I’m deep into my Switch 2 review, and with Mario Kart World and Welcome Tour being the only two first-party exclusives, a big part of that process has been looking back at the upgrades existing games got. We’ve already taken a look at Breath of the Wild, but I spent the weekend revisiting the stunning sequel I reviewed back in 2023. And not only does The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom still hold up as a game I can’t wait to lose a few dozen more hours in, the updates and additions made to the Switch 2 Edition make it feel like this is the way it was always meant to be played.

Before we dive to the depths below, lets look back at what I said about Tears of the Kingdom in my initial review:

That’s just as true today as it was then, and I wouldn’t second guess the 10 I slapped on it in 2023 for a second. Tears of the Kingdom may not have been the completely table-flipping revelation its predecessor was, but the way it expanded both that formula and the world was truly staggering. There’s a ridiculous amount of stuff here, and almost none of it is less than amazing. But what about the changes in the Switch 2 Edition specifically?

HDR is an absolute game changer in the Depths

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping thing that is part of this update is the Switch 2’s ability to take advantage of HDR displays. The increased framerate and resolution are nice enough on their own, but exploring the dark of the Depths with the benefit of HDR is, forgive the pun, a night-and-day difference. Uncharted areas are still pitch black until illuminated, so it’s not like exploration there has been made entirely trivial, but areas with low light are suddenly so much clearer than they used to be. It takes out some of the frustration of stumbling around in the dark without removing the tension.

Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t lag anywhere anymore

Alongside those visual improvements comes improved performance. Tears of the Kingdom was never terrible in this regard, but it did slow down or start to hitch in busy moments from time to time on Switch, and that’s completely gone on Switch 2. Similarly, diving from the sky straight into the Depths could occasionally pause for a quick second to let the world load, but I never once saw that happen on Switch 2.

Building is finally buttery smooth as well, as using your Zonai abilities was another one of the moments you could potentially see things start to chug. Once again, that’s all slick and clean here. These aren’t the most monumental of improvements for an update upgrade that does cost money (if you don’t have the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass), but they make Tears of the Kingdom feel like it has finally reached its final form – and they are helpful enough that I am seriously considering playing a lot more of this game than I initially thought I would have when I decided to revisit it.

Load times are super fast now

Speaking of performance, a special shoutout should go to the load times specifically. They are now ridiculously fast. The loading screen has always had this little animation where your icon blips out on the map, which then scrolls over to your new location, and then you finally blip back in. The Switch 2 Edition load times are so fast you barely even have time to watch the icon vanish before you are back into the action. It rocks.

It shares a lot of its biggest updates with Breath of the Wild

Both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were able to benefit from the Switch 2’s beefed-up hardware to make these technical upgrades, but the two games also share a lot of new integration with the Nintendo phone app. The addition of audio logs that you can find at certain locations and listen to on your phone is a neat touch, as is being able to store and share items in a way that is effectively a massive increase to your inventory size.

Tears gets one unique ability, though: you can save your builds as QR codes and then share them between friends so you can quickly reconstruct each other’s stuff. That’s a cool idea, but I was a little disappointed that it lacks any sort of built-in sharing or discovery tools to go with it. If you want to see what other people have made, you pretty much have to seek codes out on forums or social media, and I think more likely I just won’t get much use out of this function at all as a result.

Now is the time to actually beat Tears of the Kingdom

Finally, while not specifically relevant to the updated version of this game, a quick PSA/desperate plea from me: please beat Tears of the Kingdom if you haven’t already! The ending is so good. If you beat Breath of the Wild, its okay ending might make you think there’s similarly not much to see here – but the end of Tears is genuinely incredible. The final fight is possibly my favorite in any Zelda game, and the places its story goes are as unexpected as they are awesome. With all these improvements, there’s never been a better time to discover what you missed if you didn’t see it to the end two years ago.

That’s my quick look at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Switch 2 Edition, though I’m certainly excited to see more of it after what I played this past weekend. Once again, this really does feel like the way this game was always meant to be played, and I’m thrilled by the idea of a new generation discovering it for the first time. It’s sure to keep you more than busy until I’m back with my final Switch 2 review in the next week or so.

Amazon is having a pretty sweet buy one, get one for 50% sale that includes a ton of great Batman comics and graphic novels. The sale includes countless legendary runs and omnibus collections, like the entirety of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Long Halloween saga or the Hush omnibus, as well as standalone graphic novels like The Killing Joke and Batman: Damned.

This is a great way to either start your collection or fill out your book shelves, and I'd recommend finding two graphic novels of equal price to fully take advantage of the deal.

Full Batman Runs On Sale

There are a handful of graphic novels included in the sale that either start runs or are mid-run, but hardly any full collections. Of the ones included, I highly recommend Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Batman: The Long Halloween saga, including the Haunted Knight prequel short stories. This is a great time to get the full story at a discount, since Jeph Loeb is currently working on another Long Halloween follow-up, the 10-issue Last Halloween.

Batman: The Hush Saga Omnibus 20th Anniversary Edition collects Jeph Loeb Jim Lee's legendary run as well as a never-before-seen story from the powerhouse duo. This is a personal favorite of mine and one of the greatest contemporary Batman comics out there.

More Batman Comics to Pick From

Then of course there are a wide variety of standalone Batman graphic novels to buy one and get one half off. The Elseworlds tale Batman: White Knight by Sean Murphy is an interesting exploration on how the dynamic between the Joker and Gotham would play out if the Joker was "cured" of his madness. The Killing Joke is easily one of the best deals of this promotion, as it's only $10.71, and is required reading for anyone looking to get into the Batman mythos.

Get The Dark Knight Trilogy Collection On Sale

Note: this review contains some small spoilers for Deltarune's first two chapters.

It was nearly seven years ago on Halloween when I woke up at the crack of dawn to download an ominous “Survey Program” from Undertale developer Toby Fox. It turned out that this program contained not just a simple survey, but the start of a grand adventure that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since. Now, with the release of the third and fourth chapters, that adventure has truly started to take a more solid shape. Deltarune carries on the spirit of its predecessor by subverting expectations of the RPG genre in the wildest ways. It also shares the same sort of clever, heartfelt, and often absurdly hilarious writing, not to mention a truly unforgettable soundtrack. Don’t be fooled by its deceptively humble pixel art and initially simple plot: there’s a surprising amount of intrigue, beauty, and unpredictability just under the surface. The unsettling questions Deltarune raises about our relationship to the characters we control in games provides an engrossing layer of meta-commentary, while still celebrating the indomitable willpower and heart of extraordinary RPG heroes.

That aforementioned creepy survey demo ended up only being the first chapter of Deltarune, with the second released in 2021, and finally the most recent two arriving just last week as part of its more traditional “full” release – although, that’s not to say it’s “finished” now, as more chapters are planned to arrive as free content updates in the future. But no matter if you are picking up where you left off years ago or starting fresh from the first chapter, you’ll be unceremoniously thrust into the body of a weird teen named Kris. There are a lot of similarities to Undertale here, but also more than enough differences in its setting and how battles work to set it apart. Where Undertale had you navigating an underground society of imprisoned monsters you either had to fight or befriend, Deltarune begins in a pleasant but unremarkable “Hometown” – though for some reason you’re still the only human around in a world of monsters. The only epic struggles to be found here are trying to stay awake through class, or dodging the extreme embarrassment of seeing your divorced adoptive monster parents run into each other at the store.

If you played Undertale, you might get a kick out of seeing several of that game’s more notable figures living regular lives in this parallel story, but I wouldn’t quite say it’s required. In fact, I’d argue that Deltarune is at its best when it’s not trying to focus on what came before it – funny as those interactions may be. I’ll admit, at first I was a little disappointed to see familiar faces appearing in what was supposed to be a new adventure, but then I realized these aren’t simple fanservice cameos. In another universe, these were imposing boss monsters – kings and queens with terrifying strength and magical powers. Here, they’re just… ordinary townsfolk: teachers, bored police, and struggling shop owners. While they may have a role to play, this story isn’t truly about them.

Instead, things kick off when Kris and a rude, crude monster classmate named Susie find themselves transported into a world of fantasy straight out of an ‘80s adventure movie. Here, pencils and bandaids transform into swords and armor, while forgotten classroom toys or computer lab accessories spring to life as “Darkeners”, many of which will stand in your way. It’s a great touch how even the menus and UI change to reflect this new realm. The environments you’ll find yourself exploring in these “Dark Worlds” are anything but: they’re filled with vibrant and beautiful pixel art backdrops that work in harmony with a stunning soundtrack to capture the themes of these fascinating places.

Happy Feet, Dumbass

It’s not long after arrival in the Dark World that you meet your third “party member:” a lonely Darkener prince named Ralsei who seems to know all about you, and gives you the grand spiel about cleansing dark fountains and saving the world from destruction. You know, hero stuff. To get to your goal, you’ll have to fight your way through enemies, frenemies, misunderstood goofballs – pretty much everything you can think of. As with Undertale, you’ll learn that the path to victory can be forged with turn-based violence or pacifism, but the long-term consequences aren’t as clear cut here. Striking enemies into submission allows you to get stronger quicker, though finding ways to spare opponents will lead to your own Dark World’s Castle Town becoming populated with now-friendly occupants, and may even change how certain scenes play out.

Truly, the best part of battles is the ability to “Act” on your turn – winning over an opponent with enough mercy to spare them, in between dodging an ever-expanding variety of deadly bullet patterns on the enemy’s turn within the confines of a box that pops onto the screen. On paper, this system could easily lose its charm, but here it’s kept entertaining by exceptionally witty and context-sensitive execution. Each foe has different needs that get more complex (and often wacky) the further you delve into these adventures.

Things may start with you ordering a party member to flirt their way toward mercy, but it wasn’t too much later I found myself up against tougher ambulance-themed adversaries. Asking Susie to “Act” instead gave me a challenge: dodge the ambulance-themed bullets on the enemy’s turn to earn more mercy for a risky play (because she doesn’t trust doctors, naturally). Whereas Ralsei’s “Act” would suggest getting hit on purpose instead (because they’re here to… help?), which wasn’t a bad call if I was having trouble dodging already. It’s moments like these where Deltarune’s creative juices are at their tastiest, combining fun contextual commands that blend limitless humor while leaning into the personalities of both your team and the Darkeners you’ll face. Each new encounter left me eager to see what my Fun Squad could come up with, and with a mix of plentiful enemy variety and Dark World areas that never stretched on too long, I never really found myself getting tired of the opponents I came up against.

Even beyond fighting and ACTing, I really came to appreciate how Deltarune’s three party members allowed me to develop synergies and tactics as time went on. Later battles became delicate dances of assigning heals or items, then having one person ACT so that another could spare on the same turn (provided my ACTs were successful). Even the process of dodging incoming attacks provides a new layer of strategy with the ability to “graze” the bullet patterns by moving my little heart icon alongside the attacks or dodging at the last second without getting hit to build a meter necessary to perform certain magical powers. Just like ACTing, certain magic could change depending on the battle to accommodate new strategies and challenges unique to that fight, and often made the risky play to get close to attacks worthwhile.

The Power of Page Breaks Shines Within You

Even when I wasn’t fighting, there was a lot to explore both in and out of the Dark Worlds I visited. Being able to wander around, talk to people, and interact with objects isn’t exactly a new RPG idea. (I have vivid memories of obsessively checking every trash can in a Pokemon game, often leaving disappointed.) But what I believe sets Deltarune apart is the confidence it has in making its world worth stopping in to smell the roses. You might find a container of Ice-E’s Cool Boys Body Spray “Spray For the Boys” Flamin’ Hot Pizza Flavor under the bathroom sink, for instance. Deltarune’s hilariously illogical humor oozes into every corner of the world like some sort of weird goop that’s actually kind of delicious and also addictive for some reason. It’s so intrinsically linked with everything else – combat, dialogue, story, puzzles, you name it – that I couldn’t imagine this adventure being any other way. Seriously, in what other setting would you encounter a weird little dolphin attacking you with internet pop-up screens in reference to some obscure 14-year-old meme about a desktop image trying to lure you into downloading viruses?

It’s not just the jokes, either (rampant as they may be); I found myself constantly intrigued by the world being set up around this adventure. Not all of it is laid out in big, showy cutscenes and plot developments. There’s a level of reward that is given to those willing to inspect things they may otherwise walk right past, or talk to someone you may not expect to have a nugget of wisdom to give. It’s a type of detail that doesn’t seem all that impressive at first glance, and yet I’ve come to appreciate immensely during my time in each of the four currently available chapters. Even something as random as inspecting an innocuous patch of moss can steadily grow into its own running gag between chapters, which feels like I’ve uncovered a special secret. In this way, Deltarune is also rife with small, personal moments and anecdotes that allow its characters to shine in a way I rarely see anywhere else.

Every location has these touches, and the areas I explored on my quest to seal the dark fountains led me through some pretty fantastical interpretations of otherwise ordinary places. The plush carpet of a forgotten classroom became a vast red forest with fields of rippling purple grass, while a computer lab transformed into a larger-than-life shining city of lights and superhighways built from advertisements, and all of it works wonderfully in the distinct pixel-art style. Deltarune is careful about keeping its scope in check, and instead saves moments of visual flair for just the right occasion when you least expect it. Even the amount of expression seen in its character portraits continued to delight me at just how well they were able to convey the right emotions, which only got better and more expressive each chapter.

Each place you visit is accompanied by an embarrassment of phenomenal music, and as with Undertale, the payoff of Fox personally composing the music in addition to developing so many aspects of Deltarune is clear to see. From its incredibly funky and catchy battle theme to the ethereal exploration of the first Dark World and the upbeat tunes beyond, every new area you’ll visit is a treat for the ears. There’s a wonderful mix of chiptunes in all sorts of genres, and each boss encounter theme somehow surpasses the last with no signs of slowing down. (Did my ears deceive me, or did I hear the TMNT: Turtles in Time soundfont being used?). It’s not just that the music is great, but its decisive inclusions elevate the material with careful use of leitmotifs to tie events and characters together. In one of the later chapters, there are certain rare sequences that bring out the raw emotion of a live piano playing, and left me floored at how well it empowered the scene to reach greater emotional heights.

It’s Pronounced, “The $!$? Squad”

It’s hard to pick which characters to talk about in a cast that’s so colorful. Whether it’s in the relatively normal Light World, or the dream-like Dark World, the assorted monsters I met made a lasting impression on me. So many of Deltarune’s cast members are actually very, very dumb (in an extremely endearing way, I promise!), and incredibly distinct in ways too numerous to count. Many times, it almost felt like a Royal Rumble of competing scene-stealers, with new challengers arriving all the time. I’d always get a sinking feeling that there would be no way a new chapter could top the previous one’s antics… and yet, each time I was proven wrong in ways I literally could not have expected from both new and returning faces. I still don’t even know if I like Rouxls Kaard (that’s pronounced “Rules Card”) as a person, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t leave me in tears every time he popped up – usually against everyone else’s wishes.

But I can’t not talk about the true “Lightener” stars of the show: Kris and Susie, one of my favorite teams I’ve had the pleasure of commanding in turn-based battles. They both go through some very different personal journeys over the course of each chapter, and though we still don't fully know where they lead, they continue to fascinate me. Kris, Susie, and yes - even Ralsei are each loners and outcasts in their own ways, and seeing them form a bond powerful enough to shake the pillars of Heaven has been immensely satisfying.

There was a point early on where I worried that Susie’s own character growth would sputter out too soon after calming down on the more extreme ends of her bullying tough girl act (which is expertly woven into Deltarune’s mechanics to manifest in clever ways both in and out of combat). Instead, I found a wild card. She’s as much the main protagonist of this story as Kris is… sometimes perhaps even more. Susie continually forges her own path when it suits her, leading to surprising revelations and tweaks on how Deltarune plays. She won’t even let you remove gear from her without giving her something else to equip – she’s that feisty! And yet, for all her bark, she makes a wonderfully vocal stand-in for us, going from annoyed disinterest to full-throated enthusiasm as she embraces her role in the story, and her newfound friends.

Her relationship with her classmate Kris is also something I never get tired of. It encapsulates some of the funniest, most heartwarming, and most sincere parts of Deltarune’s story so far. I can’t count the number of times I inspected an object and was presented with the option to do something profoundly stupid, only to have Susie right there beside me, excitedly goading me on. They are truly a dumbass duo with joint custody of a single braincell, and the enthusiasm they share for the absurd is inescapably contagious.

Kris on their own is also a fascinating enigma, and explaining why will require a light amount of spoilers from the first two chapters. I hope you’ll forgive me on this, but it’s also one of the central parts of Deltarune’s themes, and how you play it. You can click on the spoiler tag below to read more.

I don’t want to say more about how your role continues to escalate in later chapters, nor do I wish to spoil much of the contents of Chapter 3 and 4. What I will say is that Chapter 3 felt like a demented roller coaster ride that somehow seamlessly inserted an entirely new way to play that was an absolute blast. Chapter 4 continued to step on the gas pedal, but not in the ways I was expecting – it was more like riding the aforementioned roller coaster into the gaping maw of a dread-inducing abyss. It does have a few slower parts, especially navigating some of the more maze-like areas that seemed to lack the usual unlockable shortcuts until the very end.

However, nothing prepared me for the harrowing end to Chapter 4. The story remains unfinished, yes, but in no way did I feel let down by it ending where it does for now, having surmounted some incredible odds and witnessed some jaw-dropping moments to get as far as I have.

Wizard of Legend 2 is an indie Roguelike from Dead Mage, the studio behind Children of Morta, published by Humble Games. You play as a Wizard attempting the trials to become Wizard of Legend. Gather your Arcana, grab a relic, and wear your medallion of choice as you brave the challenges ahead.

Getting Started in Wizard of Legend 2

To help you get started, take a look at Maxroll’s Wizard of Legend 2 beginner’s guide. The guide explains the different starting loadouts (don’t worry, you eventually unlock all the spells anyway) and you'll learn all about the game’s combat system; how to navigate the trials, use your Arcana to defeat foes and unleash powerful ultimate spells!

As you make your way through the game, you'll meet a variety of NPCs along the way. Some of them are vendors within the Trials, whereas others provide access to metaprogression systems in the main hub. In addition to these friendly NPCs, there are several formidable bosses to challenge, including powerful creatures and wizards who have mastered their element of choice.

Wizard of Legend 2 Metaprogression Systems

The metaprogression systems in Wizard of Legend 2 include Medallions, Runes, Arcana, and Relics, each of which contributes to your character's power. You gain more Arcanas and Relics during the run, but can only select Medallions and runes before starting out. Check out Maxroll's Metaprogression systems guide or learn more about individual topics with their deep dives below:

• Medallions Guide
• Runes and Difficulty Guide
• Relic Guide
• Arcana Guide
• Chaos Arcana Guide

Wizard of Legend 2 Events, NPCs, and More

You'll encounter a variety of events within the trial. This can include defeating challenging foes or helping a fellow Wizard. Complete events to earn a variety of rewards, including Relics, Arcana, Arcana Enhancements, or a boost to maximum health. In particular, keep an eye out for purple portals, as they often have lucrative rewards. Learn more with Maxroll's Events Guide.

