baby in a way, learning to walk again. And you honor some of the zombie lore of how zombies walk and stuff, and so we did a little bit of that. And then through the season, you can see a change through it a little bit – without giving too much away. And it was fun to treat a zombie this way. I think as far as zombie stuff goes, usually you're not cheering for the zombies, you're cheering for the people to escape. And this is the opposite. So hopefully it'll be very interesting, especially for zombie genre fans.

IGN: I love the animation of the shoulders and even when he just plops down – he sits down at one point and he just kind of falls.

GT: Yeah, yeah. And that's really fun to do for his animation because it's more unique. And because Primal is the type of show that we could take our time, we could have him just walking with some cool music, and you get a lot of that.

IGN: So obviously Fang is not present. Fang went on to live the family life. How did that affect you guys creatively just in terms of telling this story, because Spear was always so intertwined with Fang?

GT: Well, I mean, you only watched the first episode, so I don't know if that's the right statement. [laughs] So no, you can't make any assumptions I think is the answer to that.

IGN: I have so many questions now because in Season 2 we get a time jump in the final moments… but we'll put a pin in that for now.

GT: All will be revealed as you watch, yes.

IGN: Can we talk about the art of storytelling without dialogue, which obviously you sort of mastered in animation. It's a thing you've done in so many of your projects. Where does that come from and why is it something you continue to go back to?

GT: I think it's the purity of movement, and I don't know if it's the Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery influences that really just did do gag – very low-verbal-driven cartoons. The true love of it probably came when I started doing Dexter[’s Laboratory], and it's my first show and it's something that I control, and then we hired composers to do music and all of a sudden I had a little like 10-second clip and the music was great and I was like, "Oh, I wish I did this for a minute. Then you could really feel it." And then I realized, "Oh right, that's what makes things cinematic." It’s when you have great music with a slow pan and you're telling something visually, and I think it started to grow from there. I was 26; I didn't know anything and I started to realize… Especially by the time Samurai Jack came, I got to create the time so music and effects can have the opportunity to tell their own story. And of course Primal's the epitome of that because it takes the visuals and the sound and unites them into its own thing.

IGN: Did you get pushback in the early days when you would try to do more dialogue-free stuff?

GT: No. My relationship with Cartoon Network was always so great. I got so lucky because the network was just starting, I was just starting, so there was 12 million viewers when Dexter premiered, which is nothing. And so we both learned along the way.

They were always very supportive, and then when I told them about Samurai Jack, they were really interested in it. I remember this moment where in the first episode there's a seven-minute training sequence, right? And there's not one word in it. And they were visiting from Atlanta in our LA studio and I showed it to them without music, with no sound and everyone was flabbergasted because they'd never seen anything like that, and the artistry, of course, was really well done. And so we all knew we had something special. They were always supportive. Nobody said like, "Well, let's throw in a couple of one-liners here."

IGN: What do you think of the state of getting your product in front of people's eyeballs these days? Because things have changed so much from those early days of Cartoon Network where now everything is streaming and there's no monoculture – everything's so fragmented. Do you as a creator feel it's harder to get your work out there?

GT: I've been lucky. People are still buying and I have my relationships – Sony for features, Adult Swim, HBO, whatever for TV stuff, streaming. The one thing that's different that took me a minute to get over is branding, because in the early ’90s it was all about “We need the Cartoon Network brand,” “We need the Nickelodeon brand,” “Pixar brand.” Everybody was very brand loyal. And now you can make a show for anybody. It doesn't matter.

You used to watch Cartoon Network and you knew what show you were going to get. You could watch Disney Channel and you kind of knew what show you were going to get. Now those lines are blurred, right? And so the branding of movies also is different. That's something that's changed the culture quite a bit.

Rockstar has launched an official marketplace where creators can sell mods.

The Cfx Marketplace, described as a "curated digital storefront where talented FiveM/RedM creators can share and sell their work," is currently only open to a select few creators, but players running their own servers can choose from hundreds of mods — some free, some not — to add new maps, scripts, characters, clothing, vehicles, and more to their games.

