Apple releases a new MacBook Air nearly every year, and really only changes the SoC (system on a chip) running the thing. 2025 is no different, with the new MacBook Air 15 yet again being a chic little laptop that’s good for powering you through office work with incredible battery life and a gorgeous display.

Now, it’s not exactly going to handle PC games well, but it doesn’t need to. The new MacBook Air, as always, is the kind of MacBook you carry around everywhere to simply get stuff done. And that’s all it needs to be.

Design

In a lot of ways, the MacBook Air has become what many people think of when they hear “laptop”. It’s not hard to see why, even when the new MacBook Air looks identical to its last few predecessors. This is an extremely thin and light laptop, weighing in at just 3.3 pounds – basically nothing for a 15-inch laptop.

The low weight is thanks to the incredibly thin unibody aluminum chassis, which is less than half an inch thick. An extremely thin chassis isn’t new for the MacBook Air – it’s part of why the laptop has become so ubiquitous – but it is still a nice change to use such a thin device, especially when you consider I’m usually hauling a thick gaming laptop everywhere I go. But the MacBook Air is more than just thin – it’s an incredibly clean design, with even the speakers disappearing behind the aluminum.

Unlike the MacBook Pro, which has a speaker grille on each side of the keyboard, the Macbook Air instead has its speakers hidden away in the hinge, firing towards the display. On paper, this sounds like a terrible idea, and a good way to get muted and ugly sound, but Apple found a way to make it work. And it kind of makes sense; because the MacBook Air uses a fanless configuration of the M4, it doesn’t need to reserve that space for airflow. That speaker configuration also allows the lid of the laptop to serve as a sort of natural amplifier, which makes the speakers sound a lot louder than they otherwise would.

The fanless design also allows for a much cleaner design than many other laptops. Instead of needing multiple areas of the laptop to have holes to blast air into the machine, this is a completely closed off device, and it looks incredible. On the bottom of the laptop, all that you really see is the four little rubber feet, and those are just there so that the aluminum on the bottom doesn’t get scratched.

Back on the top of the device, the new MacBook Air is still using the same wonderful keyboard that it has for the last few years. It has remarkably deep travel, considering how thin the laptop is, and the days of Mac keyboards repeating keys seem to be truly over. Plus, in the top right corner of the keyboard there’s a TouchID sensor, which is fast and accurate, and usually lets me into the laptop within a second of placing my finger on it.

The touchpad is also excellent. It’s incredibly wide, covering the space between both ‘Command’ keys, but has good enough palm rejection that I never had to deal with the cursor doing weird things, even during long writing sessions. Apple has become known for making some of the best touchpads in laptops, and well, it’s keeping the crown for now, at least.

The sides of the laptops have the ports, and that’s where the MacBook Air’s winning streak comes to an end. On the left side of the laptop, you get two USB-C ports and the MagSafe connector, then on the right side you just get a headphone jack. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that Apple still includes a headphone jack – if only it would do that for its phones and tablets – but it would have been nice to get an SD card reader or at least a USB-C port on the right side. Apple’s reasoning for this spartan array of ports is likely that it’s a thin laptop and there just isn’t room for the extra ports, but I’ve seen the MacBook Pro, and it’s not that much thicker.

Display

While the MacBook Air doesn’t need to have the same creative bonafides as the MacBook Pro, it still has a great display. It’s bright, colorful, and does a decent job at resisting glare – at least to a point. It’s not quite on the same level as the MacBook Pro, but it’s much better than many Windows laptops in the same price range.

In my testing, I found the 15.3-inch, 1880p display hits 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and 100% of sRGB, which is incredible for a jack-of-all-trades laptop. It gets bright, too, reaching a peak of 426 nits. That’s a little short of the advertised 500 nits, but it still gets bright enough to be visible in a bright environment – though it does a lot better indoors.

It’s not quite as nice as an OLED display or anything, but the MacBook Air’s display is still more than enough for most people. I definitely binged quite a few shows on the laptop in the two weeks or so I’ve spent with it, and let me tell you, the excellent color performance has been doing wonders for my rewatch of The Clone Wars.

Performance

Benchmarking a MacBook is always a fraught experience. Most of the tests we here at IGN use to test laptops simply don’t work on MacOS, so it’s hard to get a really good grasp on how it actually performs. However, because this laptop is running on a fanless version of the Apple M4, it probably wouldn’t hold up very well against the gaming laptops we usually review here anyways.

Even in the games that do support macOS, the MacBook Air seriously struggles at 1080p. In Total War: Warhammer 3, the MacBook Air struggled to hit 18 fps at Ultra settings. That is a little ambitious for this thin and light laptop, and you can get up to 34 fps if you turn the settings down to medium, but I wouldn’t even recommend doing that.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows fared even worse, getting just 10 fps at 1080p with the Ultra preset. Changing it to medium settings almost doubled that performance, but even then I got 19 fps, which isn’t exactly ideal for any game. But at the end of the day, the MacBook Air isn’t a gaming laptop, and it just doesn’t need to be. Instead, this is a light productivity machine, and it kicks ass at that.

I carried this laptop around for a while, and it’s the perfect device for bringing to the little coffee shop down the road and getting some focused work done. Due to the nature of what I do for a living, I usually have something like 50 Safari tabs open, while listening to Apple Music in the background, and the MacBook Air has no problem keeping up with that.

That’s thanks in large part to the configuration Apple sent me for review, with its 32GB of RAM. Even with some heavy multitasking, I didn’t feel the system hiccup once, and that was on battery power most of the time.

The MacBook Air was also able to keep up with some light Photoshop work, though it did struggle when I tried to run a noise filter in Lightroom – something even my company-issued MacBook Pro runs into trouble with. It’s important to consider what to expect from this kind of laptop, no matter who makes it. The fact that something this thin and light can handle all my day-to-day work without breaking a sweat is huge, and so is its ability to last all day on battery.

Battery

Apple makes some serious claims about the MacBook Air battery, saying it’ll last up to 18 hours while streaming video and 15 hours browsing the internet. Now, the battery test I usually use doesn’t exactly run on macOS, but I was able to loop some video in VLC Media Player to get a rough feeling of how long this laptop can last. In that test, the MacBook Air lasted a whopping 19 hours and 15 minutes, breaking past Apple’s 18-hour video streaming claim.

There is a caveat though: this was based on local video playback, which puts a bit less strain on the battery than streaming does, though not by much. And even though I wasn’t able to run it through a specific office-based battery test like I usually would, I can attest that I was able to run this thing for multiple days without needing to plug it in, based on several 4-5 hour work sessions.

This is the exact type of laptop that’s perfect if you travel a lot – there aren’t many flights that last longer than 15 hours, after all. Plus, while the charger included in the box is tiny, it’s nice to be able to carry around a laptop that doesn’t need to be tethered to a wall when you’re just trying to check your email.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Warning: this article contains spoilers for TMNT: The Last Ronin II - Re-Evolution #5!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin has always been a particularly dark and tragic take on the TMNT franchise. After all, this saga started in a futuristic world where Michelangelo was the sole surviving member of the Turtle family, a lone hero pursuing one final quest of revenge. The original series ended on a hopeful note, with the birth of a new generation of Turtles, but even that birth was countered by Michelangelo’s death.

It’s pretty clear from reading The Last Ronin II finale that this story isn’t done yet. To find out more about the tragic but heroic sacrifice of April and what might lie in store in The Last Ronin III, IGN spoke with writers Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz. Read on to learn more about the grim new direction for this popular TMNT spinoff.

Pushing The Ronin-Verse Forward

Before we get to issue #5’s big death, it’s worth taking a step back to look at The Last Ronin II as a whole. There’s been a noticeable tonal and stylistic shift in this sequel. The original series depicted its futuristic version of New York as a classic cyberpunk dystopia straight out of Blade Runner or Akira. But with the death of Oroku Hiroto and the dawn of a more hopeful era, the series has shifted to a more grounded take on the Big Apple. The Last Ronin II shows us more of what it’s like to actually live in this uneasy future environment, and that was definitely intentional.

“I thought it was a little Star Wars-esque, in the sense that if you go from the New Hope era to the Abrams era, this idea that at the end of Return of the Jedi we feel like there's been a victory. And to a certain extent there was a victory. But if you don't take care of things, things can fall out of control again,” Waltz tells IGN. “And I think that was kind of our story here. Yeah, they had beaten the Foot Clan and they had beaten Hiroto, but what was the plan after that? It almost felt like things will go back to normal, but what is normal? The police were corrupt before, they're going to be probably corrupt now. There were three gangs before, now they're probably going to feel more empowered, the Foot Clan's out of the way.”

And I always think, power, when there's nobody in charge that invites, it creates a vacuum of power. Somebody's going to fill that vacuum. And that was kind of the overarching story we were trying to tell was, who was going to be the first one to take control of the city?

“When we designed The Last Ronin I, it was the end,” Eastmas says. “It was like, the final triumph, the final battle, the blood feud has ended, all these things that have been accomplished through these incredibly insurmountable epic terms that's like, ‘Okay, here is an ending, boom.’ Tom and I both loved the Ronin-verse, so when it came time people said, ‘Well, what would you do with a continuation of the series?’ And so we had a lot of conversations. And we dug deep and said, ‘Well, alright, we need to find, most importantly, what is that purpose?’ And that was the driving force for Last Ronin Re-Evolution, for sure, finding that purpose.”

There’s an obvious question many fans ask themselves when reading The Last Ronin - in what universe is this story taking place? Is The Last Ronin meant to be a continuation of the original Mirage Comics TMNT universe, or maybe the current IDW TMNT-verse? Is it a sequel to the cartoon series?

The Last Ronin II only further highlights that question because one issue delivers a specific callback to an issue from the original Mirage run, as April recounts her ordeal when she and the original Turtles fled New York for the safety of her father’s country house. Should fans take that as confirmation that The Last Ronin is a Mirage-verse story? Not necessarily. Waltz and Eastman make it clear that the Ronin-verse is still its own thing, and it’s intentionally left up to the reader as far as how the continuity works.

“When we approached Last Ronin, we both said, ‘Look, we have all these Turtle universes, let's make this our Dark Knight universe. Let's touch on a few of the other universes, but mainly lean heavily into the Mirage universe.’” Eastman says. “So we dismissed Bebop, and Rocksteady, and Mutants, and that kind of stuff. So this story was one unto itself, and it created a happy space that we didn't have to stick with storylines, or logic, or history, or just different things that Tom had set up. Again, we're talking about, when he wrote a hundred issues, that's like 10 years, almost 11 years of stuff.”