There's a wide variety of NPCs and Vendors to interact with in Wizard of Legend 2. Several are found in the game's main hub; interact with them to unlock Runes, Medallions, starting Relics, and Arcanas.

There are also vendors within the trials who sell you Arcanas, Relics, and Arcana Enhancements. Save up your gold to purchase something and give yourself an edge in combat — learn more with Maxroll's NPCs and Vendors guide.

You'll also need to know about Afflictions, status effects that deal additional damage to enemies or provide beneficial crowd control effects: check out Maxroll's Afflictions Guide for more information.

Wizard of Legend 2 Boss Guides

During the Trials, you'll face off against a series of wizards who have all mastered a different element. If you can defeat them, you'll earn a powerful Forgotten Variant for your Arcana. Check out these boss guides from Maxroll:

• Frost Queen Anahita
• Earth Lord Terrus
• Thunder Ace Voltran
• Flame Empress Mitra
• Wind Sovereign Flo

Wizard of Legend 2 Zone Bosses

Each zone in Wizard of Legend 2 culminates in a battle against a powerful boss, and the final stage ends in a fight against Hieronymus himself. Learn the boss's patterns, or check out tips and tricks to defeat them with Maxroll’s boss guides.

• Jungle - Akram & Bahadur
• Desert - Jabara
• Castle - King & Queen
• Final Zone - Wizard of Legend Hieronymus

Wizard of Legend 2 Database

Maxroll's Wizard of Legend 2 Database has information on all of the Arcanas, Relics, Runes, and Medallions. You can browse Arcana by type and learn about the Forgotten Variants available for each spell. Relics are broken down by category; we recommend you keep an eye out for Legendary Relics, which are made by obtaining all of the Relics from a set.

Written by IGN staff with help from Maxroll.

For a limited time, Amazon is offering a Buy One Get One 50% Off sale on most Harry Potter Illustrated Edition hardcover books. These include the original Illustrated Edition series drawn by Jim Kay as well as the later Interactive Illustrated Editions from MiniLima. These are the best physical Harry Potter physical books you can get your hands on. Each book is replete with numerous full-color illustrations. I own the full set of the original (Jim Kay) Illustrated Editions and can personally attest to the quality of these books.

BOGO 50% Off Harry Potter Illustrated Editions (1-5)

It’s a testament to Mario Kart World’s quality that I’ve spent over 35 hours with it since launch less than a week ago, yet I still can’t wait to play more. The first brand-new Mario Kart in over a decade is a breath of fresh air, but oddly enough, the biggest reasons it works so well aren’t actually its shiny new features. When I’m racing through one of World’s excellent traditional courses, dodging shells while trying to hang onto the lead, it feels like a worthy successor to the immaculate Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But when I’m somewhat mindlessly roaming around its pleasant but fairly one-note map or puttering down the lengthy straightaways that often separate its Grand Prix tracks, World doesn’t make a convincing case that going open-world was the boost Mario Kart needed. Thankfully, it still thrives on the same foundation the definitive kart racer series built its legacy upon: incredible polish, a phenomenal soundtrack, precise controls that are deep but easily approachable, and a timeless ability to generate local multiplayer magic.

World looks, sounds, and feels marvelous. As the main launch game for Nintendo Switch 2 (sorry, Welcome Tour), there was definitely pressure on World to run well and look amazing, and it delivers. The framerate is a rock-solid 60fps in single-player either docked or handheld, and its performance holds up when driving across the entirely interconnected map with no loading screens. The graphics aren’t mind-blowing or anything, but the slightly more exaggerated art style looks really nice on both a 4K TV and the 1080p Switch 2 screen itself, and World benefits from the improved resolution of Nintendo’s new hardware. To quote a famous Miiverse poster, World’s “amazing-looking water” (which reacts to items like a Blue Shell explosion!) really makes me want a new Wave Race.

Racing on 150cc feels outstanding mechanically, and while the drifting isn’t quite as tight as in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, I started to really enjoy the new feel once I got used to it. I also don’t miss customizing my kart at all; the wide selection of karts, bikes, trikes, and sleds look great and save everyone some time compared to having to choose a body, wheels, and glider. There’s an understandable adjustment period after 11 years of the same Mario Kart, but I’m already happy with how World feels and excited to dedicate this console generation to mastering its intricacies. It’s also filled with delightful little details, like the way your kart wiggles around when you move the control stick, how rain begins to fall after someone uses a lightning bolt, or the adorable animations each character performs when tricking off a jump.

The Nintendo charm is here in full force, and the clear standout of World’s atmosphere is its remarkable soundtrack. Nintendo promised over 200 brand-new arrangements for Mario Kart World, and every note helps write a love letter to Mario history with nods to classic scores from the SNES like Donkey Kong Country and Yoshi’s Island, odes to pretty much every past Mario Kart, and great, fresh tunes to accompany the new courses. We don’t know if we’re getting a proper Mario platformer this year to commemorate the original Super Mario Bros.’ 40th anniversary, but even if we aren’t, this soundtrack is a dream come true for a longtime Nintendo fan like me and a great celebration of our favorite plumber and his friends.

This is also where the first of many strange decisions Nintendo has made arrives. Various selections from the soundtrack play when driving around in Free Roam or during the highway segments of a race, but there’s no way to listen to specific favorites. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe didn’t have that at launch either, but eventually added a music player so you could listen to its big band soundtrack. Super Smash Bros. historically gives you control over which songs play on each stage, and even Super Mario Odyssey eventually let you pick what you wanted to hear, so it’s baffling that World doesn’t provide this choice at launch.

Nintendo calls its music selections a “Jukebox” in World, but in practice it’s more like a radio with only one station: if you fall in love with a song you hear once, you just have to hope the DJ eventually plays it again. Of course, there’s always the chance that Nintendo adds this feature in an update or drops the soundtrack on its official music app – or you could just go on YouTube to listen to an upload of it (Quiet! No one tell!) – but it’s a huge missed opportunity to not let us set our own road trip playlist right from the start.

A Whole New World

World takes big swings to reinvent the established Mario Kart formula, including doubling the amount of simultaneous racers from 12 to a chaotic 24 and expanding the trick system with flashy stuff like wall riding and rail grinding. But the most consequential shakeup is its vast open world, which contains all but one of its 30 wonderful racing circuits (and trust me, we’ll talk about that one exception later). The courses are connected by a series of roads ranging from remote dirt paths to fully developed highways packed with traffic. Nearly every mode in Mario Kart World makes use of these stretches of highway, to varying degrees of success.

Grand Prix has undergone a huge transformation to fit the open-world format, and I’m not a big fan of the changes. Instead of completing three laps on four separate courses, you play the first track the old-school way, but for subsequent races you drive to the next course on two laps’ worth of highways and then complete just one full lap on the actual stage once you arrive. This is where one of World’s biggest problems comes into play: after the initial novelty wears off, those highway sections aren’t nearly as interesting or memorable as the contained courses themselves, and you’ll spend a serious amount of time on the interstate if you want to go for three gold stars on all eight cups.

The highways aren’t bad – in fact some of them can be very fun – but they’re often extremely wide and straight, leading to long portions of each race that aren’t as demanding or enjoyable as the twists and turns of the dedicated levels. There are still threats to consider, as the added madness of 24 total racers means there are a lot more shells and banana peels flying around, but this results in large chunks of each race that are less about knowing your lines and executing perfect turns and more about just trying to stay out of the havoc caused by your opponents. It’s still a hoot when it’s your friends creating that chaos, but in single-player specifically, Grand Prix doesn’t hold the same staying power for me as it did in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where I was always motivated to improve my own performance just for the joy of doing so.

The main way World tries to keep your attention is with rail grinding, wall riding, and charge jumping, which are a trio of mechanics I’m honestly still wrapping my head around. That’s not a product of a rushed review period, to be clear – I legitimately think it might take months for people to squeeze the full potential out of these new techniques, and it could be a bigger game changer for high-rank online matches than anyone realizes yet. Much like the rest of World, these parkour options aren't as interesting on the intermission highway segments, but it’s a completely different story on the tracks themselves. I’ve seen some completely busted Time Trial ghosts that use rails and walls to find crazy shortcuts that are hidden in plain sight, and that’s inspired me to push these new toys to their limit. But for less-intense sections, sometimes just going straight is your best option, and you have to learn which rails are good and which ones actually make you lose ground on a track-by-track basis.

To its credit, World does try to spice up the straightaways in other ways, too, with boost pads, cars that spit out items, and enemies that launch projectiles. There are definitely great moments to be found, like when you have to outmaneuver a giant dragon swimming through the ocean. But after dozens of repeat play sessions, I’m consistently struck by the feeling that there are still a few too many instances where you just hold A and don’t do much else on the way to the next course, and I’m finding these sections are starting to feel like my daily commute.

Fortunately, you’re almost always in for a treat when you do arrive at your final destination. The more time I spend with World’s lineup of 30 tracks, the more impressed I am with it. At the very least, it matches the quality of the 32 courses Mario Kart 8 included at launch. I have several early favorites, including Great ? Block Ruins, which has you bouncing off clouds and making sharp U-turns through a gorgeous golden temple in the sky that’s filled with high-level shortcuts. Then, there’s the adrenaline rush of the new Bowser’s Castle, a test of your ability to handle high speeds that’s led to the most exciting finishes I’ve seen. Another standout is Peach Stadium, which has celebratory vibes that make it the perfect track to kick off a set with friends. There’s plenty of variety, too, as several courses make use of World’s plane and boat modes – solid replacements for the gliding and underwater abilities from Mario Kart 7 and 8. My favorite part about the boat sections is getting a free trick off of each wave and after your boat dips into the water – it’s so satisfying, every time.

Strong reimaginings of returning courses are here, too, including wonderful renditions of Airship Fortress, Toad’s Factory, Dino Dino Jungle, and Wario Stadium, the last of which includes an awesome jump off a ramp fit for a supercross superstar. There are a couple clunkers (if Desert Hills is coming up I’d rather miss my exit), but that is true of any kart racer, and overall I’m thrilled with the lineup and incredibly relieved that the tracks are as fantastic as ever while still somehow fitting into this enormous jigsaw puzzle Nintendo has designed. The highways feed into multiple entrances for nearly every track, depending on the direction you’re coming from, which occasionally leads to different routes held within. As mixed as I am on how it impacts gameplay between courses, the way Nintendo pulled all of this off is an undeniably impressive feat of open-world design.

I could shout out several more tracks I love, but I need to dedicate some time to the best one of them all: Rainbow Road. World’s take on the most iconic video game level around is the best in the series, and my new pick for the greatest Mario Kart track of all time. It’s a masterpiece from start to finish, and I won’t spoil what happens if you haven’t seen it yet, but there’s one particular moment that gives me goosebumps every single time. It’s a finale fit for a major Nintendo game on the level of those in Super Mario Odyssey and Tears of the Kingdom, a real marathon roller coaster ride, and I’m so happy that World rose to the challenge and topped everything that’s come before.

If you’re like me and decide you’re not that into the highway sections, the VS Race mode offers the option to race under the traditional three-lap ruleset, providing its great take on the classic Mario Kart experience I’ve loved for decades. Time Trials also rely on the classic formula, and I’ve had a good time challenging Staff Ghosts and going for personal bests exclusively on the courses without having to bother with the highways. Sadly, there’s no dedicated online lobby where you can play VS Race with only the three-lap rules, so if you’re a big online player, be prepared to race on plenty of intermission segments.

The one place World makes the best use of its interconnected continent is in the Knockout Tour mode, Mario Kart’s new take on an F-Zero 99-style battle royale and one of the highlights of World as a whole. Knockout Tour takes place over five non-stop segments of highway (followed by one lap at a final destination course) with the bottom four drivers getting eliminated from the race at designated cutoff points. The results are thrilling, and Knockout Tour feels like the main piece of evidence to justify the case for the open-world format, as it just wouldn’t have the same level of intensity on a standard Mario Kart track. It’s a thrill to drive through a variety of locations, from arid deserts to snowy switchbacks, as you desperately try to survive the current lap.

I will say, the item balance in Knockout Tour (and to some extent, Mario Kart World in general) can feel very rubber bandy at times – that’s always been true of this series, but it’s even more extreme here. I constantly found shortcuts during the highway sections that allowed me to cut out an enormous amount of the track if I had mushrooms or a star, and it’s not uncommon to jump from 20th place (or worse) to literally first place in an instant if you are handed the right items at the right time. Each Mario Kart finds a different balance between the importance of skillful driving to get ahead and the value of item boxes to help you out, and World’s combination of wide, straight roads and 24 racers leans heavily in the direction of the latter, especially in Knockout Tour.

This can lead to instances where you’re a total sitting duck if you get a bad item draw, which is worsened by the 12 additional drivers in the mix. To account for this, World makes recovery times from attacks like lightning much faster, and even the Bullet Bill isn’t guaranteed to spin you out if it hits you anymore. But you can still get completely overrun in the middle of the pack and find yourself in 24th… only to instantly return the favor and march right back to the front when you get a powerful item of your own. Sometimes Knockout Tour feels more like a game of chance and timing than one of skill, but it’s still a great time if you go in with that expectation, and it can be fun to strategize around the right time to make your move.

And to be fair, Mario Kart has never claimed to be a competitively balanced game – and I still believe the better racer will rise to the top more often than not simply by knowing how to make the best use of the items they get. None of this is bad, just different. But if you’re someone who gets frustrated by the luck-based elements in Mario Kart or Mario Party, you might not be thrilled with the balance World strikes. Right now, sandbagging – where you intentionally hang back to get great items so you can steamroll to the front – is a viable strategy, but we’re so early in the meta that I expect new discoveries and balance patches from Nintendo (as we saw for years in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe) to radically change things as we move forward.

It’s Dangerous to Race Alone

No matter the item balance, Mario Kart is always at its best when you throw some friends into the mix, and this entry lives up to its series’ legacy as a fantastic local multiplayer game. Playing Grand Prix and VS Race with three friends might drop the frame rate from 60 to 30, but it’s as fun as Mario Kart multiplayer has always been. World’s most hilarious and exciting moments happen during splitscreen play when four people are on the couch screaming at each other.

Knockout Tour is also very entertaining with people in the same room, although it can be a long wait to get back in a game if someone is knocked out in the first or second round. When you’re eliminated in splitscreen your TV real estate turns into a spectator view, meaning there’s nothing to do but cheer your friends on… or wallow in your defeat. For this reason, I don’t see Knockout Tour becoming a staple at Mario Kart World parties, in the same way that a lot of my casual gaming friends prefer Time over Stock at Smash Bros. nights: everyone gets to play without fear of having to sit out.

When you don’t have friends in the room, though, Knockout Tour is the definitive option for playing online without a group. It’s a blast to race against real people rather than CPUs as you jockey for position, and my online connection has been pretty smooth throughout all of my matches, even on handheld Wi-Fi. While trying to survive against other skilled players, I found myself literally holding my breath and pressing the A button even harder to try and get my kart to the next cutoff point as fast as possible. Ending someone else’s race (and prolonging your own) with a clutch shell throw is a feeling only topped by winning the whole thing, and I could feel my heart pounding when I crossed the finish line in first place for my first online Knockout Tour victory. And when I come up one spot short of qualifying, it strikes the right balance of making me feel just bad enough to want to run it again.

Unfortunately, playing Knockout Tour online also exposes one of my biggest disappointments with World: the online options are pretty barebones. You still can’t group up with your friends before joining a public VS Race – meaning someone pretty much always has to wait a full round to get into the lobby – and Mario Kart 8’s tournament feature is missing entirely. Knockout Tour was dealt the worst hand, where playing with friends online is extremely limited. If you and a friend across the country want to play a round together, the only way to do so is in a private lobby where the rest of the racers are either other friends or bots. You can’t squad up and drop into a public match together, and it’s a shame we can’t experience Knockout Tour in what I can only imagine would be the best way possible.

It’s probably because Nintendo wants to prevent a squad of eight or so friends jumping in and making things less enjoyable for everybody else by coordinating, which is understandable. At the same time, there are ways to work around this issue that other battle royale games figured out years ago, like limiting your party size to just two or three, or adding dedicated ranked and unranked lobbies with different rules. It’s certainly possible Nintendo could fix this in an update, but as of now, it’s shocking that World’s most exciting addition feels so hindered, especially with how much of Switch 2’s marketing has been focused on playing with friends “all together, anytime, anywhere.” Just let me knock my friend out of the race with a red shell!

Speaking of the classic red shell, World’s item toybox introduces some solid additions, but I wouldn’t say there’s anything as groundbreaking as we’ve seen in past entries. I love taking out opponents with the new hammers, which lob a string of projectiles in a straight line that temporarily clutter the track, making them perfect for the many straightaways – but my favorite returning addition to the lineup is the feather, which gives you a jump that serves as a reliable way to leap over gaps, access shortcuts, and (if you have the right timing) dodge incoming red shells. The new Kamek power-up summons waves of Bowser’s minions to muck up the track and makes the lives of the leaders more difficult, and driving through Yoshi’s restaurants to get a boost and potentially a new outfit from a variety of types of Dash Food is a cute touch – but both of these are tied to one of Mario Kart World’s most frustrating choices: the way it handles unlockables.

Unlocking costumes and characters is seriously strange, because it’s essentially completely out of your control. To be clear, I adore the weird roster of characters in World, including off-the-wall additions like Mario Sunshine’s Cataquack and the global superstar that is Cow. But besides the small handful of characters you unlock by winning each cup in Grand Prix, all other unique drivers in World are unlocked when someone uses the Kamek item to transform you into a random character during a race. To get them all, you have to hope you’re on the right track for a character you don’t have, hope an NPC uses the Kamek item, and hope that you’re one of the seemingly randomly selected drivers that gets transformed.

It’s a similar issue for unlocking alternate costumes – which, again, are fantastic – where there’s no discernible rhyme or reason to which food unlocks which costume for which characters. It’s just a massive guessing game. Both the oddly minimalistic map screen and the ridiculous character-select screen (you often have to scroll through pages and pages of costumes to find the character you’re looking for, like Tears of the Kingdom’s unwieldy material menu) tell you which characters still have costumes to unlock, but that doesn’t get you any closer to knowing which foods you need to eat to get them. Yes, you can use the IGN guide to help you figure it out, but there really should have been a better way within World itself. But hey, there’s a Waluigi Vampire outfit called Wampire, so I guess it’s all worth it. My go-to is Mario’s red, white, and blue mechanic outfit with the Famicom logo on the cap; the very dapper Aristocrat King Boo is another big highlight.

Free Roamin’ on the River

I spent plenty of time as the Wampire driving around Free Roam, World’s enjoyable but fairly uninspiring open world exploration mode that litters hundreds of challenges and collectables across the map by way of P Switch missions, Peach Medallions, and ? Panels. P Switch missions are the main draw: their time-limited challenges range from teaching you basic driving techniques to testing your skill at the new parkour mechanics. They are largely fun enough to complete – and some of them are genuinely tough and require multiple attempts – but the dozens I’ve seen each follow one of a handful of repetitive templates: get all the blue coins, reach the goal in time, and so on.

