Alien: Earth has a bigger scale than fellow FX series Shogun — and the production to go along with it.

If the trailers released for it so far hadn’t made it clear, Alien: Earth is a major production for FX. Just how big? In a recently published report it was described as bigger scale than smash hit Shogun, and FX was said to be hoping it will be the next Game of Thrones or The Last of Us.

Alien: Earth, from Fargo creator Noah Hawley, revolves around the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot, which crash-lands on earth. Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and a group of tactical soldiers make a “fateful discovery” that puts them face-to-face with the xenomorph fans know well, but also a number of never-before-seen alien species. Some of these look disgusting, which is of course in-keeping with the Alien franchise’s sci-fi horror roots.

While fans have been digging into the Alien: Earth trailers for clues as to where the show will take the franchise, its special effects have won praise. The VFX-heavy shots we’ve seen so far, showcasing the Maginot crashing in space and then into an earth city, as well as shots of the various aliens, have won praise from fans who are hopeful Alien: Earth will continue its revival post the successful Alien: Romulus.

Variety published an article digging into the production of Alien: Earth, and it contains a number of revelations about FX’s hope for the show. Variety described the production as “simply enormous,” and included a quote from FX Entertainment president Gina Balian, who said: “Compared to the scale of Shogun, this is bigger.”

Given Shogun had a reported $250 million budget, it seems Alien: Earth will have been at least as expensive, but FX declined to say how much the show cost.

Variety also reported that FX hopes Alien: Earth will be the next Game of Thrones or The Last of Us. As part of this, there’s word of Alien: Earth abandoning the plot of original Alien director Ridley Scott’s prequels (Prometheus and Alien: Covenant), which we already knew, to exist “in parallel” to the film franchise.

That’s interesting phrasing, and suggests Hawley wasn’t held in a vice-like grip by the Alien canon when he plotted out the events of the show. Indeed, this suggestion is reinforced by Balian, who said: “Everything doesn’t have to fit together the way you expect from Marvel. Fans don’t expect that in this universe. It doesn’t have the same pressure.”

That will make for interesting reading for Alien fans who have spent some time fussing over how Alien: Earth fits within the established Alien timeline, and whether it adds context to the events that follow it. For example, Alien: Earth is set just a few years before the events of Alien, which famously debuted the xenomorph. What, then, did the nefarious megacorporation Weyland-Yutani know about the xenomorph threat before the crew of the Nostromo set off on their ill-fated journey? And how was the alien threat contained on earth to the point where it isn't common knowledge during the events of subsequent films?

At this point in the Alien timeline, earth is governed by five corporations: Weyland-Yutani, Prodigy, which owns the city the Maginot crashes into, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. Cyborgs and synthetics coexist with humans, but then the boss of Prodigy invents hybrids (humanoid robots with human consciousness). Wendy is the first hybrid prototype, and is part of the established push for immortality that is a running theme in the Alien franchise.

Alien: Earth cast:

• Sydney Chandler (Wendy)
• Timothy Olyphant (Kirsh),
• Alex Lawther (Hermit)
• Samuel Blenkin (Boy Kavalier)
• Babou Ceesay (Morrow)
• Adrian Edmondson (Atom Eins)
• David Rysdahl (Arthur Sylvia)
• Essie Davis (Dame Sylvia)
• Lily Newmark (Nibs)
• Erana James (Curly)
• Adarsh Gourav (Slightly)
• Jonathan Ajayi (Smee)
• Kit Young (Tootles)
• Diêm Camille (Siberian)
• Moe Bar-El (Rashidi)
• Sandra Yi Sencindiver (Yutani)

Alien: Earth premieres its first two episodes on August 12 on Hulu at 8pm ET, and on FX and Disney+ at 8pm PT / ET (August 13 in the UK and internationally on Disney+). New episodes of the eight-episode season debut each following Tuesday.

In January last year, showrunner Noah Hawley explained why he is not using the backstory provided in Prometheus for Alien: Earth, saying he likes the "retro-futurism" of the original films. Hawley said he spoke to Alien chief Ridley Scott about "many, many elements" of the Alien series, including its ties to the prequels, but ultimately decided to cut loose and move away from the bioweapon backstory because he preferred the lore of the original films.

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.

Anime just keeps getting bigger. It was reported to be a $19+ billion industry in 2023, so we can only imagine where it's at now. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to watch anime without paying a dime. While you might have to skip out on the occasional Netflix original, there's something for everyone in the hundreds of anime series and movies out there for free.

If you watch anime, you probably know that there are plenty of what we'll call "risky" anime sites, most of which ride a legal gray line or head straight into piracy territory. This list is limited to free anime sites we know for sure legally acquired their streaming licenses.

Whether you want to see what the hype's about with Solo Leveling (which recently won Anime of the Year), are planning a Naruto marathon, or want to dive into classics like Sailor Moon, here are the best sites to watch anime for free.

Crunchyroll

Back in March we got to reveal Magic: The Gathering's very first Spider-man cards as part of a special Scene Box outside of the main set. Well today, as part of San Diego Comic-Con 2025, we're back with an exclusive look at some of the first cards that will actually be a part of that Standard-legal set – and this cast of five spideys will surely look familiar to any Spider-Verse fans out there.

Flip through the slideshow below to see all five Spider-Man cards, as well as an alternate comic book art style for the titular webslinger himself.

