I've had the privilege of becoming IGN's "mice guy" in 2025, and since then I've amassed enough delivery boxes to build a small castle, covered my desk in dongles, and, most importantly, clicked new gaming mice tens of thousands of times.

I've tested 15 mice this year (you can read my existing reviews, with plenty more to come in 2026). I haven't scored them all but after sizing each of them up, three stand out, each satisfying very different tastes.

While they're not necessarily the three highest-scoring, they're the trio that comes to mind whenever a friend asks me to recommend one.

Corsair Sabre V2 Pro: The Light One

When I held this mouse for the first time, I cackled like a small child on a trampoline. It is almost laughably light at 36g. I put more coffee in my French press each morning. That weightlessness is not just a gimmick – as I wrote in my review, it feels like an extension of my arm and zips across my mousepad.

Most mice badged lightweight, including our picks for the best lightweight mice, are between 50g and 65g. For example, the HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2 Mini is my favorite compact mouse and is hardly heavy at just 59g. But when I swap it in for the Sabre V2 Pro it feels like a brick in my hand.

The Sabre V2 Pro is light to a fault. I have no idea how much Bluetooth modules weigh but I'm assuming Corsair omitted it to keep the mouse as light as possible. That decision, combined with a substantial corded dongle, makes it difficult to travel with – a shame because a mouse this light should surely be portable. The side buttons feel cheap, with one disappearing almost entirely inside the shell of the mouse when you press it, and while that shell is mostly sturdy, I found a spot on the top where it caved like play-dough when I pushed.

But I forget all those problems the moment it's back on my mousepad and I'm whipping it side-to-side, grinning between headshots. It has brought me more joy than any other mouse I've tested and if weight is your top priority, then you'll love it too.

SteelSeries Rival 3 Gen 2 Wired: The Budget One

As I hunt for the best gaming mouse, my testing skews expensive: High-end mice cost $100 or more. This month, however, I finally tried the Steelseries Rival 3 Gen 2, an older mouse that you can often buy for less than $30/£30. It reminded me that a good gaming mouse needn't upset your monthly budget, and that a lot of the flashy numbers attached to expensive mice are marketing guff.

On paper it lags behind. Its polling rate – the number of times it reports its position to your computer – is capped at 1,000Hz, where many modern mice reach 4,000 or 8,000Hz. Its maximum dots per inch (DPI), a measure of sensitivity, is either 8.5K or 18K, depending on whether you go wired or wireless. Again, that's far behind the competition. So are its maximum tracking speed and its click latency, the lag between your physical press and it registering on your PC.

In practice, I barely feel a difference.

Take the polling rate. My 240Hz refresh rate screen and solid PC specs are good enough for me to clock a difference as I push high-end mice up to 2,000Hz and 4,000Hz (hand on heart, I cannot feel any difference with 8,000Hz). But those changes are so small that sometimes I worry I'm imagining them. Slender benefits are worth less, in my eyes, than the price drop to the Rival 3 Gen 2 mouse. It is simply excellent value.

The wireless version is solid but weighs more than 100g, which is too hefty for me to recommend wholeheartedly. The wired version is a more reasonable 77g, and cheaper too. It is one mouse I'd recommend without hesitation to anyone on a budget.

Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro: The Michelin-Starred One

One mouse to rule them all. I reviewed the Razer DeathAdder V2 in 2020 and used it for years afterwards, so I expected good things from the V4 Pro. The $170/£170 price only raised my expectations.

Somehow, I was still blown away. This is a near-perfect gaming mouse and the best I've ever tested.

It's not really down to its impressive specs sheet – although that certainly helps. Alongside 8,000Hz polling rate, you get 45,000 DPI and 900 inches per second of tracking. Those numbers are mostly meaningless but they are industry-leading, and I like having the reassurance that no matter how far computing tech advances in the next five years, my mouse will never be the limiting factor.

It's everything around those specs that I love. Its weighty, spherical, embossed dongle houses three LEDs that tell me everything I need to know about my mouse at a glance. Its perfectly weighted left and right clicks, crisp and bouncy, and its taught, tactile scroll wheel. Its sturdy shell and grippy coating. Its mammoth battery, which lasts 150 hours at 1,000Hz polling rate.

If I'm being hypercritical – and I think you should be for a mouse costing this much money – then it'd be nice if Bluetooth were an option, if the DPI button was on the top of the mouse rather than the bottom, and if Razer's Synapse software was less bloated.

But those are mere gripes. It is the ultimate gaming mouse and if money was no object, this is the one you should get.

Vince Zampella, best known as the co-creator of the Call of Duty franchise and co-founder of Infinity Ward who went on to co-found Titanfall, Apex Legends, and Star Wars Jedi developer Respawn Entertainment, died in a single-car accident in Los Angeles on Sunday, NBC Los Angeles reports.

According to the NBC report, "The single-car crash was reported at about 12:45 p.m. on the scenic road north of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Mountains. The southbound car veered off the road, hit a concrete barrier and a passenger was ejected, the California Highway Patrol said. The driver was trapped in the ensuing car fire, the CHP said. The driver died at the scene and the passenger died at a hospital, authorities told NBC4 Investigates."

NBC has updated their story to note that Zampella was the driver and the vehicle was a 2026 Ferrari 296 GTS, and that an eyewitness provided video of the crash to authorities. The passenger has not yet been publicly identified.

Zampella was an incredibly talented game developer who changed the industry with Call of Duty, a franchise he co-created with Jason West in 2003 at Infinity Ward, the studio he co-founded with West, after previously serving as the lead designer for EA's Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Zampella was at the center of a high-profile lawsuit against Activision that alleged that the publisher owed Zampella and the Infinity Ward team millions of dollars in unpaid Call of Duty royalties. The bitter professional divorce led to Zampella and West taking a substantial number of the Infinity Ward team with them to EA, where they co-founded Respawn Entertainment, a studio that has produced nothing but critically acclaimed hits: Titanfall (IGN review), Titanfall 2 (IGN review), Apex Legends (IGN review), Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (IGN review), and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (IGN review).

Respawn's success under Zampella led to him getting promoted twice, eventually overseeing the Battlefield franchise within his role as Group General Manager at EA.

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.

The new Apple iPhone 17 is now available and as usual, the best way to score a deal on these new phones is through your preferred service provider. T-Mobile, now the best mobile network in the US (according to Ookla® Speedtest®), is already advertising a couple of promotions, including excellent trade-in values on older iPhone models. If you're porting your number over from another service, then you may not even need to trade in your existing phone.

Get up to $1,100 off the New Apple iPhone 17 Pro with Trade-In

For those of you who don't plan on trading in an existing phone, you can still get an Apple iPhone 17 (MSRP $799.99) simply by switching over to T-Mobile from a competing service (AT&T, Verizon, Claro, UScellular, Xfinity, Spectrum, and Liberty PR) and signing up for a new line on an $85+/mo service with AutoPay. Similar to the iPhone 17 Pro trade-in promotion, the discount is paid out across 24 monthly bill credits. That means you will need to maintain your service for at least 2 years to get the maximum discount. A $35 device connection charge also applies.

