Square Enix and IceSitruuna have released the PC demos for Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined and Parasite Mutant, respectively. These PC demos will let you try these two games before they officially come out. In Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, the characters designed by famous manga artist Akira Toriyama have been transformed into a cute 3D art … Continue reading PC demos for Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined & Parasite Mutant→
Netflix has dashed the hopes of Stranger Things fans expecting a secret final episode of the series, by confirming that "every" episode of the show is now available.
Fans unhappy with the hit series' final season have driven themselves into a frenzy in recent days on social media, and pushed the "Conformity Gate" theory that suggested Netflix had another episode waiting in the wings that would answer all of their questions and alleviate their various concerns. The theory centers on much of the final season being a dream — essentially replicating the Indoctrination Theory that unhappy BioWare fans conjured up years ago, following the launch of Mass Effect 3.
Yesterday, the Conformity Gate theory was dealt a huge blow by Netflix, which announced... a flashy trailer of other TV shows and movies coming in 2026 rather than anything Stranger Things related. And now, the streamer has updated its Instagram account to make the end of Stranger Things even clearer, for anyone still needing it spelled out.
"ALL EPISODES OF STRANGER THINGS ARE NOW PLAYING," reads the bio of Netflix's official Stranger Things account on Instagram, leaving no room for any final secret new episode still lurking behind the scenes that might be yet to release.
Of course, Stranger Things remains a huge and lucrative franchise for Netflix and there's plenty still to come — but from spinoffs, rather than the original show, which has definitively now ended. The animated series Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 will tell new adventures featuring the series' core cast (voiced by other people) set between Seasons 2 and 3. A second spinoff will be a new live-action series, though with all-new characters.
"Stranger Things was a generational event that barreled into a series finale with almost impossible expectations surrounding it," IGN wrote in our review of the Stranger Things series finale. "The Duffers certainly evolved into the successful blockbuster directors they so admired in their childhoods, but their enduring legacy will be mostly doing right by a cast of characters who beguiled the globe."
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Amazon has been dropping some very nice gaming deals recently to start off 2026. The latest offer to catch our eye is on Star Wars Outlaws for PS5 and Xbox Series X, which have both dropped to $19.99 for a limited time. This marks a return to the lowest price for both PS5 and Xbox Series X versions at Amazon, so this is a great opportunity to grab it. And why not spend these next few winter months journeying to a galaxy far, far away?
Star Wars Outlaws (PS5 and Xbox Series X) for $20
This Amazon Exclusive limited edition release of Star Wars Outlaws comes with some extras alongside the game. This version will set you up with The Rogue Infiltrator Character Pack, which features cosmetics for Kay and Nix that you can use in the game.
Still wondering if this is the game for you? Our review from IGN's Tristan Ogilvie called it a "fun intergalactic heist adventure with great exploration," though he noted at the time that it was "hindered by simple stealth, repetitive combat, and a few too many bugs at launch." However, since launch, it's received updates to give it a bit of a boost.
As mentioned before, this isn't the only video game deal to cross our radar over at Amazon. The retailer has had quite a few surprises up its sleeve recently, including a very big discount on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Astro Bot. Outside of Amazon, Walmart's even offering a great deal at the moment on Battlefield 6, if you've been waiting for a good time to add that to your library. For even more discounts on games, have a look at our roundup of the best deals of the day.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
If you’re from the South like I am, you know the sound: a light, echoing hum that softly screams whenever the temperature gets above 75. A sign of summer. Of languid days filled with both dread and possibility. Cicadas - those insects found all across the Eastern seaboard of the United States – are singing their song, which is both suffocating and soothing at the same time.
In Netflix’s new limited series His & Hers, based on the bestselling novel by Alice Feeney, cicadas are omnipresent whenever the characters step outside. It’s a small detail but one that reinforces the consistent, relentless Southern gothic nature of the show. Led by Tessa Thompson (Creed, Thor: Ragnarok) and Jon Bernthal (The Punisher, The Bear), His & Hers is the latest offering from Netflix’s seemingly unabated conveyor belt of glossy murder mysteries starring A-list talent.
But whereas many of those shows leave something to be desired in terms of execution and storytelling (see The Beast in Me, Pieces of Her), His & Hers, helmed by showrunners Dee Johnson (Fellow Travelers, Nashville) and William Oldroyd, blows past the usual paint-by-numbers whodunnit trap and quickly develops into something much more than the sum of its parts.
