Rapper Skrilla says his viral hit Doot Doot (6 7) is in Grand Theft Auto 6.
The soundtrack and radio listings in GTA games have long been something of a cultural phenomenon, boosting plenty of musical careers. In this instance, however, the song in question is already a mega hit that has inspired a global meme.
Skrilla's 6 7 blew up earlier this year on TikTok and Instagram. It's a slang term referring to gun violence but became popular when it began appearing in clips about basketball players like LaMelo Ball, who is 6ft 7 inches tall. It then went viral when a boy known as the 67 Kid used it in a meme, and now kids the world over are saying it.
Talking about the game on Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, Skrilla told the hosts (thanks, Dexerto): “I’m waiting for GTA 6 to come out… 6 7 is on there, too. Yeah, 6 7 is on there. I’m going to be my own person on there, playing my own music."
Rockstar has yet to announce any songs appearing in GTA 6, and it no-doubt won't until its good and ready. But Skrilla, at least, sounds convinced 6 7 is in there, and you'd like to think he'd know.
Meanwhile, Faheem Rashad Najm, better-known as singer-songwriter T-Pain, confirmed that he's contributing to GTA 6 (in the course of bringing T-Pain aboard, it seems that Rockstar requested he stop role-playing on NoPixel, a popular GTA 5 role-play server that runs on third-party servers).
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.
A swathe of upcoming Pokémon game projects have seemingly been detailed online, via the latest release of material originating from the so-called "Teraleak" of data hacked from the servers of series developer Game Freak.
The cache of information, which includes development plans, concept art and early screenshots, was revealed overnight following the disclosure yesterday of data obtained in the hack that pertained to Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which launches this week.
As IGN reported yesterday, the suggestion is that the hacker behind last year's Game Freak breach has sat on this latest cache of data for almost a year, until Pokémon Legends: Z-A's launch. But now, it seems, the floodgates are open for everything else obtained from Game Freak detailing the franchise's future — and its product roadmap for the rest of the decade.
The largest cache of information relates to the franchise's highly-anticipated "Gen 10" games that are expected to launch next year, in time for Pokémon's 30th anniversary. Details now being shared online include the titles' planned name, early animation tests, in-engine footage and word of several planned gameplay ideas.
Beyond this, there's information relating to a separate, ambitious-sounding Pokémon MMO project, as well as concept art for a third Pokémon Legends spin-off title. And beyond that, there's the suggestion that Pokémon's Gen 11 will follow at the start of the next decade.
It's a frankly astonishing leak of information, seemingly from the same source which yesterday revealed details derived from beta builds of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and last year leaked a vast treasure trove of development data on pretty much every previous Pokémon project launched to date.
Pokémon fans are already poring over the purported plans and discussing several eye-opening gameplay mechanics. There's even early fan art for a new Pokémon species spotted in one of the new pieces of conceprt art. But it's worth pointing out that some or indeed much of what has been shared may not ultimately come to pass.
As yesterday's Pokémon Legends: Z-A beta build leak showed, gameplay features get cut in development. And nothing in the Teraleak can be relied upon as reflecting Game Freak's current plans — as the hack itself took place back in August 2024.
Nintendo previously attempted to track down the culprit behind the Teraleak, and launched a legal bid to subpoena Discord to divulge the hackers' identity back in April this year. IGN has contacted Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for comment.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Post-launch support for Hollow Knight: Silksong continues, this time with patch version 1.0.28891 out now.
The update makes a number of improvements and fixes, and some light balance changes. The game now pauses when the controller disconnects, which is an important safety net for such an intense game. Indeed, there are controller support improvements across the board.
On the balance side of things, there’s a slight increase to Sharp Dart and Cross Stitch damage, updated damage scaling on Rune Rage to match other Silk Skills, and a slight decrease to Thread Storm damage at higher needle levels. It’s also worth noting that the patch changes Fine Pins wish drops from 50% chance to 100%, but raises the required quantity.
Fixed various smaller controller issues (more fixes to come in future).
Fixed remaining instance of certain players getting stuck cursed while in the late game.
Fixed Curveclaw not reacting to Hunter down-stab.
Fixed rare instances of being able to air dash and double jump when not intended.
Fixed several out of bounds situations.
Fixed Pharlid Divers sometimes sliding on roofs after ambushing in certain scenes.
Fixed Eva Hunter Crest upgrades unintentionally clearing tool equips.
Fixed rare instances of Harpoon sometimes granting 2 Silk instead of 1.
Fixed Cogflies sometimes appearing from odd locations after scene transition and, in rare cases, having their active quantity reduced by 1.
Fixed Crafting Kits not increasing the damage of offensive blue tools (eg Sawtooth Circlet).
Slight increase to Sharp Dart and Cross Stitch damage.
Updated damage scaling on Rune Rage to match other Silk Skills.
Slight decrease to Thread Storm damage at higher needle levels.
Fixed Surgeon enemies sometimes pulling the hero out of bounds.
Fixed instances of some Spool Fragments being permanently missable if a player immediately quit after collecting the item.
Fixed Crust King Khann sometimes falling out of bounds during entry, when fought on low-end systems.
Fixed rare instance of Second Sentinel becoming rotated when defeated.
Fixed additional case of Seth sometimes getting out of bounds and not returning.
Fixed Seth sometimes remaining invincible for a moment at the start of a refight.
Fixed Vaults slide blocks incorrectly responding to damage sources other than the needle.
Changed Fine Pins wish drops from 50% chance to 100%, but raised required quantity.
Fixed issues when consuming a Silkeater while in water.
Fixed Scuttlebrace sometimes allowing a wall jump when not intended.
Fixed a soft-lock during the Grand Gate opening sequence, if the Citadel had been visited and some bellshrines remained inactive.
Various smaller fixes and tweaks.
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.
For people who decide to give Splinter Cell: Deathwatch a try on Netflix that are unfamiliar with Sam Fisher’s long and incredible run in the 2000’s as the stealth video game genre’s Pepsi to Metal Gear Solid’s Coke, they’re going to find a violent, slightly over the top, yet pretty captivating eight-episode spy show. But for those of us who have loved Splinter Cell for over 20 years and waited more than half of that time for a new game, Deathwatch will be all of those things but also a bit bittersweet.
First, the sweet part of ‘bittersweet’ is that the show is quite good! The characters are all fun and have important roles to play in moving the story forward, Liev Schreiber is an outstanding understudy to Michael Ironside from the games as the voice of Fisher, and the show is paced well enough that I kept eagerly pressing “Next Episode” until I finished all eight parts – both times I watched it. The “bitter” comes from the realization that not only are we still no closer to a new Splinter Cell game, but this show is so far along in the timeline that we might not have much more time with my favorite sardonic super spy.
Yes, Deathwatch picks up decades after Splinter Cell Blacklist, the most recent game. Anna “Grim” Grímsdóttir is running shadow-ops US government agency Fourth Echelon, and Sam Fisher is living a quiet, night-vision-goggle-free life on a farm in Poland. In fact, Sam has all of two lines of dialogue in the entire first episode. That’s because Deathwatch begins by tracking young agent Zinnia McKenna (voiced by Kirby Howell-Baptiste) in the middle of an op gone bad; the fellow agent she’s been sent to Lithuania to extract is quite dead – the victim of torture, in fact. Her youthful rage leads her to make a mistake Fisher wouldn’t, and before long all hell has broken loose, with Fisher being very unwillingly roped into the whole mess and back to the life he thought he’d left behind.