The Experience More plan costs $85 per month for a single line with AutoPay (plus taxes and fees). Like the Experience Beyond plan, you get unlimited talk, text, and 5G premium data, but not as many extra perks. Benefits include Netflix (Standard with ads) and Apple TV+ subscriptions. 60GB of mobile hotspot, full-flight texting and Wi-Fi with streaming where available, phone upgrade eligibility every two years, and a 5 year price guarantee. You also get unlimited text and 15GB of high-speed data in Canada and Mexico and unlimited text and 5GB of high-speed data in other countries.

For more info, check the math at T-Mobile.com/Switch.

Apple iPhone 17 Phones Released on September 19

Apple recently released three iPhone models: the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17 Pro/Pro Max. The Apple iPhone 17 starts at $799.99 and is available in both 256GB and 512GB capacities. Major upgrades include a slightly larger 6.3" OLED display with 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate, a more powerful A19 processor, higher resolution ultra-wide and selfie cameras, and longer battery life with faster charging.

The Apple iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max start at $1,099.99 ($1,199.99 for the Pro Max) and are available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. They carry over the same 6.3" and 6.9" screens of their predecessors but the screens are 50% brighter with up to 3,000nit rating. Other upgrades include an A19 Pro processor with more RAM, higher resolution ultra-wide and selfie-cameras, and longer battery life and faster charging.

The iPhone 16 Plus has been replaced by the new iPhone 17 Air. It starts at $999.99 and is available in 256GB, 512G, and 1TB capacities. The iPhone 17 Air measures only 0.22" thin and weighs less than 6 ounces. It features a 6.5" 120Hz ProMotion display with up to 2,000nits of brightness and the new A19 Pro processor (although with fewer GPU cores than the iPhone 17 Pro model). The thin form factor limits this phone to a single 48MP ultra-wide rear camera, although you do also get the new 18MP Center Stage selfie cam.

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.

All it took for Samson to pique my curiosity was a very brief teaser on social media, and then a follow-up post by the game director that described it “more like Mad Max…Payne” meant it had my attention. And then, once it was officially announced earlier this month, my interest immediately skyrocketed.

It’s a gritty crime drama being developed by Liquid Swords, a team made up of a number of former Just Cause developers. It’s due out early in 2026 on PC for $25, with console versions planned for later release. In it, you play Samson McCray, who finds himself in the city of Tyndalston after a job he was the getaway driver for went bad in St. Louis. His sister, Oonagh, had warned him not to take the job, and sure enough she was right. But she managed to cut a deal with the St. Louis crew: Samson has to pay back what was lost, with interest. And that’s where this game begins: with our titular anti-hero staring down a debt that’s accruing interest every day, needing to take whatever jobs he can in order to whittle the debt down.

Combat is hand-to-hand. Health pickups are bottles of painkillers (hello, Max Payne!), you’ll do plenty of driving (hello, Mad Max!). And the world, says studio founder and game director Christofer Sundberg, will “push back” on your action. “We've had this motto from the beginning that the city is a character in itself,” he explained. “So the more you poke around, the more the world will react. Interacting with people on the street, objects, doing stuff that is unexpected to the world – it's quite a depressing town. The world will react. We have a special narrative around law enforcement and why guns are exclusive to law enforcement and really hardened criminals. And the world remembers what you've done. You won't get away with everything. There will be a reaction to your actions.”

Oh, and about that “more like Mad Max…Payne” comment? When asked to elaborate on that, Sundberg told me, “[Some of] the team that worked on the Mad Max is working on Samson, and we're taking that [experience] ten years in the future. The tone is equally dark as Mad Max. It's not a post-apocalyptic world. [And] one of the greatest urban game stories ever told is Max Payne. [So] I guess it's the tone that I'm after.”

Samson originally had a much larger scope with a much larger team. But in early 2025, Sundberg and studio leadership made the difficult decision to lay off approximately half of the team.”We made a very tough decision to scale down the team due to market conditions and how much trouble the industry is in right now. It stung a lot to have to let them go and it also meant that we had to change our focus. We shelved more of the heavier RPG stuff we worked on – our version of base-building – because we didn't have the bandwidth anymore.”

And so, the team that remains, it meant trying to deliver a narrower-but-still-deep experience. “It was originally a 100-hour experience. Now it's more of a quick-and-dirty session-based experience. Completionists will get to spend at least 25 hours. But we are very respectful of people's time.” And that reduced scope is reflected in the $25 price point, too. “We see this as the first book in a series of books to be told about the city and character.

“It's tiny compared to Just Cause 2, but it's dense,” he continued. “The size of the world isn't the issue, it's more about how we fill it with meaningful content. We always say that it's ‘big enough’ and it's very scalable.”

Getting back to gameplay, Sundberg says Samson is inspired tonally by films like Heat, Ronin, French Connection – stories, in his words, “where violence is fast and decisive.” And that influence is pretty clear on the screen. Samson looked to my eye like it was set in the 1970s, but Sundberg says it is in fact the ‘90s, chosen specifically for the layer of grit the decade still had caked on it. “We played around with the identity era crisis that the '90s was. Cell phones didn't really exist but they were still around. Cash was still king and people were still smoking.”

I saw a mission played where Samson wandered outside into a seedy neighborhood. He jumped into a muscle car and drove to a mission waypoint that offered $1000 to be a getaway driver. After switching cars and meeting at the pickup point – in an industrial area that was still very seedy – the planned burglary happens, the building’s alarm goes off, your crewmates get in, and you have to escape the pursuing police. The extra wrinkle is that the cops have a helicopter looking for you too, so it means you’ll need to work extra hard to shake them. After plenty of driving around – Tyndalston seems fairly large, but again, don’t expect it to be jammed full of open-world activities to do – you eventually duck off a road in an alley, under an overpass, turn off your headlights, and lose the pursuing police.

The next mission I saw was a hit that tasked me with going into a club called Chubb’s, finding the manager, and having to fight my way through – sometimes bare-knuckled, and sometimes with a crowbar in hand. Eventually you can build up your adrenaline meter and trigger an adrenaline rush, allowing you to hit harder for a short period of time. This beatdown earned us $1000 to knock off of Samson’s debt.

Though my demo was brief – maybe 15 minutes or so – I saw enough to really like how Samson is shaping up. The Liquid Swords team is seemingly aiming to deliver a AAA experience at a AA scope and price (there’s more info in an FAQ on the Steam page if you’re interested). If they can pull it off, then Samson has a chance to be well worth its low asking price.

If you’ve been itching to switch your wireless service provider but don’t want to deal with the hassle, T-Mobile makes changing your carrier super simple. You won’t have to jump through hoops, wasting half a day figuring things out online or worse, in a store. Instead, you should have a new line with T-Mobile in 15 minutes or less. And T-Mobile is the carrier to switch to, as it offers great value while delivering the best mobile network in the US, according to Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence® data.