Magic: The Gathering developer Wizards of the Coast previously told IGN that it wasn't limiting this set to a single comic run, and that's made quite clear with this early look. All five cards are different versions of Spider-Man depicted as legendary creatures: at Uncommon you have Spider-Man Noir and the robotic SP//dr piloted by Peni Parker, at Rare are Spider-Man 2099 and the delightfully goofy Spider-Ham, and finally at Mythic Rare is the man himself, Peter Parker, who flips over to become the Amazing Spider-Man.

That last card is especially interesting as it is double-sided. The front is simply Peter Parker, while the back is his Amazing Spider-Man alter ego, and you have some flexibility in how to cast him. Magic has had what are called "modal double-faced cards" before that allow you to cast either side from your hand, but this is the first I know of that also allows you to pay a cost to flip it while the front side is already in play - in this case, you can play Peter Parker for two mana, and then pay four more on a later turn to have him transform.

If you do, you get access to his very flavorful ability called web-slinging, which allows you to pay just three mana to cast Legendary spells if you also return a tapped creature to your hand. This card is sure to be a popular leader in Magic's most popular format, Commander, as it will let you cheat all sorts of big and expensive legendary creatures into play far earlier than expected. And because this card will also be legal across Magic's regular competitive formats, giant dinosaurs and terrifying demons alike could be swinging onto the table.

The rest of the cast here is a clear nod to Sony's excellent Into the Spider-Verse animated films, only missing a take on Peter B. Parker and Spider-Gwen to complete the first movie's main cast (though there's plenty of time for those to potentially be revealed themselves before the set launches in September). But before you get too excited, this was almost definitely just a nod to their reveal as part of this year's Comic-Con, as these cards and this set in general are not actually tied to that series in any direct way.

And while we may not have a second version of Peter to show here, we do have an alternate art treatment for this one – one that is sure to excite any comic book fans out there. This secondary version shows off what's called the "Iconic Moments" Booster Fun treatment for this set, and all of the cards that use it will feature art from the pages of Spider-Man's adventures. This first one is taken straight from the cover of 1963's The Amazing Spider-Man #1, complete with artist credits for Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

If you happen to be in the San Diego area yourself, Wizards of the Coast is hosting a Spider-Man event at the Hard Rock Hotel where fans will be able to go hands-on with the set's Welcome Decks – smaller preconstructed decks themed around Spider-man that are meant to be an intro point for new players as they learn the ropes. WOTC has previously stated that its Universes Beyond crossovers have brought a huge amount of new players through the door, and just today Hasbro revealed that the recent Final Fantasy set made a whopping $200 million on its first day.

Tom Marks is IGN's Executive Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

Razer’s Deathadder lineup has some of the best competitive gaming mice of the past decade and, thankfully, the Deathadder V4 Pro continues that tradition. While it looks identical to the V3 Pro – the same body shape, no frills, no extraneous buttons – practically every component has changed, That includes a new 45,000 DPI sensor, an optical scroll wheel, new optical mouse switches, and updated Hyperspeed wireless tech alongside an 8000Hz polling rate. This is a greatest hits of Razer’s tech, a proper flagship mouse focused on pure performance, and with a price to match: at $169.99/£169.99 it’s $20 more than the V3 Pro, and $10 more than the top-of-the-line Viper V3 Pro.

Many players will barely feel a difference. The bigger numbers are, I’d argue, partly a marketing ploy to show how Razer is ahead of everyone else. Higher polling rates offer diminishing returns (and a few compromises) with 8000Hz being overkill that many players may not even notice. And given most gamers, even pros, rarely use anything higher than 3200 DPI, why would you need this new sensor? But after testing the Deathadder V4 Pro for a week, I cannot deny its brilliance. Without the cutting-edge tech it’d still be a sleek, comfortable, light, responsive, sturdy mouse – with the incremental improvements of the new tech it’s arguably the best Razer has ever made.

Razer Deathadder V4 Pro – Design and Features

The Deathadder V4 Pro keeps the same tried-and-tested shape as the V3 Pro, and I’m glad Razer didn’t tinker. The mouse’s hump, which peaks just behind the left mouse button, fits snugly in my palm, and it still felt comfy after five-hour sessions. It is a relatively big mouse at 128mm (L) x 68mm (W) x 44mm (H), making it a tad larger than the Viper V3 Pro, which was already heftier than most. But whatever position I put my hand in – moving forward or back, wide grip or narrow – it felt great. I favour a mixture of a palm grip and a fingertip grip, and the mouse suits both (claw users report that the identically shaped V3 Pro was comfortable, too).

It helps that it’s light at 56g, which is 10% lighter than the V3 Pro. Combine that with PTFE feet that cover a larger surface area and you get a mouse that glides like liquid across your mousemat. The mouse coating is the same material Razer has used in other recent mice; it’s smooth enough that it never chafes, but sticky enough that my hand never slipped. It properly grips your fingertips, which means you can move it with very little pressure.

It is also a remarkably study mouse. I really tried to make it flex or bend but I couldn't, and it was completely silent when I shook it violently, suggesting tight internals. Whether it will last for years is impossible to say but the Deathadder series has, on the whole, stood the test of time – I have used my Deathadder V2 on and off for five years with no problems.

One flaw of the Deathadder V3 Pro was its scroll wheel, which felt mushy and loose with age. The new scroll wheel is optical, rather than mechanical, which reduces the friction between components and should reduce wear over time. I can’t promise that, but I can say that it feels taught and precise, with no side-to-side wobble. I didn’t have a single scroll jump, where the wheel goes further than intended, and I never got caught between scroll increments. The scroll wheel press itself is mechanical, rather than optical, but it too felt reliable: I used it loads when playing the recently released Rematch (you press the scroll wheel to call for a pass), and it never let me down.

