Cowabunga dude, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are comming to Magic: The Gathering in March next year, and suprisingly preorders on Amazon are still live. Available right now is the play booster box, bundle, commander deck and Turtle Team-Up. Turtle team-up seems like a cool way to play Magic, it's a new co-op game mode for two to four players each with their own 60-card deck fighting "villanous adversaries". It's nice to see Hasbro trying new things in 2025, not to mention some of the best brand licencing i've seen for a while.
Mega Evolution is exactly what the start of a new Pokémon TCG generation should be. Full of amazing artwork, ridiculously rare cards and plenty of deckbuilding options. It's also nice to see Amazon being somewhat competitive by undercutting the secondary market by around $60. If you want a Mega Evolutions ETB, now's the time to snap one up.
MTG: TMNT Preorders are Live
New game mode aside, MTGs latest Universes Beyond addition is another huge IP with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Play Boosters are available, so getting a box is a great idea before preorders sell out and it becomes harder to build a deck. The Commander Deck is ideal if you want a solid foundation for a game of Commander but want to modify it with single cards down the line. Of course, the TMNT bundle comes with a few goodies including 9 play boosters, foil alt art promo card, 30 land cards and some tidy accessories.
Pokémon Legends: L-A Preorders
It's nearly time trainers! Thursday see's the release of the most radiacally different mainline Pokémon game, Legends: Z-A. Set as a continuation of Pokémon X and Y and continuing the game mechanic changes seen in Legends: Arceus, Legends: Z-A is going full real-time combat over it's tried and tested turn-based battle style. It's going to be a landmark moment for the worlds most popular entertainment franchise, so make sure you have your preorder in.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (3 Months)
Well, Xbox isn't in the good books of gamers worldwide right now, but you can dodge the Game Pass (eventual) price hike with 3 months of Ultimate for $59.99, which is $30 cheaper than the dramatic price hikes. If you're on Xbox, this is a good time to stack up on Game Pass.
Final Fantasy IX (Nintendo Switch)
We gave Final Fantasy IX a 9.2 back in 2000, so $40 for a JRPG classic isn't much to ask, right? Well if the re-release hasn't sold you on it's own, this version comes with high resolution cut scenes, and game modifiers including high speed and no encounter modes topped off with an Auto Save function. Also, character models are high resolution now too, so this physical edition of FFIX should wet you nostalgia appetite.
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.
In celebration of IGN Fan Fest 2025: Fall Edition, Humble Bundle is releasing a special bundle that, for at least $25, will get you a collection of 8 games and DLC worth $293, including Train Sim World 6, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake, and TerraTech.
In addition, your purchase will go a long way in supporting Code for America, a civic tech nonprofit that partners with the U.S. government to build digital tools, change policies, and improve programs.
The IGN Fan Fest 2025: Fall Edition Humble Bundle is available right here and will be available for purchase until tktktk. This is just one of the many ways we are celebrating IGN Fan Fest 2025: Fall Edition, which streams live on October 15 at 9am PT/12pm ET and will feature dozens of exclusive game trailers, interviews with celebrities, and exclusive clips and reveals across games, TV, and more. This includes Predator: Badlands, Netflix's The Witcher, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, IT: Welcome to Derry, The Outer Worlds 2, and much more.
OK, back to the bundle. It can once again can be fully unlocked by donating at least $25 and it includes the following;
As you can see in the list above, donating at least a certain amount will allow you to add these games to your gaming library, i.e. donating $10 will get you the bottom three games, $15 will get you the bottom six games, and $25 will get you everything.
Now, let's get into the games themselves.
Train Sim World 6 was actually just released on September 30 and allows you to navigate and manage different routes across the world. Included in this bundle is the base game and four DLC routes that will give you even more ways to immerse yourself in the fascinating world of trains.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is the first classic RPG set in the 41st millennium and it casts you as a Rogue Trader, a "scion of an ancient dynasty of daring privateers that reign over their trade empire and explore the fringes of the Imperium’s frontier." Read our review here.
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake was released in 2023 and is actually the prequel to the upcoming game, SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide. This first game follows a tale of what happens when a mysterious fortunre teller grants SpongeBob and Patrick their wishes, which causes portals to strange Wishworlds to pop up. Read our review here.
Wandering Sword is a martial arts RPG that features gorgeous 3D pixel art and stars a swordsman who is caught up in a feud that leads him to become a master at martial arts.
Koira had us sold by tasking us with protecting an adorable puppy, and it also features a musical adventure that's hand-drawn and sends you deep into a magical forest.