When you use T-Mobile’s “Easy Switch” tools to get connected online in under 15 minutes, you’ll probably be wondering about getting a new phone. Well, for a limited time, you can enjoy an incredible deal on a new smartphone without the hassle of trading in your old device. Same-day delivery may even be available.

Editorial Note: This article is brought to you by T-Mobile.

Get Up to Four Free iPhone 17 When You Switch to T-Mobile

Nintendo has signaled the end of production of the eye-catching Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle, six months after the console launched.

In April, when Nintendo confirmed that the Switch 2 would cost $449.99 and Mario Kart World would cost $80, it announced a bundle that combined the two for $499.99, effectively making the launch title $30 cheaper than its standalone price.

As you’d expect, this bundle proved a popular option among early adopters, and helped fuel not only very strong sales of Mario Kart World, but the Switch 2 itself.

Production of that bundle has now come to an end, however. Over the weekend, U.S. retailer giant Game Stop announced that the Mario Kart World Switch 2 bundle “will no longer be produced” in a social media post that followed the leak of an internal GameStop memo to staff signalling the change.

"This bundle SKU has now reached end of lifecycle, and additional units will no longer be produced,” the memo reads. “Future replenishment of Nintendo Switch 2 will be the base console."

Today, December 22, Nintendo confirmed as much in a social media post of its own, saying: “Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle is available in limited quantities at participating retailers, while supplies last.”

Don't panic, but it's Christmas Day on Thursday. Zero pressure, but if your loved ones really love you, they won't mind a late Christmas gift. If they do mind, they need to stop being silly sausages (who do all these kids think they are?).
Joking aside, I'm still manning the Daily Deals desk, finding some bangers, and it's literally the best excuse to avoid doing IRL shopping. If you need to distract your family from late Christmas presents, buy a Fire TV or Fire Stick at a massive discount and stick on some Christmas films. Amazon has some cracking discounts on their range right now, which also includes a code for one month of Xbox Game Pass. Happy days!

TL;DR: Deals for Today

Purly because I love Pokémon so much, I've taken the liberty of seeing what's available now on Amazon, then telling you where you can buy it from cheaper elsewhere (because I'm a Pokémon Master, as no one has enough badges to train me).

Need an ear buds upgrade? Apple AirPods Pro 3 are currently down to $199 from $249, shaving off a good chunk of brand tax. Side note: If you're not bothered about turning your Apple setup into some kind of Wizarding World mudblood setup, the best earbuds I've tried this year are:

• Status Pro X: Down to $269.10 with an on-site coupon from $299
• Sony INZONE: Down to $198 from $239.99 (Includes a USB-C 2.4Ghz dongle for PC and PS5 gaming too)

Speaking of Sony INZONE, their big beefy H9 headset is also on offer right now for $169.29, a massive 49% off $329. And if you're sick of eye strain or dry eyes whilst gaming or watching Fallout Season 2, Gunnar have saved the day with their limited edition Vault 33-themed gaming glasses. They're also 30% off at the moment, down to $69.33 from $99. Let's get into today's deals:

Save 20% on Roamless eSIM Plans

Pokémon TCG Price Check

To be fair to Amazon, some of their pricing isn't far off market price, but then again they're being undercut by independent businesses and sellers that will likely have worse rates from distribution than Amazon. Read between the lines there.

So Phantasmal Flames ETB is $79.94 at Amazon, just shy of $4 more than TCGPlayers $76. Mega Evolutions Three Booster Blister is in a similar spot on Amazon right now too, $29.54 compared to $28.93 on TCGPlayer. But if you're after Mega Evolutions Boosters, i'd suggest going on TCGPlayer and buying single sleeved ones for $8.70 each instead.

1 Month Free Xbox GamePass for New Fire TV/Fire Stick Discounted Tech

Apple AirPods Pro 3

Gunnar Fallout Vault 33 Gaming Glasses

Sony INZONE H9 Gaming Headset

Since first releasing in 2022, open-world racing game CarX Street has gotten countless updates and pieces of new content, but the update it just dropped is one of its biggest yet. Titled Showdown, it adds a brand-new PvP team mode that pits street racers against pursuing law enforcement.

The mode can be played by up to 16 people at a time, eight on each team. On one side, street racers need to reach a designated area to earn points and then deliver them to a garage. On the other side, police officers are rewarded for neutralizing racers in several different ways, which we’ll cover in detail in a bit.

Each match is played in two rounds, with everyone randomly assigned to either the racers or police, then switching sides between rounds. So you’ll always play as a racer once and a police officer once. The racers have HP, and if their HP is brought down to zero, they lose all their undelivered points and respawn at the garage to try again.

Racers lose HP when they run into environmental objects or other cars, so you can’t drive recklessly. But speed is still very important. If a racer drives too slowly while police cars are nearby, their HP will gradually be drained. So you need to make use of your nitro boosts and consistently drive as fast as possible while still keeping your car under control.

While racers earn points for safely reaching certain parts of the map, police officers earn points for actions that prevent it. They can score points for ramming racers’ cars, arresting racers, or using their unique ability to deploy spike strips that puncture racers’ tires. Plus, they can get points for assisting their teammates, so if you ram a racer that’s later arrested by someone else, you’ll still get points. Police cars can also teleport between police stations scattered across the city, meaning they can strategize and cut off escape routes.

But the police aren’t the only ones with a trick up their sleeves: Racers are equipped with an EMP that can temporarily disable any police cars caught in its radius. Both the police’s spike strip and the racers’ EMP are on cooldown timers, so be careful not to waste them. And for the sake of a fair match, cars in this mode are restricted by class, and tire wear and fuel are both ignored. So it’s all about driving skill and strategy, not raw vehicle stats and durability. Each round lasts for about 10 minutes, and whichever team manages to score the most points after two rounds wins.

Developer CarX Technologies has said that the dev team dreamed of creating a cops-and-racers mode since before the game originally launched in 2022, but it was too labor-intensive and complex to develop in tandem with the open-world experience the rest of the game offers. And the inclusion of unique features and visual effects makes it clear how much work went into this mode. Police cars have flashing lights and sirens, arrests are accompanied by voice lines from a police radio channel, and collisions and EMP activations feature unique glitch-like effects.

The gameplay experience of this mode is in stark contrast to the rest of the game, which sees you travel around the fictional Sunset City and its outskirts, facing off against local racing clubs that each have their own unique identity and narrative. You fine-tune your car, from the body kit and brake discs to the engine and suspension, gradually upgrading so you can qualify to take on more difficult opponents.

A lot went into the development of that core gameplay loop, which then needed to be polished for each platform CarX Street released on. It came to mobile first in 2022, then PC in August 2024, then finally PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this year. Its multiplatform approach resulted in success, reaching more than 1 million sales across Steam and consoles. Once they had it successfully running on all platforms, the dev team was able to focus on development of the new mode, which started about six months ago with the first concepts and prototypes.

