There’s never been a better time to give your games library a spring clean and make room for some banger new titles. Whether you're chasing chill vibes, story-rich sagas, or gloriously chaotic co-op, my deals listicle offers a little something for everyone (and at low gil prices). Let’s dig into the standout gems across Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X, PS5, and PC.

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In retro news, I'm celebrating the 15th birthday of my huckleberry, the rootin' tootin' Red Dead Redemption. To tell the tale true, I've got vivid memories of my launch ride being a bumpy one—where the low end of bugs were freezes and the spectacular high watermark belonged to Donkey Ladies (rideable NPCs spawned with human bodies and ass faces). Patched-out nightmare fuel aside, RDR became a blessed Western odyssey and another notch in Rockstar's gunbelt for touchstone gaming experiences. Us veteran cowpokes still swap campfire stories about our first "ride to Chuparosa (Mexico)" moment.

• NBA 2K25 (-68%) - A$29
• Sea of Stars (-35%) - A$33
• Scribblenauts Mega Pack (-90%) - A$4
• Lego The Incredibles (-92%) - A$7
• Lego DC Super-Villains (-90%) - A$8

Expiring Recent Deals

• Sonic Frontiers (-51%) - A$49
• Sifu (-70%) - A$18
• Lego Ninjago Movie (-45%) - A$49
• Shin Megami Tensei V (-32%) - A$54
• Dragon Ball FighterZ (-44%) - A$50
• Untitled Goose Game (-50%) - A$15

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Editor's note: This review in progress is based entirely on the Early Access version of Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, and will be updated with final impressions after the playing the 1.0 version at launch.

Game of Thrones is a series synonymous with epic battles, familial betrayal, and mythical creatures. It’s no wonder, then, that developer Netmarble used it as the backing for its latest mobile-friendly open-world RPG, plopping you right into the middle of the original HBO show with one major goal to achieve: Power. Yet, after 20 hours gallivanting through the Early Access version of Game of Thrones: Kingsroad’s northern factions, consolidating my wealth ahead of its full launch this week, I can’t help but feel worried about what lies ahead as I work my way toward a final review. It’s not the towering enemies or backstabbing friends waiting for me down south that I fear – it’s the reality of just how much grinding (or money) it’s going to take to get there.

Set during the events of Game of Thrones’ fourth season, Kingsroad allows you to join the story as a bastard child and sole remaining heir of House Tyre. With your lord father unwell, your job is to explore Westeros in search of support so that you can buck the bastard title and ascend to lead your people when the time comes. You’ll meet plenty of familiar faces along this journey, too, from Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly to less likeable characters like Roose and Ramsay Bolton. While it might seem like a dense point in the overall plot to drop in, Kingsroad does a decent job of introducing the series’ broader themes through a speedy tutorial, which briefly takes you beyond the Wall to lay up the threat of the White Walkers and the world’s ongoing dynastic conflicts.

Before you grapple with the inherent drama of Westeros, you’ll need to pick a character archetype to play as – a decision that will dictate the style of combat you’ll use as you level up. There are three options to choose from: A balanced sword-wielding Knight, a beefy axe-wielding Sellsword, and a nimble dagger-wielding Assassin. Inspired by Tormund and Brienne of Tarth, I opted for the hulking Sellsword, whose rage and size could sweep through larger groups of enemies with relative ease. If you’re indecisive (like me) and want to mix up your playstyle, the good news is that you can start up an alternate class at any time from the main menu and share loot between your warriors. You’ll still have to replay the central story missions with each one, but this helpful feature at least allows you to sneakily boost their stats and speed through the early game.

Once you’ve made your choice, you’ll also be able to mould their look using Kingsroad’s surprisingly complex character creator. Alongside sliders that control each muscle of the face, you can choose beard length and colour, add battle scars, and even adjust the sheen of their hair. It hasn’t got the intense depth of something like Dragon’s Dogma 2 or inZOI, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I could tweak my progeny's features to my liking.

You can’t simply walk into King's Landing and have your wish to rule House Tyre granted, though. To earn your regal title, you’ll need to work your way up the food chain and earn the respect of the ruling Ladies and Lords of the land. This means completing side quests, clearing out bandits and fiends, and collecting as much loot as you can carry to upgrade your armour. On the surface, this might sound like an enticing fantasy workload. Unfortunately, Kingsroad doesn’t quite have the technical chops to make these tasks truly draw you in.

At first glance, Westeros has been faithfully recreated, and I relished the opportunity to take in the vast icy presence of the Wall and explore the cobbled walkways of Winterfell. However, that initial sheen wears off quickly when you linger a little too long in an area. Patches of grass pop up and down uncannily, and objects or NPCs all start to repeat. Suddenly, this mythical world loses its lustre and feels like a strange simulation. That isn’t helped by how odd the NPCs look and move, with many of the citizens I came in contact with acting as either overly dynamic animatronics or still paintings that eerily follow you with their eyes. This unsettling style is most noticeable in conversations, with some villagers' jaws and eyes oscillating in unnerving fashion as they explain their routine predicaments.

This strange locomotion applied to my own movement as well, and no matter if I was on foot or mounted, it always felt as though I was skating on ice. That was more noticeable on frosty ground, which is surely intentional, but it frequently seemed like I was skidding on top of dry earth as well, with a slight delay to all my actions. Drifting my mount through twisty country roads was funny to begin with, but the constant unwieldy nature of movement gets frustrating fast. Often enough, I would catapult myself off the edge of a hill into an enemy camp without the ability to quickly course correct.

Combat is also a mixed bag, with lots of repeated attack patterns whether I was taking on an area boss or a simple grunt. The foes I was facing were a rotating crew of the same faces, the only difference being how many I would face at once. You dodge or dash out of the way of enemies and then return their hits with a mixture of light, heavy, and special attacks that don’t really attempt to do anything unexpected or fresh. Occasionally, I would be surprised by a quest that required me to use some strategy, like separating select enemies from a larger pack to get an advantage – but more often than not, combat simply came down to taking on gaggles of soldiers until I’d meet their overly familiar boss.

The story cutscenes surrounding my actions were at least enticing, pulling at my heartstrings as they urged me to help find missing children or take out bandits that were attacking weakened farmers. Sadly, the actual process of completing those tasks quickly felt thankless because of the rote combat. There are upgrade trees that can diversify your moveset as you level up, and I’m keen to investigate them further to see how they impact encounters in the full game, but in this early portion, fighting is mostly monotonous.