If the name Cfx sounds familiar, that's because Rockstar acquired the modding team behind the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto 5 roleplay servers FiveM and RedM back in 2023. That came as something of a surprise given the company’s combative relationship with modders in the past.

Now, as part of that relationship, select creators worked with Rockstar to build and supply the new mod superstore as it rolls out "in phases to ensure the best experience for both creators and server owners."

As one happy player said, the official marketplace makes it "much easier to find some trusted creators and hopefully more competition." "Amazing idea! Hope this will be a better way for both creators and server owners to reach more people and find what they need," added another.

Right now, there are hundreds of mods to choose from, some of which are free, and others, most typically bundles, are available for upwards of $450. The Attractions & Parks Bundle, for instance, includes a Theme Park, Water Park, and Maze Bank Theme Bank for $137.99.

Right now, most mods seem to be for GTA 5, but Cfx.re has mods for both Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, so we may see more Red Dead 2 mods as the marketplace expands.

Grand Theft Auto is an enduring juggernaut, with GTA 5 having sold 220 million copies to date. Rockstar is yet to detail how GTA Online will change as a result of November's release of GTA 6, but it seems likely the Cfx Marketplace lays the groundwork for a similar offering in whatever's next for the game.

It also seems in preparation for whatever other plans Rockstar has for monetising GTA RP when GTA 6 comes out. GTA fans had begun speculating about what Rockstar RP servers would look like when the company announced it was working with Cfx.re back in 2023. That excitement then only increased when popular musician Faheem Rashad Najm a.k.a. T-Pain teased in 2024 that he was working on GTA 6 but had been asked by Rockstar to stop engaging with RP servers like nopixel.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

The director of the Stranger Things documentary has cast doubt on the fan suggestion that the Duffer brothers might have used ChatGPT to write their scripts.

Martina Radwan’s Stranger Things documentary, One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, launched on Netflix this week, and fans have spent their time digging into every detail and pausing to take a closer look at each frame as they continue to process the divisive finale of the hit show.

Social media is awash with shots of the documentary that show a laptop with what appears to be a ChatGPT tab alongside a Google Doc in which Matt and Ross Duffer are working on the finale script. This has now turned into an accusation that Matt and Ross Duffer used ChatGPT to write the script itself. Netflix and the Duffers have yet to comment on the ChatGPT question specifically.

Fans accuse the Duffer Brothers of using AI to write ‘Stranger Things’ final season after spotting ChatGPT tabs in behind-the-scenes documentary. pic.twitter.com/gxmYW2OCUJ

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 13, 2026

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Radwan cast doubt on the fan claims, insisting that at no point did she witness an “unethical” use of generative-AI in the writers room.

“I mean, are we even sure they had ChatGPT open?” Radwan said when asked about the moment in the documentary. “Well, there’s a lot of chatter where [social media users] are like, ‘We don’t really know, but we’re assuming.’ But to me it’s like, doesn’t everybody have it open, to just do quick research?

“How can you possibly write a storyline with 19 characters and use ChatGPT, I don’t even understand.

“Again, first of all, nobody has actually proved that it was open. That’s like having your iPhone next to your computer while you’re writing a story. We just use these tools… while multitasking. So there’s a lot going on all the time, every time. What I find heartbreaking is everybody loves the show, and suddenly we need to pick it apart.”

Radwan was then asked directly if she witnessed an unethical use of generative-AI in the writers room.

“No, of course not,” she replied. “I witnessed creative exchanges. I witnessed conversation. People think ‘writers room’ means people are sitting there writing. No, it’s a creative exchange. It’s story development. And, of course, you go places in your creative mind and then you come back [to the script]. I think being in the writers room is such a privilege and such a gift to be able to witness that.”

The Stranger Things Season 5 finale, which left it up to the audience to decide whether Eleven was alive or dead, has proven so divisive that some fans have concocted stories about secret 'Snyder cuts' and theories about a ninth episode that would have revealed the show’s true ending. Both were proven to be fake. Still, a petition to release this supposed “unseen footage” gained nearly 400,000 signatures — despite being debunked by the cast. Some fans are even using generative AI to make alternative Stranger Things endings.