It was meant to feel unlike anything else in the game, and police chases were always the primary focus. However, after extensive internal testing, the dev team realized police chases alone weren't enough. That’s how the unique abilities arose, resulting in the addition of spike strips and EMPs.

It’s safe to say that the result accomplishes the goal of introducing a mode with completely different gameplay, but this is far from the end of the game’s evolution. CarX Technologies has stayed engaged with its community and gets regular feedback that helps guide their updates and new content, and that won’t stop anytime soon. Based on that feedback, they’ve previously mentioned that their future plans include additional competitive multiplayer modes, a dedicated highway network added to the open-world map, and a full story campaign with quests.

On top of the new mode and other planned updates, CarX Street is also currently on sale on Steam and Xbox, and it just launched a special promotion on PlayStation as well. So there’s never been a better time to get behind the wheel. If you’d like to join the community, you can follow CarX Technologies on Instagram, X/Twitter, or Facebook. Or you can check out the official website to keep up with the latest info on all their games.

2025 has given us plenty of entertainment worth celebrating, but it’s also gone and brought us consoles that cost more now than when they were first released, a Tron movie featuring Jared Leto, and an even bigger hole in our lives where Grand Theft Auto 6 was supposed to be.

From price hikes to lowlights, and missed expectations to cruel cancellations, these are the biggest disappointments of 2025.

Box Office Blunders

Battlefield 6 fans have accused EA of selling an AI-generated image after spotting a sticker of what looks like an M4A1 with two barrels in the in-game store.

Following a similar generative AI controversy for rival shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Battlefield 6 has come under fire for selling what some fans have called “low quality AI generated garbage.”

The sticker in question comes as part of the Windchill cosmetic pack for Battlefield 6, which costs 900 Battlefield Coins. It includes six items, one of which is a player card sticker called Winter Warning. The red flag here are two barrels on the M4A1, but the hand position of the soldier as well as the scope do not look properly aligned.

“Remove this AI s**t from the store,” said redditor Willcario in a thread upvoted 4,600 times. “Two barrels on the M4A1, sure. I would literally prefer to have no sticker than some low quality AI generated garbage. You can look at BO7 and see how many favors AI generated rewards won with them.”

The use of generative AI is one of the hottest topics in the video game industry, with the pressure on publishers to cut costs and speed up development in order to boost profits despite the risk of backlash from some fans. Indeed, according to a report by The Financial Times, EA’s new prospective owners (the ones who just spent $55 billion to take the company private) are betting on the use of generative AI to do just that. And EA itself, even before it was bought out, had signalled that it was all-in on generative AI, with CEO Andrew Wilson insisting AI is at “the very core of its business.”

This definitely looks AI Generated right? #Battlefield6 pic.twitter.com/VLYMhEMOqQ

— Battlefield 6 News (@BF6Updates) December 21, 2025

While EA has yet to issue a statement on the Battlefield 6 allegations, fans are digging up past comments from Rebecka Coutaz, general manager of original series developer DICE in Sweden, and Criterion, the UK studio now also a part of what’s collectively called Battlefield Studios, who in October said players wouldn’t see anything made by generative AI in Battlefield 6.

Coutaz said that while generative AI “is very seducing,” currently there is no way to work it into the developers’ daily work. However, Coutaz clarified that generative AI is used in preparatory stages "to allow more time and more space to be creative.”

While this is Battlefield 6's first significant generative AI controversy, Call of Duty has suffered a number of gen AI controversies in recent years, including the now-infamous six-fingered zombie Santa bundle. Earlier this year, Activision was forced to add an ‘AI generated content disclosure’ to the Steam page for Black Ops 6 after Valve changed its storefront rules. Currently, Battlefield 6 has no such AI content disclosure on Steam.

And last month, Activision issued a statement in response to a player outcry regarding the seeming use of generative AI art assets in a number of areas of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Players took to social media to complain about images they believed to be AI-generated across the game, primarily focusing on calling card images that they claimed used Studio Ghibli styling, following a trend of AI-Ghibli images from earlier this year. The Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Steam page also includes the following disclaimer: "Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets."

This week, IGN reported on video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which was stripped of its Game of the Year award by The Indie Game Awards over its use of generative AI. Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian plans to address concern over its use of gen AI in upcoming game Divinity following a backlash online.

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 27” ASUS ROG Swift OLED may not arrive early enough to be a gift under the tree on Christmas morning, but our top 1440p gaming monitor is back down to its lowest price ever. Every competitive gamer will want to snag this wicked fast display that hits speeds up to 480Hz, all while delivering an absolutely gorgeous picture. This monitor was already priced below competitors at the full price of $999.99, and with 25% knocked off the price tag for a limited time, it’s an even better deal.

Save $250 on the 27” ASUS ROG Swift OLED Gaming Monitor

The 27” ASUS ROG Swift OLED (PG27AQDP) is one of our top gaming monitors for a reason. It’s just a great all-around option, even for those who don’t necessarily need a ridiculously high refresh rate for esports. The 1440p picture is stunning, with near-infinite contrast and high peak brightness, which allows HDR to shine on this WOLED panel.

IGN expert Chris Coke had the opportunity to review the ASUS ROG Swift OLED (PG27AQDP), and he was particularly impressed with the out-of-the-box color accuracy and the built-in cooling system to prevent burn-in. Even going so far as to claim, “It’s one of the very best OLED gaming monitors you can buy,” and giving it a review score of 9/10.

Of course, the ASUS ROG Swift OLED (PG27AQDP) has gaming chops that are hard to compete with. With an almost instantaneous response time of 0.03ms, motion blur will be a thing of the past. However, the most notable feature is its 480Hz refresh rate, which is up there with some of the fastest gaming monitors. It's a responsiveness you can feel, especially when jumping from a 240Hz monitor. Those speeds are challenging to achieve in anything other than lighter esports games, but this monitor is still exceptional, even when playing at half that refresh rate or lower.

Danielle is a Tech freelance writer based in Los Angeles who spends her free time creating videos and geeking out over music history.

The debut trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has revealed a first look at characters played by Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, and Matt Damon.

The Odyssey, written and directed by Nolan and due out July 17, 2026, is based on Homer’s saga, and is described as “a mythic action epic” shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology. The Odyssey stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, with Zendaya and Charlize Theron.

The trailer begins at the burial site of scores of soldiers. Matt Damon's Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of Ithaca, narrates, saying that after years of war, nothing can stand between his men and home. We then see Spider-Man star Tom Holland as Telemachus, Odysseus's son who is determined to find his father. A concerned Anne Hathaway, as Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, looks on.

We then get perhaps the most iconic shot of the movie, as Trojan soldiers drag the famous Trojan Horse from the sea. Inside, Damon and his soldiers hide, silently. One soldier, cut by a sword that pierces the horse, is forced to stay silent by his desperate comrades.