By the end of the second episode, Sam is very much the star of the show, and season one is better for it.
By the end of the first episode, I was intrigued and ready for the rest of the series – not to mention relieved that Sam was clearly going to be a central part of Deathwatch, and that showrunner Derek Kolstad (whose action resume includes creating John Wick) wasn’t simply resurrecting Fisher to try and hand off the Splinter Cell brand to McKenna and a new generation of Fourth Echelon agents. No, no; by the end of the second episode, Sam is very much the star of the show, and season one is better for it.
As someone to whom Splinter Cell means a lot – I’ve completed every single game in the series (even Splinter Cell Essentials on PSP!) – the great Michael Ironside will always be my Sam Fisher. And it would’ve been particularly fitting for Ironside to get the role here, since Deathwatch’s Fisher is advanced in age, and Ironside himself is 75. But whatever the reason, Schreiber got the call, and he does a phenomenal job bringing Sam’s dry humor, wry toughness, and human compassion to life in his exchanges with his teammates, his enemies, and his dog, Kaiju. He lends Sam a toughness and gruffness that’s critical for Fisher’s character. I love him in the role and I look forward to more of his Sam Fisher if we’re lucky enough to get a Season 2.
It’s also worth noting how violent this show is – far more so than the games. Sure, you could kill everyone when playing, but Deathwatch is not shy about showing the grisly details. You’ll see scalpels (and fingers) driven into eyeballs, knives jammed into the sides of skulls, bullets fired into heads, knives rammed into guts, and worse. This isn’t a complaint, though; I liked what the violence= brought to Deathwatch, because it helped illustrate how life-or-death each encounter is for these lone-wolf spies slinking around the shadows.
And speaking of the shadows, yes, there is plenty of spywork done in this incarnation of Splinter Cell. Though if this was Blacklist, McKenna would be doing a Ghost playthrough and Sam would be playing Panther-style. He racks up quite the body count across the eight episodes – which I could only chuckle at because it’s the exact opposite of the way I typically play the games. But anyway, yes, these agents do cool ninja stuff in darkness, they do choke people out, and they do use gadgets here and there – though sadly there are no sightings of Splinter Cell classics like the Sticky Shocker or the Sticky Camera (or the SC-20k gun, for that matter).
Getting back to Sam’s supporting cast, I enjoyed what each of them brought to the team: Grim has neither patience nor F’s to give, Jo brings the steadiness Grim can’t while holding down the fort at Fourth Echelon HQ in Copenhagen, Thunder is a recruited Canadian hacker who quickly ingratiates himself to the team, and McKenna is a skilled agent for whom the mission gets personal. And on the bad guy side, Deathwatch resurrects a name familiar to Splinter Cell fans: Douglas Shetland. Though featured in flashbacks, Shetland is long dead, but the show’s story revolves around his daughter Diana Shetl nd’s dedication to turning Doug’s company Displace International from a private military contractor into a cleantech company whose imminent Xanadu project could power the world with renewable energy.
Does the plot get a bit nonsensical towards the end? Sure, but then again, so did the games. On a related note, I did appreciate that, whether it was intentional or not (and I’d lean towards it being on purpose), Deathwatch does allude to a couple of missions from the best of all the games, Chaos Theory, without outright retreading them. In fact, the final two episodes are titled “Chaos Theory: Part 1” and “Part 2.” Other Easter eggs from the past include not one but two very familiar sound effects: there’s the classic tri-lens night vision goggles turning on, of course, but I particularly appreciated the radio/comms activation noise being ripped straight from the original Xbox days of the franchise.
Deathwatch does allude to a couple of missions from the best of all the games, Chaos Theory.
Circling back to the bittersweetness of this series, while there’s certainly nothing stopping Ubisoft (who produced this show) and Netflix from keeping animated Splinter Cell alive for many years to come by simply doing flashback seasons that take us back to Sam Fisher’s prime super-spy days, the more likely reality is that this Old Man Sam isn’t going to be around for the long haul by nature of where this show starts us in Fisher’s life. If that proves to be the case, it either means this show itself will be with us all too briefly, or Schreiber’s Fisher will hand the reins to Howell-Baptiste’s McKenna, which audiences might resist, as it’d be like killing off Batman and turning it into a Robin show. I find the former to be more likely – after all, Netflix only gave The Legend of Lara Croft (which, in fairness, was not a good show) two seasons, and even the stellar Castlevania only got four seasons. Plus, historically speaking, Sam Fisher is Splinter Cell.
But for the time being, I’m just going to enjoy the fact that we’ve got Splinter Cell back in our lives, the show is a great (if all-too-brief) ultraviolent romp for just over three total hours across eight 22-27 minute episodes, and maybe, just maybe, it might convince Ubisoft to get its ass in gear on that Splinter Cell remake that got announced four years ago and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Alienware's new mainstream gaming laptop for 2025 is dubbed the "Alienware Aurora" and it replaces the previous generation's x16 and m16 series of laptops. It comes in two models: the 16 and 16X. Of the two, the 16X Aurora is the model I would unequivocally recommend. It features a fully aluminum body, a higher quality display, and more powerful CPU and GPU. It's also more expensive, however right now there's an excellent deal that actually drops the price to just $50 more than an equivalently configured 16 (non-X) Aurora.
Alienware 16X Aurora RTX 5070 Gaming Laptop for $1,599.99
Gamers should go with the Alienware 16X Aurora model
The Alienware 16X Aurora is the model that serious gamers should consider over the 16 Aurora and that's pretty obvious when you compare the specs. Just look at the all of the upgrades:
Better display (2560x1600 240Hz G-Sync vs 2560x1600 120Hz)
More powerful CPU (Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX vs Intel Core 9 270H)
Higher RTX 5070 TGP rating and thus better performance (115W TGP vs 85W TGP)
More premium materials (metal alloy lid and chassis vs lid only)
RGB keyboard vs white-only backlighting
Thunderbolt 4.0 port
Compared to other Alienware laptops, the 16X Aurora is designed to look less like a gamer's laptop. It boasts a sleek, understated design with the absence of extraneous visual-only embellishments or unnecessary RGB lighting outside of the keyboard illumination. This is a solidly built machine with a metal (magnesium alloy) chassis and anodized aluminum lid and bottom shell. Under the hood, the 16X Aurora packs a punch with powerful gaming components and a Cryo Chamber cooling system. It's also over $1,000 less than an Alienware's top-end 16 Area-51 laptop.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is a top performing CPU
The Alienware 16X Aurora laptop is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, which boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.4GHz with 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 GeForce RTX 5070 is 5%-10% better than the RTX 4070
The mobile RTX 5070 GPU performs about 5%-10% better than the RTX 4070 that it replaces. That's not a very big generational improvement, but the RTX 5070 has the newer DLSS 4 technology with multi-frame generation, which widens the performance gap in games that support it. DLSS 4.0. This GPU is a good match with the display's enhanced 2560x1600 resolution and bumping up to the next GPU in the stack (RTX 5070 Ti mobile) will cost you hundreds more.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
I've seen enough sales to know when the stars align, and right now the savings galaxy is sparkling mighty nice. Between long-awaited sequels, slick remasters and a few certified time vampires, this is one of those weeks where our backlogs are going to expand. Here's what caught my attention across the big four platforms, plus some LEGO fun to keep your shelf from looking too tidy.
