With the triumphant return of Leon Kennedy, Resident Evil Requiem is forced to straddle an awkward line between all-out action and methodical survival horror. I’ll be honest, before getting my hands on the game and seeing the transition in action, I was extremely sceptical that Capcom would be able to create a coherent experience involving both Leon and Grace, the series’ latest, highly vulnerable protagonist. The switching between their polar opposite styles sounded jarring, which is almost never a good thing, and although it's been a while, it’s not like we haven’t been burned by Capcom’s desire to push the series towards action before. But I’m pleased to share that, from my all-too-brief three hours of hands-on time with Resident Evil Requiem, not only does this design really, really work, but there’s a lot more going on than just a merging of Resident Evil’s greatest hits.
My playtime started with a short test drive of Leon, and Resident Evil 4 muscle memory kicked in immediately. Make no mistake, this plays just like the recent remake, enhanced with some clever new additions suitable for a veteran badass. Leon is more handy than ever, with a deadly hatchet that he can swing mercilessly added to his regular arsenal. Leon can also heave axes found in the world, can perform new contextual finishing moves such as a handgun shot to the chin, and finally wield the violent chainsaw. There was once a time Leon feared the chainsaw, but now, Leon has become chainsaw, destroyer of ghouls.After a short 15 minutes, the gameplay shifted perspective to Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s second protagonist, picking up her journey immediately after the events of the previous demo I wrote about in August last year. Grace and Leon are polar opposites. Gone were the tense gunfights and forward momentum of Resident Evil 4, as I was immediately thrust into what felt like a sterile, white, clean version of Resident Evil 7. For the next two hours, I explored the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, a somewhat traditional Resident Evil mansion that contains much of what you might expect among its rooms and corridors, but with plenty of new surprises. Surprises that mostly arise thanks to Grace’s abilities, or rather, lack thereof.
Much like in the previous demo, Grace’s section was focused almost exclusively on survival horror. She is armed with small pistols she finds in the environment, but her firepower and combat skills are negligible compared to our favourite floppy-haired icon. Where Leon can round-house kick zombies in the face, Grace makes do with a clumsy push. Leon is all-out assault, but the best course of action for Grace is slow and deliberate stealth, because if you do try to take some of the new enemies head-on, you’re going to have a bad time.
Last year’s demo revealed a new and much-celebrated stalker enemy, a towering, hunched, bug-eyed warden, but even within the span of my short three-hour session, I was introduced to another two, giving me the impression that Resident Evil Requiem won’t have one Mr. X or Nemesis-like persistent threat, but rather several smaller pursuers that seem to guard certain wings of the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center. Most notable was a hulking mass of blubber called Chunk, who burst through the wall and into my heart as he very slowly, but surely, ground his way through halls, stairwells and doorways in pursuit of me. Uniquely, Chunk fills the space entirely, so your only chance of survival is to find and navigate the loops built into the level design in order to outmanoeuvre the walking lardarse. It’s a clever design that generates a (somewhat) living, breathing wall of terror, and one you can’t simply sidestep or combat roll away from.
Much like the stalker I escaped last year, Chunk is cleverly implemented in the context of traditional safe rooms. Where the room’s bright light caused the previous stalker pain, Chunk simply can’t physically squeeze his sheer mass through the door, making sure there’s a logical in-world justification for a room of respite.
As well as Chunk, I also ran into a seven-foot-tall hulking unit masquerading as a chef, who, until he noticed me, was completely focused on his chopping chores. This soon-to-be stalker wasn’t yet in searching mode; rather, he was fulfilling, I assume, his pre-infection duties. This kind of behaviour isn’t unique to the chef: It turns out in Resident Evil Requiem, the traditional zombie fodder is just as much the star of the show. You see, zombies not only talk now, but also have their own personalities.
The undead are no longer unfortunate, generic lost souls, but rather husks that retain a smidge of living personalities, hanging out in the space they once occupied. There’s the lounge singing shrieker in the bar area, who, before being alerted, entertains herself by belting out a ditty. There are the zombies who were formerly patients in recovery that insist on wheeling around their drip stands, which are then, unsurprisingly, wielded as weapons when they’re aggro’d. Some zombies hate loud noises and will repeatedly yell at you if you even so much as smash a vase, and then there’s one that loves nothing more than turning lights on and off until you rudely interrupt him.
If it’s not clear by now, Resident Evil Requiem, aside from being packed with action and fear, is now also funny, something the series has never (at least intentionally) achieved before. As Grace creeps around the hospital, there’s the continual threat that around every corner awaits horror, or laughter, or sometimes even both! When you can hear the undead nattering away in a room you know you have to enter to achieve your next objective, it’s hard to know whether to be scared or have a good chuckle. On paper, this sounds like it could be awful - I’m aware of that, but honestly, it’s so good! I laughed so hard when I caught one particularly dopey zombie red-handed (both literally and figuratively), lifting a large and, importantly, red canister to throw my way. I’m sure you can imagine what happened next.
The zombie fodder isn’t just around to entertain and quickly be disposed of, though. As Grace, the undead are a significant threat, always moving a little faster than you anticipate. Their fallen corpses also pose a significant conundrum, as they have the ability to turn into “Blister Heads”, a reinvention of the Resident Evil remake’s Crimson Heads for a new generation that reanimate with a bulbous cranium and become significantly tougher to take down. Fortunately, Grace has a new tool at her disposal: a Hemolytic Injector that weaponises the buckets of blood lying around the place (seriously, it’s everywhere), creating a lethal injection that can be used as a preventive measure against Blister Heads when injected into fallen enemies, and as a stealth attack against anything moving.