There are a few exceptions to this, like the challenging Special Test of Skill missions, but after just a few hours I felt like I’d seen multiple variations of everything the P Switches have to offer, and there’s a disappointing lack of surprise that permeates the entirety of Free Roam. I am still enjoying snagging the Peach Medallions, however, as they’re often placed in tricky spots that really make you think about how you’re going to get there, which was the main thing I wanted out of this mode. I like Free Roam overall, but I quickly realized it’s more of a chill, fun diversion than World’s main draw, and I mostly pop in for a few minutes here and there in between racing sets.

The frustration sets in, though, when it comes to tracking your progress in Free Roam. There are hundreds of P Switches in the open world, but apart from the total number you’ve completed that’s displayed on the map screen, there is absolutely no way to see your overall progress. My P Switch count is in the triple digits at this point, but I have no concept of what regions I’m done with and where I still need to search. Unless you have a perfect photographic memory and remember every P Switch you’ve done, or you methodically comb through every inch of the map in a snaking pattern, or you – again – use the IGN guide, good luck tracking down every last mission. It’s choices like this that make it apparent Nintendo also considers Free Roam a side dish, and that the racing was always going to be the main course. Similarly, the reward for every objective in Free Roam is a sticker, which look cool but are very limited in use since you can only put one on your kart at a time – and with over 1,000 stickers to earn, it’s a Korok seed-sized undertaking to collect them all, which I’m just not interested in doing at this point.

If I were a kid on summer vacation, Free Roam would probably be my favorite mode. It’s simple, pointless fun to commandeer a semi-truck and cause a huge traffic accident, or see how far I can glide to reach somewhere I’ve never been before. The open world does have that innocent, spirited nature to it, and it’s a great playground for kids to make their own stories. When I was younger, I spent hours driving around in Time Trials in Mario Kart 64 just to see where I could go, so I certainly understand the appeal of getting a more intimate look at the impressively connected world – I just wish there was wider variety in its content, more enticing unlockables, and a better way to track it all. Even with my personal disappointments, I can see Free Roam gaining a similar reputation to something like Kirby Air Ride’s City Trial, because it’s just fun to mess around in and see what you can pull off, and the rewind feature means it’s always worth taking risks to try to find a fancy new shortcut.

But unlike Kirby Air Ride, it’s disappointing that Free Roam is basically nonexistent in local multiplayer. There are workarounds: when you’re waiting in a lobby to start a local wireless or online match you can drive around the open world with up to two players – but this version of Free Roam removes the P Switch challenges from the map, which is basically the whole point. You can still drive around and take pictures together, but with how hard it is to get into local multiplayer Free Roam to begin with, it hardly feels worth it for the compromised experience you get in return. It’s yet another example of how World’s multiplayer sometimes misses the mark in strange ways.

Finally, Battle Mode is here and it’s fine but unspectacular. Balloon Battle and Coin Runners are the only two options, and most of the maps are closed-off sections of existing tracks instead of bespoke battle arenas. It’s better than the unacceptable Battle Mode in the Wii U version of Mario Kart 8, but significantly watered down compared to what we saw in 8 Deluxe. It feels like it’s only here out of obligation, but it’s still completely serviceable if you’re a big fan of popping balloons.

Too much is missing to consider World an outright replacement for 8 Deluxe at the moment – of course, it’s not like we can’t play both of them on Switch 2 whenever we like, so it doesn’t really need to be fully replaced just yet. But I’m hoping this is just the start for Mario Kart World, and that 8 Deluxe’s years of content updates set a precedent for what we can expect here as well. (Nintendo has not mentioned any plans for DLC, but that’s typical this close after launch.) In addition to the annoying multiplayer limitations I mentioned earlier, the lack of the ultra high-speed 200cc mode is a shame, and I’d love to see the custom item menu make a return. You could argue that both of those things weren’t in Mario Kart 8 at launch so we shouldn’t expect them here either, but I would counter by saying 200cc has been a staple in the Mario Kart community for over 10 years at this point, so it wasn’t at all unreasonable to assume it would be here on day one. That being said, World’s bones are so strong that I can see it one day surpassing 8 Deluxe with enough fixes and content updates, even if it’s still trying to catch up to its predecessor before the next checkpoint for now.

Friends, if you haven’t already started thinking about what to get the dad in your life for Father’s Day, the time has come. Father’s Day lands on Sunday, July 15, which will be here before you know it. To help you figure out what to get, it helps to know what’s on sale – because who wants to pay full price for anything these days? Below you’ll find links to all the best and biggest Father’s Day sales at all the retailers you care about. Let’s dive in.

Featured in this article

As with many sales, all sorts of item categories are available at a discount at various retailers. Home Depot specializes in tools and storage and various items around the house. So if you’re thinking about picking up a grill or a drill for dad, that’s the place to look.

Best Buy also has some of that stuff, but with more tech items thrown in. You can get pops a PS5 Pro or a fashionable pair of Ray-Ban Meta - Wayfarer Glasses there. Also on sale at Best Buy are smart watches, headphones, video games, and grills.

Amazon has a bit of everything on sale for Father’s Day, per usual. You can find particularly good deals on Amazon’s own devices, like Kindles and Echoes, all of which make good gifts. So do books, iPads, LEGO sets, Blu-rays, and even cornhole sets, all of which are also on sale.

Target and Walmart are also general goods stores, with discounts on T-shirts and other sorts of dad-ly apparel. Apple Watches are on sale, as is the Meta Quest 3S. Coffee mugs, ball caps, folding chairs, knife sets, and beard balm also have decent discounts going now.

If the dad in your life is a gamer or a techy person in general, you can hit up the Dell or Lenovo sales. They’re offering big discounts on gaming PCs, laptops, monitors, and accessories like mice and keyboards. And if the father in question is into stylish but not too expensive clothing, you can pick up some items on sale at Old Navy.

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

The LEGO Marvel Infinity Gauntlet is currently on sale at Amazon. For $51.19 (36% off), you can pick up one of the most intricate and detailed LEGO display sets around, and just in time for Father's Day. Set #76191 features an almost-to-scale replica of Thanos the Mad Titan's Infinity Gauntlet from Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

For more LEGO goodies, check out the recently released book nooks and the best LEGO sets for adults in 2025. And check back throughout the week for more Father's Day deals.

LEGO Marvel Infinity Gauntlet Is On Sale Now

Check Out More Awesome LEGO Sets for Father's Day

The LEGO book nooks are some of the most popular new line of sets in awhile, and three of them just released earlier this month. There are themed sets from Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Sherlock Holmes available. They not only act as functioning book nooks, but can unfold into an expanded set showing off more of the scenes the sets are based on.

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

Echo Valley is now playing in select theaters. It streams on Apple TV+ beginning June 13.

Echo Valley sees a lot of potential in the complex devotion between its main characters, the mother-daughter duo of Kate (Julianne Moore) and Claire (Sydney Sweeney). And like any good thriller, it wants to needle that central theme to a breaking point: How far does unconditional love extend? How far should it go? And do the stakes become cleaner when your daughter walks through the door, visibly shaken and covered in someone else’s blood? But Echo Valley isn’t a good thriller. In theory it’s the perfect pulpy way to test a relationship and the habits of the people within it. But in practice, the sophomore feature from director Michael Pearce is far more at odds – and, even worse, dull – than its premise suggests.

From the jump, Echo Valley is only committing to half of its story at a time. Like too many films of the modern era, the genre fun of Echo Valley is heavily rooted in (you guessed it) trauma and grief. It’s been nine months since Kate’s wife died and the horse farm they ran together is falling into disrepair. She’s running out of money, having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, and she’s also making sure her daughter stays off of drugs. Consequently, those foibles feel disappointingly ordinary. Kate’s mourning is communicated mostly as shorthand: We’ve got lens-flared memories, and you better believe there’s the old classic of dead-wife videos and voicemails from happier times. It’s all there to deepen her character’s emotional state, but not really as a means of exploration.

Such devotion to emotion highlights just how underbaked Echo Valley is – and how much of a disservice those choices are to either type of movie it wants to be. Its screenwriter, Brad Ingelsby, created HBO’s Mare of Easttown, so he’s no stranger to grounding crime drama in personal conflicts. He writes the early setup with Claire coming home to Kate as a wistful potential, and Pearce gives those moments between the characters room to breathe – or, as is the case when Claire lashes out at her mom for not giving her money, reason for your breath to catch a little bit. Sweeney lets Claire’s panic and anger bubble under the surface, until it boils over destructively.

That’s a hard act for a thriller plot to follow. The early mother-daughter drama and the later showdown between Kate and drug dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson) is too vast a tonal gap for Echo Valley to bridge. There’s nothing funny or frothy or sensationalized about Claire furiously chasing her mom through the house to get money. It’s a true low point.

To be fair, it’s not that these two halves of the story can’t co-exist. But Echo Valley doesn’t find a way to make them gel. Even in its pulpiest moments, it has the slower pacing of a drama, and so everything flows out from that a little too obviously. There’s a pervading sense of unease, but in the way that a lesser horror movie might telegraph a jump scare that totally robs it of any surprise.

Not that there has to be any surprise here. But at the very least, there ought to be some ingenuity to yet another thriller where a broken woman has to find the courage to buck up and fight her way through circumstances stacked against her. Unfortunately, Echo Valley combines its pacing problems with a story that feels pretty rote and predictable – there’s nothing here that’s particularly shocking, and so it doesn’t feel particularly fun either.

It’s a shame that Moore gets dragged down with it. Claire and Jackie aren’t particularly well-drawn, but at least they’re fun acting showcases: Sweeney plays the underwritten Claire’s breakdown admirably; Gleeson, as in Ex Machina and the Star Wars sequels, strikes the right balance for a character who’s a total bastard by playing him on the absolute edge of humor. Moore proved in May December and Sirens (and elsewhere) that she’s extraordinarily talented at playing vulnerable, and does her best work when she gets to be somewhere on the line between hapless and conniving, portraying capability (and culpability) with delicious ambiguity. But Kate is totally one-note – a flat character who can’t hold the nuance necessary to the story.

Which is a problem, no matter which mode the film is in. Everything in Echo Valley has to flow from her relationship with Claire. So it sucks that she winds up feeling mostly passive and hapless. The story should be a calamitous tumble through the tumult of the choices that brought both of them to this point. Instead, the early mother-daughter drama is such a profound, genuine type of sad that none of the pulp of the back half can fill the void. And in the end, all the thriller escapades don’t even set up some great emotional throughline. There are things that are just too knotty to fully untangle – but it would’ve been nice if Echo Valley had actually tried.

The Xenomorph from the Alien film franchise is one of the coolest, most nefarious movie monsters ever hatched, with its acid blood, mouths-within-mouths, and diabolical claws. It pretty much single-handedly (and multi-teethily) invented the space horror genre and gave an entire generation a new boogeyman to fear. With Alien: Romulus now streaming, you may be wanting to do a full rewatch of the Alien franchise (including the Alien/Predator films, which are set on Earth).

But what's the correct order to watch them in? We've got you covered. Below you'll find full listings for the Alien movies, in both chronological order and by release date.

Jump to:

• How to watch in chronological order
• How to watch by release order

How Many Alien Movies Are There?

There are a total of nine movies in the Alien franchise — four in the mainline series of films, two Predator crossovers, two prequels from Ridley Scott, and, the newest addition, a standalone movie from Fede Álvarez.

Alien Movies in (Chronological) Order

1. AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)

The story of the Xenomorphs begins, time-wise, in the first of the two crossover films for the franchise, AVP. Set in 2004, Alien vs. Predator, from Resident Evil/Event Horizon's Paul W. S. Anderson, brought to life a "battle of the titans" concept that first originated in a 1989 comic. In the film, humans discover that Predators (aka the "Yautja") have been coming to Earth for thousands of years. Old cults worshipping them would sacrifice themselves to a Xenomorph Queen's brood -- the facehuggers -- producing adult Xenomorphs, so the Predators could hunt the "ultimate prey." Sufficed to say, things go badly during the Predators' 2004 hunting trip.

2. Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007)

Still set in our modern times, and therefore still happening before everything else in the Alien franchise, crossover sequel Aliens vs Predator: Requiem picks up right where AVP left off. An Alien-Predator hybrid -- the "Predalien" -- is now on the loose in a small Colorado town. A skilled, veteran Predator arrives to help clean up the mess and an ample amount of carnage ensues. This would be the final crossover film of the Alien franchise. You can see our guide to the Predator movies in order for more info.

3. Prometheus (2012)

Oscar-winning director Ridley Scott returned to the franchise he created in 1979 with the star-studded prequel film, Prometheus. Here, in the late 21st Century, Peter Weyland (presumedly a descendant of AVP's Charles Weyland) funds a cosmic trip into the unknown, following a star map left on Earth that might lead the crew of the Prometheus to the beings who created humankind. Sadly, the crew also stumbles across these creators' bio-weapon -- the Xenomorph. Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, and Charlize Theron star.

Read our review of Prometheus.

4. Alien: Covenant (2017)

Still in prequel mode here, as Alien: Covenant is a sequel to Prometheus, the story picks up 11 years later and follows a colonization ship. The crew gets pulled out of stasis years early and heads to a different target planet, a possible "utopia," to track down a distress signal. The downed ship emitting the message, however, is connected to the previous movie and contains all sorts of sinister things -- ranging from Xenomorphs to androids. The film doesn't exactly take us up to the doorstep of 1979's Alien, as there's room for more story if deemed so, but it does get us close. Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, and a returning Michael Fassbender star.

Read our review of Alien: Covenent.

5. Alien (1979)

Space would never feel the same after Ridley Scott's landmark horror film, Alien, which featured the hardscrabble crew of a commercial space tug, the Nostromo, accidentally discovering a moon full of Xenomorph eggs. With no knowledge of what these creatures are or how they cocoon inside humans before bursting out and rapidly growing into killing machines, these underpaid workers -- played by Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, and hero-in-the-making Sigourney Weaver -- find themselves going toe-to-toe with a cosmic nightmare.

Aliens also made our list of one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time.

6. Alien: Romulus (2024)

The newest Alien movie is a standalone film from Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead) that takes place about 20 years after the events of the first Alien. Rain Carradine (played by Cailee Spaeny) and her brother join a group of young space colonizers' efforts to escape a life of deadly labor on their incredibly isolated home planet. When an abandoned Weyland-Yutani vessel appears in the planet's atmosphere, the group believes their best chance at escape is using the ship's cryo pods. Of course, however, they soon discover the terrifying reason the vessel was abandoned in the first place. Alvarez takes plenty of inspiration from previous Alien movies for his addition to the franchise, as well as Alien video games and even The Last of Us.

Read our review of Alien: Romulus

7. Aliens (1986)

Terminator director James Cameron, before creating his own landmark sequel with T2: Judgment Day, gifted us with Aliens, taking the slow-boil brutality of the Ridley Scott original and ramping it up into a full-tilt masterpiece. Sigourney Weaver, returning as Ellen Ripley, would solidify herself as an action hero icon in this thrilling, endlessly-quotable film that would introduce the world to idea of space marines AND space marines getting their asses kicked, pal! Aliens would handily feature more than one Xenomorph (hence the plural title) as well as stars Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen (who would play Charles Weyland decades later in AVP) and Carrie Henn.

8. Alien 3 (1992)

An appreciation for Alien 3 eventually bubbled up over the past 30 years but at the time David Fincher's directorial debut (three years before Se7en) would be deemed thin, grim, and, essentially, disappointing regarding Ripley's story (despite it giving us one of the most iconic images from the franchise, seen above). Alien 3 picks up right where Aliens left off, as the Colonial Marine spaceship, the Sulaco, is destroyed from within by a Xenomorph and an escape pod carries Ripley to a planet housing a penal colony. There, she and the inmates must deal with a rampaging alien before it massacres them all.

9. Alien Resurrection (1997)

The final film in the Ripley Saga, Alien Resurrection, hurls us 200 years beyond the events of Aliens and Alien 3 and into the inner workings of a military project aboard the USM Auriga that uses Ellen Ripley clones (and kidnapped humans) to try and successfully breed Xenomorphs. The City of Lost Children and Amélie's Jean-Pierre Jeunet directs this bizarrely-horrific chapter with cartoonish flare, casting Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya, J. E. Freeman, Brad Dourif, and Michael Wincott as the story's new space grunts. The film ends with a possible tease of Xenomorphs headed to Earth, though we'd never get that story as a follow up (only in crossover prequel form with AVP).

How to Watch the Alien Movies by Release Date

If you're looking to watch all the movies in theatrical release order, the correct list is below:

1. Alien (1979)
2. Aliens (1986)
3. Alien 3 (1992)
4. Alien Resurrection (1997)
5. AVP: Alien vs Predator (2004)
6. Aliens vs Predator - Requiem (2007)
7. Prometheus (2012)
8. Alien: Covenant (2017)
9. Alien: Romulus (2024)

What's Next for the Alien Franchise?

After the success of last year's Alien: Romulus, there have been talks of a sequel, with director Fede Alvarez revealing that the new film could start shooting this year. An official release date has not been set, but it's a promising update from the latest Alien director.

Beyond the big screen, there's also an Alien TV series in the works at FX that is set to premiere on August 12. While the series, called Alien: Earth, is another prequel to the original Alien films, showrunner Noah Hawley doesn't seem too attached to the backstory reveals from Prometheus. In terms of plot details, the first full trailer shows off a couple different types of Xenomorphs and maybe, just maybe, a connection to the Predator universe.

More Alien Deep Dives

• Every Xenomorph (and Alien) from the Alien Movies
• The Terrifying (and Sometimes Terrible) History of Alien Games
• Every Alien Blu-ray Set and Special Edition

Xbox is one of the three console brands that are widely available in the market today. From its inception in 2001, Microsoft has delivered innovative consoles with unique features with every new console release. What was once an unknown brand is now a prominent household name, with expansion to TV, multimedia, and its Xbox Game Pass subscription. With the recent announcement of an upcoming Xbox handheld, now is a perfect time to dive into the storied history of Xbox consoles.

Looking to save on an Xbox or new titles for your system? Be sure to check out the best Xbox deals available today.

How Many Xbox Consoles Have There Been?

In total, there have been nine total Xbox consoles across four different generations. The first Xbox was released in 2001, and ever since, Microsoft has released new consoles featuring new hardware capabilities, new controllers, and more. This list counts console revisions, which were updated models with better cooling and faster speeds, among other features.

Every Xbox Console in Order of Release

Xbox - November 15, 2001

The Xbox debuted in November 2001 as a competitor to the Nintendo GameCube and Sony PlayStation 2. This console was the first of its kind from Microsoft, which eventually kicked off the Xbox brand as we know it today. Halo: Combat Evolved served as the major launch title for Xbox, which ended up being the smash hit Xbox needed to take a portion of the console market. Today, both Halo and the Xbox have a legacy built upon for over 20 years. Some of the best original Xbox games are still well remembered alongside Halo to this day.

