It’s taken five years for Pablo Clark to design and refine and illustrate The Old King’s Crown, his very first board game. Over that time, whispers have been growing among playtesters and convention crowds that this title, where players take the role of asymmetric factions competing to win the rulership of a fantasy kingdom, was something special. Something, certainly, that was better than we had any right to expect of a first-time designer. Now after a self-publishing Kickstarter run, it’s finally here, and we can explore Clark’s kingdom in all its glory.

What’s in the Box

There’s no discussing The Old King’s Crown without first talking about the art. It’s right there on the box lid, after all, and it is stupendous. Rich with color and detail, stylized yet recognizable, bringing to life in glorious precision a world that has never existed. The fact that the designer is also the artist just makes you wonder how he got to the front of the queue when talent was given out.

Even when you slide off that sumptuous box lid, the art is everywhere within, almost every picture adding to the story and the setting. It’s on the board, which is a window from a high tower looking down on the provinces of a kingdom in civil war, as though players are plotting in their fastnesses while the people suffer. It’s on the deck of tarot-sized cards for each faction, filling in the wide narrative gaps in the brief rundown given to the setting in the rulebook. It’s on all the kingdom cards, faction-neutral buffs available for players to pick up. And it’s all astonishing: every time you play, you’ll notice something new.

Rules and How It Plays

This is quite a complex game, but the complexity is in the sheer information density available rather than the core flow of play, which is relatively straightforward. Games last a fixed number of turns, normally five, and each turn is broken down into four seasons. The meat of proceedings takes place in summer, where players will fight over three locations, each of which has two possible rewards, to be chosen by the victor. First, in turn order, players place their herald into one of the victory spots, which will bring them bonus points if they win there. They can then place some of their small pool of supporters in a location, which provide a small combat bonus. Then it’s time for the card play.

All players start with functionally identical card decks from which they draw a hand of six. Everyone places a card, face down, next to each location. Then they’re resolved one at a time, with everyone flipping over a card and adding the number on that card to the number of supporter pieces there. Highest total wins. Except, very often, it doesn’t.

The reason for this is that many cards have action icons which can be invoked to complicate matters. Ambush, for example, lets the owner play a second card into the melee. Flank lets that card slide out of the current combat and into a future one. There are others, but most terrifying of all is Deadly, which takes place after all other actions and kills enemy cards, putting them out of the game and into the dreadful “lost pile” for the remainder of play unless they have a helmet or shield icon, the latter of which also keeps them in the fray for that location.

It’s hard to overstate quite how taut this is. Someone flips the cards and all at once everyone’s craning over the massive board, desperate to decode the game’s intricate array of symbology to work out who’s in contention and what the next steps might be. Combats that are decided by ambush, or value ties which are resolved with additional card play, crank the excitement up even more, as do deadly attacks which can see critical cards assigned to the lost pile forever. And then when it comes to heralds, the stakes just go through the roof.

All the locations score you influence, the game’s name for victory points. But if you win in a space where you’ve placed your herald, you get an extra point. And if you win in a space where you and others have placed their heralds, you get to take a victory point off each of those poor unfortunates. This is a game where a winning tally can be 15-20 points, so actually taking points off other people to add to your own is huge. A well-calculated herald placement can swing you from last place to first in one fell swoop, ensuring that everyone is in contention, right up until the end.

Naturally, this invites all kinds of scheming. Discard piles are public information, so you can grub around in people’s trash, seeing if they’ve played that deadly card or whether it might be lurking in their hand, still, to screw you over. It’s also possible for players to buy additional cards to add to their deck, which not only come from asymmetric stacks tailored to your faction, but can add even more wrinkles to the formula, like making it lowest card wins instead. You’ll need to keep an incredibly sharp eye on what everyone else is doing if you want to minimize the chance of nasty surprises.

Buying new cards is only one way in which the game’s asymmetry shows. Each faction has a set of four special one-use powers, plus a fifth that you can invoke if you win a particular location. They’re all unique, and roughly aligned to that faction’s thematic play style. The Gathering, which represents the cult-like state religion, can swap the positions of two cards in combat, or sacrifice cards into the lost pile in order to gain resources to buy more cards. The uprising, by contrast, which is a revolution of the state’s common folk, can give cards the deadly effect, or the retreat effect.

As you begin to weave together the various unique card effects, asymmetry, special powers, and location victory effects you can begin to see all sorts of ways you can influence not only individual clashes but the game state as a whole. Your hand size will drop as the game progresses, except you can arrange things so it doesn’t. You’ll lose supporters, unless you find a way to gain them back. If you buy enough new cards you’ll get a point bonus, but you’ll have to make big sacrifices to do it. The number of ways you can approach The Old King’s Crown and still win is absolutely jaw-dropping, almost mind-crushing in its loops within loops within loops.

And still there’s more! We’ve only really covered the summer turn so far. In spring, players use cards to bid in a selection of kingdom cards, most of which are game-breaking in their own right. They can let you swap cards you’ve drawn for one in the lost pile, steal other player’s special powers, or give your cards extra effects. Each is easily enough to build a strategy around by itself, but you can hold up to two of them. Except that after the initial bid, you can steal kingdom cards off other players instead of taking a fresh one, forcing them, and you, to replan on the fly.

In the autumn you can send cards journeying, which gives you the chance to buy more cards, or you can send them to council, where they stay and give a long-term special ability. This can mean potentially more points if you win with your herald, the chance to grab supporters back, or other effects. Finally winter is just a bookkeeping phase and, frankly, a chance to catch your breath after the absolute strategic and social insanity of an entire round of The Old King’s Crown.

This is not an exaggeration. While there’s a staggering amount to enjoy here, the sheer quantity of detail you need to take into your stride to maximize your chances is almost overwhelming. You need to be on top of your own special powers and special cards, along with everyone else’s, what they’re buying, what they’re playing, what’s in their discard pile or the lost pile. You need to be cognizant of each player’s kingdom cards, what they do and what you need to bid to steal them, or protect your own. Initially this seems impossible. It gets easier with practice but you’ll need to play an incredible amount of this game if you want to properly internalize it.

You don’t, however, need to do all that in order to win. It’s perfectly fine to play from the hip more, although the reams of detail will nag at the edges of your thought processes as you do so. And you can get away with it because, fundamentally, you can check every discard pile in the game and still not be certain whether a player has just thrown down their deadly card into a herald location or whether it’s a tricky bluff. You can do very well just by reading faces, voices, and body language. And that creates a strange tension at the heart of The Old King’s Crown: it’s a game that gives you the most astonishing range and leverage to build strategies, and then lets other players pull the rug out from under you with a cunning bluff.

Where to Buy

• Get it at Waterstones

Marvel star Brie Larson cast her vote in yesterday's elections while covering her hair and telling fans they should absolutely, definitely "ignore the wig!!" she was wearing. Which, of course, has led the internet to do exactly the opposite.

The Captain Marvel actress posted an Instagram story last night letting her followers know she had voted — while dressed in a large hooded sweatshirt pulled up to hide her clothes and as much of her blonde wig as possible.

It is, frankly, a remarkably suspicious caption for an actress who regularly sports similar hair — and something that has only drawn attention to the fact Larson is clearly hiding whatever character she is currently playing.

Naturally, this has only fuelled the flames of fan speculation that Larson is indeed secretly filming scenes for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday — which, it's important to remember, she was conspicuously left out of the main cast reveal for.

Fans certainly expect Larson's character to turn up within the movie at some point — not least because it would be weird to leave out such an important MCU figure. But there's a more important connective tissue here, too, as Avengers: Doomsday will feature many faces from Fox's X-Men cast, while Captain Marvel's best friend Monica Rambeau was last seen getting stuck in the X-Men universe.

While principal photography for Avengers: Doomsday has wrapped in the UK, fans expect additional scenes to continue to be filmed over the coming months in secret, as Marvel attempts to squeeze as many heroes into its next blockbuster as possible.

Alternatively, of course, Larson could simply be playing another character with hair that looks very, very similar to her Marvel character — but try telling the internet that.

"Ignore the wig is hilarious promo cause I don't think people would've noticed," wrote Marvel fan remerdy1 on reddit. "Yep, exactly, it's like she wanted us to notice," another fan, KostisPat257, agreed.

That said, not every Marvel actor seems likely to appear. Earlier this week, X-Men veteran Famke Janssen insisted that Marvel hadn't asked her to play the superhero again since the end of Fox’s X-Men movies. Other Fox X-Men veterans set for Doomsday include Kelsey Grammer, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, and Rebecca Romijn. Avengers: Doomsday is currently set to arrive in theaters May 1, 2026.

Image credit: Brie Larson.

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

While we’re still waiting for Disney and Epic Games’ connected universe to arrive in Fortnite, a big step has been taken towards that goal as Disney Parks has arrived in Fortnite for the first time with Disneyland Game Rush. We had the chance to try out this Fortnite Creative island and discovered it to be an incredibly authentic experience that celebrates Disneyland’s 70th anniversary through enjoyable yet forgettable mini-games and environments inspired by beloved attractions such as Haunted Mansion, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, and more.