Beyond the new enemy types, playing as Grace does feel very familiar if you’ve played either Resident Evil 7 or Resident Evil 2, although obviously it leans more towards the latter if you choose to play as Grace in third person. You’re exploring a huge mansion with locked doors, there are obtuse puzzles to solve, antique coins to find that can upgrade your equipment, Mr. Raccoons to shoot, safe rooms with a typewriter for saving and a storage box for inventory management, and so forth. Leon, however, can brute-force open certain doors that Grace can’t and is far more aggressive with combat compared to Grace’s methodical stealth. You can also choose to play as Leon in first person, though after a brief dabble, it felt very unnatural to do so. I can’t help but think Capcom built this game with Leon in third person and Grace in first person in mind, but it’s hard to complain about more choice, despite knowing deep down the development team surely has a preference.
My demo ended with a second, all too short stint as Leon, which allowed me to revisit sections of the Care Center I’d previously experienced with Grace. Interestingly, this section demonstrated perhaps my favourite element of this hybrid experience. Leon is also exposed to some of the tougher combat encounters that I’d suffered through as Grace, although the perspective (much like my viewpoint of choice) is very different. When I met Chunk as Grace, I immediately retreated and was forced into a game of cat-and-mouse. The threat is intimidating and encourages you to tread lightly. As Leon, however, emboldened by my newly acquired shotgun, I felt instantly trigger-happy, unloading shells right up in Chunk’s face and launching hatchet attacks on his head as part of a fight that felt somewhat reminiscent of the El Gigante encounters of Resident Evil 4. To Grace, Chunk and his fellow creeps are stalkers; to Leon, they’re targets. This ethos was reaffirmed when taking on a wave of Blister Heads with Leon at the end of my play time. With Grace, I waited patiently for a stealth attack opportunity; with Leon, I was hurling hand grenades and throwing axes for fun.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the Resident Evil series, so it feels like no coincidence that 2026’s Resident Evil Requiem is combining the best ideas of the saga into what appears to be a fantastically constructed tribute to everything that makes the series so great. Do you like tense survival horror? It’s here. Wanna go all guns blazing with intense action and a quip-obsessed hero? You get that too. Do you prefer playing RE games in first or third-person? Doesn’t matter; you can do either. All these choices, along with my fears of a jarring play experience being mostly squashed, make it easy to believe that Capcom’s bold move to have its cake and eat it is going to pay off in a big way.
Dale Driver is an Associate Director of Video Programming at IGN. Be thoroughly bored by following him on Bluesky at @daledriver.bsky.social
I know it’s been sacrilege for nearly three decades now, but I’ve always preferred 2D Mario games to those newfangled 3D ones. (I’m an elder Millennial; leave grandpa to his ramblings). So I couldn’t be happier Super Mario Bros. Wonder is getting the “Switch 2 Edition + expansion” treatment in March. To celebrate the new-gen upgrade and the Meetup in Bellabel Park DLC, Nintendo is releasing three new amiibo based on the game. They cost $24.99 each, and are set to release March 26, the same day as the game’s new content. They’re available to preorder now (see them at Amazon).
The new amiibo are Elephant Mario, Captain Toad & Talking Flower, and Poplin & Prince Florian. Elephant Mario is a delightful amiibo, with the pachyderm plumber squeezing his portly torso into a pipe. As for the Poplin amiibo, the orangesicle-colored character holds a watering can while Prince Florian sits on his head. And in the Captain Toad amiibo, our hero is doing a victory pose in front of the Talking Flower.
Speaking of talking flowers, Nintendo is also releasing another plastic curiosity to add to its lineup of weird hardware. This one is a toy version of the Talking Flower that actually talks to you. It’s available to preorder now as well.
As for the Switch 2 version of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Nintendo is pulling a Nintendo and charging $79.99 for the game. That’s obviously absurd, so here’s a workaround if you don’t already own the original Switch game. You can buy a copy of the original Switch game on sale now at Woot for $46.99 and then upgrade it on the eShop for an additional $19.99 once the expansion comes out. That gets you the full Switch 2 experience of the game for $64.99, which saves you $15. Not too shabby.
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.
Destined Rivals has been one of the trickier 2025 sets in the Pokémon TCG to find at a half-decent price, but Amazon’s just come in with a price cut that puts it well above TCGplayer.
Right now, the six-pack Destined Rivals Booster Bundle is available on Amazon for $52.98, shipped and sold directly by Amazon. The reason that this 9% price drop is especially notable is because That’s notable because TCGplayer currently lists the market price at roughly $52.90, with recent sales consistently landing in the low-to-mid $50 range.
However, all of TCGplayer’s listings come with an added shipping cost of at least $10 on top, making Amazon the best option by a mile. That new $52.98 price is less than half of what a 151 booster bundle will cost you in the Pokémon Trading Card game’s market right now, with its value taking a modest late-2025 drip; so, this definitely makes Destined Rivals the Scarlet & Violet set expansion so catch up on, if you hadn’t had the chance to buy any yet.
After all, Destined Rivals still has some very valuable chase cards that are worth pulling if you can — including Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex, Cynthia’s Garchomp ex, and Team Rocket’s Moltres ex.
Still, this is but one of many decent Pokemon TCG deals Amazon’s been dropping lately. For instance, you can grab the Phantasmal Flames Booster Bundle for only $44.99 at a huge $20 off. Meanwhile, the Mega Charizard X ex Ultra Premium Collection is still only $149.99 at $100 off — offering 18 booster packs from various expansions, promo cards, and plenty of luxury extras.
The pre-order prices for Pokemon’s upcoming Mega Evolution: Ascended Heroes expansion is already seeing retailer-wide sellouts and higher resale prices, so it might be worth stocking up on older collections like these until values start to cool off later in 2026.