Ultimately, Stranger Things really is done and dusted. And don’t expect a follow-up either. The Duffers have ruled out a Stranger Things sequel that would check in on the characters years later, saying it would be “a gross cash grab.”

But all is not lost for Stranger Things fans. Netflix has two announced Stranger Things spinoffs in development, the first of which is Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, a new animated series due out this year. This is set in the same universe between Seasons 2 and 3, and follows the original characters as they “fight new monsters and unravel a paranormal mystery terrorizing their town.” The second spinoff is an unnamed live-action series.

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.

Rockstar has pulled a fan-made mission in Grand Theft Auto Online designed to replicate the real-life assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Variety reports that a user-created level named "We Are Charlie Kirk" was recently pulled from the game, and that Rockstar has now added "Charlie Kirk" to its list of banned words — meaning that players will no longer see missions labelled with his name.

It's unclear how quickly Rockstar acted to remove the mission, though footage of it was uploaded to YouTube that's now over a month old. Rockstar added the ability for players to create and publish their own in-game missions as part of the A Safehouse in the Hills update that launched on December 10 — meaning this content was made within a day or two of the mode going live.

Magic: The Gathering will kick off 2026 with a return to Lorwyn, and Lorwyn Eclipsed might be the most excited I've seen the community since, well, Edge of Eternities (the last Universes Within set).

It's a trip back to a simpler time, without bagels (Spider-Man), bending (Avatar), or the Buster Sword (Final Fantasy) - just fantasy creatures throwing spells at each other all day long.

Not only is it the first set of a packed year, but it marks big changes to the product lineup. Theme decks are back for Standard play, while a new Draft Night boxed product encourages players to, well, draft cards to build their decks.

Then there's our first Commander decks since Edge of Eternities, and both look pretty great, actually.

Here’s everything on offer, and where you can find it if you're looking to lock your preorder in ASAP. Just be warned that prices are all over the place, and many products are running low on stock ahead of release.

Play Boosters

Bundle

Commander Decks

After no Commander Decks for Marvel’s Spider-Man or Avatar: The Last Airbender, they’re back with Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Collector Boosters

Draft Night Box

Theme Decks

UK Preorders

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.

Best Buy's starting off the new year right with a little Winter Sale, and it has quite a few video game deals worth checking out right now. Among the variety on sale is Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, which has dropped to $44.99 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch.

This deal makes for $25 off both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions, and $15 off the Switch version. They won't stay at this price for long, though, as Best Buy's Winter Sale only lasts until January 19. Now is the time to make a move on it if it's been on your radar.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for $45

Kiefer Sutherland was arrested after allegedly assaulting and threatening a ride-share driver in Hollywood, according to local police.

The Los Angeles Police Department said Sutherland "entered a ride-share vehicle, physically assaulted the driver (the victim), and made criminal threats" in an incident near Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue around midnight on Monday, according to NBC4. The LAPD said the victim was not injured in the incident, which is now under investigation.

The 59-year-old former star of hit TV series 24 was released after paying a $50,000 bond, and is now due at Los Angeles Superior Court on February 2. Sutherland's representatives have yet to comment.

Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders cheater purge is underway, and it seems popular streamer Turner Tenney, a.k.a. Tfue, has found himself in – and back out of – the line of fire.

The internet personality, who returned to regular gaming content creation for the first time in two years in December 2025, announced he had been hit with a 30-day ban (which was reversed after just 24 hours) in Arc Raiders earlier this week. He neglected to share any insight into why he believed Embark may have taken action against his account at the time of his ban, instead only sharing screenshots of the notifications and a separate call to action: #FreeTfue.

30 day ban?!?!? For what!?!? pic.twitter.com/LnfKmrcWJY

— Tfue (@Tfue) January 13, 2026

Why Tfue was banned in the first place remains a mystery, but fans online have theories. It’s not traditional cheats like aimbot that players believe landed him in hot water with what is currently his go-to game, though. Instead, it’s his promotion of a recently discovered visual exploit that some suspect is to blame.