Thankfully, you can find platforming puzzles nestled across the sizable, icon-covered map that offer a decent reprieve from the mindless fighting, even in spite of the floaty movement. Amongst the medieval castles and quaint villages, dilapidated buildings and cliff faces hide secrets that you can pinpoint with your area scanning tool. Hidden doorways and chests await, usually providing useful caches of loot or lore. When you’re wandering around and getting into the flow of it all, Kingsroad can start to resemble something like a stripped-back mobile port of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The interface design and structure of the open-world and combat seem particularly derivative of Ubisoft’s viking odyssey. It’s not a bad skeleton for a Game of Thrones game, though it can feel a bit egregious at times as you use your ping to highlight hidden enemies.

That said, barriers are set up around this open world in the form of Recommended Momentum requirements. Momentum is a bit like Gear Score in Destiny, a numerical valuation of your stats that takes into account your armour and skill progression, equipped accessories, and more. You’ll need to buff every aspect of your character in order to surpass the criteria required for exploring a new area, which is a reasonable enough limitation if properly tuned. But, rather predictably for a game with its eye on a mobile audience, the trove of consistent loot I was earning from early missions inevitably started to dry up, and I came face to face with the real amount of work needed to continue unlocking story missions. This is where the sinister undertone of Kingsroad’s live service design really starts to rear its head.

The bevy of activities available are persistently counterbalanced by the copious microtransactions peppered throughout. Even beyond the bog-standard battle pass and abundance of different in-game currencies, I was surprised to see just how much of the actual gameplay was tied to some form of transaction. For example, when you die in combat, you can choose to wait 30 seconds or pay to come back faster with all your healing items intact – an essential inclusion if you want to avoid trawling back to camp to buy more items. Alternatively, you can fast travel the slow way by hoofing it to a special signpost, or pay for a premium version where you can warp for free from anywhere on the map. Annoyingly, all of these features impact how efficiently you can reach the Momentum requirements needed to progress, so you’re always goaded to put your hand in your pocket.

Behind every passably accessible system was a far more user-friendly one, but only if you’re willing to fork out for it. It felt as though Netmarble was more concerned with making Kingsroad just frustrating enough to encourage people to spend a bit of cash rather than making the base game reasonably enjoyable on its own. While it’s naive to assume a free-to-play game such as this wouldn’t offer some form of paid content, a cash-based system has been implemented into almost every corner of what’s here, and it cheapens both the world you are exploring and any success you may find there.

Perhaps what’s most upsetting about this model is that beneath the plethora of currencies and grind-heavy progression, Kingsroad does have the capacity to capture the magic of its source material. Riding on a dire wolf across hazy pastoral lands and watching them gradually gain a coat of frost feels cinematic on occasion (and, again, as long as you don’t stop to look too closely). Plus, the stories of the quests I’ve tackled so far do well to curate a tragic atmosphere. But when push comes to shove, the mythic world I was reaching for was always shoved just slightly out of reach by some intrusive nudge to pull out my wallet.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that it still feels as though I’m barely scratching the surface Game of Thrones: Kingsroad despite sinking over 20 hours into it already. There’s so much more I want to explore in the 1.0 version before I deliver my final verdict, like artefacts, upgrade trees, and the estate management systems. As of right now, though, one thing is abundantly clear: When you play Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, you pay or you die.

There’s something uniquely satisfying about putting down roots in a sleepy town in games like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, or Disney Dreamlight Valley. Palia evolves this tradition to great effect, injecting large-scale multiplayer into that tried-and-true formula. After more than 70 hours of chopping down trees, hunting woodland critters, decorating my home, and hanging out with my fellow Palians, I’ve had a fantastic time catching up on all I’ve missed since the early days of the beta. There are beautiful regions to explore, interesting items and artifacts to craft or collect, and lots of compelling quests to complete – and the new content in the Elderwood expansion that arrived alongside its console launch added quite a bit to what was already a life-consuming vortex of coziness. That said, Palia still feels quite unfinished in some ways, with a story that abruptly cuts off right in the middle and some pretty serious bugs and performance issues plaguing it, but it’s easy to forgive much of that when you and your friends are enjoying a quiet evening of fishing together.

Palia is a cozy life sim with one major tweak: you’re in an online world that occasionally compels you to come out of your shell and interact with other humans – a sometimes Herculean task for the introverts often drawn to this genre. As you explore, you’ll encounter others out in the shared world going about their business, and are encouraged (or sometimes required) to cooperate with them. For example, you’ll get a buff for fishing with others and will find magical trees that can only be chopped down with the help of one or more friends. This has led to a community that’s astoundingly positive and helpful, with the vast majority of the public chat being PSAs from players who have found a valuable resource they’d like to share with strangers, then waiting for minutes on end for everyone to assemble before collecting it as a group. I spend a lot of time playing multiplayer games defined by the community’s potent toxicity and savage greed, so this kind of culture was truly a shock to my system that took me a long time to adjust to.

Although multiplayer is its signature twist, you can still do the vast majority of Palia’s activities by yourself. There’s also just a whole heck of a lot for you to do however you decide to tackle it, all in service of building up your home and improving your relationships with the NPC townsfolk. The usual zen-like staples of cooking and catching bugs are all here and actually quite good – the fishing minigame, for example, is less mindless than you usually find in the genre, having you tug and pull on your rod as the fish leaps into the air and puts up a fight. There’s even a few less common options like hunting, where you’ll pick off poor critters who burrow into the ground and leap into trees as you pepper them with arrows. While an absence of stress is an intentional focus of Palia’s design, it sometimes tries a bit too hard to accomplish that goal, like in how your arrows will magically home in on your target incredibly aggressively, sometimes turning corners to aid your aim. I’m all for a laid back experience, but it can be a bit obnoxious when you’re trying to line up a shot and the magnetism training wheels curve your arrow toward a different creature altogether, frustrating what’s supposed to be a chill activity.

Palia has a surprisingly full-featured main story as well. It has you exploring ancient ruins to uncover the truth about a world which was once populated by humans who are curiously gone now, and the dark history of magic that seemingly caused the collapse of society. This adventure is much more light-hearted than that might sound, though, and you’re mostly just given opportunities to learn about the world and hang out with the characters who accompany you on quests while you platform around and solve simple puzzles. Per Palia’s adherence to cozy virtues, none of this is particularly demanding, and the mainline quests can be completed in a matter of hours if you focus on them, but I enjoyed diving just a tad deeper into the world and the break from grinding for iron ore to craft the next piece of furniture I just couldn’t live without.

That said, while I quite enjoy the tale Palia tells, it feels disappointingly incomplete compared to every other aspect of the adventure – even after the Elderwood expansion arrived. The original cliffhanger ending was replaced by yet another hanging chad just an hour or two later, with a handful of chores and a brief new major dungeon spread across a surprisingly short bit of story. You’re telling me I’ve got this massive new map to explore, new creatures to hunt, and new characters to romance, but we still haven’t finished even one arc in the main plot.

