Stonemaier Games has an all-star lineup, including titles such as Wingspan, Scythe, and Viticulture. Vantage is the publisher’s latest hotly anticipated release, and it’s the culmination of eight years of work from studio head Jamey Stegmaier. It’s a game full of secrets and exploration, capturing some of the same vibes as mystery box series like Lost and Scavenger’s Reign. It also just may be Stonemaier’s most revelatory game yet.

Vantage begins with a simple premise. Players take on the role of crew members of an intergalactic spaceship en route to an uncharted planet. Before landing on the destination, something goes wrong, and everyone bails in isolated escapade pods. You are now hurtling towards this heretofore unexplored world with zero understanding of what you will find.

That’s the setup. While each player receives an individual named character with a specialty, there's no lengthy backstory. You don’t even know what organization, government, or coalition you work for. Beyond a relatively light ruleset, you know nothing.

This is the mystique of Vantage. It’s an open-world exploration board game built atop the bones of video games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Subnautica. This style of board game isn’t novel. There have been some popular entries in recent years, including the fantastic Sleeping Gods and 7th Continent. But those other tabletop games are based on a foundation of historical reality with a fictional layer on top. Vantage turns this idea on its head, providing no footing for understanding or tradition. Everything is weird and unusual, sometimes bearing a resemblance to what we know, but even then, this is often used as a device to subvert expectations.

Each player arrives on the planet at a randomized location. You are lost, like detritus heaved into the wind and violently scattered across a foreign body. Your position, and the conduit for the bulk of interaction, is the location card. This large rectangular card depicts your current perspective in the first person. This is your vantage.

Each card lists a half-dozen actions, each mapped to a separate skill. These categories are broad in application, with titles such as “take”, “look”, and “help”. They are denoted by colors, with the specific use of each category given a name corresponding to the circumstances you’re currently in.

This means the location card will often list a separate colored action for each of the six categories. For example, the overpower action may be displayed as a red “steal” on the card, while the blue move could be listed as “chase”. This is where the game is murky, requiring players to lean on intuition by studying the card’s artwork and trying to infer a sense of context.

After selecting the action you want to perform, another player picks up the narrative booklet of the same color and flips to the entry with the same number as your location card. Each action type has its own bespoke book of story entries, making for a massive amount of content on the whole.

Each action type has its own bespoke book of story entries, making for a massive amount of content on the whole.

The story entries list a difficulty and a brief description of what you are trying to do. So the steal example above could be: 4 – steal the satchel laying next to the sleeping sentient. Tests in this game are straightforward. You roll a handful of dice equal to the difficulty of the action, and then either lose health, stamina, or morale based on the roll. Some dice results avoid losing any vital signs, and are typically the best possible outcome.

Cleverly, your character – as well as other cards you may have attained on your journey, such as items or other followers – may store rolled dice so you don’t have to suffer the consequence. Other players may even absorb some of these dice depending on their abilities, effectively representing support or encouragement. This is the main throughline of the system, performing actions and then eating the results while hopefully maintaining enough mental and physical integrity to keep the adventure going. The more tools and followers you can amass during the journey, the more complex your system of mitigation becomes allowing for more interesting abilities and effects.

Crucially, you never fail an action in Vantage. Every test automatically succeeds, with the tension residing completely around the cost. If any of your three core stats is lowered to zero, whether as the result of a roll or triggered effect, the mission immediately ends. The action system is also where the core frustrations may arise. The fuzzy context regarding descriptors, such as what “steal” actually means, and not knowing how many dice will be rolled prior to the selection, can feel too unpredictable. This approach folds into the central philosophy of discovery quite neatly, but it’s not a particularly strategic system and can sometimes take you by surprise. This can lead to abrupt endings that are unsatisfying.

One of Vantage’s most compelling details is the mission. You are assigned a random goal at the outset of play that the whole group must work towards. This could be something like “attain two artifacts” or “build a home”. These are invented to avoid spoiling content, but the actual missions parallel this methodology. In pursuing your goal, you may also come across a destiny. Destinies are organically discovered objectives which can be pursued in tandem with your mission. They’re more impactful emotionally, as they arise naturally through play and often flow from actions. As a device to spur creative dynamic interest, they’re superb.

While I don't view the murkiness of Vantage’s action system as a substantial flaw, I do have a more critical view of the destiny and mission structure. Mostly, this system is problematic in conjunction with the unique format of multiplayer play. Since each player is scattered in an unknown land, sessions can often feel as though several characters are playing their own separate games. This leads to slow progress, uneven investment, and a finish that can be unsatisfying. In one session, a player was pursuing a series of odd developments and weird discoveries. They were learning a mysterious craft and building a life for themselves on the planet. Meanwhile, another player on a completely separate side of the world accomplished our goal and triggered the end game. The first player was never able to pursue their own interests and felt as though they were not linked to the greater story at all.

Vantage tries to correct for this. It allows you to keep playing if you’d like, but this rarely feels satisfying. Should we all have sat by, spending another hour or so wandering around while we waited for the other player to reach the conclusion of their own goals? It’s not a great position to be in.