Players caught wind of the exploit, which utilized developer tools to make spotting enemies easier by forcing environmental effects like fog to a minimum, just last week, January 9. Embark was quick to patch console command access one day later, saying the feature was “never meant to be player facing” at the time – but some PC players had already tried it for themselves.

Nearly nine hours into a stream that took place last week, Tfue can be seen setting up the workaround and using it when loading into Arc Raiders. The process takes only a few minutes and leaves the streamer slack-jawed.

“F**k, dude. That’s bad,” Tfue says when seeing how the exploit is used to illuminate a usually dark hallway. “I shouldn’t have shown this. It’s over.”

The game stream goes black, and he continues: “No, that’s so bad. I mean, people are going to be using that now, dude. What do we do?”

The segment runs approximately 10 minutes and sees the streamer engage in one fight with another player before returning to standard Arc Raiders affairs for another hour and a half. There’s no real evidence suggesting this incident is what led to Tfue’s ban, as many are simply looking to connect the dots as Embark works to make good on its pledge to ensure its extraction shooter is fun and fair for all.

The studio behind both Arc Raiders and The Finals answered long-standing calls to deal with cheaters and exploit-users in a message published January 8. It promised to implement “significant changes” to its anti-cheat strategy in the weeks ahead, saying fans can look forward to a more even playing field as the team deployed glitch fixes and new detection mechanisms. How successful Embark’s actions have been just five days on remains unclear, but it seems some – including Tfue – may already have been on the receiving end.

Just as onlookers had assumed Tfue had been dealt a lengthy timeout, he uploaded a YouTube video, explaining his own theory behind the ban. While many suggested use of glitches or exploits had caused an Embark anti-cheat mechanism to take action, some testing on his end led him to believe the issue could be tied to a new PC setup. At the time, he believed the situation was "a straight-up accident."

"If you guys think that I got banned for testing out an in-game brightness config, it's like... come on, now," Tfue said. "I think it's just a straight-up accident. You know, Embark, it's been brought to their attention that there was a lot of cheating. [Cheaters have been] stream-sniping, people exploiting out of the map, and shooting people through walls, and they're very aware of that. I think they're cracking it down, but I think they just cracked down a little bit too much."

"It kinda sucks," he added. "Honestly it does. I just caught a stray. We're going to hope and pray that it gets resolved."

It didn't take long for Tfue's pleas to be answered. Just minutes after his video was uploaded, he reappeared with a Twitch stream, proclaiming, "I'm free!" Through the ban and unban process, Tfue says his best bet regarding the cause of his ban is that a foot pedal peripheral could be to blame. Otherwise, he's still in the dark as to why Embark originally delivered the temporary suspension.

"I have no idea," he said during the stream. "All I know is all these f**king theories people have made up in their head are all false." IGN has reached out to Embark for comment regarding Tfue’s ban and its anti-cheat measures.

The former Fortnite streamer's break from gaming content creation ended just last month when he announced “I’m back” with a retirement-ending video published December 14. In the four-and-a-half-minute statement, he explained his spark for gaming had been reignited after finally finding a new game that he truly enjoyed.

“I’ve been playing Arc Raiders off-stream, and I’ve been having a really good time,” Tfue said. “It’s like a polished version of [Escape from Tarkov], and I’ve been having a lot of fun playing. Finally, after years of not really gaming or streaming, I actually enjoy a game. I’ve been grinding off-stream, and I’m just like, ‘I just gotta go live because I enjoy it.’”

Arc Raiders launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S October 30, 2025, to tremendous success. It’s ridden its wave to today, amassing more than 12.4 million copies sold as its 1.11.0 patch makes its way to fans. For more, you can read about another Arc Raiders streamer, who was accused of cheating before players took a closer look at aim assist.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

January's list of PlayStation Plus Game Catalog additions has been leaked online, and includes Resident Evil Village.

As ever, this month's additions have been leaked ahead of time by Dealabs' reliable billbil-kun, who states that PlayStation will likely make the list official later today. Already, though, there's excitement among Resident Evil fans at seeing Village join the catalog (it's set to join Game Pass on January 20).