We then get a shot of the "mythic" part of The Odyssey with a brief look at what appears to be a giant humanoid (the Cyclops, perhaps?), who enters a cave filled with soldiers. Later, the undead appear to rise from the ground itself. There's a classic sail during a storm scene, where a hapless crewmate is washed overboard. The trailer ends with Penelope asking Odysseus to promise he will return. Odysseus responds: "what if I can't?"

Damon recently recalled an incident during filming where Holland personally called the head of Sony Pictures to arrange for one of the company's pristine 70mm prints of the classic film Lawrence of Arabia to be shown to The Odyssey's cast. "Tom Holland, because he’s Spider-Man and he’s everybody’s favourite at that studio, called [Sony Pictures boss Tom] Rothman and he arranged for us to screen it on a Sunday, the full four hours," Damon said.

The Odyssey is Nolan's 13th film, after previously helming Following, Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer. Such is the anticipation for the movie, that a limited number of The Odyssey tickets went on sale during the summer — a year in advance of the film opening.

While Nolan has long been celebrated as one of the great directors of modern cinema, The Odyssey is expected to perform particularly strongly following the breakout success of Oppenheimer, the Cillian Murphy-led biopic that fuelled one half of the Barbenheimer phenomenon. Oppenheimer earned a staggering $975 million during its theatrical run, and walked away with Best Picture at the Oscars.

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.

Displate has denied that one of its pieces of official Warhammer 40,000 artwork was the product of generative AI, insisting “red flags” spotted by fans were the result of human error.

The online marketplace for collectible metal posters, which features a range of licensed art from major brands such as Marvel and Star Wars, came under fire last week after fans spotted what looked like signs of generative AI use in a $149 3D-printed Fulgrim Limited Edition artwork.

Fulgrim is one of the most prominent characters in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. As one of the Emperor’s 20 genetically-engineered ‘Primarchs,’ Fulgrim played a key role in The Horus Heresy (the civil war that acts as the foundation of the current setting), and recently returned to the Warhammer 40,000 narrative with a new model and lore as the Daemon Primarch of Chaos god Slaanesh.

No Other Choice will be released in theaters on Christmas Day, with a wide release coming in January.

Let’s be real: today’s job market sucks. Layoffs are constant, every moronic executive thinks they can replace their workers with AI, and most people would probably rather commit murder than spend more time on LinkedIn. If any movie in 2025 has its finger on the pulse of the moment, it’s most certainly No Other Choice. The latest entry from Park Chan-wook, the film stars Lee Byung-hun as a man who goes to homicidal lengths to secure a coveted job opening and ensure he can still provide for his family. Beloved by film fans worldwide for movies like Oldboy (2003), The Handmaiden (2016), and Decision to Leave (2022), the South Korean auteur returns with yet another film that defies genre but satisfies in all the ways that count.

It: Chapter Two and The Wire star James Ransone has died aged 46.

According to The Guardian, the Los Angeles medical examiner indicated Ransone died on Friday from suicide. The New York Post reported that official records show the cause of death was listed as “hanging,” while his place of death was listed as “shed.”

The American actor is best-known for playing Chester ‘Ziggy’ Sobotka in 12 episodes of the second season of David Simon’s critically acclaimed Baltimore crime drama, The Wire. More recently, he played adult Eddie Kaspbrak in It: Chapter Two. Ransone also played the Deputy in Blumhouse's supernatural horror films Sinister 1 (2012) and 2 (2015), and Max in 2021's The Black Phone. In 2008 HBO war drama mini-series Generation Kill, Ransone played real life marine Cpl. Josh Ray Person opposite Alexander Skarsgård.

Ransone’s wife, Jamie McPhee, took to social media to pay tribute. "I told you I have loved you 1,000 times before and I know I will love you again," she wrote. "You told me - I need to be more like you and you need to be more like me - and you were so right. Thank you for giving me the greatest gifts - you, Jack [their 6-year-old son] and Violet [their 4-year-old daughter]. We are forever."

In 2021, the Baltimore Sun reported that Ransone said he was sexually abused by a former tutor who worked in Maryland public schools. He wrote on Instagram that the abuse was a factor in his alcohol and heroin addictions. Ransone later said he had reported the allegations to Baltimore County police in March 2020, but was told by a detective that prosecutors had no interest in pursuing the matter further.

Tributes were paid online by former and current colleagues, as well as HBO and Blumhouse. “Rest In Peace To My Dear Brother, Mr. James Ransone. We Rocked Together On Red Hook Summer And Inside Man,” director Spike Lee posted on Instagram.

In loving memory of James Ransone. pic.twitter.com/7CKjnAnrCD

— HBO (@HBO) December 21, 2025

We are saddened by the passing of James Ransone. We are grateful to have worked with him on The Black Phone and Sinister movies.
Our thoughts are with his loved ones. pic.twitter.com/zUvPTcLJqe

— Blumhouse (@blumhouse) December 21, 2025

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sean Baker, who worked with Ransone on Tangerine and Starlet, wrote: “I’ll miss you dearly, my friend.” “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you, brother. Rest in Peace James Ransone,” Ransone’s The Wire co-star, Wendell Pierce, said.

In 2016, Ransone told Interview magazine he would “wrestle with the catharsis of acting." "I don’t end up playing a lot of likable characters, so I find myself living in a lot of unlikable skin," he said. "As a result of that I don’t always feel good."

If you are having suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline in the U.S. is available 24 hours a day at 1-800-273-8255. A list of international suicide hotlines can be found here.

Photo by Gary Gershoff/WireImage.

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.

Fresh from receiving the Game of the Year award at The Game Awards 2025, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been stripped of two awards from the Indie Game Awards after its use of generative AI hit the headlines.

Sandfall Interactive’s record-breaking role-playing game launched with some placeholder textures built with generative AI. The developer patched them out five days after release, insisting they made the cut by mistake. This went under the radar until recently, when comments from Sandfall co-founder and producer François Meurisse reemerged.

Speaking to El País for an article published in July, Meurisse said: “We use some AI, but not much. The key is that we were very clear about what we wanted to do and what to invest in. And, of course, technology has allowed us to do things that were unthinkable a short time ago. Unreal Engine 5’s tools and assets have been very important in improving the graphics, gameplay, and cinematics.”

Meurisse’s comment resurfaced amid a backlash to comments from Larian boss Swen Vincke in the wake of the developer’s high-profile announcement of Divinity at The Game Awards. The original news came from a Bloomberg interview in which Vincke said that Larian was "pushing hard" [Bloomberg's phrasing] on generative AI, even though it hasn't led to big gains in efficiency. Specifically, the studio was said to be using the technology to "explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text." [again, Bloomberg's phrasing].

Vincke later addressed the backlash, and has promised an AMA to answer questions from fans. All the while, a light has been shone on Clair Obscur, which leads us to the Indie Game Awards.