The left and right mouse clickers have brand-new optical switches, and I think they’ll be divisive. Not because of how they feel, since they are responsive and require very little force to press, which makes fast clicks easy, but because of how they sound. They are loud with a high-pitch ‘ping’ that I’ve seen others call cheap and tinny. I personally like a louder click, and to me it sounded crisp and satisfying. Crucially, they work flawlessly. I never misclicked, and every single press registered instantly.

That goes for the side buttons as well, and unlike in the V3, there’s a small gap between them, which makes it easier to distinguish one from the other in an intense firefight, for example. There are only two of them, so if you like lots of buttons on your mouse, then this isn’t for you. Even the DPI button (which many mice put on the top) is on the bottom, so you have to turn the mouse over to adjust it. That doesn’t bother me because once I’ve picked a DPI for a game I usually stick with it, making minor adjustments using the in-game settings.

Be aware, too, that it’s also not a particularly portable mouse: there is no Bluetooth connectivity, and you can only use it if you plug in the large, half-orb dongle, so if you like to travel with your mouse or switch between machines, this might not be for you.

The dongle itself is a fantastic bit of kit, though. I like the way it looks on my desk; the embossed, shiny Razer logo occasionally catches the light and stands out from the smooth matte coating of the rest of it. It’s satisfyingly weighty (at around 44g, it’s nearly as heavy as the mouse itself) and it has a grippy rubber underside, so it’s hard to accidentally shift it on your desk. The accompanying cable is stiff and unlikely to tangle.

The three indicator lights, which reflect your chosen settings, are bright and I like having the at-a-glance reminder of my setup: I never had to wonder what polling rate or DPI I’d picked. My only gripe is a minor one – it uses two shades of green to distinguish between different battery levels, and they’re hard to tell apart at a glance.

Most importantly, the connection is both instant and constant whenever you turn the mouse on. It never dropped in all my testing, and whenever I tweaked the mouse settings, such as adjusting the DPI or the polling rate, the indicator lights flicked immediately, giving me extra confidence that the settings had actually changed.

Razer says this new version of their HyperSpeed wireless tech, with an adjustable polling rate from 125Hz up to 8000Hz, has much lower latency than the previous one, while the sensor is its fastest and most accurate yet. We’re at a point where top-end gaming mice are so good that it’s nearly impossible to notice incremental differences. The Deathadder V4 Pro blows past Razer’s other mice on paper, and it’s reassuring to know you’re using the best tech possible, but it doesn’t feel like a generational leap when I’m playing. Faultless, yes, but not life-changing.

Razer Deathadder V4 Pro – Battery Life and Software

The Deathadder V4 Pro promises battery life of up to 150 hours at a 1000Hz polling rate, shortening to 22 hours at 8000Hz, which is as good as you’ll get from a top-end gaming mouse. That 1000Hz figure is in line with my testing: it took me roughly 8 hours to drain every 5% so it’s possible to use it for weeks without needing to charge it.

At 8000Hz polling, I was losing 10% roughly every 2.5 hours, which is actually slightly better than advertised. That’s likely because you can think of polling rate like a cap – sometimes you’re not going to be moving the mouse enough to “saturate” it, so your actual polling rate will be lower and the battery life longer.

If the battery life is brilliant, Razer’s Synapse software, which you use to manage your mouse, is less so. Plenty of bloat confronts you when you boot it up. At the top of the “devices and modules” menu is a prompt to install Amazon’s Alexa, for example, while there’s a tab called Exchange where you can download “pre-built macros designed for AI-powered tasks”.

More than once Synapse didn’t recognise that my mouse was plugged in: I was told the Deathadder V4 was switched off despite the fact I was clicking on it (it resolved when I rebooted Synapse). Some of the features lack proper explanation. Take dynamic sensitivity, for example, which lets you adjust your sensitivity based on how quickly you’re moving the mouse.

You can tune it so that fast swipes move the mouse further than slow ones which, on paper, sounds good for twitchy shooters. I don’t like it because I’m too used to regular aiming, but I imagine there are pro players who understand their aim tendencies far better than me who will get something out of it. But it’s poorly described in the app as it prompts you to pick from presets, or customize your own sensitivity curve, without describing what each one does, and there’s no prompt to learn more information.

Thankfully the core features of Synapse – the most important ones for day-to-day use – are simple and easy to manage. With a few clicks, you can customize five different stages of sensitivity and switch between polling rates. You can also adjust what information the hemisphere dongle shows with its three LEDs. I decided to forgo the “connection quality” for a light that showed me my current DPI, and then I adjusted the colour for each DPI setting. As somebody who switches DPI between games, I found it useful to always know what I’d picked.

You can also auto-switch your polling rate for gaming: I toggled this setting on and it worked every time. It means you can stay at, say, 1000 Hz to preserve battery life when you’re working, and then automatically bump up the polling rate for gaming. And having the rate displayed on the dongle means you can be certain it’s switched.

The mouse rotation setting is not new, but it’s worth mentioning. The idea is that not everyone moves their mouse in exact right angles relative to their set up. I slightly tilt my mouse to the left in relation to my mousemat, but swipe in line with the pad, meaning my left and right movements are, technically, slightly off-line. Razer has a tool that asks you to move side to side and then recommends an adjustment to the sensor axis to accommodate for this. I stuck with its recommended tweak and it felt natural.