In retro news, I'm waxing up a cake to mark 23 years since Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer first dropped in. For Illawarra South Coast groms like me and my mates, this game was basically a pipeline to paradise. We frothingly repped the Aussie spots like Bells and Kirra, legends like Curren and Carroll, and that slick combo system that felt like Tony Hawk had swapped his deck for a board.
Still, not everyone was amped on the game’s floaty physics and mid-air kickflips that’d make even Poseidon raise a brow. Some of us paddled past this to Transworld Surf or Sunny Garcia’s for a bit more realism.
Aussie birthdays for notable games.
- Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars (PC) 1996. Redux
- Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer (GC. PS2, XB) 2002. eBay
On Switch, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is shaping up to be everything we wanted from a new Samus mission. Retro Studios reportedly rebuilt it from scratch after the first dev attempt fell short, and that bold restart is looking great so far. Meanwhile, It Takes Two remains one of the best co-op experiences ever designed. Every level is a fresh mechanic and a new emotional gut punch, all from the mind of Josef Fares.
Pokémon Scarlet (-37%) - A$49.90 A bold step into Paldea with three story paths, full co-op, and open-world exploration that finally makes Pokémon feel fresh again. A must-own at this price.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A NS2 (-23%) - A$85.00 The follow-up to Legends: Arceus is shaping up to be another bold experiment. Expect open-world action and mysterious new evolutions when it lands on Switch 2.
Donkey Kong Bananza (-20%) - A$88.00 The big ape returns for some destructible platforming fun, discreet co-op, and collectible bananas galore. Perfect for family controller-swap sessions or retro-loving speedrunners.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (-17%) - A$75.00 Samus is back with next-gen visuals, first-person exploration, and a return to her sci-fi roots. One of Switch 2’s most anticipated adventures.
It Takes Two (-35%) - A$39.00 One of the best co-op games ever made. A clever, heartfelt romp that constantly reinvents itself with new mechanics and wild imagination. Perfect for pairs.
Over on Xbox Series X, Hogwarts Legacy is a must for Potterheads, and I’ll admit the nostalgia hit hard when I first flew over the castle at sunset. The game nails the fantasy of being a witch or wizard in an open world. Assassin's Creed Mirage, on the other hand, pulls back the bloated sprawl and reminds us why sneaking through a bazaar with a hidden blade will always rule.
Hogwarts Legacy (-57%) - A$47.10 Live your wizarding dream in a richly detailed open world set in the 1800s. Explore Hogwarts, brew potions, and sling spells in this magical best-seller.
Assassin's Creed Mirage (-69%) - A$25.00 A back-to-basics stealth adventure that recaptures the spirit of classic Assassin’s Creed. Set in bustling Baghdad, it’s sharp, compact, and stylishly deadly.
Prince of Persia The Lost Crown (-43%) - A$28.00 A stunning side-scrolling revival mixing parkour, time powers, and Metroidvania exploration. A return to form for the long-sleeping series.
Darksiders III (-73%) - A$14.80 Fury’s whip-cracking crusade delivers stylish combat and apocalyptic flair. A great pickup for fans of Souls-lite brawlers and gothic world-building.
No More Heroes 3 (-57%) - A$31.90 The world’s most eccentric assassin is back. Expect aliens, absurd boss fights, and meta madness in Suda51’s most chaotic sandbox yet.
Xbox One
Dishonored 2 (-77%) - A$9.10 Arkane’s stealth-action masterpiece offers creative assassinations, supernatural powers, and endless replayability. An absolute steal for immersive sim fans.
PGA Tour 2K25 (-62%) - A$45.00 The latest golf sim lands with smoother swings, licensed courses, and online tours. Ideal for fairway fanatics chasing realism.
NBA 2K22 (-81%) - A$19.00 Dunk through the MyCareer story, build dream teams, and test your skills online. Elderly, but still one of the deepest sports games out there.
What's Big on the Radar? Headed out the door quick
PS5-wise, Stellar Blade is a rare spectacle that feels both stylish and grounded. Developer Shift Up poured their heart into every animation, and it shows. Rise of the Ronin, from Team Ninja, scratches that samurai itch better than most, too. I’ve been slicing through late Edo-era Japan, and it’s a heady mix of history lesson and hackathon.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (-36%) - A$79.90 Kojima’s cinematic odyssey continues with haunting vistas, eerie mysteries, and surreal traversal. Expect more emotion, more cargo, and more weirdness.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (-74%) - A$29.00 Soar through lush jungles and fight RDA invaders in Ubisoft’s open-world take on James Cameron’s blue epic. A visual spectacle at a bargain.
DualSense Edge (-12%) - A$299.00 Sony’s premium controller offers custom sticks, back buttons, and elite ergonomics. Pricey, yes, but precision comes at a cost.
Rise of the Ronin (-36%) - A$79.90 Team Ninja’s open-world samurai RPG blends fast-paced swordplay and historical drama. A must-play for fans of Ghost of Tsushima and Nioh.
Lego Horizon Adventures (-33%) - A$39.90 A charming Lego retelling of Aloy’s story that trades gritty realism for colourful bricks and slapstick humour. Family-friendly post-apocalyptic fun.
Stellar Blade (-31%) - A$85.90 A sleek, stylish action game with razor-sharp combat and PS5 showpiece visuals. Eve’s battle to reclaim Earth is brutal, beautiful, and brilliantly cinematic.
PS4
Assassin's Creed Mirage (-69%) - A$25.00 Classic stealth, modern polish. Mirage shrinks Assassin’s Creed back to its sneaky roots, and this version still looks and runs solid on PS4.
God of War Ragnarok (-45%) - A$59.90 Kratos and Atreus deliver a thunderous finale to the Norse saga. Epic combat, emotional storytelling, and top-tier direction.
Riders Republic (-57%) - A$42.90 Extreme sports paradise. Race, trick, and crash your way across mountains in this huge multiplayer playground. Think Forza Horizon, but on a snowboard.
On PC, Red Dead Redemption 2 still stands unmatched for realism. Arthur Morgan's compelling story and the level of immersion Rockstar achieved are staggering. Disco Elysium, however, remains the gold standard for narrative role-playing. Its world feels alive, messy and painfully human, and it rewards players who think before they click.
Red Dead Redemption 2 (-75%) - A$22.40 Rockstar’s wild west epic delivers jaw-dropping visuals, gut-punch storytelling, and unmatched immersion. One of the best PC ports ever made.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (-85%) - A$13.40 Witty, heartfelt, and full of 80s rock. A surprise single-player gem that’s more fun than most Marvel blockbusters.
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut (-91%) - A$5.10 A surreal detective RPG where dialogue is your weapon. Deeply written and darkly hilarious. A modern classic for thinkers.