Clair Obscur had won Game of the Year and Debut Game from the Indie Game Awards, but both awards are now retracted. Explaining the decision, the Indie Game Awards said:

The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself. When it was submitted for consideration, a representative of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination. While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place. As a result, the IGAs nomination committee has agreed to officially retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards.

Each award went to the next highest-ranked game in its respective category; Sorry We’re Closed now has Debut Game, and Blue Prince now has Game of the Year.

Meanwhile, El País has updated its original article to include a statement from Sandfall clarifying its use of generative AI in the making of Clair Obscur:

The studio states that it was in contact with El País on April 25 — three months prior to this publication. During these exchanges, Sandfall Interactive indicated that it had used a limited number of pre-existing assets, notably 3D assets sourced from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. None of these assets were created using artificial intelligence.

Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative Al-created assets in the game. When the first Al tools became available in 2022, some members of the team briefly experimented with them to generate temporary placeholder textures. Upon release, instances of a placeholder texture were removed within five days to be replaced with the correct textures that had always been intended for release, but were missed during the Quality Assurance process.

And here’s Vincke's latest statement in full:

It’s been a week since we announced Divinity, our next RPG, and a lot has become lost in translation.

Larian’s DNA is agency. Everything we work towards is to the benefit of our teams, games, and players. A better work day, and a better game. Our successes come from empowering people to work in their own way and bring the best out of their skill & craft, so that we can make the best RPGs we can possibly make.

In that context, it would be irresponsible for us not to evaluate new technologies. However, our processes are always evolving, and where they are not efficient or fail to align with who we are, we will make changes.

To give you more insight, we’ll do an AMA featuring our different departments after the holiday break, in which you’ll get the opportunity to ask us any questions you have about Divinity and our dev process directly.

We’ll announce the date in the new year. In the meantime, I wish you all happy holidays!

Excellent, the AI generated textures in Clair Obscur were indeed placeholders and were replaced with custom assets. The other AI generated poster that was present in the starting area (don't have a screenshot of it now) was also removed. https://t.co/UQbfLuyj8e pic.twitter.com/5xgqsCmZpC

— Nyanomancer (@nyanomancer) April 30, 2025

The use of generative AI in video game development is one of the hottest topics in the industry. Last month, we reported that Assassin's Creed publisher Ubisoft was forced to remove an image found within Anno 117: Pax Romana that contained AI-generated elements after fans complained, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 players took to social media to complain about AI-generated images they had found across the game, following a trend of AI-Ghibli images from earlier this year.

The Alters developer, 11 Bit Studios, and Jurassic World Evolution 3 developer, Frontier Developments, meanwhile, similarly faced fan backlash when they were caught using undisclosed AI images. EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said AI is "the very core of our business," and Square Enix recently implemented mass layoffs and reorganized, saying it needed to be "aggressive in applying AI." Dead Space creator Glen Schofield also recently detailed his plans to “fix” the industry in part via the use of generative AI in game development, and former God of War dev Meghan Morgan Juinio has said: "... if we don’t embrace [AI], I think we’re selling ourselves short.”

As the debate around the use of generative AI to build video games rages on, Tim Sweeney, boss of Fortnite developer Epic Games, has waded in to call on Valve to ditch its AI Generated Content Disclosure for Steam games.

Valve’s rules mean developers must disclose their use of AI-generated content on a game’s Steam store page. For example, the Steam page for Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders includes a note from the developer on how the game uses AI-generated content: “during the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.”

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.

Avatar: Fire and Ash has launched to a huge $345 million at the global box office, which is enough to secure the second largest opening weekend of 2025 so far. But it’s down significantly on its predecessor Avatar: The Way of Water, and now there are questions over whether James Cameron will get to realize his vision and make Avatar 4 and 5.

Disney’s Avatar: Fire and Ash opened to $88 million in North American theaters, but as with previous Avatar movies, the big money came internationally, with $257 million. In total, Avatar: Fire and Ash is behind only Disney’s own Zootopia 2, which earned just shy of half a billion dollars over the same launch period.

Avatar: Fire and Ash’s opening is down significantly on that of its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water, which saw a huge $435 million during its launch weekend in 2022. But an encouraging sign came from China, where $57.6 million came in for Fire and Ash, ever so slightly above The Way of Water’s opening haul three years ago.

The question now is whether Avatar: Fire and Ash will enjoy the staying power at theaters its predecessors did. The Avatar films tend to start strong but then pick up steam over the holidays, pulling in hundreds of millions week on week. Will Avatar: Fire and Ash do the same?

The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. Avatar remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), and has earned a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. (Avengers: Endgame overtook Avatar for a brief period, before Avatar then stole its crown back via a fresh re-release.) Avatar: The Way of Water earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing it as the third-highest grossing film of all time — just ahead of Cameron's own Titanic, which floats on $2.2 billion.

The pressure is on Avatar 3 to deliver for Disney so creator James Cameron can release Avatar 4 and 5 over the next six years. Avatar 4 is down for release on December 21, 2029, with Avatar 5 due out December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, would be close to 80 years old by the time it all wraps up.

But Cameron has sounded words of caution recently. Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron admitted he was feeling nervous about Avatar: Fire and Ash’s box office performance, and was mindful of the “forces” working against theatrical releases in 2025. There’s the potential for “sequelitis,” Cameron noted. "People tend to dismiss sequels unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is — this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it.” And there’s the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies — 75% of the number in 2019, Cameron suggested.

When pressed on how much Avatar: Fire and Ash cost to make, Cameron wouldn’t be drawn into divulging a figure, only suggesting it was a lot of money, and so the movie will have to make a lot of money to turn a profit.

“It is one metric f**k ton of money, which means we have to make two metric f**k tons of money to make a profit,” he said. “I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?”

I sat down to sanity check a few discounts and somehow resurfaced hours later with a fuller wishlist and a lighter wallet. On Switch, Hades and Ori still feel like magic tricks disguised as games. Over on Xbox Series X, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds are absurd value for experiences that can eat entire weekends. PS5 is stacked with personality this week thanks to Astro Bot and Lies of P, while PC quietly delivers some of the strongest long form RPG and action value going around. Go get amongst it.

Contents

• Retro
• Nintendo
• Xbox
• PlayStation
• PC
• PC Gear
• LEGO

This Day in Gaming 🎂

In retro news, it's been 26 years since I unpeeled adventure in Donkey Kong 64, a game some called the top banana of Rare 3D platforming (I still prefer Banjo Kazooie). At the time, it looked gorgeous, sounded amazing (hello, DK Rap), and was overladen with crap to collect and unique ability Kongs to switch between. Kong made a comeback quite recently in Donkey Kong Bananza, too. I dug it.

The holidays are almost here, and we've rounded up the best deals for Sunday, December 21, below. Don't miss your chance to save on these last-minute gifts!