Annoyingly, that testing tool is in your browser, rather than in Synapse. This is a bit of a theme with Razer tools: when you use the mouse you’ll be prompted to make a firmware update, which takes you to your browser, and a tool to test polling rate is separate, and downloadable from Razer’s website. Synapse is, overall, as imperfect as it always has been, but it does offer a robust level of customisation and nails the basics.

Looking to upgrade your keyboard, too?

Check out our roundup of the best gaming keyboards!

Razer Deathadder V4 Pro – Performance and Gaming

I tested the Deathadder in four different games, all with different demands: Counter-Strike 2 for snappy first-person aiming and Fortnite as my third-person shooter, where you can use your mouse for mobility as much as fighting. I also tested Rematch – which, when played with a mouse, requires lots of both sweeping turns and small adjustments – and Doorkickers 2, which is a slower tactical game where you’re drawing paths to direct units around a level. It performed perfectly in every scenario.

Razer’s 45K sensor is undoubtedly overkill. Nobody needs 45,000 DPI (dots per inch explained here), or to move their mouse at 900 inches per second, the maximum that the mouse can track. But it is certainly cutting-edge tech. Every hand and finger movement was reflected immediately, and accurately, on screen. I detected no lag, no stutter, no stray inputs: I felt like I could completely trust the Deathadder V4 Pro to match what I told it to do, which is everything I can ask for in a mouse.

Normally I use 800 DPI and set my in-game sensitivities accordingly: with this sensor, I felt confident that I could raise my DPI to 3,200 and cut my in-game number, giving me the same overall sensitivity but, theoretically, more precision from the higher DPI. I can’t say it actually made me play better (my aim remains mediocre), but it could well make a difference in high-level pro play.

That was true even at 1000Hz polling rate (meaning it’s pinging your PC 1,000 times a second), the lowest I’d recommend using with this mouse. As you increase the polling rate, you theoretically get smoother, less jittery mouse movement. There is an ongoing debate about whether anything above 1000Hz is worthwhile. Lots of people can’t tell the difference, even when you play back gameplay in ultra slow-mo, and to really take advantage you’ll need both a high refresh-rate monitor (144hz at a minimum, but ideally higher) and a beefy gaming rig to get as many frames per second (fps) as possible.

I can’t say, hand on heart, that 8000Hz felt smoother than 1000Hz on my 144Hz screen. Once, after playing for about five hours on 8000 Hz, I bumped the polling rate down to 1000 Hz, and it felt different in the moment, but it certainly didn’t feel worse.

Sometimes, a higher polling rate can even be detrimental. The drop-off in battery life is not a big deal to me as I have a habit of charging between gaming sessions. The bigger problem is the strain higher polling rates can put on your CPU. In Counter-Strike 2, playing at the highest polling rate didn’t affect my fps – but in Fortnite, which uses Unreal Engine, it knocked a good 20-30 fps off, so it actually felt less smooth to play at higher polling rates (it’s for this reason that many Fortnite pros go with 1000 Hz).

That said, some people do swear they can feel a noticeable difference with higher polling rates. And I’d also argue that being able to play with the confidence of knowing you have the fastest possible mouse can only be a good thing – even if, in reality, the gains are marginal. Thus, I settled with 2000 Hz for most games. It makes the Deathadder V4 Pro a fully future-proof mouse: you can buy this knowing that if you upgrade your monitor, CPU, or GPU in the coming years, the mouse will more than keep up.

Whether it’s worth it comes down to a question of what you value: this is, after all, one of the most expensive mice that you can buy. I can’t honestly tell you that the performance will feel faster than, say, the HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2 Pro, with its polling rates of up to 4000Hz, or the 8000Hz Asus ROG Keris II Ace, which launched with a comparable MSRP, but is now available significantly cheaper. You can spend half as much and still get an excellent wireless gaming mouse, but if you’re after the absolute best in performance, then this is it.

King of the Hill will bring the Hill family back to Arlen, Texas, when Season 14 revival premieres next month, and they’ll be bringing a few new faces (and celebrity guest stars) with them.

IndieWire shared the new cast lineup today, teasing five additional guest stars that will play new and recast characters from the show’s original run. Each actor joins a list of other changes to the Mike Judge and Greg Daniels show as it aims to bring Hank, Peggy, and Bobby into current-day Arlen.

Topping the list of the new King of the Hill cast is Keith David (The Princess and the Frog, The Thing), who will be playing a new character by the name of Brian Robertson. The site describes Brian as the individual renting the Hill home during the time-jump that occurs between Season 13 and Season 14. There’s also Anthony ‘Critic’ Campos (Idiocracy, Harsh Times), who has been tapped to play a chef named Emilio. Viewers can catch him working alongside Bobby at the Robata Chane in Dallas.

Time has passed for the King of the Hill crew, and it’s passed for everyone in the real world, too. With the leap to the future comes recasts for Ted Wassanasong, Chane Wassanasong, and Joseph Gribble. Kenneth Choi (The Wolf of Wall Street, Spider-Man Homecoming) will take over for Toby Huss as Laotian businessman Ted, with Ki Hong Lee (The Maze Runner, Wish Upon) picking up the role of his son, Chane, from Pamela Adlon.