Xbox 360 - November 22, 2005

Xbox 360 was Microsoft's second console, which launched as a known brand in the market. With this release, many were familiar with who and what Xbox was about, primarily with its focus on multiplayer titles. Xbox 360 brought many innovations from Microsoft, especially with accessories and peripherals. Notably, the company launched Kinect, which allowed for movement to be tracked in games. To date, this was the most successful Xbox console, with over 84 million units sold. Some of the best Xbox 360 games are still relevant today.

Xbox 360 S - June 18, 2010

The Xbox 360 S offered a slimmer design compared to the original model, with significant internal changes. As many may be familiar with, the Xbox 360 was notorious for overheating, often causing the "Red Ring of Death". The Xbox 360 S aimed to fix that, with a revamped cooling system that was redesigned from the ground up. The new 360 S also featured more hard drive space, with up to 320GB available across the available models.

Xbox 360 E - June 10, 2013

To say Call of Duty is an important piece of video game history would be an understatement. It’s hard to think of first-person shooters (or action games in general) without mentioning this series, which has become one of the most successful franchises ever after revolutionizing single-player campaigns and online battles.

For decades, CoD has dominated the multiplayer scene. Apart from creating iconic characters like Captain Price and Alex Mason, the series has also introduced unexpected figures to their ranks, like Spawn, Snoop Dogg, and Lionel Messi. With Black Ops 6 now available, you might want to look back on over 20 years of Call of Duty history.

With entries exploring conflicts from both our past and our possible future, here's every Call of Duty game in chronological order.

Jump to:

• How to play in chronological order
• How to play by release date

How Many Call of Duty Games Are There?

Due to quite a few subseries, a reboot, and the many studios that have worked or are working on the series, it can be a bit troublesome to determine how many Call of Duty games have been released.

If we consider only the main entries with single-player campaigns, including all the World War II titles, the Modern Warfare subseries (plus its reboot), and the Black Ops subseries, there are 20 video games in the Call of Duty franchise

That said, things get complicated when you add all the expansions, online experiences, mobile games, and spin-offs. For example, Call of Duty: United Offensive is an expansion for the first game, while Call of Duty: Finest Hour and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One are side stories of the first two entries.

Spin-offs include strategy game Call of Duty: Siege, launched in 2016 based on Infinite Warfare’s universe; Call of Duty: Heroes, released in 2014; and the mobile version of Call of Duty: Black Ops. In fact, many main entries have significantly different editions for mobile/handheld when compared to the major console releases. Examples of this are PS Vita’s Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified and Nintendo DS’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Defiance.

Then there’s the Chinese free-to-play Call of Duty Online, released in 2015 and shut down in 2021. 2019’s Call of Duty Mobile took its place and is still running today.

The unique Zombies modes have become a staple of the series since their first inclusion in 2008’s World at War, and they have appeared in multiple entries since.

Finally, the franchise entered the battle royale and live service genres with Warzone, launched in 2020, which became a huge success. Two years later, it was replaced by Warzone 2.0, a complete overhaul of the game’s map and experience. Warzone Mobile brought the battle royale experience to iOS and Android devices in early 2024.

To avoid confusion, it’s worth mentioning that the reboot of the Modern Warfare series will be numbered with Roman numbers. Also, Black Ops 4 is not added to the list below for its lack of campaign (it’s a multiplayer-only experience).

Which Call of Duty Game Should You Play First?

For the sake of simplicity and accessibility, we recommend 2019's Modern Warfare reboot as a solid starting point for Call of Duty campaigns. Starting here creates a straightforward path through the rebooted Modern Warfare trilogy, as all three games are available on modern Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as PC. Plus, unlike the Black Ops subseries, each game was released within the last five years, meaning none should feel too dated.

Call of Duty Games in Chronological Order

Beware of minor spoilers for the stories, characters, and relevant events of each game in the list below.

1. Call of Duty (2003)

The franchise's first game was developed by Infinity Ward and published in 2003. This is the first of many entries in the series focused on World War II, following the steps of other household names like Medal of Honor.

In the first Call of Duty, you play three different campaigns as different soldiers from three countries: the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union.

The North American soldier, Private Martin, starts his training in 1942 and participates in the invasion of Normandy in 1944, while the British Sergeant Evans fights in Operation Tonga that same year. Evans will later be helped by Captain Price, a recurrent name in the franchise. On the other hand, the Soviet Alexei Ivanovich Voronin’s campaign takes place in the Battle of Stalingrad.

2. Call of Duty 2 (2005)

The sequel of the original title repeats the settings and nations but with some different perspectives. Instead of three campaigns, you experience four: one from the perspective of a North American soldier, one from the Soviet Union, and two from Britain.

As Private Vasili Koslov, you have to defend Moscow from Nazi German soldiers, while North American Bill Taylor joins the army that assaults La Pointe du Hoc during the infamous D-Day. The British soldiers, Sergeant John Davis and David Welsh, participated in the conflict in North Africa. Davis is led by Captain Price.

3. Call of Duty: World at War (2008)

A few years after Call of Duty 3, the team at Treyarch came back and delivered their last entry based on the conflict the series has been breathing off since its beginnings. This time, however, the campaign was only divided into North American and Soviet forces.

You follow American Marine Private C. Miller during the Makin Island raid in 1942, and later in the Battle of Peleliu, in which American forces confronted the Japanese army. The Soviet section takes place in the Battle of Stalingrad, but this time on the Eastern Front as Private Dimitri Petrenko.

4. Call of Duty 3 (2005)

The first main game in the series not developed by Infinity Ward, Call of Duty 3 was Treyarch’s first attempt at recreating World War II events.

Taking place in 1944, armies from Britain, Poland, the United States, Canada, and France fight against Germany's Nazi forces in the village of Chambois, France, during the Battle of Normandy.

This is the only main entry you cannot play on PC.

5. Call of Duty: WWII (2017)

Almost a decade and a half after the first game, studio Sledgehammer Games returned the franchise to World War II. This was the first time in the main series there was only one protagonist in the campaign: Ronald “Red” Daniels, accompanied by his loyal squad. As Red, you fight Nazi German forces across the European theater, from Normandy to Germany.

While WWII has some brief flashback sequences in 1940, which would set it as the first game in the series chronologically, the core of the title takes place in 1944.

6. Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021)

In the latest entry set in World War II, developer Sledgehammer Games tried once again to bring Call of Duty to its roots and explore this historical event from a different perspective.

Contrary to 2017’s WWII, you are presented with multiple characters on different fronts. The main objective is to learn more about Phoenix, a secret Nazi project that could change the tide of the war in favor of Nazi Germany.

Vanguard also has flashback sequences for different protagonists starting in 1941, but the majority of the campaign is set in 1945, near the end of the war.

7. Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)

Developer Treyarch changed eras with Black Ops. Going from 1961 to 1968, you’ll experience the events of the Cold War and part of the Vietnam War for the first time in the series.

The main protagonist, Alex Mason, works with the CIA and is tasked to remember events that would help find Soviet sleeper agents. These agents are around the United States, and they plan to release a dangerous chemical weapon called Nova 6.

8. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020)

Developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War helps connect the original Black Ops and Black Ops 2. While the main protagonist this time is nicknamed “Bell,” you get to choose your name, gender, and other details like dialogue lines.

Set in 1981, you team up with characters from previous games, including Alex Mason, Frank Woods, and Jason Hudson. Under CIA’s Russell Adler, your elite team is supposed to catch a Soviet figure that goes by “Perseus” who is planning to attack the United States.

9. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (2012)

The sequel to the original Black Ops presents two timelines. On the first one, you follow Alex Mason’s footsteps several years after he and his team successfully stopped Nova 6. It’s 1986, and Jason Hudson asks Mason to aid with the search for Frank Woods, who disappeared in Cuando Cubango, Angola.

The second timeline is centered around David Mason, Alex’s son, who’s looking for Raul Menendez in 2025. Menendez is the leader of Cordis Die, a terrorist organization that provoked the Second Cold War.

10. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (2024)

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 takes place in the early 1990s, beginning in 1991, after the events of Black Ops 2's late-80s storyline. The story is centered around the Gulf War, wherein Frank Woods and his team of rogue agents are hunted by a shadowy group that's infiltrated the CIA.

Historical figures represented in the game include former U.S. president Bill Clinton and former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

11. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)

The last entry to have a number after “Call of Duty,” Modern Warfare is the first time the series abandoned its classic Allies vs Axis conflict for something more recent.

In 2011, Yasir Al-Fulani, the president of a fictional Middle Eastern country, was executed by Khaled Al-Asad, the leader of a revolutionary party. Meanwhile, Russia is going through a civil war provoked by Imran Zakhaev, an arms dealer.

A squad commanded by Captain Price and formed by protagonist John “Soap” MacTavish have to stop an international crisis.

12. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)

Set five years after the events of the previous game, Modern Warfare 2 tells the story of Vladimir Makarov, an Ultranationalist who continues the work of Imran Zakhaev. It turns out this extremist party gained control of Russia, so Makarov gained the power to start committing terrorist acts against the United States.

Well-known faces like the Captain Soap and Captain Price join forces with Sergeant Gary "Roach" Sanderson, Lieutenant Simon "Ghost" Riley, “Nikolai”, and other agents to stop Makarov’s secret plan.

13. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)

The end of the first Modern Warfare trilogy brings the pursuit of terrorist Vladimir Makarov to its climax. Captain Price’s team re-arranges itself with Yuri, an ex-Spetsnaz known by Nikolai. Captain John "Soap" MacTavish is also present for the final mission.

Makarov captures Boris Vorshevsky, the president of Russia, who was going to establish peace with the United States. After threatening the president’s daughter, Makarov acquired nuclear launch codes, becoming an international danger once again.

14. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)

In 2019, Infinity Ward rebooted the successful Modern Warfare series by reusing some classic characters in a new timeline. Well-known faces like Captain Price are present in a new conflict with Russia.

Set in the same year it was released, a fictional republic called Urzikstan is invaded by a Russian army. While this attack is going on, a terrorist organization called Al-Qatala, also from Urzikstan, begins with operations against different countries in the world. Captain Price, alongside his Task Force 141 and the Urzikstan Liberation Force, try to de-escalate the conflict.

15. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)

Taking place in 2022, Modern Warfare II follows the story of the MW reboot, featuring returning characters from Task Force 141 and the Urzikstan Liberation Force leader Farah Karim.

Al-Qatala is still a threat, but all eyes are on Quds Force, an Iranian revolutionary group commanded by Hassan Zyani. Zyani is supported by Al-Qatala and a Mexican cartel from the fictional city of Las Almas, and he plans terrorist acts against the United States after the assassination of General Ghorbrani, an Iranian forces leader.

16. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023)

Picking up after the events of 2022's Modern Warfare II, MWIII once again stars Task Force 141, including recurring characters John Price, Simon "Ghost" Riley, Kyle "Gaz" Garrick, and John "Soap" MacTavish. Ultranationalist terrorist Vladimir Makarov, the villain from 2011's Modern Warfare 3, once again serves as the antagonist.

17. Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013)

A standalone entry with few connections to previous titles, Call of Duty Ghosts was developed by Infinity Ward in 2013. As its name indicates, it focused on the special operation group called Ghosts, a U.S. team tasked with secret missions.

It’s 2027, and after a decade of conflicts in the Middle East and an oil crisis, a South American force called the Federation of the Americas initiated a war against the United States. Working with your new team, you have to stop Gabriel T. Rorke, the former leader of Ghosts.

18. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014)

Advanced Warfare was the first entry to take place several decades beyond its release date. It was also the first game developed primarily by Sledgehammer Games.

Set in 2054, you control Jack Mitchell, a member of the United States Marine Corps who later fights in the private military corporation known as Atlas after suffering an accident. On this occasion, the enemy forces are a Chechenian separatist group called KVA led by Joseph "Hades" Chkheidze.

It was one of the first entries to feature futuristic changes in gameplay due to its setting, like the fact that soldiers now wear exoskeletons, which bring them unique abilities.

19. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (2015)

The end of the initial Black Ops trilogy was also set in the future. More specifically, in the year 2065, when a Third Cold War between the Common Defense Pact and the Winslow Accord is happening. Robotic drones, cyborg supersoldiers, unpiloted air forces, and other technological advancements take center stage.

A black ops team composed of you (simply referred to as “The Player”), Jacob Hendricks, and your cybernetics division will be tasked with preventing the conflict from reaching a more dangerous state. You investigate a strange event in Singapore and look out for the 54 Immortals, a crime organization.

20. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016)

No Call of Duty game went further into the future than Infinite Warfare. Around the 2080s, the United Nations Space Alliance was created after humans had spent all the natural resources available on Earth. Beginning the colonization and exploitation of resources on other planets, this alliance is defended by the Solar Associated Treaty Organization, a military force that battles the totalitarian regime Settlement Defense Front from Mars.

How to Play the Call of Duty Games By Release Date

1. Call of Duty (2003)
2. Call of Duty 2 (2005)
3. Call of Duty 3 (2006)
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
5. Call of Duty: World at War (2008)
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
7. Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)
9. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (2012)
10. Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013)
11. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014)
12. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (2015)
13. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016)
14. Call of Duty: WWII (2017)
15. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)
16. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020)
17. Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021)
18. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)
19. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023)
20. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (2024)

What’s Next for Call of Duty?

It's official: Black Ops 7 is next up in the Call of Duty franchise. A reveal trailer was shown at the recent June Xbox Showcase, showing Milo Ventimiglia as David Mason. Michael Rooker is also set to reprise his role as Mike Harper from Black Ops 2.

The seventh Black Ops game will be set in 2035, over 40 years after Black Ops 6, and brings back co-op campaigns. We don't have a release window quite yet, but it's certainly possible Activision sticks to their usual schedule of October or November releases.

Axel Bosso is a contributing freelancer for IGN, covering everything related to video games (he's behind some of the Wikis you might have used over the years)!

Splitgate 2, 1047 Games’ “Halo with portals”, launched just last week, marked by a celebratory announcement of a battle royale mode at Summer Game Fest. But while this should have been a triumphant moment for the studio and the community, the launch has instead been marked by not one, not two, but three different controversies that have led to mixed Steam reviews, disappointed fans, and a game community divided between those who support the studio’s actions and those who have been put off from playing Splitgate 2 at all.

First, at the game’s big battle royale reveal at Summer Game Fest, Proulx wore a hat that read, “Make FPS Great Again” onstage, which drew criticism for its reference to U.S. President Donald Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” hats, which come with significant political baggage. Then, Proulx called out Call of Duty in his speech onstage, saying he’s “tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year,” which drew ire from developers and fans of Call of Duty. And then on top of that, as the game launched, fans immediately called out a $145 microtransaction bundle on the game’s store that seemed to fly in the face of everything 1047 Games claimed it stood for.

I spoke to game director Ian Proulx in the wake of all this, and found him surprisingly sanguine for a company leader currently in the spotlight.

“So, I am surprised, to be honest, to dive right into it, we didn't expect this to be nearly as controversial as it was and we didn't intend for it to be,” he said. “In terms of the numbers, there have been good numbers, there's been a lot of negativity, but also positivity to match that people love the game. We just crossed the two and a half million player threshold, we tripled our player count. So there's good and bad, I think time will tell mixed emotions for sure, but overall feeling good.”

Obviously, I had to start by asking him about the hat. What was that all about?

“I'll start by saying, we talked a lot about this, we did not intend for this to be any sort of political statement,” Proulx replied. “I mean, I think we meant for it to be taken at face value, which is, we're not happy with the state of FPS games. I myself, as a gamer, my friends and I, we talk about how bored we are. We thought this was... It's something that's been meme'd to death. Even three months ago, Hideo Kojima had a hat that said, ‘Make TV great again.’ [Author's note: While this photo was reposted in March on Threads, the photo itself appears to be from 2017.] And his hat was red and there was no controversy there, so we talked about it, and we thought, okay, maybe some people will take it the wrong way, but it's been meme'd to death. It kind of says what we feel, which is we want to just make an awesome game and we're not happy with the state of FPS.”

I pointed out to Proulx that the MAGA hat and its message have become associated for many with feelings of discomfort and even fear due to current political events. I also noted the protests going on just a few miles away from Summer Game Fest, where Los Angelenos were taking to the streets to defend their immigrant neighbors from ongoing raids by ICE under President Trump’s orders, and where the National Guard is being deployed despite protests remaining largely peaceful. What does Proulx say to Splitgate fans and community members who felt genuinely emotionally distraught seeing the hat, in light of all that?

“I think the best I can say is we're not trying to send any sort of political message and we're moving on from this,” he replied. “Our intent is, we just want to make a great game, we want to listen to the fans, we've always been all about the community. And that's not just community in terms of listening to feedback to make the game better, but it's also in terms of making a community that people want to be a part of where the devs are engaging with the players, it's a positive community and so that's our ambition. Obviously, right now, it doesn't feel that way but we're getting back to our focus and that's what our focus is. So we're putting this behind us, we're moving forward, we're just going to keep listening to the community and making a great game.”

I pushed one more time on this topic, noting that in a tweet Proulx said he was “not here to apologize”, and here he seemed to be deliberately avoiding apologizing as well. He confirmed that was the case.

“I don't regret what I said to be candid. I think that I stand by it and my intent is I'm speaking my truth and my intent is to make a great game for everybody.”

My interview with Proulx, where he committed to not apologizing, took place on Sunday. Today, however, Proulx posted another video… apologizing.

“I want to apologize. And genuinely, you don’t have to believe me. But the truth is I am sorry. And the reason I am sorry is because of what this has done to the community. The most important thing to me right now is I want to have an amazing community… I hate seeing division. And that’s what I’m seeing now, on both sides. There’s division in the community, and for that I am truly sorry. And again, I’ll reiterate, I do stand by the intent of this, which is, the intent truly is, take it at face value. We do want to improve this genre. We do feel that the genre is in a bad state. And we want to make FPS games as amazing as possible. But I also understand that it’s not just about intent, it’s about impact, and the platform that we have had has had a negative impact, and for that I’m truly sorry.”

No excuses, I'm sorry. pic.twitter.com/4dgOxrSXUJ

— Splitgate 2 (@Splitgate) June 10, 2025

Back to our interview, we moved on to the second part of the controversy: Proulx’s comments on the shooter genre and specifically his mention of the Call of Duty franchise. During his speech onstage at the event, Proulx said, "I grew up playing Halo. And I'm tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year, and I wish we could have Titanfall 3." In response, he’s received criticism from Splitgate fans, Call of Duty fans, and developers both for using his platform at the show to disparage other video games, as well as for calling out Call of Duty when Splitgate 2 contains many of the same features, including the free-to-play battle royale mode Proulx revealed onstage.

