If you were expecting scares from Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein film, it’s time to temper your expectations. In fact, according to the man himself, this is far from a horror movie — it’s an “emotional story.”

“Somebody asked me the other day, does it have really scary scenes?” del Toro explained during a Cannes Film Festival conversation with composer Alexandre Desplat. “For the first time, I considered that. It’s an emotional story for me. It’s as personal as anything. I’m asking a question about being a father, being a son… I’m not doing a horror movie — ever. I’m not trying to do that.”

Desplat also noted that the film’s score will complement the tonal landscape del Toro set out to achieve. “Guillermo’s cinema is very lyrical, and my music is rather lyrical too,” he said. “So I think the music of Frankenstein will be something very lyrical and emotional… I’m not trying to write horrific music.”

A massive new battle has broken out in Helldivers 2. Today, developer Arrowhead Studios brought the fight to Super Earth, as the Illuminate are touching down on the Helldivers' home turf. Everyone is joining in the fight, from the player-led Helldivers to some fresh reinforcements in the SEAF.

Short for Super Earth Armed Force, the SEAF soldiers are populating battles taking place on Super Earth, helping the Helldivers hold out against the oncoming Illuminate forces. These troops can be ordered around using several commands, and will assist the Helldivers in defending the home of Managed Democracy. In turn, Helldivers 2 players already love their new NPC helpers.

As seen in the new trailer for the Heart of Democracy update, SEAF soldiers are subject to roughly the same dire circumstances and thin survival odds as the Helldivers. Today's trailer has more than a few shots of SEAF soldiers getting absolutely routed by the invasion forces.

But the new SEAF pals are garnering both the sympathy and adoration of Helldivers, provoking the need to defend their newfound backup. Refrains of "PROTECT THE LIL UNS," a Warhammer 40K: Darktide reference, are already picking up steam in the comments.

"Aah look at them, they are so cute," wrote one r/Helldivers user, responding to the SEAF soldiers' reactions to the Super Earth salute. "Protect them at all cost helldiver."

Others draw comparisons to the Clone Troopers from Star Wars, especially the NPC allies you'd see in the classic campaigns of games like Star War: Battlefront. "Fired an EAT into a harvesters leg that was attacking a squad and one yelled out 'Glad the helldiver's on our side!'" one user noted, as it reminded them of the lines you'd hear in Star Wars: Battlefront calling out similar actions. "Now we just need overseers with wrist rockets."

Others have come up with new ways the SEAF could help the Helldivers in the future, as hopes seem high for the SEAF soldiers to leave Super Earth and venture with the Helldivers into other dangerous hotspots via stratagems. Honestly, having an NPC pal around to push those bunker buttons would be useful.

Either way, the Helldivers will absolutely need the help on Super Earth, as the new update seems quite chaotic. It's the culmination of a long series of events, stretching back to a really bad bug hive and a black hole, and it's been really fascinating to see it all come together.

Not too long ago, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani declared Helldivers 2 players would "shit [their] pants" when they found out what was coming down the pipe. You don't need to give me any unnecessary information, but I do feel like the scope of this update is living up to expectations.

Helldivers 2's Heart of Democracy update, and the Illuminate invasion of Super Earth, is currently underway.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Remember yesterday when I said Amazon was charging over market value for sealed Pokémon TCG product? Well, they still are, but trainers can save an asounding $7 vs the collectors market. If you haven't guessed yet, I'm being heavily sarcastic and trainers shouldn't buy either. in my humble opinion, single cards are the way forward right now, especially considering you can just buy the main chase card, Pikachu ex SIR, for around the same price.

TL;DR: Deals For Today

What else is on the docket today you ask? Well I'm still going to force you to get on the MTG: Final Fantasy train before release, and there's a couple of fantastic deals on Pixel 9 Pro Fold, Samsung Galaxy S25 and Galaxy Watch 7. Need to charge on to go too? INIU has all of their power banks on sale at Amazon right now. There's also 34% off the best noise cancelling headphones on the market right now, so go for it and let's get into it:

Surging Sparks Booster Box

Surging Sparks Single Cards Are Crashing

This Week's Pokémon TCG Crashers and Climbers

It's becoming abundantly clear that buying up singles on the Pokémon TCG collector market is the way forward for trainers right now. Some chase cards that have crashed recently are cheaper than some overpriced booster bundles currently.

Some of the prices above look crazy, but some of them we're nearly double just a couple of weeks ago, with the latter 5 cards climbing higher and higher. If your heart is set on ripping open booster packs, let's get into the best way to do just that without destroying your life savings (much).

More Pokémon TCG Sealed Products

If you're desperate for some big box retailer products, here you go. Just make sure to be savvy before buying, as 9 times out of 10 TCG Player will be cheaper in this climate.

MTG Final Fantasy Preorders

Meanwhile preorders for Magic the Gathering: Final Fantasy are still up at Walmart and Amazon, specifically the Bundle and Starter Kit for retail pricing.

This is set to be the biggest MTG set in the history of the trading card game, so it's a wise choice to preorder now. You can also preorder single cards at the moment too:

MTG FF Single Card Prices Before Launch

I've focused on some of the more popular character appearances here, but there's plenty more to secure with this set having nearly 700 cards including Extended Art, Boarderless and Surge Foil variants.

The worst thing you can do as a Magic or FF fan is to sleep on this set, it's going to explode. These are the current biggest cards in the set before launch on June 5.

Bear in mind it's mega risky to buy before release day, as prices could plummit in the meantime. Still, it's worth keeping an eye on what's hot, and what's not!

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INIU Power Bank Sale

Amazon is running a solid range of discounts on INIU power banks, covering everything from ultra-portable 10,000mAh models to heavy-duty bricks that can charge your laptop. The compact 10000mAh 5V/3A model is just $15.98 (was $21.99), and the sleek 22.5W 10000mAh version — marketed as the smallest in its class — is down to $22.99. For more power, the 22.5W 20000mAh option is $29.99, and the MagSafe-compatible 45W 10000mAh model has dropped to $35.99 from $49.99. Need something serious? The 27000mAh 140W bank is $71.99 (was $99.99), and the 25000mAh 100W version is $48.58 with an on-site coupon. There’s also a handy 2-pack of 10000mAh banks for $35.99, or a great mid-range 20000mAh 65W model for $35.99. If your current battery pack is on its last leg, or you want one for every bag, these are easy recommendations.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold 256GB

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Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 + Smart Tag

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Nintendo Switch 2 Accessories Sale

Did you manage to grab a Nintendo Switch 2 preorder in? If so you'll want to protect that tarrif-dodging investment at all costs. Luckily I've got the best cases, screen protectors and thumb grips on the market right now.

TZGZTs case and screen protector bundle is great value for money at $12.84 and is a consistent best seller.

Looking for cases that will fit inside a Switch 2 dock? JSAUX has us all covered with some option alongside some premium cases and hardshells.

I've included JSAUX as i've been hands on with the products above and can't reccomend them enough.

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I always look forward to it when a studio steps out of its comfort zone to create something unexpected. Blades of Fire, a 3D action-RPG from developer MercurySteam, best known for the stellar Metroid Dread and its action-packed take on Castlevania during the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 era, does just that. Combining its past successes to give you control of a blacksmith who crafts his own weapons of destruction seemed like a promising concept. Unfortunately, the superb crafting portions of this lengthy fantasy adventure are overshadowed by an uneven story and combat that lacks real depth.

You play as Aran, a commoner who gains access to a legendary forging hammer that sets him on a quest to stop the queen who is leading the kingdom into ruin. The three pillars of Blades of Fire are its satisfying but simple combat, enjoyable weapon crafting system, and emotionally unimpactful story. While very uneven, those were at least enough to keep me relatively entertained for the 55 hours it took me to reach the first round of credits. However, there’s only an unsatisfactory conclusion to find there, and it was the postgame scavenger hunt necessary to find the “true” ending that really drained what little enthusiasm I had left by the end.

Starting with the good, the crafting system stands as the tallest of the three pillars holding up Blades of Fire. Through the hammer Aran receives at the beginning of his journey, he can build the powerful weapons necessary to vanquish all that stand in his path. Initially you can only craft a singular weapon, a heavy polearm called the Hyssop that deals devastating strikes but uses a lot of stamina with each swing. However, after Aran vanquishes enough of a given enemy type, you will unlock a blueprint for the weapon they brandished against him. Dismantling 60 skeletons unlocks the claymore they would clumsily swing, while taking down just five spearmen from the queen’s transformed army grants access to a long spear that deals either piercing damage from afar or slashing damage in circular strikes. Finding and taking down each new enemy to expand your arsenal made for an enjoyable loop, and encouraged me to take down the stronger optional enemies whenever they appeared.

Interacting with a forger anvil, which function as both rest points and a fast travel system, can then transport you to a mystical forge that lets you create those weapons. When you do, you can adjust several aspects of them: For example, the Twin Mallets are limited to customizing the size and shape of the head and handle, where larger weapons like the Glaive also have options for adding a pommel. These choices modify that weapon in small but noticeable ways, tweaking weight, balance, and damage to your liking, as well as altering Aran’s maximum stamina and how much stamina it costs to dodge while using it.

The final part of forging a weapon is the actual forging itself. Crafting weapons in most games ends after selecting your materials, but Blades of Fire has you actually striking the heated metal to match the weapon's shape. This system, while underexplained and confusing at first thanks to the lack of detailed tutorial, quickly became my favorite part of the journey. A weapon’s steel appears as bars similar to those on an audio visualizer, and some will shrink while others grow as you strike. The better you do, the longer a weapon will last before you need to sunset it to be recycled for parts or traded in to an ally for specific and often rarer materials. It took me half a dozen weapons before I figured out the proper technique for managing the strength, tilt, and width of each of my strikes, but once I did, I found myself confidently crafting weapons with the maximum rating every time.

For those who end up not enjoying the crafting, there is an option to skip the process after the first time, but the maximum number of times you can repair it will be limited to the best results you’ve created manually. This smartly expedited my return trips to the forge, as I’d often hold off replacing weapons until they were all beyond repair, turning what would be a lengthy process into a short trip that got me back in the action sooner. Blades of Fire even gives you the option to name your weapon before setting out, which I initially reserved primarily for punny names like Captain Falchion or Let me Axe You something – but eventually as I saw them reach their final forms with the best materials and enhancements, giving them names suitable of their legacy like Gae Bolg or Masamune.

Though there are 35 different weapons to wield and each vary between their speed, range, and other properties, combat unfortunately boils down to just eight attacks. These are performed by pressing the button on your controller that matches the part of an enemy you want to strike: So triangle/Y will strike at an enemy’s head, Circle/B will strike on the right, and so on. There are also charged attacks that deal higher damage and mutilate enemies if fatal, resulting in more gruesome deaths. It is disappointing, though, that mutilating an enemy's head with either a blunt weapon or piercing weapon has the same animation, and seeing them fall off the same way got old after the first dozen times. There are also no combinations of attacks that offer any real benefit, so alternating left and right strikes is virtually the same as mindlessly spamming a single direction. If it wasn’t for the use of parries and perfect dodges that offer a small window of opportunity to retaliate safely, combat would have felt even more bland than it already does.

Choosing the directions of your attacks carefully becomes more necessary later on as enemies start to have different levels of resistance on each body part, and some like elementals can even move these weak points mid-combat. To its credit, Blades of Fire does have a large variety of enemies to fight – unfortunately, nearly every one of them is humanoid. That means that even though they all have their own unique quirks and attack patterns, I was rarely impressed by anything new that was thrown at me. Outside of bosses, which can be hulking behemoths that shake things up more substantially, one of the few interesting regular enemy types were the trolls: they have constant health regeneration and two health bars, requiring you to drain one bar and then mutilate a limb with a charged attack before you can attempt to finish them off. But a mechanic like that is the exception rather than the rule, and the predictability of every enemy’s clearly telegraphed attacks meant fights often just came down to my parry timing.

If you do fall in combat, the powers of the legendary hammer mean Aran doesn’t stay dead for long. However, his temporary deaths come with the penalty of dropping your equipped weapon at that location, similar to how you drop souls, blood echoes, and other currencies in games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Thankfully, Blades of Fire is much more forgiving, as any weapon dropped in a location turns to stone and remains in the world permanently until Aran retrieves it. This was a welcome change to the formula as the potential of permanently losing a weapon you’ve invested heavily into after consecutive deaths would have been extremely frustrating.

Last and certainly least, the most disappointing pillar of Blades of Fire is its story, characters, and world exploration. Aran’s quest to stop the queen does keep a decent pace, but it never surprised or wowed me and many moments that seemed like they should be impactful are hindered by an uneven delivery. At one point after killing a major boss, he simply fell to his knee and sat there until I struck him once more – it felt like it was set up for more, but there was no dialogue and no flair. Just this previously important character falling to the ground in anticlimatic fashion. Blades of Fire also has one of the most disappointing endings I've seen in a while, rolling credits with little resolution and then immediately sending you off on a scavenger hunt that is too long for its own good if you want to find out what’s actually going on.

Characters are generally one-note stereotypes, and often have dialogue that further enforces their simplistic nature. Aran regularly remarks that he’s not smart enough to solve the puzzles without the aid of Adso, a young scribe who accompanies him on the journey, though Adso doesn’t offer much advice outside of stating the obvious. Adso is the brains to Aran’s brawn, deciphering codices you find, reading ancient languages to reveal paths or secrets, and magically sealing coffins during fights occasionally. Adso also makes regular remarks about Aran’s size when climbing ladders, which ends up feeling like an out of place attempt at humor as Aran rarely responds or finds opportunities to tease back. They are written as if they’ve known each other for a long time despite meeting for the first time in the opening hours, which makes moments like these unearned and shoehorned in.

Rounding out the cast are Glinda the Master Forger, a cranky witch of the woods type that lives in a house on top of a flying beetle, and Arwen, an impatient and hardheaded young girl that is only involved in the final dozen hours and yet conveniently turns out to be super important. As time went on, the uncanny parallels between these characters and those in God of War and God of War Ragnarok became more and more distracting. Aran is just a less wise and somehow less charismatic Kratos, Adso deciphers ancient languages and takes note of enemies and other elements of the world similar to Atreus, Glinda fills in the role of Freya, and Arwen is essentially a less prominent Angrboða. You even fight a giant snake at one point, and explore places that strongly resemble areas like the temple resting above the Lake of Nine. Different games using similar character archetypes or tropes isn’t anything new or wrong on its own, but it does start to feel derivative to a fault here - especially when Blades of Fire doesn’t come off so hot in such a direct comparison.

That’s not the only way it’s put in a bad light, as a lackluster map system often makes exploring for secrets very cumbersome and confusing. There are a ton of little hidden paths to find that lead to cool optional collectibles like shrines for upgrading your weapon customization options, chests with items that increase your healing flasks, gems to up your maximum health or stamina, and different dyes to customize Aran’s outfits. But many locations have multiple levels of elevation, and apart from staring at the one-dimensional map while hoping that you are reading it correctly, you don’t really have a way of knowing which level you are on until you either reach the correct destination or the wrong one. You can leave markers on the map that create a streak of color in the world as guidepoints, which at least help by adding distance and elevation cues to the compass at the top of the screen, but that’s only a half measure.

Lilo & Stitch opens in theaters Friday, May 23.

In Disney’s apparent quest to remake every one of their animated classics in live-action, the difference between the good movies (The Jungle Book) and the bad ones (Pinocchio) comes down to the filmmakers and their choices. Is their approach to some of the most well-known and beloved stories ever told on screen fresh enough to make us overlook the undeniably cynical, corporate-driven “You liked this before, maybe you’ll pay for it all over again?” spirit of the enterprise? In the case of the new Lilo & Stitch, the answer is, fortunately, yes – and that’s thanks to the inspired choice of trusting the tale of an alien fugitive befriending an orphaned earthling to director Dean Fleischer Camp. The co-creator of stop-motion sensation Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Camp is a proven expert at blending quirk and silliness with genuine heart and depth. And while he and screenwriters Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Wae don’t make any shocking deviations from the 2002 original, they do make the meaningful choice to root their out-of-this-world comedy in earthly concerns.