Thankfully, there are plenty of distractions and minigames to mix things up, like a hotpot-themed card game I spent way too much time playing, or a surprisingly intricate platforming puzzle that took me hours to master. Sometimes these experiments exceed Palia’s grasp, like the platforming sections in particular, which are held back by clunky controls that don’t seem like they were designed with precision in mind – climbing can be quite an irritating experience as your character will let go of surfaces inconsistently, sending you plummeting to your death. But the stakes in taking these spills are always very low, so there’s not much to lose aside from a bit of your time wasted. Other times, you’ll find yourself doing a sliding picture puzzle and think “y’know, this is pretty nice,” so I mostly found myself happy they took these shots nonetheless.

Of course, the purpose behind all these undertakings is to gain as much gold as you can to upgrade and decorate your home, and Palia’s got one of the better home building systems I’ve seen. Rather than giving you no control over the blueprint of your house like in Animal Crossing or Disney Dreamlight Valley, or making you monkey around with a building mode that has you placing individual walls like The Sims, Palia favors a modular system: You unlock schematics for pieces of a home that you can freely snap onto various parts of your building, making it easy to design the general layout without having to get lost in the weeds. Then, once you’ve built your place, you can decorate it down to the most minute detail, dragging furniture, dolls, and cups around on a grid to make it just so. I could probably spend dozens of hours on this part of Palia alone, were it not for my insatiable need for cold hard cash to fund my homestead expansion. But that desire to make your place exactly as awesome as you want it to be is a serious motivator that sent me out in search of lumber and iron ore time and time again.

Those resource grinds each have their own progression systems as well, as you level up by repeatedly going out into the world and bringing back your haul of raw materials and collectibles to sell. As you plant trees and craft furniture, you’ll unlock new equipment like a loom for creating fabric or a furnace for creating glass. You’ll also get better tools to perform cozy chores with, like a hoe that lets you till land faster or a bow and arrows that will let you take down prey in fewer shots, each of which feels like a handy upgrade that shows up at exactly the right moment you start feeling a need for it. The timegating that sometimes boxes you out of marathoning through everything in other life sims is mercifully absent here for the most part, so you can move as fast or as slow as you care to.

The other major pursuit in Palia is in getting to know and develop relationships with its 26 NPC residents, most of whom are really well-written and have a lot more to them than meets the eye. Most have an arc that takes place over several quests where they let you see a bit more of their personality as you forge a friendship. I quite enjoyed hanging out with the sarcastic and moody daughter of the mayor, Kenyatta, who worked the front desk with all the enthusiasm of April from Parks and Recreation – but after helping her down the extremely chaotic path of discovering what she’s passionate about in life, I grew to appreciate her in a less superficial way. Even characters I really didn't jive with like Elouisa, a cryptid-obsessed hippy who annoyed me to no end, was at least entertainingly irritating, and I’ve learned to appreciate how much her personality bothers me over time. (We’ve all got a friend like that, don’t we?) And, of course, if you’re looking for more than friendship you can partake in Palia’s quite strong dating mechanics to get yourself a girlfriend or boyfriend, or several of them – no judging here.

Unfortunately, this is one area where timegating gets in the way of a good time, and is one of the only places Palia boxes you out. You’re only allowed to chat with each character once per in-game day (a 30-minute period of real time), which improves your social links a very small amount, and you can only give each character a gift once per real world day. So if you’re trying to finish a particular character’s story, you’ll have to log on with regularity and be subjected to the same rotation of brief banter before you’re able to make any real progress. This is especially painful early on when your citizenship in Kilima Village is dependent on having someone in town to vouch for you – a task that’s made impossible to do in a short span by timegating. When every other area of Palia lets you play to your heart’s content, it’s pretty annoying to see such an essential part of this slice of life block you from progressing at your own pace.

Palia has come a long way since I first played it over a year ago, but one thing that remained true after this latest update is that it’s still missing quite a bit. Even with the beefy new Elderwood map joining the original two, the number of areas to explore is fairly small, and though they’ve got nooks and crannies for you to discover, you can more-or-less see most of what’s available in a few hours. Social features, though awesome when they happen, still feel quite slim for a game where the killer feature is supposed to be its online functionality, and there aren’t enough activities that encourage group play. And although there are quite a few options for decorating your house, surprisingly little of it can be interacted with once placed. You can’t lie in bed, turn on the sink, or really do much of anything with most objects, which sometimes made me feel like I was building a museum rather than a home. (They did add the ability to flick the light switches on and off, which is at least something.) Elderwood isn’t planned to be the final update or anything, so these are shortcomings that will hopefully be built out in the future, but I’m a bit surprised that some of them aren’t farther along all the same.

The other major issue with Palia has been its bugs and performance issues, which have gotten remarkably better but are still pretty common. I quite frequently see NPCs sink into the floor, sometimes altogether hidden underground to the point where I can’t interact with them, there’s a bunch of very visible pop-in that happens while you’re running around, and loading times when traveling between each section of the map feel far longer than they should. Playing on the Nintendo Switch is especially eyebrow raising, as everything looks pretty awful and runs significantly worse, to the point where I really can’t recommend it on that platform in the same way I enthusiastically would elsewhere.

As part of its greater HP Memorial Day Sale, HP is offering some excellent deals on its Omen Max 16 gaming laptops equipped with the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 mobile graphics. The Omen Max is HP's newest gaming laptop for 2025; it is essentially the Omen 16 but with better materials (including an aluminum-magnesium alloy chassis and lid) and a beefier cooling system to accommodate more powerful, current generation hardware. Both GPUs represent a healthy uplift in performance compared to the RTX 40 series cards, with the RTX 5070 Ti comparable to the RTX 4080 and the RTX 5080 surpassing the RTX 4090.

HP Omen Max 16" RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Laptop for $2,150

In general, the best Memorial Day sales are on things like furniture or clothing. But that doesn't stop retailers from sneaking in discounts on other stuff. Although the Amazon Memorial Day sale has been rather unimpressive so far, the online retailer does actually have a few surprisingly good 4K movie deals going on right now.

These discounts aren't quite as good as the big three for $33 sale Amazon had last month, but if you're looking to add any of these specific films to your physical media collection, these prices are worth considering.

The Best Amazon 4K Movie Deals Today

While there aren't a ton of deals on 4K movies in this sale, the ones that are available are all pretty good. The overall best deal right now is on the Batman (1989) 4K Steelbook. It has dropped to the lowest price we've ever seen and it also comes with a Blu-ray disc. If you're a fan of Michael Keaton's Batman, this is a must-have for your collection. The Schindler's List 25th Anniversary Edition Steelbooks is also at its lowest ever price. The Oscar-winning film was one of the first big movies that put Liam Neeson on the map and is arguably still his best performance to date.