Thompson and Bernthal star as Anna and Jack, an estranged married couple reeling after the death of their young daughter. Anna, a news anchor in Atlanta, disappeared a year prior to the events of the show in an attempt to deal with her grief, leaving Jack (a detective) to move in with his sister in their hometown of Dahlonega, GA. Anna reappears to cover the story of a local woman who was stabbed to death, with Jack assigned to lead the investigation.
Plotwise, what follows is a pretty typical mystery that sees bodies pile up, secrets revealed, and more than a few expository flashbacks. But that’s where the similarities between His & Hers and most psychological thrillers end.
Bernthal and Thompson are at the top of their game here. Every scene they share crackles with yearning, grief, and a million layers of personal history. After losing their daughter, they lost each other, and being reunited both rips open old wounds and creates new ones.
Thompson projects a quiet strength, constantly balancing the sorrow of a mother who’s lost her only child with the persistent drive of someone destined to make a name for herself career-wise. For his part, Bernthal (with a subtle but impeccable Southern accent, something woefully absent in many a movie and TV show - I’m looking at you Benoit Blanc) shines as a man teetering on the brink. It just so happens that Jack was having an affair with the murder victim and was with her the night of the killing. This revelation leads to a cascade of poor decisions that compromises the investigation and paints Jack as one of the prime suspects.
While many of Jack’s attempts to hide his involvement border on the ridiculous (he swabs his niece’s mouth for DNA instead of his own, he constantly shouts down Priya, his investigation partner, when she asks simple questions) these lapses are forgivable - this is a soapy murder mystery after all.
To understand what truly makes His & Hers great, we have to dig into what the show is actually about. And to do that, we must talk spoilers. So turn away (and be sure to come back later!) if you don’t want to know who the murderer is and how the show ends.
Full Spoilers ahead for all six episodes of His & Hers.
When you approach a show like His & Hers, it’s easy to take it on its face as a bingeable, glossy mystery where everything is wrapped up by the finale. And it is! But it’s also much more.
The central mystery (who killed Rachel Hopkins?) is laid out at the very beginning of the show and resolved in an entertaining, if fairly typical fashion.
But Anna and Jack’s involvement, while unclear at the beginning, is slowly revealed to be much more than meets the eye. In short, Rachel was part of a high school “Mean Girls” group that also included Anna, Jack’s sister Zoe, eventual school headmistress Helen, and outcast Catherine. One by one, the girls, now adults, are murdered. The series leads us to believe that they’re all killed by a grown-up Catherine, now calling herself Lexi and posing as Anna’s rival news anchor.
In between the action, we’re treated to scenes of Jack and Anna leaving a thousand things unsaid with sparing glances and fleeting moments together. By the final episode, everything neatly fits together. Lexi, who supposedly killed out of revenge for the bullying she suffered decades ago, is dispatched by Priya after a brutal fight with Anna.
Pretty clean resolution, right? Well, there’s still almost an entire episode to go at this point so you know nothing is as it seems.
We flash forward to a year later. Anna and Jack are back together. She has her dream job and is pregnant. They’re co-parenting Jack’s orphaned niece and all seems right with the world. They go back to Dahlonega to visit Alice, Anna’s mother, who’s showing signs of dementia. Alice leaves a letter for Anna and - TWIST - it’s revealed that Alice, not Lexi, is the real killer. After viewing a video tape of Anna being raped as a teenager and the other girls doing nothing to stop it, Alice decided to hunt down all of the girls as payback.
This in and of itself is not exceptional. Red herrings in murder mysteries are nothing new. But the end of His & Hers both elevates the wow factor and sends a message with a capital M. Alice - who spent her life overlooked and discarded by everyone in her community, was accidentally responsible for the death of Anna and Jack’s daughter, and faked her dementia as a cover story for the murders - decided to give her daughter the life and opportunity she never had herself. As she says to Anna when explaining her motivations:
“Killing Rachel brought you home.
Killing Helen kept you here.
Killing Zoe gave you the family you lost.”
Twisted as they were, Alice’s actions are a macabre meditation on motherhood itself. And thus the true nature of His & Hers comes into focus: the lengths parents will go to protect their children and the devastation that comes when they’re unable to do so. This theme gradually builds throughout the series and explodes in a truly shocking denouement that makes you want to go back and re-watch the entire show.