The father-son duo will team up with Bobby, with Ted serving as a financial backer for Robata Chane while Chane aids as a business partner. Dale and Nancy Gribble’s grown-up son, Joseph Gribble, meanwhile, will no longer be voiced by Breckin Meyer, with writer and comedian Tai Leclaire (Headdress, Super Team Canada) picking up the role in his place.

“After years working a propane job in Saudi Arabia to earn their retirement nest egg,” an official description says, “Hank and Peggy Hill return to a changed Arlen, Texas to reconnect with old friends Dale, Boomhauer and Bill. Meanwhile, Bobby is living his dream as a chef in Dallas and enjoying his 20s with his former classmates Connie, Joseph, and Chane.”

King of the Hill Season 14 will take fans’ favorite propane-fueled family back to Arlen (and to Hulu) when it hits its August 4, 2025, release date. As the classic animated show pivots with new voice talent for roles that have been described by many as miscast in the past, it will also feature posthumous credits for some of its most memorable characters. These include Dale actor Johnny Hardwick, who managed to complete work on a few episodes before his death in 2023, and Jonathan Joss, who passed away just last month.

For more, you can read up on how we think the King of the Hill revival can fix the original series’ greatest sin. You can also check out a new trailer and poster, which arrived alongside the news that Ronny Chieng would take over as Khan Souphanousinphone earlier this month.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor 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).

Bethesda has broken its silence on the future of Starfield, insisting it’s still working on updates and will share details on the “exciting things” it has planned in the coming months.

Starfield players have for some time now expressed their dissatisfaction at the level of communication coming out of Bethesda on the future of the game, with its no-show at June’s Xbox Games Showcase considered the final straw for some.

The Starfield community had hoped Bethesda would announce something to do with the game at its show, but while The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 both got their moment in the spotlight, Starfield skipped proceedings entirely. No DLC, no expansion, no PlayStation 5 release… nothing.

Now, ahead of Gamescom in August, Bethesda has piped up with a statement on Steam that is as brief as it is vague, but at least addresses Starfield’s future and promises more content is in the works.

“Looking ahead, we’re continuing work on future updates and will share more about the exciting things we have planned for Starfield in the coming months,” Bethesda said in a post accompanying Starfield Update 1.15.222, which is in beta form on Steam. Patch notes are below.

Starfield players are hoping this means the promised second Starfield expansion is still coming, and that Starfield may follow the likes of Forza Horizon 5 and make the jump to PlayStation 5.

Starfield launched in September 2023 as Bethesda’s first brand new IP in 25 years, but it was not as well received as the studio’s previous games in the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, and the Shattered Space expansion, released a year later in September 2024, has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam.

Starfield went on to reach 15 million players, but the question of whether Bethesda might walk away from the game to focus on its other franchises has been a running theme since release. In June 2024, Bethesda insisted it remained committed to supporting Starfield, and confirmed at least one other story expansion would release following Shattered Space. And in an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard said the developer was aiming to release an annual story expansion for “hopefully a very long time.”

Bethesda was seriously affected by Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs, with cuts to its London office and ZeniMax Online Studios. Its unannounced MMORPG was canceled, and its veteran studio head stepped down.

Starfield Update 1.15.222 patch notes:

General

• Minor improvements to format and display in Creations menus.
• Addressed an issue that could cause that Extreme Temperature gear to appear incorrectly.
• Minor improvements to sorting in the Missions Menu.
• General crash and stability fixes.

This update is currently in Steam Beta. If you would like to opt in to the Starfield Beta update, please follow these instructions:

• Open your Steam Library and navigate to Starfield
• Right click on "Starfield" and select "Properties"
• In the new properties pop-up window, select "Betas"
• In the beta drop down to opt into, select "[beta]"
• Wait for app to download new build and launch

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

Magic: The Gathering's Final Fantasy Universes Beyond expansion was really, really, really popular. It was the fastest-selling expansion in Magic: The Gathering history, per Hasbro. Its Secret Lair collaboration drops sold out in record time, and while stocks of the boosters, starter kits, and decks have improved, there was a period there where it was difficult to get your hands on anything Magic x Final Fantasy-related. The set's popularity even pushed a bunch of non-Final Fantasy cards to higher prices, just because of their excellent synergy with the set.

And on top of all that, it apparently earned $200 million in a single day - the same amount that Magic's Lord of the Rings set earned in six months.

This is according to Hasbro in its Q2 earnings call, which revealed the figure alongside a report that Magic: The Gathering revenue grew 23% year-over-year in large part thanks to the Final Fantasy release. Per CEO Chris Cox, it brought in more new players in stores over two weeks than any other set has in 12 weeks. And in the investor Q&A during the earnings call, Cox answered a question about how Final Fantasy's demand correlated to the company's expectations with the following quote (courtesy of Investing.com's transcript):

In terms of Final Fantasy and how it met expectations, I’ll give you a comparison between two of our biggest universe at the onsets. Lord of the Rings took six months to deliver $200,000,000 of revenue.

Final Fantasy took one day. And we left demand on the table. So we couldn’t produce enough. I think we increased production runs on it four times pre release. It was substantially, by many, many very high double digit percentages, ahead of any other production run we’ve ever done.

And we left the market wanting more. And our expectation is there’s going to be a nice long tail of backlist for the product. Likewise, we’re still selling Lord of the Rings product today. So, even though we hit $200,000,000 in December ’2 for Lord of the Rings, We sold a substantial percentage of that in the several years following. We expect Final Fantasy to be no different.

