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Save a Whopping $1,700 Off the Powerful Lenovo Legion Tower 7i GeForce RTX 5080 Gaming PC

For this weekend only, Lenovo is offering a massive $1,700 discount on the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 gaming PC equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K processor and RTX 5080 graphics card, now just $2,149 shipped after coupon code "WEEKENDPOWERUP". This is easily the best deal I've seen for a Legion Tower RTX 5080 gaming PC and over $500 less than the previous lowest price. The RTX 5080 graphics card will play even the latest games at 4K resolution with high settings and ray tracing enabled.

Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 RTX 5080 Gaming PC for $2,149

The Legion Tower 7 is Lenovo's top-end desktop computer, boasting a well-ventilated chassis with a mesh front panel housing six total 120mm fans (including three fans for the 360mm liquid cooling system) and an 850W 80Plus Gold power supply. This particular configuration features an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K processor, GeForce RTX 5080 16GB graphics card, 32GB of DDR5-5600MHz of RAM, and a 2TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor has a max turbo frequency of 5.7GHz with 24 cores and a 40MB L2 cache. According to Passmark, the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is a better gaming chip than the previous generation's Intel Core i9-14900K.

The RTX 5080 is the second best Blackwell graphics card, surpassed only by the $2,000 RTX 5090. It's about 5%-10% faster than the previous generation RTX 4080 Super, which is discontinued and no longer available. In games that support DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation exclusive to Blackwell cards, the gap widens. This is an outstanding card for playing even the latest games at 4K resolution with high settings and ray tracing enabled.

Why Choose Lenovo?

Lenovo Legion gaming PCs and laptops generally feature better build quality than what you'd find from other prebuilt PCs. For desktop PCs in particular, people like the fact that Lenovo does not use proprietary components in its computer systems, so they're easier to upgrade with off-the-shelf parts. Although we haven't yet reviewed the new 2025 models, we have reviewed last year's Legion 7 desktop and really liked its build quality and performance.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

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Save Over $800 Off the Lenovo Legion 5 Gaming PC with AMD X3D CPU and RTX 5070 Ti GPU

For this weekend only, Lenovo is offering this outstanding deal on a Legion gaming PC deal. Right now you can order a pre-configured Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 10 AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D GeForce RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC for just $1,699 after coupon code: "WEEKENDPOWERUP". Free delivery is included. This CPU/GPU duo can run even the latest and most demanding games with high framerates at up to 4K resolution.

Lenovo Legion RTX 5070 Ti Gaming PC for $1,699

The Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 10 gaming PC is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card, 32GB of DDR5-5200MHz RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD. The processor is (air)cooled by a robust 120mm tower heatsink and fan combo. A total of six 120mm RGB fans and a sensibly designed 30L midtower chassis keeps your components quiet and cool. An 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply provides plenty of power. The case offers toolless entry and most of the components are non-proprietary, so they are easy to swap out or upgrade yourself down the road.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is still an outstanding gaming CPU

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D has an established reputation of being one of the best gaming CPUs available. It's a slightly older model that has been replaced by the newer Ryzen 9 98000X3D, but it is still one of the best gaming CPUs you can get today. According to Passmark, the 7800X3D's gaming performance surpasses that of the latest generation Intel Core Ultra 7 265K. The 7800X3D is also more efficient than the 9800X3D, which means it will consume less power and produce less heat (and thus less noise because your fans don't need to spin as fast).

The RTX 5070 Ti GPU Has Excellent 4K Gaming Performance

Of all the Blackwell cards released thus far, the RTX 5070 Ti offers the best bang for your buck, especially when pitted against the previous generation GPUs. It performs neck-and-neck with the RTX 4080 Super and marginalizes the RTX 5080, which is only about 10%-15% faster but costs 33% more. Like all Blackwell cards, the RTX 5070 Ti supports DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation. It also has 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM same as the RTX 5080, making it suitable for AI.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

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NHL 26 Review

It might not have the audience of football, baseball, or soccer, but to its proud fans there’s something truly special about hockey. It’s the cold air of the arena, the weight of the puck against your stick, and the feel as your skate glides across the surface of the ice. To their credit, the developers at EA Vancouver seem to get all of that, and it’s led them to create an enjoyable NHL simulation that has earned a dedicated audience. That dedication, however, has increasingly been tested in recent years as the series has failed to truly move forward in any meaningful way. EA Sports NHL 26 continues this dynamic with a game that nails most of the elements that make hockey special, but it never feels like the kind of significant jump over what’s come before that might make buying yet another version exciting rather than obligatory.

If you’ve played a hockey game from EA at any point over the last few years, you have a good idea of what to expect from NHL 26. The lynchpin of the series is Franchise mode, which allows you to take the team of your choosing on a season-long quest to hoist the Stanley Cup. It’s basically the default mode, showcasing what the series is best known for and it still does that all pretty well. Individual games are fast, the controls are intuitive, and EA Vancouver has spent years refining a formula that mostly works. Granted, there are very few other hockey games available right now, and those that do exist don’t have the official NHL players or teams; that lack of competition might be what leads the developers to play things so safe and leave so much unchanged year to year. To be fair, it’s hard to fault them too much for not fixing what isn’t broken.

However, this situation has created an unfortunate trend for the series that’s made each year’s version feel like baby steps, and NHL 26 continues to focus more on smaller tweaks than on substantial changes. As a result, it’s easy to miss adjustments made beyond mirroring the big roster changes we’ve seen over the offseason, such as Mitch Marner being on the Golden Knights after leaving the Leafs, and Matt Dumba appearing on the Penguins following his Dallas departure. As of this writing, EA Vancouver seems to have done a pretty good job making sure everything is up to date, including representing the Utah Mammoth with their new name, uniforms, and arena (following a season under the temporary “Utah Hockey Club” label). Lastly, PWHL has been updated to add the women’s league’s two new teams from the 2025-2026 season, though that mode feels completely unchanged beyond that.

It’s easy to miss adjustments made beyond mirroring the big roster changes.

Though Franchise mode seems to be the most popular single-player mode in EA’s yearly NHL games, I really enjoy the customization options and the general approach to the sport found in the narrowed focus of Be a Pro. As someone that grew up playing hockey, there’s something that feels really authentic about focusing on controlling an individual player. There’s a greater need to consider line changes, playing in position, and setting up CPU-controlled characters.

So I was pleased to find that some of the bigger changes this year can be found here, but I’ve found that they aren’t all positive. Some of the biggest improvements come from cutting out what hasn’t worked: NHL 26 has finally dropped the often-mocked and frequently repeated “pricey pond hockey” opening scene that appeared across multiple games. You’ll no longer see the same repeated cinematic sequence with an agent talking about how you’re so passionate about hockey that you’re playing pond pick-up with a bunch of kids. Instead, you’re dropped right into the player maker. And mercifully, EA has also scaled back on the frequent coach meetings from past Be a Pro modes, but the catch is that the replacement might be even more monotonous: press conferences.

NHL 26 has finally dropped the often-mocked and frequently repeated “pricey pond hockey” opening.

The idea of taking part in press conferences is actually kind of neat, and the initial questions help to shape your on-ice personality. The hockey press will ask questions like your approach to free agency, and choosing one option will improve your likeability with teammates, while the other helps your brand. However, the execution gets dull fast once you’ve taken part in several in a row. That might be a little too real: I’ve attended real-life NHL press conferences, and the questions from sports journalists really can be as groan-inducing as they are here sometimes. How do I feel about not winning the division? How do you think?

On top of that, the impact from press conference responses on player stats often feels unfair. At one press conference, I was asked about modeling my career around a specific player, with multiple options to choose from. I apparently picked the wrong one, and it immediately led to a decrease in my brand stat. Even worse, NHL 26 doesn’t always make it clear what answers will have a negative impact on your brand or the feelings of management, so a seemingly innocuous response can have an unforeseeable consequence.

A smart change, though, has made NHL’s most intimidating mode more approachable for me. Putting together a team built out of NHL greats in Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT) takes a lot of time and effort. It can also take some real currency, though you are awarded with daily freebies that can help shape a decent team without paying extra. I still don’t necessarily want to take my team up against the passionate players who dominate online with a combination of skill and large wallets, though; sometimes you want to play without the pressure of competing with real people. So it’s a welcome change that for NHL 26, EA has replaced last year’s HUT Squad Battles with a new offline Cup Chase mode that offers a chance to build up a team and try them out in a full single-player campaign with multiple difficulty levels. I was grateful to have the chance to jump into games using my custom team without having to worry about getting schooled by people fiercely protecting their online rankings. And anybody that wants to do so can take that team online just as they normally would in HUT.

I was grateful to have the chance to jump into games using my custom team without having to worry about getting schooled by people fiercely protecting their online rankings.

Online or off, though, NHL is feeling increasingly behind the annual sports game pack graphically. That’s despite the fact that last year, NHL 25 marked the first game in the series to abandon PS4 and Xbox One and shift focus to current platforms. But NHL 26 still doesn’t feel like it’s really pushing PS5 and Xbox Series X|S to the fullest. The ice itself pops on the screen nicely, and there are lots of impressive details, including wear to the surface as a game progresses, but just about everywhere else is a letdown. The character models are rough, with players, coaches, and fans often looking pretty ugly relative to what we’ve seen in other recent sports games. There are also some weird choices and oversights that are holdovers from past games, like team logos getting cut off on specific screens. Crowd reactions also feel stuck in the past, with awkward celebrations that would be right at home on PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii.

Thankfully, I found the audio much more enjoyable. The menus have some great new songs this year, including tracks from groups like Wet Leg and The Hives. I never would have thought of “Catch These Fists” as a hockey song, but it fits undeniably well. In the games themselves, EA Vancouver continues to replicate the authentic sounds of each rink, with team-specific cheers and organ sounds. The commentary is also pretty faithful to the current NHL viewing experience; it feels like watching a nationally televised game, offering the same chatty play-by-play that you’d expect to hear on TNT. That said, I was grateful for the option to toggle it off when it got repetitive.

Possibly the worst audio in NHL 26 belongs to Macklin Celebrini, though. The San Jose Sharks forward can be heard offering career advice in Be a Pro mode, and it’s clear not all hockey players are cut out for acting.

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Save Over $1,100 off the Lenovo Legion 5 RTX 5070 Ti Gaming PC, Which Uses a Laptop Processor

Lenovo just dropped the price on a Legion Tower gaming PC to lower than what I saw during the Labor Day sale. The Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 10 GeForce RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC is down to just $1,659 after you apply coupon code: "WEEKENDPOWERUP". Free delivery is included. Curiously, this gaming PC is equipped with a laptop processor. This CPU/GPU duo can run even the even most demanding games in 4K resolution at 60fps and beyond.

Lenovo Legion RTX 5070 Ti Gaming PC for $1,659

The Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 10 gaming PC is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card, 32GB of DDR5-5200MHz RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD. The processor is equipped with a 240mm liquid cooler, which is a rare upgrade for a Legion Tower 5 series PC. An 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply provides plenty of power. The case offers toolless entry and most of the components are non-proprietary, so they are easy to swap out or upgrade yourself down the road. The exception in this particular case is the CPU and motherboard.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is normally a laptop CPU

According to Lenovo's spec sheet, this PC is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU on a customized Intel HM870 mATX motherboard. The 275HX is traditionally a laptop-class CPU, and it's important to note that laptop CPUs are (permanently) soldered onto the motherboard. Unlike a desktop CPU, a laptop CPU cannot be upgraded. If you do plan on swapping the CPU for something better in the future, then you'll have to stick with a gaming PC equipped with a traditional desktop CPU. If you don't intend on swapping the CPU, then you'll get excellent performance out of this chip. According to Passmark, the Ultra 9 275HX is roughly comparable in gaming performance to the Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF. It also has more cores (24 vs 20) for better multi-core performance.

The RTX 5070 Ti GPU has excellent 4K gaming performance

Despite the fact that the CPU is a mobile chip, the RTX 5070 Ti is a desktop-class graphics card with 16GB of RAM and 1,406 AI TOPS. Unlike the CPU, the GPU can be user upgraded.

Of all the Blackwell cards released thus far, the RTX 5070 Ti offers the best bang for your buck, especially when pitted against the previous generation GPUs. It performs neck-and-neck with the RTX 4080 Super and marginalizes the RTX 5080, which is only about 10%-15% faster but costs 33% more. Like all Blackwell cards, the RTX 5070 Ti supports DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation. It also has 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM same as the RTX 5080, making it suitable for AI.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

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The Best HBO Max Deals for September 2025

Max is officially back to being HBO Max. Even though the name has changed (returned?), the library is still full of great films and shows to watch. HBO Max is home to some incredibly high-quality watches, including House of the Dragon, The White Lotus, The Last of Us, and Sinners. You can tune in to Season 2 of Peacemaker, which will of course be joined by the new Superman later this year.

If you've been hoping to start up an account to dig into that library, we're here to help. We're keeping track of the best price for HBO Max subscriptions, along with any deals as they appear. Let's get into what's available right now.

Our Top Pick: The Disney+, Hulu, and HBO Max Streaming Bundle

There are no active discounts available for HBO Max, so your best bet for savings (assuming you're already on the hook for more than one subscription) is by checking out some bundles.

Our favorite streaming bundle includes Disney Plus, Hulu, and HBO Max. The deal can be purchased through any of the three streaming services and starts at $16.99/month for the ad-supported tier or $29.99/month for ad-free access across all three platforms. It'll save you quite a bit compared to what you'd pay for the three of them separately per month – 43% on the ad-supported plan and 42% on the ad-free plan.

To learn more about how to get started with this bundle as a new or existing subscriber, head to our guide on how to get (or switch over to) the Disney+/Hulu/HBO Max streaming bundle.