Disneyland Game Rush is a limited-time offering in Fortnite that officially launches on November 6. You can simply search for the game title or jump right in by using the island code, 4617-4819-8826, to experience this new adventure for free.

When you first enter Disneyland Game Rush and in-between mini-games, you are welcomed into an esplanade that is modeled after the one between Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, complete with the 70th anniversary castle structure in the middle. On the perimeter, you can see Sleeping Beauty Castle, Haunted Mansion, Pixar Pier, the Matterhorn, and more, and all of these pieces make a very visually appealing Disney puzzle that I loved exploring.

You can also open up presents that are each inspired by attractions or Nighttime Spectaculars, participate in Disneyland trivia for points, trade in the tokens you’ve earned in the mini-games for island-exclusive Disneyland 70th-inspired cosmetics like Mickey Ears, a Spider-Bot hat, the head of a Disneyland 70th-themed R2-D2, and even a Hatbox Ghost Back Bling, among others. One of my favorite touches is that you can find one Disneyland Key in each land and redeem it for a golden version of these cosmetics. For those unfamiliar, the Disneyland Key is a physical toy key you can use on locks around Disneyland during its 70th anniversary celebration, and it is represented here in a clever, fun way.

Dante’s Inferno celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. Not that there’s been any fireworks or cake. Visceral Games’ 2010 hack-and-slash, which saw a crusader named Dante battle through the nine circles of Hell in an attempt to save his fiancee Beatrice from Lucifer, didn’t leave the massive, zeitgeist-defining impact that publisher EA had hoped for. Plans for an even bigger, more ambitious sequel were unceremoniously laid to rest.

For more than a decade, the game’s sizable cult following has wondered what the next steps of the journey would have looked like. Dante’s Inferno was very loosely based on the first third of Dante Alighieri’s epic 14th century poem The Divine Comedy, which imagines its author journeying towards Heaven, and so a sequel would presumably have carried the story into Purgatory and, finally, Paradise. Aside from the fact that it would have involved some kind of war between Heaven and Hell, no details of the cancelled project have ever escaped onto the internet. All that remains of it has been kept under lock and key by EA, gradually fading into legend.

That is, until today. After talking with a number of sources close to the project, IGN has obtained an assortment of hitherto unpublished internal documents, including concept art, cutscene storyboards, screenshots of rudimentary level geometry, and – last but not least – a 240-page script penned by Assassin’s Creed 2 co-writer Joshua Rubin that outlines every stage, boss battle, and plot point planned for Dante’s Inferno 2: Purgatorio (or, more elegantly, simply Dante’s Purgatorio.)

Taken together, these materials not only show that Dante’s Inferno 2 made it further into the pre-production process than previously thought, but also that Visceral had planned to take the sequel in a slightly different direction than expected. The plot, for example, would have blended The Divine Comedy with another Biblical epic, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which reimagines Lucifer as morally ambiguous as opposed to a thoroughly evil figure.

The sequel’s underlying design philosophy would have been retooled as well. “The first game was heavily influenced by God of War,” one former Visceral employee told IGN. “At the time we were working on the second [game], Uncharted 2 was having a big influence on single player games: cutscenes and quick time events were being replaced with scripted gameplay sequences where the player has full control over the character.”

“So much of the original game was classic hack-and-slash in the arcade, Mortal Kombat tradition,” Jonathan Knight, the original game’s creative director, told IGN, hinting at what he wanted the sequel not to be. “Here’s an arena, some gameplay happens, then you move through a tunnel to the next part of the level. Some of that’s inevitable in a game, but the really great ones figure out how to make believable, natural environments.”

Had the developers been allowed to realize their creative vision, Dante’s Inferno 2 was planned to be to Dante’s Inferno what Assassin’s Creed 2 was to Assassin’s Creed, or God of War 2018 to the original trilogy: a sequel that dared to go above and beyond the confines of its predecessor.

We cannot show you a game that was never made. But we can offer you an unprecedented insight into Dante’s Inferno 2’s entire campaign. What follows is a comprehensive (but by no means complete) written reconstruction of what playing this game would have looked like, from start to finish.

Terminator 2D: No Fate — the new retro game that blends scenes from Terminator 2: Judgment Day with original scenarios and multiple endings — has been delayed for a third time, this time to December 12, 2025.

Terminator 2D: No Fate sees you play as Sarah Connor and the T-800 as you try to put a stop to Skynet's plans before the human race is annihilated. It's coming to PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and last-gen console systems. It was initially slated to release on September 5 before being delayed to the end of October, then November 26. And now it's been delayed again.

Last time, publisher Reef Entertainment said the release date had been pushed back from the original October 31 date due to "ongoing global trade and tariff changes that delayed shipment of the components for our Day One and Collector's Editions." And while the "physical components" necessary for all editions have now "finally arrived," the company needs "some time." And even though this only impacts the physical editions of the game, Reef has confirmed this delay also applies to digital editions, too.

"First of all, we want to start by saying thank you. We know you’ve waited longer than expected for the release of Terminator 2D: No Fate, and we truly appreciate your patience and support throughout this journey," the team said. "The physical components for all editions have now finally arrived, following the ongoing delays that pushed us off our previous schedules. However, we now have to assemble the physical editions, which we need some time to do.

"Because of this, we are moving the launch date of Terminator 2D: No Fate to December 12, 2025, for all physical and digital versions of the game.

"We are sincerely sorry for the repeated delays. We don’t take your patience for granted, and we never want to disappoint our community. Our goal has always been to deliver the game that you deserve, and we're almost there. Thank you again for standing by us."

In June, IGN reported on how the developers tracked down the actor who played future war John Connor back in 1991 to include his likeness, and found out why Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't in the game.

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.

A "Cross-Buy" graphic spotted on the PlayStation Store has sparked speculation that Sony is set to announce cross-platform purchasing for its games across consoles and PC.

References to a "crossbuy-tag" seen via the PlayStation Store and a PS5 console store graphic featuring the word "Cross-Buy" were recently spotted by social media user Amethxst and investigated by Dealabs.

Now, Dealabs has verified both the PlayStation Store code and image are legitimate, confirming — if nothing else — that Sony is indeed thinking about some kind of Cross-Buy offering.

New Symbols will be added soon (website & tool), but here some nice new features from PlayStation (yes, some are old, other are unseen):
- A kind of "echo mode"
- PS5/PC games
- "Cross-Buy" pic.twitter.com/YxIAXp750g

— Amethxst (@yAmethxst) November 4, 2025

How exactly this offering may work remains to be seen, however. Would Cross-Buy only be available for first-party games currently released on PC? Would access be granted free for future PC launches? And what about third-party titles?

Indeed, there's no formal confirmation this Cross-Buy feature relates to PC at all. Amid reports of a future PlayStation handheld being in development, perhaps the scheme will simply be offered for games that work across the PS5 and a new PS5 portable?

One thing seems certain, however — these are relatively new images, added by Sony in June 2025, according to Dealabs. That rules out this latest development as relating to anything left over from Sony's last foray into cross-buy schemes — back during the PlayStation Vita era.

Cross-buy is of course offered on Xbox, where owning a game on console also allows you to play the same title without further charge on PC (or via streaming on your phone, or Ally X handheld, or wherever else you're playing that's an "Xbox").

By comparison, Sony has been more protective over its first-party games. Sony ported Horizon Zero Dawn over to PC in 2020, three years after it released on the PS4, and has sporadically launched a swathe of other first-party titles on PC since. But, crucically, it has typically held off from launching its biggest blockbusters outside of PlayStation until a year after their original console launch.

Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer has previously criticized PlayStation for its staggered PC release schedule, pointing out that consumers are forced to wait for months or years, then pay twice for the same content. But Sony has defended the practice, with previous PlayStation boss Jim Ryan committing back in 2023 to a staggered release of first-party games on PC for the forseeable future.

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

Get your first look at Chicken Chicken, a new eight-player online multiplayer party game for PC and mobile (and later, consoles) from the makers of Kiborg in which everyone plays, as the name implies, as a chicken. You'll compete against your friends in racing cars, climbing mountains, catching flies, and more. A playable demo is now available on Steam.

Additional minigames will be added to Chicken Chicken in 2026. Kiborg says, "Some will require smart thinking with your team while others will involve one chicken vs. the flock." Check out the announcement trailer above and the first screenshots in the gallery below.

“We come from a background of dark, violent action games like KIBORG, so Chicken Chicken might seem a bit unusual,” said Sobaka Studio head Dmitry Kachkov. “But when you feel the pain of reaching the top of the mountain in Climbing Up…and someone hits you with a rocket launcher and sends you all the way to the bottom, you will understand.”

You can wishlist Chicken Chicken (and/or play the demo) on Steam if you're interested.