They’ve found the perfect Lilo in Maia Kealoha, which is saying something considering so much of the film rests on the shoulders of this little girl. She exerts just the right attitude, charm, and humor in the role, and does a notably strong job of selling the reality of her scenes with the CGI Stitch (voiced once more by the original film’s co-director, Chris Sanders). The script gives Lilo a bit less of an edge than her animated counterpart: She still shoves another girl who insults her, but she doesn’t throw any punches like she does in the original. But it doesn’t shy away from her anguish over her parents’ death, either. It’s clear that Lilo is a sweet kid channeling profound grief through her volatile behavior; just the type who could use the companionship of a fuzzy, four-armed powder keg from beyond the stars.

While the friendship of the title duo remains key to this version of Lilo & Stitch, its most important relationship is actually the one between Lilo and her older sister Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong). They’re the eye of the hurricane whipped up by Stitch’s arrival, working together to move past a loss whose aftermath is more deeply felt than the deaths of other mothers and fathers sprinkled so liberally throughout the Disney canon. Kealoha and Agudong have a pivotal rapport, with the two actresses making it hard not to invest in Lilo and Nani and their bond. The possibility of their separation – a social worker must decide if Nani is providing a solid upbringing for her sister – feels truly upsetting because of the connection the two make with each other and the audience. Agudong gets to play some new shades of Nani, too, diving into her personal aspirations and how difficult it is to balance them with the responsibility of being sole caregiver for the sister she loves so much.

The amplification of Nani’s role lets her and Lilo continually shine together, and Stitch’s transformation from non-stop chaos monster to someone who forges a real connection with Lilo plays just as endearing as in the original. But the further Lilo & Stitch gets from this tremendous core, the more it stumbles. The two aliens pursuing Stitch, Jumba and Pleakley, have always been a somewhat odd fit with this story, largely there to add some more wackiness around the edges. Here, they demonstrate how hard it is to balance the classically “cartoony” aesthetics of the original with a more realistic filmmaking approach. Their comically inept attempts to blend into their Hawaiian surroundings would be even harder to buy in live-action, so they take on fully human disguises: Zach Galifianakis plays Jumba, while Billy Magnussen is Pleakley. The two actors are certainly game, with Magnussen in particular looking like he’s having a lot of fun getting really goofy. But where the humor with Lilo and Stitch almost always works, the wacky hijinks with Jumba and Pleakley are more hit and miss.

One of the more curious choices of adaptation involves the character of Cobra Bubbles, Lilo & Stitch’s amusingly tough-looking g-man-turned-social worker. The remake splits his role in two, with Courtney B. Vance playing Bubbles as an active CIA agent investigating alien sightings, while Nani’s fitness as a guardian is determined by a new character, Mrs. Kekoa (played by the original voice of Nani, Tia Carrere). It ends up making one of the major figures in the Lilo & Stitch universe feel a bit extraneous, and leaves the fantastic Vance without much to do. (Better served: Amy Hill as Lilo and Nani’s sweet and sassy neighbor Tūtū And Kaipo Dudoit as Nani’s potential love interest, David Kawena.)

Visually, there are a few moments where it feels like Camp felt beholden to replicate a memorable image from the original in terms of framing it similarly. Thankfully, that sort of “What’s the point?” mimicry doesn’t become prevalent. The director is also able to have fun with some of the bigger sci-fi moments, including some clever visual gags involving an alien gun that can create portals.

As Lilo & Stitch comes to a close, it takes some of its biggest swerves from the source material. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can say that one involves giving the film a more specific and hostile antagonist, while other changes arrive at the very end to underline what this version of the story is all about. It’s an impactful conclusion seemingly designed to make you say “Aww” – and like so much of Lilo & Stitch, it certainly succeeds on that front.

Atomfall developer Rebellion has said that its hit British survival game became "immediately profitable" upon release, despite the fact that a chunk of its 2 million players came from Xbox Game Pass — and therefore did not buy the title outright for themselves.

Rebellion has not revealed sales figures for Atomfall, which launched for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S back on March 27, 2025.

Instead, the developer has simply discussed the fact that Atomfall has been its biggest ever launch in terms of player numbers — something that will have been aided by Game Pass subscribers simply checking the title out via Xbox and PC.

Still, Atomfall has clearly not suffered as a result. Speaking to The Game Business, Rebellion said the post-apocalyptic northern England simulator had immediately made back its development costs.

And now, Rebellion says, the studio is currently discussing plans for potential sequels or spin-offs, while continuing work on Atomfall's ongoing post-launch support and DLC.

In a previous interview with IGN sister site GamesIndustry.biz, Rebellion boss Jason Kingsley said that Atomfall's launch as part of Game Pass had successfully avoided the risk of "cannabilising" sales.

"What you gain from that cost is disproportionate," Kingsley said, noting that however a game sells, Microsoft does guarantee a "certain level of income" to mitigate risk.

Additionally, launching via Game Pass ensures the title is marketed and made available to a wide audience — aiding its potential for positive word of mouth to boost sales further.

"With Game Pass, you can get people to try it, then as a result of those people trying it, they like it, and they then tell their mates on social media, 'I found this game on Game Pass, I really enjoyed it, you should have a go,'" Kingsley continued.

"And then some of them are on Game Pass, and will [play] it. But some of them aren't on Game Pass, and will also want to be part of that conversation. So, they'll go and buy it."

Microsoft keeps details of its business agreements with developers confidential, so we can but guess at how much money Atomfall has made for both Rebellion and Microsoft itself — the latter of whom obviously benefits when games attract players to its subscription offering.

The latest Xbox Game Pass subscriber count released publicly by Microsoft is now somewhat outdated, but it placed the service on 34 million users as of February 2024.

"Atomfall is a gripping survival-action adventure that takes some of the best elements of Fallout and Elden Ring, and synthesises them into its own fresh mutation," IGN wrote in our Atomfall review.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social‬

Online gaming: Great stuff! But if you’ve encountered frustrating technical issues, like high ping preventing you from playing at your peak or geographic restrictions that limit access to certain games or servers, a VPN can help. An increasing number of gamers are turning to gaming VPNs to enjoy a more secure and less restrictive experience when playing games like Call of Duty and Forza Horizon online.

As a keen gamer myself, I’ve spent countless hours testing dozens of VPN services. Through extensive trial and error, I’ve whittled down the increasing number of options to just seven. My conclusion? NordVPN is the best VPN for gaming. Quite simply, it’s got everything a gamer could ask for, be it a global server network for bypassing blocks or fast speeds for keeping your latency low when playing Fortnite, Helldivers 2, or Minecraft. The other contenders, which include CyberGhost and Surfshark, have plenty to offer and are also well worth checking out.

TL;DR: These Are the Best VPNs for Gaming

Regardless of the Virtual Private Network you settle on for gaming, you can expect your internet traffic and IP address to be encrypted. Not only does this help protect you from DDoS attacks, it means you can spoof your location to sidestep content blocking and access your favorite games and preferred servers. In fact, the best VPNs for gaming might even improve your performance if your ISP throttles your connection or if you connect to a VPN server closer to a game’s server.

1. NordVPN

Best VPN for Gaming

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Best Free Trial VPN for Gaming

3. Surfshark

Best Gaming VPN With Extra Features

4. IPVanish

Best Gaming VPN for Unlimited Devices

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Best Gaming VPN With a Free Tier

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Best VPN for Streaming Games

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What if legendary sci-fi author Philip K. Dick were resurrected in the 21st Century? That's essentially the premise behind Benjamin, a mind-bending new sci-fi mystery series from Oni Press. This new three-issue prestige format comic revolves around an author named Benjamin J. Carp who dies in 1982, only to awaken in 2025 with no idea of how he returned.

IGN can exclusively debut a new preview of Benjamin #1. Get a closer look in the slideshow gallery below, but beware of some NSFW language ahead:

Benjamin marks the full-length comic writing debut of Ben H. Winters, author of the Last Policeman Trilogy and creator of the CBS series Tracker. The series is illustrated by Leomacs (EC’s Epitaphs from the Abyss, Basketful of Heads), with cover art by Leomacs, Christian Ward, and Malachi Ward.

Here's Oni's official description of Benjamin:

More than just a writer, more than just a science-fiction icon, Benjamin J. Carp was a cultural revolutionary. Over the course of 44 novels and hundreds of short stories — including the counterculture classic The Man They Couldn’t Erase — Carp pushed the boundaries of literary respectability for the sci-fi genre and his readers’ perception of reality itself . . . until decades of amphetamine abuse and Southern California excess finally ended a mind-bending career that always just escaped mainstream success. He died in 1982.

Until 2025 . . . when Benjamin J. Carp awakens, alive, in a burned-out motel on the fringes of Los Angeles. He remembers dying. He knows he shouldn’t exist. Is he a dream? A robot? A ghost? A clone? A simulation? In his own time, Carp pondered all of these scenarios through his fiction—and, now, as he treks from Studio City to Venice Beach and onward into the paranoid sprawl of 21st-century Los Angeles, he will be called to investigate his greatest mystery yet: himself.

"So, first of all, just because Benjamin is about a guy named Benjamin and it's written by a guy named Benjamin, does not mean it's autobiographical! Just because the hero is a cranky middle-aged science-fiction writer trying desperately to figure out life's purpose while he wanders around Los Angeles, and I'm—oh, wait. S***," Winters tells IGN. "The joy of writing Benjamin was in finding ways to take the most serious possible subject—you know, death and the fact that we all die and all that fun stuff—and make it into a joyous, goofy adventure, about a middle-aged dude who died and now is back, and is trying to figure out why. And how. And what to do now."

Winters continues, "I've always loved stories that have a bit of a wink to them, a bit of top spin. So a story about a sci-fi writer who may or may not be trapped inside one of his own stories—and by the way written by ANOTHER sci-fi writer—and trying to figure out how to get out...it's a very fun and crafty story that at the same time is pushing at the big questions that define our lives. Also there's a dog in it! A cute, loving dog named Strawman. Honestly, I don't know what else you could want."

Benjamin #1 will be released on June 18, 2025. You can also check out an animated trailer for Benjamin.

In other comic book news, DC Comics and Ghost Machine are having their first crossover (sort of), and the 2025 Eisner Award nominees have been revealed.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Stellar Blade is getting a fully-fledged sequel, developer Shift Up has confirmed.

The PlayStation-published action game launched to a positive response back in April 2024, with players saying its gameplay mixed elements of NieR: Automata and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Now, Korean company Shift Up has confirmed a Stellar Blade sequel is on the way, via a chart showing the company's future plans published as part of its latest financial results released today.

As confirmed within a presentation slide detailing how Shift Up expects to expand its franchises going forward, a Stellar Blade sequel is listed as coming next among others that look set to be released before 2027.

Before the sequel arrives, there's mention of a "platform expansion" for Stellar Blade — this likely just refers to the game's upcoming PC version, which is set to arrive on June 11, 2025.

This development period — before 2027 — will also include the launch of Shift Up's mysterious Project Witches, a new multiplatform action RPG that's still yet to be fully revealed.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Sony’s XM-series headphones are the best in class for most people. They’re just exemplary wireless, Bluetooth, noise-canceling, over-ear headphones. At $450, they’re not cheap, but this is a case where you get what you pay for. The latest model, the XM6, is now available to purchase at all the usual retailers (see them at Amazon). If you don’t want to spend that much money, however, you can save on a bundle of previous models as well. Let’s take a look.

Where to Buy Sony WH-1000XM6 Headphones

• Get at Amazon - $448
• Get at Best Buy - $449.99
• Get at Sony - $449.99

The headphones come in three color options: Black, Midnight Blue, and Platinum Silver. They feature a new foldable design that makes them more compact the previous XM5 model. They also come with a travel case so you can toss them in a bag without worrying about them bending, breaking, or getting scratched.

So what makes the Sony XM6 headphones so much better than the competition? It’s a lot of little things, honed over many years and models. They have brand-new processors and 12 adaptive microphones built in to provide excellent noise cancellation. That makes them great for blocking out whatever sound is going on around you, so you can focus on your music, podcast, phone call, video conference, or whatever else you do with headphones on. Speaking of calls, Sony says the M6s have, and I quote, “a 6-microphone AI beamforming system” that helps isolate your voice from the noise around you.

As for battery life, Sony says you can get up to 30 hours on a single charge. They also feature fast-charging technology that gets you up to three hours of playback with just three(!) minutes of charge time – however, you’ll need an optional USB-PD compatible AC adapter to make that happen. The headband has some bend, so you don’t have to worry about snapping it in half. It’s adorned with a synthetic leather that’s supposed to be super comfortable for long listening sessions.

Older Sony XM-Series Headphones Are on Sale

Netflix and Supercell have announced that they will bring the Clash video game franchise to the small screen with an animated series set in the world of Clash of Clans and Clash Royale.

The series, which is already in pre-production, will “build upon the mayhem of the games,” according to a press release from Netflix. The streamer also revealed the series’ plot, which will follow “a determined, but in over his head, Barbarian who must rally a band of misfits to defend their village and navigate the comically absurd politics of war.”

The official Clash of Clans social media accounts also got in on the announcement fun. “Sound the horns, raise the banners, and reinforce your village walls — Clash is invading @Netflix!” they shared alongside a cute teaser video featuring the company’s devs playfully announcing the game via a group FaceTime call. “We’re making a new animated series starring your favorite mustachioed Barbarian and his high-pitched, hog-riding friends. Charge!”

Sound the horns, raise the banners, and reinforce your village walls—Clash is invading @Netflix! We’re making a new animated series starring your favorite mustachioed Barbarian and his high-pitched, hog-riding friends. Charge! pic.twitter.com/55hiZkajni

— Clash of Clans (@ClashofClans) May 20, 2025

The Netflix crew also seems very excited to be finally bringing this game to life in a whole new way. “Clash has been a global gaming phenomenon for over a decade – filled with humor, action, and unforgettable characters perfect for an animated series adaptation,” John Derderian, VP of Animation, said.

“Working with the incredible team at Supercell, Fletcher Moules and Ron Weiner, we’re bringing all the fun, chaos and spirit of the world of Clash to life in a whole new way. We can’t wait for fans - old and new - to experience the mayhem.”

Netflix's Clash animated series is still in pre-production, so we don’t have a release date quite yet. The streamer has invested heavily in turning video games into shows and movies. Arcane, based on League of Legends, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, based on Cyberpunk 2077, are the standouts, but there are Resident Evil adaptations, Tekken: Bloodline, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, Dragon's Dogma, Dragon Age: Absolution, Castlevania, and a lot more besides.

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.

Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt, has hit back at criticism of The Witcher 4 focusing on Ciri — and told so-called fans of the franchise to "read the damn books."

"That's just stupid," Cockle said of the backlash against CD Projekt's next The Witcher role-playing game, sparked due to it featuring Ciri as its protagonist for the first time instead.

"It's not woke," Cockle continued, speaking during a video published by Fall Damage. "There's nothing woke about it. [Ciri]'s a cool character from The Witcher, and they're gonna focus on that character, and that's awesome."

Cockle has voiced Geralt throughout CD Projekt's The Witcher series, and is set to return as the beloved monster slayer once again in The Witcher 4 — though not as its main character.

Still, despite Geralt continuing to have some sort of presence in The Witcher 4, the confirmation last year that his adoptive daughter would be taking centre stage for the next game (and presumably the whole of the next The Witcher game trilogy) sparked an inevitable outcry of the series going "woke" from a minority online.

"We can't just have Geralt for every single game for The Witcher ad nauseam, out through eternity," Cockle continued, explaining why his character should be taking a well-earned rest. "We've seen the end of Geralt's journey. Blood and Wine was supposed to wrap up that journey.