Students Get 50% off HBO Max Basic With Ads

If you're a student, you can score the HBO Max Basic With Ads plan for just $4.99/month. That's 50% off the usual price, which is a very nice deal to take advantage of. In order to get the discount, you'll need to verify your student status with UNiDAYS, then you'll get a unique code that you can use to redeem the discounted plan.

Subscribe to HBO Max

If you're just looking to sign up for a HBO Max subscription, there are a few different options to choose from:

Both tiers allow up to two concurrent streams and offer Full HD resolution. The Standard tier allows users to download shows and movies to watch on the go, too.

HBO Max also has an additional Premium tier, which offers 4K UHD resolution and Dolby Atmos sound alongside four concurrent streams. The details are as follows:

There is currently no HBO Max free trial available as of July 2025, so you'll need to be a paying subscriber to access the service.

What's Streaming on HBO Max?

HBO Max features a wide variety of programming. New additions to HBO Max in September include a spread of anime films coming out of a new deal with GKIDS, the Tim Robinson comedy Friendship, the latest season of Rick and Morty, and Warfare.

Otherwise, the service includes shows from brands like HGTV, Food Network, TLC, and the Magnolia Network. Of course, one of the big draws of HBO Max is HBO Originals like The Last of Us, Succession, Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The White Lotus, House of the Dragon, and more. It also includes DC's slate of movies and shows like The Batman and Peacemaker, as well as other popular Warner Bros. films like Mickey 17 and Sinners. Plus, HBO Max continues to house popular streaming series like Friends, Full House, and the Harry Potter movie collection.

Back when it was still called 'Max', we gave the streaming service an 8/10 in our review, stating that, "For all its problems and an app that still runs a little too heavy, the extensive selection of well-curated choices make Max a worthwhile investment for cinema and TV lovers."

Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.

Original article from Logan Plant.

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Nioh 3 Looks Set to Level Up from Nioh 1 and 2 – IGN First

With just two games, the Nioh series has already cemented its place among the best of the soulslike genre, thanks to its uniquely fast-paced action, deeply customizable builds and playstyles, thrilling boss battles, and a certain fluidity to its combat that feels like Team Ninja’s own signature touch. Based on my five hours of hands-on time with a new preview build, the upcoming third installment is shaping up to continue that trend of excellence, staying true to the core of what has always made the series so successful, but shaking up just enough to challenge veteran players to rethink how they approach its many difficult combat encounters.

Much like Nioh 2, Nioh 3 is shaping up to be an iterative sequel that doesn’t change much about the core systems that were established in Nioh 1; instead adding brand new layers on top of that core to reinvigorate the combat system and force players to engage with it differently. Nioh 2 did this by adding in burst counters and yokai shifts, and Nioh 3 does this primarily by giving the player two styles that they can shift between on the fly: Samurai and Ninja style.

When I first played Nioh 3, back when it was offered up as a limited time demo, I was a little unsure of how I felt about this split. Samurai style, after all, is basically just the way you’d normally play Nioh, minus the ability to use Onmyo Magic; while Ninja Style just felt like a much faster and DPS oriented stance that comes with the substantial drawbacks of no longer being able to use Ki Pulses to regain your stamina, and no longer having the three sword stances to switch between, which are both two staples of Nioh’s gameplay. Not to mention that having two different styles means nearly twice as much inventory management, since they both have their own completely separate sets of gear, and if there’s one game series that already has more than enough inventory and loot management, it’s Nioh.

During my playtime, something clicked with me with regards to Samurai and Ninja style.

While loot remains an issue, during my playtime, something clicked with me with regards to Samurai and Ninja style. Not only did I gain an understanding of what each style was good for and when I should swap to one versus continuing with the other, but more importantly, I got a grasp of the sheer amount of options that having two hot swappable styles each with their own equipment loadouts and skill trees brings to the table.

While in Samurai style, you of course have access to the three stances – high, medium, and low – and all of the skills that come from each of those stances. You also are able to to use Ki Pulses to restore spent stamina without having to wait for it to recharge, making it great for sustained offense where you’re able to kind of just plant your feet down and stand and fight against a tough enemy. There’s also a new Arts Proficiency Gauge that fills up as you deal damage and successfully guard, but decreases whenever you get hit. Once it’s full, you’re able to use a powered-up version of your heavy attack, which adds a nice little reward for playing well with a careful balance of offense and defense.

Ninja style on the other hand lets you go absolutely wild. Your dashes go crazy far and are super fast compared to the dodges in Samurai style; instead of stances, you’re able to equip up to three ninja tools; you’re able to very quickly dash to an enemy’s backside to deal extra damage; and most of the weapons take advantage of the fact that Nioh 3 adds a jump button, allowing you to even punctuate your ground combos with a jump cancel, letting you tag on even more damage with air combos. On top of all of this, for both styles, you also have your guardian spirit transformations, guardian spirit skills, Soul Core skills, it’s just a lot of tools to take with you into every battle.

Of course, all of these added options in Ninja Style come at the aforementioned cost of not being able to use Ki Pulses to restore stamina, so I did find myself having to rein in my lust for aggression – it is still a stamina-driven soulslike after all – but I felt a level of creative freedom in combat expression that I typically feel in a good character action game, and I eagerly anticipate getting my hands on the full game and seeing what a high-level character can do once the skill trees start getting maxed out.

Soul Cores also return in Nioh 3, but they’re a bit different this time around. They still appear as random drops from enemies and will let you use that enemy’s signature attack, just to give you yet another option when it comes to how you choose to dispatch your foes. However you have two choices of how to equip them. When you rest at a shrine, you can put them in your Onmyo Box in either the Yin or the Yang position. The Yin position is what I just talked about, you’ll gain some stat increases and the ability of the monster to use in combat. But if you place a core in the Yang position, you’ll instead be able to get spells and items added to your inventory that will refresh every time you rest at a shrine. One of the Soul Cores had a fairly underwhelming skill, but when I equipped it in a Yang slot, it gave me invisibility scrolls that I could use to sneak past tough enemies. It’s a wonderful change to an already excellent system, and I can’t wait to mess around more with it in the full version.

The other big new tentpole feature for Nioh 3 is the addition of non-linear open field-type levels, complete with sidequests, a variety of points of interest with unique challenges and rewards, and wide open environments rife with opportunities for exploration. This is in contrast to Nioh’s typical linear levels with the occasional optional branches off the beaten path that ultimately loop back around. I got to experience one of these in my hands-on time – the frozen region of Kamigamo – and while Nioh 3 doesn’t seem to do anything surprising with its more open level design that hasn’t been done before, the shift was a refreshing change of pace. Right away, the first thing I did was a combat challenge called a Crucible Spike. This was a sealed-off combat arena with multiple waves of enemies that I had to defeat in order to proceed. Clearing the Crucible Spike improved my Spirit Force, which is a new resource that governs your usage of Spirit Skills, and also gained a new spirit skill for one of my guardian spirits.

Every time you complete one of these points of interest, your exploration level will increase, and each time it increases, you’ll get an extra bonus.

And that’s really what makes me excited about these open field levels, because these Crucible Spikes, along with other types of points of interests, are strewn all over the map, the challenges are fun, and the rewards are great – which is all the incentive I need to seek them out. Every time you complete one of these points of interest, your exploration level will increase, and each time it increases, you’ll get an extra bonus, from more icons being revealed on your map to give you some direction on where to explore, you may get an added stat bonus while you’re in that specific area, or you may get skill points to spend on your Samurai or Ninja skill trees.

All in all, Nioh 3 is shaping up to be exactly the same kind of iterative step above its predecessor that Nioh 2 ended up being. The style switching between Samurai and Ninja is an excellent addition that adds new layers of depth to an already stacked combat system, and the new open fields offer up even more incentive to explore than ever before, with fun challenges, mini bosses, and secret treasures to discover in every corner. It all ran incredibly smoothly as well, making me forget for a moment that this game is still a ways off, with a planned release in early 2026.

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Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade Sets Switch 2 and Xbox Release Date With Magic Cards Included in Some Pre-Orders

Square Enix has announced a Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade release date of January 22, 2026, for Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X | S.

An announcement for the long-awaited port arrived as part of today’s September 2025 Nintendo Direct. It came with a trailer, promising to bring the first chapter in Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, and Barret’s story to the new Switch console, as well as Xbox platforms like Xbox on PC and Xbox Cloud, just after the new year kicks off.

Square Enix’s port will bring Final Fantasy 7 Remake to more platforms nearly six years after its original launch on PlayStation 4 in 2020 and a little less than five years since its Intergrade upgrade launched for PlayStation 5. However, players on Switch 2 and Xbox take advantage of more than just the Yuffie-centered add-on story, Episode INTERmission, when Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade arrives in January.

A digital limited early purchase bonus will also be available until January 31, 2026, and grants access to the original Final Fantasy 7 at no extra charge. Those who pre-order on Xbox will be able to play the 1997 JRPG classic the instant their purchase is locked in, while Switch 2 players will have to wait until the January 22 release date.

Switch 2 players, specifically, can also take advantage of a unique offer that lets them in on the recent craze surrounding the Magic: The Gathering and Final Fantasy crossover. Those who pre-order a physical version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade for Switch 2 will net a Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy Play Booster.

Limit Break

Players revisiting Cloud and Sephiroth’s story or playing it for the first time will also notice Square Enix has included what it is calling a new “Streamlined Progression” setting. This will appear in-game in the form of five new options to make the experience easier for players if they choose to utilize them. Available options include HP that is always full, MP that is always full, a Limit gauge that is always full, an ATB gauge that is always full, and 9999 damage for every attack.

Director Naoki Hamaguchi shared a statement regarding the decision to offer streamlined gameplay options for new platforms, explaining that the team wanted to “allow the game to cater for individual players’ different lifestyles and play styles.”

“I feel that the way people enjoy content has become more flexible these days,” Hamaguci adds, “as we see with video streaming platforms, and that people also want the same thing from games, with options to tailor the experience based on the time they have and their levels of interest. I have also had personal experiences where I wanted to play something with the limited time I have but gave up because of the time it takes to level up characters or traverse the game.

“That’s exactly why I think that the Streamlined Progression feature is very effective - to give players smooth access to the story.”

Square Enix also confirms that the entire Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy will eventually make its way to Switch 2 and Xbox platforms, as well as PS5 and PC. While we wait for the rest of the story to unfold, you can read up on everything announced at the September 2025 Nintendo Direct here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

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Critter Kitchen Board Game Review

Sandara Tang has been working in board game art for some years now, but in 2022 she got sole responsibility for illustrating Flamecraft, and her cozy, charming, yet detailed style helped the game become an instant hit. Now she’s been given an even closer fit for her talents in Critter Kitchen, a game where teams of anthropomorphic animals run a kitchen, competing to create the best dishes to please the punters and, ultimately, a rarefied food critic.

There's a good deal of mechanical variety in here, as there’s some worker placement, some push your luck, some second-guessing, and some optimization, and they all hang together in a cohesive, thematic whole.

What’s in the Box

Critter Kitchen is one of those games with a lot of little bits that you’ll need to sort through and set up before each play. You start with the central board, which is really just a bifold information tracker and card organizer, onto which goes the wooden round marker and above which goes a variety of cards from three different decks, indicating the objectives, food critic, and scoring bonuses available during your game.

Beneath the main board there are boards for the different locations you can visit, which vary with the number of players. Each player also gets a deck of matching location cards, three cardboard plates, and a big critic’s plate, as well as a player screen behind which they can hide their growing stack of ingredient tokens. There are a lot of these, all of which must be punched out and stored in the provided drawstring bag, from which they’re pulled and assigned to locations during play. The final location, The Chef Academy, also has an associated deck of additional chefs for hire, each of which comes with a punch-out token to represent them in play.

Wooden pieces come in the form of three chef tokens for each player, cut and printed to resemble the animals they represent, a mouse, lizard and boar respectively, alongside a chef’s hat token to use on the priority track.

The art, throughout, is superb. There’s really no reason, mechanically, why Critter Kitchen should involve animal chefs rather than human ones, but it is a great excuse to showcase Tang’s delightful art. The cutesy style won’t be to everyone’s taste but if you can get into it, it’s very evocative, making the game’s setting, Bistro Bay, come to life with nothing more than an alliterative name and some incredibly charming, characterful illustrations of its denizens.

Rules and How It Plays

Given the slightly fiddly setup, it’s perhaps a surprise to find that the game runs fast and smooth once play gets underway. One player, labelled the Maître d', spends a moment at the start of each of the seven rounds to fill the shops with tokens drawn from a bag, indicating what can be found there. Mostly these are cooking ingredients that have a quality rating between 2 and 7, but there are also spice tokens that double the value of the matching ingredient, and rumors, which let players find out more about the hidden final scoring requirements. The final location, The Chef Academy, also gets a random “Zous Chef” card.

Given the slightly fiddly setup, it’s perhaps a surprise to find that the game runs fast and smooth once play gets underway.

Each player then secretly chooses a location for each of their three chefs by assigning them a face-down location card from their hand. Each chef has a rating between 1 and 3, with lower values going first but being able to purchase fewer items. When all the cards are assigned, they’re revealed, and the matching chef piece goes on the matching location. You then scan through the locations from left to right, and the chefs in that location from 1 to 3, picking which items from the stock that you want to take back to your kitchen.

This phase of play is an absolute riot. Shops generally only have three items available, so if a 1-value chef and a 3-value chef get assigned to the same shop, the 1-value chef gets first pick of the stock, and the 3-value chef only gets to take two items home. In a crowded field, or if one of the shops has a particularly tasty draw, this means there’s a real risk of a higher value chef going home empty handed although they get a consolation soup – a 1-value ingredient that can be used as a wildcard in place of any other – instead.