The isolated positioning of players works much better when pursuing a destiny or mission that can be accomplished in pieces. Occasionally, narrative will align perfectly with players calling out landmarks they're near and trying to orient themselves. Sometimes you have to work together across massive distances. When this occurs it’s magical. Everything feels right and Vantage is hitting its peak. These moments, however, emerge unpredictably. This is why the game works much more reliably with lower player counts, or even as a solo board game. With no downtime, the tempo just hums along and the exploration is wholly immersive.

Beyond the unique approach of scattered perspectives and its quirky take on mission objectives, Vantage’s real innovation is in how it approaches discovery. Most games of this ilk are campaign board games that ask you to commit to a scenario and play it over a handful of sessions. Vantage shoves its gameplay into a single two- or three-hour engagement. Although, that’s not the whole story.

While a game begins and wraps in a single session, the true experience of Vantage is one of extended play. The knowledge you gain is the primary achievement and what you take with you. In future sessions you'll learn more about the world, various key locations, and the mysterious nature of “the traveler” who continually reaches out to you. It’s a single-session game on the surface, with a campaign format smuggled in. This is frankly brilliant. Much of this rides on the sheer amount of content offered and the compelling nature of discovering it. The things you will find are wild and powerful, often impressing beyond expectation.

It’s a single-session game on the surface, with a campaign format smuggled in. This is frankly brilliant.

This box will stand up to dozens and dozens of hours of play. There are hundreds of locations and hundreds of items and characters and creatures to discover. Every time you arrive at a location you can only trigger a single action. You cannot engage in a second action on that card in the same session. This is artificial, but it highlights how every single set-piece has multiple things to discover. Returning to previously seen spots yields new revelations.

This is subtle, but perhaps the design’s strongest mechanical trick. One of the weaknesses of games like 7th Continent is that you must retread previously broken ground. Many locations in that game lose their wonder and spontaneity upon repeated play. Vantage overcomes that problem by presenting richer locations, as well as mission objectives that can be accomplished in many different ways. It’s structurally very different to locate two artifacts on a planet that holds dozens, than it is to locate a temple at a specific location.

All of this ties in with the core motif of creativity. The rulebook explicitly suggests you may bring your own personal goals into a session and even forego the assigned mission. The nature of play reinforces this as well, as the outcome of any particular objective is a sparse section of text lacking fanfare. Vantage is about the journey and your agency in shaping it. This cuts right to the spirit of the design, highlighting that the central experience is yours, and yours alone. Make of Vantage what you will. What I make of Vantage is that it’s one of the best games of 2025.

Where to Buy

• Get it at Stonemaier Games
• Get it at Miniature Market
• Get it at GameNerdz

Swedish hardware manufacturer Fractal Design is best known for its elegant computer cases, so I was fascinated to find that its debut headset – the Fractal Scape – maintains the company's refined design language. Understated and eye-catching in equal measure, the Fractal Scape may be the most visually appealing gaming headset I've ever seen thus far. And more importantly, it's super comfortable, sounds great, and sports plenty of features that make it well worth adding to your gaming setup.

Fractal Scape – Design and Comfort

From a design perspective, the Fractal Scape is a stunner. Without the detachable boom mic attached to the headset, this bad boy could pass as a luxury set of cans akin to Apple's AirPods Max or Bose's QuietComfort Ultra. This is particularly true of the Light variation, which is striking with its gentle matte gray finish, clean metal alloy accents, and earpad and headband fabric in a delightful silver-ish tone. Meanwhile, the Dark option trades those swanky vibes for something more traditionally sleek with its all-black aesthetic. Both are gorgeous in their own right, so it's a matter of taste as to which suits your setup better.

Tucked away between the earcups and earpads, the Fractal Scape's optional RGB accents are purposefully subtle. They feel just exposed enough to let you dial in a slight "gamer" ambience without the excessive flashiness of headsets that often feel designed to prove you're Gaming with a capital G. These lights can be extensively customized using the Adjust Pro software (more on that later), or you can just opt to turn them off entirely at any time with the simple touch of a button.

Luckily, all of these good looks don't come at the expense of wearability. Though I initially worried the fairly snug fit might lead to issues during prolonged use, I've found the soft memory foam padding on the earcups and headband has kept me from experiencing any fatigue or discomfort over long sessions. And the Fractal Scape's cozy woven fabric has been breathable enough that my ears never get hot, either.

One of the coolest features of the Fractal Scape is its wireless charging dock, which holds the headset in a standing position via a magnetic connection. While you can still charge the headset separately with a USB-C cable, the dock makes it easy to display it like a piece of decor on an entertainment center or table. The headset can also automatically power on and off when taking it from or placing it onto the charging dock, respectively. It may not sound like a big deal, but this kind of convenience goes a long way.

Additionally, you can plug the dongle into the dock, then run a wire from the dock to the USB port on your PC or console. By doing this, you can put some distance between the dongle and other nearby devices that may cause interference. And I'd recommend doing so, as my headset would sometimes randomly lose connection to the dongle while plugged into a USB-A port on my consoles. Updating the firmware reduced the frequency of disconnects, but only inserting the dongle into the charging dock and placing it away from my other devices and in a clear path to the headset eliminated the issue entirely.