“Yeah, I call it Mirage-adjacent. It's the dimension right next door to the project,” Waltz adds. “I think what Kevin and I realized early on, I think early on we were looking at Mirage, specifically. And we knew we were veering off that course when Karai became Shredder's daughter, as part of this story. But it worked better for the story. And so in the Mirage universe, that wasn't the case. And so we said, ‘Well, that's different. That's a little bit of a retcon right here.’"

Waltz continues, “And then at that point, we started saying the term Ronin-verse. I think we're creating our own universe here, but I call it very Mirage-adjacent. The Dark Knight Returns, for me, works so well, because if somebody really wants to say, ‘It's Adam West's future,’ it could be Adam West's future, because all the basic elements are there for a Batman story… I think it works so well in a generic sense, because there's just certain elements of Turtles that you have to hit, and everybody knows those things by now. Most people know what those things are, where they come from, that you can write this kind of story and let people fill in the blanks as they want.”

April’s Heroic Sacrifice

The Last Ronin II has certainly added new layers to April O’Neil as a character. She’s become the figurehead of an underground resistance movement and a grandmother figure to the new Turtles. At the same time, the series has cast April in a somewhat darker light, revealing her hidden intentions in creating the new generation of Turtles and how she effectively played god by giving them each superhuman abilities.

Ultimately, though, April is given a heroic death in issue #5, as she goes out in a blaze of glory fighting the Purple Dragons gang. As Eastman and Waltz explain, April’s whirlwind journey in the sequel was all about serving their larger goals with The Last Ronin saga. This series needed to end with the last bastion of the original TMNT generation handing the baton to the new generation.

“What we wanted to say in The Last Ronin II: Re-Evolution covered almost this very important, I want to say chaotic, but also very trying time for the family,” Eastmas says. “April's decision to create these characters, was it necessary? Was it important? Was it specific? Was it something that she missed about the original Turtles? Was something that she was trying to create something that was the potential future protectors of New York City? As the foundation of the superhero concept that we love so much, not only with the original Turtles, but then finding their purpose.”

Eastman continues, “So what happens in The Last Ronin II is, of course, the unfortunate, but very critical, story concept of April passing. It really is handing the torch to a new generation that we wanted to make very specific. So she's kind of the last of the original series, last of Casey, last of Turtles, last of Splinter, last of everything. So that is officially handing the torch to the new Turtles, much like we did with Last Ronin I, which was having each of the Turtles have a specific, and very significant, and very important demise in that series, that transitions into a much bigger picture.”

“It's not only the end of the family side of things, when you think of Casey, and April, and Michelangelo, and the rest of the Turtles, and Splinter, but it's also end of the old enemies, because that's really the demise of the Purple Dragons,” Waltz says. “And so I felt like April settled some unfinished business, in a sense, in her final act, by taking out a threat that, all the way back to The Lost Years, she knew was posed to her family with Jigsaw and the Purple Dragons.”

Waltz continues, “This moment became even bigger than I thought it would be, before we got to it, because all the pieces were there, and it came together, and it was just a matter of putting words in their mouths and actions in their hands. And I had a hard time writing it. It was hard to write that with April. I like April, as a character across all iterations, very much. She's one of my favorite characters. But like Kevin said, it was time. All this work she's done, and the Turtles before, now what is the payoff? Will these kids be able to continue forward successfully? Was it worth it or wasn't it? And that's the story that's yet to be told.”

The Last Ronin III and Beyond

As Waltz alludes above, this clearly isn’t the end of the overarching Last Ronin storyline, given that this series effectively ends on a cliffhanger. No sooner do the Turtles and Casey Marie mourn April’s death than we learn the Resistance was betrayed by one of its own. Their ally Jiro is secretly allied with the Foot Clan, an organization that has survived the deaths of both Shredder and his grandson and is now seeking to reclaim its hold on New York.

“When we say John Wick is pain, it’s kind of like a ‘fuck yeah.’” So declares Keanu Reeves in Wick is Pain, an upcoming documentary about the John Wick franchise that will be available on dgital on May 9.

IGN can exclusively reveal the trailer for the film, which features new interviews with Reeves, director Chad Stahelski, and more cast and crew who have worked on the four films. (You can watch the trailer via the player above or the embed below.)

Directed by Jeffrey Doe, Wick is Pain utilizes never-before-seen footage shot over a decade both on and off the set of the Wick films. The doc also chronicles the travails of the very first John Wick movie from 2014, a small indie film plagued by financier problems that got shut down at one point.

“We were panicked. This is Keanu fuckin’ Reeves. You do not wanna let him down,” Stahelski recalled in the trailer about the dire straits the first movie found itself in.

“I don’t know how you find six and a half million dollars by Monday,” producer David Leitch said. Fellow producer Basil Iwanyk was even more blunt: “I took money out of my house. We are doomed. We are completely fucked.”

(John Wick’s savior turned out to be actress Eva Longoria, who invested the $6 million necessary to resume production.)

And yet despite all that turmoil and pain, John Wick ultimately spawned a billion-dollar franchise.

IGN has been with the series since the very beginning. We visited the set of the original film in New York City where we chatted with Keanu Reeves and co-star Adrianne Palicki, and we even exclusively debuted the first movie’s trailer back in 2014.

Beyond Wick is Pain, fans of the franchise have the upcoming spinoff Ballerina to look forward to as well as the recently announced John Wick 5 and an anime prequel film.

Steve Jackson Games' Munchkin Presents Batman is at the lowest price we've ever seen on Amazon for the board game. For $31.46 (30% off), you can pick up the Batman themed version of the hit board game now, and its a perfect strategy game for when you want to destroy your friends. Check out our full Munchkin buying guide for a breakdown of all the different versions and expansions, and for more Batman you can read about the best DC board games.

The Best Batman Board Game Deal on Amazon Today

Munchkin is an easy-to-pick-up three to six player board game where you navigate dungeons, level up, find rare and ridiculous loot, fight monsters, and compete against other players to emerge victorious. In Munchkin Presents Batman, the mechanics are relatively the same. You pick from eight classic Batman villains: The Joker, Mr. Freeze, the Riddler, the Penguin, Catwoman, Two-Face, Harley Quinn, or Poison Ivy and use various gadgets from Batman's arsenal to win. You'll also encounter other members of the Caped Crusader's rogue's gallery throughout the game like Scarecrow and Solomon Grundy.

The full color game board and over 200 cards with Steve Jackson's signature art style are a great way to get the real Munchkin experience with a DC comics twist. For more info about gameplay, you can check out the rules to the game in the image below.

For a Solo Board Game, Try Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

If you like the idea of a Batman board game, but don't have enough people around to consistently play board games with, you may want to try Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - The Game. It's a huge game that can be played solo or with one other person.

The Secretlab Easter Sale is happening now with savings of up to $119 off the popular Titan line of gaming chairs, Magnus gaming desks (including the Magnus Pro electric standing desk model), and accessories like the Secretlab Skins upholstery covers, desk mats, cable management, and more.

It's no secret that we love our Secretlab gaming chairs. Two of the six chairs in our best gaming chair roundup are Secretlab models. Of all the gaming chairs we covered in our "Budget to Best" roundup video earlier this year, my colleague Akeem Lawanson considered the Secretlab Titan Evo to be the most comfortable. No good chair comes cheap and Secretlab chairs definitely cost a premium, but we think the craftsmanship, materials, and customizability are worth it.

TL;DR - The 7 Best Secretlab Deals

You can quickly browse through all of the listed products on sale above. For more information on each product and why they are worth your consideration, read through below.

Secretlab Titan Evo

Secretlab Titan 2020

Secretlab Titan Evo Lite

Secretlab Titan Evo Nanogen Edition

Secretlab Titan Recliner Add-On

Secretlab Magnus and Magnus Pro

Ubisoft has outlined its plans for the first year of post-launch content for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, including promises to add features like new game+, more difficulty settings, additional story content, and more.

The Assassin’s Creed company detailed all of its plans for 2025 in a four-and-a-half-minute roadmap update video published today. It’s a brief but enlightening video with a specific schedule for May and June as the team behind the latest stealth-action entry plots out how it will keep fans coming back with free updates throughout the year.

Nintendo's new Virtual Game Card system is live now with the latest Switch update. For those looking to hide their game cards away from prying eyes, they'll have the option to do just that.

As evidenced by a user on X/Twitter, Virtual Game Cards can be hidden from your acquired list on Nintendo's VGC portal. This makes it so anyone looking at your list of Virtual Game Cards won't see any games you have on there, for whatever reasons you might have.

I tested this out myself, and was able to hide games like the Suikoden I&II HD Remaster and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. While the games would still appear in my list on my OLED Switch if I had them installed or loaded, they would be removed from the list once uninstalled.

Blizzard is preparing to add a new feature to World of Warcraft that might sound strange at first: an option to have the game tell you what spell you should optimally cast next in combat, with an additional option to simply let the game cast the ideal next spell for you.

Today, in a lengthy video interview between game director Ion Hazzikostas, Team Liquid raid leader Maximum, and content creator Dratnos, it was announced that the upcoming World of Warcraft patch 11.1.7 a new feature will be added called Rotation Assist. Rotation Assist, when turned on, will highlight in combat the recommended next ability for your character to use based on class, specialization, and the combat situation.

Additionally, the feature will come with an optional “one button” option that will allow a player to simply press one button to automatically cast whichever spell the game is recommending cast next. However, there’s a penalty for using the one-button option - it will add an additional small amount of time to the global cooldown, meaning players using the single button option will overall cast spells slower and deal less damage than someone playing manually.

In the video, Hazzikostas explains that the new feature is based on the popular add-on Hekili, which similarly recommends optional next spells to cast but does not provide a one-button rotation. As Hazzikostas explains:

“Add-ons are amazing. The things that the community has done over the last 20 years to allow people to experience different aesthetics, different functionality, have information available at their fingertips like that is a huge part of WoW’s success. And we don’t question or want to undermine that for a moment. At the same time, ideally…if you ask people you know, ‘hey, how can I get better? I’m really struggling at this.’ The first answer shouldn’t be, ‘Well download this add-on, this add-on, this add-on. Otherwise you’re doing it wrong.’ Because that’s starting to get into that mandatory place, whether we like it or not.”