If you're looking for the overall best value, the Get Out/Us Double Feature bundle is sitting at a great price. You get two of Jordan Peele's horror movies for only $25.99, which is the lowest price we've ever seen for this combo.

Outside of those three deals, a few other price drops are worth noting that aren't necessarily a part of Amazon's Memorial Day sale. The latest Captain America movie only recently came out on 4K and Blu-ray and it is already pretty heavily discounted. It's worth adding to your Marvel collection if you already have one, but it wasn't very well-received by critics, so it's potentially worth skipping if you haven't actually seen it yet. There's also a pretty substantial discount on House of the Dragon Season 1, which isn't a movie but noteworthy all the same.

Should You Buy Now or Wait for Amazon Prime Day?

Since Memorial Day sales aren't exactly a treasure trove of 4K movie deals (at least so far), it's probably safe to say you can wait to make any major purchases for your collection until later on. That being said, Prime Day might not be the only time worth buying physical media. Amazon has had two major buy three for $33 movie sales in 2025 and these have been the best overall chances to build yourself a collection. We expect there to be a lot of movie deals on Prime Day this year, because there were last year, but keep your eye out for other special promotions if you want to save the most money possible.

A jump starter is an essential part of car's emergency kit, and a cordless one eliminates the need to plug it into an available cigarette lighter. You don't need to pay a premium for a jump starter that reliably gets the job done, either. Amazon is currently offering Amazon Prime members this AstroAI S8 Pro 12V 3,000A cordless car jump starter for $32.99 shipped after you clip a 45% off coupon code "AQ97FOMC". Not only does it function as a car jump starter, it can also be used as a power bank to recharge your smartphone in a pinch.

Update: This deal is no longer reserved for Amazon Prime members only.

AstroAI S8 Pro 12V 3,000A Car Jump Starter for $32.99

George Wendt, the comedian-turned-actor best known for his role as “Norm Peterson” on the classic sitcom Cheers, died Tuesday at the age of 76.

Wendt died peacefully in his sleep at home, according to The Hollywood Reporter, who received the following statement from a family representative:

“George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him. … He will be missed forever. The family has requested privacy during this time.”

The Chicago native began his career as a standup comic in the 1970s with the improv troupe Second City. As an actor, Wendt found fame – and earned six consecutive Emmy nominations for best supporting actor in a comedy series – during his 11 seasons on Cheers.

Memorial Day 2025 is coming up (the day itself is May 26), but some retailers have already pulled the lever on their sales. You can find Memorial Day sales live at Amazon, Best Buy, and more stores. Among the many appliances and yard tools on sale, you can find some killer deals on video games. Below, you'll find our picks for all the best video game deals in all of the Memorial Day sales that are currently live. Let’s dive in.

The Best Video Game Deals Today

Above is a blurb-free carousel of all the best video game deals for Memorial Day 2025. For details and links on some of the games, keep on reading.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 for $49.99

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 for $39.99

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake for $39.99

Star Wars Jedi Survivor for $19.99

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition for $49.99

Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1 for $19.99

See More Memorial Day Sales Live Now

Looking for more discounts outside of video games? There are already a ton of Memorial Day sales live for 2025. Below are some of the biggest ones we've found so far.

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 graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD, 2024) by Tessa Hulls has won the Pulitzer Prize, announced on May 5.

Feeding Ghosts is the second graphic novel to ever win the Pulitzer, the first being Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1992. In that instance, Maus received a Special Award. Feeding Ghosts, however, won in a regular category, Memoir or Autobiography, having competed against the best English prose in the world. What’s more, it’s Hulls’ debut graphic novel.

Widely considered the most prestigious award in journalism, literature, and music in the US, the Pulitzer Prize is second only to the Nobel Prize internationally.

It’s a momentous accomplishment, ostensibly the biggest news in the field of comics. But surprisingly, it’s barely been reported on. Since the book won two weeks ago, only a handful of mainstream and trade press reported about it—notably Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly—and only one major comic book news outlet, Comics Beat.

The book, which according to Hulls took almost a decade to create, was called by the Pulitzer Prize Board “An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women – the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories.”

Feeding Ghosts traces the reverberations of Chinese history across three generations. Hulls’ grandmother, Sun Yi, was a Shanghai journalist swept up by the turmoil of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she wrote a best-selling memoir about her persecution and survival, but then suffered from a mental breakdown, from which she never recovered.

Growing up with Sun Yi, Hulls watched both her mother and grandmother struggle beneath the weight of unexamined trauma and mental illness, which she dealt with by leaving home for the most remote corners of the globe. Eventually, though, she returned to face her own fear and trauma, a generational haunting that could only be healed with the love of family.

“I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this,” Hulls said in an interview last month. “My book is called Feeding Ghosts, because that was the beginning of this nine year process of really stepping into something that was my family duty.”

Hulls’ first graphic novel may also be her last, however. “I learned that being a graphic novelist is really too isolating for me,” she said in another interview. “My creative practice relies on being out in the world and responding to what I find there.” On her website, she says she’s “setting out to become an embedded comics journalist working with field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits working in remote environments.”

Whatever the future holds for this groundbreaking artist, Feeding Ghosts deserves to be recognized and celebrated outside the world of comics and especially within.

Roy Schwartz is a pop culture historian and critic. He is a former CNN regular contributor, the author of Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero and co-producer of the documentary JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @RealRoySchwartz and at royschwartz.com.

If you're in the market for a mechanical keyboard that skips the flashy RGB in favor of something a little more classic, you're in luck. Best Buy has dropped the price of the 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard, which includes the Best Buy-exclusive joystick, from $100 down to just $80. This is a feature-rich keyboard that not only feels great to use but also looks the part. Check out the full breakdown of the deal below or dive into the full Best Buy Memorial Day sale for more deals like this.

8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard with Joystick on Sale

Eddington opens in theaters Friday, July 18. This review is based on a screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

With Eddington, 21st-century horror maestro Ari Aster makes an ambitious swing towards politically flavored comedy – but he misses just as wildly with this dusty, small-town modern Western. The first misfire of Aster’s directorial career makes a futile attempt to capture and satirize the rampant paranoia and cultural fault lines of the summer of 2020 via its COVID-era tale of bitter rivals running for mayor. With flailing jabs in every direction, Eddington ends up with shockingly little to say, and meanders for much of its 145-minute runtime.

There’s some superficial enjoyment to be found, especially in the lead performances: Eddington is an extremely slight work in the body of a comedy that’s only ever funny because the likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone make real attempts at finding something beneath the surface. But given the material they’re working with, they often come up short. Phoenix plays Joe Cross, the rebellious, alarmingly individualistic sheriff of the fictional Eddington, New Mexico, who spends his time listening to right-wing talk radio and attempting to politely (but aggressively) navigate his way around pandemic mandates (or insisting that others do so). His messy domestic life informs at least some of his frustrations, between his withdrawn, younger wife, Louise (Stone), and their intrusive, extended-stay house guest: Louise’s mother, Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell).