It’s partially what’s powering our backlist, which already in five and a half months in the year did more than we’ve ever done in any year prior. So, I think that’s a little bit on what our bullishness is on Final Fantasy. What drove success for it? I think it’s a couple of things. I think first and foremost, it’s finding the right IPs that are great adjacencies to what Magic fans might appeal to or what Magic might appeal to another fan base.

Lord of the Rings was fantastic because it’s kind of the granddaddy of fantasy. It invented the genre, major books, major movies, major animation and games. Final Fantasy, I think, is almost as strong as Lord of the Rings in terms of IP strength, if not stronger in some regions. I think it has stronger cross regional appeal, and it has probably more of a sweet spot in gaming than Lord of the Rings has, because it was kind of born from gaming. So, I think potentially the overlap of fan bases was stronger than you might have even seen for something like Lord of the Rings.

In a follow-up question, Cox also noted that he feels "pretty good" about future collaborations and first-party sets coming next year "in terms of being Final Fantasy like in terms of the types of players, the size of community, and the adjacencies we have."

That last remark bodes well for fans of the Final Fantasy set. We just saw a Sonic: The Hedgehog Secret Lair crossover debut, and already know about Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender themed sets in September and November, respectively, so with success like this, more crossovers are likely to make sense to the folks at Hasbro. In the meantime, at least this means Hasbro will keep the Final Fantasy cards stocked for a good while, for those who haven't been able to get their hands on them yet.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

One of the biggest incentives to shop directly through LEGO is their awesome Free Gift With Purchase deal. These are offered through a couple of different routes and vary depending on the gift, but are great little additions if you planned to get particular sets anyway. Sometimes you'd have to spend a qualifying amount to get the free gift, but here all you have to do is purchase the LEGO Botanicals Flower Arrangement (#10345) online. Do that, and the Field Flowers free gift is yours!

Gifts with purchase are only available to LEGO Insiders members, which is free to join.

Get LEGO Field Flowers For Free

Alienware released a new flagship gaming laptop this year - the Area-51 - and it brings to the table a host of upgrades over the m-series laptops including a sleeker redesign, current generation components, and better cooling potential. As part of the Dell Back to School Sale, several Alienware Area-51 gaming laptops have dropped to the lowest prices I've seen this year. They're all equipped with the newest Intel Core Ultra 9 processors and Nvidia RTX 5000 series Blackwell graphics cards. Check out all of the deals below.

Alienware Area-51 Laptops on Sale for Back to School

The Area-51: Curvy Design, More Power, Better Cooling

New for 2025, the Alienware Area-51 gaming laptop features a magnesium alloy chassis with upgraded cooling to tackle the latest and greatest heat generating components. This includes more fans and bigger cutouts enabling greater airflow, more generous use of copper, and a new thermal interface material to better transfer heat away from the core components. Dell claims that the laptop can handle a higher power ceiling of up to 240W TDP without raising acoustics.

Design-wise, the Area 51 accentuates its smooth contours, with rounded edges and soft corners replacing the squared off design you'd see in most other laptops. The hinges are also mostly internally positioned so that they're near invisible. As befits an Alienware laptop, there are ample customization options for RGB LED lighting.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is a top performing CPU

The Area-51 laptop is also equipped with a very powerful CPU as well. The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.4GHz with a whopping 24 cores and 40MB total L2 cache. According to Passmark, this is the second most powerful Intel mobile CPU available right now and goes head to head with AMD's Ryzen 9 7945HX3D.

The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 mobile offer the best performance for your dollar

As expensive as these laptops are, you don't want to spend even more on trivial upgrades. The RTX 5070 Ti mobile GPU boasts performance on par with the RTX 4080 but with the added benefit of faster GDDR7 RAM and DLSS 4.0. The RTX 5080 mobile GPU represents a healthy improvement over the RTX 5070 Ti for a nominal price bump; it's about 15%-20% more powerful than the RTX 5070 Ti and the RTX 4080 that it replaces. It also happens to be about 5% more powerful than the RTX 4090 and has the same amount of memory (16GB). Unfortunately, the RTX 5090 only appears to be just 5% more powerful than the RTX 5080, and its only real benefit is the 24GB of memory, which isn't that useful for gaming (but is an attraction option for professionals who work with AI applications).

Check Out More Alienware Back to School Deals

Check out our Best Alienware Deals article with all of Dell's currently ongoing deals on gaming laptops and desktop PCs. Not everyone is the DIY type. If you're in the market for a prebuilt gaming PC, Dell is one of the best brands we'd recommend. Alienware desktops and laptops feature solid build quality, top-of-the-line gaming performance, excellent cooling (further improved on the newer models), aggressive styling, and pricing that is very competitive with other pre-built options. Best of all, there are plenty of sales that happen throughout the year, so it's not difficult to grab one of these computers at considerably less than their retail price.

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.

It’s encouraging news for DC Universe TV show Booster Gold, which is reportedly set for a pilot for HBO Max. However, it’s unclear whether this will result in a full series getting the green light.

Fresh off the release of DCU kickstarter Superman, we’re starting to get a better idea of what DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran have up their sleeves. We know Supergirl and Clayface movies are set to release next year, with Peacemaker Season 2 and a Lanterns TV show also in the works. There are plans for a supposedly fast-tracked Wonder Woman movie, a DCU Batman movie based on The Brave and the Bold — which is causing Gunn all sorts of problems — and reported TV spinoffs for Superman supporting characters Mister Terrific and Jimmy Olsen.