Hazzikostas goes on to explain that long-term, Blizzard is thinking more deeply about the role of add-ons in World of Warcraft and how for players wanting to participate in competitive content, many of them have essentially become mandatory. The team, he says, wants to move away from that philosophy, and is thinking down the line about improvements that can be made to World of Warcraft’s class design, boss encounter design, and UI that will ensure the functions players feel are necessary from add-ons are built-in natively.

And though Hazzikostas says they’re never going to simply ban add-ons outright, once the team feels their objectives around reducing the necessity of add-ons are accomplished, he wants to “rein in” some of the functionality of add-ons around “real time in combat problem solving, specifically where like automating, coordination, communication, in ways that are always going to be better than anything the UI could natively provide you, as long as they remain possible.”

If you’re not sure what Hazzikostas is talking about, these changes likely won’t impact you. But as he, Maximum, and Dratnos discuss in the video, high-level raiders have frequently felt the need to rely on add-ons such as WeakAuras that allow players to essentially build custom tools to solve difficult raid encounters in real-time, such as telling them where exactly to stand or assigning them groups on the fly. And while this might feel like cheating if you’ve never experienced it firsthand, Hazzikostas is candid in the video that some of the team’s raid encounter design decisions may have pushed players in that direction by being a bit too difficult to figure out sans add-ons. “The way we design encounters has been influenced in significant ways, by the way players use add-ons,” he says. “I know you know the community sometimes speculates that [certain encounters were] built clearly to require an add on. I can’t say that’s never the case.”

Hazzikostas goes on to explain that while encounter designers are never specifically designing mechanics with the intent for players to create add-ons to solve them, when players inevitably do so in testing, they have historically seen feedback from playtesters using add-ons complaining that the fight was too easy. But instead of redesigning the encounter to make the add-ons unusable and reinstate the intended difficulty, they have simply added more mechanics. “I think that’s not a great place for things to land,” he says.

You can watch the full 45-minute video here, but we also spoke directly to Hazzikostas to ask him questions about both the upcoming new Rotation Helper feature and the developers’ intentions for future add-on restrictions and interactions. Our full interview is posted below, lightly edited for brevity and clarity:

IGN: I think you talked around this a little bit in the video. But is it your opinion that it's essentially become mandatory to have add-ons to play WoW at anything above a basic questing level at this stage?

Ion Hazzikostas: I don't know that I would go that far, but certainly it's been something that's been part of community trends over time, where players are clever. When you give them a very versatile toolbox, they will make more and more clever and more and more powerful things. And when it gets to competitive content, trying to defeat challenging raid bosses, trying to clear the highest Mythic+ keys that you can or PvP at a competitive level, every advantage helps. And while certainly people can and do play the game without using add-ons and succeed, I think most players at a high level, including Max[imum] and Dratnos, and I was talking to them in this [video], agree that you are at a disadvantage if you're not using some of these tools.

And in social content, if you're in a raid group, if you're part of a group that's running Mythic+, there's an expectation that it doesn't matter how you personally want to play. If everyone requires that you use this tool, then you feel like you have to. And on the one hand, while the legacy of add-ons over the course of 20 years of World of Warcraft is an amazing part of how the game has grown and evolved, I think looking at a world where someone is told that they need to use an external third-party tool if they want to play the game the way that they prefer, that's not healthy, we think.

And so, that's the question of, how do we tackle that really has begun with us trying to look at building up the native functionality of the game's UI, of the game's systems, of how we're presenting information, not just through the user interface, but also things like visual effects and how we're telegraphing the clarity of different boss mechanics or class mechanics or the like.

I know this is something you've probably thought about for a very long time, but was there any moment or any particular raid boss or something that made you go, "Okay, we actually need to address this."?

Hazzikostas: Honestly, I don't know that I can pick out a single thing. I mean, I think there have definitely been occasions over the years. This is not the first time that the World of Warcraft team has waded into this space. I mean, even before I worked on the team going way, way, way back, like 20 years ago, literally in vanilla World of Warcraft, add-ons could do very powerful things like automating targeting. People who raided in the early days of Molten Core, right? If you played back then, you probably had Decursive if you were a healer. And you would just push a button, and it would automatically, intelligently dispel someone in your group who needed dispelling.

And the team looked at this at the time and was like, "This feels like it's actually kind of undermining some of the core gameplay of the game. Let's restrict this functionality. But also, let's continue to improve our built-in raid frames. Let's continue to improve these things." And so, I think there's been an ebb and flow there over the years. But I think increasingly, when I'm just reading through community discussions on our official forums, on Reddit, wherever, and it's very common to see people ask like, "Hey, I need help improving. I'm trying to play Mage really well. I'm trying to play Rogue well and it feels like I just can't compete with other people." The first question that they get asked is, "Well, what add-ons are you using? What's your weak core configuration?" Not, "What is your rotation? What is your talent build? What decisions are you making?" It's like, "What tools do you have?" That's not healthy. It's a barrier to approachability.

And so, again, the path here is not to... Really, just to try to narrow that gap by improving the baseline functionality that our game is providing, and really focus in any long-term efforts in terms of what we might limit or restrict on just that narrow sliver of combat functionality stuff.

And that's why we've tried to make it super clear here. We have no intent of touching anyone's RP add-ons, world informational helpers, accessibility tools, gathering assist. Any of that stuff is great. It really is just a question of like, how do we improve the information that our default UIs giving combat-wise? And then once we've gotten 90% of the way there, what do we do about that last mile or so that includes functionality that feels like it wouldn't really make sense to come from our UI? Like things that are solving a raid mechanic for you and telling players where to run, that's kind of the point of the gameplay itself.

We want to provide information, make it clear how you're supposed to tackle the problem. But at the end of the day, it should be up to the raid group to figure that out for themselves.

Obviously you always want to improve your UI and improve your boss encounters. But as far as adding stuff like a WoW internal version of Hekili. You talked in the video a little bit about looking at maybe doing in-house damage meters at some point or other things like that that are currently solved by add-ons. Why not just continue letting the community handle that level of stuff? Is there any concern that if you try to start doing the job of modders, you're going to need a lot more time and resources when currently you've got basically crowdsourced problem solving?

Hazzikostas: To some extent, so I think, yes, it's taking on more responsibility for the team. But I'd argue that this is responsibility that we really should've been shouldering for a while now. And I think the community at times has said that add-ons are solving problems in our games design, and I think sometimes they're right. Sometimes there are places where a class mechanic or a talent really is asking a player to do something that the game isn't natively giving them the tools to do correctly, like tracking stacks of a buff and making decisions on the fly based on how many stacks you happen to have based on some proc that triggered.

That's not a reasonable in-the-moment computation for a human, but add-ons streamline and simplify that. Similarly, when something isn't clear in an encounter, when a visual effect is not clear, but someone has an air horn that's telling them when they're standing in something to make up for a lack of clarity in our VFX, that's a completely reasonable criticism. And if some of this means that we need to do extra work to fix issues, honestly I think that's in players' interest and something we should've been doing all along.

And again, to be clear, we're not looking to, in any way, marginalize or push aside our wonderful add-on author community. Step one here and step two and step three involve nothing about restricting any sort of add-on functionality. They're just continuing to build up our alternative solutions, give players a chance to give us feedback on those, understand what more they would need to do, what more would need to change for those to feel like they're sufficient.

And then when we get to the end of that road, eventually restrict some things. Because again, that part is required, I think, in order to solve the problem of joining a group and being told you have to download this or use this week or whatever. Again, when there's an open-ended toolbox, players are always going to try to computationally solve the challenges we put in front of them. And of course, people are going to use every advantage that's at their disposal. That's just the nature of competitive players

…Another aspect is there are tons and tons of players, even setting aside accessibility concerns that may limit someone's ability to do a mechanically intensive rotation. There are many people who, honestly, combat is not what they enjoy most about WoW. Mastering and optimizing how to use all 20 of their abilities in sequence to maximize their damage is not what's fun. It's immersion, exploring, collecting, doing all these other things. And the mechanics of the game are sometimes an obstacle to enjoying the parts that many players want to embrace. And so, I think offering just a baseline way of opting out of that complexity is something that, I think, will be welcome to many players. It's the same way, when we changed our talent system in Dragon Flight. We offered just a default starter spec.

If you didn't want to deal with optimizing and placing all your points, you could just use our preset loadout for yourself and focus on the parts of the game you enjoy. At the end of the day, this is about giving players more options and more customization. It's also an example of how, in some of our sort of built-in solutions, we can do things that add-ons couldn't. Hekili obviously can highlight the next buttons for you, but it can't actually automatically pick which ability to cast based on a single key bind, whereas our solution is able to do that.

Have you spoken to the Hekili folks at all? Do they have an opinion on this?

Hazzikostas: Personally, not yet. I know that our UI team, and particularly the engineers on our UI team, have close communications with our add-on author community. A lot of bug reports and updates and things go back and forth. They're usually trying to keep them up-to-date on any changes we're making to the APIs, so they're not caught off guard. So I think that's going to be part of this conversation going forward for sure. And I think we understand that when we offer a solution ourselves, it's not going to be as deeply and fully customizable as add-ons for power users are.

And so, our goal is not to kind of subsume, like take over a space entirely, but rather offer a strong baseline solution to something while still leaving add-ons as a space for people who want cosmetic customization. They want to tweak the display of the information even more than what the base UI allows. And also, again, it's a chance for us to get feedback on the nature of those gaps, so we can try to offer as much of what our players want as possible.

As far as the functionality of this thing goes, how reactive is it to different types of builds? When I play, I have set up builds for a single target spec, a single target with cleave, a multi-target Mythic dungeon, a Delve loadout. And with Undermine right now, there are a lot of fights where I'm using my single target raidng build mainly, but there are also moments in the same fight where I have to switch to cleave damage or something like that. And so, I'm curious how adaptive this tool is going to be towards what sort of build you're running and what sort of things you might want to do in the moment in a fight.

Hazzikostas: So I think that's going to vary a little bit by specialization. I'd love to say that we have every possible permutation that someone might spec into accounted for, but we don't. And we're going to get feedback on that. Some of that will simply be a bug or something we overlooked. But the system itself is designed to be very versatile and something that our team can continue to update over time. It is looking at what talents you currently have, but it's also making recommendations situationally based on your current available resources, whether there's one enemy in front of you or four enemies in front of you, so you don't need a separate preset loadout of dungeon versus raid.