Ben Williams – IGN freelance contributor with over 10 years of experience covering gaming, tech, film, TV, and anime. Follow him on Twitter/X @BenLevelTen.
Another Nintendo Direct is coming this Thursday, January 29, dedicated to the company's upcoming social sim game Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.
Coming just days after a Nintendo Direct focused on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie which debuted our first look at Yoshi, Birdo and more, the next scheduled broadcast from the company will instead return to its games.
You'll be able to tune in for more details on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 life sim game this Thursday at 6am Pacific, 9am Eastern or 2pm UK time. The stream is set to run around 20 minutes.
Living the Dream will be the third game in Nintendo's Tomodachi Life franchise, which lets you oversee a community of Mii characters. While a relatively niche series in the West compared to its bigger brands, Tomodachi Life enjoys a strong following among its fans, and particularly so in Japan.
Now, the franchise will be getting its first dedicated Nintendo Direct, similar to how Kirby Air Riders was treated to its own presentation (and then a second!) last year.
The series' first game, Tomodachi Collection, launched in 2009 for Nintendo DS (albeit only in Japan). Its 3DS sequel, Tomodachi Life, was then released worldwide and went on to sell a very respectable 6.72 million units.
Memorably, Tomodachi Life experienced a backlash over its lack of same-sex relationships, something that Nintendo found itself having to comment on after rumors spread online that they were something that had been originally programmed into the game that was later removed. Nintendo denied this, though not before the controversy blew up to the point that it was parodied on late night TV by John Oliver, via a skit which featured crudely animated versions of Mario and Link snogging. Notably, Nintendo then promised that if it did make another Tomodachi Life game, it would make it "more inclusive, and [something that] better represents all players."
While the status of same-sex relationships is yet to be confirmed (though may be this week), Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is already notable for finally allowing Mii characters to have ears. It only took 20 years.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
It has recently been revealed that Nintendo veteran Hideki Konno retired from the company last summer after almost 40 years.
Joining Nintendo in 1986, Konno shaped many of the Japanese game company’s major series. He worked as assistant director on Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, as well as designing the games’ levels and characters. Later, as a director, he helmed games including Yoshi's Island, the SNES version of SimCity, and Luigi’s Mansion on the GameCube.
However, Konno is probably best known for his extensive work on the Mario Kart series. He directed the original Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, before going on to produce Mario DS, Mario Kart Wii, Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart 8 (plus the Deluxe version), and Mario Kart Tour. He got a special thanks credit on Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World.
Konno produced many other games like Nintendogs and was also hardware director for the 3DS. As head of Nintendo mobile, he produced titles such as Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes, as well as contributing to the global success of Pokémon Go!
As reported by Japanese news outlet Game*Spark, last year Konno updated his employment status on Facebook to say that he left Nintendo in July 2025. This was recently spotted by fans over on the Famiboard forums and has become a talking point on Twitter / X over the weekend.
Noticing the discussion of Konno’s departure, Takaya Imamura (another former Nintendo employee who was art director on Star Fox 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask) tweeted: "Konno's resignation is starting to attract attention. The people who defined an era are leaving Nintendo." Imamura himself departed Nintendo in 2021 to pursue his own projects, resulting in the Omega 6 manga and Switch game Omega 6: The Triangle Stars (he even wrote a blog post on why he left).
Last week, it was revealed that another longtime Nintendo creator, Kensuke Tanabe, had recently retired, with Tanabe confirming that Metroid Prime 4 was his last game at Nintendo (as reported by Video Games Chronicle). Many of the legendary game creators who shaped the NES and SNES eras are now in their 60s and 70s, including Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto (72). We will likely be seeing many more of these influential game designers departing Nintendo in the coming years, especially with the Switch 2 out the door.
Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images.
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.
Anyone that has to do a lot of work – or even gaming – on a computer knows the virtue of having multiple displays. After all, it makes multitasking easier, without having to rely on alt-tab going to the right window. That’s kind of what the Asus Zenbook Duo is looking to capitalize on, and unlike some of the half-baked designs seen on this laptop line in the past, Asus has actually nailed the formula this time around.
In a nutshell, the Asus Zenbook Duo is just like any other thin-and-light laptop. It’s powered by Intel’s new Panther Lake CPU – specifically the Core Ultra X9 388H – which is powerful, but not the kind of desktop-class performance you’d expect in a heavier workstation or gaming laptop. Still, because of the improvements Intel has made with this generation of mobile processors, this laptop is actually capable of gaming at decent quality settings with a high-ish frame rate.
That said, I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone looking for a strictly gaming laptop. But if you’re a creative person that wants something thin, light, and able to do some gaming on the side – while having a whole second display attached – the Asus Zenbook Duo has a lot to love. That is, if you can get past the $2,299 price tag.
The ZenBook Duo is ostensibly a ‘thin and light’ laptop, but it’s not actually that thin when everything is folded up, measuring about 0.9 inches thick at its thickest point. But when you consider that thickness is two displays, a keyboard and a whole system, it’s actually impressive that Asus was able to fit it into such a thin package.
The extra display also makes the Zenbook Duo a little heavier than it’d otherwise be, coming in at 1.65kg, or 3.63 lb, with everything included. That’s much lighter than something like the Razer Blade, but considering it’s not packing the same kind of hardware, that’s only to be expected.
When the laptop is first opened, it looks like pretty much any other 14-inch laptop. There’s a lovely 16:10 OLED display, and a keyboard. But when I glanced at the side of the laptop I could immediately tell that the keyboard can be removed, just by the difference in tone between the keyboard and the rest of the chassis. The difference is subtle, but it’s just enough that they look like two separate pieces.