Save on Assassin's Creed Shadows for Nintendo Switch 2

The holidays are almost here, and we've rounded up the best deals for Saturday, December 20, below. Don't miss your chance to save on these last-minute gifts!

Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle for $449

The LEGO Tropical Aquarium is beautiful. It might not be $480 beautiful, but for the right person with the right amount of disposable income, the price might not matter. The person who owns a set like this one might be older or might have been gifted it. They might be part of the emerging LEGO-as-lifestyle audience, the same audience that would buy LEGO wall art or LEGO flowers that integrate into the living space. The LEGO Tropical Aquarium has a trendy pop art appeal that LEGO's more play-intensive sets lack.

The tank's dimensions are 14 inches high, 20.5 inches wide, and 11 inches deep; were this a real tank, it would hold approximately 13-and-a-half gallons of water. You build the black framed edges of the tank, the floor of the tank (which is designed to look like sand), and the background scenery of the tank (a blue, aquatic backdrop decked with little waves and bubbles). You're not building the glass that forms the tank itself. But when you look at the aquarium from a small distance, the scenery does some heavy lifting, and your brain concludes that all the negative space is water. It's a cool optical illusion that enhances the set's attractiveness; I can easily imagine people doing double takes when walking past it.

Building the tank itself is straightforward – you layer bricks to establish tactile strength and build notches to "fit" and strengthen the connection points. But the most fun parts of the build are the tank's inhabitants: the fish, crustacean, rocks, coral, seaweed, anemones, and thematic elements that the LEGO designers thoughtfully arranged into a colorful pastiche.

The closest equivalent to building the LEGO Tropical Aquarium scenery is building one of the LEGO Botanical sets. Like the flowers in a bouquet, the coral is also composed of numerous colorful pieces, which are arranged in symmetrical, circular patterns. It is a redundant process, admittedly. But the variety of coral means you're never building one formation for too long before you're moving on to the next one. My favorite part of the scenery are the sea anemones, which sprout from the rock facade like a bouquet of poisonous flowers.

The animals do not have real-life equivalents. They bear strong resemblance to actual species, but LEGO is content to refer to them as "brickfish" in their promotional materials. A fanciful approach allows the LEGO designers to play with size and scale. Looking at this aquarium feels like looking at one through a magnifying glass; everything is larger than life. The entire tank seems a little more crowded than it ought to; there's no way that a fish of such large proportions could navigate a tank this small.. But the variety and aesthetic impact overrides practical quibbles.

Each animal and type of corral gets its own plastic bag, which makes it easy to divide the work among multiple friends or family members. You build an element, install it into the tank, and then build the next element; there is no sequential necessity to any of it. This is the sort of set that, owing to its diverse yet isolated elements, lends itself to collaboration.

There are several mechanical functions built into the tank. The rocks hide built-in gearboxes, rods, and pins, which allow you to animate four different elements by turning a crank or dial. A crab emerges from its cave. A massive fish waves its tail and torso. A cluster of orange coral sways in the waves. And a treasure chest, half buried in the sand, opens and closes. Inside the chest are gold bars and a note in a corked bottle.

As an 11th grade high school English teacher, I read a lot of college essays, and one of my students wrote a particularly memorable one this year. He detailed his efforts to incorporate a freshwater fish tank into his bedroom. For him, it was a lesson in patience, consistency, and long-term planning – of realizing there is a league's difference between creating something wonderful and maintaining that thing for an extended length of time.

The LEGO Tropical Aquarium is a stress-free alternative to the real thing – for people who want the ambience but not the ongoing costs and labor that go into establishing a nitrogen cycle and minimizing algae growth, not to mention cleaning the tank itself.

LEGO Tropical Aquarium, Set #10366, retails for $479.99, and it is composed of 4154 pieces. It is available exclusively at the LEGO Store.

Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He's also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.

Director and DC-boss James Gunn announced on social media Saturday that he has cast German actor Lars Eidinger as the villainous Brainiac in his Superman follow-up film Man of Tomorrow.

“In our worldwide search for Brainiac in Man of Tomorrow, Lars Eidinger rose to the top,” Gunn wrote on his Instagram account. “Welcome to the DCU, Lars.”

Eidinger, 49, may be relatively unknown to North American audiences, but he can currently be seen in the George Clooney-Adam Sandler movie Jay Kelly, which is streaming on Netflix.

His other film and TV credits include Babylon Berlin, All the Light We Cannot See, High Life, Tim Burton’s Dumbo, My Little Sister, Dying, Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper, White Noise, and Irma Vep. Eidinger is also a rapper, musician, and DJ.

It’s December, meaning it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Yes, I’m cliché and enjoy the holidays for the warmth and celebrations they bring, but today I’m more interested in reflecting on the evolution of accessibility throughout 2025. And thankfully, this year brought improvements to long-standing franchises, as well as surprise additions to the triple-A and indie scenes.

From my perspective, there were no accessibility moments that revolutionized the industry in 2025. Instead, the year demonstrated a continuous evolution of what disabled players have rightfully come to expect when purchasing a new release. In my opinion, no one game has been better than another, especially in terms of innovation, but that’s not to say this year didn’t surprise me in unexpected ways. So, for this Access Designed, let’s explore some of my favorite examples of accessibility during 2025.

Runner-Up: and Roger

This section contains mild spoilers for and Roger.

The inclusion of TearyHand Studio’s and Roger on my list may surprise some. This roughly hour-long visual novel features numerous quick-time events that guide you through the loving memories of Sofia and her husband, Roger, as Sofia succumbs to dementia. Each minigame puts you directly in control of Sofia as she completes everyday tasks like brushing her teeth, making soup, or looking through old photographs. While these may seem mundane activities, Sofia’s dementia makes each simple event feel like a monumental task. And for disabled players, the intensity of the QTEs is exacerbated by the game’s notable lack of accessibility features.

And Roger features no accessibility tools to help you complete the game. There are no alternatives to finishing QTEs, options to skip them, or settings that have the game natively complete them for you like in this year's Assassin’s Creed Shadows. You are forced to continuously mash or perfectly drag a white button for every single QTE, something that was immensely exhausting with my physical disabilities. Yet, after completing an event within the first chapter that had Sofia push Roger’s hand away by rapidly mashing a button on the screen, I realized its inaccessibility made the experience much more powerful.

And Roger, through its lack of accessibility, made me reevaluate how I critique games, something I’ve been professionally doing for six years. Sofia’s struggles with dementia were far more pronounced when I was struggling with her. And in an industry where proper disability representation is still relatively lacking, and Roger masterfully captures the truest expression of disability. There are moments of love, grief, pain, joy, and suffering – all emotions I’ve personally felt or witnessed disabled friends and family experience. I have never played a game so dedicated to having, and occasionally forcing, the disabled experience on the players, thus making and Roger one of my favorite games of not only 2025, but of all time.