His & Hers doesn’t reinvent the murder mystery. But it does kick it into a gear that’s far too rare in the genre nowadays. It’s entertaining, gripping, and heartbreaking from beginning to end, and achieves the rare feat of making you think long after the credits roll.
Actor, stuntman, and Jackass co-creator Johnny Knoxville has today confirmed that a fifth Jackass film is coming to cinemas this year, on June 26, 2026. Knoxville announced the news via Instagram.
“Well a wang dang and hot damn doodle, we are starting the year off with a bang,” wrote Knoxville. “We wanted to let you know that this summer Jackass is back! We will see you in theatres June 26th. More to come but wanted you to hear it from us first!”
A fifth Jackass film (or perhaps… eighth, if you feel like counting the .5 sequels built with unused footage that came in the wake of the second, third, and fourth Jackass movies) follows 2022’s Jackass Forever. The successful fourth instalment was certainly pitched as a last hurrah for the core crew of the trailblazing, slapstick stunt comedy series, but precisely who is on deck to return in Jackass 5 (and in what capacity) is still unknown in the wake of this initial announcement.
IGN’s Jackass Forever review, which has now erred in dubbing it the “final chapter in American comedy’s most chaotic saga”, declared it “a hilarious last hurrah for its original crew,” and noted “few recent films have been funnier or more delightfully nostalgic.”
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
EB Games has made a proposal to close all its remaining stores in New Zealand, as well as its NZ distribution centre, reports The New Zealand Herald.
The proposal came as a letter sent to employees which explained “[t]his proposal is not final, and no decision will be made until we have completed a full consultation process in good faith with affected team members.”
The letter did, however, go on to confirm that if the proposal proceeds, all employment roles at EB Games New Zealand will vanish. The total number of job losses this will result in has not been reported. Employees have until January 12 to respond to the closure proposal.
EB Games’ Australian and NZ operation consists of 374 stores across the two countries, with 38 of them in New Zealand. The chain remains a part of US video game retailer GameStop, which acquired the EB Games business back in the mid-2000s. However, while EB Games locations in the US were rebranded as GameStop, stores in Australia and NZ remained identified as EB Games only.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon X and X2 processors may finally have access to Fortnite and Epic’s Easy Anti-Cheat, but despite how much Qualcomm is trying to push gaming on the Snapdragon platform this year, I just don’t care.
Fortnite runs on smartphones, after all. And while Easy Anti-Cheat opens up a whole new slate of games for Snapdragon X-series laptops, most of the titles we’ve seen running on Qualcomm systems aren’t exactly GPU intensive. Baldur’s Gate 3 was one of the bigger games shown on the original Snapdragon X Elite platform, though performance on Qualcomm’s reference designs hardly held up when compared to actual consumer systems.
And at CES 2026, Qualcomm was showing off its new high-end Snapdragon X2 Extreme chip running Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider in 2026?
Look. I love Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It’s a great game. It’s a great benchmark. But the game hit gaming PCs way back in September 2018 – over 7 years ago. It was a graphically intense game back on the RTX 2080. While it is impressive to see how smooth the game runs on integrated GPUs at 1080p and High graphics settings these days, it’s not exactly a bragging point.
Especially when AMD was running Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 at over 30 fps native on the Lenovo Legion Go 2’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme last year, and Intel is showing off thin and light Panther Lake laptops running Battlefield 6 with frame rates hitting over 200 fps (though that is with multi-frame generation).
While Qualcomm’s reference design Snapdragon X2 Extreme laptop did haveCyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong installed, neither game was running for the press demos. Instead, the company wanted to talk about using AI voice changing features while gaming, rather than talk performance.
Integrated GPU Performance Matters Most on Handhelds
When it comes to iGPU gaming, handheld gaming PCs are king. While I love being able to play some games on a general consumer or business laptop because I’m a monster, few people are going to use a Lenovo Yoga or Dell laptop for gaming.
And when it comes to handhelds, well. AMD got an early lead in the handheld market, and Intel is still trying to claw out space for itself. Qualcomm hasn’t even tried. At this point, it’s probably too late. Between the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, Intel Lunar Lake, and the recently teased Intel Panther Lake handheld chips, Qualcomm’s opportunity to get a Snapdragon handheld out on the market has passed.
iGPU Gaming Only Goes So Far
While every gaming handheld around right now is an iGPU machine, no one is going to buy a general consumer laptop for gaming. Since Qualcomm doesn’t have a handheld, this makes the Snapdragon X platform’s lack of discrete GPUs even more obvious.