You can swap from the 2.4GHz wireless mode to Bluetooth 5.3 using a toggle on the left earcup, letting you bounce between multiple devices with ease – though it's worth noting that the headset doesn't support the two simultaneously, so you won't be able to answer a phone call while still hearing your game. Meanwhile, the omission of a 3.5mm jack means you're limited to using a USB-C cable for a wired connection on the Fractal Scape. This doesn't phase me as someone all-in on the wireless world, but more options are never a bad thing, so I hope Fractal reconsiders adding a jack on any future iterations of the headset.

Fractal Scape – Software and Battery Life

Adjust Pro, Fractal's web-only software, lets you customize and save up to three EQ presets, which you can then cycle through using the EQ button on the headset. It also gives you an impressive amount of customization over the RGB lighting with a combination of colors, effects, speeds, and more. It's nice that these changes are flashed to the headset immediately so that you can start using your settings with no extra hassle.

The Fractal Scape promises a reasonable battery life of 40 hours, but I'm happy to report I've been getting closer to 50 hours out of it from a full charge. Opting to use the RGB features can cut that down to just a little over 20 hours, however, which is a substantial reduction for a payoff that you can't even see while using the headset anyway. I'd recommend ditching the flashy stuff and keeping things basic for the extra runtime – and to be fair, I'm not really an RGB kind of guy to begin with. Do what makes you happy, but know there’s a trade-off.

Fractal Scape – Sound Quality and Microphone

I wouldn’t consider myself an audio snob, but it's impossible not to tell the difference between the bass-heavy sound profile of many gaming headsets and the wide, clear audio output of the Fractal Scape. It makes sense that its contemporaries chase those lower frequencies for immersion in a medium often filled with loud explosions and deep, rumbling scores, but sacrificing mids and highs can leave their soundstages a bit muddy at times. With its 40mm audio drivers, the Fractal Scape focuses on providing fine-tuned balance and clarity across all frequencies, and I love it for that.

Make no mistake, the Fractal Shape still serves up plenty of bass, ensuring that combat in a game like Doom: The Dark Ages feels rightly impactful. But giving mids and highs some room to breathe allows you to hear dialogue and important audio cues much more clearly. Most notably, when combined with the headset's top-notch spatial audio, I found pinpointing enemy footsteps and gunshots in competitive games significantly easier than with most headsets in my arsenal.

The Fractal Shape's super wideband boom mic covers frequencies between 50Hz and 16kHz, with the latter reaching the upper limits of human hearing. This means that, unlike average headset mics that compress your voice output and make you sound a bit muffled, the Fractal Shape's mic highlights the dynamics of your voice far better. As such, you come through nice and bright to whoever is listening on the other end.

I'm a big baby who finds boom mics inherently irritating, though, so I love that the Fractal Scape also has a built-in omnidirectional mic. There's a moderate drop in overall quality when comparing it directly with the boom mic's unidirectional design, which helps reduce background noise, but none of my friends minded when I swapped between the two during our gaming sessions. That being said, my home tends to stay very quiet, so your pals may appreciate you using the boom mic if you're gaming in a noisier environment.

Billy Givens is a freelancer at IGN with over a decade of experience writing gaming, film, and tech content. You'll find him blabbering on about video games and more on Twitter at @mektige.

I am a long-time fan of Capcom’s Street Fighter series, having hurled my first Hadouken all the way back on the Super Nintendo with Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and have loved the fighters ever since. These days, folks are mostly playing Street Fighter 6, but I've been dabbling back with its predecessor. Instead of pressing buttons and inputting directions on my controller’s D-pad, I've been playing cards and rolling dice with Kess Entertainment’s Street Fighter V: Champion Edition - Legends board game. While I may have had a fine enough time with it, it always felt more in line with another of Capcom’s series than it did with the one-on-one brawler that is Street Fighter.

Street Fighter V Legends is a cooperative board game in which one to four players work together to take down one of the heads of the evil Shadaloo organization, led by the evil M. Bison. Among them are Bison himself, Balrog, Vega, and Sagat. Each player selects a character to play as from the roster of the original eight world warriors: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Dhalsim, Blanka, E. Honda, or Zangief, with each character bringing their unique attacks that fans of the video games will instantly recognize.

With your character selected, you then get to choose a deck of cards that represents your fighting style – one of my favorite aspects of the game. In Street Fighter, the actions you can take on your turn are based on cards that you draw and play from these respective decks of cards, with each deck tailored to different strategies and named after common terms in the fighting game communities that have built up around the video games.

Take, for instance, the “Shoto” deck, which has more projectile cards, as though you are spamming Ryu or Ken’s Hadoukens. Or there's the Rushdown deck, which is more about maneuvering around opponents and hitting them hard with attacks like the Cross Up.

With your character selected, you then choose a deck of cards that represents your fighting style – one of my favorite aspects of the game.

On each turn, players place down and activate two of these cards from their hands, rolling dice to dish out damage, and with each card adding various resources to their available pool, which can then be spent to use their character’s special abilities. These resources include punches, kicks, and my personal favorite, joysticks. The six included decks offer some sense of asymmetry to how a character can play. I wish this was pushed a little farther to highlight further the different playstyles used in competitions, but their inclusion is still a neat easter egg that I appreciate.