On this front, Proulx admits his studio went too far in a response on Twitter to a Call of Duty developer who criticized his remarks. The developer tweeted, “‘make fps great again’ and its splitgate”, prompting the official Splitgate account to quote tweet it with, “Which Call of Duty does your team make again? I can’t tell them apart.” Both tweets have since been deleted, and Proulx said he was not the person behind that particular remark.

“Yeah, so I will say there was a tweet that we put out that we have since deleted, and I will apologize for that one. I mean, everything is on me of course as the CEO, that was not my post. My posts are me, right? They're videos of me, I try to be really just honest and off-script and just talk to the fans directly, but there's no excuse for that one and we did take it down.”

Regardless, Proulx stood by what he said onstage. He said he doesn’t have a specific beef with Call of Duty, but misses the “good old days” of the game. I asked him what that means, and he said he misses the “newness and the innovation”, citing Call of Duty 4. “And then Modern Warfare 2 taking it to the next level, whether it was the campaign, the multiplayer, all the skins to grind for, the lack of skill-based matchmaking where you just felt like it was very organic. And it feels like there's sort of a lack of innovation now that they're putting out quality and polish, but they're not necessarily pushing the bar forward.”

Finally, there’s the microtransactions. Splitgate 2 is free-to-play with microtransactions, and when it launched on June 6, players immediately began expressing their displeasure over one particular microtransaction: a $145 bundle, discounted to $80 for launch. 1047 Games cut the price dramatically down to $40 almost immediately, along with the prices of a number of other items.

Then, in a video published just before our interview took place, Proulx apologized for the pricing situation, saying he only learned about the bundle pricing shortly after he got offstage at Summer Game Fest. He attested that 1047 Games’ former head of monetization, who “happened to come from Call of Duty”, had been “very aggressive on the pricing,” and that prices had been even higher before. After his departure from the company, Proulx claimed 1047 leadership did a reevaluation of the pricing and lowered most prices, but “things slipped through the cracks.”

Why we went from $80 to $40. pic.twitter.com/8VC7Ku1qHQ

— Splitgate 2 (@Splitgate) June 8, 2025

I asked him how he, as head of the company, was unaware of the pricing of bundles for the game he was launching. Proulx reiterated that he took responsibility for what happened, saying he had been “very focused on getting through the beta.”

“We got through beta, we had other fires to attend to so I was focused on servers and just trying to get us through that. I was not thinking at all about monetization because I was just like, we're not going to make any money, it doesn't even matter if people can't play the game. And so that was where my head was at for the last two weeks was like, we got to just make sure this game is great, fix the servers, keep the lights on, fix the issues. Okay, we've made it barely, now we've got to go launch this game. And then it was a kind of, what the fuck moment, like how did we not catch this?”

I pointed to Proulx’s comment in the video that the person he alleges is responsible had previously worked on Call of Duty, which seemed to fit with accusations that he was taking shots at the game. Proulx replied that it was “a funny coincidence, but a hundred percent the truth.”

We talked a bit more about what happened, with Proulx reiterating that 1047 Games never intends to do anything like that expensive bundle ever again, and that they’re refunding players who already purchased it.

“Whether you like my original statement or not, that is what I am trying to accomplish here, and I don't need to talk about the statement anymore,” he says. “What I'm trying to accomplish here is I want to build a brand, and a community, and a product that people want to support where we are listening, that's the best way to do it. That's not how it's done anymore, and that is how I want to do it. You tell us your feedback, we're going to take that to heart, we're going to iterate, and we're going to actually take action quickly. We're not going to sit around and wait for the proper PR statement. That's why a lot of times when we talk to the players, I don't have a script, I just turn my phone on and we just find out what comes out of my mouth and that's what we go with.”

To wrap it up, I asked Proulx if he’s learned anything from this trifecta of incidents. He’s made it clear 1047 Games doesn’t intend to offer expensive bundles in the future, but what about the Call of Duty comments and the Make FPS Great Again hat? Will this incident inform how he presents himself in the future?

“Yes,” Proulx said. “So I'd say the biggest lesson, just kind of realizing the platform that we have, it's got a lot more weight than we realized and also just the seriousness of everything in this day and age. We intended to put out a meme, we intended to put out something that summarized how we feel, truly, but also it was a joke. It's a joke that's been done to death and has literally been done by Hideo Kojima, and we thought, well, this is a good data point for how a similar reaction will occur. We also specifically chose to do a black hat instead of a red one, not that that, I don't know if that makes a difference. So I think I've just kind of learned just the impact that little things like this can have on people and so we're trying to be very thoughtful about it going forward. And we're trying to get back to focusing, there's all this stuff in the air I just want to move on, I want to make a fun game. That's what we're going to do.”

Despite all the criticism, Proulx doesn’t feel that any of the issues over the last week have impacted Splitgate 2 as a game. “I think there's so many games that have done well over time that have had controversies, whatever it is. I think it did get us a lot of attention, whether good or bad and now it's on us as developers to improve and actually act on feedback. And so if we do that, I think we're going to succeed. And if we don't, I don't think any of this would've mattered.”

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.

Incredibles 3 will reportedly be directed by Elemental and The Good Dinosaur's Peter Sohn instead of Brad Bird, who wrote and directed the first two films in the Pixar franchise.

As reported by THR, Bird will still be writing the screenplay for Incredibles 3 and producing it alongside Soul's Dana Murray.

#D23 erupts as Incredibles 3 is announced! pic.twitter.com/gchdZOIvfy

— IGN (@IGN) August 10, 2024

We don't know much else about Incredibles 3, and Pixar only recently announced the project at D23 2024 with the news that Brad Bird would be on board in some capacity.

It is important to note that Sohn and Bird (the latter of whom is currently working on Skydance's Ray Gunn and could be the reason for the change), have had a very long working relationship as Sohn has worked on every past animated Bird film, including both Incredibles films. Sohn has also voiced a handful of Pixar characters in the past, including Ratatouille's Emile, Monsters University's Squishy, and Lightyear's Sox.

The Incredibles itself has been around since 2004, and the first film brought in $631 million globally and won the Academy Award for the best animated film. Incredibles 2 followed in 2018 and soared to $1.24 million worldwide.

For more in the world of Disney, check out how Pixar is doubling down on sequels, our guide to Walt Disney World's Cool Kid Summer, our ranking of the best Pixar films, and everything else on the schedule for Disney and Pixar.

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.

James Gunn’s Superman is easily one of the most hotly anticipated movies of 2025. Not only does the film introduce a brand new cinematic incarnation of the Man of Steel and his supporting cast, but it also kicks off the live-action side of Gunn’s and Peter Safran’s DCU. There are a great many questions about how exactly Superman introduces this shared cinematic universe and what role David Corenswet’s Kal-El plays, but things are becoming clearer thanks to a new roundtable interview from Entertainment Weekly.

From the fact that the DCU has a Justice Gang rather than a Justice League to the surprisingly deep history of metahumans in this world, here are the biggest takeaways from the EW interview.

Justice League or Justice Gang?

Superman’s fellow DC heroes like Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner, Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl, and Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific have featured prominently in DC’s marketing so far. We know that these heroes serve on the DCU version of the Justice League, a team apparently spearheaded by Sean Gunn’s Maxwell Lord (a nod to the Justice League International comics of the ‘80s). But what we didn’t know until now is that this team isn’t actually called the Justice League. They’re the Justice Gang.

That one change speaks volumes about the team and their place in the wider DCU. There’s a certain harder edge inherent to the Justice Gang, partly because their name also dredges up images of the supervillain team from the comics known as the Injustice Gang. Rather than consisting of the best, brightest, and most noble heroes the world has to offer, the Justice Gang is comprised of hotheads and abrasive personalities. We saw from the recent Peacemaker Season 2 trailer that Lord and his team aren’t particularly respectful of their fellow heroes.

Ultimately, the Justice Gang is still a force for good in the DCU. They just aren’t necessarily blessed with the same inherent sense of kindness and decency as Superman himself. "They're good. They just are not saintly," Gunn tells EW.

That speaks to a larger desire on Gunn’s part to explore the full spectrum of morality in the DCU. Corenswet’s Superman and Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor represent polar extremes, but most characters fall somewhere firmly in the middle of the good/evil spectrum.

"There are some characters that are really almost saintly, like Superman," Gunn says. "There are some characters who are almost pretty terrible, like Lex Luthor. But I don't think Lex is all bad, and I don't think Superman is all good. All those people in between, the Guy Gardners and the Jimmy Olsens of the world, are even more complex in their moralities and what they think is okay."

Fillion also points out an important distinction when it comes to Guy Gardner and Green Lanterns in particular. They’re recruited into the Green Lantern Corps not because they’re the most heroic beings in the universe, but simply because they feel no fear. That’s how you wind up with a proud jerk like Guy wielding a power ring.

"I love the idea that if you have an emergency and you need a Green Lantern — there's thousands of them out there in the galaxy — this is the last one you want," Fillion says. "What is very true about Guy Gardner, and what James understands very well, is you don't have to be good and pure of heart to be a Green Lantern. You just have to be fearless. You just have to have the will. And Guy Gardner thinks he can take on Superman. That's how fearless he is. No, you can't take on Superman, dude."

Lois and Clark Are Already Dating

The latest Superman trailer shines a light on the dynamic between Corenswet’s Clark Kent and Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane. As Lois grills Clark on his recent controversial actions in Boravia, it becomes clear that she knows his secret identity and isn’t afraid to call him out for his mistakes. What wasn’t clear from the trailer, however, is whether Lois and Clark are actively dating as the movie opens. Yes, we see the two kiss in one shot, but is that a later development or an extension of an existing romance?

Gunn now confirms that the latter is true. Superman is set in a world where Kal-El and his fellow heroes have been active for some time already, and that extends to his relationships with the Daily Planet crew. Lois and Clark have known each other long enough that she already knows his secret and has come to appreciate the many sides of Superman.

“This isn't like the interview in the [Richard] Donner movie where Lois doesn't know that he's Clark," Corenswet says. "Lois knows everything about him, so he's in a very vulnerable position. He's madly in love with this woman and desperately wants her to understand him and appreciate him and love him back."

This dynamic between Lois and Clark will play a very prominent role in the film, to the point where it fundamentally affects Corenswet’s performance. This is a hero who puts on one public face as Superman and another as bumbling reporter Clark Kent. Lois becomes one of the very few people to know and appreciate the real man that exists between those two facades.

"We also had this third character, of who Clark is when he's in a room with somebody who knows both sides of him,” Corenswet says. “He's not really playing the character of Superman, but he's also not really playing the role of Clark, either. It's a personality that only comes out with his parents and with Lois, once she really gets to know everything about him."

The DCU’s Long Metahuman History

We’ve known from the beginning that Superman takes place in a world with a rich, existing history of superheroes and metahumans. But until now, we didn’t realize just how deep that history goes. Gunn reveals that the DCU is a place where the general public is intimately familiar with the existence of metahumans. These figures have been public knowledge for roughly 300 years by this point.

"If you saw a shark-man walking down the street, you'd probably vomit and s--- yourself to death," Gunn says. "If they saw one, it would be more like if you saw Paul McCartney on the sidewalk in New York."

At this point, we can only speculate as to the metahuman-related conflicts the DCU has dealt with in the past. No doubt this is a world where, like in the comics, many heroes and villains played parts in World War II. The 300-year timeline probably also encompasses the Paradise Lost series, which will explore the political turmoil and strife on Wonder Woman’s home island of Themyscira. And that’s to say nothing of immortal metahuman characters like Vandal Savage.

How The Engineer Is Different From the Comics

By now, it’s become clear that María Gabriela de Faría’s Angelia Spica/The Engineer is one of the main antagonists in the film. The trailer shows The Engineer battling Superman alongside the mysterious Ultraman and even clashing with Superman’s faithful pup Krypto. This is a character who will differ from the source material in terms of both powers and motivations.

When it comes to the former, The Engineer has been reimagined so that she’s no longer a T-1000-style shape-shifting, liquid metal lifeform. Instead, she’s a human modified by advanced nanotech, allowing her to generate deadly weapons from pure thought.

De Faría provides some insight into her character’s motivations, revealing Angela to be a true believer in Lex Luthor’s vision for humanity. And while this isn’t overtly referenced in the film, there may be a romantic attraction driving her as well.

“I imagined that Lex and Angie had this work relationship where they respect each other so much," she says. "Angela highly believes in Lex's idea of making the world a better place. She's practically given her life to Lex for this greater good. But at the same time, I feel like there's an element of an underlying relationship going on between the two of them.”

De Faría even reveals she told Gunn, “I feel like these guys f***.”

Metamorpho’s True Purpose

Some DC fans have noted concern about the large ensemble cast of what is ostensibly a Superman-centric movie, pointing to the presence of numerous other metahuman heroes and villains as a sign the film is too crowded for its own good. Though if the Guardians of the Galaxy movies proved anything, it’s that Gunn has a knack for drawing in all manner of characters without making them superfluous to the plot.

That looks to be true for Superman as well, especially now that we know exactly what role Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho is meant to play in the conflict between Superman and Lex Luthor. It seems that Luthor sees Rex Mason as a valuable weapon. A man whose body can transmute itself into any element is the world’s most ready-made source of Kryptonite. Rex, naturally, is less than thrilled at becoming a pawn in Luthor’s anti-Superman crusade.

"You're in a situation where it's having to hurt someone, having to be an agent of the bad guy. And at the same time, there's this struggle to want to be good," Carrigan says. "What the film does brilliantly is it puts you in this situation of, 'Oh! He has no choice.' He has to be doing this, and you see how painful it is."

Gunn Is Developing a Superman Follow-Up

Superman is just one step in a much larger roadmap for the DCU. Gunn and Safran announced a number of movies and series when they first revealed DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters in 2023. With the emphasis on getting scripts ironed out before moving forward on any project, the release lineup has shifted somewhat in the years since, but Gunn definitely has a plan he’s busy executing.

We’ve known for a little while that Gunn is busy writing his next major DCU project after Superman and Peacemaker Season 2. But now the director is confirming that he’s specifically developing a follow-up to Superman (whether or not these are the same project remains unclear). Not necessarily a direct sequel, but one that builds on the characters and plot points introduced in the first DCU movie.

"What I'm working on is in some way…I mean, yes, yes, yes, yes,” Gunn says. “But is it a straight-up Superman sequel? I would not say necessarily."

It appears that Gunn’s next several projects will be about establishing more connective tissue in the DCU and making it more clear what the Gods and Monsters plan actually entails.

“The most important thing is the specific stories, but there is also a much bigger story that we're telling that will take a little bit longer to tell," Gunn says. "That's sort of where my next couple of things are going to be."

Part of that process may involve introducing a true Justice League in the DCU. Gunn cryptically hints, "There is no Justice League in this world… not yet."

Again, we now know that Lord’s team in Superman is the Justice Gang rather than the Justice League. That distinction is even more significant if it turns out the idea is to build toward the debut of a proper Justice League down the road. As the DCU debuts its versions of key heroes like Wonder Woman (who’s confirmed to be getting a new movie) and Batman (the DCU version of whom will debut in Batman: The Brave and the Bold), Gunn’s goal may be to introduce a more traditional Justice League team comprised of these iconic heroes just in time for the climax of Gods and Monsters.

Do you want a more traditional Justice League team in the DCU, or do you prefer the misfit Justice Gang? Cast your vote in our poll and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

For more on the future of the DCU, brush up on every DC movie and series in development.

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

Alienware released a new flagship gaming laptop this year - the Area-51 - and it brings to the table a host of upgrades over the m-series laptops including a sleeker redesign, current generation components, and better cooling potential. It might be a tad early for a Dads and Grads event, but several variants of both the Alienware 16 Area-51 and Alienware 18 Area-51 gaming laptops are already on sale with discounts of up to $300 off. They're equipped with the latest Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, including the RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. Orders are expected to ship out late June.

The Area-51: 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.

As part of the greater Sony PlayStation Days of Play Sale Event, Amazon is offering 25%-27% off discounts on PlayStation DualSense controllers in nearly every color. Prices range from $54.88 to $59.88 with free shipping. The Dualsense is oft regarded as the best PS5 controller under $100 but it also makes for an excellent PC controller, especially since PC game clients like Steam support DualSense features like haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. You better hurry though, because the Days of Play Sale ends on Wednesday, June 11, along with these DualSense deals.

Sony PS5 DualSense Controller Chroma Series

The Lord of the Rings is one of those franchises that fans just can't get enough of. Whether you love the books, movies, or both, there a ton of ways to show your appreciation for LotR in 2025. That being said, some of the best Lord of the Rings gifts can get pretty expensive. If you're looking to invest in a deluxe edition of the books, a box set of all of the movies in 4K, or even just and awesome LEGO set, it isn't going to be cheap.

Thankfully, Amazon always seems to have some sort of discount you can take advantage of. The latest buy one, get one 50% off sale includes the LotR books and movies with quite the variety of choices within just those two categories. If you've been looking for the perfect Father's Day gift for a dad who loves Middle-earth, this is the perfect opportunity to grab something really nice at a discount.

Buy One, Get One Half Off Lord of the Rings

The buy one, get one half off sale is fairly simple. Amazon has a huge list of items included in the sale and all you need to do is add two of them to your cart to get 50% off the cheaper item. So to fully take advantage of the sale, you'll probably want to buy two similarly priced items. There are more than just Lord of the Rings books and movies in this sale, however, so you chan chose from a variety of other 4K movies and books included in the sale and still get the discount.

I've featured some of the best LotR gift picks from the sale above, but this isn't even everything. Almost all of the Lord of the Rings books are included in the sale right now in various forms. There are a couple of awesome box sets that are a great edition to any shelf as well as two different illustrated editions of Tolkien's work. If you're looking for the ultimate book gift, I'd suggest the Deluxe Illustrated Edition simply because it's a giant epic tome. Both illustrated books include drawings from Tolkien himself, though, so the main difference is the price.

If you're more of a fan of the Lord of the Rings movies, one of the best options available is included in this sale. The 4K UHD Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Extended & Theatrical) movie set is a great option. It includes all three films from the Peter Jackson trilogy as well as bonus features, all in glorious 4K. There's also the Blu-ray version of the trilogy available for a lot cheaper included in this sale, but it doesn't include the same amount of bonus features.

Check Out The New LEGO Lord of the Rings Book Nook

The upcoming Big Bang Theory spinoff series Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is going to hit with, well, a bang apparently — because according to creator Chuck Lorre, the show is set to have some serious visual effects.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe revolves around Big Bang Theory character Stuart Bloom, played by Kevin Sussman. Stuart, as Big Bang Theory fans will know, is the comic book store owner and dismissive friend of the main cast. As the show went on, Sussman's role in it grew to the point where he became a significant member of the cast.

“There’s a lot of CGI,” Lorre, who is developing Stuart Fails to Save the Universe alongside fellow Big Bang Theory creator Bill Prady and Avengers screenwriter Zak Penn, revealed during a recent conversation at Baniff World Media Festival this week reported by Variety.