Assigning your chefs is thus a tense tightrope walk of trying to prioritize what you need and what you can risk, while second-guessing what other players might do, then praying things work out for you when everyone reveals their cards. The tension doesn’t stop there, though. Sometimes, a player won’t pick what you expect and you get something you wanted but were expecting to lose. Sometimes the queue-based tie-break mechanism kicks in, when two chefs of the same value sit on the same spot, and the player who wins goes to the back of the queue, meaning ties in later shops might work out in your favor. It’s all crossing fingers and biting lips right up until the last two shops in the chain.

The penultimate location is the Midnight Market, where you can’t see what’s on offer until you resolve the location. It’s a risky proposition as it’s not only hard to predict who might be there, but can also be a great way for a 3-value chef to snag some unbelievable bargains, or can lead to them trudging home with a bagful of grot. The final shop is the Chef Academy, where you can grab the unbelievably useful Zous Chef, who acts as a whole extra chef for you next round, with a handy bonus ability to boot.

Competition for the Zous Chef can become fierce, but in a clever twist, any ingredients left over from previous shops get sent to the academy, meaning there’s often a grab-bag of other stuff to pick up here. So you can always assign slow chefs here in the hope they’ll come away with something, but they risk picking up dross and have almost no chance of getting that super-helpful Zous Chef. In Critter Kitchen, every chalice is potentially poison by the time you get there. But while other players often upset your well-laid plans, the hidden location selection means it never feels cruel or targeted, giving the game plenty of interaction without too much negativity.

In Critter Kitchen, every chalice is potentially poison by the time you get there.

What you’re carrying home from this mad dash to the markets are ingredients that you’ll use to serve up three meals after rounds 3 and 6, and then a final plating to please a food critic in round 7. The ingredients needed for the first two scoring intervals are revealed one turn at a time, adding a delicious frisson of uncertainty to proceedings. You’ll get a smattering of points depending on the quality of ingredients you plate up but the bands are wide: a total of 6 quality is enough to get you one point, but 21 quality gets a whopping four. That makes the decisions around what to throw in and what to keep much more difficult, as does a limit on the number of items you can carry over after each plating round.

Most of the points come from the critic’s plate. This needs all seven types of ingredient, and the player with the highest quality in each type gets a point. The critics themselves are represented by a card that offers a specific bonus: you’re recommended to start playing with the mouse critic, for example, who gives extra points for the best cheese course. Once that’s all been assigned there’s an extra tranche of points from the total quality of ingredients you’ve used in your critic plate, then you tally up everyone’s final total to see who’s won.

Scoring rounds take a little while, as everyone figures out what ingredients they want to use, but other than that the game ticks along at a very pleasing pace because of the way your chef locations are decided simultaneously. And despite the apparent chaos of this round, it manages to strike a balance between strategy and excitement: you’ll be rewarded for prioritizing well just as much as you’ll be thwarted by failing at mind-games and second-guessing your opponents. Similarly, the slow reveal of objectives and rumors can sometimes feel frustratingly random, but really helps to keep up the tension and tempo of play.

Where to Buy

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Dragon Quest VII Reimagined: Here’s What Comes in Each Edition

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is set to release February 3, 2026 if you buy the more expensive editions, or February 5 for the standard Edition. It’s coming to PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. A from-the-ground-up remake of the original PS1 game, the remake brings the epic RPG adventure to modern platforms with modern visuals and storytelling. It’s available in several editions, all of which are detailed below. Let’s dive in.

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - Standard Edition

PS5

Nintendo Switch 2

Nintendo Switch

Xbox Series S|X

PC

The standard edition just comes with the game itself, plus the preorder bonus (detailed below). It’s also worth noting that physical editions for Switch 2 are Game-Key Cards, and don’t contain the game on the cartridge.

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - Digital Deluxe Edition

In addition to the base game, here’s what digital extras you get with the deluxe edition:

  • 48 hours early access
  • Luminary’s Livery costume set
  • Road of Regal Wretches battle arena content
  • Jam-Packed Swag Bag - assortment of helpful items
  • White Wolf Costume

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - Collector’s Edition

The Square Enix Store-exclusive collector’s edition comes with the following physical and digital extras:

Physical Items

  • Steelbook Case
  • Ship in a Bottle Figure
  • Smile Slime Plush

Digital Items

  • Luminary’s Livery costume set
  • Road of Regal Wretches battle arena content
  • Jam-Packed Swag Bag - assortment of helpful items
  • White Wolf Costume

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined Preorder Bonus

Preorder Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, and you’ll receive a couple of in-game items to help you on your way. Here’s what you get:

  • Trodain Togs
  • Seed of Proficiency x3

What Is Dragon Quest VII Reimagined?

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is a full remake of Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, a JRPG that first launched in 2000 for the original PlayStation console. It’s previously been ported to Nintendo 3DS and mobile platforms, but this is, as the title suggests, a full reimagining of the game.

DQ7 is a famously long game, with an average of 75 hours to complete the main story in the 3DS edition, according to Howlongtobeat, with a completionist time of 130 hours. The PlayStation version has even longer completion times.

The game is a traditional single-player JRPG that has your unnamed character and a team of adventurers sailing around, traversing islands, and completing quests to help people out on each one.

As for the art, Square Enix wrote in its announcement, “The character designs, originally crafted by world-renowned manga artist Akira Toriyama, have been reimagined into a charming 3D art style using dolls actually created in the real world.” That’s wild. The graphics look great, though, almost toy-like in that Link’s Awakening remake sort of way.

Other Preorder Guides

Feel free to check out everything else announced during today's Nintendo Direct, including a new Super Mario Galaxy bundle for Nintendo Switch.

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.

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Every Pokémon Game on the Nintendo Switch in 2025

Often cited as one of the world's most valuable media franchises, Pokémon is a household name that's been a Nintendo staple since the Game Boy. The beloved series is home to hundreds of amazing creatures you can catch in-game or collect as trading cards, with each new generation bringing loads more to discover. Every console released by Nintendo has had plenty of Pokémon games released for it, and the Nintendo Switch is no exception.

Pokémon Day brought tons of new announcements about what's next for the franchise. Below, we've compiled every Pokémon game that has been released on Nintendo Switch and the information we have on a number of upcoming Pokémon games releasing on the Switch 2.

How Many Pokémon Games Are There on Nintendo Switch?

In total, 12 Pokémon games have been released for the Nintendo Switch. This includes the mainline games for the 8th and 9th Pokémon generations as well as plenty of spinoffs. For the sake of this list, we've counted mainline entries with two versions as a single release. We also don't include the Pokémon games offered through Nintendo Switch Online, but you can check out that list below.

What Pokemon Game Should You Get in 2025?

If you're wondering which game is worth picking up on the Switch in 2025, my recommendation is Pokémon Legends: Arceus. It's not going to give you that OG Pokémon game feeling, but that's what the older generation games are for. Instead, Legends: Arceus introduces more action and RPG elements to the Pokémon series, offering the freshness of open areas to explore, more control over encounters, and plenty of polish for the handheld.

All Pokémon Games on the Nintendo Switch (in Release Order)

Pokkén Tournament DX (2017)

Pokkén Tournament was originally released for the Wii U in 2016. A year later, Nintendo and Bandai Namco prepared a deluxe version of the game for Nintendo Switch, adding new characters and updated visuals to take advantage of better hardware. This three-on-three battle system is a blast to play with friends both in person and online.

Pokémon Quest (2018)

Pokémon Quest turns all your favorite Pokémon into miniature cube form. This free-to-play Switch game features a fun and simple combat system where you send Pokémon on expeditions. Equip different abilities to your Pokémon to handle all types of encounters.

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! & Let's Go, Eevee! (2018)

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! & Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee! are remakes of the beloved 1998 Pokémon Yellow. These titles were the first mainline Pokémon games ever to release on a home console, since none made it to the Wii U. Set in the Kanto region, all 151 original Pokémon appear with varying forms from previous mainline installments. With heavy accessibility features, these remakes were a great first step for the series on Nintendo Switch for newcomers and veterans of the series.

Pokémon Sword & Shield (2019)

Pokémon Sword & Shield marked the first installment in the series to feature aspects of an open world. Dubbed the Wild Areas, these regions allowed for free traversal and battles with wild Pokémon. Gyms also made a return for the first time since X & Y. Additionally, Sword & Shield introduced the eigth generation of Pokémon, which included Dynamax and Gigantamax forms of previous Pokémon.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (2020)

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is a remake of the 2005 titles Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team & Blue Rescue Team. Surprisingly, this is the first Pokémon spinoff remake ever, with development handled by Spike Chunsoft. The gameplay consists of completing jobs in different dungeons and unlocking new Pokémon along the way.

Pokémon Café ReMix (2020)

The other Pokémon release of 2020 was Pokémon Café ReMix featuring similar gameplay to other puzzle games like Disney Tsum Tsum, which requires you to connect Pokémon together to solve puzzles. In Pokémon Café ReMix, you and Eevee own a café and must serve the Pokémon who come for food or a little drink. This charming service game is free-to-play via the Nintendo eShop.

New Pokémon Snap (2021)

After more than 20 years, the Nintendo Switch is the console that finally received a sequel to Pokémon Snap. Developed by Bandai Namco, you traverse around different biomes and areas with an on-rails camera to capture pictures Pokémon in the wild. You can unlock new courses by taking good pictures in New Pokémon Snap, leaving for a sizeable amount of content to unlock and discover. You never know what you might find during each session!

Pokémon Unite (2021)

This free-to-play game marked Pokémon's first entry into the MOBA genre. You command and control a team of five Pokémon in head-to-head battles against other players online. There's a solid amount of Pokémon to choose from, so you can adjust your team to best fit your needs. Pokémon Unite went on to be featured in different esports tournaments, with multiple championships held for the game.

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl (2021)

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Pokémon Shining Pearl are remakes of Pokémon Diamond & Pearl, which originally released in 2006 for the Nintendo DS. As the fourth generation of Pokémon, Diamond & Pearl feature a wide variety of Pokémon to battle against and discover. The remakes feature a new chibi art style that was created to stay faithful to the original titles while still remaining fresh.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022)

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is often praised as one of the best Pokémon games available on the Switch. This original title takes place far in the past, somewhere in the Hisui region. With a focus on exploration, you can freely walk all around the map to capture Pokémon, explore different environments, and so much more. Pokémon can be spotted wandering around all over the map, which requires you to be strategic if you're looking to avoid battle.

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet (2022)

The latest mainline Pokémon games officially kicked off Generation 9, bringing along an entire new approach to gameplay and world design. In Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, an open world awaits with freedom to explore wherever your heart takes you. The DLC pass, titled The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero, is now wrapped up, making it a perfect time to check out Scarlet & Violet.

Detective Pikachu Returns (2023)

One game and one movie later, the sequel to Detective Pikachu is finally available on Nintendo Switch. Tim's father is missing, and it's up to Detective Pikachu to solve the case! This sequel features new puzzles and investigations, where you can investigate scenes and use your notebook to get to the bottom of the mystery. If you're a fan of both Pokémon and mystery games, this is a great game to consider.

Available Pokémon Games With Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack

The Nintendo Switch Online subscription service has additional Pokémon titles if you're looking for more after completing the Nintendo Switch library. Here are the five Pokémon games you can play with a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership:

  • Pokémon Trading Card Game
  • Pokémon Snap
  • Pokémon Puzzle League
  • Pokémon Stadium
  • Pokémon Stadium 2

Upcoming Pokémon Games on Nintendo Switch

Pokémon Legends: Z-A is the next mainline game launching on Nintendo Switch. The game is set in Lumiose City, within the Kalos regions. Tepig, Totodile, and Chikorita are familiar starting Pokémon, from Gen 2 and 5, but will be getting new Mega evolutions. "Rooftop parkour" and new battle mechanics also indicate an increased focused on real-time action.

In the April 2025 Nintendo Direct, Nintendo confirmed that Pokémon Legends Z-A will release simultaneously on both Switch systems, with the Switch 2 edition featuring enhanced graphics and better framerates. Nintendo more recently announced a Nintendo Switch 2 bundle featuring Pokémon Legends Z-A, which will release on the same day as the game itself, October 16. The game is now up for preorder.

Pokémon Pokopia

While we may not be getting a new Animal Crossing game (yet), Nintendo just announced a new Pokémon spin-off game that looks pretty darn similar. Pokémon Pokopia makes you a Ditto with a human appearance, who must work and learn from local Pokémon to build a new community on a small island. The game is set to launch on Switch 2 next year.

Pokémon Champions

Yep, there's more. Game Freak and The Pokémon Company have also announced Pokémon Champions, a new battle game in the spirit of Pokemon Showdown. Coming to mobile devices and Switch, you'll be able to battle with Pokémon you've trained in other games through the Pokémon Home app.

Noah Hunter is a freelance writer and reviewer with a passion for games and technology. He co-founded Final Weapon, an outlet focused on nonsense-free Japanese gaming (in 2019) and has contributed to various publishers writing about the medium.

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Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Nintendo Switch Is Up for Preorder

Here’s some good news for anyone with a soft spot for the Wii and its library: Nintendo is releasing a bundle of Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Nintendo Switch on October 2. As with nearly every original Switch game, it will be fully playable on Switch 2 as well. The reason for the souped-up ports is because these games are the basis of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which hits theaters April 3, 2026. The game collection is available to preorder now (see it at Walmart) either in physical or digital form. Read on for details.

Preorder Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2

Physical

Digital (eShop)

There are no special editions to be found here. The games are all you get. Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 is available in physical form, or in digital form on the Nintendo eShop. If you choose to go the digital route, you can buy them together for $69.99, or individually for $39.99 each.

Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 Preorder Bonus

As yet, Nintendo has announced nothing in terms of preorder bonuses for the game. If it does at some point in the future, or if any retailer decides to offer a bonus of its own, I'll add it here.

What Is Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2?

These are ports of Nintendo Wii games. Super Mario Galaxy hit the waggly platform in 2007. The sequel arrived on the same console in 2010. Both games were incredibly well received: IGN gave Super Mario Galaxy a 9.7/10 and Super Mario Galaxy 2 a 10/10.