"I celebrate Ciri. I celebrate her being the protagonist. So all you people who think it's woke... [blows raspberry]."

Cockle then went on to suggest that The Witcher 4 features Ciri for a specific reason — one that is tied to the franchise's original novel series by Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski.

"If you read the books, then you understand why CD Projekt went down this avenue," Cockle said. "There's a whole rich world of stuff to explore with Ciri, that they didn't do when they put her into Witcher 3, because the story was about Geralt. But she hints at it.

"If you think it's woke, read the damn books — they're good, first of all. And secondly, you won't think it's so woke anymore."

CD Projekt's games are set loosely after the finale of Sapkowski's novels, though Sapowski himself has always distanced his work — and the rather definitive finale he wrote for his characters — from The Witcher video games that continue Geralt's story some time later.

Without spoiling story elements from the final novel that may be explored in The Witcher 4, it's fair to say that Sapkowski, like CD Projekt, also saw Ciri as a pivotal character — and one that is happy to pick up the action when Geralt needs some downtime.

IGN previously discussed the return of Geralt in The Witcher 4 with CD Projekt franchise and lore designers Cian Maher and Marcin Batylda, who explained how the already established timeline of events all makes sense.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social‬

Predator and Alien are set to have a crossover moment in the upcoming Predator: Badlands movie, but could there also be a Xenomorph link in Predator: Killer of Killers? Fans think so.

Predator: Killer of Killers is an animated anthology that's coming out in June. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg (director of Prey and the upcoming Predator: Badlands), Predator: Killer of Killers will be released on June 6, 2025, exclusively on Hulu.

According to 20th Century Studios, the film follows three "of the fiercest warriors in human history: a Viking raider guiding her young son on a bloody quest for revenge, a ninja in feudal Japan who turns against his Samurai brother in a brutal battle for succession, and a WWII pilot who takes to the sky to investigate an otherworldly threat to the Allied cause." Of course, all three have to face a Predator.

Warning! Potential spoilers for Predator: Killer of Killers follow.

At the end of the latest trailer for the show we see what looks like a Yautja (the Predator alien species) elder wearing Xenomorph parts on its back. The shape and sharpness does make you think Alien as this Yautja walks off their ship, presumably to congratulate a human on surviving a battle with one of their kin (the shot follows one of the characters wondering what happens if they survive). For me, it very much looks like this Predator is wearing Xenomorph tails as a trophy cape, which is one of the most badass things I’ve seen a Predator do. Clearly, this Yautja has seen things.

When I reviewed the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDM last year, I was blown away. It quickly took my top spot for the Best 4K Gaming Monitor and has remained a stellar choice since. With the ROG Swift PG27UCDM, Asus is going back to the well, coming back with a more accessible screen size and even crisper image. It will still cost you a mint, but if 32 inches was just too big, this monitor offers the same outstanding performance and plentiful features.

Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM – Design and Features

The Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM is a high-end gaming monitor that both looks and feels the part. It comes well-packaged and includes a number of different accessories, including additional cables in their own zippered bag, decals for the down-firing red illumination of the stand, and even a couple of blank discs to create your own logo. It comes with the same excellent tripod-style stand that comes with other ROG Swift OLEDs and includes a heavy-duty adapter to mount to a third-party arm. The build quality of each piece is excellent, akin to the other ROG Swift monitors we've reviewed so far.

Compared to its larger sibling, the PG32UCDM, the design language is almost identical. It comes with thin bezels on three sides that are made of metal and add some reassuring rigidity to the otherwise thin edges of the frame. The back panel is plastic and includes a large Asus ROG logo that can be customized for color, animation, or turned off entirely. Like its predecessor, it looks thin from the front but peeking around the rear reveals a fairly thick compartment to accommodate its internals and airflow-based cooling solution. It still feels thinner than your average IPS or VA gaming monitor thanks to the edges being separate and, indeed, super thin.

It comes with a high-quality tripod-styled stand, the same as we've seen on other ROG Swift displays. It's familiar, but it remains excellent with a heavy metal build and completely tool-less assembly. It also offers plenty of options for positioning and ergonomics, with degrees of -15° to +5° degrees of tilt, -30° to +30° of pivot, just over four inches of height adjustment, and the ability to turn it into portrait orientation to use as a second display. It also includes a cable management channel with enough space to accommodate everything connected to its USB hub and video ports, a ¼-20 thread on top to mount a camera or other video accessory, and a down-firing red projection LED to show the Asus logo on your desk (or one of your own using the blank disks included in the box).

The display uses what is, as of this writing, the latest Samsung QD-OLED panel. It’s still relatively spacious at 26.5-inches corner-to-corner, but it’s this smaller size that Asus hopes will make it more appealing. With the same 4K resolution, it’s able to offer a pixel density that's around 20% higher than its 32-inch predecessor, with 166 pixels per inch (PPI). At 4K, the increase is marginal enough that you’d need the two versions side by side to see a difference, but for the best clarity, the PG27UCDM is measurably better.

Its other specs and features are close, for the most part. It has the same, esports-ready 240Hz refresh rate, the same rated specs of 10-bit color with coverage for 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and a tight Delta E < 2 rated calibration spec, which I test in the Performance section. It also has matching deep color options, gaming picture presets, and dedicated gaming features, like Sniper Mode and ELMB (Extreme Low Motion Blur), which I’ll get into in the next section.

And because it’s a QD-OLED – that is, an OLED monitor with a Quantum Dot layer to enhance its colors and luminance – it offers the same high caliber picture we’ve come to expect from Asus’s flagship gaming monitors. OLED monitors are naturally appealing for gaming due to their incredible contrast and dynamic range (each pixel is individually controlled, lending it millions of full-range local dimming zones), and the QD enhancement only makes it better. This is especially true in SDR where brightness lags behind competing LCD monitors. Because of its enhancements and great tuning, the PG27UCDM looks great no matter which dynamic range mode you may be using.

Its KVM feature has also been carried through, making it a good fit if you plan to connect a game console or like to work side-by-side with a laptop. On the underside, flanking its joystick, is a three-port USB 3.2 hub. Anything connected to this hub can be hot-swapped to a second system with a single button press assigned through its OSD.

Opposite are its video inputs, including two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort 2.1a, and USB Type-C video that’s also capable of 90W of PD charging. DisplayPort received a version bump this release, offering a full 80 Gbps of bandwidth to support 4K240 without the need for DisplayStream compression.

Burn-in is a constant worry with OLED monitors, but Asus is at the forefront when it comes to preventative OLED Care features. All of the staples return, like Pixel Shifting and regular Pixel Refresh cycles every four hours when the monitor goes to sleep. It can also detect logos, desktop icons, and the taskbar and adjust the brightness around these areas to reduce the risk of burn-in.

This release introduces a new proximity sensing feature that can turn off the screen once it senses you’ve moved too far away. You can adjust the distance of its sensor in the settings up to 47 inches, at which point the screen will decide that you’ve moved away and darken to protect its pixels.

The concern over burn-in is valid and isn’t likely to go anywhere until it’s no longer a risk, but it’s nowhere near as worrisome as it was in year’s past. With proper precautions, like hiding the taskbar and desktop icons and not leaving static images on the screen for extended periods of time, most people will be just fine even over many months of daily use.

Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM – OSD and Software

The PG27UCDM can be configured using a deep on-screen display or Asus’ DisplayWidget Center. The layout and features are mostly the same as other ROG Swift OLEDs, so I won’t go through everything in-depth here, but if you’re brand new, I encourage you to read my breakdown in my earlier review of the PG32UCDM.

With that in mind, I’m pleased to see that Asus again delivered one of the deepest sets of configuration options available in gaming monitors today. All of the usual picture controls are there, including brightness, contrast, and saturation, as well as a range of picture modes catering to different gaming genres. That’s the tip of the iceberg. The PG27UCDM offers a full range of color sliders to perform custom picture calibrations to perfectly tailor it to your needs without necessitating an expensive colorimeter. Though you might not need it because it comes factory calibrated with a complete calibration report viewable right within the OSD.

You're also given easy access to a number of different gaming features, including the usual customizable on-screen reticle and Shadow Booster mode, as well as ELMB to reduce motion blur even further, at the expense of brightness. It also brings back the controversial Sniper Mode, which magnifies the center of the screen, similar to the scope on a sniper rifle, as well as night vision that can highlight other players or enemies in dark environments. Since both are running at the hardware level, there's no way for games to block this in competitive settings, and it can absolutely provide a competitive advantage. Be a good citizen and save these for single player, please.

The monitor's KVM feature is also accessible through this menu. Once your peripherals are plugged into the USB ports on the underside of the monitor, you can either enter the menu to toggle the KVM on or assign it to a shortcut key for even faster switching.

If you would prefer not to fiddle with an actual OSD and its somewhat cumbersome joystick navigation, Asus also makes its settings available through its Display Widget Center software. I find this to be more convenient to use on the fly. However, perhaps due to how often I have used the on-screen display in Asus monitors, the actual OSD feels intuitively laid out, if a bit dense.

Regardless, it's not difficult to wrap your head around either option, so you're safe to go with whichever you prefer. You'll certainly be spending time adjusting settings, especially as you determine your preferred picture and HDR modes or want to use or change an OLED Care feature. Even if you don't plan to keep it, I suggest at least trying DisplayWidget Center to see if its convenience wins you over.

Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM – Performance

I've been lucky enough to test the Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM for the better part of two weeks. During that time, I've put it through its paces with many different games, as well as using it as a daily driver to get work done, watch movies, and anything else I might need my computer for. Throughout that time, it has been consistently excellent, offering a fantastic picture and enjoyable use experience across the board.

One of the things I have to commend Asus for is that even in SDR mode, its displays never look dull. Using my Spyder Pro Colorimeter, I measured peak brightness at 498 nits, when 50% of the screen was full white. With 100% of the screen white, luminance dropped to 337 nits. For day-to-day use outside of gaming, you’ll rarely be looking at a completely white screen, so brightness will fall somewhere in between. It’s great for use away from direct sunlight, which is also advisable to keep the panel from overheating.

I also verified that Asus’s claims of color gamut coverage were accurate. The display analysis pegged it at 100% of sRGB and 99% of DCI-P3. Properly calibrated, you can be confident that this display is going to be able to represent your work well if you work in a creative field where wide-gamut accuracy is important.

Color accuracy was also very good in its sRGB mode, though didn’t score a Delta E < 2, as claimed. It was close with an average of 2.46 but cyan was a bit oversaturated and the greys were also slightly off. Still, this is very good out-of-the-box accuracy. You could confidently use it for all but high-level professional color work, and few people outside of trained experts will be able to perceive its inaccuracies with the naked eye.

I did run into some trouble in mapping its tone response, however. No matter what I tried, I wasn't able to achieve accurate grayscale ramping for the Gamma 2.2 standard. To get close, I actually had to turn it all the way to 2.6, so something is clearly off here. With this setting, I was able to achieve the ramp pictured above alongside the color gamut report. This is close enough for great results, but it shouldn't be necessary to use Gamma 2.6 when Gamma 2.2 has its own setting.

Built into the OSD, you can view Asus's own calibration report, which does validate its claims. The company is using much more expensive tools for these ratings, so some small discrepancies are to be expected. Taken as a whole, however, the monitor looks great out of the box, and it's fairly easy to dial it in even further. If you do happen to have a colorimeter, it's possible to achieve even better results, which is truly impressive from a display intended for gaming above all else.

Moving on to gaming, it's really no surprise that it offers outstanding responsiveness and fantastic image quality. OLED displays are naturally much faster than LED, which allows Asus to rate this monitor at a ridiculously fast 0.03ms response time. Paired with its 240Hz refresh rate, it's able to achieve next-level responsiveness and great motion clarity. The PG27UCDM would make a great choice for competitive esports even at the professional level.

The BlurBusters Test-UFO Ghosting test illustrates this perfectly. Capturing the above picture with a high-speed camera, there simply isn't any ghosting, overshoot, or artifacts at all. This is a fantastic result, even for an OLED display. Simply put, you should never experience ghosting. If your skills are up to the task, those 360° flip headshots should be easier than ever.

To that level, gaming on the monitor is nothing short of excellent. The image quality, clarity, and responsiveness are simply fantastic. When you add in support for Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, the consistent smoothness is elevating. While it certainly lends itself to competitive shooters, it's a treat no matter what genre you might be playing, but especially in games that emphasize bright colors like Baldur's Gate 3 or Diablo 4.

This is the case even if you decide not to enable HDR all the time, and there's good reason for that in certain games. Battlefield 2042, for example, tends to look more bland in HDR than it does in SDR. No matter what you choose, however, you'll still be able to enjoy wide dynamic range because of each pixel acting as its own local dimming zone. Even SDR content has more dynamic range, and looks better than a traditional LED monitor.

I don't keep a game console with my PC, but I tested the KVM feature with my laptop and was able to transfer my peripherals seamlessly. It's perfect if you plan to take a keyboard, mouse, controller, or headset between platforms, or if, like me, you need to trade off between two different systems quickly.

Its OLED protections do tend to nag, but this goes with the territory for OLED monitors today. I would much rather have reminders pop up on the screen every now and again than have such an expensive purchase need to be replaced sooner than necessary.

Just don't expect miracles from its higher pixel density. It's not the only 27-inch 4K monitor, and it certainly won't be the last. As I mentioned previously, unless you have both versions of this display side by side, you probably won't notice any difference. Instead, it's more important to choose the size that works for you over any of the different features here.

The introduction of this monitor introduces a quandary. The 32-inch version, the PG32UCDM, has been out long enough that you can frequently find it on sale for around $1,000 while this model is likely to remain at its $1,199 MSRP for a long while yet. If you prefer the smaller 27-inch size but like everything else, do you bend and get the larger version for $200 less on sale? Or do you hold out, or spend extra, for this more compact option? Only you can decide.

Outspoken Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford has responded to a fan who expressed concern about the prospect of paying $80 for Borderlands 4, saying: “if you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”

The video game industry has made the jump to $80, first with Nintendo and Mario Kart World, then with Microsoft and its price hike announcement that will kick in this holiday season. Could Borderlands 4 follow suit?

Publisher 2K Games and parent company Take-Two have so-far remained vague on whether they will go to $80, and Randy Pitchford has insisted the decision is out of his control. But, responding to one concerned fan on social media, Pitchford set the cat among the pigeons by saying that if you’re a “real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”

When you get a spontaneous call from the president of Nintendo of America, you don’t ask too many questions. You just take the call.

That’s the advice that was given to designer Chris Maple by a fellow designer friend back in 1998, who warned him the call would be coming later that day. At the time, Maple was no stranger to sudden phone calls from company executives. Maple ran his own design business, Media Design, which specialized in last-minute work for companies in emergency, time-crunch situations whose agencies weren’t equipped to handle the speed or size of their request. Though it was rarely, if ever, publicly credited for this type of work, over Media Design’s history, Maple says his company quietly developed a good reputation with clients throughout its local Seattle area. He recalls doing work for (among many others) Boeing, the Seattle Mariners, Holland America Line cruises, and others.

Maple had been in the business for several years when then-Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa’s secretary phoned him and asked him to come visit the office in Redmond. He was told over the phone that the company wanted him to work on a new game, but that was it. Maple, intrigued, accepted the invitation, not knowing he was about to become an instrumental part of one of the biggest cultural phenomenons in the world: Pokémon.

Go West, Pocket Monsters

“So I showed up there and I sat in their lobby for about a half hour and stared at this beautiful 21-inch crystal horse in their lobby, a crystal horse head,” Maple recalls of the day he went to Nintendo of America’s Redmond HQ. “And I was like, just staring. You get a sensation. Like I'd have to read a room when I go into these corporate arenas, since I'm the subjective person presenting the aspect of imagery and content behind whatever's bothering them that day or what's broken or what needs to be fixed. You just learn to pick up stuff. So I was sitting there staring at this crystal head, and it was the Nintendo lobby.”