Runner-Up: EA Sports FC 26

I will be the first to admit I don’t like sports games. The genre just doesn’t appeal to me, which is admittedly ironic considering I live in a very sports-centric city. Yet, EA Sports FC 26 made me appreciate soccer games (football for non-Americans) because of its incredible attention to accessibility detail.

FC 26, like most games with accessibility offerings, provides customizable controls, subtitles, and colorblindness settings. However, I appreciated the features for varying gameplay assists. Shooting, passing, defending, switching, and dribbling all have their own settings to provide relief during extended play sessions. When I was too fatigued to properly shoot, I would activate Auto Shots, which would trigger as I came close to the goal. If passing becomes too much, I can simply increase the sensitivity, making the game natively pass the ball without the need for immense precision. Even as the goalkeeper, I can use assists to help with saves. And for longer sessions, I can activate one or two button control schemes, significantly reducing the number of inputs needed to play (unfortunately, one and two button use cannot be used in competitive play).

Yet, FC 26’s greatest accessibility achievement doesn’t impact my disability. For the first time in the series, as well as in a competitive multiplayer setting, players can activate High Contrast Mode. Everything from the home team, away team, referees, to even ball color can be customized to increase their contrast. This provides blind players with crucial visual information when playing frantic matches. It’s easy to lose control of player and ball position when matches become intense, especially with online PvP, but FC 26 redefines what accessibility can be in the competitive scene. The potential to challenge industry perspectives for competitive games is why FC 26 deserves a spot among the most accessible games of 2025.

Winner: Doom: The Dark Ages

Doom: The Dark Ages, id Software’s latest in the iconic FPS series, is by far my favorite entry, as well as its most accessible. While the newest game includes relatively common accessibility options like customizable controls, adjustable subtitles, and varying difficulty modes, The Dark Ages adds new tools that redefine accessibility in this fast-paced game.

Shooters like Doom rely on immense speed and precision to slaughter enemies and complete levels. You are constantly dodging enemy fire, sprinting through levels, jumping over obstacles, and switching weapons within your extensive arsenal to play the game. And if you don’t have the strength or stamina to perform any of the above, the gameplay formula becomes abysmally inaccessible, even with lowered difficulty settings. But The Dark Ages has a solution: it introduces modifiers that adjust game speed, enemy projectile speed, enemy aggression, player damage, and even enemy damage. Further, The Dark Ages includes options to change the parry windows for melee encounters. Every piece of the combat system is customizable.

With accessibility, there’s often this incorrect notion within Internet spaces that options and inclusive designs ruin the intended gaming experience. The Dark Ages completely nullifies this argument with its customizable settings, which indicate that the "artistic intent" is the experience that you as a player want to have. There's no punishment for modifying the experience. Whether you have a disability or not, you control how you play. Are you a masochist that enjoys frantically throwing yourself against an onslaught of demons? Simply adjust every setting listed above to maximize their values. In my case, I would customize parry windows and game speed if I was particularly tired, but would find myself increasing enemy aggression for more of a challenge. I’ve never played a game that allows me to fine-tune every aspect of combat, and that is why Doom: The Dark Ages is my game of the year for 2025.

These three games represent only a fraction of the excellent accessible titles throughout 2025. Assassin’s Creed Shadows, South of Midnight, Split Fiction, and even Kirby Air Riders all deserve credit for their accessible tools and designs. And while the three games listed above are my personal favorite, 2025 has arguably been my favorite year as a critic, not for the innovations, but for the continued dedication to disabled players.

Grant Stoner is a disabled journalist covering accessibility and the disabled perspective in video games. When not writing, he is usually screaming about Pokémon or his cat, Goomba on Twitter.

It’s been a tough few years for voice actors. While it’s perhaps never been more obvious how much value they provide to a game’s characters and story – the huge success of Baldur’s Gate 3 and its beloved cast put the profession in perhaps the brightest spotlight it’s ever had – voice actors and motion capture performers face a daunting threat in artificial intelligence. That’s just one of the reasons why we wanted to honor the art of performance in this year’s IGN Awards. Actors bring our games to life, and our digital worlds would be poorer without them.

As with our other awards, we asked the IGN team to nominate their favourite performances from across the past 12 months, and then we all voted for which one we felt was the very best example. These are our picks for the best individual performances in video games this year:

Runner-Up – Erika Ishii (Atsu, Ghost of Yotei)

The role of a revenge-seeking samurai is well-trodden ground, but Erika Ishii breathed refreshing new life into Atsu, the protagonist of Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yotei. Lending the character a believable “rough around the edges” feel, Ishii ensures that Atsu’s bloodlust has depth.

Runner-Up – Aaron Paul (Robert Robertson, Dispatch)

Unlike Hollywood, which has long cast animated movies using celebrity movie stars, video games have predominantly held onto the idea that voice acting and performance capture is a distinct skill, and that hiring people who specialize in that is the way to go. But while Dispatch features industry titans like Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer, it’s screen actor Aaron Paul who’s the standout; our review explains that he's able to deliver "a nuanced performance as a man struggling to hold onto his optimism while reconciling with who he is outside of his giant mech suit."

Runner–Up – Konatsu Kato (Hinako Shimizu, Silent Hill f)

Lending both her voice and likeness to Silent Hill f’s protagonist Hinako Shimizu, Konatsu Kato brought to life one of the series’ most tortured heroes. While many of us will have relied on subtitles to understand her Japanese-language lines, her delivery helped instill every scene with the heavy, complex emotions intended by the script’s nuanced tale.

Runner-Up – Ben Starr (Verso, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33)

In Verso, Ben Starr was able to take the gruff, dark hero voice he adopted for Clive in Final Fantasy 16 and perfect it. The maturity of Expedition 33’s themes, particularly in its final act, allow for Starr to explore a character who must revel in tragedy, but who carries enough optimism and conviction to never allow the dark to obscure the light.

Winner – Jennifer English (Maelle, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33)

Maelle is the heart of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and a major reason her journey rings so true is Jennifer English’s performance. Grief is a difficult emotion to wrestle with, especially when it’s part of a story that happily leans into the melodramatic, but English keeps Maelle eternally grounded and completely believable. Expedition 33 may be a game with flashy combat, monstrous deities, and an army of goofy paintbrush people, but what it’s really about is the human condition and, more specifically, how we deal with loss. As Maelle, Jennifer English ensures that Clair Obscur’s loftier, more literary themes and ambitions are never lost among the more video game-y, JRPG-inspired tropes.

While individual performances are important, a strong ensemble cast can help bring a level of consistent immersion to a fictional world. When everyone in an ensemble gives their A-game, there’s no fracture in your belief that these video game characters are genuine people. Our picks for the best video game ensemble cast are:

• Runner-Up – Ghost of Yotei
• Runner-Up – Hades 2
• Runner-Up – Dispatch
• Runner-Up – Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Winner – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Congratulations to Jennifer English, the entire cast of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and the team at Sandfall Interactive, as well as the casts and development teams of all the games we nominated. For more from the IGN Awards 2025, be sure to check out our complete list of winners.

Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.