Both games have gotten some upgrades and improvements in their transition to the new platform. They have improved resolution (up to 4K on Switch 2), a better UI, and a new in-game music player. You also have the option to play using standard controls, or using the Joy-Cons in a more Wii-like manner with motion controls.

In addition to the improvements, Rosalina's in-game storybook is also getting new pages. We’ll have to wait until the game comes out to see exactly what they’ll include.

The crux of the original games is that Mario is sent into space, where he runs and jumps around on planetoid-like environments. Each one has its own gravitational pull, so you can run all around the spheres, making for some interesting platforming challenges. They really are superb games.

Other Preorder Guides

Check out everything else that was announced in the most recent Nintendo Direct or our ongoing list of upcoming video game release dates.

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.

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Alienware Has the Only GeForce RTX 5080 Equipped Complete Prebuilt Gaming PC for Under $2,000

With prices on Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards dropping back down to retail levels, prices on prebuilt gaming desktop computers are also following suit. If you're still rocking an RTX 30 series GPU or older, now would be a good time to upgrade. Currently, Dell is offering an Alienware Aurora R16 gaming PC equipped with a powerful GeForce RTX 5080 GPU for just $1,969.99 with free delivery. That's $130 less that the best deal I saw during Labor Day and one of the few times I've seen any RTX 5080 prebuilt for under $2,000.

Alienware Aurora RTX 5080 Gaming PC From $1,969.99

There are two different Alienware RTX 5080 models that are on sale. The base model costs $1,999.99 and is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F CPU, GeForce RTX 5080 CPU, 16GB of DDR5-5600MHz RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD. This is a customizable system, so you can upgrade the CPU, RAM, and storage. The're also a pre-configured upgraded model that includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 258K CPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB M.2 SSD, for $630 more.

The Core Ultra 7 265F is part of Intel's newest Arrow Lake-S lineup released earlier this year and boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.3GHz with 20 cores and a 36MB L2 cache. This is a good all-around CPU for gaming, multi-tasking, and general workstation performance. For gaming, you won't see much of an improvement upgrading to a Core Ultra 9, especially if you plan to play at high resolutions where the GPU makes much more of an impact. However for multi-tasking and workstation and creator tasks, the Core Ultra 9 is superior because it has significantly more cores.

The GeForce RTX 5080 GPU will run any game in 4K

Performance-wise, the RTX 5080 is no slouch. It's one of the fastest cards on the market, bested only by the $2,000 RTX 5090 and the discontinued $1,600 RTX 4090. This is a phenomenal card for playing the latest, most demanding games in 4K resolution at high settings and ray tracing enabled. The RTX 5080 supports DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation, which means you can push even more frames out of games that support the technology with minimal visual compromise. Recent games that support it include Doom: The Dark Ages, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (after a recent update), Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Stellar Blade, and upcoming titles like Borderlands 4 and Battlefield 6.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

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The Long Walk Review

It may not have been the first book the Master of Horror ever published, but The Long Walk was the first novel Stephen King ever wrote. Written during the height of the Vietnam War, it’s a fascinating, primal keystone text for understanding the lens through which King sees the world, and all that remains relevant about the text - translated faithfully by director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner - allows this long-overdue adaptation to punch above the weight its barebones premise may suggest.

The rules for the 50 young men who’ve won a nationwide lottery to compete in the Long Walk are simple: Walk. Don’t stop, don’t sleep… walk. If a walker drops below three miles per hour, interferes with another walker, or otherwise breaks the rules, it’s a warning. Three warnings, and you “get your ticket.” In most cases, that means a bullet to the brain courtesy of the military escort riding along in humvees, led by The Major (Mark Hamill), a roaring parody of machismo and rugged individualism who’s something of a godhead in this ailing world.

The more the Walk winds on though, and as the elements and the limits of the human body come into play, the better that bullet starts to look for the set-upon young men. Lawrence - who cut his teeth on dystopic fiction with I Am Legend and most of the Hunger Games movies - kicks the Walk off within moments of the movie starting, but takes his sweet time before letting the first contestant get eliminated, a moment he punctuates with a cinematic flourish that lands as a real surprise so long after the movie has started. Every drop of rain, hill, dropped ration, and bowel movement that follows become life-or-death modifiers of the march.

The dozens of deaths that occur as The Long Walk goes are covered plainly and unflinchingly, and by the time the Walk has wound down to its final contestants, the ones who “got their tickets” early on look like the real lottery winners. Lawrence rarely lets viewers off the hook, squeezing every drop of blood out of that R-rating and forcing the viewer to be complicit in the violence. Even when we don’t see the carnage, Lawrence puts the focus on the terrified faces of the survivors, highlighting the mounting psychological weight being loaded onto them as their bodies start to fail. The violence doesn’t take long to become numbing, but that’s the whole point here. The director smartly illuminates this by having Cooper Hoffman’s Ray Garraty call out the real horror of The Long Walk early on, vocalizing his fear that both the Walkers and the audience (in their world, and by extension our own) will grow to accept the bloodshed as routine. Simple though it is, the conceit of The Long Walk proves a very elastic premise onto which many types of societal adversity can be projected.

Garraty’s reasons for joining the walk, and why winning matters to him, are a lot more complicated than most of his other competitors, which leaves him more open to forging relationships with the other Walkers, in particular Peter McVries (David Jonsson). Garraty and McVries spend much of The Long Walk musing on the larger existential questions begged by the very existence of the competition, and both Hoffman and Jonsson bring easy naturalism to their performances, which winds up being a real saving grace in the midst of all this darkness. The support and kindness they show each other become infectious, leading to moments of triumph as small as sharing food or letting one lean on the other.

It also makes the times when they’re at odds feel as dangerous as the creeping exhaustion they’re both fighting, as that camaraderie feels more and more like the real secret to getting out of this thing alive (even if the rules state only one of them would be able to make it in the first place). With Garraty’s attention set to how his single wish could change the world if he wins, Jonsson’s McVries becomes the real heart of the film, putting lovely emphasis on the power of living moment to moment and finding silver linings to every thundercloud… even the ones that dump rain on the boys as their shoes begin to fall apart and their feet start to bleed.

Garraty and McVries’ fellow walkers don’t get nearly as much depth, and here Lawrence and Mollner feel a little stuck figuring out how much time to invest in developing characters with presumably such short life expectancies. Even more prevalent characters like Olson (Ben Wang) and Baker (Tut Nyuot), who take to Garraty and McVries’ optimism, are mostly just there to reinforce the co-protagonists’ viewpoints. Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) is an antagonist in the truest sense of the word, a nervy, annoying nihilist who The Long Walk uses to needle at the competitors, positioning him as a ticking time bomb, poking holes in Garraty and McVries’ attempts to keep morale up, but he never quite goes off the way the movie seems to want you to think he will. Garrett Wareing's Stebbins, a strong, quiet contender for the win, is a much more interesting character in that respect: his usual silence makes any infrequent observations about the futility of hope or his own thorny motivations to walk hit a lot harder. Mark Hamill’s Major is drawn pretty thin, and the fact that he’s got the privilege of being driven around on the back of a jeep while the boys die walking gives you everything you need to understand what The Long Walk’s trying to say through him.

The Long Walk runs relatively short at 108 minutes, but it feels every second of it. The rinse-and-repeat nature of the deaths may hold a lot of emotional weight here, but rarely has the hairsplitting thought of shaving 10 or even five minutes off a cut felt like it may pay greater dividends as the pace does start to drag in The Long Walk’s second half. Gorgeous though the practical locations may be, Lawrence is only able to squeeze so much visual variety out of those long, verdant stretches of road, though he does break up the drone of the Walk with occasional flashbacks to Ray’s home life which explain why he was so adamant to join the Walk in the first place. These flourishes aren’t the only changes Constant Readers will notice. But the detours Lawrence takes from King’s source material are all additive. They stay in the spirit of the book and feel respectful to the story, rather than an attempt to change anything just for the sake of it.

Though the focus and perspective rightly stays on the Walkers, Judy Greer’s Ginny Garraty has a few opportunities to show up in support of Ray and, hey, no shock for anyone who knows thing one about Judy Greer, but she absolutely crushes in these very brief appearances. Greer’s quick shifts through all of the complex emotions a mother in this world may possibly experience, watching her boy take part in this death march, bookend the story, and are as haunting as any bullet or hemorrhage the movie has to offer.

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Absolute Batman Provides Twisted New Origin Stories for Iconic Batman Villains

Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Absolute Batman #12!

Absolute Batman really flipped the script with the Dark Knight in a number of ways, not least of which being that this version of Bruce Wayne is shown to be childhood friends with Harvey Dent, Oswald Cobblepot, Edward Nygma, Waylon Jones, and Selina Kyle. These five characters are seemingly destined to become costumed supervillains, yet each now has a deeply personal connection to the Batman. Now, thanks to Absolute Batman #12, we know how Penguin, Riddler, and Two-Face are born in the Absolute Universe. And it all centers around one terrifying villain - Absolute Bane.

Previously, issue #11 explored the origin of Bane in the Absolute Universe and how he came to be the Joker's top enforcer. That issue ends with Bane determined to break Batman once and for all. Not by physically destroying him, but by targeting those he cares about most.

Absolute Batman Vol. 1: The Zoo

In issue #12, Batman escapes Ark-M with a little help from Waylon, who has now been mutated into Killer Croc thanks to the scientists at Ark-M prison. Croc begs for Batman to kill him and end his insatiable hunger, but Bruce can't bring himself to do it. Bruce then passes out and is rescued by secret agent Alfred Pennyworth. When Bruce finally awakes, Alfred informs him that he's been asleep for nearly three weeks.

Despite suffering from the effects of his ordeal in Ark-M and the Venom-related experiments therein, Bruce immediately sets out to reunite with his mother, Martha. It's there that he learns his friends have been tortured and hospitalized. Bane paid them a visit, and the results aren't pretty.

Oswald was brutally beaten, with Bane delivering a series of surgical strikes that broke many of his bones but spared his internal organs. Oswald's body is now twisted and malformed, making most versions of the Penguin seem positively handsome by comparison.

As for Harvey Dent, Bane literally cracks his skull in two with one powerful blow, before holding Harvey's face into a pool of gasoline and lighting a match. As Bane explains, this is fitting punishment for a two-faced man who always seeks to straddle the line between hero and criminal. As for Two-Face's signature scarred coin, in this universe it becomes a poker chip from the friend group's weekly poker night. Harvey flips the chip to Bruce before reassuring him, "I only hate you half of the time."

Eddie Nygma is the only one of the group in good spirits after Bane's attack. Eddie reveals that Bane challenged him to a mental contest, even promising to allow Eddie to kill him if he won. Eddie didn't win, unfortunately, and in response, Bane bashed his skull hard enough to cause severe brain damage.

With his brain exposed and seemingly hooked up to a massive computer system. Eddie is now obsessed with questions and riddles. He alone seems to understand that Bane wasn't merely torturing the friends to get at Bruce. He was breaking them down to help them become the monsters they're meant to be.

Bruce finally returns to Alfred, ready to exact vengeance on Bane. Alfred is only too happy to help, but their preparations are cut short when an intruder enters their hideout. Alfred assumes Bane has tracked them down, only to be subdued by a mysterious woman wearing the helmet of the recently defeated Black Mask. Absolute Catwoman has arrived, and Bruce doesn't seem terribly happy to see her.

October's Absolute Batman #13 will serve as the proper introduction of this universe's Catwoman, where we'll no doubt learn how Bruce and Selina went from lovers to estranged costumed vigilantes. October also marks the release of Absolute Evil #1, a one-shot that focuses on Joker and other major Absolute Universe villains coming together for the first time.

For more on the Absolute Universe, find out why it's the most exciting DC launch in years and get the full scoop from the Absolute Batman creative team.

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

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Alienware Has the Only GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Prebuilt Gaming PC Priced at Under $1,500

Well ahead of the holiday season, Dell is offering some great deals on its Alienware gaming PCs. One of the best deals I've seen so far is on this Alienware Aurora R16 gaming PC equipped with the excellent Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card. You can get it starting at just $1,499.99 after a $600 instant discount. Free delivery is included. The RTX 5070 Ti graphics card can run any game at 60fps even in 4K.

Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 5070 Ti Gaming PC for $1,499.99

The base configuration is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F processor, GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16GB graphics card, 16GB of DDR5-5600MHz RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD. The system is powered by a 1000W 80Plus Platinum power supply. Note that this is a customizable system, so you can upgrade the CPU, cooling, RAM, and storage.

The Core Ultra 7 265F is part of Intel's newest Arrow Lake-S lineup released earlier this year and boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.3GHz with 20 cores and a 36MB L2 cache. This is a great all-around CPU for gaming, multi-tasking, and general workstation performance. It doesn't have as many cores as a Core Ultra 9 processor, but that doesn't matter for gaming since the vast majority of games will not be able to utilize more than 20 cores. By default the processor is air cooled by a tower heatsink and fan combo, but you can upgrade to 240mm all-in-one liquid cooling for an extra $20.

The RTX 5070 Ti GPU Has Excellent 4K Gaming Performance

Of all the Blackwell cards released thus far, the RTX 5070 Ti offers the best bang for your buck, especially when pitted against the previous generation GPUs. It performs neck-and-neck with the RTX 4080 Super and marginalizes the RTX 5080, which is only about 10%-15% faster but costs 33% more. Like all Blackwell cards, the RTX 5070 Ti supports DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation. This GPU is capable of high framerates in nearly all games, even at 4K resolution. If you plan on using this card for AI, the RTX 5070 Ti may be a better value since it has the same amount of VRAM as the RTX 5080.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

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The Asus TUF GeForce RTX 5070 12GB Graphics Card Drops to $549 (Better Than the Asus Prime)

Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 graphics cards have been dropping back down to launch prices, and that includes the popular Asus brand. I've seen it's budget "Prime" series cards back to MSRP for a little while now, but today that trend has extended to the next model up. Amazon is currently offering Amazon Prime members the Asus TUF RTX 5070 12GB graphics card for just $549 with free delivery. The Asus TUF is a generally higher quality card than the Asus Prime, featuring "military-grade" components and a more robust cooler. This particular model has also been binned for a guaranteed overclock.