Games of Street Fighter V take place in one of four possible stages that you build from poster-board tiles that come with the game. Each stage has some unique rules that go with it, as well. It would be too easy if the big bad were out from the get-go for you and your friends to take out. Instead, you need to prove yourself first and get strong by taking out various minions that spawn on the board, or fighting your rival (an AI-controlled Street Fighter character assigned to each player at the start of the game). Taking out these enemies earns you EX bars that can be used to upgrade your character's abilities, putting you in a better spot for when the Nemesis boss character appears.

Bison, Balrog, Sagat, and Vega – the Nemesis characters – each have their own set of abilities that are triggered depending on what is pulled from the Nemesis deck, which also determines where new minions spawn. Once you and your team manage to deal enough damage to knock out the nemesis, you win – but if even one of your team is taken out, then it’s game over. The general flow of the game is pretty simple, and by the second or third turn through, everyone I played with had a good grasp on how the game worked, and things went pretty quickly.

Moving my character around, hurling fireballs, and beating up minions was fun, which caused my friends and me to, on more than one occasion, yell out the signature moves as we performed them. The lack of enemy variety is a bit of a bummer, with only three minion factions to pick from, each with only two options. That means you will quickly run out of new enemies to fight against, made worse by the fact that each game only has you go up against one of the three factions.

Maps aren’t overly large, which is nice. It's never a hassle to get to the various objectives or wherever you want to go, and the additional few “Hard” Nemesis cards you can mix into the deck do increase the challenge, but I wouldn’t turn down more offerings or tweaks to increase the difficulty or complexity of the game. If you are just looking for a game to beat up thugs with your friends, Street Fighter is fine enough now and then.

I have played a good number of board game adaptations of popular video games, from Resident Evil to Slay the Spire, and even ones like Guilty Gear Strive that are also based on a fighting game. But Street Fighter V: Champion Edition - Legends feels the most disjointed and confused as to what it wants to be. Looking at just the gameplay, the concept of running around with your friends, taking out small minions before tackling the stage’s boss is far more in line with, say, Capcom’s Final Fight series of beat-’em-ups. A series, mind you, whose characters have made the jump into Street Fighter previously, such as the ninja Guy. But Street Fighter has always been about duking it out with your friend in a 1v1 fight, and by making this a strictly cooperative game, both of those core components of the game are missing.

This disparity includes even those little easter eggs that I mentioned, like the various fight style decks and joystick resource on the cards. These little nods will be appreciated most by members of the fighting game community and glossed over by others who would appreciate this game more for what it is, rather than the package we got that honestly feels like it simply got the Street Fighter V property slapped on top of a different game and called it a day.

Where to Buy

• Get it at Amazon
• Get it at Walmart

Hulu is shaking up its schedule for Futurama Season 13 when it premieres September 15, 2025.

As reported by Variety, the switch-up will see the classic sci-fi comedy show change its release plan from weekly episode drops to an all-in-one launch, allowing viewers to binge the entire season in one day if they choose. That means all of Season 13’s 10 episodes will be available to watch at 5 p.m. PT / 8 p.m. ET when that September release date arrives for Hulu subscribers.

That release date is still a few months away, but if you just can't wait to see more, you can check out a few first-look images shared by Variety below.

Hulu released a description for Futurama Season 13: “Bender is rampaging out of control! A volcano is about to explode! Fry confronts a rival for Leela’s love! And Dr. Zoidberg is rising up to heaven?! The excitement might be too much! You’ve been warned… it’s an all new season of Futurama!”

Futurama’s history on TV has been a bit complicated. It first aired on Fox in the late ‘90s before bouncing over to Comedy Central in 2010. Fans continued to tune in to see characters like Fry, Bender, Leele, and more before it was finally canceled there in 2013. David X. Cohen and Matt Groening’s popular animated show remained in cryosleep for nearly 10 years before Hulu finally cracked open its plans for Futurama Season 11 in 2022.

It's a revival strategy that’s panned out, with Hulu reporting via Nielsen that Futurama landed among the top 10 streaming originals in 2024. The release schedule shake up will mark yet another change for the long-running series when all episodes arrive on one day, though it is worth noting that FXX is still set to slowly roll out Season 13 with two episodes a week starting September 15.

Futurama Season 13 will continue Hulu’s revival efforts, with Season 14 set to push Fry and company even further in 2026. For more, you can read our 6/10 Futurama Season 11/revival review and our 5/10 Season 12 review.

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 Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman has discussed his surprising comment that suggested lead actor Pedro Pascal had been cast as Reed Richards in order to portray someone who ends up "leading the Avengers".

Shakman's description raised eyebrows last week, not least because it appeared to highlight the importance of Pascal's character in Avengers: Doomsday, a movie cloaked in secrecy that's still 18 months away, while Pascal's version of Richards is yet to make his debut.

Now, speaking with IGN, Shakman has sought to clarify his comments — which he insisted "the internet has run with" and "misinterpreted". Instead, the future of Reed Richards in the MCU is something for the Russo brothers, the directing duo behind Avengers: Doomsday, to reveal.