Doom Eternal (-78%) - A$12.00 Rip and tear through demons in blistering fashion. Fast, fluid, and metal as hell. FPS perfection at a ridiculous discount.
Lego Bricktales (-88%) - A$5.00 Solve puzzles and rebuild worlds brick by brick in this cozy, creative adventure. A relaxing change of pace for Lego fans.
Adam Mathew is a passionate connoisseur, a lifelong game critic, and an Aussie deals wrangler who genuinely wants to hook you up with stuff that's worth playing (but also cheap). He plays practically everything, sometimes on YouTube.
Lenovo's most powerful Legion gaming PC just dropped to a new price low for a few days only. The Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 gaming PC equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor and RTX 5090 graphics card is marked down to $4,079.99 after two stackable coupon codes "EXTRAFIVE" and "BUYMORELENOVO". That's over $1,000 off in combined savings. This configuration is exclusive to Lenovo direct and you won't be able to find it at traditional retailer sites like Amazon, Newegg, or Best Buy. If you order it now, you should receive it by late September.
Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 RTX 5090 Gaming PC for $4,080
The Legion Tower 7 is Lenovo's top-end desktop computer, boasting a well-ventilated chassis with a mesh front panel housing six total 120mm fans (including three fans for the 360mm liquid cooling system) to keep your components nice and cool. The system is powered by a generously oversized 1,200W power supply. We reviewed last year's Legion Tower 7i desktop, which uses the same chassis, and came away impressed.
This particular configuration features an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor, GeForce RTX 5090 32GB graphics card, a whopping 64GB of DDR5-5600MHz of RAM, and a 2TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor has a max turbo frequency of 5.7GHz with 24 cores and a 40MB L2 cache. According to Passmark, this is Intel's best gaming CPU and really the Intel chip that can compete with AMD's X3D processors. It's paired with 64GB of DDR5 memory.
The RTX 5090 Is the Most Powerful Graphics Card Ever
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has emerged as the most powerful consumer GPU on the market. Although with this generation Nvidia has prioritized software updates, AI features, and DLSS 4 technology to improve gameplay performance, the 5090 still boasts an impressive 25%-30% uplift over the RTX 4090 in hardware-based raster performance. If you want the absolute best performance for your gaming PC, there is literally no other option from any other brand.
Why Choose Lenovo?
Lenovo Legion gaming PCs and laptops generally feature better build quality than what you'd find from other prebuilt PCs. For desktop PCs in particular, people like the fact that Lenovo does not use proprietary components in its computer systems, so they're easier to upgrade with off-the-shelf parts. Although we haven't yet reviewed the new 2025 models, we have reviewed last year's Legion 7 desktop and really liked its build quality and performance.
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.
Amazon is having another one of its "Buy 2 Get 1 50% Off" sales and it is absolutely filled to the brim with puzzles this time around. There are hundreds of options included in this sale from some of the best puzzle brands out there. If you're on the hunt for your next puzzle, or are just looking to grab a nice gift for the puzzler in your life, this promotion makes it a great time to save some money.
To take advantage of the promotion, you'll just need to add two eligible jigsaw puzzles to your Amazon cart and the 50% discount will be applied to whichever one is the least expensive. And since it isn't just puzzles included (there are board games as well), you can also mix and match with other items to still get that discount. I've gathered some of my top picks from this sale below, but there's a ton of other options available if you want to browse the sale yourself.
Jigsaw Puzzle Sale on Amazon Today
Like I mentioned above, there are a ton of puzzles included in this sale. I couldn't possibly include them all, so I've only highlighted a few top picks that I think best represent what is included here. There's a fairly wide variety of piece counts, from 300 to 3000, but I mostly stuck to 1000-piece puzzles here as they are the most popular whenever I've covered a puzzle sale.
If you are looking for some suggestions for what to buy, the Spider-Verse puzzle from Buffalo games has been on our list of the best puzzles for adults for over a year now. It's got a ton of different Spideys and is consistently one of the most popular marvel puzzles out there. There's also the Disney & Pixar Shop puzzle from Ravensburger that offers something similar for fans of Disney instead of Marvel. There's a bunch of characters and easter eggs hidden in each one.
I'd also recommend checking out The Drippy Trip puzzle. It's the latest puzzle made by The Magic Puzzle Company and actually features a few fun secrets from the popular cartoon Adventure Time. If you aren't familiar with Magic Puzzle Company Puzzles, they are a mix between jigsaw puzzle and magic kit and are generally very popular with families. There have been five different series of these types of puzzles and Amazon has a bunch of them featured in this sale right now.
Board Games Are Also Included
Amazon's buy 1, get 1 50% off sale also extends to board games. So if you want to purchase a puzzle and a board game you can still get that 50% off. There are a surprising number of board games included in the sale and you can mix and match to your heart's desire. There's even some crossover between IP so you can purchase a Lord of the Rings puzzleand a Lord of the Rings board game all at once if you want.
A House of Dynamite is enjoying a limited theatrical release and will soon make its Netflix premiere on October 24.
Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow's first movie in nearly a decade is a paranoid sandbox of doomsday porn featuring a talented ensemble sweating and fretting their way through a global game of nuclear chicken. For a movie mostly featuring characters prattling and panicking in enclosed government spaces, it has a swiftness of energy and a lively urgency. Ultimately though, it's feckless and aimless in its efforts to deliver unto us a new harrowing thing to intrusively keep us up at night.
When a single nuclear missile is launched at America from an unknown perpetrator, folks like a White House Situation Room Captain (Rebecca Ferguson), a Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso), a STRATCOM General (Tracy Letts), the Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris), and the current President (Idris Elba) -- and many more -- must run through every scenario of possible response while the movie layers one hypothetical nightmare on top of another.
A House of Dynamite is basically a big "what if?" crucible that keeps unspooling new Russian nesting dolls of f**kery. Okay, yes, WHAT IF this happens? There's a mysterious lone strike against the U.S. that could be an accident (or a provocation): What would we do? Well, not only does A House of Dynamite take us through that dramatized simulation, but it also adds several more layers of "gotcha" torment that feel like flat-out manipulations, since the film massively fumbles in the end zone, almost proclaiming that it merely exists to throw us all into a existential tizzy with no release one way or the other. It actually loses a whole ass point because of the finish, by the way.
Nuclear armageddon horror -- usually cinematically juiced up as a "political thriller" -- has been around since the advent of the bomb itself, from 1964's Fail Safe or Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove to Tony Scott's Crimson Tide (1995) to this year's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning and Hulu's Paradise. The idea is that once the world starts to unravel in any serious way, everyone will launch everything everywhere, because preemptively striking is the only way to ensure a small percent of your people will survive. On an even more basic level, it's the idea that action is inherently seen as a virtue while passivity is equated with cowardice, even at the expense of all humanity. A House of Dynamite brings this up, but doesn't offer up its own resolution...or any decision, really. So not only is this well-traversed territory, but it's a half-measure compared to its peers.