It will recommend an AOE ability if it's going to hit five targets or a single target ability if there's only one boss in front of you. And again, the goal here is, not absolute perfection. There's certainly all sorts of little sneaky min-max tricks that players have optimizing for movement and things that the system can't know about. But the goal is really to be something that helps if you're trying to learn a new spec or if you're just trying to, like you're trying to learn an encounter and you don't want to put too much of your bandwidth into thinking about your rotation for a bit. The same way people use many of these add-ons, we think this will be a very helpful tool for just approachability of spec gameplay and just trying to raise the skill floor in the game.

Especially with the one button option, is there any worry that it might inadvertently have the opposite effect where you've got people joining up into a normal or heroic group through Group Finder, and then just sort of closing their eyes and hitting the button, and then pissing off a raid leader or something. I can hear the comments coming in now.

Hazzikostas: I mean, honestly, frankly, for some folks who may struggle with their rotations currently who haven't really kind of grasped how they're supposed to build, spend their resources, and use their different tools situationally, I think even the one-button rotation will be an improvement. Certainly, it will allow them to focus on mechanics and focus on other parts of something that they're doing. I think we've crafted that. It has a small penalty that's incurred to the global cooldown when you use it, to make sure that... It's never the best way to play.

We definitely don't want a world where a raid group is failing to meet some damage check, and the raid leader tells all other players, "Stop trying to play your class. Just turn on this one button thing and that's going to be the right way." But as just a simple baseline, that should be adequate for solo gameplay, for outdoor questing, for raid finder, things along those lines, this should be more than sufficient and allow people to just focus their attention on other parts of the game that they find more engaging.

Do you think that raiding has gotten harder over the years?

Hazzikostas: Yes. I think that it has gotten more involved, more complex. I think that our targets for how many attempts we wanted to take to defeat a certain raid boss at a certain difficulty haven't changed, right? In that sense, we may think, "Okay. On heroic mode, the final boss should take 20 or 30 attempts. It should take a few hours for a group to beat for the first time." That's true today. That was true 10 years ago. Now the thing is, players on average have gotten better, as is the case in any game, right? Whether it's a PvP game, otherwise. I mean, it's easiest to see in PvP games where someone maybe has stepped away from their favorite MOBA, or Overwatch, or whatever and they used to be a platinum player. Then, they come back and they're like, "Oh, wow. Everyone is so much better now."

And that's the same phenomenon that we've been working through in our dungeon and raid gameplay. We do have to offer novel looks at things. We have to throw a couple more mechanics in the mix to provide the same level of relative challenge that we used to be able to do with less, right? Going all the way back to Classic, you could see clearest-cut example of bosses that seemed impossible, that took groups literally months to defeat that now look simpler than a common dungeon boss, and that modern players without prior knowledge go in and steamroll in classic versions of the game. That's just how the player base has evolved.

You've also designed things differently too in that regard, right? Raiding with 40 people was much harder just purely on a communications level. If you want to provide challenge when we have fewer people, you have to make things harder in different ways.

Hazzikostas: I think that's certainly part of it. I think another factor is... I think this is something that was touched on in the conversation with Max and Dratnos. We never design things with the intent that add-ons are going to solve them, but we also can't be ignorant of what add-ons are capable of doing. And if we have a fun idea for something that might be a fun mechanic, that might've been done years and years ago in terms of a raid-wide coordination challenge, the puzzle that you have to solve as part of your group, we know that someone's just going to make a WeakAura that solves it for you. The raid leader's going to pre-type everyone's name into it before they've even pulled the boss once, and that mechanic is not going to play out the way we wanted it to.

And so we're probably just not going to make that mechanic period. And so instead, I think we have probably over time skewed more and more towards testing skills in players that add-ons can't trivialize, things like just reaction time, getting out of a lot of stuff that's under your feet, rapid movement, twitch reactions, things on that level. And I think while that's a niche that should exist in WoW encounters, I don't think it's healthy for the game. And I think players agree for all encounters to be like that. I think if you're a raider in the World of Warcraft today, here's a challenge. Try to count the number of bosses that aren't at some point putting a swirly under your feet that you have a couple seconds to move out of. Good luck. It's basically all of them. I would love for the game to just have more variety in the challenges that it's posing to players. And I think that eventually when we get there, being able to restrict a couple of aspects of what add-ons can do today, I think will open up a very fertile design space and allow for encounters that are equally challenging in terms of how many hours they're going to take your group to learn and to beat, but that put that challenge in different places that are, hopefully, a bit simpler and more engaging.

Is this something you have already been slowly trying to implement as far as Undermine goes? Are we already subtly seeing changes to encounters to move in the direction of that philosophy?

Hazzikostas: A bit. Yes. I think that we've gotten feedback from the community on Liberation of Undermine. But I think there are fewer fights in this tier than in previous tiers that feel like they were solved by an add-on, that they really almost required one. There were encounters in past tiers like Broodtwister or the like that made people feel like, "Okay, we don't know how to do this without using an external tool." And we are consciously trying to steer away from that. Another example of a way that we've continued to improve things in our Undermine update earlier this year, one of the changes we made was really revamping a lot of our spell visuals for increased clarity.

Ultimately, I think philosophically for years we had often said, "Okay, we want these things not to feel too gamey." We want them to feel a little bit like chaotic fire or whatever. And ultimately, just kind of accepted that that's not in the best interests of gameplay and readability. And let's get some hard edges on things and let's make it really clear cut when you are or aren't standing in something. And even things like that can instantly help players to be able to just jump into an encounter and feel like they know what they should be doing as opposed to needing assistance to let them know what's safe versus what isn't.

Long-term, how soon should we expect some of these bigger changes to what types of add-ons you will and won't allow? Is this a next raid tier kind of thing, a next expansion kind of thing?

Hazzikostas: Yeah, so I think there's no specific date in mind. It's more kind of kicking off a conversation and signaling a general trajectory, a heading. I think we know we have a bunch of work to do. I wanted to kind of put into context some of the changes that players have seen that feel like probably like a departure from past practice, like the cooldown manager that we added as a first iteration of helping to track your own abilities and cooldowns in our most recent 11.1.5 update.

Of course, this combat assist coming in 11.1.7, and more things that will follow. I think we know that before we reach an eventual endpoint of limiting the ability of add-ons specifically to parse real-time combat events, we'll need to have our own solution for a customizable damage meter for things like encounter boss timers, letting you know when an ability is coming next and how far away it is. Things that players have relied on add-ons based on real-time combat information for a long time.

Our intent is not to suddenly just break things and leave players in the lurch. We want to build up a solid foundation. And then, when the community feels and we all collectively feel like we're ready for that next step, we think it's one that the community will hopefully embrace and be for the good of the game in the long run, making things more approachable while keeping the full array of informational and cosmetic customization that add-ons have always offered.

Do you expect that long-term, your changes to design are going to dramatically change the flavor of any classes or specs? I know you were talking in the video a little bit about Outlaw Rogue - I don’t play Rogue, but you suggested it was maybe perhaps a little too complex.

Hazzikostas: Honestly, I don't think it will dramatically change the flavor. No. I think there are certain mechanics that will need to be revisited. Outlaw Rogue is a fun spec, but it's one that I pick on for these purposes. Because if you go look up a guide for playing Outlaw Rogue, you'll see that there's some situations where it's like, if you have more than 60 energy, and the cooldown of this ability is less than 12 seconds, then do this. And it's like, "Come on." There's no way that anyone is going to parse that in real time without just having a way forward that pops up and tells you, "Okay, push this button now." And those are the sorts of things where it's like, "Is that fun? Is that part of the flavor of the spec really?" What could an alternative implementation of that sort of general vibe based around the idea of re-entering stealth and unleashing your attacks and combat as a rogue? How can we realize that without leaning on something so intricate and mechanically intensive?

Have you looked at all at what Final Fantasy 14 has done in terms of how much they restrict add-ons? They restrict them pretty heavily and always have. How do you look at what they've done and how it's impacted the flavor and the type of game that they have over there?

Hazzikostas: I think it's their decisions made at the start that inevitably affects how things evolve. There's certainly a lot more control that you have as a designer of understanding exactly what information your players are going to have at their disposal, what tools they have at their disposal to overcome an encounter? And so, you can design in that world for everybody in a more level playing field, or as we have to accept that people will have a bunch of different ways of looking at or processing things.

But that's part of how World of Warcraft has evolved. I think that we want to be very narrow and surgical in these restrictions, and they're not terribly different from things we've done over the years in the past. Years ago, add-ons could draw things in the 3D game space, and that was something the team looked at and was like, "No, this is clearly too far." That's not a thing that add-ons should be able to do, and that functionality was restricted, and players evolved, and the game moved on. There's an alternate world where if the team had never done that, if 15 years ago the team in Wrath had said, "Yeah, this seems fine." Today, every encounter you go into would be full of these virtual 3D markers that are telling you exactly where to run and stand, and that would be how people played the game. And so, it's like having this powerful ecosystem.

It's tremendously empowering to players, but it also requires vigilance on our part as developers to ensure that we're kind of preserving the integrity of the game and giving people a level playing field. Where if you just install World of Warcraft and you want to play the game and experience what it has to offer, it really it is our obligation that the out-of-the-box experience should be sufficient. And if it's not, that's a problem we need to work on solving.

Is there any concern that it's sort of a one button rotation is going to lead to people doing annoying exploits? Going into LFR or basically AFKing or something like really causing issues with it?

Hazzikostas: I hope not. Honestly, you've been able to go in and try to fly under the radar and just auto attack. Those are situations that have happened in groups for a long time, whether it's non-participation in Battlegrounds or just trying to coast and leech off a group. But I think most players when they're sitting down to play World of Warcraft or looking to play World of Warcraft and accomplish some goals, and I think that's always going to be, we want to design in the interest of the majority. And we have tools, whether it's reporting or other measures to make sure that people aren't disrupting other people's gameplay or being toxic.

So you said that you're not looking to mess around with people's quest add-ons and stuff. But you'd also talked about wanting to build in-house tools like damage meters and stuff like that. Would you ever consider doing more internal stuff that is based off add-ons that people use for stuff that is outside of combat? Pet battling, auction house stuff, professions, anything like that?

Hazzikostas: I mean, I think absolutely and that's stuff that we continue... We're definitely inspired by the sorts of tools that the players turn to for outdoor world game plan for convenience as we look to continue to just make the game more approachable. I mean, things like, this has been several years now, but in the world of 3D navigational marker when you have a quest tracked or some objective tracked is something that in the past people would use an add-on to do for them to add kind of wayfinding support. That just felt like a more modern way of doing it than asking you to constantly pop open your 2D map to see where you were headed. So we added something like that. We're going to continue improving all of that functionality. I don't think there's any world though where we're going to restrict what add-ons can do in that space, because I think there's a big difference between convenience and competitive advantage.