Eventually, Maple was taken upstairs into a meeting room where a few individuals were sitting, waiting for something. “It looked like the inquisitor was going to come out,” Maple recalls. But when Arakawa entered, Maple says he “was a very magnetic personality. I could tell why he was in the seat.”

I’ll let Maple relate what he remembers happening next:

“He introduced himself and said that they're going to be launching a game officially in the United States and Europe. Only problem is, the prior agencies they've tried out for the situation didn't quite hit the mark, and they burnt the budget and time element. Are you okay with that? And I go, ‘Yeah, sure. It's going to cost a penny.’

With Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning hitting theaters everywhere, we've sorted and sifted through the previous M:I installments for a ranking of Ethan Hunt's high-octane IMF adventures.

The Final Reckoning is said to conclude, story-wise, the awesome ride this film franchise has been on for the past 30 years, though that doesn't mean this will be the last Mission: Impossible movie as the title is, basically, "final" in name only. So let's explore this 30-year journey by listing the M:I movies from worst to best. Or, to put it a better way, least-great to greatest. Because they're all thrilling and fun in their own way.

Previously, we ranked all of Ethan Hunt's IMF team members from each movie and the Mission: Impossible villains. Check those out when you're done here!

7. Mission: Impossible 2 (2002)

Mission: Impossible 2 was the most MTV-driven of all the M:I films, with tons of TV and nu-metal hype behind it. Yet it also continued the brief trend of these movies being sort of wild auteur-driven takes, shifting from the pulpy Hitchcockian Brian De Palma to Hong Kong action-poet John Woo. Thus, it stands as the most different of all the installments, and, ultimately the least satisfying.

For this one outing, Ethan Hunt and the IMF team -- who we'd never see again aside from ol' reliable Luther (Ving Rhames) -- went full slo-mo action opera, complete with Woo's trademark doves, wild motorcycle stunts, and an overblown love triangle involving a thief named Nyah (Thandiwe Newton) and her connection to an ex-IMFer (Dougray Scott) looking to unleash a deadly plague. It was a "cool at the time" M:I movie that didn't age all that well once a different look and tone locked in place with M:I 3 six years later.

Still, Anthony Hopkins playing Ethan's boss, just this once, was a nice addition and also we got our first taste of Tom Cruise doing a dangerous stunt -- the free solo rock-climbing up the side of Utah's Dead Horse Point. It wasn't as death-defying as his future escapades would be, since he had a harness and ropes (that were removed digitally in post) and a stunt double, but it sure looked cool to see him up there in the shots he himself performed, and it planted the seeds of more awesome stunts to come.

6. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (2023)

After the highs of Mission: Impossible - Fallout, which was the culmination of the franchise steadily climbing in quality with each passing movie for a decade, Dead Reckoning (originally Dead Reckoning Part One) was a deflating step down. Yes, even with that spectacular motorcycle-off-the-cliff stunt.

Firstly, Ethan Hunt and his team clashing with a rogue AI program felt out-of-step. Or, in the very least, a step too late as TV and movies had been doing AI stories for a long, long while before Ethan went toe-to-toe with "The Entity."

Then there was the human villain (Esai Morales), who felt a bit toothless compared to past Big Bads, and whose ties to Ethan's past, which had never before been explored, felt a bit "Randy Meeks' Rules of the Horror Trilogy." Then throw in a controversial death and an ending action sequence that didn't thrill like the many M:I third-act crucibles before it, and you've got just a medium-good Impossible flick. Which is not what we need right when the entire run is wrapping things up.

5. Mission: Impossible (1996)

The first Mission: Impossible movie was a blast, only really suffering here because better ones followed it down the line. Brian De Palma's strong visual eye and stylized flare for thrillers served this franchise opener well, as most of the story involves Ethan trying to clear his name and find the traitor who killed off his entire team, including his mentor Jim Phelps (Jon Voight playing the role Peter Graves made famous on the TV series).

The "dangly" Langley Heist sequence was an instant hit, and was fodder for much pop culture parody at the time, and the TGY Bullet Train sequence at the end, even with mid-'90s CGI, still holds up amazingly well. The franchise would eventually find more of a traditional action movie tone, as bold set pieces, and Tom Cruise's running, would become more and more the focus, but the first M:I, which was also Cruise's first time as a producer, will always be a solid watch. Should you choose to accept it...

4. Mission: Impossible III (2006)

J.J Abrams, who was coming from the TV world, wasn't exactly an audacious auteur pick like a Brian De Palma or John Woo, but Abrams was riding high on his series Alias, and Cruise, impressed by the show's clever, layered revival of the spy genre, chose his man.

The result was Ethan Hunt getting a true love interest, and wife, in Michelle Monaghan's Julia, which in turn gave fans a chance to see Ethan become vulnerable in ways like never before. Unlike the romance in M:I 2, which came across as glossy and flimsy, this new relationship gave M:I 3 its foundation, and set the stage for Ethan's story going forward through the franchise.

Throw in Ethan coming out of retirement to help a trainee (Keri Russell), a deliciously devilish turn by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, a traitor in the midst, a fantastic Vatican (person) heist, the introduction of Simon Pegg as Benji, and a (literal) heart-stopping finish, and you get an emotionally deeper Mission: Impossible as well as the excellent M:I movie that carved a whole new path for the saga.

3. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

The final Mission: Impossible movie on the "rotating directors" train - before they'd all be directed by Tom Cruise's main collaborator, Christopher McQuarrie - was Ghost Protocol, a soaring high point for the franchise directed by Brad Bird, who was helming his first live-action movie after almost a decade at Pixar where he wrote and directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

Ghost Protocol is a triumph, building off the M:I 3 template, presenting classic spy thrills in fresh ways, making time for laughs, and officially kicking off the era of "Tom Cruise does a stunt where he might actually die." Because who can ever forget the scaling of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. A true leveling up of the rock-climbing in M:I 2.

Yes, it's the third time Ethan's disavowed by the IMF and labeled a traitor. But Ghost Protocol ramps up the danger, raises the stakes, gives Benji actual field work, has Tom Cruise running through a sandstorm, and caps it all off with an edge-of-your-seat fight in a 20-story car tower. And just when you think it may have pulled an Alien 3, it rewards those who were invested in Ethan and Julia in the previous movie. For many ImpossiFans, this is their favorite Ethan and Co. adventure.

2. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

By the time Rogue Nation rolled around - the fifth Mission: Impossible film - the franchise has found its true groove and Ethan Hunt's world felt truly lived-in and connected in the ways the early entries didn't establish.

With Luther and Benji now fixed at his side, Ethan would meet both Rebecca Ferguson's dangerous disavowed MI6 Agent Ilsa Faust and Sean Harris' creepy, dastardly Solomon Lane, one of the franchise's best villains. Battling The Syndicate, a global terrorist operation populated by thought-to-be-dead spies and mercenaries, Ethan faced down his toughest foe to date.

Christopher McQuarrie seamlessly stepped into the director's chair and delivered a cracking good time, with a car chase in Morocco, an underwater vault heist (featuring Cruise holding his breath for six minutes), a shoot-out at the Vienna State Opera, and an uneasy alliance between Ethan and Ilsa that felt like a shot of adrenaline for the long-running saga.

1. Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

Fallout delivered in big, unexpected ways. Also known as the "reason why Henry Cavill's face looked so weird and dumb in the Justice League reshoots," this seventh M:I installment not only brought back the sinister Solomon Lane for an encore, making him Ethan Hunt's Blofeld, of sorts, but it also wrapped back around to former flame Julia, connecting Ethan's greatest love to his most diabolical enemy.

Because of Lane's return, Fallout felt like a more direct sequel to Rogue Nation, though the connective tissue in Fallout in general made everything done in the Mission: Impossible-verse over the previous decade feel massively satisfying. And the action sequences were just beyond phenomenal. Yes, Tom Cruise doing a HALO jump for real was amazing, but the helicopter chase at the end was something Mission: Impossible fans - hell, movie fans - will never forget.

Back in 2018, big showy blockbusters were at all-time levels of popularity, thanks in large part to the MCU, and Mission: Impossible took this opportunity to gift us with its biggest and best film. The Final Reckoning is supposed to feel like the pinnacle, and thematic resolution, of the entire series. But if it falls short, somehow then Fallout can still be that for us. Just a few years earlier.

What's your favorite Mission: Impossible filM? How would you rank them all? Vote in our poll and let us know below...

NBC Universal has released the final trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth, showing off key elements of the film as well as a good look at old and brand new dinosaurs.

Jurassic World Rebirth, starring Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali, sees an extraction team race to the most dangerous place on Earth, an island research facility for the original Jurassic Park inhabited by the worst of the worst that were left behind. It’s directed by Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) from a script by original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp.

Here’s the official blurb:

Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.

Academy Award nominee Johansson plays skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett, contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure the genetic material. When Zora’s operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on a forbidden island that had once housed an undisclosed research facility for Jurassic Park. There, in a terrain populated by dinosaurs of vastly different species, they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that has been hidden from the world for decades.

So, what do we see in this final trailer? Highlights include the river raft scene from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. In January, Koepp discussed a sequence from the first Jurassic Park novel that didn’t make it into 1993’s seminal Jurassic Park movie. Koepp said he re-read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park novels to get back in the game, given there’s no source novel to draw on for this sequel. As a result, Koepp “did take some things from them,” and one of those things is a sequence from the first novel that went unused until now. “There was a sequence from the first novel that we’d always wanted in the original movie, but didn’t have room for,” Koepp revealed. "We were like, ‘Hey, we get to use that now.’ "

The actress behind a key character in Marvel TV series Agatha All Along has said she's pitched MCU boss Kevin Feige a way she could still return — despite her apparent tragic death.

Warning! Spoilers for Agatha All Along follow.

Legendary actress Patti Lupone, who plays Agatha's coven-mate Lilia, says she's keen to appear in future MCU projects, even if it's just for a cameo appearance.

This is despite the fact that viewers saw Lilia sacrifice herself in the supernatural series' seventh — and best — episode, Death's Hand in Mine.

Lilia's fate appeared sealed as she sacrifices herself for a heroic — if tragic — ending, upending a tower to defeat the coven's enemies, the Salem Seven, causing them to fall to their deaths, impaled on swords.

"I will just say, you never see Lilia land," Lupone has now said, speaking to Entertainment Weekly in a joint interview with Agatha actress Kathryn Hahn. "[Your character] never hits those swords," agreed Hahn.

Death's Hand in Mine is an episode centred on Lupone's character, and reveals that she has been experiencing her life out of sequence since she was a child. Because of this, the episode is presented with flashbacks and flashforwards — and we see Lilia falling from the beginning of the episode.

Now, Lupone says she has suggested to Kevin Feige that this could also be a way for her character to return — even if it is just to fall past the screen in other MCU projects too, as something of an in-joke.

"I said, 'You know what you should do in all the Marvel movies? You should have a tiny Lilia falling in the corner...'" Lupone said of her conversation with Feige. "I just want to make sure that everybody knows, we never saw her [land]."

Stranger things than Lilia's return have happened in the MCU (remember when Harry Styles turned up as Thanos' brother?), and with the multiverse shenanigans of Avengers: Doomsday on the horizon, anything is possible. Alternatively, Lilia could just turn up as a ghost, as Agatha herself did in the series' finale.

Agatha's own future in the MCU remains unannounced, though the success of her series has left fans expecting a continuation of her story with Wiccan, AKA Billy, of some kind.

Earlier this week, an apparent set leak spilled details of a surprising MCU location set to return in Avengers: Doomsday.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social‬

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 will soon see the release of Patch 8, which publisher Focus Entertainment and developer Saber Interactive have already said heralds the arrival of the hotly anticipated Horde mode.

But what else might it include? Recent datamines of Space Marine 2 itself may hold clues.

Warning! Potential spoilers for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 follow:

Let’s start with perhaps the biggest question Space Marine 2 fans have right now: what is the new class? Datamines suggest it is the Techmarine. Why? Because in the files was mention of a perk called ‘shoulder gun bolter,’ which is a clear indication that Techmarines are finally in play.

For the uninitiated, a Techmarine is a Space Marine engineer-type class who’s a big fan of the Cult Mechanicus as well as their Chapter. They’re big on technology and specialize in fixing and maintaining vehicles and other big stuff, such as Dreadnaughts.

You can see how a Techmarine might slot into a Space Marine 2 squad, which currently lacks a class of this type. And this ties into another datamined detail: the apparent ability to “summon” a Dreadnaught in Horde mode. Dreadnaughts are a part of the Space Marine 2 campaign (one viral moment involves a Dreadnaught being particularly heroic and badass), and you also fight alongside one in a PvE Operations mission. Could you earn the right to summon a Dreadnaught and, as a Techmarine, keep it alive, in Horde mode?

Now onto the promised new melee weapon. Datamines suggest Space Marine 2 will finally get a Power Axe, which again, makes sense in the context of Games Workshop’s big Space Wolves push for the tabletop game. And let’s remember, in December, IGN reported on Space Marine 2 modders who put the axe from Secret Level’s Warhammer 40,000 episode into the game.

THIS is why I’m a fan of Warhammer 40k! Hats off to @PrimeVideo for producing Secret Level: And They Shall Know No Fear. Watch it here: https://t.co/Gf0i2d0Rus

I highly recommend giving the entire 19 min episode a watch. It’s immersive and awesome. It’s a happy grim dark ray of… pic.twitter.com/iuYxprAo2J

— MiniWarGamer Dave (@MWGdave) December 10, 2024

There’s more! As discussed in a recent video by Warhammer 40,000 YouTuber Chapter Master Valrak, dataminers recently unearthed evidence of a Grav-cannon in Space Marine 2. This is, typically, a big gun used by Space Marines that manipulate gravity to cause a target to crush itself to death. Could the Techmarine class, should it be a genuine upcoming arrival, exclusively wield the Grav-cannon? If so, I imagine there will be many players who gravitate towards it with the release of Patch 8.

It’s worth noting that Patch 8 remains under wraps for now, but we’re expecting Space Marine 2-related announcements during the upcoming Warhammer Skulls livestream this Thursday, May 22. Perhaps we’ll find out more there.

There’s a lot happening in the world of Space Marine 2, despite the surprise announcement that development of Space Marine 3 development had begun. Space Marine 2’s year one roadmap remains in place.

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.

Disney has signed up Conan O'Brien for a role in Toy Story 5.

The redheaded chat show host will voice a mysterious new character named Smarty Pants in the upcoming movie.

O'Brien announced his involvement in Toy Story 5 via his official TeamCoco Instagram account, via a skit in which he jokingly suggests he asked Disney if he could voice Woody or Buzz Lightyear instead. (Thankfully, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are already signed up to reprise their legendary roles.)

No other details on O'Brien's character were mentioned, leaving fans to speculate on who exactly Smarty Pants might be.

Toy Story 5 will reunite Woody, Buzz and the rest of Pixar's beloved cast for a fresh adventure that sees the traditional toys having to grapple with a world in which kids are now more interested in gadgets, gizmos and other technology.

Could Smarty Pants be some kind of electronic toy, and perhaps an antagonist for our intrepid toy heroes? Time will tell.

O'Brien's casting is the first time a fresh character has been announced for Toy Story 5, suggesting this is a casting of some importance.

Toy Story 5 will mark the first major new entry in Pixar's series since Toy Story 4 in 2019. A spin-off, Lightyear, which focused on the in-universe exploits of the original Buzz Lightyear character, launched in 2022 but was widely considered a flop.

Now, Disney is hoping to breathe fresh life back into its main Toy Story brand once more, despite the risks of having to follow the series' universally-praised original trilogy.