Some positives here are Bigelow's direction -- which takes a claustrophobic narrative and gives it a fast pulse and humanity -- and the script's structure, which splits up the story's crucial 20-minute window of chaos and alarm into three chapters, each one showing us a different segment of the ensemble and how they're dealing with the crisis at hand. Of course, after seeing the same events play out three different ways, you can't really see it as anything other than a build up. And so the movie builds. To something big. That never happens. That's the F-minus portion of the film. It's almost as if A House of Dynamite tries to shuck its B-movie qualities -- because, at its crux, that's what it is (Bigelow and pedigreed cast aside) -- and don a sheen of Oscar bait nonsense.
Everyone's really good here, of course, with the likes of Ferguson, Elba, Harris, and Anthony Ramos carrying us through this diabolical WarGames riff. Even the characters who only exist in their job roles, and don't get that tiny smidgeon of home life to share, are terrific. They all feel full of internal life as everyone bandies about solutions to the problem of America possibly losing 10 million people without knowing who to seek revenge on. You'll even see the likes of Greta Lee, Willa Fitzgerald, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Kaitlyn Dever. All the while, the movie unwittingly reveals its scariest element, which is making us think about who's in charge right now and how all of humankind is immensely borked if anything even slightly resembling this even happens.
There are a lot of daily horrors to deal with in this country right now, so it's very understandable if some might want to avoid apocalyptic fiction, or even films that hit "too close to the bone." A House of Dynamite accidentally wanders into this terrain, but it's also too timid to go the full mile. Maybe this is how it earns its "streaming movie" badge of dishonor. There weren't too many people in the theater with me watching this, but every single one of us proclaimed "What!?" when the credits rolled.
While just about every phone you can get your hands on nowadays will be able to play some games, several key features distinguish a fine gaming phone from a great one. Powerful processing is one piece of the puzzle. Being able to sustain high performance levels is also a must – you don’t want to deal with a phone that can only run smoothly for a few minutes before it slows down and scorches your hands. Extra memory and storage are also clutch for gaming phones, providing a means for multitasking even while you have a game running and giving you plenty of space for games. Some gaming phones, like the RedMagic 10 Pro, even offer extra upgrades for gaming, like additional shoulder buttons and enhanced touch sampling rates. (Though you could also just pick up a dedicated phone controller.)
Of course, the display is also a big piece of the puzzle. If you can’t see your games, you’re going to have a hard time playing them. A bigger, brighter display helps, as does a boost in refresh rate for smooth motion. An added benefit of a bigger phone is that your thumbs won’t cover as much of the display when you’re using touch controls. I've been testing and reviewing gaming phones for years now, so with all these details in mind, here’s a look at the best smartphones that also excel when it comes to gaming anywhere, anytime.
TL;DR – These Are the Best Gaming Phones:
1. RedMagic 10 Pro
Best Gaming Phone
Gaming demands a lot from a phone, and over all others, the RedMagic 10 Pro has what it takes, as I found when I reviewed it. The beating heart of the RedMagic 10 Pro is an actively cooled Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. I’d already seen this chip do wonders performance-wise in phones like the Asus ROG Phone 9 and OnePlus 13, but the RedMagic 10 Pro turns it up a notch with a cooling fan that lets the chip run all the more effectively for the kind of long-haul sessions that gaming requires. Any time the RedMagic 10 Pro wasn’t at the head of the pack in benchmarks, it was still very near the front, and it absolutely led the way where sustain was concerned. All that performance is only further backed by an astoundingly large 7,050mAh battery.
Naturally, the RedMagic 10 Pro has a few extras specifically for gamers. It includes two shoulder buttons, providing a way to get your index fingers in on the action. You can simply map these shoulder buttons to on-screen controls, good for pretty much any game. The display also has a fast touch-sampling rate, so it’ll detect inputs quickly. Depending on the game, you can also tap into supersampling and frame interpolation to sharpen visuals and smooth out the action.
RedMagic packs all of this capability into a good-looking phone, too. It’s not gaudy, but it still has style. There are a handful of looks, including clear backs, that give a peek at the layout of components. The display is also a winner. It has tiny bezels and stretches 6.85-inches across – and we’re talking a proper 6.85 inches, as the display is rectangular without large areas being cropped by corner curves. RedMagic even effectively hides the selfie camera beneath the display so that it doesn’t interrupt your view of games. The display is a brilliant AMOLED panel offering a 144Hz refresh rate, high peak brightness, and ample sharpness.
Truly, this phone is wonderfully geared up for gaming, and even with a commanding performance lead, it doesn’t cost as much as its competitors. The RedMagic 10 Pro starts at $649, which is almost absurd considering the price of competitors like the Asus ROG Phone 9 at $999.
2. OnePlus 13
Best Everyday Phone for Gaming
If you’ve seen some of the ostentatious designs that come with “gamer” gear, you can be forgiven for wanting to steer clear of the typical gaming phones. Fortunately, you still have an excellent option available to you with the OnePlus 13. You’ll find plenty to love when it comes time to game, but for the rest of the time, you’ll get a much more tame-looking phone.
Inside the OnePlus 13 is a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. This pairs a blazing fast CPU and potent GPU that make for exceptional everyday performance and potent gaming speeds. In benchmarks, the OnePlus 13 readily rivaled the iPhone 16 Pro Max in CPU speeds and outstripped it in 3DMark’s graphics tests. The phone could even offer a decent amount of sustain. And when put to the test with Wuthering Waves at max settings, it didn’t struggle to keep up with the action. The phone’s 6,000mAh battery also helps out for those long gaming sessions.
OnePlus packs that speed into an elegant chassis. There are three designs, and each is more than a simple color swap, giving you a little more selection than you typically get from new phones. The design also has impressive water protections against submersion and hot water jets. The display on the OnePlus 13 is also excellent, providing a large, vibrant, and searingly bright platform for everyday use, movies, and gaming. And unlike most gaming phones, the OnePlus 13 doesn’t force you to sacrifice camera quality. You’ll find brilliant shooters on the back and front of the phone that capture great photos and video.
The OnePlus 13 comes in at $899 for a configuration with 256GB of storage and 12GB of memory, but if you want plenty of room for games, you can bump up to 512GB of storage and get 16GB of memory for $999.
3. iPhone 17 Pro Max
Best iPhone for Gaming
Mobile gaming calls for a couple of things: extreme performance and a great display. Where iPhones are concerned, the iPhone 17 Pro Max delivers the best Apple has to offer in both categories. Offering a massive (for smartphones) 6.9-inch display, the 17 Pro Max benefits from 120Hz ProMotion smoothness, ample sharpness, and a vivid OLED panel so bright that our reviewer flashbanged herself with it.
Performance is also its strong point. The A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Pro Max packs six CPU cores and six GPU cores, which make for small performance upticks over the earlier iPhone 16 Pro Max but will be a much more considerable boost for anyone coming from older models. The iPhone 17 Pro Max is still lagging slightly behind some of the Android phone options running the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC in multi-core performance and 3DMark benchmarks (like the RedMagic 10 Pro and OnePlus 13 included above) and that gap is likely to widen further when the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 lands in phones in late 2025. But that’s not enough to hold the iPhone 17 Pro Max back as a great option for gaming, as plenty of developers optimize their games for iPhone, and the performance on deck here holds up well in even the most demanding games.