It's a timely addition, just over a month away from the arrival of Resident Evil: Requiem on February 27, and just ahead of this week's Resident Evil Showcase event that's set to stream tomorrow, January 14. If you're yet to play this spooky first-person modern classic, now is a great time. (And hey, one of its characters may be making a return in Requiem, too!)

Elsewhere, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is another notable addition, alongside off-road simulator Expeditions: A MudRunner Game. Both titles originally launched in 2024 to positive receptions.

Rounding out the leaked list are stealth horror game A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, offbeat indie adventure The Exit 8 and top-down racer Art of Rally. PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers, meanwhile, will gain access to original Ridge Racer from the PS1.

Even more titles may be added to the list when Sony makes its official announcement later today. We'll keep an eye, and update then with any further additions.

PlayStation Plus Catalog January 2026 Games:

Premium/Extra:

• Resident Evil Village (PS4, PS5)
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS4, PS5)
• Expeditions: A MudRunner Game (PS4, PS5)
• A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (PS5)
• The Exit 8 (PS4, PS5)
• Art of Rally (PS4, PS5)

Premium:

• Ridge Racer (PS1)

So, anything take your fancy?

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

Meta is laying off around 10% of staff at its Reality Labs division as part of sweeping cuts set to affect more than 1,000 people. This includes the closure of a number of VR-first studios, such as Twisted Pixel, the studio behind Deadpool VR, Resident Evil 4 VR developer Armature Studio, and Asgard's Wrath maker, Sanzaru Games. According to Bloomberg, the cuts come as Meta pivots away from the Metaverse towards AI, phones, and wearable tech.

The cuts come just over four years after Facebook changed its name to Meta and went big on virtual reality and the Metaverse.

Letters reportedly went out yesterday (Tuesday, January 13) morning, and developers from the impacted studios shared their shock on social media throughout the day.

"I've just been laid off. It appears the entire Twisted Pixel games studio has been shut down. Sanzaru Games, too," one now former member of staff said, while a designer wrote: "unfortunately, I was part of the layoffs today at Meta, and will be seeking a new role. To my Twisted Pixel Games family: it was an honor to work alongside you for 3.5 years and ship Marvel's Deadpool VR. We made something really special together and no one can ever take that away."

Twisted Pixel is the studio behind a number of popular Xbox Live Arcade games, such as 2009's The Maw and 'Splosion Man. It became a part of Microsoft Studios in 2011, and went on to release Xbox 360 Kinect-exclusive shooter The Gunstringer, and Xbox One game LocoCycle, before becoming an independent company again in 2015 and moving into VR game development.

Meta only acquired Armature and Twisted Pixel in late 2022, and Sanzaru in 2020. However, it is now seemingly shedding much of its internal VR business as Meta scrambles to recover billion-dollar losses and pivot to AI.

In a statement, Meta confirmed the three studio closures: "we said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables. This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year."

According to Reuters, CEO Mark Zuckerberg prioritized and spent heavily on the Metaverse, only for the business to burn more than $60 billion since 2020. The Reality Labs business also produces Meta's Quest mixed-reality headsets. According to CNBC, Meta isn’t abandoning VR entirely. It is now courting developers who build games for Roblox to build experiences for Horizon Worlds.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Former Activision boss Bobby Kotick has made a number of claims about the state of his former company, Call of Duty, and the console market as part of a response to a lawsuit.

Kotick, who left Activision Blizzard at the end of 2023 having sold the company to Xbox maker Microsoft for $69 billion dollars, is battling investors who claim he rigged the sale to keep his job and $400 million in change-of-control benefits, and to insulate himself from claims he knew about widespread sexual harassment at Activision. Kotick has denied any wrongdoing.

The investors are led by Swedish pension fund Sjunde AP-fonden (AP7). They have accused Kotick of rushing into the Microsoft merger, and contend the $95 per share takeover price was too low from the outset. AP7 names Kotick, Activision Blizzard, and its owner, Microsoft, as defendants.

Emilia Clarke has said she's likely finished working on fantasy projects after spending nine years as Daenerys Targaryen, the central character in Game of Thrones who received a highly controversial ending.

Speaking to the New York Times, Clarke said that it was "highly unlikely" viewers would see her "get on a dragon, or even in the same frame as a dragon, ever again."