Someone might say, "Oh, having this gathering add-on or having this World Quest tracker or whatever, it's convenient. Or someone with a Quest add-on maybe saves themselves a couple of alt tabs to look something up. But I don't think anyone would seriously claim like, "Oh, no. You have to use that add-on if you want to succeed in World of Warcraft." And that really is the difference. It's us looking at add-ons where someone is pretty reasonably, incredibly able to say to a new player or to their group mates, "Really, you pretty much need to use this if you want to succeed." And our goal is in this blue sky idealized world, that we can say that there isn't a competitive advantage to using add-ons in World of Warcraft, that they're a powerful tool for customizing your aesthetics, for customizing your information, and for kind of add an extra layer of self-expression in your game experience, but not a competitive advantage.

Is there any concern as you think about what sorts of things to add and how to add them, that the UI might become too heavy or too complex or actively work against the player in becoming unapproachable? Right now, opening World of Warcraft for the first time, there's already a lot of things on screen. And we've all seen that sort of joke screenshot of someone's UI with all the add-ons on it.

Hazzikostas: Always. I mean, I think we're always mindful of trying to strike a balance between serving our engaged core players who've been with us for years and making sure that the game stays approachable to someone who's coming back to it or picking it up for the first time. Because if we're not hitting both of those, really, we're not going to be able to continue to serve our audience and grow our audience. And so when we talk about these things, we have a lot of customization built into the UI. Some things are going to default off, some things are going to default on.

We're talking about how we want to introduce some of these new elements to players in their new player experience, kind like if you're level three on Exile's Reach and you only have two abilities, do you need to know about a one button rotation? No. We're actually like, "Press frostbolt. You'll be fine." At some point, maybe when you're level 40 and you just spent your 30th talent point and you have a couple dozen abilities, might that be a great time to introduce something like this and make sure you were aware that exists? Yes. And so, I think that's how we want to continue to think about and iterate on our onboarding experience as we add more customization built into the game.

Well, thank you so much, Ion. I really appreciate you taking the time. This has been really interesting. I'm very curious to see what my guild thinks of this announcement.

Hazzikostas: Me too. And truly, the goal here is really just to kick off a conversation. I know it's a scary looking 45-minute video that's really just announcing two minutes of new stuff at the start. Then, the rest is like, "Let's talk philosophy and let's get a sense of how open players are to us walking down this long path."

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Batman celebrated his 80th anniversary in 2019, but you can celebrate right now with the Batman 80th Anniversary Collection, a Blu-ray compilation of some of the best Dark Knight animated movies from the last couple of decades. It's currently at the lowest price in 2025 for a limited time, and you can pick this up for $44.96 (36% off)

Want to learn about the movies' source material before diving into the movies? Check out our guide on the best way to read the Batman comics online.

Batman 80th Anniversary Blu-Ray Collection is on sale

Sony has announced the PlayStation Plus monthly games for May 2025.

As revealed in a post on the PlayStation Blog, PS Plus members can download Ark: Survival Ascended, Balatro, and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun for free from May 6 to June 2.

It’s worth noting that Until Dawn, which was rumored to be a May PS Plus game, is not on the list.

Here’s the official blurb on each game, courtesy of Sony:

Ark: Survival Ascended | PS5

Are you ready to form a tribe, tame and breed hundreds of species of dinosaurs and other primeval creatures, explore, craft, build, and fight your way to the top of the food-chain? Your new world awaits in this survival sim, reimagined from the ground-up with Unreal Engine 5, with high-end graphic features, advanced physics systems and quality of life revamps in every area. Ark: Survival Ascended includes access to all of Ark’s worlds, including Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, Ark Genesis Part 1, Ark Genesis Part 2, and more. The game supports public online multiplayer for up to 70 players, private-session multiplayer for up to 8 players, and local split-screen for 2 players.

Balatro | PS5, PS4

In this poker-inspired roguelike deck builder, it’s all creating powerful synergies and winning big. Play illegal poker hands, discover game-changing jokers and trigger outrageous combos in this roguelike strategy experience. Combine valid poker hands with unique joker cards in order to create varied synergies and builds. Earn enough chips to beat devious blinds, all while uncovering hidden bonus hands and decks as you progress. You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun | PS5, PS4

Load up your Boltgun and plunge into battle headfirst! Experience a perfect blend of Warhammer 40,000, classic, frenetic FPS gameplay and the stylish visuals of your favourite 90’s retro shooters. Play a battle-hardened Space Marine on a perilous mission across the galaxy, as they battle against the Chaos Space Marines and daemons of Chaos. In glorious boomer shooter style, unleash your devastating Space Marine arsenal as you blast through an explosion of sprites, pixels and blood. Run, jump and charge across huge levels to shoot, shred and slice the worst heretics across the galaxy!

Meanwhile, 22 games are set to be pulled from the PlayStation Plus library next month, including Grand Theft Auto 5, Payday 2: Crimewave Edition, and the last playable versions of first-party titles Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2. As a result, Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2 will now completely disappear for modern consoles.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Whether you're looking to save on games, storage, or accessories, there are plenty of Nintendo Switch deals to check out right now. We've gathered up some of the best Switch deals currently available, including discounts on Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics and Super Mario RPG. You can see these deals and even more of our favorites at the moment below. For more updates on the latest discounts, follow @IGNDeals on Twitter/X.

Nintendo Switch 2 Preorder Information

The Nintendo Switch 2 is currently out of stock at numerous retailers right now, but don't let that get you down. If you're still hoping to get your hands on Nintendo's new console, bookmark our Nintendo Switch 2 preorder guide to stay up to date on restocks. For instant updates on what's going on, it's also worth following @IGNDeals on Twitter/X and Bluesky.

Best Nintendo Switch Game Deals

While Woot's Spring Sale is still going strong - with great deals on Super Mario RPG, Princess Peach: Showtime, and more - Amazon's also offering some great discounts at the moment. This includes deals on Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics and Monster Hunter Stories Collection. You can see those deals and many more of our favorites above.

Nintendo Switch OLED with Super Mario Bros Wonder Bundle

Preorder the LEGO Mario Kart Set

Best Switch Micro SD Card Deals

The best Switch SD card should be fast and reliable. Therefore, you're going to want to opt for a micro SDXC UHS-I U3 A2 V30 memory card. That's a lot of random letters, so to save you a bit of time we've left our top suggestions and deals below for your convenience. We've also included a selection of Switch 2 compatible MicroSD express cards if you're planning on picking up the brand new console.

Best Nintendo Switch Accessory Deals

Best Switch Power Bank Deals

Looking for a new power bank to keep your Switch charged up? Thankfully, there are some nice deals to check out at the moment. Our favorite picks right now are over at Amazon, where the INIU power bank has gotten a great discount down to just $15.99 and the Anker 737 has dropped down to $109.99.

When Should You Buy a Nintendo Switch?

The short answer is that you should buy a Nintendo Switch whenever there’s any kind of sale, regardless of the time of year. Amazon will likely offer the same console bundles on any other sale as it will on Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day, so there’s no real reason to wait if you’re in need of a Nintendo Switch.

That being said, there are sometimes some unique bundles and promotions during Black Friday that you won’t find any other time of the year. They usually include additional games (like the famous Mario Kart 8 bundle) or Switch accessories for free, but quantities tend to be limited. As always, do your research into the seller before you make a purchase and keep in mind that the Nintendo Switch 2 is coming soon.

Where to Buy a Nintendo Switch in 2025

• Nintendo Switch Console for $299.00
• Nintendo Switch Lite Console for $199.00

With how expensive gaming is getting in 2025, we're trying to save you as much money as possible on the games and other tech you actually want to buy. We've got great deal roundups available for all major platforms such as PlayStation and Xbox, and keep these updated daily with brand-new offers. If you're trying to keep costs down while maintaining your favorite hobby, stay tuned for more incredible discounts.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

There's certainly been no shortage of games in the last month or so, and it's easy for games to get lost in the proverbial avalanche. In a show of mutual admiration, though, two leads behind two RPGs, both of which launched in the same week, are promoting each others' games to fans.

As spotted by GamesRadar, Kazutaka Kodaka — creator of Danganronpa and co-director behind the recently released The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy — shouted out players reaching a milestone in his own game. Then, he went on to shout out another current RPG in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. "Even after you finish Expedition 33, this Japanese cult game will still be here, waiting for you!" said Kodaka.

He went on to praise Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in a follow-up post, drawing a comparison between the two games' unique takes on their respective genres. "Expedition 33 is an amazing tribute to classic JRPG, while Hundred Line is a cult Japanese VN & SRPG," said Kodaka. "Hundred Line has its own unique charm too, so why not play!!!"

Sandfall Interactive seemed to notice the shout-outs, and the official Expedition 33 account posted a message from creative director Guillaume Broche:

"After your Expedition, check out The Hundred Line, another great turn-based RPG that was also released last week, and made with love by an awesome team. There's too many good RPGs coming out at the same time, these days!"

A note from Guillaume Broche, @SandfallGames Creative Director:

After your Expedition, check out The Hundred Line, another great turn-based RPG that was also released last week, and made with love by an awesome team.

There's too many good RPGs coming out at the same time, these… https://t.co/AmGExVxXUp

— Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (@expedition33) April 30, 2025

Kodaka followed up, with more praise for Expedition 33:

"Thank you!!!! And for those of you who finished your school life first—it’s time to head out on an expedition! Expedition 33 is the future of RPGs. With unique RPGs like these coming out at the same time, now’s the perfect time to dive in and enjoy everything the genre has to offer"

There are, frankly, a lot of games coming out every year. Per SteamDB, over 6,000 games have hit Valve's PC platform in 2025 as of this writing. Over 18,000 released on Steam last year alone. By any metric, that's a baffling number, and even games with newsworthy creators may struggle to reach audiences in the massive flood of new things to play. Factor in ever-evolving live-service games and their content update schedules, and everything, everywhere is fighting for your time and attention.