He continued: “There’s a lot of special technical stuff that — you know, for me in my career, a big production number was two people sitting on a couch, drinking coffee! This is different. This is trying to incorporate some of that world of science fiction/fantasy into a comedy. And I’m completely out of my element, which is what I wanted. Which is what I was hoping to do, something that I had no experience with. And maybe I can learn as we go.”

If you're looking for an affordable power bank that will fast charge your brand new Nintendo Switch 2, Steam Deck, or Apple iPhone 16, then check out today's deal. Amazon has the Iniu 10,000mAh Power Bank with up to 45W of Power Delivery over USB Type-C for only $11.25 after you redeem the 50% off coupon on the product page. Iniu power banks have solid reviews and are less expensive than equivalent Anker models.

Iniu 10,000mAh 45W USB Power Bank for $11.25

James Gunn has confirmed a new Wonder Woman movie is officially in development, saying it’s “being written right now.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly to promote the upcoming launch of Superman, DC Studios co-head Gunn said this new Wonder Woman movie is being developed separately to the already announced Paradise Lost HBO Max series.

"We're working on Wonder Woman,” Gunn said. “Wonder Woman's being written right now."

Outside of the comics, Diana of Themyscira has had a rough time in recent years. Her live-action film franchise starring Gal Gadot flamed out after the mixed reception of Wonder Woman 1984, she’s never had a dedicated animated series, and what was supposed to be Diana’s first ever solo video game was cancelled despite being announced all the way back in 2021.

As IGN writer Carlos Morales recently explained, "At the height of competition between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DCEU in the late 2010s, the first Wonder Woman film was one of the latter’s most undeniable success stories. The 2017 film received largely positive reviews and pulled in over $800 million at the global box office. After Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad both polarized audiences, Patty Jenkins’ take on Diana connected with filmgoers in a way the last few DC films hadn’t. ... The 2020 sequel Wonder Woman 1984, however, was a significant letdown, dividing critics and failing to recoup its budget theatrically."

That movie was released day and date on HBO Max and in theaters because many filmgoers were still hesitant to go out during the pandemic.

A third film was in the works but development puttered out eventually, and there had been no word on another Wonder Woman feature until now. Of course at this point, with a new Wonder Woman movie in the works, questions over who will play Diana will crop up once again.

Superman hits theaters July 11 and kicks off Gunn's rebooted DCU in a big way. It's set before Peacemaker Season 2, which premieres on HBO Max on August 21, 2025. Supergirl comes out on June 26, 2026, but we don’t have a release date for the Lanterns TV show.

Other upcoming DCU projects known to be in the works include Clayface, which has a September 11, 2026 release date. DCU movie The Authority, however, sounds like it’s in trouble. Gunn has said Waller, a spinoff of Peacemaker, “has had a couple of setbacks, frankly.” However, HBO Max series Booster Gold “is going pretty strong,” and Paradise Lost is "slow moving, but it's moving."

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.

If you're playing Mario Kart World, you'll likely be unlocking a steady stream of new vehicles simply playing the game as you normally would — progressing through Grand Prix Cups, Knockout Tour and hunting down challenges in Free Roam.

All in all, there are 30 karts to unlock on top of the game's basic eight vehicles. Every 100 coins unlocks a new kart, so you'll need 3,000 coins to nab them all.

It's not a particularly tall order, but that hasn't stopped fans from immediately trying to maximise their Mario Kart World time to get everything even quicker.

Most tips involve Mario Kart World's Free Roam mode, where players are hunting down the most lucrative spots to grind for coins — or even go AFK and watch their coffers slowly fill.

If you're happy to rinse and repeat loading the game over and over, fans are recommending honing in on any of the game's giant stacks of coins you can find in Free Roam which respawn every time you reload the game.

IGN has tested this method with the stack of coins by the Boo Cinema fast travel spot. Load into Free Roam from the game's main menu, turn around and you'll see the coin stack to your left. After collection, simply reload the game and repeat the process.

Artist Tyler Kirkham has become a fixture at Marvel Comics in recent years, and it's not hard to understand why. Now Clover Press is celebrating Kirkham's prolific career by making him the subject of their latest Marvel artbook.

With the crowdfunding campaign for The Marvel Art of Tyler Kirkham now live, IGN can exclusively debut a new preview of the Spider-Man artwork featured in the book (art which will also be reprinted as a portfolio in certain pledge tiers). Get a closer look in the slideshow gallery below:

The Marvel Art of Tyler Kirkham is a hardcover, coffee table-style artbook featuring 200 pages of art pulled both from Kirkham's interior art in books like New Avengers/Transformers and Phoenix: Warsong and from covers to series like The Amazing Spider-Man and Venom. In addition to the book itself, backers have the option to add on extras like 11"x17" art prints, stickers, and other goodies.

“I am extremely excited to announce my official art book with Marvel Comics and Clover Press,” said Kirkham in a statement. “It represents a comprehensive collection of my artwork for Marvel over the years, encompassing hundreds of covers and interior pages. I'm honored to have a book of this scale and quality coming out and I can't wait for people to see it!”

“I’ve been a fan of Tyler’s work since our days at DC, and have marveled at what he’s accomplished in the years since,” said Clover Press Publisher Hank Kanalz. “He continues to top himself with his ‘Battle Damage’ covers and more recently his homage pieces. The Marvel Art of Tyler Kirkham tracks his growth as an artist, and collects so many pieces in one volume – not to be missed by any Tyler Kirkham collector!”

The Kickstarter campaign for The Marvel Art of Tyler Kirkham is live now. Previous Marvel artbooks from Clover Press have included The Marvel Art of Alex Maleev, The Marvel Art of Russell Dauterman, and The Marvel Art of Michael Turner.

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

EVE Online has a decades-long reputation at this point for being a sprawling, ruthless, libertine space sandbox full of crime, war, betrayal, and player-built empires. And from its conception, EVE Frontier is really all of those things dialed up even further. Blending its space MMO heritage with elements of the survival crafting genre and employing the blockchain to – so the devs say – give even more control to players, it's certainly a thought-provoking prospect.

Let me get this out of the way first: Frontier is, yes, a blockchain game. It also features a cryptocurrency token that can be bought with real money and spent on in-game purchases. (EVE Online has had the ability to buy its subscription token, PLEX, with real money and sell it for in-game money for a while now, so that specific aspect isn't new.) I am highly skeptical, personally, of these kinds of rotating Silicon Valley hype words, and nothing CCP has said to me so far has made me less so, as a rule.

But I do believe, based on the conversations I've had with these devs, that they are genuinely interested in the tech primarily on the basis of the gameplay features it might enable. I asked a lot of hard questions, and don't think they're trying to drum up investment capital by invoking magic words or cash in on some kind of crypto rug-pull. Their faith in this tech might be misplaced, in my opinion. But I think their desire to leverage it is generally in good faith.

CEO Hilmar Pétursson told me that the intent with putting Frontier on the chain was that if, for instance, a meteor were to hit their offices in Reykjavik, the universe they, and we, created could persist without them. It also opens the door for CCP to step back from being active administrators some day and simply be another organization within the decentralized EVE Frontier ecosystem. On the topic of environmental concerns, I was assured repeatedly that using "proof of stake" verification, it was possible to run Frontier's blockchain elements using about the same amount of energy as the traditional EVE Online servers that have been up for years. I don't know enough about the tech involved to independently verify this, but it's what I was told.

At the end of the day, it is what it is. So let's move on to how Frontier actually plays.

A DARK FOREST

While EVE Online started with large areas of high security space populated by NPC factions with their own laws and police, Frontier is exactly what it says in the name: an entirely fresh canvas of wild space with no rules but the ones we make and enforce as players. We're still controlling spaceships in third person, making jumps between star systems to collect resources and craft industrial stations, consumables, and equipment, and shooting at NPC baddies or other players with lasers and rockets. It feels very familiar, moment-to-moment, as a long-time EVE player. One big exception is that combat is a bit more intuitive and complex now with obstacles like asteroids being able to block weapon fire realistically based on their precise shapes.

Everyone starts out in your own dark corner of the galaxy with a single ship and a home base, beginning a journey to tame the stellar wilderness from square one. When I asked the devs if they thought players would eventually build their own permanent civilizations, maybe up to and including something like EVE Online's Concord, they told me the potential is definitely there. But there is a certain level of added attrition in Frontier, partly in the form of terrifying, wandering world bosses that take the shape of rogue AI – hulking, almost Lovecraftian metallic beasts in the black with unknown motives.

Frontier also aims to be a moddable MMO, which might sound like a strange prospect. Initially, much of what you build in the 3D world will be restricted to remixing premade assets. You won't be able to import your own meshes from Blender, for instance, though that restriction may not last forever. But we were shown a lot of ways players could push the boundaries of the genre and their own imaginations.

HIGHWAY TO SPACE HELL

One way this manifests is in the gate network, which will be entirely player-built. You could set up your own interstellar highway connecting what will initially be isolated star systems, and even charge in-game resources or crypto tokens to use them. Of course, there's nothing necessarily stopping another player from building their own bypass right next to yours with lower tolls or even for free. You also don't have to ask for resources at all. You could make other players solve a riddle or follow you on social media to use your gates.

Obviously I can imagine many dystopian permutations of this kind of libertarian space sandbox. More than anything, it kind of reminds me of Minecraft anarchy servers like the infamous 2b2t. And when I asked Pétursson if CCP's lawyers thought he was crazy, he very matter-of-factly confirmed that they do. But CCP is trusting that the players will be the ones to self-police the worst excesses.

If McDonalds were to come in and try to establish a stargate network that required you to watch a commercial for their new combo meal every five jumps, they would also need to provide their own around-the-clock security or anti-corpo player federations could simply come in and blow it all up. To what extent these brands might find it's worth hiring mercenaries in a video game to protect their ad buys remains to be seen. And there is something fascinating about that, I have to admit.

The one thing CCP will not ever allow modification of, the bedrock upon which this universe sits, is its laws of physics. A ship still has mass and will behave like something with mass would, even if you make it look like pregnant Sonic the Hedgehog. And anything you build will still ultimately require a supply chain that can be traced back to mining matter from black hole clusters. If you want to use your real-world riches to buy a bunch of tokens and bootstrap an in-game empire, you'll still need to buy those finite resources from players who took the time to gather them, at market rates. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. There's no way of bypassing that.

SEE YOU ON THE FRONTIER

EVE Frontier is, if nothing else, an intriguing experiment in the making. It could be an absolute trash fire, and I remain actively wary of its blockchain and cryptocurrency elements. But I did have fun playing the small bit of it we got access to, and it is an enticing invitation to settle and develop fresh empires in a blank slate galaxy with no major NPC factions to work around. But if you don't want to take my word for it, you can try it out yourself with one of Frontier's paid Founder packages right now.

IGN's Dune: Awakening map is here! Our interactive map tracks essential locations across Arrakis, including Main Quests and Contracts, Enemy Camps and Enemy Outposts, and Trainer locations.

Dune: Awakening Interactive Map

In the upcoming Obsidian game Grounded 2, a game about a group of teenagers being shrunk down to bug size in a giant park, one of the premier features that’s new in the sequel is the ability to mount a bug like a horsey and ride it around. It’s a feature request the community has been making for a long time, and one that Obsidian has been very keen to honor.

And it’s also one of the main reasons that Obsidian is making Grounded 2 in the first place. Put simply, Grounded 1 couldn’t handle mountable bugs…or really much in the way of new content at all by the time it was finished. Obsidian wanted to make its game about becoming very small…bigger. Much bigger. And a move to Unreal Engine 5 helped make it possible, he says.

“There's a handful of different reasons, but I'll focus in on a few of them,” answers executive producer Marcus Morgan, when asked why Obsidian made a sequel instead of just continually updating Grounded 1. “Thing number one was, we started Grounded 1 on the original Xbox One. And we were running out of room to actually physically get things into the game. And so if we wanted to add any more content, we actually would've had a hard load to expand the game. And that ruined the concept of being really immersed and really being in this continuous space.”

Morgan goes on, pointing out that the team had told a complete story in Grounded 1 – beginning, middle, and end – and wanted to do a separate complete story in sequel form. But finally, there were the bug mounts, or “Buggies” as Obsidian playfully calls them.

“We had already prototyped out making multiple creatures in Grounded 1, the challenge was though we didn't design all of the spaces to match that new style of play. You change the speed of traversal, you have to spread out your distance between [points of interest], how you handle over lands, how you handle interior spaces, how you handle environmental hazards. All that stuff wasn't really thought through, so we needed to build a whole new space to really let those things land, that's why the game's so much bigger.”

Obsidian isn’t making Grounded 2 alone. The team is partnering with the developer behind Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, Eidos Montreal, for co-development. It's a partnership which Morgan praises highly for how well the teams have worked together, and describes as co-development “in the truest sense.” He explains that Obsidian initially reached out to Xbox’s central team to ask for help finding a studio partner for Grounded 2, but it was the second-party partnerships group who responded and suggested Obsidian speak with Eidos. Turns out, the studio had a lot of big Grounded fans on board – enough that it was the Eidos team who selected and refined the premise for Grounded 2’s story and antagonists. That was enough to sell Morgan and his colleagues on Eidos as a co-development partner. [And no, Morgan does not think Obsidian and Grounded specifically are standing in the way of a new Deux Ex game.]

Currently, Grounded 2 is planned for early access launch on Xbox and PC – no PlayStation or Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2, even though its predecessor eventually made it onto the former two platforms. That doesn’t mean the door is closed forever, though.

“I will say that I'm so, so happy for Grounded 1 that we were able to go on all those platforms,” Morgan says. “At the end of the day, we have a little tagline of ride together, survive together. This game to me is about playing together with your friends no matter where they play. And so our goal always is to reach as many players as possible. We'll start off with this, we'll see where it goes in the future.”

Morgan really can’t speak in a firm way about any plans for the future of Grounded 2, but he does suggest the thought from Obsidian is to do something similar to what was done for Grounded 1: a couple of years of early access, then a 1.0 release. And then, who knows? But he adds that the team doesn’t “put any hard and fast constraints on that because there is a very sincere commitment to the early access process of putting content out there, seeing how people react to it, iterating on that and building from it.”

“And so, what I would say is I definitely see Grounded 2 as being, it's set up to be much more expandable than maybe we had initially laid out Grounded 1 for, but we need to see how it goes in terms of whether or not we put a cap on or not,” he continues. “In terms of what we do for future content and beyond, that'll really be dictated by what players do and then assuming if backend and tech can still hold and keep us in the future, but we would stick with that too. But we'll play that out as we work with the community through it.”

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.

In a delightful surprise for Grounded fans, Obsidian took to the stage at the Xbox Games Showcase last weekend to reveal an unexpected sequel simply dubbed Grounded 2.

Obsidian has shared that Grounded 2 will take cues from its predecessor by similarly launching into early access and growing over time with the support and feedback of the community. That early access launch is soon, too; next month, to be exact. I got a chance to play a little bit of what players will be shrinking into next month at the Xbox Games Showcase in Los Angeles over the weekend. And my overall impression, which I say as a full-throated compliment, is that yup, that's a little bit bigger Grounded all right!

It's admitedly hard for me to say much about the ways in which Grounded 2 differs from the first Grounded just based on the small, small snippet I played. I was given the option to jump into a later section of the game, but I opted for the tutorial to refresh my Grounded skills, which have gotten a little rusty.

Thus, much of what I saw through that tutorial was, pleasantly, more Grounded. It's the same kids (albeit two years older now) shrunk down to ant size thanks to the shady dealings of a company called Ominent. Once shrunk, they suffer from a touch of amnesia that leaves them with little memory of what they were doing pre-shrinking, but luckily, our teens do remember the gist of their last tiny backyard adventure, even if they must reacquire many of the skills they developed the first time around. Crafting, for instance - you'll still be analyzing every item you come across, learning new crafting recipes, and slowly building new pieces of armor, weapons, tools, and other items to help you survive. Or you'll be scrounging around the early areas for food (mushrooms, in my case) and drink (dewdrops) so you don't starve to death. Or maybe you'll be fighting bugs or other critters, poking at them nervously with a crudely-made stick spear. All the fundamentals are still in Grounded, familiar and waiting for everyone who just wanted more of what the original was selling.

What's new here was a little less obvious in a short, early-game sample, but I did get a taste of some of it. You'll get a new Omni-tool, for instance, that combines all of your tools into one for easy use without taking up inventory space. I didn't get to experiment with its myriad uses much, but I did use it to hack away at some enormous grass blades in place of an axe. Another new mechanic is the addition of a dodge button in combat, which fit in so smoothly I briefly forgot dodging wasn't a part of the first game. Both of these examples are relatively small quality-of-life features, but they seem poised to smooth out some of the wrinkles in the overall experience long-term. It's wild that the first Grounded didn't have a dodge button before now!

The biggest new piece of Grounded 2 that I actually got some decent hands-on time with was the Buggy system - essentially mounts. I was able to ride proudly astride a big ol' ant. It...kinda ruled? It's fun to ride a big bug? Galloping around on my ant steed aside, the Buggy actually comes with quite a few other interesting features packed in. You can sprint, or you can swap to a much slower gathering mode that will have your Buggy collect any resources it runs into as you pass them, eliminating the need for time-consuming harvesting. Buggies can also fight on your behalf, or chomp down on blades of grass or other choppable items to hack them down. At one point, I skittered through a nest of mites, gripping a glowing mushroom torch and letting my ant do the dirty work of munching away every mite that threw itself at me.

I was told in an interview after our preview session that it's these Buggy mounts that essentially necessitated Grounded 2, albeit alongside other factors. The first Grounded was never designed for the speed at which mounts can cover ground. As a result, the map was too small for Obsidian to ever implement Buggies as a real, useful feature for anyone. The only way to get the oft-requested rideable bugs into the game was to make the game much, much bigger.

And that's what I'm told has happened here. Grounded 2 takes place not in a backyard, but in Brookhollow Park, which Obsidian says is roughly three times the size of the backyard from the first game. I think I saw, like, maybe the teensiest, tiniest, earliest-gamest corner of that park - the nice, easygoing space that's intended to acclimate both new and returning players to the world of Grounded before sending them off on an ant-riding adventure into the unknown.

I still have a lot more questions about what Grounded 2 is bringing to the picnic table that will justify an entirely new game as opposed to just expanding the existing Grounded. Mechanically, I'm not fully sure rideable bugs is going to sell me on it. Then again, Grounded is heavily story-focused, and Grounded 2 opens the gate to a brand new story. It lets Obsidian age up its protagonists, progress Ominent's nefarious nonsense, and expand the world. And it remains true that the first Grounded was pretty dang fun just as it was. So sure. I'll take more of it, plus bug riding. Ride like the wind, bugs-eye.

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.