Clarke has previously discussed her difficulty processing how her character ended up in Game of Thrones, and her shock at reading the finale's script for the first time. And in a 2021 interview, Clarke said she could "get why people were pissed" with how her fan-favorite character Daenerys was handled in the series' final episodes.

Now, Clarke has said she struggled following the show's finale, especially after she finally wrapped up her last duties promoting the show at the Emmys in late 2019, shortly before the Covid pandemic hit. "It was the first time in my professional life that I stopped," she said. "I had a full mental breakdown. It was almost as if the timing of the pandemic was bang on."

Seven years later, Clarke is now taking on a lead role in a new TV show, cold war spy drama Ponies, which begins streaming via Peacock this week. "I was definitely, like — a lead in a TV show? I know what that commitment feels like."

But Clarke said this lengthy time since Thrones has now allowed her "to realize that I could try and get some autonomy over my choices, my work. So much of my career didn't reflect my taste, I just sort of shot out of a cannon."

Don't expect Daenerys back in any future Game of Thrones project, then, as work bubbles away within HBO on further spin-offs beyond House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — including several ideas for potential sequels, according to franchise creator George R.R. Martin. (Where did that dragon carry her off? We may never know.)

Years on from Game of Thrones' final episode airing, the show's legacy still looms large. Earlier this month, Sansa Stark actress Sophie Turner suggested she was one of the few cast members happy with the fate of their character following the series' divisive final season. At the same time, however, Jon Snow actor Kit Harington has said he was "genuinely angered" by a fan-made petition that called for the final season to be remade with "competent writers."

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

This review contains spoilers for Fallout Season 2, Episode 5, “The Wrangler,” which is available to stream now on Prime Video.

We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. The Ghoul has betrayed Lucy, using her as a bargaining chip in his bet to find his family. Ella Purnell appears torn apart as her character’s role in his plan all becomes clear, the tears barely held back as she whispers “We were actually beginning to get along.” It’s the most devastating moment in an emotionally raw episode of Fallout, and certainly justifies her powerfist punch that sends The Ghoul flying out of a second window. The moment captures the full blend of Fallout’s flavour: dramatic, gory, and absurd.

Perhaps the more telling response in this whole exchange, though, is the gritted teeth and low rasp of The Ghoul, who genuinely seems wounded by his own choice. Lucy was good for him – more than just a surrogate daughter, she was a slowly-administered antidote to his lack of humanity. She’s the one drug that The Ghoul can’t afford to go cold turkey on. But his reluctance to see that has led to his impalement on a lamppost, left for dead and with no companion to help find his family.

Splitting up Lucy and The Ghoul shifts Fallout into a whole new phase. While this betrayal (much like the equally phase-shifting Brotherhood of Steel civil war from last week) has always been on the cards, it’s benefitted from a strong, steady build, simmering away through the first half of this season. It’s boiled over at exactly the right moment, leaving three whole episodes to explore the characters’ new situations and set in motion not just a (hopefully) satisfying finale, but put everyone on intriguing paths for the show’s future.

Equally as strong as those story threads is the episode’s visual presentation. Director Liz Friedlander and writer Owen Ellickson pull the same trick here as was used in the season’s third episode, layering The Ghoul’s past and present over each other, cutting back and forth between flashback and current events to draw parallels. Here, it perfectly captures his anguish as his worlds fall apart – in the present, he betrays his sole companion, only for his plan to be instantly derailed. In the past, he learns that he could be the lynchpin of the entire apocalypse. Once again, Ramin Djawadi’s score really elevates the melancholy of this moment, but the true highlight is seeing Cooper Howard ape Dr. Strangelove’s Major Kong as he rides a bucking bomb. If the end of the world really is coming, at least part of him has already given into inevitability. In time, he’ll learn to stop worrying and love the chaos.

Of course, Cooper learning that he may somehow be at the center of the apocalypse wasn’t the only major reveal this week, but it was by far the strongest. The unveiling of the real Mr. House was, of course, inevitable – we knew Justin Theroux had been cast as the industrial magnate months before the show even started, and it was only a matter of time until Rafi Silver was explained away as a body double. However, while the disclosure itself lacks bite, having the double walk up to an unaware Cooper and say “Mr. House would like to see you” is undeniably cool. I’d have loved to have shared in Cooper’s surprise and seen this land in the way it was clearly intended to.