For context, here's what Shakman said of casting Reed Richards previously, in conversation with Variety.

"He goes from being the nerdy scientist who's locked away in the lab, to the husband and the father who'd do anything to protect his family, to the guy who's leading the Avengers. I realized that the version we were building had to have all of those elements."

Asked for more detail on how Reed Richards would undergo that transformation from scientist to multiverse defender, here's what Shakman said, reproduced in full:

"Well, I can't speak too much about Doomsday," he began. "And the idea of him as the leader of the Avengers in Doomsday was something that the internet has run with and is actually they misinterpreted something I said. I was actually talking about Reed Richards in the comics and how different he can be from issue to issue and from run to run, and that sometimes he is that cerebral scientist locked away in the lab trying to solve everything. Sometimes he's leading the Avengers and running off and trying to save the day. Sometimes there's an emphasis on him as a family man.

"So I needed him to encompass all of those things," he continued, "a leader who's willing to jump into the fray, a person who's in the lab trying to solve everything, and a devoted husband and father and best friend and family member, right? And so for me, it was talking about how I went about finding the best actor for that part and finding Pedro Pascal to play someone... An actor who could do all of those things really. So where Reed Richards goes in the Avengers: Doomsday is for the Russo brothers to tell you."

It's an intriguing response from Shakman, and one that certainly seems to walk back the idea of Reed Richards already being set to be crowned leader of the Avengers within the MCU.

That said, while the character certainly has been a part of the Avengers in the comics, he's not a character well-known for leading the whole team. And in both quotes from Shakman, originally and now, there's the confirmation that Pascal was cast as someone who could indeed step up as Avengers lead, should the need arrive.

And then there's the confirmation that, for anything Avengers: Doomsday related, Shakman defers to the directors of that film. Of course the Russo brothers will be the ones to discuss the characters in their film, just as Shakman is here. But perhaps Shakman has already said too much?

The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens in theaters this Friday, July 25, 2025. Avengers: Doomsday then picks up the team's story as they join the fight against Doctor Doom, from December 18, 2026.

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

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

Dell and Alienware Coupons

Alienware Gaming PC Deals

Alienware Gaming Laptop Deals

You can quickly browse through all of the listed products on sale above. See below for our favorite picks.

Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 5080 Gaming PC

Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 5070 Ti Gaming PC

Alienware Area-51 RTX 5090 Gaming PC

New Alienware Aurora 16 Laptop

New Alienware Aurora 16X Laptop

Area-51 Gaming Laptops: New Style, More Power, Better Cooling

New for 2025, the Alienware Area-51 gaming laptop features a magnesium alloy chassis with upgraded cooling to tackle the latest and greatest heat generating components. This includes more fans and bigger cutouts enabling greater airflow, more generous use of copper, and a new thermal interface material to better transfer heat away from the core components. Dell claims that the laptop can handle a higher power ceiling of up to 240W TDP without raising acoustics.

Design-wise, the Area 51 accentuates its smooth contours, with rounded edges and soft corners replacing the squared off design you'd see in most other laptops. The hinges are also mostly internally positioned so that they're near invisible. As befits an Alienware laptop, there are ample customization options for RGB LED lighting.

Why pick a Dell or Alienware gaming PC?

If you're in the market for a prebuilt gaming PC, Dell is one of best gaming brands we'd recommend. The Alienware gaming desktops offer a staggering array of options, all built into a custom chassis that's both easy on the eyes and easy on the wallet. Alienware gaming laptops in recent years have been redesigned to be thinner and lighter while still offering the same immense power under the hood. Consistent build quality, available inventory, frequent sales, and solid customer service are the main reasons why Dell is at the top of our buying list for gaming laptops and PCs.

Some other resources you might be interested in:

• Best gaming laptop deals of 2024
• Best gaming PC deals of 2024

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

We already knew that Daredevil star Charlie Cox feels like a "total fraud" anytime someone gushes to him about one of this year's biggest games, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but now the voice of Gustave is determined: "I wanna play the game."

Cox, who plays party member Gustave, is among Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s star-studded cast, which also includes Jennifer English as Maelle, Ben Starr as Verso, and Andy Serkis as Renoir. But as his actual work on the game only amounted to a single four-hour recording session, Cox admits he didn't really know what he was getting into, saying games have "come a long way" since the last time he played, and yet he still doesn't own the game, let alone a console to play it on.

"I remember being in the studio and thinking, 'This is beautiful, the visuals are extraordinary,'" Cox said in a Q&A during GalaxyCon (thanks, GamesRadar+). "They've come a long way since Mario 64, which is probably the last computer game I played."

"I wanna play the game I need to play the game. I need to get a console first. I feel like a fraud because I just did the voice. But it's so cool, I'm so happy for these guys. They're not like, a big company that makes a ton of games. And I hear it's a frontrunner to win game of the year, it's really cool."

In IGN's 9/10 review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, we described it as a "modern RPG classic," adding: "In so many ways, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 reminded me of numerous classic and contemporary RPGs I love, but developer Sandfall truly understood why those games are special and made the pieces it borrowed its own." If that's convinced you to give it a go, be sure to check out our tips for the important things to know before going into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

The cast of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 stopped by IGN Live last month to not only discuss the beloved new game, but also to exclusively premiere an over 10-minute look at the game's making-of documentary. It comes after the team was congratulated for their success by the French President Emmanuel Macron himself.