Asus TUF GeForce RTX 5070 12GB Graphics Card for $549

Compared to the previous generation GPUs, the RTX 5070 performs comparably with the RTX 4070 Super. We wish there was a bigger generation improvement in raw performance, but the RTX 4070 Super was already an excellent card for 1080p and 1440p gaming. In any case, the RTX 4070 Super GPU has since been discontinued and is only readily available in the used market. The RTX 5070 also supports DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation, and the performance gap widens in games that support this new technology , like Wuchang: Fallen Feathers and Doom: The Dark Ages.

The Asus TUF model boasts a substantial 3.125-slot heatsink that's significantly larger than the Asus Prime's 2.5-slot heatsink, and it also uses higher quality fans. The TUF's claim to fame is its use of "miltary-grade components," specifically referring to the capacitors, chokes, and MOSFETs, which Asus claims help improve system stability. The model is overclocked to 2,542MHz in OC mode, or about a 100MHz improvement over the stock Asus Prime. Although that's technically only a 3%-5% increase in performance, it also implies that these TUF graphics cards is binned to hit a specific performance tier and thus is (supposedly) better quality.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

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Pokémon TCG Crashers and Climbers: Silver Tempest Prices Are Shifting Fast This Week

Silver Tempest remains one of the most collector-driven Sword and Shield era sets, and prices reflect the tug-of-war between nostalgia, competitive play, and scarcity. Alternate arts and Trainer Gallery cards dominate collector demand, while competitive staples like Lugia VSTAR continue to influence the market.

On the climbing side, Lugia V (Alternate Full Art) 186/195 has skyrocketed 68% since July, now sitting at $427, cementing itself as the premier chase card of the set. Trainer Gallery heavy-hitters such as Rayquaza VMAX TG20/TG30 and Blaziken VMAX TG15/TG30 have also surged thanks to their combination of nostalgia, strong artwork, and lingering competitive relevance.

These climbs position them as cards worth watching for investors who see Trainer Gallery subsets as undervalued compared to alternate arts.

TL;DR: This Weeks Crashers and Climbers

Not all cards are faring well, however. Regidrago V (Alternate Full Art) 184/195 slipped 12% since July, now down to $14.99, as its short-lived meta role fades. Alolan Vulpix VSTAR (Secret) 197/195 has also cooled, losing about 7% over the past month. Even Lugia V 138/195 in its standard form has seen a correction, dropping to the $11 range as attention shifts toward its higher-rarity variants.

Meanwhile, Silver Tempest sealed products are heating up. Silver Tempest Booster Box that were $350 in June now fetch nearly $465, and even three-pack blisters and Silver Tempest Build & Battle Box are doubling or tripling compared to last year. With sealed product prices steadily rising, investors are finding Silver Tempest a set worth holding onto long-term.

Pokémon Card Climbers

Lugia V (Alternate Full Art) 186/195 has surged 68% since July, climbing from $254.51 to $427. This alternate art is widely considered the premier chase card of Silver Tempest, both for its place in the competitive Lugia VSTAR archetype and for its stunning artwork showing Lugia emerging from stormy seas. For investors, this card represents one of the safest long-term holds from the Sword and Shield block, balancing competitive relevance with iconic artwork.

Rayquaza VMAX Trainer Gallery TG20/TG30 has more than doubled in value since July, now at $122.72 compared to $71.40. Its Azure Pulse ability, which lets you discard your hand and draw three cards, still provides flexibility in niche decks, and Max Burst remains a strong scaling attack with Energy discards. Much of its price movement comes from the Trainer Gallery art, where Rayquaza dominates the scene in bold colors. With strong nostalgia and limited supply, Rayquaza VMAX looks like a smart mid-range option for investors who prefer artwork-driven cards.

Lugia VSTAR 202/195 has risen 44% since July, moving from $23.22 to $33.55. Lugia VSTAR continues to be one of the most powerful cards in the format, with its Summoning Star ability enabling explosive bench setups by recovering Colorless Pokémon from the discard pile. Tempest Dive also provides reliable 220 damage with the bonus of Stadium removal. This Secret Rare version benefits from both its ongoing playability and the prestige of being a high-rarity Lugia card in a set defined by the legendary bird, making it attractive to both competitive players and investors looking for sustained growth.

Blaziken VMAX Trainer Gallery TG15/TG30 has jumped from $11.90 in December 2024 to $28.99 today. Its Max Blaze attack can accelerate Energy to Rapid Strike Pokémon on the bench, and while this synergy is only occasional in competitive play now, the Trainer Gallery artwork featuring May alongside Blaziken has given it collector-driven momentum. As a lower-entry price point compared to Lugia or Rayquaza, it could appeal to investors targeting the Trainer Gallery subset as a whole.

Blaziken V Trainer Gallery TG14/TG30 has seen an even more dramatic increase, climbing from $10.29 in December 2024 to $28.99. While its attacks are straightforward, the Trainer Gallery artwork again takes center stage. Featuring May with Blaziken in an anime-style presentation, this card has quickly gained momentum as collectors seek to pair it with the VMAX. Investors watching Silver Tempest may see this as a strong example of character-driven cards performing well long-term.

Pokémon Card Crashers

Regidrago V (Alternate Full Art) 184/195 has dropped 12% since July, now sitting at $14.99 compared to its previous $17.13. The card once carried strong hype as the core of Regidrago VSTAR decks, where Celestial Roar could accelerate Energy and Dragon Laser offered splash damage across the board. As the competitive meta moved toward Lugia VSTAR, Charizard ex, and other faster attackers, Regidrago lost ground and demand has followed. From a collector standpoint, the alternate art design remains appealing, featuring Regidrago amidst ancient ruins, but it does not command the same prestige as the Lugia alternate arts, and with high supply on the market the correction feels like a natural leveling of its long-term value.

Alolan Vulpix VSTAR (Secret) 197/195 has slipped around 7% since August, falling to $13.86 from $14.98. Its Silvery Snow Star attack once had situational strength against Pokémon V-heavy decks, dealing up to 350 damage under the right conditions. However, as the format has leaned further into Pokémon ex and efficient single-prize strategies, Vulpix’s impact has weakened. Snow Mirage offered some stall potential, but it has not been enough to hold its place in the current meta. Collectors may still be drawn to the rainbow Secret Rare finish, but with Silver Tempest containing multiple more desirable chase cards, Alolan Vulpix VSTAR has been overshadowed.

Lugia V (Full Art) 185/195 has dropped 15% since September, down to $10.50 from $12.34. While Lugia VSTAR remains one of the defining cards of the Sword and Shield era, the V card itself sees play mainly as a stepping stone. Players only need a few copies to evolve, and with the card printed in multiple versions, supply is abundant. Collectors often focus on the alternate art or higher-rarity versions of Lugia, leaving this Full Art with less staying power. Its decline reflects a broader trend where supporting cards lose value once the meta cements which versions are most desirable both in play and in collections.

Serperior V (Trainer Gallery) TG13/TG30 has slid from $13.35 in September to $12 today. The card’s Noble Light ability to heal all Pokémon adds an interesting niche, but it also benefits the opponent, making it less practical for most decks. Solar Beam at 120 damage for two Grass Energy looks underwhelming compared to the speed and power of current competitive attackers. What has kept Serperior relevant is the Trainer Gallery artwork featuring Rosa, which gives it crossover appeal among collectors. Still, as prices of Silver Tempest Trainer Gallery cards fluctuate, Serperior has not been able to keep pace with the likes of Rayquaza or Blaziken.

Lugia V 138/195 in its standard Ultra Rare print has seen a decline from $13.51 to $11.44 since September. Similar to the Full Art version, this card’s primary role is as the base for Lugia VSTAR, and demand has cooled as players already hold their playsets. With alternate arts and Secret Rares capturing the majority of collector interest, the standard Ultra Rare finds itself priced closer to utility than prestige. The card is still essential in Lugia-focused decks, with Read the Wind providing early draw power and Aero Dive clearing Stadiums, yet despite this playability, its sheer availability prevents it from holding long-term value above its rarer counterparts.

Silver Tempest Sealed Products

The Silver Tempest Booster Box has seen a sharp rise since June, climbing from $350.44 to $464.98 today. As the set continues to age and supply dwindles, sealed boxes remain one of the strongest investment plays for collectors and investors alike, especially with the chase Lugia alternate art driving sustained demand.

The Silver Tempest Pokemon Center Elite Trainer Box has also risen significantly, now $305 compared to $183.74 in June. These Pokémon Center exclusives are printed in smaller runs, and as more collectors chase complete Sword and Shield ETB lines, this version of Silver Tempest is proving especially desirable. For investors, the smaller supply pool makes this one of the most reliable sealed options to hold.

The Silver Tempest Elite Trainer Box has climbed from $77.95 in June to just under $100 today, a steady rise driven by accessibility and the general demand for sealed ETBs. While not as scarce as the Pokémon Center version, it benefits from overall market momentum and remains an approachable option for investors seeking affordable sealed products.

The Silver Tempest Booster Bundle has risen from $60.63 in June to $70.98, showing that even smaller sealed options are gaining traction as booster boxes become more expensive. Similarly, the Silver Tempest Build & Battle Box has nearly doubled since October 2024, now reaching $31 compared to $16.08. These are lower-cost sealed items that investors may look to stockpile, as they are easier to move in the long run compared to higher-priced boxes.

Three-pack blisters have shown some of the most dramatic jumps. The Silver Tempest 3 Pack Blister Manaphy has risen from $13.06 last November to $32.95, while the Silver Tempest 3 Pack Blister Togetic went from $7.54 in March to $35 today. These spikes reflect both character collector demand and the scarcity of sealed promos from the set. Investors who favor lower-entry sealed products may see these as smart pickups, given their strong growth in a short period.

Finally, Silver Tempest single boosters have crept up as well, with the Silver Tempest Sleeved Booster Pack now at $10.49 compared to $9.97 in June and the Silver Tempest Booster Pack at $8.09 compared to $6.35. While these increases are smaller in percentage terms, they show the across-the-board upward pressure on all sealed Silver Tempest product, confirming the set’s strength as a long-term hold for investors.

Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of "Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior". Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.

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Danganronpa 2x2 Brings Goodbye Despair to PC and Consoles With New Storyline in 2026

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is making a comeback in the form of Danganronpa 2x2 for PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S.

Spike Chunsoft announced a remaster for its 2012 visual novel sequel during today’s September 2025 Nintendo Direct. A trailer for the upgraded re-release reintroduces players to fan-favorite Hope’s Peak Academy students such as Gundham Tanaka, Nagito Komaeda, and Mahiru Koizumi, as Monokuma traps them in yet another twisted killing game.

Danganronpa 2x2 is expected to launch for PC and consoles in North America and Europe sometime in 2026. Spike Chunsoft says it will include a “freshly revamped” version of the original story scenario featured in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, including updated visuals in an experience that will “deliver a more beautiful and satisfying gameplay experience.”

The real draw with Danganronpa 2x2 is the promise of an additional, new story for players to sink their teeth into. It’s unclear how exactly it will spin off from the Goodbye Despair storyline fans have enjoyed for more than a decade, but it is at least confirmed to bring back the original cast of characters.

“Danganronpa 2x2 includes a brand-new scenario based on Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair,” Spike Chunsoft said in a statement. “The setting and cast of characters remain the same, but a certain incident triggers a completely different chain of events with different victims, culprits, and tricks. This new scenario offers a volume of content on par with the original.”

Danganronpa 2x2 comes to PC and consoles sometime next year. While we wait for updates, you can check out everything announced during today’s September 2025 Nintendo Direct.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

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Save Nearly $1,000 Off Lenovo's Legion Pro 5 Gaming Laptop with OLED Display and RTX 5070 GPU

Lenovo just listed an excellent deal on a Legion Pro laptop that's actually lower than I saw during recent promotions like the Labor Day Sale and the Intel Gamer Days Sale. Right now you can get a Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 10 gaming laptop, equipped with a 16" OLED display and RTX 5070 GPU, for just $1,308.99 after you apply two stackable coupon codes "GIVELEGION10" and "BUYMORELENOVO". That's a total of $991 in savings. You don't want to hesitate, though, because Lenovo claims that there are "only a few units left."

Lenovo Legion Pro 5 RTX 5070 Gaming Laptop for $1,308.99

The Lenovo Legion Pro 5 series is a higher-end model featuring an aluminum top and durable plastic bottom. It weighs in at about 5.6 pounds. The gorgeous 16" OLED display has a 2.5K 189ppi resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, HDR 1000 True Black certification, and 100% DCI-P3 color range. This particular configuration is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB of DDR5-5600MHz RAM, and a 1TB SSD. The Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX has a max turbo frequency of 5.1GHz with 16 total cores. According to PassMark, the Core Ultra 7 255HX is Intel's third best mobile gaming chip sitting just below the two Core Ultra 9 models.