However, it’s not immediately clear how the keyboard should be removed. I mean, in theory, it’s not complicated, because it’s just magnetic, but the first time I opened the device I found myself gingerly pulling up on the keyboard in random places making sure I was removing it from the right place. It would have been nice if Asus added a little grip of some kind to the top-right corner of the keyboard, just to make pulling the keyboard off the bottom display a little easier – even if it’s not that complicated.
The keyboard itself attaches magnetically to a set of POGO pins at the bottom of the second display. This serves two purposes: it connects the keyboard to the PC without relying on Bluetooth, and also keeps it charged wirelessly.
When you pull the keyboard off of the bottom display, the PC should automatically enable the second screen, and the keyboard itself will automatically switch to Bluetooth mode. The only time it didn’t do this for me was in the middle of testing, and I was very upset until I figured out that I had disabled Bluetooth for the battery test. Every other time, though, it just worked.
Due to how thin it needs to be, the keyboard doesn’t sport the deepest travel. It’s just a chiclet keyboard at the end of the day, but it’s comfortable enough to type on. However, what’s really annoying is the gestures Asus built into the trackpad. For years now, Asus has had a fascination with making its trackpads as feature-packed as possible, but what actually ends up happening is that my palm is constantly turning up or down the brightness as I’m typing. This is a feature you can thankfully disable in the MyAsus app, but it annoys me every time. What’s wild is that when the feature is disabled, the trackpad actually has excellent palm rejection. Make it make sense.
On the left side of the laptop, the ZenBook Duo sports an HDMI cable, a Thunderbolt 5 port and a headphone jack (they still make those). The keyboard also has a USB-C port on its left side, but that’s just there for charging the keyboard. On the right, you’ll find the power button, another Thunderbolt port and a singular USB-A port for legacy peripherals.
Around the back, there’s a kickstand. That seems weird at first glance, but it’s actually necessary to use the Zenbook Duo in dual-display mode. It works excellently when the displays are sitting horizontal, but for some reason the kickstand only covers the center of the device, which means if you want to turn the device sideways – which would be great for working on documents or coding – you have to kind of angle the displays in a weird book configuration. And even then, it’s not very stable.
Having a second display is always going to be useful – that’s why portable monitors exist in the first place – but having one built into the laptop is a compelling idea. This isn’t the first time Asus has made a device like this, with the ZenBook Pro Duo UX581 debuting way back at Computex 2019. However, that laptop looks a lot different than the new 2026 model.
On that previous model, the second display was cut in half and placed above the keyboard deck. This immediately limited its usefulness, as you couldn’t put full-sized apps on it. Plus, this was around the same time that Asus was experimenting with the Screenpad concept, which embedded the numpad into the touchpad – and it’s never really been executed on properly.
In 2024, though, Asus debuted the Zenbook Duo with a full second display, which made it a much more usable device. Now, the company has followed that up with a more refined Zenbook Duo for 2026. For the first time in the 7 years since I saw that first ZenBook Pro Duo at Computex 2019, I’m sold on the concept.
Critically, the Zenbook Duo simply works like a normal laptop in its one-screen-configuration. The second display is only there when I need it, meaning I don’t have to sacrifice a comfortable keyboard like on the original models. And then when I do want to whip out that second display, it’s incredibly useful.
It was really when I sat down to write this review that it started to click for me. I put the laptop in its dual screen mode with Asus’ review guide on the second display, while typing on the top as normal. You see, I do most of my writing on a laptop, and I’ve gotten very good at using touchpad gestures to swap between multiple displays to look at reference material. That’s just how I’m used to working these days, but this laptop makes it so much easier to reference or access a second document or other source of information.
With the Zenbook Duo, I have Google Docs open on the top display with the reference materials right below it. And, because they’re both touch displays, I can just scroll through documents with the touch screen. It feels incredibly natural.
It doesn’t hurt that they’re both gorgeous displays, either. In my colorimeter tests, both displays hit 100% of the RGB and P3 color gamuts, making pretty much any content spring to life. This is also great for photo and video editing, as I can be sure that the edits I’m making are accurate without having to second guess anything.
You can also just remove the keyboard and summon an on-screen keyboard on the second display by using a gesture by pressing four fingers from both of your hands on the screen at the same time. You can even shrink the on-screen keyboard by pressing those same fingers on the screen, and dragging them down. With the latter, it is almost like the Zenbook Duos of old, even! However, actually typing this way is a nightmare, so I wouldn’t recommend it as anything more than a party trick.
Even though I’m not the biggest fan of the physical keyboard and trackpad, the Zenbook Duo is quickly becoming one of my favorite laptops to work on. Even if I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for gaming.
The Zenbook Duo that Asus sent for review is powered by an Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. And even though it doesn’t have a discrete graphics chip, the integrated Intel Arc B390 is no slouch.
Intel spent the months leading up to CES bragging about how good Panther Lake – the architecture behind the 388H – is at gaming. So I did what any sensible tech reviewer would do and ran it through the same testing regimen as any other gaming laptop. And while it definitely does struggle at its native resolution of 1800p, at 1200p you’ll be able to play pretty much anything, as long as you stay away from the highest quality settings.
Our standard benchmark suite for gaming laptops tests all the games at their max quality settings, and as such, the integrated graphics in the Zenbook Duo do start to struggle. In Cyberpunk 2077, on the Ray Tracing Ultra preset at 1200p, this laptop gets 29 fps – not great. However, turn the settings down to the High preset and it gets 65 fps – and that’s before frame generation.