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.

Hot on the heels of Nintendo's handheld success with Switch 2, Sony is ramping up the capabilities of its own PlayStation Portal device with the ability to stream thousands of games without being connected to a PS5 console.

Starting today, PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers can stream a long, long list of games that they may already own, including big hitters such as Grand Theft Auto 5, Borderlands 4, and the newly-launched Ghost of Yōtei.

Hundreds of games from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Classics Catalog will also be streamable, including existing titles such as Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk 2077 and God of War Ragnarök. Sony has a long list of every title supported, which stretches to more than 2,800 games.

Of course, this isn't a new idea — and cloud streaming via the PlayStation Portal has already been available to some users for almost a year in beta form. But today the feature launches officially, and Sony is keen to highlight the different play possibilities that Portal offers.

Having a Portal as well as a PS5 doesn't just let you stream games while playing on the toilet. Using the handheld device, you can also play a game together with a friend who's using your main TV and PS5 setup. Or, play a game while someone else uses the TV to watch KPop Demon Hunters for the umpteenth time on Netflix.

Additionally, cloud streaming leaves beta with a handful of all-new features attached: 3D Audio Support, a passcode lock, a network status screen, game invites, accessibility options, and the ability to make in-game purchases while cloud streaming.

Interested? PlayStation Portal is priced at $199, and comes in either white or black colors. The device is "the best PlayStation 5 Remote Play solution available," according to IGN's PlayStation Portal review.

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

Battlefield 6 developer BF Studios has announced a “major” overhaul of Challenges and Assignments, with “substantial” adjustments across the board.

BF Studios said that these changes, outlined in patch notes below, build on the recent updates that increased the XP earned in official matches and reduced the XP needed for the first 20 attachment ranks.

“This update makes significant reductions to challenge requirements, cutting down on time investment while maintaining a focus on skill-driven progression that rewards consistent play,” BF Studios explained. “Challenges and Assignments are tuned around defined playtime targets, and these changes bring their requirements in line with those goals to make them more achievable within a reasonable session length."

BF Studios continued: "Assignments will continue to range from goals you can complete through regular play to a few that reward true mastery, particularly those tied to cosmetic items. Some of the original criteria did not fully reflect that intent, and we have updated them to make their difficulty and purpose clearer.”

The first set of changes went live today, November 5, through a server-side update and are available immediately. Any progress you’ve already made will automatically be applied when you enter a match, unlocking any challenges or assignments you now meet based on the updated criteria.

BF Studios said the scale of its plans for Challenges and Assignments is “large and will take place over multiple server-side and client-side updates,” so players can expect additional updates in the future.

While Battlefield 6 has enjoyed a record-breaking launch, some have critisized the pace of in-game progression, which this update looks to address. Other hot topics include the size of Battlefield 6's multiplayer maps compared to those in previous games, and out-of-place soldier skins.

We've got plenty more on Battlefield 6, including word on the hidden firing range room that players are investigating for secret Easter Eggs and hints at future content. Those looking to brush up on their online skills can also read our multiplayer tips and tricks guide.

Community Update - Challenge & Assignment Changes patch notes:

In this first set of changes we made a total of 90+ adjustments to Challenges and Assignments. Below we’ve highlighted a few examples.

Class Challenges

Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon challenges now complete much faster.

• Assault 2: Have Squadmates deploy on your Spawn Beacon.
• Reduced from 50 deploys to 5.
• Support 2: Revive teammates as Support.
• Reduced from 200 revives to 60.

Weapon Assignments

All weapon-type assignments (ARs, SMGs, LMGs, Shotguns, DMRs, Snipers, Carbines) have been significantly simplified.

• Rapid Fire 1/Assault Rifle: Inflict damage with Assault Rifles.
• Reduced from requiring 10000 inflicted damage to 3000.

Mode & Unit Assignments

The majority of our mode-specific assignments (Conquest, Rush, Breakthrough, Domination, and others) have been standardized to require two wins per tier. This change makes it easier to pursue these challenges with clear intent.

• Conquest 2: Wins in Conquest.
• Reduced from 5 wins to 2.
• Conquest 3: Objective kills in a round of Conquest.
• Reduced from 30 objective kills in a round to 10.

Gameplay & Mastery

General “Expert” and “Master” assignments that require multi-kills, headshots, kill streaks, or revives have been adjusted to better match the natural rhythm of gameplay. For example, multi-kill and streak goals now align with average round performance rather than rare, outlier achievements.

• Explosives Expert 2: Get Multi Kills (2+ Kills Onwards) with explosives.
• Reduced from 20 Multi Kills to 5.
• Adaptable 2: Repair damaged Vehicles in a life.
• Reduced from requiring 3000 damage to 500.

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

The Witcher Season 4 looks like it’s having a hard time compared to previous seasons of the Netflix series, with viewership data showing a dramatic decline.

For Season 4 and the upcoming fifth and final season, Netflix replaced Henry Cavill with Liam Hemsworth as Geralt following the former Superman actor’s exit at the end of Season 3. Season 4 made its debut on October 30 with all eight episodes and met with a mixed response from fans and critics. IGN’s The Witcher Season 4 review returned a 7/10. We said: “Even with the Cavill/Hemsworth shake-up, The Witcher sticks to its guns (er, swords) and delivers a decent season of magic and mayhem.”

According to What’s On Netflix, Season 4 has struggled for views in its launch week. It landed at No. 2 on Netflix’s English TV list with 7.4 million views across its first four days of availability.

The comparisons make for tough reading if you’re Netflix. While we don’t have figures for the breakout first season, Season 2 has first week views of 18.5 million, and Season 3 had 15.2 million. For extra context, animated spinoff The Witcher: Blood Origin had 4.6 million cumulative views in its first week. While there is nuance to be found within these comparisons (Season 3 was a split release, for example), it cannot be denied that Season 4 of The Witcher has disappointed.

In a note to press, media analytics company Samba TV delivered its own verdict on The Witcher Season 4, saying 577,000 U.S. households watched Season 4 Episode 1 during the launch window. That’s down 35% from the 885,000 U.S. households that watched Season 3 Episode 1 during the same launch window period.

Cast your mind back six years to the launch of The Witcher and it was one of the hottest TV shows on the planet. In January 2020, Netflix said The Witcher Season 1 was on track to become the biggest Season 1 TV series ever on the streaming platform, with a huge 76 million member households watching in its first four weeks of release. It was so big that it drove up sales of the CD Projekt video games, the books upon which they’re based, and even spawned a viral musical hit. You'd worry for the future of The Witcher if it were any other Netflix show, but we already know how this one ends: the confirmed fifth and final season.

In truth, The Witcher has endured a rocky road ever since Cavill’s dramatic exit. The show has faced a backlash from some fans who adored Cavill’s portrayal of Geralt, and it feels like it wouldn’t have mattered who had replaced him, such was the sentiment after the news broke in 2022. It's still unknown why Cavill left but the actor said in November 2021 he was absolutely committed to a seven season run of The Witcher "as long as we can keep telling great stories which honor Sapkowski's work."

In September, Liam Hemsworth spoke for the first time about replacing Henry Cavill, admitting reaction online forced him off social media and the internet. Last year, speaking to Collider, Ciri actress Freya Allan said she felt sorry for Hemsworth for having to take over from Cavill in what was "not an ideal situation."

"I feel sorry for him, honestly, because, number one, that fan base can be very attack-y, and it’s not an ideal situation to be in taking up someone else’s role,” she said. “But I’m really excited to see what he does. And he’s such a lovely guy. I just hope that people give him the time of day."

Back in 2022, Cavill took to social media to say he would return to play Superman "after being told by the studio" to do so, but new DC Studio heads James Gunn and Peter Safran went in another direction (Gunn later admitted Cavill was messed about by previous studio leadership). Cavill went on to sign a deal with Amazon and Games Workshop to adapt Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop game he loves, and is currently recovering from a leg injury sustained training for the Highlander reboot.

Christy opens in theaters on November 7.

Sydney Sweeney is the latest to dance the biopic shuffle, punchily portraying boxing pioneer Christy Martin in a rather run-of-the-mill sports drama based on Martin's game-changing rise to fame -- along with her years of abuse at the hands of manager-husband Jim Martin (Ben Foster). Much like The Smashing Machine with Dwayne Johnson and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere with Jeremy Allen White, Christy marches diligently alongside 2025's middling, performance-forward biographies as Sweeney shines brightly in the midst of what is, basically as a blueprint, a life montage.

It's a tricky thing to call out what are considered to be the cliches of a biopic because, well, it is someone's real life. Accusing it of being hackneyed or by-the-numbers feels mean and dismissive. Remember though, the life in question is shoved through a Hollywood lens and formatted for our easy narrative consumption. Biopics have always been a performer's medium and not so much a filmmaker's because many of them, as films, have a hard time balancing involving the viewer vs. just merely showing the viewer. Christy takes us from 1989 to 2010, sometimes pausing for important landmarks but most often whisking us through the rest in a way that makes you wish there were some moments we spent more time with.