The GeForce RTX 5070 is 5%-10% better than the RTX 4070

The mobile RTX 5070 GPU performs about 5%-10% better than the RTX 4070 that it replaces. That's not a very big generational improvement, but the RTX 5070 also supports multi-frame generation, which means the margin will widen in games that support DLSS 4.0. It should have enough power to run most games at a comfortable framerate on the display's enhanced 2560x1600 resolution. If you want a significantly better performing Nvidia GPU, the next step up is the RTX 5070 Ti GPU. While it does offer a pretty reasonable performance upgrade, prepare to pay hundreds of dollars more.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

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The Best Deals Today: iPhone 17 screen protectors, Shin Godzilla steelbook, and more

With fall product launches in full swing, retailers are rolling out fresh discounts on both new releases and everyday essentials. Today’s lineup has something for everyone: iPhone 17 owners can grab discounted privacy screen protectors, gearheads will find savings on tools and jump starters, and collectors can lock in a limited-edition Godzilla steelbook before it sells out.

TL;DR: All Deals Today

There's a good mix of entertaining and practical deals today. There are big markdowns on basics like Fruit of the Loom socks, but also collector-friendly pre-orders and smart accessories that make owning a new phone less stressful. Whether you’re looking to protect your tech, prep your garage, or just refresh your sock drawer, these picks balance value with usefulness.

iPhone 17, Pro and Pro Max Screen Protectors

If you just picked up an iPhone 17, protecting it doesn’t have to cost much. These IMBZBK bundles include three tempered glass privacy protectors and three camera lens covers, all for under $10. They come with an auto-alignment tool that clears out dust and helps you apply the screen without bubbles, so even first-timers can get a clean install.

The glass itself blocks side views at a tighter 25° angle, making it harder for anyone nearby to peek at your messages. It’s case-friendly, works with Face ID, and has a coating that cuts down on fingerprints. The lens covers are designed for night shooting, so your photos stay sharp.

Right now, you can grab the iPhone 17 (6.3") kit for $8.24 (41% off), the iPhone 17 Pro (6.3") kit for $9.49 (32% off), or the iPhone 17 Pro Max (6.9") kit for $9.49 (32% off) on Amazon.

Shin Godzilla - Limited Edition Steelbook

If you missed earlier runs, this steelbook gives you a clean way to add Shin Godzilla to your shelf in 4K. It’s a pre-order that releases Oct. 28, 2025. Good pickup for kaiju fans who want a display-worthy case.

GRENPRO Ratchet Wrenches Se

Solid value for a home or garage kit: 72-tooth ratchets for tight spaces, color-ring size markers, a 12-point box end, and a roll-up pouch with printed sizes. Includes a bolt gauge so you pick the right wrench fast.

AstroAI S8 Air Jump Starter with Air Compressor

Handy all-in-one: a 1,500A jump starter (for up to 6.0L gas / 3.0L diesel), a 150 PSI inflator with auto shutoff, a 2.4" screen, flashlight/SOS, and USB power bank. Good glove-box insurance before road trips.

Fruit of the Loom Men's Dual Defense No Show Socks (12 Pack)

Basic, comfy, and cheap. You get moisture-wicking fabric, reinforced heel/toe, and easy machine-wash care. Great for restocking the drawer without spending much.

Amiibo Sale

If you’re building out your Legend of Zelda collection, teight the Legend of Zelda amiibo are down to just $19.99 each (33% off their usual $29.99) with others also having slight discounts. The Riju amiibo unlocks random in-game items in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, with the chance to score a special paraglider fabric. The Sidon amiibo gives access to bonus extras in compatible Nintendo Switch games, while the Tulin amiibo celebrates the young Rito warrior and Sage of Wind, also offering unique in-game rewards.

Apple AirPods Pro 3

Apple AirPods Pro 3 are listed at $249.00 and bring several new upgrades. They feature stronger active noise cancellation, heart rate sensing, and even live translation support through Apple Intelligence. Battery life now reaches up to 8 hours with ANC enabled, and the redesigned ear tips come in five sizes for a better fit. With spatial audio and hearing health tools included, these earbuds are built for more than just music.

LISEN iPhone 17 Charger Cord

LISEN iPhone 17 Charger Cord is designed for fast and reliable charging on Apple’s latest devices. Built with reinforced materials for durability, it supports high-speed power delivery and stable data transfer. If you’ve upgraded to the newest iPhone, this cord ensures you can charge quickly without worrying about fraying or slow speeds.

INIU Portable Charger, 20000mAh 65W

INIU Portable Charger, 20000mAh 65W is currently $35.98, down from $44.99. It has enough power to fully recharge a MacBook Pro at top speed, and its three output ports let you charge multiple devices at once. The built-in phone stand adds convenience when streaming or video calling while charging, and the compact size makes it easy to carry in a bag while traveling.

Keychain Box Cutter (1.34 Inch Blade)

Keychain Box Cutter is available for $7.98, down from its typical $9.99. This small folding knife has a 1.34-inch blade and attaches easily to a keychain for everyday carry. It’s a handy tool for opening packages or small tasks on the go, and the compact design keeps it practical without taking up pocket space.

Warhammer 40,000 Preorders

The Warhammer universe is front and center in today’s deals. The Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 – Ultima Limited Edition ($99.99 at Amazon) is the definitive version of the game, bundling the base adventure with both season passes, a SteelBook case, and the Macragge’s Chosen DLC. If you’ve been waiting to grab the full package in one shot, this is the edition to get.

Fans who want to dive deeper into the lore have some excellent book picks as well. The Art of Warhammer Video Games ($50, releases Nov. 25) is a lavish hardcover that showcases 30 years of game art, from Dawn of War to Space Marine 2.

Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide ($23.50, down from $45) is already available and serves as the first full encyclopedia of the setting, complete with stunning miniature photography and detailed faction overviews. And the Warhammer 40,000 Character Encyclopedia ($23.03, releases Oct. 7) spotlights over 120 key figures from across the 41st Millennium—plus it comes bundled with a Lieutenant Titus miniature for collectors.

The Thing [4K UHD]

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a horror essential, and the 4K edition is just $10.49 right now. You get HDR visuals, Blu-ray, and a digital copy, plus commentary with Carpenter and Kurt Russell. At 65% off, this is a must-own for horror fans.

Jaws - 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital [4K UHD]

Spielberg’s Jaws doesn’t just hold up, it’s a piece of film history. Today you can grab the 4K edition for under $12. It includes Dolby Vision/HDR10+, deleted scenes, and multiple documentaries on the making of the film.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (4KUHD + Digital)

Tim Burton’s new sequel is here, and the 4K UHD edition is already on sale. Bonus features include director commentary, behind-the-scenes docs, and stop-motion featurettes.

Courage the Cowardly Dog Complete Series (DVD)

Since Courage the Cowardly Dog disappeared from streaming, this complete DVD set is the only way to watch every episode. At under $18, it’s a solid pick for animation fans who want it in their collection.

Lexar 1TB Play PRO microSD Express Card

If you’re eyeing the Switch 2 or already have one, this next-gen microSD Express card is one of the fastest options available. With read speeds up to 900MB/s, it’s future-proof storage for handheld gaming.

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar 2025

December will be here before you know it. This LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar has 24 mini-builds, including a snowman BB-8, C-3PO, and holiday droids. It’s already seeing early discounts, so grab it before holiday demand spikes.

Pokémon TCG Price Watch

Sealed packs and boxes are trending lower, especially at TCGPlayer where discounts hit as high as 60%. Standouts include the Temporal Forces Sleeved Booster for $6.40 (down from $16.17) and Destined Rivals Boosters for $7.99 ($14.28 on Amazon). On the premium side, the White Flare Elite Trainer Box is $81, beating Amazon’s current listing. Amazon still holds the edge on select bundles, including the Black Bolt Booster Bundle at $48.90 and the White Flare Booster Bundle at $45.01, as well as the Team Rocket Tin at $41.25. Both retailers have strong pricing today, but the deepest cuts are still coming from TCGPlayer.

LEGO Arkham Asylum

The Arkham Asylum set packs in Batman, Batwoman, and Robin alongside classic villains like The Joker, Catwoman, and Harley Quinn. The model is loaded with hidden features and references for DC fans. Purchases of $130 or more also include a SEGA Genesis controller gift through Sept. 17, adding extra value for collectors.

Monster Energy Zero Sugar (Black Ops 7)

The Monster Energy Zero Sugar 16oz (15-pack) is on sale for $24.73 at Amazon (6% off). Along with the drinks, buyers receive bonus rewards tied to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, a nice perk for anyone already playing Activision’s newest shooter.

Unicorn Overlord

Unicorn Overlord is available for $29.99 at Amazon, half off its usual $59.99 price. The tactical RPG from SEGA combines hand-drawn animation with strategic battles across five nations. Both the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 versions are included in this deal.

INIU Portable Charger

Amazon has the INIU 10,000mAh 45W portable charger marked down to $18.69 (38% off). The slim power bank features two USB-C ports and one USB-A, allowing three devices to charge simultaneously. Its compact build makes it practical for daily use or travel.

LEGO City Advent Calendar 2025

The LEGO City Advent Calendar 2025 is down to $25 from its regular $34.99 price. It includes 24 surprises ranging from Santa and Mrs. Claus minifigures to seasonal accessories. A fold-out playmat adds to the holiday display, making it a straightforward seasonal pickup.

The Secret of Secrets: A Novel (Robert Langdon)

Dan Brown’s latest thriller, The Secret of Secrets, launches today and is already on sale for $22.80 at Amazon (40% off). The story follows Robert Langdon through Prague, London, and New York as he races to uncover a manuscript tied to human consciousness, mythology, and a dangerous secret project.

Superman (4K Ultra HD + Digital)

James Gunn’s Superman arrives September 23, but Amazon has the 4K Ultra HD + Digital edition available for $29.95 (14% off). Preorders come with Amazon’s price guarantee, so the order will adjust to the lowest price between now and release.

Dreamegg Portable White Noise Machine

The Dreamegg portable white noise machine is selling for $15.99 at Amazon. It offers 16 sound profiles, a long-lasting 1000mAh battery, and a pocket-sized design. With precise volume controls and timer settings, it’s built for both travel and home use.

Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of "Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior". Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.

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Battlefield 6 Devs Hope Console Players Keep Crossplay on Even If 'We Can Never Win' Against PC Cheaters

The developers behind Battlefield 6 are encouraging players on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S to keep crossplay on, even if they “can’t promise that there will be zero cheaters” on PC.

Ripple Effect technical director Christian Buhl and senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson talked about the ever-present threat of cheaters in Battlefield during a recent interview with IGN. During our chat, we learned about how the team is supporting console players with everything from crossplay to performance and fidelity modes.

We also learned about how the studio has implemented anti-cheat measures for next month’s Battlefield sequel. The conversation saw Buhl acknowledge that, while it will be hard to guarantee a cheat-free environment for those playing with the Battlefield 6 PC pool, Ripple Effect and the rest of the BF Studios team have gone to great lengths to fight off cheaters.

“So, we're doing a lot on the PC side to clamp down on cheating as much as possible,” Buhl said. “We have a whole team within Battlefield dedicated to anti-cheat, which includes engineers, analysts who are reviewing things and banning players, and figuring out what the latest cheats are. We have another whole dedicated team at EA to anti-cheat that we work closely with.”

Buhl also highlights the new Battlefield 6 anti-cheat system, Javelin, as well as the divisive secure boot, as other important components in their strategy. Still, as cheaters continue to run amok across the most popular multiplayer games on the market, Ripple Effect knows some will slip through the cracks, especially on PC.

“Now, we can never win against cheaters, right?” Buhl added. “Cheaters will always be there. It's a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. I can't promise that there will be zero cheaters if you're playing against PC players. That's just simply not possible, but I can say that we are being extremely aggressive. We see this as critical to the success of — to the health of — the game.”

Battlefield 6 has a release date of October 10, 2025, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S, but cheaters were able to infiltrate servers months early. EA held open beta periods throughout August, allowing players to get a pre-release taste of the Battlefield experience BF Studios has been cooking up for the last few years. It also saw players come face-to-face with cheaters despite the development team’s efforts, with EA reporting it prevented 330,000 cheat attempts by August 8, just one day after open beta early access began.

Nickerson said crossplay will be on by default when a player loads into Battlefield 6 for the first time, something players should know if they’re especially worried about encountering cheaters on PC. Console users who turn off crossplay will limit their pools to the PlayStation and Xbox communities, but Ripple Effect is hoping it won’t come to that.

“You don't want to play a game and feel like a bunch of people on the other side are cheating,” Buhl added. “I hope console players feel confident enough in what we're doing for cheating on the PC side that they don't feel like they want to turn crossplay off just for that reason. If they do want to, that is an available option for them, but we think it's super important for PC and console players to be confident that most of the people that they're playing with or against are not cheating, and we're putting a huge amount of effort into that.”

You can see Buhl and Nickerson explain some of the other ways BF Studios is prepping for the launch of Battlefield 6 in our full interview. You can also read up on what the rest of the Battlefield team learned from the beta and what kind of fixes players can expect to see at launch.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

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'Secretly Console First' – Ripple Effect Talks Building Battlefield 6 and Lessons Learned from Battlefield 2042

Battlefield 6 feels like a make-or-break moment for BF Studios.

The four-studio team that makes up the Battlefield-focused group (Ripple Effect, DICE, Criterion Games, and Motive Studio) has spent the duration of the project’s development working to ensure next month’s launch goes off without a hitch. It’s a years-long effort to dodge the notoriously troubled releases the franchise is known for without repeating past mistakes — or creating new ones.

We sat down with technical director Christian Buhl and senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson earlier this week to learn more about how BF Studios worked to shock life back into the classic EA shooter series with Battlefield 6. Our conversation touched on how Ripple Effect helped lay the groundwork for what it feels is “the best Battlefield ever,” with a focus on consoles, fighting off cheaters, learning from Battlefield 2042, dealing with leaks, and more player feedback than ever before.

IGN: What can you tell me about the differences between Performance Mode and Fidelity Mode on PS5?

Christian Buhl: I think the short answer is, for performance mode, we wanted to make sure that we set high framerate targets for all of our platforms. We wanted to make sure we were at least 80 frames or above most of the time, and then we just dialed down different performance settings until we were confident that we could give you that experience.