Oh, yeah, Panther Lake’s integrated GPU supports up to 4x multi-frame generation, just like DLSS or FSR Redstone. With frame generation enabled, Cyberpunk on the High preset goes up to 103 fps at 2x FG and 165 fps at 4x FG. Those numbers look good, but keep in mind that it also comes with a slight increase in latency, going from around 39-42ms without frame gen to 55-72ms with frame gen maxed out.
Compare that to the Lenovo Legion Go 2 – also powered by a mobile-class integrated GPU – which gets 37 fps at 1200p with the same settings. The two processors aren’t directly compatible, as the Legion Go 2’s Z2 Extreme tops out at 35W, compared to about 54W for the ZenBook Duo, but it’s close enough that I’m really looking forward to seeing how this architecture does in a handheld gaming PC.
Gaming performance does really suffer when you play games at the native 1800p resolution, though. For instance, in Cyberpunk, the frame rate drops to 21 fps with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset and XeSS set to the performance setting. And, in Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition, the framerate goes from 20 fps with the Extreme Preset at 1200p all the way to a measly 13 fps at 1800p.
Even with the new Panther Lake architecture, The Zenbook Duo is clearly still not a gaming laptop, but it does have good enough gaming performance that you should be able to play some games in your downtime.
When a laptop really wants you to work all day on it, it actually has to last most of the day. After all, you don’t want to be in the middle of an important project only to have it die on you halfway through. Luckily, the Zenbook Duo does last quite a while on battery.
In the Procyon Office Productivity Battery benchmark, the ZenBook Duo lasts a whopping 17 hours and 35 minutes on battery, which makes it one of the longest lasting laptops we’ve tested by a lot – though admittedly we almost never review this class of laptop at IGN. The battery puts the Zenbook Duo in the same class as the MacBook Air. Only, Apple’s laptops don’t have a second screen attached to them.
Even outside of the tests, in the week or so I’ve spent with the Zenbook Duo, I never had to rush to plug it in, with it sitting on my desk for a couple of days of intermittent use before needing to charge. This is definitely the type of laptop I’d like to take with me to an event like CES, where its creative chops and long battery life would help me out immensely.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
Intel technically revealed Panther Lake back in October 2025, leading with the Xe 3 graphics architecture, which Intel claimed was a massively improved integrated graphics chip. Well, shortly after these new laptop processors were ‘launched’ at CES 2026, I’ve finally been able to sit down and test it for myself.
And while the Asus Zenbook Duo I used to try out the Intel Core X9 Ultra 388H isn’t exactly what I’d call a ‘gaming laptop’, what with it not having a discrete graphics chip, it’s more than capable of playing AAA games at high settings. You just have to temper your expectations a bit. If you ask me, though, a thin and light laptop playing games at high settings isn’t the most exciting thing in the world. What’s going to be much more interesting is how Panther Lake is going to perform in handheld gaming PCs.
While Intel has hinted at a handheld-only Panther Lake chip making its way to market some time this year, we don’t necessarily have to wait that long to see these laptop CPUs make their handheld debut. After all, there are plenty of gaming handhelds out there using laptop chips – even if they’re not exactly the most efficient models out there.
Handhelds like the Ayaneo Kun and the GPD Win 4 have been using full-fat laptop CPUs since before the Steam Deck even existed, and that’s not going to stop any time soon. These chips are powerful, especially for the kind of lower-resolution display you find on a handheld, but thus far they’ve been held back by subpar battery life.
That’s one of the reasons, after all, why Valve elected to toss a 15W custom AMD APU in the Steam Deck, otherwise it’d run out of battery after an hour like these other handhelds. That was also the driving force behind AMD’s Z-series chips, starting with the Z1 Extreme that showed up in the ROG Ally and the original Legion Go.
And for the last few years, these Z-series chips have been kind of the default when it comes to gaming handhelds, giving AMD the majority of the handheld market. However, with the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and its Lunar Lake-powered Core Ultra 7 258V, Intel started to sneak into the market.
That was, like the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H I tested in the Zenbook Duo, a laptop chip, albeit one with a slightly lower 37W max power.
I’ve done a lot of the testing on the MSI Claw 8 AI+, and one thing that’s fascinating about that handheld is how long the battery lasts. In PCMark10, which is admittedly not a gaming test, the Claw 8 lasts more than 15 hours, compared to 10 hours from the Legion Go 2. Obviously, those numbers are a lot smaller when you’re actually playing games, but it shows how much better Intel is at handling battery life.
And, in my early tests of Panther Lake, the new Core X9 Ultra 388H is getting northwards of 17 hours in the Procyon Office Productivity battery test. That’s not the same test, but the workloads being tested are similar enough that I’m definitely interested in seeing something like this in a handheld.
Back at CES 2026, Intel told us that a Panther Lake handheld chip was on the horizon. We don’t know anything about what this chip will actually look like, just that it’s called the “Intel Core G3” and that it’s coming some time this year. But either way, I’m excited to see what it can do.
I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be as powerful as the Core Ultra X9 388H found in the Zenbook Duo, but I do think it’s going to be close. After all, Intel does claim that this G3 chip will be leveraging the full power of the Arc B390 graphics in the 388H, just likely with less CPU cores and maybe a trimmed down NPU (neural processing unit).
We won’t know how Intel is going to spec this thing out until it’s announced, but if it’s the same B390 that’s in Panther Lake, we might be looking at 60 fps gaming in high-end games with high graphics settings. And that’s before Intel’s new multi-frame generation enters the equation.
For instance, in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1200p with the High preset and XeSS set to “Quality”, I was able to get an average of 65 fps in a slice of gameplay from the opening mission. When I turned on frame generation, that number went up to 103 fps with FG set to 2x and 160 fps at 4x multi-frame generation. Now, those higher numbers pushed latency up from 45-55 ms of PC latency up to around 72 ms with 4x frame gen, but I don’t know how much that matters in a single player RPG.