Christy, as a biography project, is a montage, filled with smaller, faster montages, speeding us through training, boxing, media rounds, and Martin's almost parodic conservative parents (Merritt Wever and Ethan Embry giving their best West Virginia scowls). But Sweeney and director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom, The Rover) know well and good enough that we've come to watch a famous person look different and sound different. We've come to see how hard they've worked to change their appearance, alter their voice, and devote themselves to a particular skillset, be it sports or music or what have you. Because truth be told, we could all just watch the Netflix documentary (Untold: Deal With the Devil) and see a much more unfiltered telling of the tale.

Sweeney is tremendous here, physically transforming herself, telling the story of a woman trying to battle her way out of brutal trappings. Chastised and shunned at home for being a lesbian, Martin finds her calling in the '90s boxing world -- where no woman had ever found fame or fortune -- drawn to the violence as both escape and catharsis. Once entrenched, however, Martin finds herself in quicksand after marrying her trainer, Jim, and slowly discovering that he's a physically and mentally abusive POS. Any and all attempts she makes to move past him -- even seeing Don King (played with glee by Chad L. Coleman) as a possible ticket to a Jim-free life -- go up in flames thanks to Jim's weaponized incompetence and manipulations.

Ben Foster does a great job of being very vile as Jim, a mushy, wholly unimpressive man who manages to subdue a woman who could best him in every aspect, using the world's (and her own family's) misogyny and homophobia to his advantage. Eventually, Martin's freedom is only found after wresting it from the jaws of death in 2010. Again, unless you've got the panache and confident energy of a Scorsese, then your biopic will probably tread through the same visual cues and hit the same structural speed bumps. There's a point in Christy where it notes a time jump, that it's jumping ahead a decade, but then, at the same time, it doesn't really let you know that everything you watched before it took place over seven years.

It's hard to make a movie biography that doesn't feel like an uneven encapsulation or an endless parade of check-ins, and Christy is no exception to those pitfalls, sadly. Characters either tend to feel like stock caricatures or they're simply underserved, like Martin's entire training team outside of Jim. But the two main performances, particularly Sweeney's, are good reminders that the spotlight is on the role here and not the particular obstacles or unspooling of struggles.

Sweeney is able to capture the desperate drive of Christy Martin, the shame she's forced to feel for who she loves, and the vulnerability of a celebrity who projects a "tough as nails" persona. Foster's Jim isn't as layered as the villain of the piece who's pretty much a miserable sack of dongs from the get-go, but he's also playing the metaphoric role of patriarchal, societal shackles. Jim is able to slip through the cracks (well, until he cracks) because of how ugly things are for women. Katy O'Brian lights up the screen as Martin's former boxing nemesis Lisa Holewyne, though her and Christy's fate is unfortunately relegated to a "Where are they now?" epilogue crawl. A lot happens off-screen toward the end, including Jim's comeuppance, that would have made for a much better finish.

Nintendo plans to release further video game films at a "consistent" rate following the launch of next year's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and 2027's The Legend of Zelda.

In a presentation to investors today, Nintendo said it was "building a framework for a consistent release cadence" of movies, built on the success of 2023's breakout hit The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Next year will of course see the arrival of a sequel to that film, which is scheduled to arrive on April 3. This will then be followed by a live-action The Legend of Zelda adaptation in 2027, and beyond that... Well, today Nintendo suggested it had at least a couple of other ideas in the pipeline.

In a slide showing posters for the three movies mentioned above, Nintendo indicated it had at least a couple more film projects planned for launch within the next few years.

"We are continuing to prepare for the ongoing release of movies in the future," Nintendo simply said of its future plans. But the suggestion of more movies already being planned has set fans' tongues wagging.

So, what else could we see? Well, Nintendo currently seems keen to build on its universe of Mario characters — at least some of whom will be headed into space within The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. But while Seth Rogen's Donkey Kong will still feature, fans have long expected the character to eventually get his own spin-off — something Rogen has said he's keen for, and Nintendo recently filed a copyright notice to protect.

The release of a recent Pikmin short film underlines Nintendo's keeness to continue growing that particular franchise — could a full movie follow? Or perhaps Nintendo will look to its other top-tier franchises after Mario and Zelda, and attempt to launch another?

An animated Fire Emblem film? A live-action Metroid? An Animal Crossing horror movie where Tom Nook collects his debts, shovel in hand? The possibilities are endless — as long as Nintendo can repeat its Super Mario Movie success. After all, for now it has secured just one box office hit — though the company is clearly banking on more to follow, and sooner rather than later.

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

Today, November 5, marks 10 years to the day Battlestate Games unveiled its extraction shooter, Escape from Tarkov. And now, 10 days from its 1.0 release, the developer has revealed preorder and beta rewards.

Escape from Tarkov is a hardcore MMO mixture of first-person shooter / third-person shooter and role-playing gameplay. Players need to find a way out of the isolated Russian city of Tarkov, survive deadly hazards, and unearth the mysteries of the city. It's been playable in early access form since making its debut in 2016, and it's finally coming to Steam as part of the 1.0 launch on November 15.

For anyone thinking of preordering the shooter ahead of its November 15 release — or those who've already preordered it — players can get following awards:

• Clothing set: USEC Legionnaire Olive
• Clothing set: Bear Sumrak Reverse
• PMC Dogtag: Immortal
• Prayer Armband: Head, Eyes
• Hideout Style: Echo of Battle
• Shooting Target: Hatchling
• Mannequin: poses

Obsidian has said it’s well aware that whenever it announces a new game, people ask where Fallout: New Vegas 2 is, but it loves how it’s been able to create new IP and even release sequels to them — and its owner Microsoft sounds like it supports that approach.

Fallout Season 2 is set to hit Prime Video this December, and while Bethesda has a new Fallout: New Vegas bundle up its sleeve, there’s no word yet on a Fallout remaster or a Fallout: New Vegas 2 to capitalize on the surge of interest in the franchise. Obsidian is of course the developer of the much-loved 2010 RPG Fallout: New Vegas, so fans often wonder whether it will return to the setting for a sequel, especially given it’s owned by Bethesda parent company Microsoft.

Obsidian, though, has focused on making brand new games, and it is prolific in doing so. It’s released Grounded (Grounded 2 came out this year), fantasy RPG Avowed (which came out this year), and sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds (The Outer Worlds 2 came out this year). Pentiment, which came out last year, was another brand new game, although I wouldn’t expect a sequel to that any time soon.

In an interview with The Game Business, Obsidian’s VP of operations Marcus Morgan and VP of production Justin Britch touched on the fan calls for a New Vegas follow-up, but pointed to its work establishing new franchises as a “joy.”

“I know everyone on the internet, on every game we ever announce, will constantly reference back to, ‘When’s the next New Vegas? Or when’s the next whatever?” Morgan said.

“But this year, in addition to it being a celebration of shipping three games, all three of those games are IP that we’ve created, that are Obsidian IP. Our history, prior to the Microsoft acquisition, really was surrounding around working on others’ IP. And this is the joy that we get of… how do we start to define our own and how do we build our own IP? And we’ve got to the part where we have sequels to all of them. All of them are sequels to the IP we created.”

And it sounds like Microsoft has supported Obsidian’s desire to do just that, even though you’d think the mega corp might have gone hard on Fallout, especially with the hugely popular Fallout TV show breaking through into the mainstream.

“Xbox has been pretty supportive of the stuff we want to do,” Britch insisted. “It’s been great.”

There was no mention made during the recent Fallout Day broadcast of a Fallout: New Vegas remaster, which some (including Danny Trejo!) have called on Bethesda to develop. Indeed, there were no new Fallout games announced at all. Find out everything announced during the Fallout Day broadcast here.

But there are all sorts of rumors floating around about potential Fallout remakes now that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is out the door (Fallout 3 Remastered was leaked back in 2023, but those plans may have changed). And we know Bethesda wants to eventually get to Fallout 5, albeit after The Elder Scrolls 6.

The last we heard on Fallout 5, by the way, was back in June 2024, when Bethesda Softworks head Todd Howard said he wasn’t interested in rushing it out the door. Howard opened up about the future of the hit post-apocalyptic RPG series during an interview with YouTube content creator MrMattyPlays.

"For other Fallout games in the future, you know, obviously I can’t talk about those right now, but I would say, sort of rushing through them, or we kind of need to get stuff out that is different than the work we’re doing in 76… we don’t feel like we need to rush any of that," he said. "The Fallout TV show fills a certain niche in terms of the franchise and storytelling."

The last mainline Fallout game was Fallout 4, which was released in 2015. DLC content for the entry was steadily released for PC and consoles over the next year, and in 2018, Bethesda launched its multiplayer-centered offshoot, Fallout 76. While fans flocked to the West Virginia-set open-world RPG over time (and after a rocky launch), it wasn’t until the premiere of Prime Video’s Fallout TV show that the Bethesda series leveled up in terms of attention.