Whenever Joe comes home, he finds Louise and Dawn lost down their own separate online rabbit holes. Louise gravitates towards the teachings of new age self-help messiah Vernon Jefferson Peak (a severely underused Austin Butler), while Dawn constantly absorbs and regurgitates absurd conspiracy theories from YouTube. At a glance, these details are not entirely unfamiliar: When Joe scrolls through his phone, he’s met with a variety of content that’s either incendiary or mind-numbingly banal, as any of us might. However, much of this is just window dressing, worthy of a chuckle before we forget about it (Eddington certainly does). Fed up with the state of things, Joe decides to run for mayor against incumbent candidate Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), a smirking politician who harbors an angry streak at home, and who hopes to inject the town with tech jobs by welcoming the construction of a massive data center – portending the popularity of AI in a few years’ time. This is perhaps the closest Aster comes to offering any lasting social commentary.

Given Joe’s attempts to skirt the very rules he’s supposed to enforce, it’s hard not to be unsettled by some of the movie’s early interactions. Rightly so: Phoenix is incredibly adept at barely buried simmering, ensuring that Eddington begins in unnerving territory. This, however, ends up a promise unfulfilled. There’s little exploration beyond the period-piece façade of social distancing and social unrest, which hint towards wider details and context we never see, and whose effects seldom trickle down into anyone’s behavior beyond the first time we meet them. It’s a film in emotional and thematic stasis, even when things appear to change rapidly. It may be set in 2020, but the sickening roller-coaster feeling of living through that moment in time is rarely reflected.

When protests over the police killing of George Floyd begin spreading throughout the United States, the people of Eddington begin preparing for an explosion – but the blast feels only partially formed, and entirely insincere. On one hand, as the town’s more conservative residents grow furious at the increasing presence of Black Lives Matter protesters, Joe and his deputy Guy (Luke Grimes), both white, try to navigate the awkwardness of open discussion with trainee Mike (Michael Ward), who is Black. This subplot makes for an amusing flourish, but it unfolds at length without ever engaging with its central tension beyond fleeting punchlines, and the comedy is seldom informed by Mike’s perspective or experience. On the other hand, the protesters are caricatures of teenagers who don’t know better than to adopt an enlightened vocabulary they barely understand in order to get laid or to show off online. All the while, a lingering enmity between Joe and Ted looms larger, concerning a possible sexual impropriety between Ted and Louise, which may have ushered the latter into her cocoon.

Whatever Aster’s attempts with this premise, he spins far too many plates, and his approach ensures that Eddington’s satire is no deeper than a kiddie pool. The film plays with incendiary material but fumbles it constantly, by rarely (if ever) making genuine attempts to examine the humor or absurdity found within its characters’ points of view. Aster’s grief-tinged horror movies Hereditary and Midsommar depend on a genuine, detailed understanding of who he’s making suffer and why, but he doesn’t apply those skills here. Its construction is ideologically flimsy, as though drawn from a highly removed liberal angle on both right-wing frustrations and left-wing activism. For instance, the mess of conspiracies in Joe’s life keep the more paranoid characters at odds (rather than their paranoia feeding off each other), while the film’s engagement with the era’s discourse on race and policing is no more detailed or honest than that of the teen characters delving into these topics for the very first time.

When Eddington loosens its grip on reality, introducing manifestations of imagined far-right phantoms – like global cabals of child predators responsible for every crime, or an armed Antifa super-state that may as well be an organization run by Bond villains – its ravings feel distinctly un-tethered from Joe’s outlook. Imagine, for a moment, a version of the anxiety-inducing opening act of Aster’s Beau is Afraid, in which Phoenix’s Beau becomes besieged on all sides by a Fox News nightmare of a crime-ridden American city – only this time, Beau isn’t afraid. In Eddington, it’s always someone else’s worst fears peeking through the edge of the frame, rather than Joe’s. What ought to be experiential and visceral becomes distantly observed, since the concerns of Phoenix’s sheriff tend to lie far away from the plot’s strange, Under the Silver Lake-esque unveilings.

What is arguably commendable about the film is the way it shifts in tone, from broad political send-up to crime mystery, after a key turn in the plot about midway through. However, this transformation ends up feeling at odds with the movie’s attempts to dramatize one of the freakier years in recent memory. Its style never evolves in a way that goes deeper into that mood. Even its sprawling Southwestern setting is often reduced to a broad symbol of neighborly schisms and civic malaise, alongside a violent cruelty towards its characters that’s anything but nuanced – let alone as potent as an editorial cartoon.

Rigorous satire hardly demands a gentle hand. However, it does demand the rigor of knowing one’s target intimately, in order to strike it with precision. But Eddington is far from precise. Its distant perspective on the many concerns it portrays – across the bounds of party affiliation or taste – results in a disaffected work that has little to say about its chosen moment, other than the fact that some people were bothered by what they may have imagined others were believing. The film itself may as well be one of those subjects, given its old-man-yells-at-cloud approach to any topic that might remotely force the average viewer to confront their own biases, or even reflect on the festering, uncomfortable feelings that defined the era – and continue to define the current one. If you’re looking for a movie that observes the twisted emotional complexities of a world deep in crisis, and says, “Can’t we all just get along?” then Eddington may be for you.

The big Secretlab Memorial Day Sale starts now. Save up to $139 off Secretlab's popular Titan line of gaming chairs, Magnus gaming desks (including the Magnus Pro electric standing desk model), and accessories like the Secretlab Skins upholstery covers, desk mats, cable management, and more. Unfortunately, newer releases like the Titan Evo Nanogen chair and the recliner add-on are exempt from this sale.

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

TL;DR - The 7 Best Secretlab Deals

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

Secretlab Titan Evo

Secretlab Titan Evo Lite

Secretlab Titan 2020

Secretlab Titan Evo Nanogen Edition

Secretlab Titan Recliner Add-On

Secretlab Magnus and Magnus Pro

Jurassic Park, created through the imaginative writing of novelist Michael Crichton and the filmmaking magic of Steven Spielberg, was one of the most beloved and successful movies of the ‘90s. Two sequels and two decades later, the Jurassic World trilogy returned the franchise to relevance and, across three additional movies, added $4 billion USD to its collective box office haul.

With Jurassic World Rebirth hitting theaters in July, we’ve created a guide to help you navigate the series’ story. Scroll down to find out how to watch the Jurassic Park movies in order, by narrative chronologically or release date.

How Many Jurassic Park Movies Are There?

There are six feature-length Jurassic movies — three Jurassic Park films and three Jurassic World films. Jurassic World Rebirth will be the seventh Jurassic Park film. The canon also includes two short films and an animated Netflix series, which we’ve included in the chronology below.