Toy Story 5 is set to launch on June 19, 2026, and will be the first of several new sequels to classic Pixar films due over the next few years, with Incredibles 3 and Coco 2 also on the cards.

Photo by Daniel Boczarski/Redferns.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social‬

Call of Duty fans are still digesting the news that Activision is walking away from Warzone Mobile, the game that was meant to lead the battle royale into a new era.

Over the weekend, Activision pulled Warzone Mobile from iOS and Android app stores, with the scope of the game being “streamlined" and an admission it had not met expectations. While servers will remain online for now, no new content or updates will be issued to the game, and players can no longer spend real money in it.

"We're proud of the accomplishment in bringing Call of Duty: Warzone to mobile in an authentic way, [but] it unfortunately has not met our expectations with mobile-first players like it has with PC and console audiences,” Activision said.

It’s a brutal end for a game that clearly struggled right out of the gate. Warzone Mobile launched in March 2024 on iOS and Android as a Warzone-specific Call of Duty mobile experience that offered battle royale for up to 120 players, as well as cross-progression with the PC and console Warzone, Modern Warfare 2 and 3, and, later in the year, Black Ops 6.

IGN's Call of Duty Warzone Mobile review returned an 8/10. We said: "Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile includes all the best elements of Warzone, while speeding up and streamlining matches and using cross-progression to make this a meaningful extension of the traditional experience."

Activision’s hope was that Warzone Mobile would make a splash in the competitive mobile shooter market, where the hugely successful Call of Duty Mobile, developed by Tencent-owned TiMi Studio Group, is already established. With Call of Duty Mobile, which has seen 1 billion downloads since launch, revenue is shared between Activision and Tencent. Warzone Mobile, on the other hand, was developed entirely in-house at Activision, and so the company received a bigger slice of the money pie every time a player dropped cash on a battle pass or a cosmetic.

But Warzone Mobile, which requires more powerful mobile phones than Call of Duty Mobile to work well, failed to meet Activision’s expectations, and its development team was scaled down when, in September last year, Microsoft-wide layoffs hit across the games business.

Now, Call of Duty fans, especially those who did play Warzone Mobile, have lamented the state of the game and indeed the franchise.

“This game simply came out too early and wanted to be too greedy,” said redditor Maddafragg. “It could be seen on the Reddit videos, a lot of gameplay was not fluid with weird graphics, it could be seen that even if the game is playable, the device struggles to run it. The world of mobile gaming is cursed, it's not just Warzone that's dying. Dead by Daylight mobile and Star Wars hunter will also close the doors.”

“Turns out mobile games need to be optimized on most devices to be successful, you can't just cater to high end devices and hope your game succeed — it won't,” added piegeamorue.

“Greed is a dangerous thing. Activision was too greedy and when it leaked that they planned on killing CODM in favor of WZM they essentially turned tens of millions of people against the game. It became ‘us vs them’ and CODM is vastly more accessible than WZM — the loss was guaranteed.”

What's next for Call of Duty, which appears to be in a tricky spot right now? Earlier this month, The Game Business reported that while Black Ops 6 launched big late last year, the Call of Duty franchise saw its users decline afterwards, and “more sharply” than in recent years.

Here’s the relevant blurb:

... the reality is that despite a strong start, Call of Duty has struggled to engage players to the degree it has in the past. According to Ampere, in March 2025, Call of Duty had 20.6 million players. That is still a huge number, but it’s slightly less than March 2024, which had 20.8 million players, and well down on March 2023, which saw 22.4 million players.

The return of the much-loved Verdansk to Warzone did give the battle royale a much-needed shot in the arm, but with the honeymoon period over and accusations of rampant cheating once again dominating the narrative, all eyes are on Activision and this year’s Call of Duty game to see if the still-huge first-person shooter franchise can reinvent itself once again.

Related, there are a number of apparent datamined gameplay videos doing the rounds that show wall-running and even jet packs working in Black Ops 6. This, some believe, indicates this year's Black Ops 7 will ditch Activision’s ‘boots on the ground’ mantra for gameplay reminiscent of Black Ops 3.

They also added jetpacks lol pic.twitter.com/ZrFxLVfQkj

— Bikou (@Kivikou) May 20, 2025

🚨‼️WALL RUNNING CONFIRMED FOR BO7‼️🚨
There is wall running in BO6 currently It is unclear if it's leftover from BO3 that managed to make it's way into a glitch through BO6 or if it's from BO7 and is left in the BO6 files. @charlieINTEL @ModernWarzone @Dexerto pic.twitter.com/0FJ0guUIEH

— peter (@viipeter_) May 19, 2025

Activision told IGN its teams are busy and moving forward on a variety of work, so hopefully we’ll see the fruits of that soon. Microsoft’s annual June Xbox showcase is around the corner. Perhaps Call of Duty will turn up there. And, meanwhile, Call of Duty: Mobile is going strong, but, as we’ve pointed out, it’s not as lucrative a business for Activision, despite being bigger.

Activision Blizzard’s recent mobile struggles also call into question Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of the company itself, given Xbox boss Phil Spencer has made no secret that the decision was in part motivated by Xbox’s lofty mobile ambitions (Activision Blizzard owns King, the maker of phenomenally popular mobile game Candy Crush). Indeed, Microsoft plans to launch an app store of its own, taking on Apple and Google in the lucrative mobile game space.

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.

Nintendo has shown off our first proper look at a Nintendo Switch 2 game cartridge, ahead of the console's launch next month.

The latest video from the company's Nintendo Today app shows off a look at the official Switch 2 carry case, which has slots for you to safely tuck in up to six Nintendo Switch 1 and Switch 2 cartridges.

As we knew already, Switch 2 cartridges are the same size and shape as Switch 1 cartridges — meaning that the Switch 2 itself only needs one cartridge slot to play games from both Switch console generations. But there's one key difference: the cartridge's color.

Switch 2 cartridges are red — and this appears to be a universal decision, not just for the Mario Kart World cartridge seen in Nintendo's video. (If you don't have the Nintendo Today app, you can see the video via OatmealDome on X / Twitter below.)

The top of the cartridge's printed design sticker also shows a Switch 2 logo, rather than the Nintendo Switch design on original cartridges.

[Switch 2]

Here's a look inside the official Switch 2 carrying case. It has room for the console with the Joy-Con 2 attached, six cartridges, and two Joy-Con 2 straps.

(Also, Switch 2 cartridges seem to be the same size as Switch 1 cartridges, to no one's surprise.) pic.twitter.com/h7k0tqThQz

— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) May 19, 2025

Other than that, Switch 2 cartridges are identical, even down to the foul-tasting coating that Nintendo applies to discourage you from putting the cartridges in your mouth.

"We don't want anybody to be at risk of any unwanted consumption," Switch 2 director Takuhiro Dohta previously told GameSpot. "We have indeed made it so that if it enters your mouth, you'll spit it out."

Switch 2 is set to launch on June 5, 2025 — in just three weeks' time. Earlier today, a report revealed that Nintendo's key electronics partner Samsung was already thinking about a Switch 2 hardware refresh with an OLED screen upgrade.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social‬

Helldivers 2 finally has Super Earth maps to fight on as part of the Heart of Democracy major update.

As had leaked last week, the Heart of Democracy update — out now across PC and PlayStation 5 — sees the Illuminate invasion reach Super Earth. You can now select missions on our home planet in Mega Cities and fight back alongside SEAF soldiers.

The city biomes include operations that work towards liberating the cities, which, developer Arrowhead said, have “a significant impact on planetary campaigns.” This is a part of Helldivers 2’s ongoing Galactic War, a community-driven meta narrative that Arrowhead orchestrates behind the scenes.

The Illuminate have reached the Heart of Democracy.

Our Mega Cities are under siege. Liberty now hangs in the balance. The Ministry of Defence has authorised arsenal upgrades and placed SEAF soldiers on active duty. Today, we fight for the future of Super Earth! pic.twitter.com/GxkrAQCmKD

— HELLDIVERS™ 2 (@helldivers2) May 20, 2025

Here’s the official blurb, per the PlayStation Blog:

The Helldivers are tasked with a new objective: to repel the Illuminate invasion by gaining ground over the squids as they fight to control areas where the fleet is landing. It won’t be a walk in the park, divers. Like a game of intergalactic tug-of-war, you will struggle against the incoming forces, gaining and losing control quickly.

You can activate Planetary Defense Cannons and take down the Illuminate fleet, as shown in the trailer. And, as mentioned, SEAF troops will help join the fight to defend the cities. These small squads will fight enemies on their own, or they can be ordered to follow Helldivers and provide temporary backup as you navigate toward objectives. You do, however, need to be mindful of civilians who are still roaming the streets; Helldivers 2 is as much about friendly fire management as it is blowing aliens up.

The Heart of Democracy update is part of Arrowhead's long-term committment to keeping Helldivers 2 going for years to come following its record-breaking launch last year.

Last week, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani addressed player concern that the studio might leave the game behind to focus on its next project, dubbed "Game 6."

"Nah. It's ALL Helldivers 2 for now," he insisted. "A very, very small team will spin up something later this year and go at it sloowly. Helldivers is our main focus and will be for a loooong time."

So, how long does Jorjani expect content updates for Helldivers 2 to last?

"As long as you folks keep playing and buying Super Credits we can keep it going," Jorjani said, pointing to Helldivers 2's virtual currency that's used to buy Premium Warbonds. "Last summer we were kinda screwing the pooch so it looked like we wouldn't be able to keep the train going for a long time - but we turned the ship around, you support us a lot so it's looking bright."

Accompanying the release of Heart of Democracy is update 01.003.002. Patch notes below.

Helldivers 2 update 01.003.002 patch notes:

Fixes

Resolved Top Priority issues:

• Attempting to purchase a Master of Ceremony item in the Super Store when on PlayStation 5 while using the "Quality" visual setting will no longer change page

Crash Fixes, Hangs and Soft-locks:

• Fixed a crash that could occur when trying to enter the Weapon Customization menu on certain weapons
• Fixed crash that could happen when killing illuminates that were about to spawn

Weapons and Stratagems

• Fix drone's not returning to backpack correctly

Miscellaneous Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Stingray strafing attack sounds could get stuck for a while
• Fixed corpses of some enemies sometimes sending players flying across the map

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.

Welcome to Derry has its first trailer, revealing a creepy look at HBO Max’s It prequel series, due out fall 2025.

The trailer, below, sets up the story, which is set in Maine in 1962. Newcomers to the area appear disturbed by reports of missing children, and the slow realization that something is very wrong in this part of the world. As is It tradition, a group of kids from Derry High School band together to try to find out what’s going on, worrying the adults will never believe a word they say.

There’s blood, screaming, creepy smiles, balloons, and, right at the end, a glimpse at It iconic villain Pennywise the Clown, once again played by Bill Skarsgård.

Get ready to go back to where IT all began... 🎈 #ITWelcometoDerry is coming this fall to HBO Max. pic.twitter.com/SOhXEA6yYe

— Max (@StreamOnMax) May 20, 2025

Welcome to Derry is a nine episode Season 1 from Andy Muschietti, who adapted the two It movies from Stephen King’s iconic horror novel. It’s set 27 years before the events of those films, showing Pennywise’s murder spree before hibernation.

"This is a book we love a lot, and we felt that there was still a lot of story to be covered," Muschietti and sister, Barbara, told Entertainment Weekly last year.

"It’s so rich with characters and events, we thought we would do justice to the book and the fans by going back into this world. Specifically, we are telling the stories of the interludes, writings by Mike Hanlon based on his investigation that includes interviews he conducts with the older people in the town.

“In Welcome to Derry, we touch on the usual themes that were talked about in the movie — friendship, loss, the power of unified belief — but this story focuses also on the use of fear as a weapon, which is one of the things that is also relevant to our times.

"27 years is the dormant period of Pennywise. It’s a different part of American history with a new set of fears for children, as well as adults having in mind the cost of the Cold War. Our baseline is 1962, but we do a few jumps to the past... Every 27 years when It appears, It’s cycle is marked by two catastrophic events, one at the beginning and one in the end. We are using the Black Spot as an event in which many stories are built around."

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.

Nintendo Switch 2 is still weeks from launch, and yet a key electronics partner is already thinking about the console's inevitable future hardware refresh.

That's according to a new report from Bloomberg, which states that Samsung is pushing Nintendo to incororate its OLED screens in the next version of Switch 2, whenever it appears.

Remember, of course, that the launch version of Switch 2 features an LCD screen — which some see as a slight downgrade from the display boasted by the Switch 1's later OLED model.

At a Switch 2 press event attended by IGN earlier this year, Nintendo said it had not made the decision to effectively switch back from OLED to LCD screens lightly.

"Now there's a lot of advancements that have been made in LCD technology during development," Nintendo Switch 2 hardware design lead Tetsuya Sasaki explained. "We took a look at the technology that was available to us now and after a lot of consideration we decided to stick to LCD.

"Even with the OLED version of Nintendo Switch, we didn’t have compatibility support for HDR, but that's something we have the support for now."

In some respects, word of a Switch 2 refresh at some point in the future shouldn't be a surprise. Nintendo always launches new versions of its consoles after a couple of years (well, usually — sorry, Wii U).

The suggestion of an improved Switch 2 refresh with an OLED screen would also simply be following the same pattern Nintendo used with Switch 1.

But maybe don't cancel your Switch 2 pre-order just yet. There's no telling when Nintendo will actually decide to launch a new Switch 2 model — especially now, as demand for the launch version looks likely to remain sky high for a signficant period, and affordability of every console now a key issue.

Nintendo will only launch a new Switch 2 when it will be confident it can manufacture, ship and sell it at a price it believes customers will buy, and be happy to pay to upgrade from the base Switch 2 model. Remember, also, that the Switch 1's OLED model didn't turn up until October 2021, four years after the console's March 2017 debut.

In other words, while Samsung may be planning for Switch 2 OLED, you probably need not be.

Elsewhere in Bloomberg's report, Samsung sources stated they believed the company had the capacity for Nintendo to ship 20 million Switch 2 consoles this year — considerably more than the 15 million estimate that Nintendo has told investors it expects to shift before March 31, 2026.

That 15 million estimate would match the same number of Switch 1 consoles sold by Nintendo back in 2017, and has also been seen as a conservative figure by some analysts. Speaking to IGN sister site Eurogamer earlier this month, veteran firm DFC Intelligence said it believed Nintendo would in reality likely sell 16m, enough to say it had beaten its expectations.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social‬

Marc Laidlaw wrote 400 Boys in 1981 aged 21, long before he ended up Valve’s lead writer and one of the chief creators of the Half-Life games. The short story was published in Omni magazine in 1983, before it was picked up for Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology and enjoyed a wider audience. On Marc’s website, at the bottom of the short story itself, he points out 400 Boys has probably been read by more people than anything else he’s written, except perhaps Dota 2 seasonal ad copy. Yes, the video game world knows Marc Laidlaw as the lead writer of the Half-Life series. But he’s done a lot more than video games. It’s funny how things work out.

In a post-apocalyptic city where warring gangs follow a bushido-like code of honor, a new gang, the 400 Boys, forces them to unite. A blend of beauty and brutality from Canadian director Robert Valley, whose LDR episode “Ice” won the Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Animation.

“The inspiration for it just came out of walking around,” Marc remembers. “I lived in Eugene, Oregon and there was always the phone poles with the names of bands that were playing in town, and it was just name after name of super cool bands, and I just wanted a way to do that. I just wanted to make up lots of band names. So I came up with the idea of, if I have all these gangs in the story, I can come up with names for all these different gangs and that would be fun. And it was funny. That was kind of the thing that drove a big part of the story, just wanting to make band names.”