Robert House has been the awkward thorn in this season’s side, and not just because of that re-casting. As one of the major characters of Fallout: New Vegas, those who have played the game already know much about him, and so this season’s threat that House was the man with his finger on the nuclear button was always empty: fans know he has no involvement in the war. The reveal that House has no plans to help Vault-Tec nuke America thus falls a little flat to a sizable amount of the show’s audience. It was a smart idea, then, to tie House’s predictions of annihilation directly to Cooper. That's the real reveal here. “I don’t think you’re a cowboy at all. No, I think you’re a killer!” screams House, a great line that also layers past and present – The Ghoul, of course, wears the costume of a cowboy and has the show’s itchiest trigger finger.

This season’s flashbacks have all been about putting Cooper on the frontlines of Fallout history, but I didn’t expect him to be at the very centre of the hurricane. I do have my reservations about this – I don’t think it would be a good move to re-write the entire of Fallout history and pin it on a Hollywood actor – but so far this exploration of the unknown is working in the show’s favour.

Talking of exploring the unknown, I appreciate that the flashbacks are able to take us to a version of Vegas we’ve never seen before. The production design continues to be second to none, and seeing the glittering casinos of the strip before they’re ravaged by 200 years of nuclear winter is a nerdy thrill. Similarly, it’s great to see Freeside, one of New Vegas’ most recognisable locations, given life on screen. It even has Bethesda level design, with multiple entrances to buildings that allow sneaky characters to get in through the back door and steal overpriced items. Lucy’s sticky fingers adventure in Sonny’s Sundries is yet another example of Fallout having fun replicating the video game experience in a narratively-appropriate way – the important thing about this mini heist, though, isn’t its link to the games, but that its bloody conclusion forces Lucy to question how she’s changed. The Ghoul has undeniably influenced her, and it’s smart to have Lucy ponder that in advance of his betrayal.

With Maximus absent, this chapter of Fallout is almost entirely about Lucy and The Ghoul, which makes for the most focused episode of the season so far. The only outlying factor is Norm, who makes a more substantial appearance following last week’s single scene. Norm has suffered a similar fate to his fellow vault dwellers this season, feeling significantly left behind in the grand scheme of things, and so this week’s massive discovery is the emergency shot in the arm this thread needed. A trip to Vault-Tec’s California office reveals that Bud’s “Future Enterprise Ventures” is actually the Forced Evolutionary Virus, a genetic meddling project that Fallout fans are more than familiar with. It’s a fun tease for what could be waiting in the season’s final act, but more importantly, the F.E.V. is revealed to be a vault experiment overseen not by Bud Askins, but Barbara Howard.

And so, much like last season, Norm’s seemingly disparate plotline is welded into place among the greater picture. This links Norm’s story to Barbara’s, who’s linked to Cooper, who’s linked to Lucy, House, and Hank. These newly forged connections help make the entire season feel like a more coherent whole, and while we don’t know exactly where things will land, you can see how the components are being aligned to ensure everything is in service to each other. This gives me a little more confidence that whatever is going on in Vaults 32 and 33 will eventually be given substance, but with less than half the season remaining, the clock is ticking louder than ever.

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

Contents

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

This Day in Gaming 🎂

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

Aussie birthdays for notable games.

- Streets of Rage 2 (MD) 1993. Get

- ESPN NBA 2K5 (PS2) 2005. eBay

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

Nice Savings for Nintendo Switch

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

Baseus BP1 Pro Wireless Noise Canceling Earbuds for $19

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

The Best Pokémon Mega Bloks Sets Available Now

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

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

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

LEGO Pokémon Sets Up for Preorder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Save 50% on The Art and Making of Arcane Hardcover

3 for $33 4K UHD Movies

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

$50 Off the AOC Q27G40XMN Mini-LED Gaming Monitor

Best Buy Video Game Winter Sale

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