Still, Howard wouldn't budge when it came to desires for a substantial video game release. For him, it comes down to wanting to treat Bethesda's franchises with care.

"Totally get the desire for a new kind of mainline single-player game," he said. "And look, those things take time. I don’t think it’s bad for people to miss things. We just want to get it right and make sure that everything we’re doing in a franchise, whether it’s Elder Scrolls, Fallout, or now Starfield, that those become meaningful moments for everybody who loved these franchises as much as we do."

In the meantime, The Outer Worlds 2 has strong New Vegas vibes. Check out IGN's The Outer Worlds 2 review for more.

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.

Ever wondered exactly how many hours you ploughed into Donkey Kong Bananza on a specific day this summer? The new Nintendo Store app will let you find out.

Now available worldwide, the Nintendo Store app is primarily a way to browse and buy Switch games and Nintendo merchandise. You can download demos, acquire amiibo, and even purchase new consoles or retro controllers.

But the app's most unique feature is a little more hidden. Head to your profile and scroll down to find your Play Activity, which lists all Switch 1, Switch 2, 3DS and Wii U games you've played over the last couple of years. Selecting a particular title then lets you see a range of previously unseen data — including playtime by day.

For example, let's look at my save file for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which I played a lot back in early 2020. My playtime is listed as the rather vague "200 hours or more," but I can also see when I first played the game (March 3, 2020) and when I last played (July 8 the same year — when I quit Animal Crossing games, I tend to go cold turkey).

During those dates I played across more than 106 days, and scrolling down I can see, by date, how much I played on each. Amid a string of sessions where I played more than five hours per day, I can see a 6 hour 15 minute session I logged back in early April. To be fair, there wasn't much else to do at the time.

Your play history can be ordered via longest played (Animal Crossing is my longest, closely followed by Zelda: Breath of the Wild), the date you first played a game, and via system — giving you a couple of options to look back at what you were playing several generations ago. (My most played Wii U game? Zelda: Twilight Princess HD.)

Or, of course, you could just use the app to shop. If you fancy trying it yourself, Nintendo Store is now available via the App Store and Google Play.

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

Valor Mortis, the first-person action game set in an alt-history version of the Napoleonic wars, was announced earlier this year at Gamescom Opening Night Live. In its announcement and subsequent marketing, the developers have been clear about one big element of Valor Mortis: it’s a soulslike.

Sure, it’s a first-person game, which automatically makes it look radically different from any FromSoftware game or even the 2D soulslikes such as Hollow Knight, Nine Sols, and Blasphemous. But speaking to me at the Game Industry Conference in Poznań, Wielkopolska, game director Radosław Ratusznik was hyperaware of the expectations that such a bold declaration would immediately attach to Valor Mortis. And he’s determined to do right by players while remaining committed to the perspective shift.

Valor Mortis is being developed by One More Level, the studio behind 2020’s Ghostrunner. Ratusznik tells me that the studio is largely made up of Souls game fans who badly wanted to tackle the genre, but knew they needed more development experience as a group first. This, he says, is what led to Ghostrunner, which is a first-person action game that, at least by our own estimation, was pretty great.

With one success under their belt, One More Level turned to Valor Mortis. Ratusznik says that the idea for gameplay came before the game’s setting – the team wanted something that would let them mix melee combat and firearms with the more magical mutant abilities. It just so happened that the game’s lead concept artist was also an historian with a lot of knowledge on Napoleonic Europe.

Which is how Valor Mortis ended up set during the Napoleonic Wars, featuring a monstrous Napoleon raising an army of undead mutants to rampage across Europe.

“I think, for many players, the Napoleonic era sounds really to be like... I don't want to say unattractive, but with this silly uniform, something like that, they're not treating it like something that is maybe attractive for them, and we wanted to change that a little bit,” Ratusznik says. “We think that this is a significant part of our history here in Europe, Napoleon as the emperor, and we want to tell the story, our own version about it. It's not historically accurate. So we don't want to educate players, of course, about the history, but we think that it's something unique, something new for the players to play, to explore.”

You play as William, a British soldier who initially joined Napoleon’s army wooed by promises of a free Europe, but who is gradually coming to the realization that war is far from rosy. Unlike his fellow soldiers, William can control the nephtoglobin, the substance that prompts the undead mutation, and is able to retain his sanity while making use of its powers and fighting his way through the gruesome, warped battlefields left in Napoleon’s wake.

“The theme of horror is very important for us,” Ratusznik explains. “So it's not even just these monsters that you are fighting. We are also telling the story about the war and how there are no winners, no true winners at war. That we are in the middle of this conflict, we will learn about each side of the conflict. So this is a story about the foreign soldier in the foreign army, in the foreign land, because we are exploring the eastern parts of Europe. We are not telling if it's Poland or is it some other country. So it's more like a universal story about soldiers in the war.”

Having played quite a bit of Valor Mortis at GIC, I can confirm that despite how silly the premise seemed to me initially, One More Level has indeed made something pretty unsettling. An image permanently burned into my memory is of a soldier in uniform, on all fours, leaping out at me like a dog from behind a pile of bodies. But instead of looking at me with his face, his head was contorted downward to put his large, ridiculous, fuzzy wig-hat out front, which had opened down the middle into a mouth full of teeth and was snarling at me as it attacked. Weird, startling, and very effective.

But whatever you think of the setting, the gameplay is fundamentally very souls. There’s a stamina meter to manage, poise meters on enemies to break with attacks and well-timed parries. When you die, you of course drop all the currency you’ve collected from enemies as you go and have to fetch it back, or lose it forever. And there are bonfires (in this case, lanterns) that serve as safe spots and checkpoints to restart from with each death. Valor Mortis is also quite difficult. I won’t pretend to be the best Souls player around (I’m decidedly middling) but I spent a good long while running up against the game’s first (I think) boss, which had two phases, summoned smaller enemies, and had an enormous attack radius. I died. A lot.

And yet, Ratusznik is on the defensive about whether his game qualifies as a Soulslike or not, in part because of the first-person perspective, but also because of the high expectations put on any game that purports to hail from that tradition by its many fans.

“I think that the genre is such a demanding thing that if you want to create a good thing for this demanding community, you need to be very well prepared,” Ratusznik says. “And we wanted to communicate it this way. We are telling people, ‘We are a Soulslike. And If you are not sure about it, you can challenge us. You can ask us why we think it's Soulslike.’ And we are perfectly fine with that. And we know that players after the playtest, after showing the game at Gamescom, at TGS, we were also on PAX in Seattle, and all the players who are playing, they are telling us, ‘I was doubtful about it that you can manage to make a Soulslike in first-person, but after playing it, I believe you. It's true. It's a Soulslike in first-person.’ So that's what's very cool for me. I mean, personally, as a fan of the genre, that we managed to deliver the game in the genre, it's something amazing.”

So I ask Ratusznik, what does it mean to be a Soulslike? What are the defining characteristics, to him, that Valor Mortis just had to embody?

“Well there is always a debate, how many features from the FromSoft games should game have to be a Soulslike?” he says. “So in our example is, of course, a stamina-based combat system. So that's the first thing. Then we have the checkpoints that are kind of similar to the bonfires in Soulslike. In our game this is a lantern. So you have to reach the lantern to save, make your checkpoints. When you die, you will start from this place. You can then rest, the enemies will come back to life. So this kind of thing is present. But also the exploration is very important, I think, for the Soulslike in this kind of Metroidvania approach in the level structure.

“In our game we even push it further. So we also have these elements of Metroidvania, such as abilities that you are gathering that you can use on previously visited levels to unlock some alternative paths. Also the shortcuts are very important, so you need to explore to find the shortcuts to get faster to the safe point, to these checkpoints or something. So there is a lot of that. And also, the boss fights as the true challenges, very demanding. So I think, yeah, I mean these elements are there for sure, but it's not like we are taking all of it blindly. We are thinking about each of this and how it'll fit our vision for this game and also the first-person perspective, which is kind of tricky.”

The perspective switch really is a difference maker for Valor Mortis, as it transforms how combat plays out, how parries and dodges and swings need to be timed and directed, and how boss mechanics can be tuned for challenge. But given the popularity of the Soulslike genre, I’m surprised that there aren’t more first-person Souls games out there – most people just follow in either the Dark Souls tradition or the Hollow Knight one. Why is that?

“I think it's not easy to make it happen, to be honest,” Ratusznik says. “I mean we did Ghostrunner, so we learned how to make first-person melee combat. And even for us, it was not easy to make the melee combat in first-person satisfying and not confusing. But in Poland we can do it because we have Dying Light, Cyberpunk is also with first-person combat. And we have our games, so Ghostrunner and now Valor Mortis. So it's a bit tricky.