But what about Booster Gold? In 2023, when Gunn and Safran unveiled their roadmap for the rebooted DCU, they mentioned a Booster Gold TV show, but we haven’t seen anything of it since.

Now, though, we have news from Deadline that HBO Max has Our Flag Means Death creator David Jenkins writing a pilot. “If taken to series,” Deadline continued, “we understand the plan is for Jenkins to show-run.”

That’s a big “if.” Gunn has made it clear that DC Studios will not progress with the production of films or TV shows unless their scripts are finished and of a high enough quality. Will this Booster Gold pilot make the cut?

So, who is Booster Gold? When Gunn announced the DCU, he said the character “uses basic technology from the future to pretend to be a superhero in present day.” We have a Booster Gold explainer if you want to know about the character’s comic book origins.

In February, Gunn said Booster Gold “is going pretty strong."

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.

Amazon is finally offering a 2TB PS5-compatible SSD for under $100, which I haven't seen for months. Right now you can pick up an Orico 2TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 Solid State Drive for only $96.19 after you apply the 26% off coupon on the product page. This is a PS5-compatible SSD with speeds well above Sony's minimum recommendation of 5,600MB/s and the proper form factor to drop right into the PS5's drive bay. You'll need to add your own heatsink, but you can easily get a PS5-compatible heatsink for well under $10. The Orico brand isn't as immediately recognizable as Samsung or WD, but this drive in particular has racked up enough positive feedback for me to feel comfortable recommending it.

Orico 2TB M.2 SSD (PS5-Compatible) for $96.19

While we have put together lists recommending the best DC board games and Marvel board games on the market, there are still plenty of great titles out there that don't fall under either of those banners and instead highlight the "superhero" motif itself. These are games that pit players against one another as heroes and villains, and those that let you work together to stop some dastardly villains. This list takes a look at some of those games that will appeal to fans of capes and spandex, regardless of publisher.

TL;DR - These are the best superhero board games

If you don't have time to peruse the blurbs, you can see all the items on this list in the catalog above. But if you want more info about any of these superhero board games, read on for the info.

Kapow!

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition

Massive-Verse Fighting Card Game

Invincible: The Hero-Building Game

Astro Knights

Hellboy: The Board Game

The South Park Season 27 premiere is set to go ahead tonight, July 23, after creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker signed a big money deal with Paramount.

The hotly contested new contract for South Park will see the long-running Comedy Central show continue even as Paramount works to get its merger with Skydance over the line.

Earlier this month, Parker and Stone expressed their frustration about Paramount’s decision to delay the premiere of Season 27 for two weeks — using the show’s social media accounts to claim the Paramount and Skydance merger was “f—king up” their show. The pair even enlisted the services of a “bulldog negotiator” lawyer as the row over their contract escalated.

Now, the new deal is official, which means the new season will debut on Comedy Central at 10pm ET / PT tonight, July 23. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the agreement runs for five years and includes 50 new episodes of the show to debut on Comedy Central. It is reportedly valued at $300 million a year, or $1.5 billion over the length of their contract, which makes South Park one of the most valuable franchises in television.

Meanwhile, the South Park library will move to Paramount+ in the U.S. and globally. New episodes will also stream on Paramount+ in the U.S. the day after they air on Comedy Central.

Remember Secret Level, that Amazon Prime miniseries of short films inspired by popular video games? You know the episode that recast Pac-Man as a marooned warrior abducting strangers to help it fight its way out of a prison planet? Well, Bandai Namco fleshed that idea out into a lengthy metroidvania called Shadow Labyrinth – a rare Street Fighter: The Movie-type beat – and this bizarre reimagining of the industry’s oldest eater is a truly challenging experience. Not necessarily because it’s difficult, as it’s not a cake walk but I’ve thrown myself against the rocks of more tortuous games in the past. No, my biggest struggle with it was staying interested in Shadow Labyrinth’s cryptic, slow, and frankly boring story while also fighting through some gnarly difficulty spikes and brutal checkpointing.

I’m not completely against the idea of a gritty reboot of Pac-Man in theory, but the execution here did not make a great case for it in practice. The story, which drapes you in the rags of Puck’s (read: Pac-Man’s) sword swinging goon, sort of exists around you. That makes some sense given you’ve woken up without any memories or understanding of the wreckage of war you’re being lead through by your scheming yellow companion, but Shadow Labyrinth’s insistence on making you stand around and watch broken, vague, trope-bloated dialogue between the handful of active characters is arduous.

The 10-minute Secret Level episode did a much more effective job of weaving an interesting parable by using the “cycle of survival” story as a parallel of the cyclical nature of Pac-Man’s eat-die-repeat gameplay. As a direct sequel to that short, Shadow Labyrinth expands on the story exponentially, but fills that new space with rote sci-fi lore that has very few compelling plot happenings sprinkled throughout. Even on the occasions where the journey of Puck and the Swordsman took big swerves, those twists came and went without much time spent considering their magnitude or potential consequences. I was always dungeon diving just like I would have been a few minutes later.

Shadow Labyrinth looks pretty good, though. The sort of moving paper doll animation used so well in games like Salt and Sanctuary is mostly solid here, too. There’s a surprising level of detail in many of the monsters, especially the mechanical ones with all of their bits and doodads. Animations can feel a little stilted and floaty, like a marionette on strings, but it doesn’t affect the action in any meaningful way. The levels themselves make good use of color in their fore and backgrounds, though I wouldn’t call its renditions of the depths of a lava filled cavern or the many stories of a high tech tower all that unique. There are disappointingly few locations that aren’t an underground cavern or high-tech base using similar backgrounds with the colors remixed. My favorite zone is the most interesting both in how it looks and how you have to navigate it, a valley filled with sometimes deadly flowers that is a completely optional and can’t be accessed until late.