In light of that, it's heartwarming to not only see two creators acknowledging and promoting each others' games, but encouraging fans to go play them afterwards. In the never-ending battle for eyes and attach rates, encouraging players to roll credits and move on to other experiences is noteworthy.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is out now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is also out now, for PC and Nintendo Switch. If you're close to finishing one, it sounds like you might want to check out the other, too.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

The impeccable Shōgun, winner of a whopping 18 Emmy Awards and 4 Golden Globes, is making its way back for a second season — and the plans are underway. Cosmo Jarvis, who stars in the series as pilot John Blackthorn, has officially signed on to return to the role for Season 2, as well as to join the team as a co-executive producer, according to an official press release from FX.

Additionally, lead Hiroyuki Sanada — who signed on for Season 2 last May after the show was renewed despite originally being a limited series — was upped to an executive producer after producing the original run. The show is officially set to begin production on Season 2 and return to Vancouver, where the original series was shot, in January 2026.

FX said the second season of the show is “a wholly original new chapter to the first season,” which was an adaptation of James Clavell’s novel of the same name. About the two seasons and how they connect, the network explained:

“In the first season, Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Sanada) fought for his survival as his enemies in the Council of Regents united against him. When a mysterious European ship was found marooned in a nearby village, its English pilot John Blackthorne (Jarvis) shared vital strategic secrets with Toranaga that tipped the scales of power in his favor to win a century-defining civil war.

"Part two of Shōgun is set 10 years after the events of the first season and continues the historically-inspired saga of these two men from different worlds whose fates are inextricably entwined.”

If there's any good in this world, we’ll get some new episodes of this excellent show by the end of 2026 — but for now, we can only wait and hope.

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

Woot's Spring Video Game Sale has had plenty of excellent gaming goodies to check out, and this discount is another great addition to its selection of deals. Assassin's Creed Shadows for Xbox Series X has been discounted there for the first time, currently marked down to $54.99. This is a 21% discount from its list price of $69.99.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows (XSX) for $54.99

With your hands full of guns and a warrant for the Devil’s arrest in your pocket, Shotgun Cop Man sends you on a nonstop blitz of new ideas. This short and sweet action-platformer continually reinvents itself across 10 clever worlds, leaving little room for a good idea to get stale. Once I mastered its distinct style of projectile-based movement, barrelling through the circles of hell turned into a pure power fantasy. Even though it’s harder than it should be to chase high scores and better times, I still had a blast gunning for a more optimized run after the credits rolled.

Shotgun Cop Man’s goofy vibes, flashy acrobatics, and time attack setup transported me back to my middle school days of bypassing the browser security settings in the computer lab to sneak in runs of Flash games like Fancy Pants Adventures or Electricman 2. Granted, this would blow many of those study hall time killers out of the water, but I could still easily see myself racing to the end of its first world with a friend while we’re supposed to be working on a research paper or math homework. It shares the same tight scope and paired back tone, but here those mask a surprisingly deep platformer.

Shotgun Cop Man isn’t just a standard run-n-gun shoot-em-up. Instead, the recoil from your shotgun serves as the driving force behind most of the movement. Need to take out some demons to your right? Well, you better make sure the coast is clear to your left when you pull the trigger. This challenging, but ultimately rewarding, system of ballistic blowback fills in for genre-standards like jumping or dashing midair, while firing your sidearm — which ranges from a satisfyingly snappy but weak pistol to a powerful gatling gun — allows you to hover midair or make more precise hops.

You can’t just spray and pray you wind up on the next platform, though. Each weapon has limited ammo, keeping Shotgun Cop Man relatively grounded: the shotgun itself only holds three shells at a time, so he needs to touch terra firma to reload. That said, sidearms tend to have bigger magazines, allowing for a reliable second option to fall back on when you need to get to the ground and take another shot at a tough jump. This restrained approach brings a levelheaded balance to Shotgun Cop Man that encourages mayhem and speed without leaving precision and skill in the dust.

To make matters more difficult, Shotgun Cop Man also has to contend with the armies of Hell as he chases down their leader. Aside from a few combat-focused levels that blend each circle of Hell’s unique mechanics into an arena-style showdown, as well as the requisite boss that shows up at the end of each 17-level world, Shotgun Cop Man is all about movement. Because of that, enemies play second fiddle here, being treated as platforming obstacles masterfully woven into each level. They act like the bright-red explosive barrels of a 3D shooter, providing the satisfaction of popping them while offering direction on where and when to shoot. Shotgun Cop Man bets big on its platforming acumen rather than falling in-line with other action platformer successes like Katana Zero, and it pays off in spades.

Still, this unique movement takes quite some time to get used to, especially if you’re playing with a controller: Pointing in two different directions like a twin-stick shooter (left for walking, right for aiming) makes for an unnatural platformer control scheme. Wrapping my head around it felt like being asked to rub my belly and pat my head at the same time. Unfortunately, there’s really no better way to make this specific type of movement work on the sticks, though it is much more comfortable with a keyboard and mouse. Thankfully, Shotgun Cop Man’s accessibility features allow you to skip certain inputs, like making it so you pick up new sidearms automatically, so you can tweak things to be much more comfortable.

I was halfway through the roughly five hour campaign by the time I felt like I’d fully climbed its relatively steep learning curve, mastering this propulsion-based blend of combat and movement. Normally, this initial struggle would be a knock against it, but Shotgun Cop Man constantly introduces and innovates on new ideas while rewarding your growing mastery of them. It also sets up systems that successfully encouraged me to obsessively replay levels in an attempt to shave nanoseconds off my time. This potent blend dangles an appetizing carrot-on-a-stick to gnash at in bite-sized speedruns once you’ve found your footing.

When he inevitably takes a hit, Shotgun Cop Man’s heart comically pops out of his body. Running into it will pick it up and restore health, but he’ll die in one hit without it. When that happens, the camera zooms in on his oddly detailed face as he says, “I die,” in a goofy, computerized voice. This minimal, self-aware sense of humor sets the tone overall, as there’s otherwise not much of a premise to explain here (and developer Dead Toast Entertainment even pokes fun at this in the credits by putting quotes around the word “Story”). You’re a cop with a shotgun trying to arrest the Devil. Naturally, Old Scratch doesn’t play ball. Each time our hero catches up to him, Satan tells the boy in blue to shove it, and you continue on your chase once more. It’s thin, but it works, and is just amusing enough to keep things moving.

Unfortunately, that sense of humor eventually becomes Shotgun Cop Man’s Waterloo. Each time it zooms in on his face as he points out the obvious, it takes far too long to get back into the action. It takes as many as three button presses to respawn, and even longer to restart a level. I know how silly this sounds in the face of everything Shotgun Cop Man gets right, but in a game where you’ll be dying and trying again quite a bit, these add up to completely hamper any sense of momentum. That’s especially glaring when every level in Shotgun Cop Man grades your performance on whether or not you killed every enemy, beat the par time, took any damage, or did all three of those in the same run. In what feels like a big oversight, there’s no quick level restart button when you die, so to chase that perfect run, you need to resume the level after that death, pause, and then hit the retry option from there. Because Shotgun Cop Man trades in seconds and milliseconds (most levels took me less than a minute to complete), this otherwise small bump in the road became an outsized, unnecessary part of mastering each level.

That said, for a game that only took me about five hours to see from end to end, Shotgun Cop Man crams in a staggeringly impressive range of innovations and spins on its seemingly simple run-and-shoot formula. It ricochets from idea to idea, never allowing a mechanic to get old — in fact, there are quite a few I wish got some more time to shine, like reactive floors, which alternate between safe and deadly each time they’re shot, or clever box-moving puzzles that put your understanding of each weapon’s power to the test. Most mechanics get a chance to shine before being woven into more new mechanics later on, but there’s also an impressive level creator (exclusive to the PC version) that lets you toy with some of these ideas yourself if you feel like your favorite didn’t get its time in the sun.

I’m not much of a level designer myself, but the creation suite provides a robust toy chest for dedicated designers to mess around with. It doesn’t just feature tools that enable you to recreate or expand upon any clever idea found in the campaign, it even includes wholly unique mechanics that aren’t found there, like extra enemy and NPC types. I didn’t get to try any user-created levels during the pre-release period, but I’m really excited to see what people think up once Shotgun Cop Man is out in the wild.

After years of struggle, Blizzard Entertainment has found itself in uncharted territory: Overwatch players are having fun again.

The Overwatch team knows failure well. Its massive launch in 2016 was eventually dampened by divisive balance decisions, a disastrous launch for Overwatch 2, a sea of negative reviews, the cancellation of PvE content – the list goes on. As each controversy was usually only followed by another, fans began to wonder if Blizzard would ever regain its footing or if the glory days of Overwatch were left in 2018. Following an invasion of fundamental changes, fans have determined Overwatch 2 is set up not only for the best lineup of content it’s seen in years but what might be the best state it's ever been in.

To All Agents of Overwatch

On February 12, 2025, game director Aaron Keller assembled the Overwatch team to debut an Overwatch 2 Spotlight presentation that was said to explore “what the future holds.” With years of painful decisions in the rearview mirror, fans were split between fear and cautious optimism, leaving little room for excitement as it became clear this was a make-or-break moment for Blizzard. What followed was a 34-minute breakdown that included a detailed content release schedule, copious amounts of changes players had been pleading to see implemented for years, and, most importantly, transparency.

Where false, nigh unreachable promises plagued years past, Overwatch 2’s 2025 outline felt attainable. Damage and Support heroes Freja and Aqua made their debut here, as did Stadium, a revolutionary third-person Competitive mode poised to shake up the tedium of standard matches. Loot boxes, the controversial monetization tactic left behind when the original Overwatch was shuttered in 2022, were back with tweaks that made them more rewarding without a tie to real-world money. Perks gave all 43 characters a set of four unique, game-changing abilities, and Blizzard even managed to further detail its plan to bring back 6v6. It was a weighty list of tangible additions and more content than Overwatch players had seen since the launch of Overwatch 2 – and most of it would be added within only a few months.

Not gonna lie I had a lot of fun playing 6v6 perk watch today

It makes me really happy to say Overwatch actually has found the light on this path

Post bans, 6v6 open queue perkwatch is the best state the game has been in since 2020

Looks like hero shooters will stay winning!

— Samito (@SamitoFPS) April 5, 2025

Now, in April, loot boxes, Freja, Stadium, Classic balance modes, and more have executed on Blizzard’s mission to turn the page to a new chapter of Overwatch. It’s been a much-needed break from the monotony of same-y seasonal content releases coupled with exceeded expectations for those who were, justifiably, worried the hero shooter would never be seen in a positive light again. There’s debate about what triggered such a radical change in strategy, but there is no denying Overwatch 2 is currently backed by a team that wants to see it succeed. This is a different Blizzard.