“You need to make at least a few tricks to somehow help players to get better feedback from each of the actions that they are taking. So for example, when we attack the enemies, we have some kind of a system that is in the action fighting games where you are snapped to the enemy, pulled to the enemy somehow. So we are attacking and the system is assisting you in getting closer to the enemies. Because it's hard to tell the distance. Both the collider of your weapon is a little bit bigger than you expect just to feel that you hit it. So we need to set it up properly. There are a lot of small things that you have to add to make this combat feel juicy but also satisfying for the players. Of course on top of that there are proper animations, proper animation of the enemies, of the reactions of the enemies. Sound design is very important. Also…there needs to be some additional assets, like some arrows, some indicators that are telling you that if someone is behind you, these kinds of things.”

Valor Mortis is planned for a 2026 release on PC, PS5, and Xbox. I ask Ratusznik how it’s been developing for consoles this generation, and he gives me a rather surprising take: he really likes the Xbox Series S.

“Each generation is easier, the certification process is easier and also the knowledge of the hardware is bigger among the developers,” he says. “So I think also the fact that you have to optimize for all consoles is beneficial for all the players, right? So when we need to optimize our game for Xbox Series S, then the PC players also get a more optimized game, right?

“I know a lot of players who really love, for example, one genre or one type of game. They are only playing, I don’t know, Call Duty or Gears of War, so they don't have to buy the newest stuff to play their games. So they have the Series S. And if you try to make a PC for the same cost, for example, it won't be possible, right? So if we manage to optimize the game for the S, I know that a lot of developers are struggling with it, but I think it's more like a challenge that you should handle to make the game optimized for players.”

But there is one console conspicuously missing from the lineup. Where’s the Nintendo Switch 2?

“I mean I would love that one day,” Ratusznik says. “So we are considering it. It's not like that we are announcing anything, but personally I would love to bring this game to Switch 2. I think that it would be nice to see this type of game on this console.”

We also spoke to Ratusznik at GIC about Soulslike difficulty, and why the game might have an easy mode, but won't have a bunch of other difficulty settings. You can read our conversation right here.

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.

Valor Mortis, the first-person soulslike action game set in an alt-history Napoleonic era, is out next year. And with developer One More Level especially pushing the “Soulslike”-ness of the whole thing, it seems only natural that at some point before or after launch there’s going to be a discussion about the game’s difficulty - is it too hard? Is it hard enough? Should it have an easy mode, or something else?

The difficulty discussion, of course, is one that crops up every time a new Souls game is released. What makes difficulty fun, and what makes it obnoxious? Should games have easy modes? What sorts of accessibility features are helpful to ensure everyone can play the game and experience its design friction as intended, without experiencing other, undesirable friction due to controls or other functions?

I played Valor Mortis at the Game Industry Conference in Poznań, Wielkopolska, and while I’m only of middling Soulslike skills, I can confirm it’s pretty tough! I also spoke with game director Radosław Ratusznik, who says that the team is still in discussions as to how they will approach all this. For now, he says, Valor Mortis just has one difficulty setting. But that may change in the future.

“If we decide at one point to change it, I think we will change it for easy mode and normal mode, just two of them. Because I think that players should have similar experiences when they're playing these kinds of games. So personally, I'm fine with the easy mode, if someone wants to just experience the story, learn a little bit about how the game works. But if we have a lot of options, like there are like tens of difficulty options, then each person can play a totally different game. I think what connects Soulslike players is that they are all struggling in these games. If they manage to succeed in this game, they can share this experience with other players. And this is something that has a huge value I think for them, for this community.”

But there’s nuance here, because while Ratusznik may be against having ten difficulty options ranging from Story Mode to Ultra Hard Giga Death Difficulty, he agrees that discussions around difficulty often don’t take into account the nuance of accessibility. He’s not a fan, for instance, of games that let you turn on and off certain mechanics (such as parries), because he thinks that players “lose something from this experience.” But he also adds that, as far as accessibility goes, “we can have a lot of things that can assist you without lowering the difficulty of the game.” Accessibility isn’t solved with an easy mode.

Ratusznik isn’t alone in this belief. FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki has said similar of Elden Ring, “We are always looking to improve, but, in our games specifically, hardship is what gives meaning to the experience. So it’s not something we’re willing to abandon at the moment. It’s our identity.” But also notably, Elden Ring was far more flexible than FromSoftware’s past games in the ways in which it allowed players to eventually conquer challenges. You could outlevel bosses to make them trivially easy if you wandered off and defeated enough weaker enemies, there are some builds that turn certain bosses into jokes, and there’s so much to do in the game and so many paths to victory that if you’re struggling with something, Elden Ring encourages you to leave and do something else. Another recent Soulslike, Hollow Knight: Silksong, is similar in this structure.

How Valor Mortis will ultimately handle its difficulty remains to be seen, as Ratusznik himself says that the team is still working out what they want to do. We won’t know til next year when the game launches on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series.

We also spoke to Ratusznik at GIC about Valor Mortis’ soulslike credentials, and why it’s challenging to make a game in that tradition in the first-person. You can read our conversation right here.

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.

Epic Games has celebrated the launch of Fortnite's new The Simpsons mini-season, which it says has welcomed "the biggest number of new and returning Fortnite players since last holiday season."

Public player data tracked by Fortnite.gg shows that a peak of 2.6 million players logged on both Saturday and Sunday, firstly to watch the live event that introduced The Simpsons aliens Kang and Kodos to Fortnite's battle royale Island, and secondly to then play on the game's new Springfield map when it came online.

The live event saw Fortnite's heroes scooped up in a UFO and transported to Springfield Island, a mash-up of Fortnite and The Simpsons filled with familiar locations and Easter eggs from the long-running animated series. Fan response to the new season and its highly-detailed map has been positive, and Epic Games seems pleased with player numbers.

"In 48 hours, we welcomed the biggest number of new and returning Fortnite players since last holiday season," the developer wrote in a social media post. "The first Fortnite | The Simpsons short popped to #1 on Disney+ today in the US. Move over Shelbyville..."

Fortnite's player numbers have dipped somewhat this year, amid tough competition from Roblox and a string of battle royale seasons that feel like they haven't landed with fans quite as expected. In September, during the game's alien bug season, the game's average daily numbers briefly sagged to around half a million players, though player counts then rallied as Fortnite began its annual Halloween celebrations.

While 2.6 million players this past weekend is impressive, Fortnite has recorded several higher player spikes this year for other events. A peak of 5.7 million players logged in on June 7 for Death Star Sabotage, the game's live event that served as the finale of its Star Wars mini-season. Fortnite also saw a spike to 3.9 million players on August 2 for its superhero season finale, and 3.3 million players for the launch of its Daft Punk Experience.

What remains to be seen is how many of those new and returning players stick around over the rest of this month, as Fortnite's The Simpsons season culminates in a big live event on November 29. This is expected to usher in the game's next big era — Chapter Seven — that looks set to feature a crossover with Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill and, potentially, the return of Fortnite's heroic Seven faction.

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 Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 just around the corner, Activision has laid out exactly when players will be able to jump into the action, and has confirmed everything players need to know about the official PC system requirements and pre-load times.

While pre-load goes live at the same time across all platforms on November 10 — 9am PT (scroll down to see when that'll be in your part of the world), launch times vary depending upon where you are, and what platform you're playing on. It's a bit confusing, so we've outlined the release times across key territories below.

We also have confirmed PC specs for Black Ops 7, so you can check to see if your PC is up to the task.

Confirmed Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 PC specs:

Predator: Badlands is unlike any Predator movie before it. Without spoiling the story, I’ll report that it is an all-out action adventure more along the lines of Disney's The Mandalorian than the sci-fi horror exploits of Dutch and co in the jungles of Mexico. It is a film in which the Predator is the protagonist, not the stalking, gore-obsessed antagonist we’re used to seeing. The whole premise of the Predator is flipped upside down here. Rather than hunt hapless humans, Dek, the Yautja runt out to prove himself, finds himself the hunted one on a death planet that’s out to get him.

But it’s more different, still. The tone, the pacing, the whole vibe of Predator: Badlands is… different. Not unfamiliar, of course; I’ve seen a hundred action adventure movies in the Star Wars style. But this is different for Predator. There are jokes (the Predator makes one — deliberately — himself!), there are moments of slapstick comedy, and there is a cute alien sidekick called Bud who I’ve already seen compared to Baby Yoda (Bud is a bit like Baby Yoda, I suppose, but a lot more rippy and shreddy).

There will be some Predator fans who will not like this one bit. I suppose I’m one of them. I suppose I’m a Predator purist, someone old enough to have seen Predator on VHS, a few years — probably — before I should have. It’s a formative film for so many… for me. And when it came to subsequent Predator films, it was all downhill from there.