In our testing, heat was still an issue, as it is for most phones, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max still managed it well enough. In 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light stress test, the phone quickly lowered its performance after one run, but then largely sustained for the remaining 19 runs. That’s fairly typical behavior from a phone that doesn’t have active cooling (a rarity) or simply throttles its performance from the start. Crucially, the phone’s extensive aluminum frame and vapor chamber do a good job of spreading heat, so even though the phone gets warm while gaming, our reviewer didn’t find it having any serious hotspots.
What helps make the iPhone 17 Pro Max more worthwhile is that on top of its credentials for gaming, it’s also a powerful device in other respects. It’s built sturdy, it has a great set of cameras, and it should get the same kind of long-term support that has been a standout feature of iPhones for many years.
4. iPhone 16e
Best Budget iPhone for Gaming
While Apple did launch the new iPhone 16e in 2025 with budget-minded consumers in consideration, it didn’t provide as affordable a new model as it had with earlier iPhone SE devices. The $599 iPhone 16e has some advantages though. This new model runs on the A18 chip that powers the iPhone 16, and that’s a serious piece of hardware. Unfortunately, the iPhone 16e gets a trimmed-down GPU with 4 cores instead of 5. Fortunately, the A18 has performance to spare, so I don’t see that holding the iPhone 16e back from being a solid gaming phone for even demanding titles. Even though I haven’t had a chance to test the iPhone 16e yet, I think it’s safe to say it’ll still rip through everyday operation and games alike, and my colleague over at PCMag saw excellent performance from the phone in his review.
While it's a shame the iPhone 16e couldn’t get a $429 price tag like the prior iPhone SE, it doesn’t make the same sacrifices that phone did. The iPhone 16e gets a more modern design in line with what Apple’s been pushing since as early as the iPhone 12. The best part of this upgrade for gamers is the much greater screen size. The iPhone 16e has a 6.1-inch display without the beefy bezels of the iPhone SE. That’s more real estate to see games and use your thumbs for controls. Plus, the display is an OLED panel, which provides better image quality and contrast. The iPhone 16e also starts with more base storage at 128GB, which is huge compared to the 64GB Apple provided in the prior iPhone SE.
All of that sets up the iPhone 16e nicely for gamers. But I’ll caveat that it may not be the perfect choice for folks who just want a value-focused iPhone. It may be the cheapest Apple offers at the moment, but it does sacrifice quite a bit. For instance, you won’t get access to mmWave or UWB 5G networking, which tends to offer the fastest speeds. That lack of mmWave also means precise device tracking for items like AirTags won’t work. The iPhone 16e also lacks MagSafe support, so you’ll have to either go without it or rely on a case to enable compatibility with MagSafe accessories. The camera system is also rather limited with just one sensor. I’d recommend the iPhone 14 for most people, but the updated chip in the iPhone 16e will make more sense for gamers who can forgo the extra mentioned here.
5. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
Best Foldable Gaming Phone
Sometimes you just want more screen to see all the glory of your favorite games, and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 that I reviewed is just the ticket. This foldable phone has an 8-inch interior display that stretches games across it, and while that may not work for everything, you can still use its exterior display for gaming too – that one is a more normal 21:9 display. Regardless of which you use, both screens will highlight the rich contrast and bold color of an AMOLED display, not to mention the smooth visuals that come with a 120Hz refresh rate.
To power your games, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 packs in a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. This is the same hardware you’ll see in many of the best gaming devices out of 2025. Between the powerful Oryon CPU cores and the Adreno GPU, this chip offers extreme performance for smartphones and tablets alike or, in the case of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, both types of devices in one device. If you really want to go all out, you still will be better off with a tailor-made gaming device. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has bursty performance, but under heavy sustained loads, its thin design will heat up and see performance drop off by as much as 60%. Thankfully, plenty of Android games don’t take full advantage of the hardware just yet, so there’s a good chance you’ll get to game without feeling this specific shortcoming.
The flipside is that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is much more pocket-friendly than its predecessor. This folding phone sits at just over 4mm thick open and it folds shut to measure just 8.9mm thick. That’s the same thickness as the Asus ROG Phone 9.
While the Galaxy Z Fold 7 may not have the same gaming chops as dedicated gaming phones, it will provide a more well-rounded experience. So if you’re also looking for solid cameras and long-term software support, you can expect it here. Of course, with a $1,999 price tag, I’d still point anyone who didn’t need one device to serve as a gaming tablet and phone toward separate purchases of a OnePlus 13 and Redmagic Astra tablet, which will cost less combined.
6. OnePlus 12R
Best Budget Android for Gaming
The OnePlus 12 is a compelling value, offering top-tier qualities at the price of most base-tier flagships (think S24 Ultra at the price of an S24). But OnePlus wanted to make an even more budget-friendly option with the OnePlus 12R. This model offers the look and feel of the OnePlus 12, but it comes in at just $499. The star of the show is the 6.78-inch LTPO AMOLED display, which boasts a 1264x2780 and 120Hz refresh rate. It’s a stunner and a great platform for gaming. Put this next to the iPhone SE, and it’s no contest which has the better display.
Internally, the OnePlus 12R isn’t swinging for the fences. It packs 2023’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, but for most gaming, it still offers plenty of horsepower. With a 5,500mAh battery inside, the OnePlus 12R is also ready to stretch your gaming sessions out.
The OnePlus 12R did have to make some sacrifices, and its camera system is one area where it trimmed things. It doesn't have a setup that matches the OnePlus 12, but the camera system has little bearing on the phone’s ability to run games. So if you’re out here shopping for a cheaper gaming phone, the iPhone 12R is a great, value-focused option.
What We’re Looking Forward to:
The RedMagic 10 Pro is truly an excellent gaming phone. But with all the performance it pumps out of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip inside, it got me wondering just what the kind of performance could do if it were funneled into the same kind of games we all play on PC. When I’m not testing phones, I’m often testing laptops, and I’ve tested the MSI Claw 8 AI+ for Lifehacker. What’s been interesting to see is how the divide between the PC and phone hardware has been narrowing, both because the phone chips are speeding up considerably and because Windows has made a push toward ARM (the same architecture used by phone processors) alongside the introduction of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite SoCs for Windows systems.
With that narrowing divide, I’m constantly checking to see where there’s the closest overlap. For instance, the RedMagic 10 Pro actually performed quite close to the MSI Claw 8 AI+ in Geekbench 6’s single-core and multi-core test. It falls a bit further behind in raw GPU performance, though with just 78% of the performance in Steel Nomad Light. But bear in mind that the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is a powerful handheld that outstrips the Steam Deck considerably in 3DMark, by even more than it beats the RedMagic 10 Pro in Steel Nomad Light (one of the more demanding tests). All that is to say, the RedMagic 10 Pro could make a viable handheld when paired with a phone controller.
Now, there are certainly plenty of great games for Android, but there’s a whole world of PC games that it would be wonderful to throw all of the RedMagic 10 Pro’s horsepower at. But you can’t. And that’s where the upcoming RedMagic 10S Pro gets exciting. As reported by TechSpot, the RedMagic 10S Pro may support some form of Windows emulation to run PC games. While I’d expect there to be some performance penalty as a result, I don’t think even a 25% penalty would be enough to stop the phone from offering excellent performance in games like Hades or Dead Cells – the kind of indie titles that excel on gaming handhelds. And since the new RedMagic 10S Pro is packing a Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version chip, it should offer a slight bump in performance over its predecessor.