Unfortunately, the actual task of moving through these expansive areas takes far too long. Platforming never gets too out of hand, the bigger challenges are relegated to side paths occasionally leading to more dangerous mini-puzzles and obstacles that’ll test your timing and reflexes. I was regularly presented with rails that morph you into the round yellow chomp machine we all recognize. These tracks allow you to waka waka waka up designated walls, around corners, and across ceilings, munching on pellets (which is a currency to spend on perks and upgrades) as you go. Hopping from line to line or launching Puck at foes with a spinning sword attack is funny at first, but I can count on one hand the times I encountered sections of this that feels truly clever outside of the fact that the gimmick exists in the first place. They are such isolated experiences that if you removed all of these sections from Shadow Labyrinth, I wouldn’t miss any of them.

While on foot, obscure signposting and an abundance of crossroads often made it unclear where the critical path laid and I regularly stumbled into side paths by accident, which sometimes lead to goodies like bonus health and other times to roadblocks I didn’t have the upgrade to surmount. Sauntering around these corners was oppressively dangerous as death would jettison me back to a checkpoint that almost always felt miles away from where I fell. It was made more stressful because of the two-tiered checkpointing: the larger Miku Sol points that you can upgrade your warrior with and teleport between, and smaller pylons that are checkpoints in the strictest, old school sense of the word. As resources dwindled and the paths splintered and multiplied seemingly endlessly, a little misstep here or there could erase so much of my progress that I felt just as trapped in these places as Puck did. Maybe that's the point, they don’t like it and neither do I.

One thing I did really like were the MAZEs, little pocket dimensions that unlock about midway through the journey that pull you into chaotic versions of Pac-Man levels. You’re doing much more than zooming and eating in these, with various puzzly obstacles like moving walls that you essentially throw at enemy ghosts to make them edible. The flashy colors and arcade music provided a sort of Championship Edition DX energy that was a welcome reprieve from the mostly by-the-numbers dungeon delving I was undoubtedly doing before I approached their glowing headstones, and would return to as soon as they were over.

Combat is full of your standard fare for a game like this. You can dodge around and swing a sword in a basic combo from the start. You unlock a power attack that provides a large amount of ranged damage when used alone or can be linked to the end of your basic combo as a satisfying finisher. There’s an air dash, a grappling hook, a parry, and more all waiting to be found and added to your repertoire as well, each of which cost a little bit of your ESP gauge to use. Running that meter to empty puts you in a Street Fighter 6-style burnout condition, meaning you can’t do anything but attack until it recharges again. This is a heavy and meaningful penalty, one that asks you to really pay attention to how much offense you’re attempting to unload at once.

Meanwhile, perks can alter you in smaller ways, like making your dodge cost less ESP or showing the remaining health of the last enemy you hit. The most effective ones for me were those that make your special abilities stronger or allow Puck to passively gather bits for you. But while those are useful, none of these perks changed combat in significant ways or made the fact that I was just mashing attacks until everything died feel less repetitive.

Puck can get in on the action on occasion, combining with your swordsman to become a sort of mechanical dragon creature that rips and tears until its timed energy bar is done. It was fun to be big enough to ignore enemy damage and adverse terrain for a short period of time, but you are still largely just mashing the basic attack button until you can’t anymore. To recharge this mode, you have to devour fallen foes, which also give you various materials that can be spent at specific vendors for perks. I spent almost no time trying to hunt down specific enemies to farm pieces, and my available perks list was understandably slim because of it. That said, there was nothing sitting on a vendor’s shelf that made me think my odds of beating a nagging boss or a tough jumping puzzle would be greater if I did.

There’s quite a variety of different types of enemies to use all of this offense on, but you spend so much time in large zones that baddies turn from new challenges to nuisances pretty quickly. Enemies that you can’t simply whack to death at first sight are few and far between, and they’re rarely arranged in a way that makes them a real threat to your progress, the occasional archer standing on a platform you need to jump up to hit notwithstanding. Bosses on the whole don’t require much strategy outside of basic pattern recognition, either. A giant rooster mini-boss early on gave me an opportunity to use my air dash optimally just after unlocking it, but it wasn't until much later in the roughly 30-hour campaign that any big enemies forced an extra technical layer out of my combat strategy. And when the challenge did finally ramp up, it was completely over-tuned. The damage output exploded and the time between attacks shrank, turning some late game fights into frustrating walks of shame from the closest checkpoint to the boss.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise has a rich history in the comic book realm, with multiple publishers adding to the mythology of the classic TV series. Now Dynamite Entertainment has become the newest home for Buffy comics, with the publisher announcing a pair of interconnected titles - Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Both books will be written by Absolute Wonder Woman and Birds of Prey writer Kelly Thompson and feature cover art by David Nakayama. No interior artists have been revealed yet.

The Studio star Ike Barinholtz is reportedly set to play Elon Musk in Amazon’s Artificial, a movie about ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

The Hollywood Reporter said Barinholtz is in talks to play the X / Twitter and Tesla owner in Artificial, which also stars Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield as OpenAI boss Sam Altman, and Anora actor Yura Borisov as OpenAI co-founder Iya Stuskever.