And then Dan Trachtenberg turned up and he did something super interesting: Prey. I love Prey. It’s a back to basics Predator movie that takes what was great about the first film and builds something fresh and exciting around it. It rejuvinated the franchise, and I love — love! — that it did well enough for Dan Trachtenberg to be awarded the keys to the franchise, to be named the Predator showrunner (movierunner?), a fan and a hugely talented director who just gets Predator and wants to take it forward with critical and commercial acclaim.

His animated anthology go-between, Killer of Killers, continued the impressive run, although I still have my doubts about Trachtenberg's idea that the Yautja kidnap those who have bested them in the hunt, and — all off-screen — put them on ice only to defrost them later for another go. Sorry lads, that’s your ego getting the better of you, there. Aren’t you Yautja supposed to be super honorable? Take the L and leave Dutch, Harrigan, and Naru to live out their days in peace (well, relative peace given the persistent night terrors I'm sure they suffer over what you put them through). If you're bored, there has to be a Xenomorph out there who's desperate for a scrap?

And so we come to Predator: Badlands. I was in the rather fortunate position of being able to interview Dan Trachtenberg the day after I saw his film, with it fresh in my memory but also having slept on it. I should say this: I enjoyed the movie for what it is. When the Predators fight each other, it’s genuinely superb. Like, top-class action superb. At times it looks amazing. It always sounds amazing. I laughed at the bits I was supposed to. Elle Fanning as Weyland-Yutani synth Thia (and more) is superb. Dimitrius Koloamatangi delivers a truly impactful performance as Dek himself; you really feel the weight of the Predator as he leaps about the death planet. I was invested in this buddie movie, this Frodo and Sam road trip to a far future Mount Doom (owned and operated by Weyland-Yutani, of course). Predator: Badlands is a fun ride. But is that really what I want to be saying about Predator: Badlands after leaving the theater?

Whatever your answer to that question, it cannot be denied that Predator: Badlands is a fascinating project. It’s a movie I suspect will split the fanbase down the middle, like Dek tearing through a tentacled alien monster. Some people will hate it. They will accuse Predator of having succumbed to the ‘Disney effect’ in the pursuit of a larger PG-13 audience and, theoretically at least, box office. Some people will love it. They will take it for what it is: a rip-roaring sci-fi romp in which a Predator is the surprise main character, standing on his own two (very large) feet. I suspect few will sit on the fence with this one.

And so it was with all this in mind that I virtually sat down with Dan Trachtenberg to squeeze just a handful of questions into our painfully brief interview time. Such is the junket way! So, like Dek would, I jumped straight into the thorny question: why, Dan, have you done this?

IGN: It's obviously a very different tone and feel to what's gone before. I'm not going to get into spoiler territory or anything. There are jokes. I think the Predator even makes a joke at one point, there's slapstick comedy, there's a cutesy sidekick. It is a big swing for the Predator franchise. I'm sure you'll be asked about this a lot, but why did you decide to go in this direction for Badlands?

Dan Trachtenberg: Because it's a movie that does not exist. Prey was very much a back to basics exercise and Killer of Killers really doubled down on that traditional Predator story where you meet human characters and they're hunted one by one. You've now got five new movies... Killer of Killers is like four movies in one. And then with Prey as well, it really felt like, man, I don't think people really need another version of just that movie, that story, that structure as it was. It really felt like, boy, it'd be nice to have something refreshing and new in the franchise, but then also in science fiction movies in general.

We've always fallen in love with the sidekick, walking carpet Chewbacca, or the villainous monster, and they've never been the main character of the movie. So really loved the idea of being like, yeah, we're going to make a movie where the Predator is the main character and he's going to be ferocious and badass, and then he's going to meet this other cast of characters and there's going to be a soul to the movie.

A day after revealing its latest stellar sales figures, Nintendo has confirmed it will now "shift" its development focus to Switch 2 — and revealed that 84% of the console's early adoptees were players who owned Switch 1.

"Going forward, we will shift our primary development focus to Nintendo Switch 2 and expand our business around this new platform," Nintendo wrote in a freshly-published sales presentation.

Switch 2's first six months have been marked by a smattering of exclusives such as Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, but also a series of paid upgrades to existing Switch 1 games (like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Party Bonanza) and cross-gen titles (like Pokémon Legends Z-A and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4: Beyond). Nintendo now appears to be suggesting that its future release slate will likely be more orientated to Switch 2 exclusives, likely buoyed by the huge success of its new machine.

Perhaps it's not a surprise to see such a huge percentage of Switch 2 players upgrading from Nintendo's prior console (which, after almost a decade on sale, is now near ubiquitous). But what's interesting here is a breakdown provided by Nintendo showing how smoothly the company has picked up its early Switch 2 adoptees over the Switch generation — relatively evenly, year by year.

The largest group of Switch 2 players are those who bought the Switch 1 back at its launch in 2017, but the groups of those who acquired Switch 1 in the following few years are not too different.

Bethesda has outlined the patch notes for Fallout 4 ahead of the release of the Creations Menu update and Anniversary Edition.

During the recent Fallout Day broadcast, Bethesda announced Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, due out across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on November 10, 2025.

Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition — designed to coincide with the post-apocalyptic role-playing game’s 10th anniversary — contains the six official add-ons and over 150 pieces of Creation Club content. Creations (user created content) arrive in Fallout 4 via a brand new in-game Creations menu, which will make it easy for players to find and download the new content on PC and console.

Now, Bethesda has detailed Fallout 4’s Creation Menu update, due out on November 10 alongside the release of the Anniversary Edition, and it includes more than expected. However, Bethesda issued a warning to mod users. Fallout 4 mods will undergo maintenance November 6-10, and during this time, Fallout 4 mods and Creation Club will be offline. This means you won’t be able to download or upload any new content (you’ll still have access to change your mod load order and play the game).

Bethesda asked players to disable any mods that change the main menu before the November 10 update (which requires changes to the main menu screen). If you don’t, the mods may break with the patch.

“Thank you for your patience as we work to roll these changes out and lay the groundwork for things like additional storage for Creations,” Bethesda said in a post on Steam.

Meanwhile, the Fallout 4 patch notes reveal some surprising but welcome gameplay and performance improvements. VATS Accuracy should now be fixed so hit chances are consistent across platforms and no longer drop to 0% or show incorrect values (this has been a problem for some time). Targeting enemies through walls without the Penetrator perk is no longer possible, too. There’s also improved Ultrawide and Super Ultrawide Support, and Resolution Detection (Autodetect now sets supported display resolutions, preventing crashes on launch).

Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition Creation Club content includes unique weapons, power armor, Pip Boy paint jobs, and more. During Fallout Day, Bethesda teased some of the Creations in the works, including one that will bring a "slice of the Mojave Desert" to the Commonwealth, an escape room experience, and even a mind's eye version of your spouse voiced by the original actors you can interact with. The six official expansions included are the Far Harbor, Automatron, and Nuka-World story add-ons, and the Contraptions, Vault-Tec, and Wasteland Workshop add-ons.

Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition will be available on Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Steam and PC. It’s coming to Nintendo Switch 2 at some point in 2026, marking the first time Fallout 4 will be available on a Nintendo console. Patch notes are below.

Fallout 4 - Creations Menu Update November 10 patch notes:

• Creations Menu: A new in-game Creations menu has been added, making it easier than ever to discover, download and enjoy content from professional developers and passionate enthusiasts alike.

Gameplay & Performance

• VATS Accuracy: VATS hit chances are now consistent across platforms and no longer drop to 0% or show incorrect values. Targeting enemies through walls without the Penetrator perk is no longer possible.
• NPC Visual Creations: Fixed stuttering and hitching caused by Creations that edit NPC visuals. Performance is improved when using such Creations.

Stability & Crashes

• BNET Connectivity: Better handling when there is a  Bethesda.net outage
• Crafting Station Crash: Interacting with crafting stations or the workshop on ultrawide monitors no longer causes crashes.

Ultrawide & Super Ultrawide Support

• UI & HUD Scaling: UI elements, HUD backgrounds, and item previews now scale correctly for 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios. Menus, quest updates, tutorials, workshops, and inspected objects are no longer stretched or squished.
• Pip-Boy Map: Players can now place markers, fast travel, and pan the map to the right side in the Pip-Boy when using ultrawide resolutions.
• Save Preview Images: Save preview images are now letterboxed to avoid looking squished on ultrawide monitors.

Miscellaneous

• Resolution Detection: Autodetect now sets supported display resolutions, preventing crashes on launch.

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.

It’s been 6,496 days since the original release of Burnout Paradise, not that I’m counting. With the Burnout series clearly consigned to the same storage cupboard EA has been hiding the corpses of Westwood, Black Box, Pandemic, and all the other studios it shut down over the years, I completely understand the motivation for developer Three Fields Entertainment to craft Wreckreation. It’s an unapologetic Burnout Paradise clone in a stack of very clear ways, built for a ravenous audience that's been starved of one of arcade racing’s heaviest hitters for too long. After all, if you want something done, sometimes you need to do it yourself. Unfortunately, the one core component of its spiritual ancestor that Wreckreation couldn’t recapture was its overall quality, and the result is a janky, unrefined, and often unsatisfying racer that I don’t have much desire to keep playing.