Jurassic Park Movies in Chronological Order

These blurbs contain mild spoilers, including characters, settings, and broad plot points.

1. Jurassic Park (1993)

The Jurassic Park chronology is largely straightforward as the feature films’ release order lines up with their chronological order — only the short films and Netflix series may require a bit of guidance.

Jurassic Park adapts the Michael Chrichton novel of the same name and sets up the series’ narrative conceit: Dinosaurs have been cloned by extracting DNA from prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in amber and a reckless entrepreneur (Richard Attenborough) is using the clones to fill a theme park on the fictitious island Isla Nublar.

Paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and mathematician/chaotician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) arrive on the island to assess the safety of the park. They’re joined on their tour by Lex and Tim Murphy, the grandchildren of Jurassic Park founder John Hammond.

A tropical storm lands on the island and a saboteur kills the power to steal corporate secrets, resulting in a deactivated security system. With the dinosaurs now unrestrained, the island tour turns into a deadly escape mission against velociraptors and a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Read IGN’s Jurassic Park review or preorder the 4K Edition of Jurrassic Park.

2. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Set and released four years after Jurassic Park, The Lost World brings back Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm and Attenborough’s John Hammond to star alongside Julianne Moore’s paleontologist Sarah Harding.

The Lost World is set on a second island, Isla Sorna, where Hammond also cloned dinosaurs. The island was ultimately abandoned and the dinosaurs were left to fend for themselves. A power struggle for control of Hammnod’s company, InGen, leads two opposing factions to Isla Sorna.

One faction, led by Hammond’s nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), wants to again try exploiting the dinosaurs for profit, while Hammond, Malcolm, and Harding aim to turn the island into a nature preserve where the creatures can be studied away from human interference.

The two sides struggle against the backdrop of uncaged, territorial dinosaurs, once again resulting in frenetic chase sequences and occasional death. The exploiters are successful in capturing a T-Rex to transport to a new park in San Diego, which escapes captivity and wreaks havoc on the city. Malcolm and Harding attempt to capture it nonlethally.

Read IGN’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park review.

3. Jurassic Park 3 (2001)

Sam Neill reprises his role as Alan Grant for the series’ third film, with Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler returning as well, albeit for a much smaller role. Another four years have passed between The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 — both in the real world and in-universe chronology.

Jurassic Park 3 is once again set on Isla Sorna, where a man and a boy have gone missing. Grant, in need of money for his continued dinosaur research, accepts to give a helicopter tour of the island in exchange for funding. We learn the tour is actually a rescue mission chartered by the missing boy’s parents.

As expected, the dinosaurs welcome the humans with hostility. The group is pitted against a pack of velociraptors, which they must outsmart and outmaneuver while searching for the missing persons. Grant eventually contacts Settler to coordinate a rescue mission.

The end of Jurassic Park 3 began a 14-year hiatus for the franchise.

Read IGN’s Jurassic Park 3 review.

4. Jurassic World (2015)

Set and released 22 years after the original Jurassic Park, Jurassic World quickly became one of the highest grossing movies of all time after it's release. The film takes viewers back to Isla Nublar, where a new dinosaur theme park has opened. Jurassic World stars Chris Pratt as animal behavioralist/velociraptor trainer Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard as Jurassic World operations manager Claire Dearing.

Claire’s two nephews venture off on their own to explore the park, while a genetically modified mega-dinosaur, the Indominus rex, escapes captivity. Claire and Owen venture out to save the boys as the situation escalates and more dinosaurs join the fray.

With the boys safe, the action turns toward subduing the Indominus rex. Owen is tasked with confronting the beast with his trained velociraptors, which does not go according to plan. The climax of the film is an epic showdown between the Indominus and a T-Rex. The surviving humans flee and the great dinosaur theme park experiment is once again shuttered.

Read IGN’s Jurassic World review.

4a. Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (TV Series - 2020)

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is a canonical, family-friendly animated Netflix series. It’s not essential viewing but we’re including it for those who want the complete Jurassic Park experience.

Camp Cretaceous ran for five seasons and takes place during the events of the Jurassic World trilogy. The show follows six kids who attend Camp Cretaceous on Isla Nublar. The dinosaurs break free and the kids are left to survive on their own.

The show offers tons of references and connections to the films throughout — many of which have been chronicled by SYFY. Overall, Camp Cretaceous is less about moving the overall Jurassic World plot forward and more about experiencing the trilogy’s events from a different perspective.

Read IGN’s Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous review.

5. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

As you may have noticed by now, the real-life time gaps between Jurassic films aligns with the in-universe time gaps. As such, Falling Kingdom is set three years after Jurassic World. Fallen Kingdom continues to explore the dangers of exploiting dinosaurs for the sake of profit. Jeff Goldblum reprises his role as Ian Malcolm.

A volcanic eruption threatens the lives of the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar. Malcolm promotes correcting for the unnatural creation of present-day dinosaurs by letting them die in the eruption; Claire Dearing lobbies to save the creatures through her Dinosaur Protection Group. When the U.S. Senate votes to let the dinosaurs die, Claire teams up with Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) to save them. She recruits Owen Grady to support the cause.

We learn of ulterior motives within the rescue group and discover the series’ cloning technology has not been limited to dinosaurs. The film ends with many of the dinosaurs set free and humanity entering a new era – one in which the two species must co-exist.

Read IGN’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom review.

6. Battle at Big Rock (Short Film - 2019)

Co-written and directed by Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow, Battle at Big Rock is a 10-minute short film set between Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, specifically one year after Fallen Kingdom. It shows the first major confrontation between dinosaurs and humans following the events of Fallen Kingdom.

The 10-minute short ends with clips of other early human-dinosaur encounters.

7. Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (TV Series - 2024)

Jurassic World: Chaos Theory is a sequel to the franchise's previous Netflix animated series, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. Chaos Theory reunites Camp Cretaceous's "Nublar Six” for a mystery-thriller set six years after their experience on Isla Nublar, placing it just before Jurassic World Dominion on the franchise timeline.

Read IGN's Jurassic World: Chaos Theory review.

8. Jurassic World Dominion: The Prologue (Short Film - 2021)

Originally shot as the beginning of Jurassic World Dominion, The Prologue is a five-minute short that was edited out and made into an IMAX preview. It’s now available to view online as a standalone short film or as part of the Jurassic World Dominion extended edition.

The short opens 65 million years ago, showing creatures of the Cretaceous. A Giganotosaurus does battle with a T-Rex, and the loser has its blood sucked by a mosquito…. The back half of the short is set in the present day, where a helicopter pursues a loose T-Rex at a drive-in movie theater.

9. Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Dominion explores the premise set up by Fallen Kingdom: A world in which humans and dinosaurs co-exist. It’s set four years after Fallen Kingdom and unites the most recognizable characters from the franchise’s two trilogies: Owen Grady (Pratt), Claire Dearing (Howard), Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), Alan Grant (Neill), and Ellie Sattler (Dern).

The integration of dinosaurs into nature had great ecological effects and led to great ethical dilemmas. Claire and Owen work on behalf of the dinosaurs’ well-being, while genetics company Biosyn exploits the animals for profit. Elsewhere, giant locusts are destroying crops across the U.S. Ellie and Alan work together to find the locusts’ link to Biosyn.

Read IGN’s Jurassic World Dominion review.

How to Watch the Jurassic Park Movies By Release Date

• Jurassic Park (1993)
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
• Jurassic Park 3 (2001)
• Jurassic World (2015)
• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
• Battle at Big Rock (2019 – short film)
• Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020 – TV series)
• Jurassic World Dominion: The Prologue (2021 – short film)
• Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
• Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (2024 - TV series)

Future Jurassic Park Movies

Next up for the franchise is Jurassic World Rebirth, releasing in theaters July 2. Rebirth is set five years after the events of Dominion and follows a team “racing to secure DNA samples from the three most colossal creatures across land, sea, and air.” Recent trailers have revealed some of the new mutant dinosaurs the new film will feature.

The film is directed by Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) and stars Scarlett Johansson as covert operations expert Zora Bennett, Mahershala Ali as team leader Duncan Kincaid, and Jonathan Bailey as paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis. Rumor has it the newest movie also takes some inspiration from the original Jurassic Park novel.

Jordan covers games, shows, and movies as a freelance writer for IGN.

Three (count 'em, three) LEGO Super Mario Bros. sets are still in stock at Amazon and are on sale for surprisingly low prices. These three sets will be retired soon, so now's the perfect time to add these to your collection before they start to disappear. For a full list of LEGO sets that will be retired soon, you can visit LEGO's official website for a full breakdown in their Last Chance to Buy section.

If you're curious about more LEGO Super Mario Bros. sets, we recently built the new LEGO Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart (#72037).

Grab These LEGO Super Mario Bros. Sets Before They're Retired

These three sets are part of the original LEGO Super Mario Bros. modular playset line and include a ton of fun callbacks and references to classic Super Mario Bros. games. The Soda Jungle set from New Super Mario Bros. U comes with a fully posable wiggler, chopming Piranha Plant, and a to-scale Shy Guy. The Goomba Tree set, remiscent of the original Paper Mario on N64, includes three Goomba figures and a functional seesaw. Bowser's Muscle Car, seen in Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, is the coolest of the trio. It comes with a to-scale Bowser buildable figure, and the car itself is extremely detailed down to the angry face on the grill.

For a more in-depth look at recently retired LEGO sets, be sure to check out Brick Economy, a perfect source for collectors to keep track on the ins and outs of their favorite hobby.

Recently Retired LEGO Sets Still Avaialbe on Amazon

Once LEGO officially retires a set, they tend to hang around at other retailers for a bit longer. This makes Amazon one of the best places to buy LEGO thanks to their extended inventory of these products. There are a number of other recently retired sets you can currently still purchase right now. We've featured some of the most popular ones below, including a popular Sonic the Hedgehog set Nintendo fans might enjoy:

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

Streaming has made entertainment more accessible than ever, but that doesn't mean it's cheap. Most streaming services have continuously hiked their own prices and limited password sharing, and confusing licensing deals sometimes make it surprisingly difficult to find an entire franchise in the same spot.

Nowadays it's common to debate, as I'm doing constantly, which subscriptions are worth keeping for the long haul. Plenty of streaming services – particularly the newer ones – offer free trials, bundles, and discounts to try and attract new subscribers. "New subscriber," of course, meaning "different e-mail address."

The best time to save on subscriptions is undoubtedbly Black Friday, when most streaming services offer their biggest discounts of the year. But if you're trying to find savings sooner rather than later, these are some of the best deals available on National Streaming Day.

TL;DR: These Are the Best Streaming Deals Right Now:

Best Streaming Bundle: Disney+, Hulu, and Max

Flexispot is running its Memorial Day Sale with up to 60% off the brand's most popular standing desks and ergonomic chairs. We like Flexispot because it offers quality electric standing desks with all the features you'd want at a fraction of the price compared to other more well-known models. We rated Flexispot's highes- end model, the E7 Pro, the best overall standing desk of 2025. I've been using a Flexispot desk for years now and wouldn't pay more for a "better" desk.

Featured in this article

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

Flexispot E7 Pro Desk starting at $399.99

Our favorite standing desk for 2025

A big screen version of the original Kane & Lynch game, developed by Hitman studio IO Interactive and released back in 2007, was on the cards for years, with various Hollywood stars attached at one point or another.

Writing on social media this week, Nobody 2 director Timo Tjahjanto revealed that he had written a treatment for the Kane & Lynch film that would have starred David Harbour — that's Stranger Things' own Jim Hopper, or Red Guardian/Florence Pugh's dad in Thunderbolts*/New Avengers.

"Never seen a script, but couple years ago when that property was still kinda shit hot. I wrote a short treatment with James Badge Dale and David Harbour in mind," Tjahjanto wrote. "Never gotten anywhere."

CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, codenamed Project Orion, is a closely guarded secret, but that hasn’t stopped Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith from teasing some previously unknown details.

Pondsmith, who worked closely with CD Projekt on the 30 million-selling Cyberpunk 2077 and was involved in promoting the game ahead of its 2020 launch, was asked about the scope of his involvement with Project Orion at the Digital Dragons 2025 conference.

Responding, Pondsmith admitted he wasn’t as involved this time around, but he does review scripts and had been to CD Projekt to check out the ongoing work.

“Last week I was wandering around talking to different departments, and seeing what they had, ‘Oh look, this is the new cyberware, what do you think?’ ‘Oh yeah, that’s pretty good, that works here.’ "

And then, the morsel of detail on the sequel: that it features a brand new city in addition to the Night City we know from Cyberpunk 2077. Pondsmith described this new city as “like Chicago gone wrong.”

“I spent a lot of time talking to one of the environment guys, and he was explaining how the new place in Orion, because there’s another city we visit — I’m not telling you any more than that but there’s another city we visit. And Night City is still there. But I remember looking at it and going, yeah I understand the feel you’re going for this, and this really does work. And it doesn’t feel like Blade Runner, it feels more like Chicago gone wrong. I said, ‘Yeah, I can see this working.”

It’s worth pointing out here that Pondsmith’s comments do not necessarily suggest the Cyberpunk sequel will feature a future Chicago, rather a city that has the feel of a dystopian version of the city. It may well be a take on future Chicago, but that isn’t confirmed based on these comments.