As far as package-shipping simulators go, Deliver At All Costs more closely resembles drunk driving than it does Death Stranding. There's no need for complicated weight management or careful navigation through its 1950s small-town USA setting; instead, this kooky courier quest loads your pickup truck with increasingly quirky cargo and sends you careening through road signs, fences, shopfronts, and countless pedestrians, with almost every dispatched delivery quickly devolving into a full-on destruction derby. It’s a riotously good time for a while, but it soon starts to sputter out and eventually breaks down well before it reaches the end of its 10-hour journey when its nonsensical sci-fi story fails to pay off and this world turns out to be far more rewarding to reduce to rubble than it is to actually explore.

There is a plot connecting all of its street-shredding shipments, but honestly the less said about it, the better. You’re Winston Green, a likeable fresh hire at the We Deliver corporation who’s seemingly on the run after a mysterious incident in his past. Though it begins as a sort of goofy workplace comedy it soon makes jarring tonal shifts into corporate crime conspiracies and eventually a preposterous tale of time travel, before crashlanding into a fast-tracked climax that left me feeling about as hollow as someone who’s tried to make a meal out of packing peanuts. Deliver At All Costs’ story is a bit like a box of flatpacked furniture delivered from IKEA; it’s full of interesting parts to pore over, but once you’ve put it all together it seems noticeably wonkier than you expected and it’s clear that there’s more than a couple of screws loose.

The real star is the staggering destructibility of its world, which is viewed from your choice of two top-down angles. Pretty much everything above ground can be satisfyingly smashed asunder as you tear around in your delivery truck turning every apartment block into a potential Jenga tower. There’s admittedly an overly fragile and weightless feel to it all – it’s a bit like crashing through houses made of cards rather than bricks and mortar because you rarely feel the impact or lose momentum – but punching my own shortcuts through everything from hotel lobbies to tennis courts and tombstone-covered graveyards kept me consistently amused for at least the first half of the drive. I gleefully sped around chewing through scenery like I was Nicholas Cage in Face/Off. Pretty much the only time I pumped the brakes was when I had to keep something from spilling out of my truckbed, or whenever I hit one of the abrupt loading screens that separates each district of the three cities that make up its decently sized open-world map.

Can’t Hardly Freight

Deliver At All Costs’ 20-mission-long chain of violent cargo hauls aren’t so much door-to-door as they are wall-through-wall, but that’s not to say I didn’t face some resistance along the way. Different challenges are introduced in keeping with the object that’s dumped into the back of your truck or dragged behind you with a winch, and a few entertainingly wacky work orders had me laughing out loud. In one mission reminiscent of Pixar’s Up, I was hired to transport a bouquet of helium balloons, which meant that even the smallest bump in the road launched me into a clumsy aerial drift that left me struggling to stay on terra firma like a mailman on the moon’s surface. In another, I had to steer around a leaking tank of napalm that was igniting a growing wall of fire behind me, turning a simple pick-up and drop-off into a citywide game of Snake that blew me to smithereens if I attempted to double back on my delivery route.Then there was the time I had to drag a new statue of the local mayor towards the town square without it getting bombed by the swooping seagulls dropping their own special deliveries.

Unfortunately, though, there are almost as many duds in the mix as there are standouts. Being asked to drive recklessly to scare a limousine full of crooked executives doesn’t really come as a break from the norm when you’ve been otherwise hurtling around like a madman during each and every other job, for example. A mission to photograph a series of cows being abducted by a UFO can be passed simply by mindlessly spamming the camera button. Meanwhile, the on-foot retrieval of your stolen truck from under the nose of a patrolling security van becomes less of a daring infiltration into a scrapyard and more of a walk in the park because Deliver At All Costs’ stealth system is non-existent, to the point where you can just stroll in there unopposed with minimal thought or effort. That’s not to say the rest of the on-foot action is much better – pretty much whenever you’re forced to leave your car for more than a moment it becomes a dull stretch of basic platforming where your only actions are walk, jump, climb, and shove.

Haul or Nothing

Elsewhere in Deliver At All Costs there’s rarely any substantial consequences for your actions, and that makes it start to get dull sooner than it seems like it should. If you accidentally flip your car over it will automatically right itself. If you bust a tyre you can hop out and instantly repair it with the tap of a button. If you bring down an entire building because you’re doing doughnuts through all four corners of its foundations you will almost certainly draw the attention of the police (who, the intro movie explains, are all but non-existent in this island town), but you can instantly lose that heat by leaving your truck and diving into a dumpster – even without necessarily breaking the line of sight. In fact, even if you’re caught, you just instantly respawn with no punishment served anyway. On the one hand, the general lack of rules or repercussions gave me the freedom to drive as recklessly as I wanted to, but it also meant that almost everything felt noticeably low in stakes.

Sometimes, in fact, Deliver At All Costs is so forgiving that it completely sucks any tension out of the task at hand. Steering your delivery truck from one side of the city to the other with an armed atom bomb couched in its cargo bed shouldn’t just have you flirting with danger, but buying danger a drink, beckoning danger onto the dance floor, and giving danger an open-mouthed kiss. But in practice, it’s surprisingly lacking in intensity: there’s no ticking clock to pressure you into keeping your foot clamped down on the accelerator, allowing you to take things as slow and steady as you like. That means the only challenge here is to not drive like a maniac. Even when I did accidentally bump into a car and blow myself to bits, generous checkpoints meant that I was back on the road with my unstable payload with minimum penalty to my progress. I don’t want a game to be overly punishing, but there’s a happy medium to be struck that this one never manages to nail.

Elsewhere, and despite the consistently impressive amount of environmental detail to be found throughout its toy town world from Christmas tree-lined main streets to a giant drive-in theater projecting black and white films, there’s not a great deal of interesting activities to amuse yourself with when you’re off the clock. There are a further 10 side missions to be found dotted around the map, but few of them are particularly memorable. There’s a basic circuit race to place first in and a couple of missing persons to track down, but there’s little here to match the more creative courier tasks found in the main story path. Well, there’s one enjoyable exception that had me piloting a satanic sports car straight out of Stephen King’s Christine. Deliver At All Costs could’ve used a lot more like her to make its map call me back for more.

There are other unique vehicles to track down too, but these are uniformly disappointing on a number of counts. For one, their locations are clearly marked on the map from the outset, so you’re not provided with the same thrill of discovery of, say, a Forza Horizon barn find. You also don’t have a garage to store them in, and nor can you use them for a delivery mission, so they’re mainly there for a brief joyride before being ditched in favour of a return to your trusty We Deliver truck. Worse still, they don’t provide any real point of difference to make them even remotely worth the minimal effort to uncover – they each handle more or less the same, and there are no unique emergency missions to undertake in the ambulance or dessert drops in the ice cream van to trigger like you might find in a Grand Theft Auto game. They’re just sort of… there.

Another underwhelming factor is the upgrades you can weld onto your truck using spare parts found throughout the world (as ridiculous as it may be to open a giant chest to find someone has stashed a single roll of duct tape in it). They seem like they should open up new possibilities for mayhem and creativity in a world that’s as eager to be knocked down as this, but these, too, are disappointingly limited in their use. The crane is handy for the job that sees you load a giant marlin onto your truck and then literally fishtail your way to a drop-off point, but both it and the winch you get access to afterwards can’t actually be used outside of a mission to mess with objects at will. You can’t, say, attach the winch’s tow cable to a random car or pedestrian and drag them around town just for kicks like you can in Saints Row or Just Cause. You can supercharge your car horn to blast the windows out of shopfronts, but you can't use the cargo bed catapult at all outside of a handful of specific story moments. There’s a lot of potential for Deliver At All Costs to achieve the same sort of freeform fun that we see in games like Goat Simulator, but it just doesn’t give you enough flexibility to really revel in it after you’ve grown tired of blasting into people’s living rooms like a Kool-Aid Man on wheels.

The Last of Us’ hugely successful TV adaptation was confirmed for Season 3 before Season 2 even kicked off. But will it have a Season 4? Showrunner Craig Mazin has indicated a fourth season is pretty much essential for the series.

Speaking to Collider, Mazin agreed that in order to wrap up The Last of Us’ story from the two Naughty Dog-developed video games in Season 3 would mean Season 3 itself "would take forever." So, while there's a "decent chance" Season 3 will be longer than Season 2, at the end of the day "there’s no way to complete this narrative in a third season."

He continued: "Hopefully, we’ll earn our keep enough to come back and finish it in a fourth. That’s the most likely outcome."

Warning! Spoilers for The Last of Us follow:

Here’s Mazin’s quote in full, which includes a big spoiler for The Last of Us Season 2:

Yeah, and it would take forever. There are natural perforations in the narrative where you can go, “Okay, let’s tear it here.” I think there’s a decent chance that Season 3 will be longer than Season 2, just because the manner of that narrative and the opportunities it affords us are a little different. The thing about Joel’s death is that it’s so impactful. It’s such a narrative nuclear bomb that it’s hard to wander away from it. We can’t really take a break and move off to the side and do a Bill and Frank story. I’m not sure that will necessarily be true for Season 3. I think we’ll have a little more room there. But certainly, there’s no way to complete this narrative in a third season. Hopefully, we’ll earn our keep enough to come back and finish it in a fourth. That’s the most likely outcome.

The Last of Us premiered in January 2023 to major acclaim, even being touted by some as the best video game adaptation thus far. Season 1 collected a whopping eight Emmy awards out of the 24 nominations it received.

Season 2 sees leads Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal return as Ellie and Joel, alongside newcomer Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, a soldier who is dead set on revenge in the wake of losing someone close to her. Beef star Young Mazino, Alien: Romulus star Isabelle Merced, Captain America: Brave New World star Danny Ramirez, and legends Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Wright are also in Season 2.

In March, series creator Neil Druckmann cast doubt on the prospect of The Last of Us 3, saying: “I guess the only thing I would say is don’t bet on there being more of Last of Us. This could be it.”

But if there’s no The Last of Us 3, would Naughty Dog and Druckmann keep the TV show going past the games?

That’s the question IGN put to Druckmann himself on the red carpet ahead of The Last of Us Season 2 premiere, and he replied to say that while he has an ending of The Last of Us story in mind, because he’s not sure if he’ll get the chance to make The Last of Us 3, he’s leaving nothing on the line.

“I have to have an ending,” Druckmann said. “When I made The Last of Us 1, I didn’t know if there was going to be a sequel, so that had to be a definitive ending. When I worked on Uncharted 4, I don’t know if we’ll ever get to do it again. I need it to be a definitive ending. Last of Us 2, same way. All these things have to line up.

“I don’t know how long I’ll keep doing this or whether I’ll be given another opportunity. So I leave nothing on the line.

“Right now it’s like, we have an ending in mind. And that ending will be it. That ending will be it for this story.”

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.

Naughty Dog chief Neil Druckmann has revealed the studio has a secret, unannounced second game in the works other than Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

In an interview with the Press X to Continue podcast, Druckmann discussed his ongoing roles at Sony-owned Naughty Dog. On Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Druckmann works with two game directors: Matthew Gallant and Kurt Margenau, and is co-writing the game with narrative director Claire Carré. Druckmann did not say which director is working on the second game, however.

“There’s another game that’s being worked on at Naughty Dog where I am more of a producer role and I get to mentor and watch this other team and give feedback and be like the executive in the room,” he said.

“I enjoy all those roles, and the fact I jump between one to the next, it makes my job very exciting and always feeling fresh. I’m never bored.”

It is unclear at which stage each game is in production. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is announced, so you’d imagine it’s further along. But what is the second game?

There are some obvious candidates. Could it be The Last of Us 3? Druckmann has expressed his uncertainty in the past about being able to make the game, but has said he has an ending in mind for what the game would be. Based on Druckmann’s comments about having more of a producer role on this mystery second game, it doesn’t sound like it’s The Last of Us 3, as you’d imagine he’d want to be heavily involved and take on a director role for that game.

Alternatively, it could be another Uncharted game. There hasn’t been a brand new Uncharted game since 2017’s The Lost Legacy. Could it finally be time for a return? And there’s always a chance this second game could be a brand new intellectual property, as Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is.

It’s worth noting that there’s always a chance this second game never comes out, or is never properly revealed by Sony. Naughty Dog has endured a tumultuous time in recent years, with the cancelation of its The Last of Us multiplayer game to focus on single-player games coming amid an apparent pull-back of live service titles at Sony.

Naughty Dog stopped development on The Last of Us Online in December 2023, saying it would have needed to put all its resources into post-launch content for years to come — an approach that would have severely impacted its ability to develop future single-player games.

Historically, Naughty Dog has struggled to work on two big games at the same time, with one tending to end up top of the tree internally. The studio hasn’t released a brand new game since 2020’s The Last of Us 2, with remakes and collections in the interim.

With over a hundred years of history and a stacked portfolio of films and TV shows, it’s no surprise that Disney has its own horse in the competitive streaming service race. Since the inception of Disney+ in 2019, the streaming giant has grown its portfolio beyond its classic fairy tale roots and now boasts a catalogue of box office-busting films and bingeable series alike. From Star Wars to Marvel, you might be wondering: How can I stream Disney+ in 4K? Look no further, as our guide will run you through everything you’ll need, from subscription types to hardware.

How to Stream Disney+ in 4K

Unlike most streaming services on the market, Disney+ doesn’t require you to have a premium account to access 4K content. That means no matter what kind of subscription you’ve chosen, whether it be a bundle or basic plan, you’ll have access to 4K streaming on Disney+. So if you’re considering which bundle or account type to pick, the decisions will come down to what extras you’d like, such as offline downloads or ads.

Here are the current Disney+ US plans and their prices and what they include:

• Disney+ Basic (with Ads) – $9.99 per month
• Disney+ Premium (without Ads) – $15.99 per month
• Disney+ Hulu Bundle Basic (with Ads) – $10.99 per month
• Disney+ Hulu Bundle Premium (without Ads) – $19.99 per month
• Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Basic (with Ads) – $16.99 per month
• Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Bundle Premium (without Ads) - $26.99 per month
• Disney+, Hulu, Max Bundle (with Ads) - $16.99 per month
• Disney+, Hulu, Max Bundle (without Ads) - $29.99 per month

Make Sure Your Setup Is 4K-Compatible

To stream Disney+ in 4K, you’ll need to ensure all aspects of your setup can support streaming in 4K. That means it’s not just your Smart TV that needs to be compatible, but also every other piece of hardware, too. If you use an Apple TV or Firestick, you’ll need to shop around for the 4K compatible versions. Same goes for buying a HDMI cable to connect your hardware.

One important caveat to consider is that, as of right now, streaming Disney+ in 4K is not possible on computer browsers. That means if you're using a laptop, your content will be limited.

Check Your Connection

When streaming 4K content on Disney+, there aren’t any internet settings to adjust, as the app automatically detects internet quality and adjusts your content’s video format accordingly. With that in mind, if you’re still running into problems, you can reset your device’s cache. To do this, we recommend following the official guide Disney+ has on its website.

Are There Other Ways to Watch Disney+ Movies and Shows in 4K ?

From keyrings to theme parks, Disney loves to flaunt its vast collection of iconic IPs. As such, the media conglomerate has released a slew of its best content as physical Blu-rays. From Marvel’s catalogue of high-octane superhero flicks to Pixar’s collection of heart-rending animated films, much of the Disney+ catalogue can be purchased separately from the platform. Better still, many seasons of Disney’s beloved TV shows have also found a home on 4K Blu-ray, including The Mandalorian, Loki, and Hawkeye, to name a few.

Even though your pile of shame’s already teetering and your backlog is the size of a felled sequoia, who are you and I to resist yet another bargain? Today's gaming treasure trove spans mischievous birds, noir cyborgs, and wizarding wonders, all at prices that’ll have your wallet breathing a sigh of relief. Whether you’re deep in console country or loyal to your trusty PC, there’s a little something here to make your day but ruin your bandwidth.

This Day in Gaming 🎂

In retro news, I'm lighting a 15-candle cake for WarioWare D.I.Y., one of my favourite Nintendo DS time-wasters. Nintendo essentially handed players the keys to the microgame factory and somehow didn’t burn the place down. Armed with a stylus and too much free time, you could compose janky 8-bit music, draw unhinged sprites, and script chaotic games that lasted all of five seconds but felt like fever dreams.