Wreckreation’s resemblance to Burnout Paradise runs surprisingly deep, even for an independent studio that’s spearheaded by former Criterion Games bigwigs – the home of the Burnout series. In fact, there are times when it borders on self-plagiarism, such are the similarities – from the digital information ticker at the base of the screen to the familiar tone of a successful takedown. As such, Wreckreation often seems more concerned with recreating entire segments of Burnout Paradise’s identity than establishing its own unique one. I’m conscious it’s trying to do this with a fraction of the budget and a sliver of the staff of Criterion’s classic, and that’s admirable in its own way, but comparisons are unavoidable when the parallels are this blatant.

Crashing Out

From the opening race it was evident things were awry, from the framerate stutters when I hooked into a drift to the actual sliding itself – which feels a little more cumbersome than I typically like. Arcade racers live and die on their handling, and Wreckreation’s driving dynamics aren’t the best by any stretch. Its brake-to-drift brand of handling is straightforward enough, but it’s not the type of drifting that lets you effectively alter your angle throughout a powerslide. It’s almost as if the throttle has no real impact on your drift angle once you’re sideways. I became accustomed to the handling, but I certainly can’t say I ever warmed to it. I especially dislike its idiosyncrasies, like the fact that cars will screech to a quick halt when braking in a straight line, but stomp on the brakes mid-drift and your car will simply continue to hurtle onwards – even if you’re completely off the accelerator. There are also occasional moments of severe understeer, but I can’t figure out what’s triggering it. It may well be a combination of road surface and car type, but there were times when I just craved more responsiveness and needed my cars to snap back into a drift, and they wouldn’t. There's definitely a lag to the steering that blunts that zippy, arcade feel.

After a brief race across Wreckreation’s elevated stunt tracks, the next event was a stunt challenge, where I was required to accumulate a certain amount of points within a very basic arena of jumps and loops. Unfortunately, while my car could easily make it around the skinny loops during free roam, the moment I tried to take them on during the stunt challenge my car was instantly wrecked for no apparent reason. This wasn’t a one-off thing; it was consistently repeatable and happened every time I tried to drive the loops during the challenge. That’s a bad bug to hit five minutes in.

Pivoting my approach, I stuck to the jumps in order to build up the points I needed to progress. It wasn’t particularly challenging – and the simplistic approach to auto-leveling cars in the air means the stunting is all rather superficial and shallow compared to something like Wreckfest or Hot Wheels Unleashed – but nonetheless I’d earnt more than six times the necessary score when the time limit expired. At this point I… failed the challenge. I had, in fact, scored zero points – because points don’t automatically bank at the end of the session if you’re still accumulating them in a combo. They just vanish.

This sort of thing leaves a terrible first impression, and nothing I subsequently encountered was strong enough to affect a course correction.

Wreck Yourself Before You Check Yourself

After the stunt-centric opening minutes, Wreckreation quickly settles down into its largely Burnout-inspired groove. The bulk of what’s on offer here are standard races (where the goal is to finish first), ‘Takedown’ races (where the goal is to wreck a set number of vehicles), plus the occasional time trial and ‘Shutdown’ event (where you must perform a takedown on a special, marked car while exploring the open world, in order to add it to your garage – sound familiar?). You can progress through all this content however you see fit, hitting events in any order as you uncover new ones around the huge map. Unfortunately, this flexibility doesn’t disguise how familiar every race rapidly becomes.

The size of Wreckreation’s massive map is almost certainly a major culprit in this. At a reported 450 square kilometres, it’s an environment larger than a lot of contemporary open-world racing games. It makes for a great bullet point, but the reality is that this huge size brings with it major caveats. Its primary problem is that it’s extremely generic. It’s a large, square island, with no towns or cities. It’s just ribbons of tarmac and dirt draped over vanilla countryside, where one side of the map feels no different than the other. There are no obstacle-filled alleys or bustling urban centres; it’s just a big green slab with a lot of trees and rocks. I haven’t encountered any memorable races, because there are no memorable areas. There’s very little to distinguish one race from another, so ticking them off became tedious pretty quickly. There’s also a bug I encountered semi-regularly when selecting “restart race” from the pause menu that removed most of the HUD and made it impossible to open the map. The only fix was to restart the game, which was equally tiresome.

Races occur against just five other opponents, which is low by modern standards, and rely on some pretty egregious catch-up AI to stay tense – but they’re better than the Takedown races and Shutdowns. Takedown races began as a major frustration, with awful AI spawns that placed fresh takedown victims too far ahead. Unlike Burnout’s Road Rage events, which effectively inject opposition around you at all times to smash and bash, Wreckreation messed up massively by making other cars a total chore to catch within the slim time limits. Hell, sometimes they were impossible to catch because they spawned on an adjacent road you couldn’t reach thanks to the guardrails.

A patch released this week addressed this, and now opponents quickly streak into the picture from behind – just as they do in Burnout (although they still occasionally spawn on nearby roads you can’t get to). But I have to wonder how it was released in its previous state at all? How thoroughly was this game tested? At any rate, I’ve always maintained that the Burnout series fumbled when it added time limits for Road Rage events in Burnout Revenge. Burnout 3: Takedown was better without them, with the limiting factor simply being how much damage your car could take. I wish Wreckreation had cribbed from the latter in this instance.

Wreckreation also introduces a new spin on its off-brand Road Rage mode, which adds cars you’re not supposed to take down, lest you receive a time penalty. I don’t find this is a fun twist, and I actively dislike competing in these. The penalty cars don’t just chop precious seconds off your time limit – they don’t even count as takedowns if you shunt one off the road accidentally. The worst penalty takedown events have two marked penalty cars you can’t crash into, meaning every batch of opponents will only have two cars to take down. It makes chasing some of the high takedown totals extremely frustrating, and doubly so when it’s being stingy with attributing them to you in the first place. I lost track of the times multiple AI cars crashed out during a slo-mo takedown clip, but I was only rewarded for one of them.

Chasing the unfairly overpowered AI during Shutdown attempts is also extremely frustrating. That is, being barely able to catch a pickup that was supernaturally staying out of my grasp by perfectly matching my top speed is a cheap trick. I know speed stats are a bit of a meaningless metric in arcade racers with rubberband AI, but discovering this truck was actually doing at least 40km/h more than what it’s literally listed as being capable of was pretty annoying after chasing it across the map for 10 minutes.

Temu Trackmania

As close as Wreckreation sticks to its Burnout family roots, it admittedly does bring a whole new pillar of play to the party in the form of its customisation and creation tools, dubbed Live Mix. This gives us the ability to do everything from renaming vehicles, to changing the weather and traffic density, to even plonking down massive track pieces to create huge, skybound stunt courses.

The track creation suite should speak to me. 1990’s Stunts from Distinctive Software, with its pioneering track building tools, is one of the most formative racing games I’ve ever played and I’ve adored this sort of thing ever since. However, Wreckreation’s track builder has completely failed to inspire me.

There are some elements here that I find quite neat. I admire how most of the track modules automatically generate the necessary support structures beneath them to secure them to the ground, regardless of their elevation. It gives the tracks a feeling of physical presence, like the skyscraper-sized feats of engineering something like this would be. There are some clever considerations baked in here too, like how the scaffolding will handily delete itself if you place new track pieces beneath established ones. However, after clipping together a whole bunch of track segments (and one complete game crash as I tried to add the last piece), the net result is that they’re nowhere near as thrilling to drive on as they look. It just feels significantly out of date compared to the incredible depth and fine tuning available via the track builder in, say, the Hot Wheels Unleashed series.

Live Mix ultimately proved handy on occasion for dropping down a jump or platform in the right place to reach a smashable billboard, although I’ve since wound back on that. Tracking down and crashing through the many collectables quickly became rather dull thanks to the fact the world just isn’t very interesting to explore. This is a non-insignificant hurdle considering a lot of these collectables are additional pieces and modules for the stunt tracks. It’s hard to argue the juice is worth the squeeze here. I’d say Wreckreation’s residents would be happy to see fewer obstacles strewn all over the roads, but they simply clip straight through them in a shower of sparks, anyway – like the props are invisible.

Earlier this week I wrote about the best Meta Quest 3 deal we are probably going to see in November. eBay and Meta Store have now followed up with the best Meta Quest 3S deal. Ahead of Black Friday, the official Meta Store on eBay is offering the refurbished Meta Quest 3S 128GB VR headset for just $215.99 after a 20% off coupon code "TECH4THEM". Alternatively, the 256GB model is $287.99. Both headsets ship free and come with an extended 2 year warranty supplied by Allstate. This is easily the lowest price I've ever seen on a Quest 3S headset with warranty.

Refurb Meta Quest 3S for $215.99

Includes extended 2 year warranty