If Intel’s nascent handheld chip does come with the same B390 GPU as its high-end Panther Lake laptop chips, Team Blue could actually pull ahead of AMD. As good as the Ryzen Z2 Extreme is, AMD’s handheld chip uses RDNA 3.5 graphics, which isn’t exactly ancient, but it’s also a generation behind the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT that debuted at the same time. More importantly, it can’t leverage Team Red’s latest upscaling tech. And that’s the best handheld chip AMD has to offer at the moment.
The rest of the Z2 series of handheld chips is in a much worse position. The regular Z2 is using an RDNA 3 GPU, and the Z2 Go, primarily found in the entry-level Legion Go S, has an RDNA 2 graphics core. For reference, RDNA 2 debuted back in 2020.
In AMD’s defense, it makes sense to pair lower-end processors with older architectures to save cash, but if Intel is coming to market with a handheld chip that offers a faster and more efficient architecture, it’s not hard to imagine that Team Red has to be sweating a little bit. It’s going to be a few months before an Intel Panther Lake handheld gaming PC makes its way to market, but when it does, I’m going to be very interested to get it in the lab to see how it holds up against AMD’s established Z-series chips.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
Surprise! It looks like a 30th Anniversary Edition of Rayman is on the way.
Though not formally confirmed by Ubisoft, the unannounced game has popped up on the Australian Classification website, and it's apparently coming to both Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5.
While the franchise is owned by Ubisoft, both the developer and publisher are listed as Atari, which has previously distributed physical editions of games and remakes. Sadly, the listing gives us very little detail on what to expect aside from confirmation that it has "very mild" violence (thanks, Gematsu).
We already knew that Ubisoft was set to celebrate all things Rayman as it got ready to mark the series' 30th anniversary, promising last September that it was working on the "future" of the series. Though the official Rayman X/Twitter account had long been dormant, only resurfacing a handful of times in 2020, then once in 2021, in September it was resurrected to bring us up to speed on what's happening in Rayman's world.
"Rayman turns 30! Join us on our official channels to celebrate an incredible legacy," the account exclaimed at the time, attaching a brief video. In the video, brand producer Loic Gounon — who has been working on the Rayman franchise since 2006 — revealed that "a very talented team at Ubisoft Montpellier and Ubisoft Milan are currently working together on the future of Rayman."
We haven't had a mainline Rayman game since 2013's Rayman Legends. "Don't expect news from us too soon," Ubisoft said, "but rest assured, Rayman is in good hands." Despite all the recent changes and cancellations at IP holder Ubisoft, including that Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake, Rayman appears to have survived the cull.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Director Sam Raimi has ruled out making a belated fourth film for Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man despite once having plans to do so, as his versions of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson now "have gone elsewhere."
Speaking to Screenrant, Raimi said that he still loved the Spider-Man franchise but could not see a way he would return to direct another entry himself, despite the enduring popularity of Maguire's incarnation and calls from fans for more following the character's reappearance in 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home.
That film featured Maguire's Spider-Man temporarily crossing over into the MCU and meeting Tom Holland's iteration, before returning to his own universe — and in an earlier version of the script, there were reportedly plans for Kirsten Dunst to reprise her role as Mary Jane as well.
"For a brief time I was handed the torch to carry on after 40 years of Spider-Man comics," Raimi said of his time working on the franchise. "And then after my three movies, I handed the torch off to someone else. And I think they've got to keep running with the storyline and the audience that is now following the torchbearer."
Raimi had once planned a further full trilogy of Spider-Man movies starring Tobey Maguire, and reportedly had lined up John Malkovich to play Vulture, Anne Hathaway as Black Cat, and Bruce Campbell as Mysterio to appear across the new films.
Alas, Sony ultimately decided to cancel work on the new trilogy amid disagreements over the film's script and Raimi's schedule. The company then opted to instead reboot the franchise with Marc Webb directing Spider-Man's new Andrew Garfield incarnation.
Now, Raimi has suggested he'd be unable to tell more stories with his versions of Spider-Man and Mary Jane as their lives have continued off-screen (while Marvel Studios has now come up with its own versions of Vulture and Mysterio to face up against Tom Holland's Spider-Man). Because of that, Raimi has said it wouldn't "be right for me to go back and try and resurrect my version of this story" and that he had been able to "pass the torch happily."
Marvel fans still expect they haven't seen the last of Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, however, with a further return for the actor expected, though certainly not yet confirmed, in Avengers: Secret Wars, Marvel's upcoming climactic conclusion to the MCU's Multiverse Saga.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Whether you log in to keep up with the NBA or you’re just a casual fan of video games, chances are, you’ve seen a lot of talk about content creators Kingsman265, Cece, zazzastack, and an infamous $40,000 Marvel Rivals tournament recently.
What began as a livestreamed spat between esports teammates has since evolved into an inescapable beast of a trending topic that quickly broke containment in the Marvel Rivals community. But who are these people? Why are thousands rallying behind their favorite online personalities? And why are the Atlanta Hawks posting TikToks about a Marvel Rivals tournament?
The saga many are calling the “Kingsman265 drama” began just earlier this month and is transforming every day, so we did our best to explain the story so far for those who need to know what’s got the internet so worked up.