After all, a Microsoft Surface Laptop isn’t a gaming device. If it can run games, cool. But it’s not a gaming platform. Sure, Qualcomm laptops can now utilize AMD FSR and Qualcomm’s custom Snapdragon Game Super Resolution upscaling features, but it’s just not enough reason to care. Between having no handhelds, using reference design laptops that won’t hit the market, and not talking actual performance expectations using modern game titles, Snapdragon gaming isn’t any more compelling than it was last generation.
Madeline (She/Her) is a contributing writer at IGN. She’s been writing about comics, tech, and gaming since 2013. Her byline has appeared at sites like Laptop Mag, PCMag, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, CGMagazine, and Bleeding Cool.
Every car absolutely needs a tire inflator as part of an emergency kit to be readily available at any time. If the only reason stopping you is the cost, then this deal should give you no more excuse. Ahead of Black Friday, Amazon is offering Prime members the Neverland cordless tire inflator and air compressor for just $14.99 after you clip the 18% off coupon and apply coupon code "NDKCVOXM" during checkout. Any brand of tire inflator you find on Amazon at around this price point was probably made from the one of few overseas factories. They might not have as many fancy features as other more expensive models, but they get the job done and that's what matters.
Neverland Cordless Tire Inflator and Air Compressor for $15
The Neverland tire inflator and air compressor features an internal lithium-ion battery. Cordless inflators are much more convenient to use because they don't need to be plugged in and can be charged with a standard USB Type-C cable. The compressor is rated for a maximum pressure of 150 PSI and can refill a 195/65 R15 tire from 25 to 36 PSI in about one minute. It also has an essential auto-stop feature to prevent you from dangerously overfilling your tires.
Like most tire inflators, this model can also be used as a cordless compressor to inflate other things as well, like bicycle tires, balls, inflatables, and more. The digital display is easy to read and can switch among four different units of measurements: psi, kpa, bar and kg/cm². It's also equipped with a USB output so that it can also be used as a 16,000mAh power bank to charg your phone or mobile electronics in a pinch.
Most people will get this tire inflator to keep their tires topped up, however it will come in handy during the real emergencies when you get a flat. Keep in mind though that If your tire has a puncture, there's no point filling it back up if it's going to leak again. So make sure you also have a tire patch kit on hand.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
I have spent more hours than I care to admit scrolling digital storefronts, convincing myself I am only looking. This week’s batch finally justified the damage. There are some genuinely smart buys here, not just filler discounts dressed up as generosity.
In retro news, I’m ensuring we all Don’t Starve by baking a 11th birthday cake for said indie great. When I was famished for things to play on my newly acquired launch PS4, I was surprised when this out-of-nowhere roguelike nourished me for dozens of hours. Being a masochist, there was so much to love about this—the complete lack of farming direction, the Burtonesque atmosphere of a storybook gone bad, and that increasingly bunghole-puckering stress of keeping shadow beasts and stomach grumbles at bay. Holds up quite well today, and you really ought to play this with a mate in the Don’t Starve Together co-op variant.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (-24%) A$68 Retro Studios finally returns to first-person bounty hunting, blending classic Prime atmosphere with modern controls and a heavier narrative focus than earlier entries.
Sonic Frontiers (-51%) A$49.10 Open-zone Sonic that launched rough but matured beautifully, especially after free updates reworked combat, difficulty and traversal.
EA Sports FC 26 (-46%) A$49 Still the gold standard for licensed football, with career tweaks and Ultimate Team refinements keeping it dangerously addictive.
Blasphemous (-75%) A$9.30 A grim, pixel-perfect Metroidvania inspired by Spanish religious iconography and brutally precise combat.
Octopath Traveler (-50%) A$45.10 Eight intersecting stories, HD-2D visuals, and a turn-based battle system that still rewards experimentation.
Adam Mathew is a passionate connoisseur, a lifelong game critic, and an Aussie deals wrangler who genuinely wants to hook you up with stuff that's worth playing (but also cheap). He plays practically everything, sometimes on YouTube.
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