The tutorials starred Wario’s development crew trying (and mostly failing) to teach you game design basics without causing a workplace accident. Honestly, it was less Super Mario Maker and more Mario Paint meets GarageBand on a sugar high. It even let you upload your madness online, meaning no DS cartridge was safe from your homemade horrors. A beautiful, timeless mess.

Aussie bdays for notable games

- LostWinds (Wii) 2008. eBay

- WarioWare D.I.Y. (DS) 2010. eBay

- Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands (PS3,X360) 2010. Get

- L.A. Noire (PS3,X360) 2011. Get

- Transistor (PC) 2014. Get

- Fire Emblem Echoes: SoV (3DS) 2017. Sequels

Contents

• Nintendo
• Xbox
• PlayStation
• PC
• PC Gear
• LEGO
• Headphones
• TVs

Nice Savings for Nintendo Switch

Nintendo players can dash into Sonic Frontiers for A$49, a sprawling open zone adventure that lets the blue blur stretch his legs like never before. Or stir up some trouble in the minimalist mayhem of Untitled Goose Game, a local Melbourne creation that nabbed a BAFTA and inspired real-life goose protest signs.

• Sonic Frontiers (-51%) - A$49
• Sifu (-70%) - A$18
• Lego Ninjago Movie (-45%) - A$49
• Shin Megami Tensei V (-32%) - A$54
• Dragon Ball FighterZ (-44%) - A$50
• Untitled Goose Game (-50%) - A$15

Expiring Recent Deals

• The Witcher 3 Comp. (-75%) - A$19
• Lego Skywalker Saga (-80%) - A$17
• Dead Cells (-50%) - A$18
• Yooka-Laylee (-80%) - A$6
• Blasphemous (-75%) - A$9
• Unicorn Overlord (-36%) - A$61

Or gift a Nintendo eShop Card.

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Exciting Bargains for Xbox

• Robocop- Alex Murphy Ed. (-90%) - A$10
• Metaphor: Refantazio (-27%) - A$83
• Mafia: The Old Country (-12%) - A$79
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps (-67%) - A$13
• No Man's Sky (-60%) - A$35

Xbox One

• Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (-51%) - A$39
• It Takes Two (-65%) - A$20
• Unravel Two (-75%) - A$7

Expiring Recent Deals

• NBA 2K25 (-68%) - A$38
• Seagate Expansion Card 1TB (-25%) - A$230
• UFC 5 (-65%) - A$39
• EA Sports FC 25 (-55%) - A$49
• Star Wars Outlaws (-64%) - A$40
• Red Dead 2 (-67%) - A$29
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (-90%) - A$10
• Mass Effect Leg. Ed. (-90%) - A$9

Or just invest in an Xbox Card.

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Pure Scores for PlayStation

• Ghost of Yōtei (-21%) - A$99
• Mafia: The Old Country (-12%) - A$79
• Assassin’s Creed Shadows (-19%) - A$0
• The Last of Us Part II Rem. (-14%) - A$69
• Cyberpunk 2077 (-35%) - A$71

PS4

• Ghost of Tsushima Dir. Cut (-58%) - A$46
• Spyro Reignited Trilogy (-65%) - A$24
• Tactics Ogre: Reborn (-21%) - A$55

Expiring Recent Deals

• Doom: The Dark Ages (-17%) - A$99
• Split Fiction (-16%) - A$59
• Star Wars Outlaws (-64%) - A$40
• 40K: Space Marine 2 (-27%) - A$79
• Judgment (-48%) - A$28
• UFC 5 (-65%) - A$39
• Octopath Traveler II (-32%) - A$57
• Night in the Woods (-50%) - A$14
• Rogue Legacy (-80%) - A$5

PS+ Monthly Freebies
Yours to keep from May 1 with this subscription

• Ark: Survival Ascended (PS5)
• Balatro (PS5/PS4)
• Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (PS5/PS4)

Or purchase a PS Store Card.

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Purchase Cheap for PC

• Elden Ring Nightreign (-12%) - A$55
• Dungeons of Hinterberg (-67%) - A$11
• Sleeping Dogs: Def. Ed. (-85%) - A$4
• Witcher 3 Comp. (-90%) - A$5
• Baldur's Gate 3 (-20%) - A$71

Or just get a Steam Wallet Card

Laptop Deals

• HP Envy x360 16" 2-in-1 (-39%) – A$1,399
• HP Laptop 15.6" Ryzen (-34%) – A$1,049
• ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 (-35%) – A$869
• Lenovo Yoga 7i Gen 9 (-41%) – A$1,229
• Apple 2024 MacBook Air 15-inch (-16%) – A$2,094
• Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 (-36%) - A$879
• Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen7 (-27%) - A$1,018

Desktop Deals

• Lenovo neo 50q Gen 4 Tiny (-35%) – A$639
• Lenovo neo 50t Gen 5 Desk (-20%) – A$871.20
• Lenovo Legion Tower 5i (-29%) – A$1,899

Monitor Deals

• ARZOPA 16.1" 144Hz (-55%) – A$159.99
• Z-Edge 27" 240Hz (-15%) – A$237.99
• Gawfolk 34" WQHD (-28%) – A$359
• LG 27" Ultragear (-42%) – A$349

Component Deals

• MSI PRO B650M-A WiFi Motherboard (-41%) – A$229
• AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (-7%) – A$876
• Corsair Vengeance 32GB (-35%) – A$82
• Kingston FURY Beast 16GB (-30%) – A$48

Storage Deals

• Seagate One Touch Portable HDD (-24%) – A$228
• Kingston 1TB USB 3.2 SSD (-17%) – A$115
• SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO (-63%) – A$29
• SanDisk 32GB Ultra SDHC (-53%) – A$9.90

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Legit LEGO Deals

• Botanicals Daffodils (-48%) - A$12
• Minions’ Music Party Bus (-42%) - A$35
• Deep-Sea Research Submarine (-33%) - A$39
• Construction Steamroller (-33%) - A$10

Expiring Recent Deals

• Captain America: Civil War (-47%) - A$79
• TIE Fighter & X-Wing (-42%) - A$105
• Technic Porsche GT4 (-28%) - A$179
• F1 Garage Mercedes (-27%) - A$95

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Hot Headphones Deals

Audiophilia for less

• Galaxy Buds2 Pro (-31%) – A$239
• Technics Wireless NC (-33%) – A$365
• SoundPEATS Space (-25%) – A$56.99
• Sony MDR7506 Pro (-18%) – A$199

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Terrific TV Deals

Do right by your console, upgrade your telly

• LG 43" UT80 4K (-24%) – A$635
• Kogan 65" QLED 4K (-50%) – A$699
• Kogan 55" QLED 4K (-45%) – A$549
• LG 55" UT80 4K (-28%) – A$866

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The market is already chock full of RGB LED decor, but Govee has still managed to release a unique product that might just deserve a spot on your desk. The Govee Pixel Light, which was first unveiled at CES 2025, is finally available for purchase for immediate delivery. This is essentially a 52x32 or 32x32 LED array panel that allows you to display personalized content. Prices start at $119.99 with free shipping, but there's a 30% off coupon code "PX30". This would make for a very cool toy for streamers, or maybe even for tech savvy and gadget-happy dads, since Father's Day is fast approaching.

Save 30% Off Govee's New Pixel Light

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card is still nigh impossible to find a standalone GPU, and your best bet is to get it pre-installed in a ready-made gaming computer. HP is currently the only online retailer I've found that has an RTX 5090 prebuilt gaming PC priced under $5,000. It's at least $400 less than every other prebuilt 5090 configuration out there. You'll need to follow my directions to configure the options, and HP's estimated June 4 delivery seems pretty optimistic, but if you're bent on getting one of these cards then you have to put in the effort.

HP Omen 45L RTX 5090 Prebuilt Gaming PC for $4489.99

This list contains spoilers for the Mission: Impossible franchise.

A new Mission: Impossible film is hitting theaters this month – the final one in the franchise, if we’re to believe Tom Cruise and the suits at Paramount – and if you’re like us, you’re probably knee deep in a series rewatch right now.

The focus of the films, spectacular action set pieces aside, has been Cruise’s lead spy, Ethan Hunt. Fellow team agents have often come and gone, and supposedly impossible missions have varied time after time, but Ethan has remained. The only other constant has been a steady supply of villains – men and women with big plans fueled by greed and/or malice, who think they’ll be the one to outwit, outsmart, and outrun Hunt. Fools.

It might seem counterintuitive ranking the Mission: Impossible villains under the banner of “best,” but every great hero needs an equally great villain. Numerous elements come into play when determining the best villain, but we’re zeroing in on the scale of their threat, the weight of the violence (both physical and emotional) they commit against Hunt and his team, and the palpable degree of villainous charisma they exhibit.

So cue up that classic Lalo Schifrin theme, here are the 10 Best Mission: Impossible Villains, Ranked!

10. A.I. The Entity (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One)

“A self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite infesting all of cyberspace” sounds like a pretty cool threat in any other high-octane thriller, but in the Mission: Impossible franchise it’s only good enough to land at number ten. It underwhelms compared to its human counterparts, because let’s be real – zeroes and ones ain’t got shit and madness and guns – but its power and immense reach are undeniable. The Entity began “life” as a digital weapon designed by the U.S. government before going rogue and hopping through cyberspace with the giddiness of a puppy experiencing its first snowfall.

Most villainous act of villainy: While toying with and killing a submarine filled with Russian sailors is an act of murderous cruelty, it’s the Entity’s bigger, broader acts of deception that mark it as a true villain. Its early days of online manipulation saw it shifting public opinion and behavior through social media, and it’s a brutal reminder of events in the real world. We live in a present where people with nefarious agendas are influencing easily shaped minds, and with the increased use of A.I. in our online dealings, it’s not hard to imagine something like the Entity stepping in and really turning our daily lives into a nightmare.

9. John Musgrave (Mission: Impossible III)

Not every villain has direct blood on his hands, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less dangerous. Musgrave is Hunt’s Operations Manager at the IMF, and it’s suggested they may even be minor friends – understandable as he’s played by Billy Crudup, and who wouldn’t want to be friends with Billy Crudup. He brings Hunt in on a mission to rescue one of his proteges, Lindsey Farris, and when that goes wrong and Hunt is blamed for the fallout, it’s Musgrave who helps the agent escape to pursue justice. See? A friend.

Surprise! It’s all a ruse, and Musgrave is actually a traitor working with a man named Owen Davian on some elaborate plan to retrieve a piece of tech nicknamed “the rabbit’s foot.” Musgrave’s a hero in his own mind, though, as he’s hoping to use this as motivation for first strikes against enemy forces. He wants the U.S. and the IMF to play a more aggressive role in the fight against terrorism, and if that means supporting terrorists along the way, well, he’s all for it.

Most villainous act of villainy: Musgrave might think his heart is in the right place here, but in addition to enabling a murderous terrorist in Davian, he crosses an equally big line by pulling Ethan’s wife, Julia, into danger. Worse, he lets Davian shoot Julia in the head right in front of Hunt. Sure, she’s revealed to have been a minor henchwoman in a mask, but the emotional damage is real.

8. Kurt Hendricks (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol)

While some villains act out of greed and others cause misery simply for the fun of it, Kurt Hendricks is a man who only wants the best for humanity. What is the best, you ask? Well, in Hendricks’ mind, our species would benefit from something of a cleanse. From the great biblical flood to the atomic bombing of Japanese cities during World War II, immense disasters lead to rebuilding, recovery, and real improvement… apparently.

Sounds logical, so Hendricks sets out to trigger just such a global debacle starting with a massive attack on the Kremlin in Moscow and leading to the acquisition of nuclear codes. He proves himself to be one of the greatest threats Ethan Hunt has faced to that point.

Except, and this is where casting comes into serious play, the film wants us to see him as a physical threat to Hunt – but that’s nearly impossible. Michael Nyqvist was a fantastic actor, and he makes for a compelling villain through dialogue and intent. But a serious contender in a fight with Cruise? It’s difficult to buy, but that doesn’t stop director Brad Bird from letting him go toe to toe with the film’s star for a weirdly long fight. (To be fair, Chad Stahelski started it by letting Nyqvist seemingly hold his own for a bit with Keanu Reeves in John Wick.) So, while Hendricks is a grand threat on the world stage, he tumbles some in the ranking here as an unserious brawler against the highly trained and in far better shape Hunt.

Most villainous act of villainy: Like Musgrave above, Hendricks seriously thinks he’s doing the world a favor by causing harm. His final act results in a nuclear missile being fired towards San Francisco, something that would have killed tens of thousands of people immediately before triggering the death of millions more. That’s no small thing, and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling IMF agents.

7. August Walker (Mission: Impossible - Fallout)

Hunt and his IMF team have been betrayed by double agents and traitors on numerous occasions, but most of them are greedy middle-aged men in suits who don’t pose an immediate physical threat to our intrepid hero. August Walker is something different entirely. He towers over Hunt and is jacked from his mustache on down. Henry Cavill’s portrayal ensures that he’s already menacing even while pretending to be on Hunt’s side, but once the truth comes out, the gloves come off.

Walker is revealed to be working in cahoots with the brilliant Solomon Lane, and together they frame Hunt and once again pull the love of his life, Julia, into harm’s way. His motivation for it all is a bit over the top and dramatic – he wants the old world to implode and give rise to something better – but what else would you expect from a man who seems to cock his arms like guns during fist fights.

Most villainous act of villainy: Walker and Lane are planning to detonate nuclear bombs, and while the latter stays behind to die in his greatest act of terror, Walker is on a chopper heading to safety. Hunt, of course, catches up to him in pursuit of the detonator that’s needed to stop the countdown. While Walker could have easily escaped by giving up the detonator, his desire to cause suffering – especially Hunt’s suffering if Julia were to die – leads him to a one-on-one fight to the death with the agent. It’s a decision built on rage and self-righteous justification, and it rightfully ends in his painful demise.

6. Paris (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One)

When it comes to villains in the Mission: Impossible universe, few can touch Pom Klementieff’s Paris on style and charisma points. A henchwoman to Gabriel, she lets her gleefully murderous skillset do most of her talking, and it’s a refreshing change of pace from baddies who seem compelled to share their life stories before pulling a trigger.

Her costume and face makeup see her stand apart from the crowd, but don’t let her doll-like appearance fool you. Paris is a merciless fighter who refuses to quit despite the odds, as evidenced by a shootout and car chase in Rome that sees her literally plowing through obstacles both human and otherwise in her pursuit of Hunt.

Most villainous act of villainy: While Paris makes mincemeat out of numerous threats, she ultimately succumbs to Hunt during an alleyway brawl. He spares her life, though, and after being punished by Gabriel – he basically tries to kill her – she chooses to betray both him and her villainous tendencies by saving Hunt’s life. Maybe I’m stretching the definition here, but it takes a real badass to turn your back on villainy with the discovery of unexpected morals and a change of heart.

5. Gabriel (Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning)

The mysterious Gabriel arrives in the penultimate entry of the franchise, and he’s a man with deadly skills and an alliance with the Entity. He also comes with a backstory suggesting an integral role in Ethan Hunt’s life. It seems Gabriel killed a woman named Marie thirty years ago, someone Hunt was apparently fond of, and it’s that murder that landed Hunt at the IMF – where he went on to save thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands, even. So maybe Gabriel is a hero? I kid, I kid.

He’s obviously a villain, and he may even be something of a seer (?), but while his late-to-the-party franchise arrival unavoidably undercuts his dramatic weight, the character’s casting lifts Gabriel right back up again. Esai Morales brings real charm and a calm menace to the character, and it’s immediately made clear that he’s not someone to be trifled with. You believe both his physical abilities and deadly intentions, and Morales’ added dramatic weight makes him a real threat to Hunt. He also earns a bump in the rankings by gifting viewers with the best, most unforgettable villain death in the entire franchise.