While this currently remains in the realm of conjecture, as I don’t have my hands on the new phone (yet) and can’t be certain it will even offer the sort of emulation suggested, it’s still an exciting prospect. Even better would be if someone (like Valve) would adapt Steam OS to support some of this mobile hardware. Heck, it might not be long before Windows can run natively on these phone SoCs.
What to Look for in a Gaming Phone
Once you're certain you're a prime candidate for a gaming phone, here's exactly what to consider when you're on the hunt for one. While the best smartphones on the market tend to have some of what it takes to be a decent gaming phone, proper gaming phones tend to have some considerable advantages. You’ll find unseen benefits under the hood, upgrades to the screen and battery, and even extra controls to help give you the edge while gaming.
Processors: This is a key area for gaming phones as they effectively define how well a phone can run a game. Top-tier chips like those from the Snapdragon 8 family (e.g., Elite, Gen 1/2/3) tend to be strong performers in games, and the recent Snapdragon 8 Elite has shown itself an absolute beast when it comes to gaming. Apple’s iPhones also tend to have pretty high-performance chips, with any model within the last year or two often providing more than enough speed for the latest games.
Cooling and heat management: While a fast processor is a good start, running games is demanding and generates heat. Gaming phones generally make a point of managing that. Paying attention to sustained performance is a key part of how we test phones’ gaming potential. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra may have great performance in a short benchmark, but it slows down considerably as it heats up. Meanwhile, a top-notch gaming phone like the RedMagic 10 can lag behind Samsung in some benchmarks, but proves itself capable of sustaining its performance for the long haul thanks to powerful heat management in the form of an active cooling phone — something most everyday phones won’t have.
Power: Sometimes it’s not about hardware when it comes to smartly managing heat. You should be on the lookout for pass-through power when shopping for a gaming phone. This feature lets you plug in your phone and have the chipset draw power directly from the outlet, skipping the battery and avoiding the extra heat this would create while also letting you game nonstop without worrying about running out of charge. But again, this isn’t something you can count on every phone offering.
Display: Most gaming phones will give you a solid display for gaming. This will include a high resolution and refresh rates ranging from 120Hz to 165Hz or above. Most often, these will be OLED displays, giving you rich contrast and limited motion blur. While many games have framerate caps at 60fps, not all do, and the extra frames can make a world of difference in the perceived smoothness of a game. Quite a few gaming phones also offer high touch sampling rates, ensuring your inputs are registered quickly, and with games often calling for split-second reaction times, this can make a difference.
Gaming-specific features: Finally, good gaming phones often find ways to make themselves extra useful in games. This often comes in the form of extra software that’s not always pleasing or easy to use, or extra buttons on the phone that let you use more than just your thumbs as inputs. Even with just a pair of shoulder buttons on a gaming phone, you end up with double the input methods you’d have otherwise, and the ability to move, aim, jump and fire all with separate fingers in online FPS games, for instance, makes a big difference.
Gaming Handhelds vs. Gaming Phones
Deciding on a portable gaming device truly depends on your lifestyle, the type of games you want to play, and how you want to play them.
A gaming phone is ultra-portable and easily pocketed. However, it’s still a highly capable machine that does more than game, offering all your typical smartphone features, including quality cameras, navigation, and communication. Gaming phones also better support cloud streaming for Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox games. Many gaming phones even have cooling solutions to prevent thermal throttling and some handy triggers. If you’re not a fan of touch controls, you can always grab a phone controller and get an experience much closer to a gaming handheld.
Gaming handhelds, like the Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch, are substantially bulkier but still easy to toss in a bag and take on the go. Unlike gaming phones, they are pretty much used solely for gaming, so you get responsive joysticks, triggers, and buttons with these options.
As for actual games, there’s a considerable rift. Android and iOS get plenty of games, and it’s becoming increasingly common to find the same titles on mobile and PC, though the mobile versions are often scaled back in some ways. Gaming handhelds get access to pretty much all of the PC games out there because they are, in fact, gaming PCs (except the Nintendo Switch, of course). Some PC games won’t run well (or run at all) on the low-powered hardware of the gaming handheld, though.
Both gaming handhelds and gaming phones can tap into cloud gaming platforms like Nvidia GeForce Now and Xbox Game Pass. In these, the performance of the phone and handheld don’t matter nearly as much as the quality of their internet connection. In that sense, phones can get an advantage as they offer both Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity (though a very good 5G connection is all but essential to try game streaming).
Battery life can be a tossup. Gaming phones tend to have sizable batteries, run efficiently, and can easily last through the day even with a bit of gaming sprinkled in – otherwise, what use is it as a phone? Gaming handhelds tend to last just a few hours, with the Steam Deck offering pretty poor battery life as an example. And topping up the battery on the go will be easier for the phone, which won’t require a high-wattage charger.
Cost is a big question. The Steam Deck starts at $400 and the original Nintendo Switch is even less than that. Most gaming phones cost more. But some gaming handhelds are landing with prices closer to $1,000, and that far outpaces some of our favorite gaming phones. Plus, most of us need a phone whether we get a gaming handheld or not. The fact a gaming phone can pull double duty should weigh into its value.
The limited access to games may be the deciding factor, as even with cloud gaming as an option, some games simply won’t be available for gaming phones. If everything you want to play is available on mobile or cloud gaming, then it’s worth testing the waters of cloud gaming with your current phone and then, if you like the experience, considering a gaming phone as your next device. If you can’t play the games you want the way you want, then a handheld may fit the bill.
Mark Knapp is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything electronics and gaming hardware. He has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry with bylines at PCMag, Reviewed, CNET, and more. Find Mark on Twitter @Techn0Mark or BlueSky at @Techn0Mark.
If you've been waiting for one of the more affordable Blackwell cards to come back in stock at a reputable retailer, here's a shocker: the RTX 5070 graphics card has dropped to below launch pricing. Amazon is currently offering Amazon Prime members a chance to pick up the MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 12GB Graphics Card for just $499.99 with free shipping. Launch price was $550. The RTX 5070 is an excellent GPU for gaming at up to 1440p with high framerates, especially with DLSS 4 enabled. The Asus Prime uses a triple fan cooler, which is preferred over dual slot solutions for its better cooling potential and lower noise, as long as your PC case has the proper clearance.
MSI GeForce RTX 5070 12GB Graphics Card for $499.99
Compared to the previous generation GPUs, the RTX 5070 performs comparably with the RTX 4070 Super. We wish there was a bigger generation improvement in raw performance, but the RTX 4070 Super was already an excellent card for 1080p and 1440p gaming. In any case, the RTX 4070 Super GPU has since been discontinued and is only readily available in the used market. The RTX 5070 also supports DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation, and the performance gap widens in games that support this new technology , like Wuchang: Fallen Feathers and Doom: The Dark Ages. Check out our own Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 review for our hands-on impressions.
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.
The holidays are once again right around the corner, and what better way to celebrate both the Winter break and Star Wars than with this new Keepsake ornament from Hallmark. Depicting the fun and iconic "let the Wookie win" scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope where Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO are in a tense game of Dejarik, or holo-chess. It's available to preorder now at Amazon for $99.99 and it releases on October 20. Most notably (and very questionably), it does not include the Keepsake power cord needed to power the lights and sounds, which is sold separately.