“They pulled themselves out the gutter with this one,” Reddit user Right_Entertainer324 said regarding the Overwatch 2 Spotlight. “Super excited for the future of Overwatch 2, for the first time in… Well, ever.”

Experience Tranquility

Through ups and downs, it’s been about seven years since Overwatch was the titan fans originally fell in love with. Even with the onslaught of kept promises bombarding players for both Season 15 and Season 16, Overwatch 2’s current season, your average fan has every reason to believe the other shoe could drop at any moment. It’s been that way since February, yet Blizzard is charging forward.

“Let's be honest, (Overwatch 2's) development history has been... troubled,” a popular post from Reddit user ImperialViking_ said. “When PvE was cancelled we all thought it was the end. Now, come Season 15, Overwatch has turned the corner and the future is looking super bright.”

They continued: “All in all I think it goes without saying that the devs have really been hitting it out of the park recently. People calling them ‘lazy’ is just plain wrong. There are OF COURSE still issues with (Overwatch), and there always will be, but the decisions of Aaron and the team have led the game to a healthy state of growth and competition. I think that deserves praise.”

Reddit, Discord, X/Twitter – there’s been a vibe shift on every platform where people can talk about Overwatch. Posts praising Stadium are all too likely to show up on fans’ feeds, as are comments from players thrilled Season 16 introduced Competitive hero bans. This long-requested feature finally made its proper debut last week, essentially giving players the option to never play with or against pesky heroes like Sombra ever again if they don’t want to.

Of course, Blizzard is only just lifting off when it comes to the journey to rebuild the goodwill it’s lost over the years. Overwatch fans surely won’t let it forget the damage done, but the change in attitude is undeniable.

Content creator Niandra, whose “Let’s Talk About the State of Overwatch 2” video examined the hero shooter with a fine-toothed comb last summer, remains cautious but tells us they feel “pretty good” about where things are at now. They believe fans are starting to come around, too, thanks to a few key additions.

“I think a particularly critical playerbase is to be somewhat expected with games that try to be your forever game and a part of your daily routine,” they explain, “but I think the (Overwatch) community is getting happier!

“It feels like the momentum of perks into Stadium and Freja has brought a lot of goodwill. Morale in the community felt really low during the release of Marvel Rivals and its following month, especially since Overwatch didn't immediately respond with sweeping changes. Upon reflection, that was probably the correct move as Marvel Rivals is now having its own issues while Overwatch has released big changes. I wouldn't be surprised if ex Overwatch players have curiously checked out the game again recently.”

Stadium has now established itself as a core component of Overwatch 2, but its importance doesn’t stop at the fresh gameplay it brings to the nine-year-old hero shooter. A game mode as radically different as this has players engaging in good-faith discussion about what could make it better. It will take time for the community to fully wrap its head around the value it could add to the free-to-play experience, but mostly, they’re just enjoying the ride.

One clear point of criticism has revolved around the fact that Stadium lacks a Quickplay option and, as a result, crossplay support. While it’s barred groups of friends on different platforms from testing out its many character builds and synergies, most assumed a mode in its infancy would be fleshed out with more features in future seasons. That, along with Blizzard’s usual reluctance to reveal its hand, is why it was so shocking to see concerns addressed just days after complaints emerged.

“God it is so nice seeing this,” one Reddit user commented after Blizzard promised to tackle highly requested features like crossplay. “Literal IMMEDIATE update on feedback they’ve been given. Making no promises but being transparent about what the feedback is and how they intend to handle it. I really do love this direction of community communication they’ve been on for the last year or so.”

Does This Mean Overwatch Is Back?

Overwatch has been a black sheep in gaming for a while. A once-great staple of the multiplayer world fell from grace and spent years finding new ways to fall further. Renewed faith and interest in what it can be isn’t proof that all wounds have been healed or that Overwatch 2 is now perfect, but it is a sign that it can claw its way back.

While the momentum is there, many agree that there is one trump card Blizzard could play to get its community fully invested in the future of Overwatch: traditional story cinematics. These narrative tie-ins each amassed millions of views upon release but were largely abandoned when Blizzard shifted its focus onto the game itself. Still, considering it helped draw a connection between players and the characters that hold the experience up, these videos remain one of the most desired – if not the most desired – components fans hope will return.

“It feels like Overwatch has spent the last few years focusing on just the game itself, which has been wonderful don't get me wrong, but does mean the reach outside of it feels limited," Niandra added. "Overwatch feels much like one very well-made PvP game, as opposed to the big multimedia franchise it has the potential to be, which is a shame considering all the praise its world-building and lore has gotten over the years."

Following Blizzard’s February event, Overwatch has managed to jump from being the most negatively reviewed Steam game of all time to having “Mixed” reactions from players. As the team continues to invest in additions like Stadium and the long-awaited return to 6v6, its consistency in the long term will be the key in determining if Blizzard is able to reclaim all of the ground it's lost. If the last few months are anything to go off of, it’s absolutely doable.

“I think we’ve entered a new golden age of Overwatch,” hero-shooter content creator and longtime Overwatch player Flats said during a recent livestream. “Overwatch is potentially in the best state it’s ever been, and it’s not even close. Better than the launch of Overwatch 2. Better than when the PvE missions ‘came out.’ Dare I say, better than Overwatch 1. The only time, maybe not, is 2016 hype when it first started – arguably.”

Overwatch 2 Season 16 kicked off the next phase of Blizzard’s grand scheme last week. It introduced newcomer Freja as its latest Damage hero, with this week ushering in a mech-fueled Gundam collaboration. Future seasons are said to come with a Dva Mythic skin, a Reaper Mythic Weapon skin, additional Stadium characters, and more. Time will tell if it’s enough to revive Overwatch to its former glory.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor 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).

The latest Nintendo Switch system update is out, introducing new systems like the Virtual Game Cards ahead of the launch of Switch 2. Implementing that has closed off a method for playing the same digital game online across two systems at the same time, though.

As noted by Eurogamer, Switch users could previously use the primary console to pull up a game and play it online, alongside the owner of said game logged in on another Switch. This loophole has been closed off with the new Virtual Game Cards system.

Users are reporting that you can still play a single copy of a digital game by going offline, though. By going to your profile's user settings and turning on the Online Licenses option, you can play a digital game even if you don't have the Virtual Game Card, so long as it isn't being played somewhere else, or as long as the Switch playing it is set offline. Here's the text for the setting:

"If this option is enabled, purchased digital software will be playable while the console is connected to the internet, even when the virtual game card for that software isn't loaded to the console. However, when using an online licence, only the user signed int to the Nintendo Account that was used to purchase the software will be able to play it, it will not be playable for other users on the console. Your virtual game cards can be used to play software regardless of this setting. Online licences cannot be used on multiple consoles at the same time. The online licence and virtual game card for a software title cannot be used at the same time."

Essentially, if one Switch is offline in some way, you can still play the same game at the same time across two Switches. Eurogamer tested this and verified the system works. The big change is that, if you want to play the same game online at the same time, that loophole appears to be closed.

Fans aren't too keen on the change, as users across forums like ResetEra and Reddit are frustrated that their previous game sharing set-ups aren't going to work the same. Specifically, the ability to play online at the same time is a gripe, as people mention playing games like Splatoon or Minecraft as a family or group.

Users note that for families, this would double the cost of picking up games moving forward if they have multiple kids that want to play a Switch game together. Families that previously played together will have to buy more copies. While it's essentially closing a loophole, it was a useful loophole, and it's not surprising to see people frustrated with the new system already.

This all arrives just over a month out from the launch of the Switch 2, which will utilize the same system. It's also going to use Game-Key Cards, meaning certain games — a decent number of them, actually — will not have the entire physical game on the Switch 2 cartridge, and will require an online download.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Call of Duty is steeped in 4/20 culture. It’s something Activision has monetized for years now, doubling down on the fanbase’s reputation for kicking back and relaxing while going for those killstreaks. But with Black Ops 6 and Warzone, the 4/20 microtransactions have leveled up, and now Seth Rogen is in the game some fans have had enough.

The Season 03 Reloaded update, out tomorrow, May 1, is pretty much all about 4/20 culture, even though it arrives 11 days after the day itself. The Joint Operations (I see what they did there) Limited Time Mode is a Black Ops 6 multiplayer variant that adds modifiers, including a +420 Score Bonus (I see what they did there), 3rd Person, Visual Impairment, Double Health, Hardcore, Paranoia Sounds, Low Gravity, Double Jump, and Increased Movement Speed (I see what they did there, etc).

It’s a similar situation over in battle royale Warzone. The Verdansk Limited Time Mode High Trip Resurgence (I’m not saying it again) challenges players to “smoke” the competition (nope, I’m not saying it).

After the success of Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th kicked off the 80's by taking the slasher genre to gorey new heights. Jason Voorhees first appeared (sort of) to terrify teens at a Crystal Lake summer camp, and its safe to say the original Friday the 13th is essential viewing for any horror fan. 12 movies and 11 directors later, the hockey-mask wearing horror villain has become a zombie, gone to space, and battled a fellow slasher icon.

For anyone looking for a slasher binge, here's where you can stream all of the Friday the 13th movies right now.

Where to Watch the Friday the 13th Movies Online

The Friday the 13th movies have consistently been pretty hard to find online. This past October, the first eight Friday the 13th movies ("the original series," if you will) found a home at Paramount+, but at some point since then were quietly removed. Now, you can only find the eight original Friday the 13th movies on Pluto TV, a free streaming service with ads. The more recent Friday the 13th reboot is streaming on Max.

Otherwise, all of the Friday the 13th movies are available to rent or purchase from digital storefronts, which is the only way to get your hands on Jason Goes to Hell (maybe that one's for the best), Freddy vs Jason, and Jason X.

Friday the 13th Movies on Blu-ray

It’s a Minecraft world, folks — we’re just singing in it. A Minecraft Movie continues to hit major milestones a month after debuting in theaters and catapulting its way toward becoming the highest-grossing video game movie ever at the global box office. Now, the movie’s “Steve's Lava Chicken” song, sung by star Jack Black himself, has made its way to the coveted Billboard Hot 100 Chart in the United States. Yeah, you read that right.

At just 34 seconds, the song — which boasts deep lyrics like “la-la-la-lava ch-ch-ch-chicken” — has become the shortest ever to hit the Hot 100. It debuts on the chart dated May 3, 2025 and comes in at No. 78, which is pretty solid for a sub-35 second song. Additionally, the track, which was written by Black and the film’s director Jared Hess, has hit No. 10 on the Hot Rock Songs Chart.