Photo by John Nacion/WireImage.

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

Predator: Badlands’ new trailer shows off much more of the movie, reveals even more connections to the Alien franchise, and even teases a big mech fight.

Dan Trachtenberg, who directed Prey and this year’s well-received animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers, will continue the Predator (and Alien) resurgence with Predator: Badlands, due out November 7.

In the trailer, we see Elle Fanning’s surprisingly chirpy Thia strike up an alliance with Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi’s young Predator, outcast from his clan. We see Thia (at least, we think this is Thia), rebooted after what looks like a fight with some sort of monster. Thia is a Weyland-Yutani synth from the nefarious company’s bio-weapons division, and we later see her make mincemeat out of an alien foe.

The problem is, Thia has been cut in half, and must be carried by the Yautja as he seeks out what is described as "a creature that can’t be killed" and "the definitive apex predator" (is it a xenomorph?!).

There’s plenty of action here and, in the final shot, another Alien reference as a mech makes a dramatic entrance to fight a giant monster (Aliens Power Loader, anyone?). Thia teases this mech's introduction by saying: "We might not be alone in this hunt." Who is she talking about? Who is piloting the mech?

The new Predator is called Dek, an underdog Yautja “runt” in the protagonist role. Predator movies typically feature Yautja (the name given to the race of alien hunters) in antagonist roles. Dek selects his hunting ground, a “Death Planet” called Kalisk, and it’s here he fights to prove his worth to his father and for acceptance within his own clan. In the trailer we hear Dek speak, insisting he’s not the prey here (it looks like he is, at least for a time).

Trachtenberg has said the on-screen relationship between Dek and Fanning’s character was inspired by 2005 PlayStation masterpiece Shadow of the Colossus.

“As inspired as I am by movies, I’ve been very inspired by video games [like] Shadow of the Colossus, where you have a protagonist paired with someone else who provides color and connection,” Trachtenberg explained.

“There’s a thing with a horse in Shadow of the Colossus that’s devastating when you play the game. And so [Predator: Badlands] was a little bit inspired by that in terms of wanting to see the Predator with someone else, this character who’s the opposite of him. He’s very laconic, [Fanning] is not. She’s capable in ways that he is not. Physically, she’s got a real thing that I’m so excited for you guys to see. But I want to let eventually some of that speak for itself.”

There are a number of other Alien references in the Predator: Badlands trailer, as well in the recently released animated film Predator: Killer of Killers, which had sparked speculation Trachtenberg is setting up Aliens vs. Predator 3. Trachtenberg was, as you’d expect, tight-lipped on those Alien connections and Fanning’s character’s nature. “There’s a unique hook to her character that is exciting in the pairing of [her and Dek],” Trachtenberg teased.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

For most PC gamers, buying a prebuilt gaming rig is far more attractive than it used to be. Years ago it was inarguably cheaper to build your own gaming PC than to buy a boutique gaming rig. That's not the case anymore. It's not uncommon for major brands like Alienware, HP, and Lenovo to offer quality pre-built PCs for cheaper than the cost of building your own PC with the exact same specs.

If you're looking to save on a build, there are still some deals available even after big summer sale events like Amazon Prime Day or Alienware's Black Friday in July event. We've compiled a list of the best current gaming PC deals, both from the manufacturers themselves like Dell (Alienware), HP, and Lenovo, as well as from reliable third-party retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. This includes an excellent deal on an Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 5070 gaming PC (16GB/1TB) for $1,649.99. Check out more of our favorite gaming PC deals at the moment below.

The Best Gaming PC Deals

More Dell and Alienware Gaming PC Deals

If you're in the market for a prebuilt gaming PC, Dell is one of the brands we'd recommend. The company's Alienware gaming desktops offer a staggering array of options, all built into a custom chassis. Consistent build quality, available inventory, frequent sales, and solid customer service are the main reasons why Dell is at the top of our buying list.

More HP Gaming PC Deals

Of the big three OEM PC manufacturers, HP usually offers the lowest price on equivalently configured items. HP carries several different models of gaming PCs depending on how much power you need. At the upper end of the scale, the HP OMEN 45L offers a massive tower chassis with space for up to a 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler as well as a total of four additional 120mm case fans for ventilation. On the other end of the scale, the HP Victus, Envy, and OMEN 25L gaming PCs feature understated aesthetics and a bargain price point. These PCs can still be configured into formidable gaming rigs.

More Lenovo Gaming PC Deals

Lenovo Legion gaming PCs may be the priciest of the big three OEM manufacturers, but they are also generally the highest praised among gamers and reviewers alike. The Legion gaming PCs are highly rated for their build quality. People like the fact that Lenovo does not use proprietary components in their rigs, so they're much easier to upgrade with easily obtainable, off-the-shelf components compared to some other popular prebuilt PC brands. Lenovo gaming rigs generally also utilize solid cooling, especially for the CPU, even if you opt for the base models.