Star Wars Hallmark Keepsake Ornament Is out Next Week
The ornament itself comes in at around 5.5in high, 4.5in. wide, and 4.5in. long and features a fairly one-to-one recreation of the Dejarik scene on the Millennium Falcon, sans Han Solo. It lights up and plays the dialogue and sound effects from the classic scene at the push of a button, with no batteries necessary. But the lack of the required power cord, mixed with the $100 price tag, is an odd omission.
Despite the quality and level of detail on the ornament, having to maneuver the power cord around something like a Christmas tree while it hangs at a reasonable spot might become a headache, although the official Hallmark Keepsake power cords can be as long as long 83in. See below for a link to get one at Amazon, sold and shipped by a third party.
Hallmark Has More Great Holiday Ornaments
If Star Wars isn't quite your thing, Hallmark also offers holiday ornaments of other popular properties and brands. Their Nintendo collection expanded earlier this year with a handful of great new additions like Link, Elephant Mario from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Venusaur, and an adorable Winter-themed Rowlet. These don't light up or make sound like the Star Wars holo-chess diorama, so the prices are much more tolerable. I'll definitely be picking up the Link ornament when December rolls around.
Frankenstein will receive a limited release in theaters on October 17 followed by a Netflix release on November 7.
Stories about generational trauma are nothing new – chronicles of the pain that is handed down from parent to child and, in time, right on down the line to the next child, never breaking the cycle. It’s, as Mrs. Potts once said, a tale as old as time. From Kronos eating his own lil’ ones, only to suffer the eventual wrath of those children under the leadership of Zeus – who would pass down his own messed-up issues to his myriad children – all the way to Michael Corleone’s fall into the very underworld that his father hoped he would rise above, the pain is real.
Pretty much everyone knows the story of Frankenstein, and del Toro – who’s been trying to get a movie based on the iconic novel made for at least 20 years – doesn’t deviate from Mary Shelley’s work in any way that anyone but fans of the OG would notice. Some characters are missing, others are added, but the bones of the story remain intact: Man makes monster, man rejects monster, monster gets pissed off. But more than just intact, these bones are also seemingly pulled from (carved out of?) Dr. Frankenstein’s choicest picks, his finest specimens, because this iteration of Frankenstein is, like its Creature, a beautiful, haunting thing through which classic themes are made to feel fresh and new.
Not only is Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) a monster for much of the film’s runtime – cue everyone’s favorite “who’s the real monster?” line – but he’s a monster who was spawned by a monster, his stringent and abusive father Leopold (played by Charles Dance, who at this point in his career is destined to play the same miserable asshole over and over again). So of course that generational pain continues to rear its ugly head – or perhaps in this case not so ugly – when Victor brings life to his creature, played by a scarred yet still movie-star-handsome Jacob Elordi.
This iteration of Frankenstein is, like its Creature, a beautiful, haunting thing through which classic themes are made to feel fresh and new.
Elordi is a marvel here (and his Creature exhibits Marvel-esque superhuman powers, which is fun), belying his turns as bad guys or unsympathetic characters in titles like Euphoria, Priscilla, and Saltburn. No, while the Creature in GDT’s Frankenstein will mess you up if need be – and does in fact mess up man and beast alike in spectacular fashion – del Toro writes him and Elordi plays him in the finest Karloffian vein, a sympathetic, sad-sack SOB who just wants a friend. That the actor also seems to be channeling the body work of GDT regular and creature-player extraordinaire Doug Jones only accentuates how different Elordi’s Creature is from past incarnations. He pivots his body, twists his waist, leans in and back, and cocks his head in such a way as to always remind us that, after all, the Creature’s body is actually a series of bodies that are still getting used to each other.
Isaac as Victor, on the other hand, runs the risk of becoming too unlikable at times. When his Creature is born, there are genuine moments of affection between the two. But the newborn’s apparent inability to evolve and grow – in terms of speech, he can’t get any further than saying “Vict-or” over and over again – frustrates the genius, and frankly, dickish doctor. Just as his father did before him, Victor punishes his child rather than nurtures him. And so the cycle continues, with the Creature never even having a chance at normalcy, his appearance notwithstanding. But the result is that Isaac’s Victor very nearly becomes the film’s villain, which perhaps isn’t a new concept in the Frankenstein mythos, but occasionally works against the film in the character’s darkest moments. (Colin Clive, who played the mad doctor opposite Boris Karloff’s monster, was always sympathetic, mind you, even when he was operating at peak Looney Tunes.)
And then there’s Mia Goth, who brings to the Elizabeth Harlander character an otherworldliness that has sort of become a trademark for the MaXXXine and Suspiria actress. Named Elizabeth Lavenza in the book, the character is adopted into the Frankenstein household and eventually marries Victor, but in this version she’s engaged to Victor’s brother William (All Quiet on the Western Front’s Felix Kammerer). William usually doesn’t make it to adulthood when he’s present in a Frankenstein story, falling victim to the Creature in a savage act of revenge. But again, del Toro tweaks and twists these plot elements, with William in the way of Victor’s traditional love interest while also giving Elizabeth an uncle in the person of Christoph Waltz’s Heinrich Harlander. And while Waltz is typically a welcome addition to any film, his character – a benefactor who pays for Victor’s experiments – ultimately doesn’t add much at all here beyond helping to make the film slightly longer than it needs to be.
Frankenstein is full of blood and gore and dismembered limbs and ripped-off jaws and crunched skulls, but it’s not a horror movie. Like the director’s 2015 Gothic romance Crimson Peak, this is a film that feels big, engulfing the viewer in a world where a sad wife’s deep-red gown is set against the stark backdrop of a foreboding castle. It’s a place where the city streets run red with slaughterhouse blood, where a frozen battlefield is marked by a horse covered in ice, still in mid-gallop with its rider astride. And yet at the same time, the beauty of creation itself is infectious, as when Elordi’s Creature first experiences the sun. As Vict-or tells him, “Sun is life.”
Del Toro also wears his geek cred on his sleeve. The Creature’s design is very clearly inspired by comics legend Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein, while an early experiment by Victor involves half a corpse coming to life in a gasp-worthy but somehow funny scene that feels plucked right out of The Return of the Living Dead. The combination of influences fused together and brought to life by a genius is especially fitting here, given this movie’s plot and the 100-plus years of adaptations Mary Shelley’s work has endured. And always it’s del Toro’s love of the source material itself that shines through, as the filmmaker tells his unique version of this classic story while still paying respect to the Shelley book that he clearly lives and breathes.
Anyone who knows the book can tell you that a happy ending does not seem in the cards for either Victor or the Creature. But for del Toro, the fucked-up Frankenstein family deserves redemption after all those years of suffering and self-inflicted pain. That GDT chooses to tell his story in two parts – one from Victor’s point of view, and the other from the Creature’s – only serves to drive home that this is ultimately a story about atonement and forgiveness. Can the Creature forgive Victor’s failings as a parent? Can Victor break the long cycle of abuse? Well, you know what they say: All you need is love.
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