Some things just feel right. When I first laid eyes on Invincible VS, my thoughts were something along the lines of, “Yeah, that makes sense.” If you were going to choose a comic book to adopt into a fighting game, you could do a lot worse than Robert Kirkman’s magnum opus. It’s got everything you need for a tag fighter: bone-crushing hits, a big cast to draw from, a cool art style, plenty of unique superpowers that can easily be converted into special moves, the works. But Invincible VS has a secret weapon, too: its developer, Quarter Up. That name might not be familiar to you yet – they’re a new studio – but they’re anything but rookies. Several members of the 40+ person development team played a core role in the development of 2013’s Killer Instinct, and you can feel that influence. Seeing Invincible VS is one thing, but when I sat down to play it and speak with members of the team, I knew I was among fellow sickos – and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

One of the problems with previewing a fighting game is that you never have enough time with it to really dig into its systems. This is an incredibly complex genre; every time you sit down with a new fighting game, it’s a new experience. Some of it is like riding a bike. Hold back to block. Your assist button will also tag if you hold it. That sort of thing. But a lot of it is new. You gotta learn your button layout; you gotta figure out how combos work, what kind of defensive systems you have, what your special moves do, all kinds of stuff. If I had my way, I would have spent hours in Invincible VS’s training mode just tinkering with teams and learning how things worked. As it was, I only had about an hour. But even with such limited time, I left feeling like I knew what Invincible VS was by the time I put my fightstick down.

Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way: Invincible VS is still very, very early in development. It absolutely nails the look and general vibe of the show, mostly because Quarter Up is working directly with the folks who made it. There's still a lot left to do (the build I played didn't have proper lip syncing yet, for instance), but if you’re worried about whether this will honor the source material, don't be.

Invincible is a brutal, bloody, often shocking story, and that’s reflected in how the characters interact on-screen. If you’re the one dishing out the hurt, your character will quite literally get blood on their hands. It just isn't theirs. Meanwhile, if you’re the one getting hit, it'll be obvious. If you’ve been blocking with your face, the bruises will make sure everyone knows it. That pristine costume will look like you’ve lost a fight with a lawnmower; the rest of you will resemble a prizefighter who just went 12 rounds with a heavyweight… or just Mark himself after he’s been fighting his dad. Invincible VS is far from the first fighting game to do real-time battle damage, but it looks great, and I appreciated how I could tell who was winning without looking at the health gauge at the top of the screen, and that it matched the show’s visual language. There’s a lot of blood here, folks. And hey, if you end a fight with the right special or super move (and we’ll dig into the gameplay in a second, I promise), you can pop Atom Eve’s head off or turn Bulletproof into a series of limbs missing a torso.

And it’s not just the characters absorbing all this damage. The environments will feel the impact of these super-powered brawls, too. There’s less of a visible impact on the moon because… well, the moon is kinda empty. But in a city? You’re gonna see buildings falling down, cars getting totaled, streets getting torn up, the works. Superheroes trying to kill each other generally doesn't go well for anyone (or anything) else in the immediate area. And hey, just because you start a brawl in a city street doesn’t mean it’ll end there. You can absolutely punch somebody so hard they break orbit (or end up on another, different stage).

Okay, so the presentation stuff is really cool, but the appeal of any fighting game is the actual fighting. I didn’t have enough time to really dig into Invincible VS’s core systems, but a fighting game can’t just have smart design choices backing it. Landing hits has to feel good, too. And Invincible VS has that part down pat. In a lot of ways, it resembles the tag fighters of yesteryear, but there are some unique twists here. You’ve got your standard light, medium, and heavy attacks, as well as a light autocombo for folks like me who were just starting out. Special moves are their own button, but Invincible VS doesn't use motion inputs. You choose your special kind of like you do in Super Smash Bros: pick a direction and press that special button.

So the core gameplay is a lot like Marvel or Dragon Ball FighterZ. Lights go into mediums, which go into heavies (though you can do things like switching between crouching and standing normals to spice things up and open up new routes), and down and heavy gets you a launcher for an air combo. You can also enhance your special moves for special properties and extra hits if you’ve got the meter, and bone-crushing, human-smushing, jaw-removing supers for when you’re ready to cash out (and see a slick animation that will likely leave your opponent getting literally scraped off the area floor; plus, they’re easy to do. Just press heavy and special at the same time, and you’re golden). Standard tag fighter stuff, but what makes Invincible VS cool are the core systems.

Some of them you’ve seen before: you’ve got a pushblock to get people off of you, snapbacks to bring a damaged backliner back in so you can keep pouring up the hurt, defensive saves where you can bring in another character to save the one getting comboed, assists for each character that isn't on the field (this is a tag game, after all), ground bounces to set up interesting combo opportunities, and the like. There are way, way too many options to dig into here, but if you’re worried that the simplified control scheme means Invincible VS might not have the juice, let me alleviate that concern for you right now. Once I got put into a high/low mixup I blockstun by Bulletproof’s rekka, I knew this was a game for degenerates (which, again, I saw as a compliment).

One thing I will dig into is how Invincible VS determines combo length. As you hit your opponent, you’ll see a meter build up. Fill it, and your combo will end because your opponent will fall out. This means that while basic combos in Invincible VS aren’t short, they’re not as long the ones you'll find in Marvel 3 or Dragon Ball FighterZ. You’ll be out of that combo and back in the action (or dead) before your next birthday.

But there is a way around that. Tag in one of your other characters, and you’ll reset part of that combo meter, allowing you to lay additional smacketh down. Getting the most out of your characters requires spending meter or cycling through your team. Neither of these concepts is new, but I appreciate what Quarter Up is doing to make Invisible VS unique. I also like how different the characters feel. The build I played only had four fighters to choose from, but Bulletproof and Thula quickly stood out to me, though neither Invincible nor Atom Eve felt bad. Part of the fun of a tag fighter is building a team that works for you; these characters already feel quite different from one another, and that’s a good thing. Thula slicing you to pieces with her hair? Rad. Bulletproof calling you a cab? Iconic.

The other thing I appreciate are the little touches, from the unique intro dialogue between the characters (this is becoming more and more rare in modern fighters) and the Dragon Ball FighterZ-style clashes when a new character comes in. These serve to reset the playing field and let you take a breath, but there’s also more ubique dialogue here, too. I love stuff like this, and I'm happy Quarter Up has embraced it wholeheartedly.

When I set my arcade stick down after about an hour with Invincible VS, I felt pretty good. Trying a new fighting game is a lot like driving a new car for the first time. You’ve got a general idea of what you’re getting, but the devil’s in the details. I left pretty pleased with my test drive. Quarter Up still has a lot of work to do, but I can’t wait to kick Invincible VS’s tires for real and see what she can do on the track. Fighting games are a tricky business, but it’s also easy to tell when they’re on the right track. Invincible VS has a killer team behind it, the tools and the resources they need to do the comic and the show justice, and a lot of good ideas. Let’s just hope they can pull off a superhero landing, and look good doing it.

Does Ninja Gaiden still work in 2025, in a world where soulslikes dominate the high-skill action game subgenre? I played Ninja Gaiden 4 for the first time last weekend, and my answer is unequivocally, yes, absolutely, 1000%, Ninja Gaiden not only still works in 2025, but it is a high-speed, stylish breath of fresh air. It was my favorite thing I played amongst all of the games I covered at this past weekend’s various showcases, and as someone who considers Ninja Gaiden Black the finest action game ever made, I left incredibly happy.

A mere 25 minutes of hands-on time with Ninja Gaiden 4 isn’t remotely enough to make a judgment call on where PlatinumGames and Team Ninja’s sequel will fit into the hierarchy of the franchise, but it was enough to make me feel like a badass killing machine and still challenge me in the process. Which means Ninja Gaiden 4 is off to a good start in terms of dialing in that ever-so-special Ninja Gaiden feeling as PlatinumGames takes the lead, with Team Ninja guiding them. “The game is fast,” said PlatinumGames producer and director Yuji Nakao. “We wanted to make sure it feels like a modernized high speed game…while staying true to what Ninja Gaiden is.” He added, “We are going against the trend” – meaning, soulslikes.

I played as young Raven Clan member Yakumo in Chapter 1, which isn’t the very beginning of the campaign – that honor goes to a tutorial section – but for all intents and purposes it is. It’s set well after Ninja Gaiden 3 (shh, we don’t talk about that one!) in a near-future Tokyo amidst the return of the Dark Dragon. Sadly, I didn’t get to play as Ryu Huyabusa, but I can’t wait to do so. I didn’t mind too much in my demo though, because I was having so much fun as Yakumo.

See, Yakumo has some of Ryu’s classic tricks – Izuna Drop, anyone? – while also unleashing his own in the form of Bloodraven attacks, which are deployed by holding the left trigger and then pressing X or Y. These are large area of effect offensive maneuvers, but they take longer to wind up and execute. It was my old habits and not being quick enough to adopt these new moves that doomed me in the large encounter near the end of my 25-minute hands-on session. I won’t make the same mistake next time. And unfortunately it means I didn’t get to face off against the Chapter 1 boss, who you can see in action in the video at the top of the page.

If you’ve played Ninja Gaiden games before, you should feel pretty comfortable right away, even though there is certainly plenty of new stuff to learn and get used to: Tapping right trigger at the right moment to block an incoming attack and set up a counter. Wall-running and tapping Y to take the head off of a low-level enemy. Holding Y with Blood Essence – seemingly in place of Ninpo, at least for Yakumo – still uncollected on the battlefield after your previous kill so you can use them to power an Ultimate technique on the foe still alive in front of you; it’s all still here. Oh, and don’t forget to assassinate enemies quietly when you get a chance.

If anything, Ninja Gaiden 4 feels faster than ever. Even Yakumo’s running speed feels faster than Ryu’s did in the older games. It’s also somehow even bloodier than ever. Things started to get gory in Ninja Gaiden 2, but here the crimson fountains spray every which way, constantly coating Yakumo in a Carrie-like coating of plasma. Arterial spray gets everywhere when slicing and dicing a handful of foes. It’s like a vampire’s dream come true out there. Let’s all sit back and watch this awesome sequence for the next minute and a half or so – which I remind you again is only from the first proper level of the game!

Oh, and here’s more good news: the camera is actually pretty good now! It’s certainly evolved over the years, but thankfully in 2025, it no longer seems to be a detriment or distraction to the player. Certainly a lot more time will be needed to verify this initial impression, but the camera didn’t annoy me once in my entire hands-on session.

Difficulty modes, meanwhile, can be adjusted on the fly if, say, you’re playing on Hard and want to drop it to Normal for a particularly tough boss. An easy mode is here, too; it’s called Hero mode, but I didn’t get to test it out to see just how forgiving (or not) it might be – I spent my time on Normal difficulty. Also, baked into Normal, at least (and presumably Hero as well, but I’m not sure about Hard yet), is a feature that offers you a helpful item if you’ve failed a particular encounter a few times. On that last big rumble I was too slow to bring Yakumo’s new attacks into, I was given a large healing elixir to help me on my next attempt.

Ninja Gaiden 4’s checkpoint system now takes some stress out of trying to find a save point with ample health and supplies. A red-eyed raven can also be approached, which triggers a visit from a friend who can unlock combat skills in exchange for the in-game currency you’ve accumulated. You can also go into a practice mode from here too that lets you get familiar with your moves (which I didn’t waste time doing during my short demo).

And yes, there are collectibles to look for as well. They’re called Gourdys, and they’re little adorable creatures that you have to complete a quick-time event sequence in order to secure. I found one Gourdy and it was only two rapid-succession button taps to bag it; we’ll see if the QTEs get more complicated and difficult the deeper into the campaign you get. I’m not sure yet if collecting them will yield any sort of greater reward.

I’ll be honest: I came into my first hands-on session with Ninja Gaiden 4 with extremely high expectations. If PlatinumGames and Team Ninja screwed this up, I would’ve been very vocal about it as a 20-year fan of the series. But thankfully, they seem to be on the right track towards getting this right. If they don’t, the series is probably dead forever. But I was smiling the entire time I was playing Ninja Gaiden 4 – even when I got killed. Its need for combat speed is matched by its sense of style, and all I want to do now is play Ninja Gaiden 4. The Year of the Ninja might truly be magical, between the excellent Ninja Gaiden 2 Black earlier this year, the extremely promising Ninja Gaiden Ragebound that we also just played and adored, Sega’s seemingly focused 2D revival of Shinobi, and the biggest one of them all, PlatinumGames’s Ninja Gaiden 4. I’m as optimistic as ever that they’re going to nail this when it (Izuna) drops on October 21.

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.

Nintendo Switch 2 was the company's biggest UK console launch in its history, early sales data has revealed, beating the previous record holder, Nintendo 3DS.

That said, Switch 2's UK launch sales were still lower than those of the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S in the country, according to sales data from NielsenIQ, reported by The Game Business.

While a full tally of Switch 2 sales is yet to be publicly revealed, it will be north of the 113,000 units Nintendo 3DS shifted in the UK back in 2011. Indeed, it is reportedly more than double that of the supply-constrained Switch 1, meanwhile, which sold over 80,000 units in 2017.

To a large degree, Nintendo has avoided the same kind of hardware shortages for Switch 2 that were seen around the UK launches of both the Switch 1 and the Wii, when some customers faced weeks of waits in order to finally get their hands on new consoles.

So, why hasn't Switch 2 beaten PS4 and Xbox Series X/S in the UK — or PS5, even, which suffered from particularly bad stock shortages for months after arrival? Well, as The Game Business reports, the UK has always been a comparatively tough market for Nintendo, due to the popularity of both Sony and Microsoft consoles.

High ownership of all three major platforms has meant market share is more divided than in other countries where Nintendo holds a clear advantage over either Sony or Microsoft's machines (Japan), or in other countries where PlayStation has an even greater margin over Xbox.

It's also worth noting the price of the Switch 2 in the UK, a relatively steep £395.99 without Mario Kart world, and £429.99 with Mario Kart World.

Yesterday, unverified Switch 2 market data from France was shared online by a noted sales insider, Wccftech reported. This claimed that Switch 2 had sold 200,000 units in the country at launch, doubling the record of the previous fastest-selling console (PS5). Additionally, the attach rate of Mario Kart World — the amount of Switch 2 console owners with the game — was reportedly over 95%.

Nintendo forecast 15 million global sales of the Switch 2 and 45 million game sales for its current financial year ending March 31, 2026. Some analysts have called that figure "conservative." Nintendo has said it's aiming for a launch on par with the first Switch.

If you're still getting started with Mario Kart World, you may like some pointers on how to unlock the game's secret Mirror Mode, including the ability to explore it within Free Roam using a cool Super Mario 64 secret.

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

Dune: Awakening won't release on console until some point in 2026, developer Funcom has said.

The survival MMO launched as planned on PC on June 10, and it had been hoped the console version would release not far behind. But it sounds like fans will have a bit longer of a wait than expected.

Funcom failed to expand on why the survival MMO had been delayed on console, only writing in a press release that while the game "will be coming" to PlayStation and Xbox, that release is expected "sometime in 2026."

The team was able, however, to confirm that the Dune: Awakening Season Pass is now live, offering the Wildlife of Arrakis DLC which boasts four in-game statues celebrating some of the planet's most "tenacious" creatures: the sandworm, chiroptera, kulon, and Muad’Dib.

Three more DLCs are scheduled over the next year or so — expect one in Q4 2025, Q1 2026, and another in Q2 2026 — with free updates peppered between those bringing "new content, features, and enhancements." Funcom also strengthened its commitment to "no subscription fees or microtransactions."

We're still in the process of reviewing Dune: Awakening. While there's no score at yet, and we're still a little unimpressed by the gunplay, our reviewer wrote: "After more than 35 hours I still feel like I’m fairly early into my Dune: Awakening adventure, and still have new zones to visit, haven’t gotten very far into the main story, and have only had a few encounters with PvP. There’s a ton for me to do, so look for an update sometime this week as I work my way through to the endgame."

Did you know that you can (sort of) ride sandworms in Dune: Awakening after all? It turns out that if you're super patient and don't mind a little screen-tearing or clipping through assets, it can be done if you've the right equipment. Here's how.

To help you survive on Arrakis, we've got Dune: Awakening resource guides that'll help you find iron, steel, aluminium, and more. If you're just getting started, check out all the Dune: Awakening classes you can choose from, and keep an eye on our in-progress Dune: Awakening walkthrough for a step-by-step guide to the story.

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.

Nintendo has announced Splatoon Raiders, a brand-new Splatoon spin-off exclusive to the Switch 2. The surprise reveal was made with a trailer that was released first on the Nintendo Today! app.

Splatoon Raiders is the first ever Splatoon spin-off game. Nintendo failed to announce a release window, but said to keep an eye out for more information in the future.

Splatoon Raiders revolves around a mechanic adventuring with the Deep Cut trio to the mysterious Spirhalite Islands. This new protagonist for Splatoon Raiders is described as an "expert mechanic with a mysterious background."

The new protagonist for #SplatoonRaiders is an expert mechanic with a mysterious background. That ink tank and walking robot look rather intriguing, wouldn't you say? pic.twitter.com/XeP9t75JAW

— Splatoon North America (@SplatoonNA) June 10, 2025

We've identified a variety of interesting findings, including a floating ship-like structure that serves as the mechanic's base and an island with a unique atmosphere. We'll keep investigating! #SplatoonRaiders pic.twitter.com/huFy5BlF4Z

— Splatoon North America (@SplatoonNA) June 10, 2025

Meanwhile, a significant free update for Splatoon 3 is also coming, due out on June 12. Splatoon 3 ver 10.0.0 includes 30 new weapon kits from the Barazushi and Emberz brands (the Splatlands Collection), the return of the Urchin Underpass stage from the original Splatoon game on Wii U, and performance and visual improvements for Switch 2. Nintendo said Switch 2 players will notice more detailed visuals, and the game will appear smoother in certain locations such as Splatsville and the Grand Festival Grounds. Switch 1 and Switch 2 Splatoon 3 players will still be able to play together.

Plus, all weapon Freshness caps will be raised and players can earn new in-game Badges, Nintendo said. A new stat will be added for Anarchy Battle (Series) called Series Weapon Power. It will track a player’s effectiveness per weapon based on their win/loss ratio in battles – and will then match them with players of a similar power. This makes it possible for players to try new weapons without being disadvantaged and push the limits their favorite weapons.

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.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Predator: Killer of Killers.

2025 is a big year for the Predator franchise. Director Dan Trachtenberg of 10 Cloverfield Lane and Prey fame is back with two new Predator films, those being Predator: Badlands and Predator: Killer of Killers, with the latter now available on Hulu. The animated anthology features three short stories of Predators encountering human warriors from various time periods, those being Vikings, samurai, and World War II pilots. The three stories then converge for a fourth act finale on an alien world, where the human characters team up to try to survive. As a standalone movie, it’s quite enjoyable if somewhat slight. But as a proof of concept for what the Predator franchise could become – Predators being dropped into all sorts of random historical settings – it’s what the long-running series has needed for quite some time.

Let’s take a look at how Predator: Killer of Killers sets up what the Predator franchise should have been doing all along.