🏆 DEADPOOL CREATOR CUP 🏆
— BasimZB (@BasimZB) January 12, 2026
$40,000 Prizepool - 8 Captains - 48 Creators
🎴 CAPTAINS DRAFT DAY - Jan 13th
🎴 TOURNAMENT DAY - Jan 18th
Marvel Rivals Tournament hosted by @BasimZB @MarvelRivals #MarvelRivals #DeadpoolCreatorCup pic.twitter.com/6GtTcxzJQA
NetEase Games’ Marvel hero shooter became the center of attention when a relatively small Marvel Rivals esports content creator named Kingsman265 uploaded a YouTube video titled, “I was kicked from a $40,000 tournament…” on January 17, 2026. That tournament, hosted by streamer BasimZB, was known as the Deadpool Creator Cup, a somewhat small competition advertised to feature 48 creators as Deadpool joined Marvel Rivals. According to a number of competitors invited to the tourney, the competition didn’t include a $40,000 prize pool until after invites had been sent out and many had already signed on.
“In this video I show all perspectives, POV's and exactly why I was removed,” Kingsman says in the video’s description. “With this being one of the biggest tournaments I've played in, and $40,000 on the line with the prize pool being $18,000 for first place, AKA $3,000 per person.”
Most of Kingsman’s videos hover around 25,000 views, with many struggling to break 10,000 views as recently as eight months ago. At the time of this piece’s publication, his upload covering the creator tournament has amassed 2.7 million views. Kingsman says numerous times, both in and outside of the video, that he’s a college student, and that winning the $3,000 would go a long way toward helping pay his bills.
“It is an insanely big deal for someone like me,” his description adds.
The hour-and-17-minute upload is an edited recording of a livestream showcasing a series of pre-tournament scrimmage matches with his team – team captain Cece, zazzastack, kayceeedilla, Fumiata, and collaborator, Luciyasa. It starts simply enough, with each player preparing by speaking about their respective competitive ranks as Kingsman asks Cece if they can “full try hard for these scrims.”
“I need to win this s**t. Can we do that? Please?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she replies. “I got you.”
Judging by what is shown in edited clips, it seems the team gets off to a good start, winning their first match as zazzastack’s preferred character, Black Widow, nabs the MVP title. The laughs between the group quickly fade as Kingsman suggests the team switch from the theoretically balanced build of two tanks, two damage per second (DPS), and two support heroes to the current favored meta composition that includes three supports. Other teammates fire back, telling him they did not plan to utilize the meta comp during their scrimmage matches or for the tournament.
“OK, this is going to be a hard tourney then,” Kingsman says.
Kingsman, who is seen by many to be one of the best Marvel Rivals Magik players in the world, appears to be the first to turn up the heat, arguing that other teams will almost certainly enter matches with the triple support plan because $40,000 in winnings is on the line. Others, including zazzastack, contend they shouldn’t “run a triple support with a character that I don’t know how to play.”
The moment passes and tensions ease. Then, seemingly minutes later, the driving point of contention emerges when Kingsman calmly asks zazzastack if she would be interested in swapping from Black Widow’s sniper to a character with crowd control and displacement abilities like Winter Soldier. She declines, calling Black Widow her “anti-dive” pick, making it clear that she has no intention of switching from her preferred character.
Fans of hero shooters like Marvel Rivals and Overwatch are certainly aware of the weight character flexibility holds in a every match, but team chemistry can sometimes be just as important. Both elements were topics of discussion that day, as Kingsman frequently overperformed as Magik, while zazzastack’s Black Widow proved to be inconsistent.
Meanwhile, players use scoreboards in hero shooters as a measurement of performance, but these tools rarely tell the full story and don’t account for things like time on point or game-changing plays. Still, they can be used to detect symptoms of broader issues. One specific round's scoreboard circulating online saw Magik carrying eliminations with 18 kills, one assist, and two deaths, while Black Widow secured zero kills, zero assists, and five deaths. It’s also worth noting that zazzastack had a notably higher ping than her teammates, often reaching numbers as high as 170ms.
As Kingsman persisted, the tense back and forth about strategy and philosophy eventually took a turn for the worse. The video shows multiple members of the team siding against Kingsman, with players like Cece and Luciyasa becoming two of the more vocal individuals coming to zazzastack’s defense. What many online take issue with is the tone and insults that followed, even as Kingsman offers to switch to other characters to support a new team comp.
“That’s such a good point,” Cece replies with a sarcastic tone. “You’re so right about that – and we’re still going to play Widow.”
“I’m just here to accept that Kingsman is a meta slave,” she jabs again shortly after.
Insults and calls to “shut the f**k up” are lobbed at Kingsman as arguments progress in the video, with clips showing instances of Cece calling him a “loser” in-between matches on her own stream emerging later. One match that takes place later in Kingsman’s video sees the team calmly walk away with a narrow win, with everyone performing relatively well. Just as the “Victory” card slides across the screen, a voice can be heard, saying, “talk s**t to Kingsman now, zazza.”
This whole Kingsman situation on Marvel Rivals has gone insanely viral.
— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) January 22, 2026
I’ve seen clips of it and posts about it on literally every social media platform, even posts about it from people I KNOW don’t play video games or keep up with them 😅 pic.twitter.com/ZkH84XqJ8X
Moments later and more than an hour into tournament prep, Kingsman departs, saying he’s going to go queue ranked games, separate from his team. Cece leaves to take an “urgent” call from BasimZB, the team goes their separate ways, and Kingsman shares a few words with his viewers.
“I’m just here to win the tournament, you know? I need that money,” he says. “I’m f**king broke. I like money, and $40,000, which has a prize pool for first place of three grand, is a lot of money for me. I could really use that to help pay my college.”
BasimZB later sends Kingsman a message, telling him he has been kicked from the tournament without warning. Cece was banned on Twitch – and thus kicked from the tournament – shortly after for a separate incident that she has since said is related to her “saying something toxic to my friend in chat,” violating the streaming site’s terms of service.