There is also already some debate about whether the Cyberpunk sequel will expand upon the Night City that’s in Cyberpunk 2077 or feature a new version, and the extent to which it is playable. There are a lot of unknowns, but it looks like there may be two fleshed out playable cities in this sequel.

While CD Projekt’s focus right now is The Witcher 4, it has a new studio set up in Boston to work on Project Orion. Earlier this year, CD Projekt said 84 of its 707 staff were working on Project Orion, which is still in the concept phase. Much can change, and we’re not expecting the game for some time.

There’s also a new Cyberpunk animation project on Netflix following the well-received Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. In the shorter term, Cyberpunk 2077 is set to launch on Nintendo Switch 2.

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.

TinyBuild Connect is back this year to showcase a bunch of games that are on the way from tinyBuild, the publisher behind titles like Potion Craft, Graveyard Keeper, and Streets of Rogue. And once again, it’ll be a show focused on world premieres and exclusive new trailers with no talking heads or any other fluff. Just games.

TinyBuild Connect Date, Time, and How to Watch

The full event will be livestreamed on Tuesday, May 27 starting at 1:00 p.m. Eastern / 12:00 p.m. Central / 10:00 a.m. Pacific. For our friends across the pond, that’s 7:00 p.m. CET. It’ll start promptly at those times and will jump right into the games.

IGN.com (our homepage)

IGN’s Facebook

IGN’s Twitter

IGN’s Twitch

IGN’s TikTok

IGN’s YouTube

If you’re not able to catch the show live, you’ll be able to watch the whole thing on our YouTube page after it finishes. Just like last year’s show.

What to Expect from tinyBuild Connect 2025

This will be a dense show, with lots of reveals and announcements packed into less than 30 minutes. There will be a mix of premieres of previously unannounced games, new info about announced games, and updates for released titles, highlighted by upcoming titles Hello Neighbor 3, Ferocious, and Kingmakers. You can expect a new look at gameplay for both HN3 and Ferocious, while Kingmakers is getting a Steam Early Access release date announcement.

Hello Neighbor 3 was announced last year and is the latest entry in the adventure sandbox thriller series. You’ll return to the town of Raven Brooks, this time as a stranger with no ties to the town. Raven Brooks functions as a real-time sandbox simulation, where every player’s decision is the right one. It’s populated by residents who act based on their personalities, relationships, desires, and goals. The game is currently in the playtesting phase, so now seems like the right time for an update.

Ferocious made a strong impression during last year’s Games Baked in Germany showcase with its cinematic trailer. Developed by Omyog, a small German team with veterans from the film and AAA game industries, the game is a survival-focused, narrative-driven FPS set on a remote island filled with dinosaurs and hostile mercenaries. Among the team is the former Level Design Director of Far Cry 3, Narrative Director of Far Cry 4, and Campaign Creative Director of Star Wars Battlefront II, so it’s safe to say it’s an experienced team.

Kingmakers was revealed last year too, and it took the IGN audience by storm. We featured it on IGN Next because its trailer was a surprise hit, getting more than 11 million views across our social channels. Like Ferocious, it resonated thanks to its unique premise. Kingmakers is a mix of third-person shooter and RTS set in medieval Europe. You might be thinking, “How could a shooter be set in medieval times?” Well, you’re a time traveler who’s been sent to the past with modern weapons to alter the course of history. TinyBuild has confirmed that they’ll be announcing the game’s release date in Steam’s Early Access, so you can look forward to that.

Those are some of the games you can expect to get updates, but there will be plenty more announcements and updates we can’t see coming. Tune in on May 27 to see all of it.

If you were expecting scares from Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein film, it’s time to temper your expectations. In fact, according to the man himself, this is far from a horror movie — it’s an “emotional story.”

“Somebody asked me the other day, does it have really scary scenes?” del Toro explained during a Cannes Film Festival conversation with composer Alexandre Desplat. “For the first time, I considered that. It’s an emotional story for me. It’s as personal as anything. I’m asking a question about being a father, being a son… I’m not doing a horror movie — ever. I’m not trying to do that.”

Desplat also noted that the film’s score will complement the tonal landscape del Toro set out to achieve. “Guillermo’s cinema is very lyrical, and my music is rather lyrical too,” he said. “So I think the music of Frankenstein will be something very lyrical and emotional… I’m not trying to write horrific music.”

A massive new battle has broken out in Helldivers 2. Today, developer Arrowhead Studios brought the fight to Super Earth, as the Illuminate are touching down on the Helldivers' home turf. Everyone is joining in the fight, from the player-led Helldivers to some fresh reinforcements in the SEAF.

Short for Super Earth Armed Force, the SEAF soldiers are populating battles taking place on Super Earth, helping the Helldivers hold out against the oncoming Illuminate forces. These troops can be ordered around using several commands, and will assist the Helldivers in defending the home of Managed Democracy. In turn, Helldivers 2 players already love their new NPC helpers.

As seen in the new trailer for the Heart of Democracy update, SEAF soldiers are subject to roughly the same dire circumstances and thin survival odds as the Helldivers. Today's trailer has more than a few shots of SEAF soldiers getting absolutely routed by the invasion forces.

But the new SEAF pals are garnering both the sympathy and adoration of Helldivers, provoking the need to defend their newfound backup. Refrains of "PROTECT THE LIL UNS," a Warhammer 40K: Darktide reference, are already picking up steam in the comments.

"Aah look at them, they are so cute," wrote one r/Helldivers user, responding to the SEAF soldiers' reactions to the Super Earth salute. "Protect them at all cost helldiver."

Others draw comparisons to the Clone Troopers from Star Wars, especially the NPC allies you'd see in the classic campaigns of games like Star War: Battlefront. "Fired an EAT into a harvesters leg that was attacking a squad and one yelled out 'Glad the helldiver's on our side!'" one user noted, as it reminded them of the lines you'd hear in Star Wars: Battlefront calling out similar actions. "Now we just need overseers with wrist rockets."

Others have come up with new ways the SEAF could help the Helldivers in the future, as hopes seem high for the SEAF soldiers to leave Super Earth and venture with the Helldivers into other dangerous hotspots via stratagems. Honestly, having an NPC pal around to push those bunker buttons would be useful.

Either way, the Helldivers will absolutely need the help on Super Earth, as the new update seems quite chaotic. It's the culmination of a long series of events, stretching back to a really bad bug hive and a black hole, and it's been really fascinating to see it all come together.

Not too long ago, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani declared Helldivers 2 players would "shit [their] pants" when they found out what was coming down the pipe. You don't need to give me any unnecessary information, but I do feel like the scope of this update is living up to expectations.

Helldivers 2's Heart of Democracy update, and the Illuminate invasion of Super Earth, is currently underway.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.