The Predator: A Disruptive Force

The original Predator from 1987 is not just a remarkably well-made action movie, it was also fairly subversive at the time. In a decade of horror films marked by the progeny of 1974’s Black Christmas and 1978’s Halloween, slashers became one of the go-to molds for genre fare. Unstoppable antagonists terrorizing helpless teenagers or twentysomethings was what audiences expected from this type of story. Yet along comes John McTiernan’s Predator, which presents itself as a gung-ho, commando/jungle action vehicle that bleeds testosterone and stars a group of character actors, only for their “mission gone wrong” plotline to go really wrong with the arrival of an alien trophy hunter who tears through them one by one.

We’re not the first to make the connection between Predator and old-school slashers, but it speaks to what the Predator as an antagonist has been since its inception: a disruptive force, one who breaks into a story it’s not built for and changes all the rules. In any typical war action movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch and his companions would be more in control of the situation, and go out heroically if they had to. But the Predator is a cut above (ha) their league, throwing these muscle men into the meat grinder. It’s only when Dutch starts using his brain over his brawn that he finds a way to outfight the Predator, and he still only barely survives the movie. It still stands as one of the best action films of that decade, and gave McTiernan the platform to follow it up with other classics like Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October.

But the obligatory Predator sequels didn’t do much to add to the power of the original concept. 1990’s Predator 2 and 2010’s Predators are both perfectly entertaining action films, but neither one really develops the “disruptive” idea that’s intrinsic to the Predator’s DNA. A Predator crashing the urban jungle of Los Angeles is a very “sequel-y” concept, giving the production a safe quality that prevents it from living up to the original. Likewise, Predators reuses the jungle motif but on an alien world where the Predators drop humans to hunt, which is yet another safe sci-fi premise. And despite coming from talented writer-director Shane Black of Lethal Weapon and Iron Man 3 fame, 2018’s The Predator is a hodge-podge of potentially interesting ideas that are turned into bland soup by jamming them all together. (And no, we’re not counting the Alien vs. Predator films as part of this conversation.)

So how does Killer of Killers help turn things around? Well, it all starts with Trachtenberg, who also directed the previous movie in the series.

The Future of the Franchise

It’s a shame how long it took, but 2022’s Prey is the movie that finally set the Predator franchise back on the right path. It’s strange that “the Predator arrives in 1719 North America and battles a Comanche hunter” is the first premise that feels like a proper sequel to the original film, but better late than never we suppose. Killer of Killers builds on the historical warrior angle with three new time periods, those being Viking age Scandinavia, feudal Japan, and a WWII naval battle. Although the anthology structure means that none of the settings get as much development as they could (really, any of these pitches could have been their own film), it’s at least a step in the right direction because Killer of Killers remembers what the Predator was originally supposed to be: an incursion into a story that’s not about Predators.

The Viking story is about an older female warrior on a quest for revenge alongside her son. The Japan story is about two brothers, one a ninja and the other a samurai, who are battling over their father’s legacy. And the WWII story is about a young mechanic/wannabe pilot who wants to prove himself in aerial combat. These stories all exist independently of alien influence, much in the same way that Prey’s protagonist Naru (Amber Midthunder) wanting to be a hunter instead of a healer and setting out to break the traditions of her tribe didn’t necessitate an alien monster being the catalyst for proving her bonafides. Under Trachtenberg’s guidance, the franchise has reclaimed what made Predator unique among every other sci-fi monster series.

That’s not to say we’re not excited for the more futuristic-flavored Predator: Badlands, set to arrive later this year, especially since there are hints that the movie may be setting up a new (and hopefully better) Alien vs. Predator crossover. But watching Killer of Killers’ commendable visual storytelling, smart use of setting, and agreeably gory action whets the appetite for future Predator features that show the creature barging into all sorts of historical events. If 20th Century Studios wants this franchise to be as long-running as possible, they’d be smart to see Killer of Killers as a stepping stone for a myriad of possible premises.

Seriously Disney, where’s my Predator Western?

Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.

UPDATE: Last night, MindsEye developer Build A Rocket Boy warned players on Xbox that the game's launch day update would miss its release due to "varied platform certification".

This warning has now been scrubbed from the developer's release day reddit post, and Build A Rocket Boy has told IGN that Xbox players will now be able to download MindsEye's day one update after all.

ORIGINAL STORY: MindsEye, the new blockbuster action-adventure from Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies, debuts today on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S. But the game's important day one patch won't arrive on day one for Xbox.

Writing on reddit last night, MindsEye developer Build A Rocket Boy said that due to "varied platform certification," Microsoft's console wouldn't feature the 16 GB patch at launch, despite the fact the studio says this update is "highly recommend[ed]... to ensure MindsEye plays as we intended."

"It includes key final refinements," Build A Rocket Boy said, including "gameplay improvements, visual polish, stability fixes and performance tuning." When will it pop up for Xbox players? For now, the studio can't say for sure. "[It] will be made available on Xbox as soon as possible," the studio added.

This is the same update that, last week, Build A Rocket Boy said fans should wait for rather than playing the game before its street date, after early copies began making their way in the hands of players. Early reaction to the unpatched version of the game included negative comments branding the game a "technical mess."

"We want everyone to experience the story the same way at the same time on day one, without bias," Build A Rocket Boy said in a statement issued in response to early copies being played. "This means waiting until the official release date to play through the game firsthand." Now, Xbox fans will have to wait a little longer.

Mention of bias in the studio's statement sparked suggestion by some fans that the company was referring back to comments made by its co-CEO Mark Gerhard, who suggested there had been a "concerted effort" to "trash the game and the studio" with negative social media posts from paid accounts or bots.

IGN subsequently put this claim to Hakan Abrak, boss of Hitman developer IO Interactive, the company which is publishing MindsEye. His response: "I don't know. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I just think the game should speak for itself on June the 10th."

MindsEye has had an unusual road to release, having been initially announced as an episodic campaign component for the company's now-abandoned creative platform Everywhere.

Ultimately, MindsEye is being released with its story mode as the star, and while the full game will offer customisation of its world using Everywhere's toolset, the metaverse-y portion of the game has been sidelined.

In MindsEye, you play as Jacob Diaz, an ex-military drone pilot who was implanted with a chip to interface directly with the flying hardware. The experience has shaterd Diaz's mind — and it's up to you to investigate Diaz's past and piece together the truth of what happened.

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

Marvel has dropped a new trailer for upcoming Disney+ show Ironheart that reveals a magic-powered Iron Man-style suit for heroine Riri Williams.

The teaser also showcases a couple of allies for Williams (Dominique Thorne), including Riri's late friend Natalie (This Is Us' Lyric Ross) who the inventor brings back as an AI hologram, and a character played by Solo: A Star Wars Story's Alden Ehrenreich.

But the trailer's biggest reveal is Williams crafting a new Iron Man suit that fuses her own technological genius with the kind of magic we've previously only seen wielded by witches and wizards like Wanda Maximoff and Doctor Strange. And it's this reveal that has now reignited long-standing rumors of Ironheart finally being the place we first see the MCU's version of Mephisto.

If it feels like Ironheart has been a while coming, well, that's because it has. First announced by Marvel in 2020 as a spin-off from the then-upcoming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the series was shot in 2022 and has been sat waiting for release ever since.

While not part of Ironheart's officially-announced cast, multiple reports from Deadline in late 2022 claimed that Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen had filmed for the series in a secret role, believed to be that of fan-favourite comic book villain Mephisto.

So far, however, Mephisto has been kept under wraps — but the show's blending of technology and magic has long hinted at something more fantastical bubbling under its MIT-set surface. Indeed, earlier looks at Ironheart have focused on Williams' relationship with Parker "The Hood" Robbins (Hamilton's Anthony Ramos), another familiar character from Marvel comics who looks set to act as her gateway to magic use.

Comic book fans will know The Hood as a villainous criminal, with superpowers gained from wearing a magical, well, hood. Fans suspect Robbins' relationship with Williams to deteriorate throughout the series, turning him from ally to adversary, perhaps through continued temptation by a greater magical power.

Who could this be? Well, all fingers point to Mephisto, a character who has long been expected to turn up in the MCU, as far back as celebrated Disney+ series Wandavision. In the comics, The Hood gets similar powers from Dormammu, the demonic entity already seen within the MCU during the first Doctor Strange movie. But the sense here is that Marvel has not cast Baron Cohen to take on the mantle of that character — and instead, Dormammu's role will be taken by another devilish foe.

Also, Mephisto likes hanging around in his underpants, which would fit with the Borat star.

Ironheart debuts with its first three episodes available via Disney+ in just a couple of weeks, on June 24, 2025.

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

With seemingly excellent timing following the launch of the Switch 2, the steelbook edition dual pack of Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet is now back in stock at My Nintendo Store for £99.99 physically.

As the name implies, this not only comes with both Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet, but with a special gold-themed steelbook adorned with Legendaries Koraidon and Miraidon, with dual cartridge slots, so you can store both games together.

Not only is there a brand new "Buy 1 Get 1 50% Off" sale at Amazon right now for books and more, but there's also a handful of popular eBooks down to just $2 up for grabs right now.

That includes the soon-to-be-starring Ryan Gosling major motion picture "Project Mail Mary" by Andy Weir, author of The Martian (also a film) and Artemis (not a film, still just a book). I've read and listened to Project Hail Mary, and I'd highly recommend both versions.

You can check your local library for the audio version using apps like Libby, or use another audiobook service like Audible, which frequently has free or cheap membership sales during events like Prime Day (coming up again soon this summer). For now, $2 for a book of such quality is well worth considering for your next read.

Other notable books in the sale include Dan Brown's Inferno (funnily enough, also a film), and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 (you guessed it, adapted into film as well, are you keeping up with this?). Both have dropped to $2 as well, so you're getting three great books at a mega discount price today.

I've also included several other eBooks down to $2 or less today, most of which are taken from Amazon's top seller chart, so they've got to be good... right?

Amazon's Buy 1, Get 1 Half Off Book Sale

Amazon’s wider Buy 1, Get 1 50% Off promotion covers a range of media, including books, movies, and more, so you're not limited to pairing two of the same item type. For example, you could grab a bestselling hardcover and a 4K Blu-ray, and get 50% off the cheaper of the two.

It’s a solid opportunity to pick up a Father’s Day gift while also treating yourself. To get the discount, both items need to be added to your cart and purchased together.

The full list of eligible items is extensive, and it’s worth digging through the pages or using the search bar, some of the best books are buried a few layers deep. That said, there are some standout finds, including recent 2025 hardcover releases that are already topping Amazon’s bestseller charts.

The most notable is Sunrise on the Reaping, the new Hunger Games prequel, which hit shelves earlier this year and already has a film adaptation in development. There’s also a full Hunger Games box set included, making this a great time to complete the collection.

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

Lies of P developer Neowiz did indeed drop DLC Overture during Summer Game Fest, introducing new locations, new enemies and bosses, new characters, weapons, and the very controversial decision to add in two easier difficulty options. And now, those options are getting easier again as the team preps for "difficulty reduction."

As a "Soulslike" game, Lies of P can be punishingly difficult, especially for inexperienced players perhaps attracted by Lies of P's dark story and setting. Director Jiwon Choi had previously said the team didn't think Soulslike games should have difficulty options and it shipped without any, but has since had a change of heart, saying: “We wanted to make sure a wider audience of players could play the game."

For those attempting the Overture DLC on the "intended" difficulty, Legendary Stalker, however, things seem tougher than ever. There have been so many comments — both for and against the DLC's difficulty spike — that the Lies of P subreddit has had to merge them all into a "megathread" to stop the community from being overwhelmed by complaints.

Some comments and reviews on Steam echo this, with one writing: "I’m at level 300 and should not be getting 2-shot from basic enemies. It doesn’t help that the enemy grouping is designed for you to have to deal with multiple at once. This wouldn’t be a problem if even one of those enemies doesn’t take out half your health with one hit."

Now, courtesy of a new Lies of P Director's Letter, it seems the difficulty will be tweaked once again.

"We're reviewing all of [the player feedback] carefully and are already looking into when to implement some of your suggestions," Choi said, as spotted by Eurogamer. "Among all the feedback, we are paying the closest attention to the combat experience.

"We identified areas that did not turn out quite as we intended. Therefore, we are reviewing various adjustments, including difficulty reduction. However, combat is one of the most fundamental experiences in Lies of P, so any modifications or changes require meticulous work and thorough testing." It's perhaps because of that "fundamental" issue that Neowiz has not given an indication of when the game will be patched.

We had a good time with Lies of P, awarding it 8/10, and Overture itself also secured a 8/10. "Even if it’s clearly dancing on the same old strings, Lies of P: Overture is an excellent expansion that adds a whole lot more to a game that was already great," we wrote.

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.

John Wick 5 is official and Keanu Reeves has signed on to “give John’s story the proper next step.” We know that much. But, how can that be, given the ending of John Wick 4? It turns out that's something of a head-scratcher even for director Chad Stahelski.

Warning! Spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4 follow.

John Wick appears to die at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4 after, once again, defeating the bad guys. We even get to see John Wick’s gravestone, with Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) saying their farewells. But, crucially, we only see John Wick collapse from his injuries and appear to die.

So, how can Reeves continue as Wick? The Hollywood Reporter asked Stahelski if he'd managed to work that out yet in a recent interview. Here’s the exchange:

THR: You’ve said that John Wick 5 won’t renege on the ending of 4, that John Wick will still have died. Has that evolved? The last time we spoke last year, you were trying to crack it.

Chad Stahelski: I’m not going to lie to you, it’s a bit of a conundrum. Me and Mike Finch — the writer on 4 who’s also writing 5 — we’ve got a pretty good story that I think is cool. Once we have a 50-page book, and if we’re feeling it, we’ll sit with Keanu and shape this thing. Look, everybody seems to want it. It’s a matter of whether we crack it. We’re actively working on it. It’s just … is it going to be satisfying?"

Stahelski’s comments make it sound like he’s still trying to work out exactly what John Wick 5 is, which in turn suggests it’s a fair way from production. In fact, Stahelski’s comments make it sound like John Wick 5 might not even happen, if he and his team fail to “crack it.”

Stahelski continued: “If we go down the road of John Wick 5 and build this story and decide this isn’t right, there are probably going to be 10 other things we’ll discover that we’ll use for other things. It’s a great creative exercise. It’s being in the room riffing with people we love. That’s nothing but wins.”

So, it’s not certain John Wick 5 will happen?

Stahelski again: “The studio would very much will it into existence, I’m sure, at some point. Look, they’ve been great and they’ve asked us to really try and we have a really good couple of ideas and we’re going to try.”

John Wick 5 is (probably) happening, then, but we don’t know what it is yet. What we know it isn’t is a prequel, as Stahelski ruled that out: “Keanu and I are not interested in going backwards.”

It’s worth remembering that while Keanu Reeves appears ageless, he is in fact 60-years-old, and there will come a point when he is unable to play Wick in the same way he has before. So perhaps he’ll play Wick in a different way. In March, Stahelski told Empire: “The saga of John Wick was pretty wrapped up. So the only way to do a 5 is to have a new story that involves John Wick. It’s not a continuation with the High Table. John dealt with his grief. It will be really different, and everybody [will] see the trailer and go, ‘Holy fuck... I gotta see that.’”

It’s a busy time for the billion dollar John Wick franchise. In addition to the four mainline films, the John Wick Universe, as it’s called, includes two spinoff films (the just-released Ballerina and a spinoff directed by and starring Donnie Yen reprising his Caine character, set to start production this summer).

In addition, Lionsgate Television produced The Continental: From the World of John Wick for Peacock and Amazon Prime, and Lionsgate confirmed it’s developing the TV series John Wick: Under the High Table, which Stahelski and Keanu Reeves are executive producing. There’s an animated prequel film that will tell the story of John Wick’s ‘Impossible Task,’ too.

Outside TV and films, Lionsgate recently opened an immersive John Wick experience in Las Vegas and has a John Wick AAA video game in the works.

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.

Screenwriter and producer Jeremy Slater has talked up Mortal Kombat 2, describing it as “so much funnier and bigger” than the first movie.

In an interview with ComicBook.com, Slater discussed squeezing a cast of 20 familiar fighters into Mortal Kombat 2, which is due out Oct 24, 2025 and stars Karl Urban as Johnny Cage.

“It’s very easy for these things to become three-to-four-hour, sprawling epics, so you always have to be judicious in cutting things down and what’s the emotional story we are telling and what is the story the audience cares about,” Slater explained.

“Then, making sure when you get to those moments that matter — the fights, the fatalities, the surprises, the deaths — that they land and they are as satisfying as everyone wants them to be. I think we nailed it. They had the best stunt team in the business working on this thing. The actors are phenomenal. It’s so much funnier and bigger than the first movie.”

Slater then talked about attending test screenings, which he said were full of Mortal Kombat fans reacting to the movie “the way I reacted to Avengers: Endgame.”

“I am so excited for people to see the movie,” he said. “It’s been done for a while. We’ve been waiting for the right release date and waiting for the right window. I have been to those test screenings, which are full of Mortal Kombat fans, and watching them react to it the way I reacted to Avengers: Endgame. They were cheering and jumping out of their seats. Every joke is landing and they are loving it. It’s one of the greatest moments of my life. That’s why you get into this business.”

In March, we finally got a first look at a number of new characters set to appear in Mortal Kombat 2, including Martyn Ford’s Shao Kahn and Adeline Rudolph’s Kitana, alongside the returning Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion.

Mortal Kombat fans had wondered how Karl Urban, who plays Billy Butcher in The Boys, would look as Mortal Kombat’s fan-favorite egocentric Hollywood star in live action form after his image appeared in an in-universe poster for a Cage movie.

In Mortal Kombat 2 we see a fresh-faced Urban with Cage’s trademark hair and sunglasses in a typical martial arts pose. In the background, we see Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, and Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade.

Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm’s Ed Boon has said of Johnny Cage’s appearance in the sequel: "His integration into the Mortal Kombat story and universe is a big part of what this movie explores. He's a washed-up Hollywood guy thrown into this magical, ultra-violent thing. Karl, his depiction of Johnny Cage is different than our games in some ways. He's adding his own flare to it, but I think it'll feel fresh. There's like a novelty factor in there."

Expect a "ridiculously hilarious” character introduction for Johnny Cage, Boon teased. Director Simon McQuoid added: "We wanted a character that wasn't just completely silly, comic book… It's a character that could instantly go there and become too light and throwaway if we were to lean too much into the kind of cheese. The casting of Karl Urban for that role allowed that character to have more depth."

Meanwhile, Damon Herriman (Better Man) plays Quan Chi in Mortal Kombat 2, and Josh Lawson and Max Huang make a surprise return as Kano and Kung Lao, two characters who bit the dust in the first movie. How can that be? Boon said existing lore from the Mortal Kombat video games, which famously play fast and loose with the alive or dead status of its characters, makes anything possible: "So we deal with spirits and the NetherRealm and things like that," he said. "There are ways to bring dead characters back."

And finally, Tati Gabrielle (The Last of Us Season 2) plays Jade, and Ana Thu Nguyen (NCIS: Sydney) plays Queen Sindel.

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.