Legion Tower 5 Gen 10 30L (AMD) with RTX 5070 (32GB/1TB)

It’s no secret that Superman’s box office is soft internationally, at least compared to its big success domestically. So why is the movie performing better in North America? James Gunn has a number of theories.

Superman topped the global box office once again in weekend two with $102.45 million ($57.3 million domestic / $45.2 million international) and now has an impressive global total to date of $406.8 million. $236 million of that total has come from North American theaters, which means the international haul is lagging behind with $171 million.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gunn acknowledged the difference in performance, but expressed positivity around the international figures. As for why Superman is trending this way, Gunn said Superman simply isn’t as big of a superhero character globally as, say, Batman is, but he also pointed to another crucial factor: international sentiment on the U.S.

“We’re definitely performing better domestically than we are internationally, but internationally is also rising and having really good weekday numbers in the same way we are,” Gunn said.

“So obviously the word of mouth is very positive both here and everywhere else. Which is the thing that we needed to do the most. At the same time, there are certain countries in which it’s really performing well. Brazil and the UK.

“Superman is not a known commodity in some places. He is not a big known superhero in some places like Batman is. That affects things. And it also affects things that we have a certain amount of anti-American sentiment around the world right now. It isn’t really helping us.”

Gunn didn’t mention specifics, but it’s hard to read his comments and not think of things like Trump’s policies on things like tariffs and border control. In April, the Trump administration’s high-profile deportations and detentions at the border were predicted to cause the U.S.’s travel and tourism industry to miss out on billions of dollars this year.

“The way we are perceived globally is we are blowing up not just our economy but everyone else’s economy,” Jackie Filla, president of the Hotel Association of Los Angeles, told the LA Times at the time. “People don’t think it’s good, they don’t think it’s fair, so why would they go to America?”

For Superman, however, Gunn is bullish.

“So I think it’s just a matter of letting something grow,” he said of the international performance. “But again, for us, everything’s been a total win. Having the movie come out and be something that has been embraced by people everywhere — this is just the seed of the tree that Peter [Safran, DC Studios co-CEO] and I have been watering for the past three years. So to be able to have it start off so positively has been incredibly overwhelming.”

For his part, Gunn has said rumors surrounding exactly how much money Superman needs to make in order to be considered successful are wide of the mark. In a profile of Superman actor David Corenswet published on GQ, Gunn downplayed the box office pressure on the movie. “This is not the riskiest endeavor in the world,” Gunn said.

Gunn then called the $700 million figure that had been touted online as the minimum Superman needs to make during its theatrical run to avoid flop status as “just complete and utter nonsense,” but admitted there is of course some pressure on the movie to deliver for Warner Bros.

“Is there something riding on it? Yeah, but it’s not as big as people make it out to be,” Gunn said. “They hear these numbers that the movie’s only going to be successful if it makes 700 million or something and it’s just complete and utter nonsense. It doesn’t need to be as big of a situation as people are saying.”

We likely won’t get an accurate picture of Superman’s performance until Warner Bros. boss David Zaslav has his say during a financial call, but it’s easy to see why there’s more box office pressure on Superman than your average superhero film.

It is, after all, kickstarting Gunn and fellow DC Studios CEO Peter Safran’s rebooted DCU, which already has a number of eye-catching follow-ups in the works. For example, Superman leads into the events of HBO Max series Peacemaker Season 2. Then, next year, the DCU continues on the big screen with Supergirl starring Milly Alcock, and Clayface starring Tom Rhys Harries. If Superman flops, it will call into question the viability of everything that follows.

Check out IGN’s Superman review to find out what we think of the film, and then head over to our Superman Ending and Post-Credits Explained to find out what it all means.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The long-running Hunter x Hunter series recently received a new video game adaptation with Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact. With a beloved brand and a notable fighting game developer on board, you might hope this would go off without a hitch.

Yet in the days since launch, Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact has been the subject of discourse and criticism within the fighting game community. Its gameplay hearkens back to the kind of scrappy, seemingly overpowered bouts many enjoy in this particular environment, but several issues have been holding Nen x Impact back; namely, the netcode.

Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact is a tag-team fighting game that went live five days ago on July 16 and, at the time of writing, has a little over 140 total reviews on Steam. While the ratio of positive-to-negative reviews favors the former, it's at a roughly 2:1 ratio, leaving Nen x Impact at an overall "Mixed."

Multiple reviews, even the positive ones, note issues specifically with the netcode. While there are issues taken with a slim single-player offering and other points, netcode is a primary concern.

On the flip-side, the majority in positive reviews do enjoy the fighting quite a bit. "I can't help it man, its my favorite fighting game ever. nothing else comes close in terms of how freeform you can be, how explosive it is, how impressive it feels and looks to do well," one reviewer wrote.

netcode broke https://t.co/ukuyS7K9Ep pic.twitter.com/J6NDWuJEzP

— Broskі (@broskiFGC) July 15, 2025

Within the broader fighting game community, Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact is receiving similar criticism. Even those who have been eager to play and compete, who see the potential in Nen x Impact, are hitting a wall with its online play.