Kingsman and Cece’s former teammates went on to participate in the tournament and landed in seventh place out of eight teams. All of the major players in the story have since released separate videos and social media statements in an attempt to clear confusion and share their sides of the story, with everyone calling on their fans to not harass anyone else involved.
Cece’s immediate video response alleges BasimZB kicked Kingsman solely because of his tone, which she says was “making the team uncomfortable” and potentially impacting team performance. She says she had little involvement in Kingsman’s removal from the tournament, sharing messages with BasimZB where he says he saw clips of Kingsman “saying disrespectful things while muted” and “saying disrespectful things about the tournament.” She adds, “in hindsight, maybe [Kingsman] should have gotten a warning.”
Cece, who has received a barrage of harassment online following the Deadpool Creator Cup, also took to X/Twitter to respond to questions about her behavior, addressing comments she made both during and after the initial incident. One more recent post issued to her followers sees her explaining the reasoning for her actions and apologizing to Kingsman for some of her words, including calling him a “loser,” both on her stream and her follow-up video.
I’m sorry I failed to realize that I need to take proper accountability on here as well. Many of you saw my replies and they were defensive, deflecting, and argumentative. I was busy fighting to defend myself and I’ve deleted them now because I realized what you guys really…
— Cece (@cecefps) January 20, 2026
“Emotions were high and I failed to notice which resulted in me snapping at Kingsman,” Cece says. “I apologize as no matter what, raising voices and instantly shutting down a teammate is not the right thing to do. I also should have reprimanded the comments directed at Kingsman once the scrims were over. I needed to hold everyone accountable.”
BasimZB initially stood by his decision to kick Kingsman but eventually reversed course after watching the entire series of scrimmages. He has since apologized to Kingsman, saying that he has already spoken to him and that he “def got played by a lot of people.” He has also commented on the “hate” he’s received from users criticizing his handling of the Marvel Rivals tournament, saying, “the people who come in here, when they hate, they are justified in what they’re saying.”
Luciyasa, who has been known to collaborate and “duo” with Kingsman in the past, has also faced criticism for her role during the scrimmage matches and for comments she made later. She has clarified that some of her words were said “at wrong times,” though she stands by telling Kingsman to “shut the f**k up” because of how it was affecting zazzastacks. While it’s unclear if she has spoken with her former Marvel Rivals partner, she has expressed interest in speaking with him offline.
Zazzastack has also been bashed online despite saying relatively little during the confrontation with Kingsman. In her follow-up post, she apologizes for shifting to a “stern” tone after he continued to push her to switch characters, adding that she is “taking accountability for not swapping off Widow when I should have.”
“I was never once rude to Kingsman in the VODs (video on demand) even when asked to talk my s**t,” zazzastacks said. “I will take accountability for getting stern after a while of being asked the same question over and over and do apologise for that as I definitely could’ve had more patience, however I still don’t believe that I insulted him in any way. If Kingsman is at all offended by any of my actions then I am deeply sorry to him.”
Kingsman eventually shared a document containing direct messages between he and Cece called "The Cece Files." It covers a conversation between the two feuding creators that took place after the scrimmage matches and after Kingsman had uploaded his video.
He appears to have hoped to maintain a competitive attitude upon learning of how it could help pay for his education but only wound up removed from the tournament without a dime to show for it. That’s the story the internet has rallied behind, and the result is far, far more than $3,000 for the Magik player.
Kingsman’s latest YouTube video hitting nearly 3 million views may earn him a bit of cash, for example. In addition to what appears to be a growth of hundreds of thousands of subscribers on the Google video platform, he has seen an increase of more than 220,000 followers (up from 1,000 January 16) as his average viewers skyrockets (via TwitchTracker). Kingsman has also seen a drastic increase in subscribers and audience donations, as he also alleges that one anonymous donor outright paid him the $3,000 he had hoped to earn in winnings.
Kingsman265 was gifted in-game units to purchase premium skins.
— Trending Now ON X (@TrendingNowVidz) January 22, 2026
W dev team @MarvelRivals pic.twitter.com/3eC0znyu6X
We can't tell just how much money he has made in the aftermath of his removal from the Deadpool Creator Cup, but as viewers head to comment sections across the internet to offer their support, it’s safe to say he’s got at least a little more cash to help pay for college. Meanwhile, Kingsman says the Marvel Rivals team at NetEase has also stepped in, gifting him in-game credits known as Units to, as he says, “purchase Magik skins.”
NBA team the Atlanta Hawks got in on the drama, too, showing their support for the competitive gamer with a post on TikTok. Even Straight Outta Compton star and son of Ice Cube, O’Shea Jackson Jr., commented on the events of the last few weeks, simply sending out a post mentioning his name.
kingsman went live and just made more than 3K in literally 5 minutes of the stream.
— SN | Avataryaya (@avataryaya_) January 21, 2026
I still have faith in the world pic.twitter.com/1hafMLb3in
The Kingsman265 drama began as the kind of argument hero shooter players find themselves in every day and transformed into what could remain as the biggest gaming drama of the year. For now, it appears every name involved will continue playing, streaming, and competing in Marvel Rivals events, regardless of the sides they took. Kingsman didn’t come close to winning the Deadpool Creator Cup, and it doesn’t like he would have if he hadn’t have been kicked, but at this stage of the drama, it seems the internet is doing its best to put him on top.
“I was looking through my old clips, and I found a video of myself being like, ‘I’ve only ever made $90 from Twitch in four years of streaming, but I’m going to keep streaming anyway,’ and… holy s**t,” Kingsman said during a recent stream as his livestream chat asks him to turn on ads. “You guys really want ads? OK, bro.”
“How do I even turn on ads? I literally don’t know,” he adds.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
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