Quality mode is basically just turning up all the quality features. Highest resolution textures, highest fidelity of visual features, and, yeah, that's the primary difference there. We just kind of turned everything on but still made sure that we were hitting 60 frames per second. We didn't want just, 'Let's turn on every visual feature and then you'll get a great-looking single frame at a shitty framerate,' right? We also tuned that so that we made sure we gave the best possible visual fidelity that still hit 60 frames per second.

Then, for performance, we said, 'OK, let's raise that even higher, lower quality to the point where we get even better frame rates.' I don't know if I could tell you exactly... we did tune it based on platform and based on what we would turn on and off to get there, so I don't know that I necessarily remember all the exact settings that are enabled for each of those, but we wanted to give you one big dial where you could say, 'I want the highest fidelity possible but still get super smooth framerates,' or 'I want the best performance possible.'

Matthew Nickerson: That's a great summary. Yeah.

IGN: So, what are we looking at with the PS5 Pro? What is that comparison?

Christian Buhl: So, for PS5 Pro, the main thing is that we run everything at a higher resolution. I've got my own chart up, here. On Fidelity Mode, we run at [2160p] instead of 1440p, and on Performance Mode, we run at [1620p] instead of, I think, 1280p. Basically, you can run it at higher resolution and still hit the same quality, is the short answer. I believe PS5 Pro will also run at a higher framerate. It runs at higher resolution and at a higher frame rate when you put it into performance mode than the regular PS5 does.

IGN: I'm assuming the Xbox Series X is comparable to the PS5 performance and quality options, but looking at Xbox Series S, I know there are some fears that Battlefield 6 will have muddy visuals. How does the Series S compare? Is it a stable like 60FPS, and how does it look, in general, with the performance and quality modes in mind?

Christian Buhl: So, just to be clear, we only have one mode on Xbox Series S because it is a less powerful console. We don't offer performance and quality as separate options, but it does run very solidly at 60 frames per second at 1080p. That was our goal with Xbox Series S: to make sure that it ran super solid at 60 frames per second at 1080p.

IGN: Were there any challenges or hurdles that you had to overcome when developing Battlefield 6 for the Series S, specifically? Were there any compromises made to ensure the game worked on this platform as well as others?

Christian Buhl: There were. It's a less powerful system, obviously, than the Xbox Series X or the PS5. The biggest challenge for us, honestly, was memory. It has... what is it? Eight GB of memory? I think it's eight or 10 GB of memory – much less than the other consoles, also less than our mid-spec PC. So, that was our biggest challenge: making sure that all of our levels could fit into the memory on the Series S.

We did have to tune some levels and make changes to make sure that happens, and obviously, also, we turned down some fidelity settings in Series S, both to hit our performance targets and to lower the amount of memory. Yeah, it was a challenge, but we also develop for multiple platform targets on PC. So, it's not like it's something we didn't know how to do. It's just... we have different targets, and we need to make sure that we work properly on all of them.

IGN: Crossplay has become a pretty standard feature across the industry, and Battlefield 6's version of that is what I've seen described as 'preferred crossplay.' Can you just walk me through that feature on consoles? Is crossplay customizable at all, or is it pretty much just a toggle on/off?

Matthew Nickerson: Crossplay, generally, what we have on consoles is a simple toggle that's actually in-game. Not every product that launches has that available to the player. Some players have to dig through option menus to actually turn off crossplay, like on the Xbox or something. We have it in-game, and it's just a simple toggle on/off.

When it comes to preference input, we have just what it sounds like: If you're a console player, we are looking for other console players in a set time frame, and then if we need to fill up the lobby more, we will look towards PC players. We're very confident but also very keen to what crossplay means for Battlefield 6. We've gone the extra mile and put in a lot of effort in terms of balancing the inputs, understanding where the inputs lie [not just] in terms of relationship to general play styles but general performance of what they're good at and maybe what they lack.

We've completely redone aim assist from our Battlefield 2042 version. We've added aim assist for what we call our 'combat triangle' now - and that's infantry versus inventory, infantry versus vehicles, and vehicles versus vehicles - to give that cohesive experience if you are on controller, compared to, maybe, something that's a little bit easier on keyboard and mouse. So [we're] very dedicated to crossplay, and we're trying to nail it across multiple vectors when it comes to crossplay. It's just such an important aspect for us and for Battlefield 6.

IGN: Is crossplay default on or default off when the player loads in?

Matthew Nickerson: Default. Yes, it is indeed on.

IGN: You explained it as an on/off situation. I have seen calls for console-only crossplay. Is that something you guys see and consider? Is there any potential for console-only crossplay?

Matthew Nickerson: Console-only crossplay happens if you turn it off. When you flip that switch, then you get, basically, console-only crossplay, and that is, we don't fill with PC players.

IGN: So, PlayStation players can play with Xbox players if crossplay is off, still?

Matthew Nickerson: Yeah.

IGN: Battlefield, Call of Duty, and a lot of the military simulator shooters out there have notoriously been affected by cheaters. Obviously, it's a big talking point right now. What can you say to console players to reassure them that they won't have to deal with cheaters on PC if they have crossplay turned on?

Christian Buhl: I guess what I can say is we are taking cheating extremely seriously. Obviously, cheating is much more prevalent on PC than on console, but we are taking a lot of effort, putting a lot of work into prioritizing fighting against cheaters. We've turned on secure boot. We've got Javelin, our new anti-cheat system, which is required in order to play.

So, we're doing a lot on the PC side to clamp down on cheating as much as possible. We have a whole team within Battlefield dedicated to anti-cheat, which includes engineers, analysts who are reviewing things and banning players, and figuring out what the latest cheats are. We have another whole dedicated team at EA to anti-cheat that we work closely with. That's what I can say. Now, we can never win against cheaters, right? Cheaters will always be there. It's a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. I can't promise that there will be zero cheaters if you're playing against PC players. That's just simply not possible, but I can say that we are being extremely aggressive. We see this as critical to the success of – to the health of – the game.

You don't want to play a game and feel like a bunch of people on the other side are cheating. I hope console players feel confident enough in what we're doing for cheating on the PC side that they don't feel like they want to turn crossplay off just for that reason. If they do want to, that is an available option for them, but we think it's super important for PC and console players to be confident that most of the people that they're playing with or against are not cheating, and we're putting a huge amount of effort into that.

IGN: The beta tests went over really well as far as I can see. I think it was a really reassuring moment for a lot of fans. What were some of the takeaways for the team from these tests, and how will they result in a better Battlefield experience at launch?

From a feedback standpoint for open beta, like you said, I think the general sentiment was very positive. It was very nice, number one, to have players – live players – outside of our Battlefield Labs and outside of our external and internal play test to play the game and to give feedback and to give different points of view on aspects that, maybe, we grew accustomed to as developers of this Battlefield 6.

What we handled was, and what I've been actively busy in, is a lot of input discussions. Where are we going to go with aim assist from a live standard product? Where are we going with weapon balancing? Where are we going with anything in terms of crossplay? Again, input discrepancies we... we ultimately want whatever platform, whatever input that you choose, to have the best Battlefield experience possible, and that rings true with our team, and that rings true with the product as a whole.

So, [there were] a lot of discussions about active tuning, a lot of discussions around changing up loadouts. You saw the discussion about bringing Recon's respawn beacon and moving that to Assault, and that's a byproduct of open beta. That's an understanding of what players wanted, and that's based on the active feedback that we got data-wise from the open beta. A lot of those discussions are still active and will continue to happen post-launch and as we move towards a live product.

Christian Buhl: I'll say, Matthew touched on this a bit, but open beta was not the first time we started collecting data from players, right? We've been running BF Labs since the beginning of the year. Obviously, it was a much smaller player set, but it was just real players, right? We sent out massive amounts of information, of invites, and got a ton of real players to join. And so we've just been, ever since the first BF Labs event, 'Put it out there. See what players like. See what they don't like. See what they react to.' That's kind of been how we've been treating BF Labs, and then open beta was just the same thing at several orders of magnitude larger.

In a similar vein, we've, all along in BF Labs and open beta, been collecting performance data, stability and crash data, and we identify performance fixes or crashes that we need to fix. So, we're using it to improve our launch, and our plan is for... obviously, all the qualitative feedback we got from open beta, we're going to react to a bunch of that. Obviously, [we're] not going to do everything every player asks for, but we're hearing what people are asking for and trying to make the best decisions. But then we're also improving our performance and stability, so there should be... you know. I'm thrilled that the open beta performed as well as it did from a framerate perspective. It should be even better for launch.

IGN: I think there were a few specific talking points that came out of the beta that I do want to touch on. There was a lot of talk about maps being too small. Obviously, there are more maps in the launch build of the game, but I am wondering if some of those maps that we saw, the team looked at that feedback and said, 'Well, we're going to rearrange some of these maps. We're going to make these maps feel less cluttered, or maybe there's more cover.' Is that the kind of thing you guys looked at?

Christian Buhl: I don't know if you know the specific answer to that question, Matthew, but I do know that, first of all, there was feedback. The maps were too small, and yeah, in hindsight, maybe we should have put one of the bigger maps into the beta so that we didn't get that feedback. But we've always been planning on doing bigger maps, right? We recently tested some of the bigger maps in BF Labs, and there were a bunch of reasons we picked the maps we did for open beta, including, partly, the maps that were furthest along and most ready to show in open beta.

So, I don't think we need to react to the maps-aren't-big-enough feedback by making changes to the small maps. They're just small maps. They're different experiences, right? We do have those big maps, those big experiences. We did run them on BF Labs over the last, I believe, two weekends. So, we've gotten feedback on those and want to make sure that those are good for the large map experience. I do know that, on all the maps, we did collect feedback on... I mean, I can't answer specific questions about specifically what we changed, but we did collect a bunch of feedback and make changes. I don't know, Matthew, if you have any more specific examples.

Matthew Nickerson: We looked at maps via game mode. If an M-COM on a certain map was maybe a little bit too close or in an incorrect position that we deemed. There have been changes in that regard to more smooth out the overall gameplay experience when it came to maps supporting multiple modes. We want to really make sure that each map shines, and there are going to be choke points, there are going to be rough spots, there are going to be really sick holds that are going to happen, maybe, on the last push of Rush or something. But there have been active discussions and active changes when it comes to massaging things a little bit, M-COMs or moving points around when it came to certain feedback points that were very apparent. You know, 'Hey, this little adjustment had to happen.'

IGN: One of the updates you guys had recently was that the server browser and things like that were going to be looked at in Portal. How has that gone? Is the server browser in Portal going to be ready at launch?

Matthew Nickerson: Just generally, the tests have gone well. We put out that Portal will have a server browser, and then there will be verified experiences also within the server browser.

Christian Buhl: I think to answer your question, generally, people are saying they want server browser. We know they want it. We want to give it to them. One of the challenges is, when people say, 'I want server browser,' it means different things to different people, right? So, we're trying to figure out, 'OK, what are the best ways we can give people, most people, what they want, and it is healthy for the game?'

I'm not a designer myself, so I can't tell you exactly where we're leading and heading with this, but we will have a server browser experience. We think it's going to be something that most players are going to be happy with. So, if you want, you could just click a button and jump into a game. If you want, you can go look for a specific game in a specific server. We're going to give people a lot of options.

Matthew Nickerson: There's also customized search, as we saw between the two open betas. That coming online - that really helped improve match times massively and just overall quality of matches. There are going to be multiple options to see how players want to experience their Battlefield.

IGN: Can you talk about any of the highlights coming up for Labs testing? Can you talk about or tease any notable features or mechanics you guys are looking into?

Christian Buhl: I think we actually only have one Labs test scheduled, and I can't say what that's going to be. You'll probably figure it out in a couple of days, but I guess all I could do is tease that I can't say what it is that we're testing.

IGN: The game has been in development for years. What are some of the challenges the team has had to overcome in the long road to Battlefield 6? This one, more than others in recent history, really feels like an important game in this series.

Christian Buhl: As you pointed out, we knew, have known, for a long time that we really had to nail this Battlefield. We learned a lot of lessons from 2042. The launch didn't go well. The game wasn't performance-stable. There were things we weren't listening to players on that they wanted. I think the challenge has been to, well, first, to build a stable and performing game, to figure out a plan and a path for how we get information from players. That's where BF Labs came from, right? We got to make sure that we're putting the game in front of players, getting feedback from them. We put a ton of effort into stability and performance testing. We built huge farms of PCs and consoles so that we could test the game over and over. But I think overall, the biggest challenge has been just the scale and scope of the game work that we're building.

In the past, Battlefield was built primarily by DICE, with assistance from Ripple Effect and Criterion and some other studios along the way, but this time, we're building it as four studios all working together. We're building it all across the world. It's had some rough edges. It's had some challenges, where we've messed up on things, but we've also been able to combine the expertise of, obviously, DICE with all their deep expertise in Battlefield. Studios, like Criterion and Motive, with their deep history of single-player games and the racing games and the wide-open worlds that they have there. Ripple Effect, with our Portal background.

We've been able to combine all these studios with different ideas and different expertise together. It's been a huge challenge, but it's also been just awesome to see that we've been able to bring four studios together to make a game that is way, way bigger and way better than any of us could have built on our own.

Matthew Nickerson: From the design side, a lot of it's been testing your theories and improving them, and it's been a lot of player-driven feedback. It was also a post-mortem look at 2042. What did we hit from crossplay, from aim assist, from weapon balance, from gunplay, and where do we move on from that? We obviously, again, learned a lot from 2042, as Christian said. What can we elevate? What did we do right, and what did we do wrong, and take a step back. But also, really player-driven feedback focus, to prove our theories that this is the direction that we want to go for Battlefield 6. Again, just really heavy play testing, at least from the design side.