Nen impact has some 2011 netcode lol what is this

— dekillsage (@dekillsage) July 15, 2025

just to clarify i still really like the core gameplay of nen impact, had a lot of fun labbing stuff, but the netcode constantly fluctuates 3-6f of rollback even against people close to you, it doesnt work right and i dont think its a good consumer product as of the current patch

— Broskі (@broskiFGC) July 15, 2025

It's honestly a shame, because Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact does have some incredible potential. It's based on Hunter x Hunter, for one thing; an anime series that has a wide cast of characters, each with their own unique powers that could make for a rich environment of playstyles and designs. Seeing Biscuit Krueger, Hisoka, Kurapika, and more face-off is already fun, especially since shonen fighting games can range from stellar to less-than-stellar.

Nen x Impact also inherits a legacy from its developer, Eighting. It's a studio known in fighting game circles for its contributions to the craft, most notably with its work on Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Watch some clips of Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact, and it's not hard to see the MvC3 influence.

ｂ pic.twitter.com/3f7ecEN9TM

— PO1 | ピチカート (@pizzicatokai) July 19, 2025

This should be a match made in Hunter x Hunter heaven. But instead, Nen x Impact has struggled to find a foothold due to online frustrations. It's the kind of issue that is, as fighting game commentator Sajam put it, thankfully an outlier these days, but can still be a major blocker for any game trying to keep an audience. In-person and local competition is still huge for fighting games, but online play has been a core part of keeping a game's community alive and thriving. Bushiroad and Eighting even pushed the original 2024 launch date of Nen x Impact back in order to implement rollback netcode.

The developer published a statement on July 16, confirming both an issue where "excessive rollback frames occur during matches" and one where "matches forcibly terminate due to desynchronization errors." The team confirms it's investigating these issues and is working on a resolution. Meanwhile, the studio is recommending players fight under "a stable and reliable internet connection whenever possible," and will introduce a feature in an upcoming update to view "more detailed information" regarding an opponent's connection quality and region.

The question now is whether these fixes can arrive fast enough, before other games steal the spotlight. The tag fighter genre is starting to get a little crowded, as both Riot's 2XKO and now Arc System Works' Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls loom on the horizon. It would be exciting for MvC3 fans and Hunter x Hunter fans alike to see Eighting get Nen x Impact to a stable place, but it seems like the road there could be longer than some would hope.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Instead of launching with a new 3D Mario game like many expected, Nintendo opted to create the first 3D Donkey Kong game since Donkey Kong 64, marking the first brand-new DK game since 2014. Donkey Kong Bananza stars the fan-favorite Kong naturally, but it also features a young Pauline, who first reappeared in Super Mario Odyssey back in 2017. Together, the two aim to smash their way to the center of the planet, where wishes are supposedly granted.

Donkey Kong Bananza Is Out Now!

Once again, it looks like those internet rumors are proving to be, you guessed it, untrue. Stranger Things creator and showrunner Ross Duffer made it a point to squash the speculation about the runtimes for the upcoming Season 5 episodes that started online.

"Lol not even close to accurate," one half of the Duffer Brothers explained via his Instagram stories, including nothing else in his statement other than the graphic with the fake, elongated runtimes to illustrate his point.

In the original post, which was seen making its way around Twitter recently, it shows most episodes clocking in at two and a half hours or more, with some even hitting beyond three hours — a generally absurd notion for just one episode of a TV series, let alone an entire season. The graphic was faked to look like it came directly from Netflix as well, which was able to fool many fans online for a period of time.

🚨 CODE RED 🚨

THE STRANGER THINGS 5 TEASER IS HERE pic.twitter.com/xklBxyJ11N

— Netflix (@netflix) July 16, 2025

Some of what must have bolstered the rumor is what cast members have previously said about the runtime of the finale episodes. Maya Hawke revealed during an episode of Podcrushed last year that season 5 will be "basically eight movies" with "very long" episodes, while Finn Wolfhard told Collider in January that "not every episode is like a full-blown movie, but there are definitely some episodes this year that the runtime is definitely film-length."

For what it’s worth, Ross Duffer in particular has been vocal about Season 5 lately, taking to social media to also quell audience worries about spoilers for the final season. “Don’t worry about spoilers,” he wrote in an Instagram grid post that included the recent teaser trailer. “This teaser pulls from every episode except 7, but it’s mostly Volume One and just barely scratches the surface.”

Volume One of Stranger Things season 5 premieres on Netflix on November 26.

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

Developer Massive Entertainment and publisher Ubisoft have announced that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the very good 2023 first-person shooter set in the titular world of Pandora, is getting another big update timed to the third anniverary of the game's launch on December 5 (and the release of the third Avatar movie, Fire and Ash, on December 19) that will add an optional third-person perspective mode as well as a New Game+ mode. Watch the new trailer above.

Massive says it has "reworked animations, controls, audio, and camera systems to ensure the experience feels seamless and intuitive" when playing in third-person perspective. Meanwhile, your inventory and skills will persist when making another run through the campaign in New Game+. More powerful gear will be available to put to use against more difficult enemies, and you'll have a new skill tree to work with.

Previous updates since Frontiers of Pandora released have added a 40fps mode for consoles, "The Sky Breaker" and "Secrets of the Spires" story packs, and a revamped Hunter's Guide.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.