Most villainous act of villainy: Gabriel’s killed a lot of people, and he even destroyed a rolling Agatha Christie landmark, so it’s clear he’s a bad guy. His most vicious act, though, comes as a bookend to having “fridged” Marie three decades earlier. Gabriel threatens to do it again by killing either Ilsa or Grace – Hunt’s current love interest or the woman who just landed in his lap mere hours ago – and while the film wants to trick viewers into thinking it’s going to be the latter, it’s Ilsa who dies by Gabriel’s blade instead. McQuarrie and Cruise are obviously the real villains here for introducing this tired trope of a woman’s death being responsible for a man’s life, but it’s ultimately Gabriel who thrusts the knife into Ilsa’s gut. It could have been Grace who died. Hell, it should have been Benji. Instead, Gabriel extinguishes the franchise’s brightest flame this side of Hunt himself. J’accuse!

4. Jim Phelps (Mission: Impossible)

Jim Phelps wasn’t the only friend/fellow agent to betray Hunt over the years, but he was the first – and arguably the most shocking. The character, as played by Peter Graves, was the IMF’s lead agent for the bulk of the television series’ seven-season run from 1966 to 1973. He was unquestionably a good guy, so there was no reason to suspect that his presence in the first Mission: Impossible film would be anything different – well, Jon Voight in the role was probably a clue.

Audiences expected Phelps to essentially hand the reins over to Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, but while he did just that, he did so with a major act of betrayal. As he tells Hunt once his ruse is discovered, the end of the Cold War threatens to end the need for the IMF – this is as naive a statement as ever uttered in the entirety of the franchise – and he was worried about becoming a relic barely scraping by on sixty-two thousand dollars a year.

Most villainous act of villainy: The betrayal itself is already brutal as Phelps turns his back on friends and agents who’ve risked their lives together over the years, but it’s the specifics of his traitorous act that hits hardest. In his effort to frame someone else for his crime, Phelps kills off three members of his team during an operation and then fakes his own death. What could have been a simple theft, instead becomes an act of cruelty making his betrayal sting even more.

3. Sean Ambrose (Mission: Impossible II)

“That was always the hardest part of having to portray you,” says ex-IMF agent Sean Ambrose to a beaten and angered Ethan Hunt, “grinning like an idiot every fifteen minutes.” That line alone makes Ambrose a top villain as it’s a terrific zing at both Hunt and Cruise himself. He’s equally dismissive of women as evidenced by his comment that they’re like monkeys when it comes to the men in their lives, that they “won’t let go of one branch until they get a grip on the next.” Say what you will about his greedy desires, but Ambrose (Dougray Scott) understands the assignment when it comes to being a charismatic villain.

That greed has led him to steal a deadly plague with plans to unleash it on whole populations if his demands aren’t met. While cash money is his primary motivator, though, Ambrose also seems fueled by a splash of jealousy towards Hunt. That makes their faceoffs all the more entertaining whether they’re jousting on motorcycles or sharing beatdowns in the sand as only the great John Woo can capture it.

Most villainous act of villainy: The film opens with Ambrose masquerading as Hunt in order to acquire the Chimera plague, but rather than just kill one man, Ambrose and his team crash an entire passenger jet filled with innocent civilians. Acts of terror would claim higher body counts in later films, but this puts faces to the dead in a far more direct way making it more personal and affecting.

2. Solomon Lane (Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation)

Whether due to low pay or poor benefits, the world is seemingly overflowing with ex-government employees ready and willing to betray their nations and jump on the train to villain town. Solomon Lane is one such agent, but he goes a step or three further by helping create an organization called The Syndicate that’s built entirely on those bitter, trigger happy ex-agents. They want to sow chaos and reap financial rewards, and they’ve been doing it for years.

Lane is introduced killing a young, unarmed female agent right in front of Hunt, and it’s soon revealed that he’s responsible for thousands of deaths over the years through events made to look like accidents or the work of wholly unrelated perpetrators. Lane’s history of manipulating trust and the world’s various systems makes him one of the most dangerous villains in the franchise. He’s ahead of Hunt at every step, and his mantra – “The greater the suffering, the greater the peace.” – marks him as a man willing to do anything to accomplish his goals.

While many actors go big playing villains, Sean Harris takes the opposite approach and makes Lane a weasel of a man who you just want to see get beaten senseless. It’s an unusually bold choice that leaves him without a darkly appealing persona or personality – he’s just a very bad man who couldn’t care less about you or your loved ones.

Most villainous act of villainy: As the rare villain to be an active threat across more than one film, Lane inflicts plenty of pain, suffering, and stress on Hunt and his team. The bulk of his evil acts were committed before Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation even begins, but his cruelest and most personal action unfolds during the followup, Fallout. Along with August Walker, Lane manages to activate two nuclear bombs threatening not only the water supply for billions of people, but also the life of Hunt’s greatest love, Julia. Seeing her in harm’s way is the kind of gut punch that Hunt felt only once before, and it’s clear just how sorry he is that his choices have once again brought her so close to dying.

1. Owen Davian (Mission: Impossible III)

There’s a lot of competition when it comes to selecting the best villain in the Mission: Impossible franchise, but there was never any doubt who’d land at the top of the heap. Davian doesn’t care about much beyond his own wants and needs, and the film reflects that by never revealing exactly what his end goal is – we know he wants the so-called rabbit’s foot, but what it is and what it does are never made clear. We just know that Davian will cut through anyone and anything to get it, and that makes him an exceptionally dangerous man.

J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III is unfairly maligned, but even those underwhelmed by the film itself can’t help but applaud Philip Seymour Hall’s frighteningly effective and highly entertaining portrayal of Davian. His blistering stares, his lightning quick shifts from dead silence to raging outbursts, and his deceptively calm way of threatening everything that Hunt holds dear all work to make him a villain who commands the screen and even steals every scene from Cruise himself.

There may not be a big, global threat at play here, but Davian is the man who arguably gets closer than any other villain to actually killing Hunt. He injects the agent’s head with an explosive device that gets within seconds of churning Hunt’s brain tissue into ground beef, and he even gets some serious licks in while brawling. You wouldn’t think a Cruise versus Hoffman fight would convince, but the latter’s pure ferocity paired with Hunt’s incapacitation due to the pain in his head makes for a viciously compelling bout.

Most villainous act of villainy: Davian is a mean bastard who, while still in restraints, coldly threatens to murder Hunt’s fiance Julia. “I’m gonna make her bleed and cry and call out your name”, he says, and it’s one of the few times where Hunt’s legendary control tips into real fear and emotion. Davian later comes close to doing just that after abducting Julia, tying her up, and appearing to shoot her in the head. Hunt’s pain is palpable, and it’s enough to damage his heart to the point that he’d go on to never let someone that close again. Davian has literally halted Hunt’s ability to connect with someone on a deeply personal level, and it’s the kind of attack that bullets and bombs just can’t compete with.

Ahead of its official Memorial Day Sale event, Sonos is offering an extra 25% off its two most popular portable speakers: the compact and rugged Sonos Roam 2 and the bigger sounding and more feature rich Sonos Move 2. These deals are available from Sonos direct and at various retailers, although I recommend buying from a retailer to get faster shipping.

Sonos Move 2 for $336

Some of the best LEGO sets that have ever been created are now retired. While you can still find ways to buy them online, it is nearly impossible to find them below their original retail price. So if you find yourself face to face with a LEGO set that really sparks joy, it's best to pick it up before it's gone forever.

That being said, there are some rare cases when you can still find a set for below MSRP even after it gets retired. One such case is this current discount on the Green Hill Zone LEGO set at Amazon. It isn't much of a discount, but we don't expect it will still be at this price for much longer now that its been over five months since it was retired.

LEGO Sonic The Hedgehog – Green Hill Zone Sale

There’s no way to talk about mechanical keyboards without bringing up Cherry and their prolific brand of switches, which you’ll see in some of the best gaming keyboards throughout time. Following the introduction of the new generation of switch components last year, the accessory company highlights its new wares in the Cherry XTRFY MX 3.1 keyboard. In what should have been a brilliant showcase for the company’s new product lineup, those fantastic new keys are marred by some odd design flaws on what’s otherwise a rather pleasant-feeling keyboard.

Cherry XTRFY MX 3.1 – Design and Features

Cherry packed a few frills into the XTRFY MX 3.1. It’s a wired full-size keyboard complete with a full set of Cherry’s new MX2A Red mechanical switches. It’s available in black and white color schemes as well as a light pink edition, although that’s only available in Asian territories. You can spice up the look with full RGB customization and shine through the keycaps and vents on board’s sides. Inside the box, you’ll find only the keyboard, a sturdy braided USB-A to C cable, and in lieu of any adjustable legs built onto the keyboard itself, Cherry provides a pair of screw-on feet to adjust the keyboard’s height. It’s nice that there’s an option of some kind to change the angle at which the keyboard sits, but I wish there were something to make that adjustment quicker and easier for users to switch between positions on the fly. That’s just the first of my issues with the MX 3.1’s design, but thankfully, the majority of my complaints are skin deep.

Like other products in the XTRFY line, the MX 3.1 isn’t a particularly handsome piece of tech. Its key layout is crowded, eliminating the gaps between the main keyboard and the number pad area, leaving space only for a trio of notification lights above the arrow keys. However, while it should be saving space, it’s still about as wide as the full-sized Logitech G413 SE, which manages to give each section more room to breathe than the MX 3.1. Thankfully, in practice, the MX 3.1 manages not to feel as cramped as it looks.

The frame is comprised of a solid chunk of aluminum that’s machined into an angular base that houses the recessed switches and folds into feet on the front and rear edges. It’s flanked with dotted RGB side plates with a dotted pattern that aren’t quite flush with the frame – although it creates a sort of textured look, it makes the whole look of the keyboard rough and unpolished. The build quality is great, however, and doesn’t feel flimsy even if there are still a handful of edges that could use some cleaning up in its design philosophy.

Cherry is clearly aiming for the gaming crowd with the aesthetic of the XTRFY MX 3.1, going with a pseudo-futuristic look, but it feels like it’s living in the past. The stock keycaps are emblazoned with a sharp sci-fi-inspired font, making the unit as a whole look like some of the try-hard budget keyboards on sale over a decade ago. It’s not a complete eyesore, but it’s one of a few questionable choices Cherry made with the MX 3.1.

However, there are more confusing choices, specifically how some of the punctuation keys are depicted on the stock keycaps. When a key has multiple functions, the represented characters are oriented vertically, with the top character being the default and the bottom requiring a press of the Shift or Function keys. It’s a pretty standard configuration for most keyboards, except Cherry has decided that some of the punctuation keys have the same vertical orientation, while others are displayed horizontally. Here’s the kicker: there’s no consistency on whether the left or right character is supposed to be the default. For example, the bracket keys and forward slash, which are in line next to each other, are flip-flopped on each sequential key. It is truly a UX disaster.

Cherry XTRFY MX 3.1 – Software and Customization

When it comes to making things colorful, the adjustable RGB lighting is one of the best aspects of the MX 3.1, and brings the overall aesthetics back from the brink of being irredeemable. Using the Cherry Utility software, the keyboard can be customized with a variety of pulsing, waving, or static lighting styles, including on the side plates. For those who want to get granular with the look of their setup, each key can be individually lit with bespoke colors, which thankfully is becoming more common, and is especially great to see here. The lighting, which illuminates the characters on each key, gives a neat underglow to the recessed base of the device, with bright, colorful luminescence pouring through each crevice.

The Cherry Utility allows for multiple profiles to switch up the lighting as well as changing the functions of individual keys. There are options to remap keys, create macros, add specific multimedia functions, or type out a pre-written 1000-character field of text with a single keystroke, which is great for mapping your passwords to a key. The utility itself is simplistic, splitting customization up into “Lighting” and “Actions” segments, which are easy to navigate and use. There’s not a lot to do, but it’s great that Cherry has a clean interface for users to easily make the MX 3.1 more their own.

Cherry XTRFY MX 3.1 – Performance

The XTRFY MX 3.1’s saving grace is that it’s overall a pleasant keyboard to type with, especially for long periods of time. This is my first experience with Cherry’s MX2A Red switches, and I’m fairly impressed with how they feel. The switches require only a light touch to press, only 45g of actuation force, which is on the lower end of what Cherry offers with its various switches. As is pretty standard, each key has a total travel distance of 4.0mm and an actuation point in the direct center of that at 2.0mm. Cherry boasts that this reduces strain and fatigue when playing games and while I wouldn’t go as far as to fully endorse that statement, after a couple of weeks using the keyboard as my daily driver at work and while playing games, I haven’t come away from long sessions feeling like I needed to rest my hands and wrists.

Cherry claims the MX 3.1 is built to dampen the sound of its switches, and in practice, they’ve done a pretty great job. The MX2A Red switches are already designed as a linear switch which means it doesn’t have the clickiness of other Cherry switches, and when typing on the MX 3.1, it’s noticeably quiet. They aren’t completely silent, mind you, but they provide a satisfying sound like a couple of plastic measuring spoons gently tapping one another. There are layers within the keyboard to help dampening which isn’t visible without taking apart the chassis, but whatever it’s doing works really well.

The ABS keycaps themselves are largely unremarkable in look and feel, though they are comfortable enough to use. Laid out in the standard Cherry height and formation, the keys feel smooth when pressed. A common complaint about ABS keys is how they wear over time, and with Cherry suggesting these caps are abrasion-resistant, I gave them a minor stress test to find out. Lightly scraping a key with a small flathead screwdriver is obviously not a normal use case, but the tool hardly left a mark on the plastic. Pressing slightly harder did leave a more noticeable abrasion, but it’s hardly visible at a glance, and invisible enough to pass my quick test flying colors.

Amazon’s Memorial Day Sale is already in full swing, and with it, Apple’s latest iPad is back to its lowest price ever. The classic 11-inch iPad with an A16 processor just came out in March, and we’re excited to see it already getting discounted. It’s rare for these sales to happen so soon after an Apple release. However, this isn’t even the first time it’s dropped in price, as the newest iPad had $50 knocked off a couple weeks ago, with the same savings leading up to the unofficial start to summer this weekend. Right now, every color of the iPad is a great deal, so grab an option that fits your aesthetic while it lasts.

The 11th-generation iPad isn’t the only iPad model seeing discounts right now; a bunch of Apple’s latest tablets, including the iPad Air (2025) and iPad mini (2024), plus some other great tablets, are on sale before the holiday weekend.

Score $50 off the new 2025 Apple iPad (A16)

With its combination of affordability and capability, the 11th-generation iPad is the best iPad model for most people. This iPad has slight upgrades from previous generations. Most notably, it now comes with an A16 processor rather than an A14, making for even snappier performance in everyday tasks from scrolling socials to streaming. Base storage also doubled to 128GB, leaving extra space to download apps and games, while the screen only got a minuscule size increase from 10.9 inches to 11 inches. But even with these changes, Apple didn’t up the cost from the 10th-generation model, so the starting price is just $349.

Not much else has changed with the newest iPad. It looks nearly identical and still offers the same Wi-Fi 6 connection, camera, and USB-C charging. Support for Apple’s Magic Folio keyboard and the Apple Pencil (USB-C) also makes it a viable option for lighter workflows, but if you're after serious power, the iPad Air or iPad Pro may be a better option.

Save up to $100 on the Latest iPad Air (M3) models

Amazon dropped one of the best games of 2024 to the lowest price I've seen. As part of the Amazon Memorial Day Sale, you can pick up a physical copy of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 for PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X for just $39.99. That's 43% off the $70 list price and beats the previous price low (during last year's Black Friday) by $10.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (PS5, Xbox) for $39.99