Obviously, we play test multiple times a day. We have a very heavy emphasis on controller play testing now because that is a huge part of this crossplay puzzle and this piece that we really want to deliver on. So, no matter how familiar or unfamiliar you are with controller, because you're a keyboard player or anything, at the end of the day, we really need that controller feedback, and that was integrating controller into everything that we do from the design side was definitely a huge change compared to 2042.

Christian Buhl: I mean, these controllers [motions to nearby controllers on a shelf] are here because I use them for play tests on my PC. I do mostly play testing on PC, but I use controller so that we make sure that we were experiencing input.

IGN: A lot of that info is reassuring for someone like me who was there for Battlefield 4 at launch. I do wonder if maybe you can get a bit more specific for those people who have seen Battlefield's history and have seen troubled launches here and there. What can you say to reassure console players, specifically, who are worried about jumping in day one?

Christian Buhl: I could say we've been thinking about console and the console experience from the start of Battlefield 6. It has been a top-of-the-line thing. We have to build this game as if it was made primarily for console players. Obviously, we're still also thinking about PC players, but in the past, frankly, Battlefield was built as a PC game and then ported to console, and it probably felt like that. That is not how this game was built. We built this from the beginning with the idea in mind that this is going to be on both console and PC. It has to feel and play like it is a console game that was built to be a console game.

Matthew Nickerson: We have a saying here in the office, in Ripple Effect when I joined the team, that I created, called 'Secretly Console First.’ It's a little moniker that kind of pokes fun. We don't want to, obviously, tear down or destroy any of the legacy that Battlefield has, which is, first, a PC game, but we really have to care about console at the end of the day. We've been putting in the reps, putting in the work, just like Christian said. Console has been at the forefront of Battlefield 6 development since day one, and really, we're honed and we are well-crafted in providing this product at the highest quality possible.

Christian Buhl: Actually, I think it was about two years ago, we checked to see how many people were playing with controllers on a daily basis for their play tests, and then we sent people controllers. We said, 'Here, use the controller.' We wanted people to use controllers as the default for their for their play tests. So, obviously, you might still be playing on PC, but you're playing with a controller. That was a big part of our play testing push, is to get people using controllers.

IGN: I think Battlefield 6 has had a particularly interesting rollout for a Battlefield game. Specifically, I feel like there have been a lot of leaks, small and big. I'm wondering, how does the team, how does EA, feel about leaks like that? Did the team go to any lengths to try and tighten the lid?

Christian Buhl: I could talk about that a lot, actually. I could talk about that. I'll start by saying we did not want leaks, but we also knew that the most important thing was to get player feedback through BF Labs, right? We had, actually, discussions, I think about a year or two ago... I guess it was maybe about two years ago, about how much we were going to do to prevent leaks versus how much we were going to do to get the game in front of players. We made a very deliberate decision that we were going to bias very heavily towards putting things in front of players and getting their feedback, even though we knew things would leak.

I remember, at one point, making a big presentation that said, 'What will leak? Everything.' Like, we just started with that assumption that things would leak. Now, to be clear, we didn't want things to leak. We weren't seeking leaks, but we knew that the most important thing was to get the game in front of players, get real feedback from players, get real telemetry, real data, and that had to come at any cost, including the fact that things would leak. So, that's been our approach up until now, is like, 'We don't want leaks. We are doing some work to make it a little bit harder for people to leak things,' but our priority has been: Get the game in front of players even though we know it will end up leaking.

IGN: The Call of Duty team appears to be backing away from including goofy skins for this year's Black Ops 7. It's, I feel like, all anyone can talk about, even in the Battlefield community because you guys have, conversely, doubled down on gritty realism. How does it feel for the team to see other shooters backtracking from the goofy aesthetic, while Battlefield sticks to its guns? Does it feel like this commitment to a more grounded shooter experience is paying off so far?

Christian Buhl: I think we're really happy with where we are. We want to be a gritty, realistic shooter. Other games can and should be whatever they want to be, right? [laughs] Like we're not, I don't know... Fortnite is pretty goofy, and that game is pretty good. So, I think where we end up is we're pretty happy with where we are. We are a gritty, grounded, realistic shooter. That's what we intend to be, and that's what the game is going to look like for a while.

Matthew Nickerson: From the design side, we are aware of what other products are doing, but we’re really focused on what works for Battlefield at the end of the day. We’re not chasing trends. We’re not chasing other products. I think a perfect example of the skins that we’re still committed to releasing is the Road to Battlefield 6 event that’s going on in 2042. Those are 30 premium skins that will give a player a taste of what is more to come when we talk about cosmetics in the Battlefield 6 product line. Generally, I think, from a design perspective, we’re doing us. We’re staying in our lane, doing us at the end of the day.

IGN: Auto-spotting is another topic I see brought up in the community. Is that being tweaked at all? Is it going to be like it was in the beta? How are you guys looking to address that feedback, if at all?

Matthew Nickerson: I can answer that because we just talked about it and just submitted fixes and changes for it – literally just last week. So, yeah, we definitely reduced the range and overall reduced the power. We found out a lot in open beta that it was obviously very strong, just like players said. Really, players ended up just shooting Doritos. Light environments, dark environments – they were just like, ‘Hey, aim at the Dorito. You’re going to hit something at the end of the day.’

We definitely don’t want that for Battlefield, so we’ve definitely reduced the duration, reduced the range – everything across the board to really hit that system and align it more appropriately with what we want. Again, we want the information. It’s important to ping players, but it’s got to be an active part of Battlefield. It can’t just be a fire-and-forget sweep across the whole thing [and] everyone’s lit up. That was very apparent in open beta, so we’ve made some considerable changes to the system. In terms of strength overall, we’ve definitely toned it down.

IGN: I think my favorite and a lot of my friends’ favorite joke to come out of the beta was the meme where a player spawns, they look up in the mountains, and they see an ocean of sniper glints. I’m curious what you guys think when you see a meme like that. Do you think, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s so funny,’ or is it more in-depth, like, ‘We don’t want players to have that feeling.’

Christian Buhl: [laughs] I feel like it’s both. I saw those. I thought it was hilarious. Obviously, we needed to fix some things and tune some things, so it was funny to see players react in a humorous way to those things but also great to get that feedback and say, ‘We need to tune down snipers or we need to change the glints so it’s not like…' you know? I saw those memes with the hillside just full of these giant glares, so I think it’s both.

Matthew Nickerson: Definitely from the design team, we loved sending those around, internally. They’re really, really funny, and they kind of magnify, ‘Hey, we still have work to do, but also…’ For example, with the sniper glint stuff, we knew it was too strong, so we stepped it back. We knew the bullet tracer effect was too strong, so we stepped it back.

My favorite one is just the guy that has a shotgun that turns into a multi-utility thing. He blows the guy in half, turns around, blows up the building with a shotgun, and holds it in awe of the power of the shotgun in Battlefield 6. At the end of the day, it keeps us honest. It keeps us, like, ‘Hey, we still have work to do. There are things that players are, maybe, not vibing with or are vibing with in different capacities.’ We’ve taken a look at the shotgun, also, to kind of address that. From a design standpoint and from the team, we love this stuff. The community is engaged; we are engaged.

IGN: I have to imagine it’s quite the balancing act, deciding when to take these funny things out or just tweak them. I have friends, who I played the beta with, who had never played Battlefield, and they couldn’t get into it until they discovered they could kill people with the defibrillators. Those fun moments like that, I’m sure, weave their way into the game all the time.

Matthew Nickerson: [laughs] Definitely.

Christian Buhl: One of the coolest parts about Battlefield is how open it is and how you can play it so many different ways. The destruction, obviously, opens up a lot of that. I remember, in one of our internal playtests, somebody posted a video where they looked in a room, a bunch of people are there, they ran into the next room, blew a hole in the wall, and then shot them from the back. You also could have just gone guns blazing into that room, right? It’s just so awesome in Battlefield how you can go do the same thing a bunch of different ways and play in a bunch of different ways. I love it.

Matthew Nickerson: There have been some really great clips from the beta, especially when it came to funny physics and interactions. A tank blowing up and then the whole top spinning. We’ve had discussions about, ‘Should we fix that? Maybe it looks a little bit unpolished,’ and we’ve decided on a lot of those to keep them just because they’re funny. It is classic Battlefield moments that you can’t get in any other product. We’re going to keep it. We’re going to preserve it.

IGN: Another talking point I’ve seen a lot about is open and locked classes. What do you guys think about that discussion, when you see so many people who want classes to have locked weapons and things like that?

Matthew Nickerson: It’s philosophy at the end of the day. We don’t really want to make a decision or really pigeonhole how you want to experience Battlefield. I know we’re supporting both open and closed weapon sets in Portal and in different game modes. We ran a giant telemetry, data collection test in open beta, and we posted those results.

I think it’s ongoing, and I think it’ll continually evolve, but again, from a design side, we don’t want to make a decision for the player base at the end of the day. We want to support both moving forward, and again, a key mantra for Battlefield 6 is, ‘Play Battlefield how you want to,’ so we’re making sure we support both open and closed systems. We just don’t want to make the decision for the player.

IGN: Is there anything else you want to say, before launch happens, about Battlefield 6, how we got here, what this game means, or what players can expect on consoles at launch?

Christian Buhl: I guess I’ll say we said internally, from the beginning, that our goal was to make the best Battlefield ever, and I think we did it. This Battlefield is amazing. It’s huge, the single-player is awesome, the multiplayer is amazing.

You’ve got a huge variety of maps and modes and weapons, and we built it from the beginning, as Matthew said, to be secretly console first. We made sure that this felt like a game that was built for console and not a PC game that was ported to console.

Matthew Nickerson: For me, and I think for the team in general, we’re just really excited for launch. We’re really excited about our unique version or vision for crossplay, when it comes to different backend systems or aim assist or anything. We do some things a little bit differently that, I think, works really well for Battlefield.

We’re really excited to collect more data on that and move that needle in terms of where we need to go next. I’m also excited about the post-launch content. We have such a robust post-launch lineup that is just… There are some really, really cool gems in there, and I’m really excited to see how that continually shakes up the game as more and more information comes from us about that. I’m excited about that. I’m excited about launch and excited about the future of Battlefield, for sure.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

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'What Will Leak? Everything' — Battlefield 6 Devs Insist They Didn't Want the Game to Suffer From Leaks, but Getting Player Feedback 'Had to Come at Any Cost'

Battlefield 6 developer Ripple Effect hasn’t been the least bit surprised by the steady flow of leaks it has suffered throughout 2025.

Leaked gameplay footage, details, and more from EA’s ongoing closed playtest program known as Battlefield Labs have poured onto the internet throughout the last few months of development on this year’s new Battlefield game. It’s resulted in an unorthodox lead-up to what has been propped up as a particularly important entry in a long-running FPS franchise, leading to confusion from fans as they watched everything from gameplay reveals to game modes leak online.

We asked technical director Christian Buhl and senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson about their approach to Battlefield 6 leaks during a recent interview. Buhl asserts that the Ripple Effect team “did not want leaks” but admitted the BF Studios’ desire to thrive off of player feedback led to a few necessary sacrifices.

“We had, actually, discussions, I think about a year or two ago,” Buhl explained. “I guess it was maybe about two years ago, about how much we were going to do to prevent leaks versus how much we were going to do to get the game in front of players. We made a very deliberate decision that we were going to bias very heavily towards putting things in front of players and getting their feedback, even though we knew things would leak.”

EA and the four entities that make up BF Studios — Ripple Effect, DICE, Motive Studio, and Criterion Games — knew Battlefield 6 needed to hit the ground running so as not to further stain the franchise’s already tarnished reputation. Player feedback has been an important part of the team’s foundation for years, but they weren’t naïve to the idea that a direct line of communication with fans could result in official materials making their way to the public early.

“I remember, at one point, making a big presentation that said, 'What will leak? Everything.' Like, we just started with that assumption that things would leak,” Buhl added. “Now, to be clear, we didn't want things to leak. We weren't seeking leaks, but we knew that the most important thing was to get the game in front of players, get real feedback from players, get real telemetry, real data, and that had to come at any cost, including the fact that things would leak.”

Buhl said BF Studios made it “a little bit harder for people to leak things” but kept its sights set on one goal: “Get the game in front of players even though we know it will end up leaking.” We’ll know how Battlefield 6 turned out when it launches for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on its October 10 release date. In the meantime, be sure to check out our full interview with Buhl and Nickerson. You can also read up on a recent leak that saw a few Battlefield 6 maps show up online.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

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Capcom Reveals 3 Resident Evil Games for Nintendo Switch 2 With February 2026 Release Date

Capcom made a surprise appearance during today’s September 2025 Nintendo Direct to announce that Resident Evil Requiem, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, and Resident Evil Village are coming to Nintendo Switch 2.

The latest mainline trio in the Resident Evil series showed up for the Direct with a Switch 2 release date of February 27, 2026, for all three titles. While Biohazard and Village have been in players’ hands for years, today’s trailer also came with a fresh look at gameplay for Requiem, which is also set to launch for other platforms the same day.

"Confront fear like you’ve never experienced in the ninth entry in the chilling Resident Evil series," an official description says. "Return to a ruined, abandoned Raccoon City in a thrilling survival horror experience that features the series’ trademark combat, investigations, puzzles, and resource management."

With months to go until launch, there is still much to be revealed about Resident Evil Requiem. However, we did get to go hands-on with the game just a few weeks ago, and shortly after, we spoke with the Capcom team for an all-encompassing interview.

We'll know more about Resident Evil Requiem when it launches in February. The ports of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village coming to Switch 2, meanwhile, are the Gold Edition versions of each experience, granting players access to additional content.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil 8: Village, and Resident Evil 9: Requiem come to Switch 2 early next year. While we wait for any sign of Leon S. Kennedy, you can check out everything announced during the September 2025 Nintendo Direct here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

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