Interestingly enough, this isn’t even the first chart the song has made it onto. Earlier this month, the song debuted at No. 21 on the UK’s official chart — so clearly Black’s solo is really connecting with the movie’s audience. Plus, this isn’t Black’s first time charting for a film either. He hit No. 58 for “Peaches” from The Super Mario Bros. Movie back in 2023 as well.

A Minecraft Movie screenings have been pretty rowdy affairs so far, but it seems as though fans will have an opportunity to meme and scream their way through the “Chicken Lava” song and the rest of the film as the studios are debuting specific screenings meant for audience interaction.

"Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures invite fans back to the theater to experience A Minecraft Movie together in a whole new way! You know the moments. You know the lines. You love the songs,” stated the announcement for the set of Block Party Edition screenings that will take place on May 2 across the United States and select international locations. “Now it's time to get loose, laugh out loud and belt out those lyrics like a true diamond-tier fan.”

We’ve got plenty more on A Minecraft Movie, including how the Minecraft movie team had a private server they played on.

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

I remember vividly when I first caught wind of The Outer Worlds back in 2018 – my managing editor at the time talked about his preview of what developer Obsidian was working on; an original first-person RPG with the makings of a Fallout game. As someone who still won’t shut up about Fallout: New Vegas to this day, that was music to my ears. It turned out to be one of my favorite games of 2019, but instead of expecting it to be the next coming of Fallout, I saw it more as a new foundation for Obsidian to work within.

There were certain limitations to what the first Outer Worlds could be in terms of size and scope, and that much was clear in the several conversations I’ve had with the development team when reflecting on it. But after seeing the sequel in action for the first time and interviewing key folks at Obsidian, The Outer Worlds 2 seems like that original vision fully realized. For all the details I’ve been able to dig up about the revamped gameplay systems and worldbuilding, the overarching idea was that The Outer Worlds 2 needed to be a deeper RPG where player choice has more of an impact in nearly all aspects of the experience. And from everything I’ve gathered from our month’s-worth of exclusive coverage, this sequel looks like it’s stepping in the right direction.

What I’ve seen thus far is based on an early build of the game, all of which has been through hands-off demos, and all the footage you’ve seen was provided by Obsidian. So while I haven’t played it yet, The Outer Worlds 2 is so far reminding me of some of the best parts of the studio’s long list of RPGs, where unconventional playstyles are viable and unpredictable choices and outcomes are intrinsic to the roleplaying aspect, asking you to roll with the punches regardless of whether or not it’s deemed “optimal,” and this manifests in several ways.

Attributes, which were stats that you invested in as you leveled up, have been set aside for a heavier focus on Skills – a total of 12 (including staples like Engineering, Explosives, Guns, Hacking, Leadership, and more) now dictate how your character functions. While this may seem like further streamlining, the goal is to make sure the points you put into various Skills have a more noticeable impact throughout the process of leveling up, as opposed to the minute effects you’d feel in the old Attributes system. Of course, I can’t speak to how this comes to fruition in a full playthrough, but there are other systems in place that feed into the idea that these mechanical decisions can affect your character in bigger ways.

That leads to Perks, of which there will be about 90 to choose from. There are specific Skill levels needed to gain access to certain Perks, but these are said to offer significant changes to what you can do in combat, conversations, exploration, and more. One example is a Perk that lets you aim, fire, and reload while sprinting and sliding for those who want to approach enemies with the mentality of a traditional shooter. Or the Serial Killer and Psychopath Perks that grant bonuses for those who try a much more violent playthrough. Or the Space Ranger Perk that lets you convert points in your Speech Skill into damage bonuses in battle. Dialogue branches may vary based on the Skills and Perks you have (more so than the original), or your character may pick up on things in the environment they wouldn’t be able to otherwise, so the results of your build aren't just isolated in combat scenarios. Those are just a few examples of how these systems feed into specific playstyles with the intention of rewarding you for the way in which you’re specialized.

Then there are Traits that stack additional permanent effects that you wouldn’t necessarily get through Perks. The catch is that if you want to take more Positive Traits, you have to also select Negative Traits, and that’s where things can get interesting. I’m actually curious about how I’d play with something like “Dumb” where I’d have to lock myself out from ever putting points into five of the 12 Skills, or “Sickly” where I’d take lower health and toxic resistance. It seems like a trade-off that could be worth it, depending on how I want to build out my character.

But if you want to lean more into unconventional mechanics, accounting for things you usually wouldn’t in other RPGs – enter the new Flaws system. Like in the original, the game is watching your behavior and then offering permanent bonuses at the cost of a permanent detractor depending on how you play. However, The Outer Worlds 2 goes deeper on this idea – you’re not just offered a Perk point if you take a Flaw. Flaws now have bespoke status effects and conditions that can have major ramifications for how you’ll play the game, should you take a Flaw. I only got to see two of them, but they speak to the philosophy behind them. Sungazer offers regenerative health outdoors during the day at the cost of extreme visual lens flare and reduced accuracy, and that’s activated by staring into the sun multiple times. Or if you quickly skip through dialogue choices frequently, Foot-in-Mouth offers a permanent XP bonus while forcing you to make all future dialogue choices in a 15-second window – and if that timer runs out, the game will pick for you, which can lead to some unintended consequences. There’s another Flaw that’ll force you to accept all future Flaws no matter what, and Obsidian hinted at one that will account for those who save scum, but that remains to be seen – it’s bizarre ideas like these that can shake up playthroughs. Obsidian said there are around 30 Flaws in total, and my hope is that the incentives will be worth the trade-off, and that they’re built in a way that it won’t be easy to circumvent their effects, which could diminish their impact.

All that said, it’s clear that Obsidian put a lot of thought into how to rebuild its RPG mechanics with the intention of making something that is more reactive and impactful, or at least purposeful along the progression path. And with no respec beyond the intro mission, you’ll have to build out your character with a little more care. Hands-off demos can only tell me so much, so I’m expecting everything else around The Outer Worlds 2 to bring out the best in those systems and push me to engage with them beyond the surface level.

That sounds all well and good, and the brief gameplay sequences I saw were also promising. While the first game had approachability at the forefront, The Outer Worlds 2 looks like it’s offering more variability with a web of systems that come together for something a bit more sophisticated. For example, we now have actual stealth mechanics with a better detection system, proper stealth kills, and scenarios in which this approach would make sense – and features such as damage bar read-outs tell you whether or not a stealth attack will be worth it. The N-Ray Scanner is one of the new gadgets you’ll use, and this lets you see through walls and detect cloaked enemies or key objects hidden in the environment, but it’ll expend your mana-like energy – it’s a tool that’s conducive to this playstyle, and I’m looking for how this approach can be sustained throughout.

Judging from the brief run of the N-Ray Facility, for example, I saw snippets of that in action, which leans into this particular playstyle I prefer. This level was also ripe for playing it like an immersive sim, and it gave me hints of Deus Ex or Dishonored, especially with how you navigate the level and find different paths. I know the DNA of those games will always find their way into first-person RPGs, but it’s something that wasn’t quite as present in the first Outer Worlds, and very much apparent in this sequel.

And while I’m excited for stealth options and wielding the environment to create paths forward, the punched-up gunplay and addition of gadgets shows an improvement in combat approaches across the board. The aforementioned sprint-slide-firing Perk – along with the returning Tactical Time Dilation (TTD) – looks to be a deadly combo in a firefight, but some wild unique weapons like the crank-powered sniper rifle called the Planet Killer or the advertisement-blasting Pop Gun that’ll distract enemies, widen your toolset. When all hell breaks loose, the triple-barrel shotgun will probably be an old reliable in my playthrough. And I’m sure I’ll be saving those rare shots I’ll find for this game’s version of the BFG for the toughest fights.

But with Obsidian looking to games like Destiny in terms of reworking gunplay, I think it’s a net-positive for how the game feels on a moment-to-moment basis. There’s an emphasis on better mobility, smarter enemy behavior, and varied enemy types, along with that wider, more creative arsenal. But there’s also no more level scaling, and so there’s been more consideration in how difficulty works in The Outer Worlds 2 with tiered enemies and static levels for encounters across the game, letting encounters be designed with more intent, especially with where the designers will funnel players and create friction.

The more intimate details of level design excite me, and seeing interiors like the Zyranium Lab be noticeably bigger and intricate with multiple paths has me thinking about the gameplay possibilities. But its large open zones are also a key point in this sequel. I’ve said in previous coverage that bigger doesn’t always mean better, and Obsidian is aware of that. So, The Outer Worlds 2 has an emphasis on density and rewarding players who poke around its areas with more side stories and useful loot in a way that the first game didn’t. Points of interest out in the distance are built intentionally and are said to be placed for a reason and draw players to those locations and discover quests off the beaten path. This is all based on a brief walkthrough of Golden Ridge, which is the only open zone I saw, and it does seem like there’s a lot more going on at the ground level. And I hope that this design philosophy extends to the rest of The Outer Worlds 2's open regions.

Finally, Obsidian wasn’t ready to share many details on story or companions, but game director Brandon Adler hinted at a world-changing event happening early on when landing on Golden Ridge, and that being indicative of the types of narrative swings they’re going for. Creative director Leonard Boyarsky, who was one of the original Fallout developers, spoke to how the team is thinking about The Outer Worlds 2’s story. He mentioned being sharper with its humorous tone while going deeper on its commentary about how corporations, and those in power, will exert and abuse their power on those seen below them. It seems a major factor in conveying these themes will be through factions – The Protectorate, The Order of the Ascendant, and Auntie’s Choice (a merger between Auntie Cleo and Spacer’s Choice from the first game). While companions are optional, it appears they’ll be an important lens through which you navigate and understand the world. Boyarsky also emphasized the intention of making a story that can stand the test of time with its dissection of the human condition, rather than directly reflect the times in which it was made – and that’s largely been the philosophy that guided the old Fallout games, including New Vegas.

Overall, I get the impression that Obsidian is trying to avoid homogeneity in its gameplay systems, and build worlds with questlines and encounters that tease out the varied options you have this time around. You can have complex and creative systems to toy with, but ultimately, it’s a means for engaging with the captivating stories tucked within where we have a distinct role to play. If the original Outer Worlds was Obsidian building the framework, my hope is that this sequel is the series reaching its full potential. And that’s something we’ll have to see when The Outer Worlds 2 comes out later this year.