To get ready for Invincible VS, this bundle will allow you to jump into Invincible Presents: Atom Eve, where you will play as one of the most powerful superheroes in the Invincible universe and will need to unravel a mystery while also dealing with the challenges of everyday life.
TerraTech is an open-world sandbox adventure and vehicular combat game that puts its focus on design, crafting and discovery, making it perfect for those with a big imagination.
Last by certainly not least, Predator: Hunting Grounds rounds out the IGN Fan Fest 2025: Fall Edition bundle and lets you bring up to four friends with you to not only play as an elite military fireteam, but to also become the Predator yourself and hunt down those who dare oppose you. Oh, and it may just help you get hyped for Predator: Badlands! Read our review here.
Humble Bundle is part of IGN Entertainment, the division of Ziff Davis that includes GamesIndustry.biz, IGN, and MapGenie.
You'd think it would be enough for filmmaker James Wan to have two hugely successful horror franchises under his belt with Saw and Insidious (both co-created with writing partner Leigh Whannell). But then he also went and created The Conjuring, which, since its debut in 2013, has produced nine films in total and grossed over $2 billion at the box office.
Starting as a 1970s ghost series, based on the real life investigations of married paranormal snoops Lorraine and Ed Warren, The Conjuring Universe has sprawled into a franchise that not only keeps track of the Warrens' demon-busting adventures, but also delves further into the haunted backstories of these cases with prequel installments set decades before the Warrens show up. Now that the fourth and final Conjuring movie is in theaters (and on digital), you might want to revisit the full timeline of The Conjuring-verse.
So are you looking to watch these Conjuring films as they were released - or do you want to absorb all the spookiness via chronological binge, kicking things off in 1950s Romania with The Nun? Whatever the case, you'll find both lists below.
There are 10 total movies set within The Conjuring universe — four Conjuring movies, three Annabelle movies, The Nun and The Nun 2, and The Curse of La Llorona. The fourth Conjuring movie, titled Last Rites, is now available in theaters. If you're planning on marathoning all of these movies, you can currently stream most of them on HBO Max.
The Conjuring Movies in Chronological Order
1. The Nun (2018)
Prequel frightfest The Nun takes place in 1952 Romania, and stars Demián Bichir and Taissa Farmiga (sister of franchise star Vera Farmiga) as a Roman Catholic priest and a nun uncovering an unholy secret involving Bonnie Aaron's evil Nun from The Conjuring 2.
Taking place after The Nun, in 1955 California, Annabelle Creation was the fourth installment in the Conjuring Universe, but the second chronologically, depicting the origin of franchise breakout star -- Annabelle, the creep haunted dolll. It's the story of a story of a doll-maker who opens his home to six orphans and a nun, only to have an ancient evil released in his own house.
Although The Nun 2 takes place after the events of The Nun, it's actually the third movie in the timeline. The events of The Nun 2 take place in 1956, taking place four years after Sister Irene's first encounter with Valak and one year after the events of Annabelle: Creation.
The second film made in the Conjuring Universe, even before The Conjuring 2, was prequel Annabelle, taking place in 1967 in Southern California, 12 years after the official origin of the doll. Annabelle tells the story of a young doctor and his wife who bring the doll into their home (to reside amongst other scary-looking dolls) only to have it make their life a living hell.
The movie that started it all, The Conjuring, starred Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as real-life paranormal investigators/ghost hunters Lorraine and Ed Warren (whose exploits reportedly inspired The Amityville Horror), as they aid the besieged Perron family in 1971, on Rhode Island. Series creator James Wan directed this first outing, marking the third official blockbuster horror franchise he'd created.
Next up is Annabelle Comes Home. Taking place only one year later in the story, in 1972, the Warrens' young daughter, Judy (McKenna Grace), must contend with Annabelle and other demons who escape the Warrens’ artifact room while the couple is away. Conjuring Universe (and It: Chapter One and Two) writer Gary Dauberman makes his directorial debut here.
Based on the Latin American folklore of La Llorona, this Conjuring Universe spinoff follows a mother in 1973 Los Angeles who must save her children from a malevolent spirit trying to steal them. Starring Linda Cardellini and Raymond Cruz, The Curse of La Llorona is the most detached and removed tale from the franchise's ongoing story, only featuring Tony Amendola's Father Perez from Annabelle as a connecting character.
Based on the events of the Enfield Poltergeist in England, The Conjuring 2 brings back Lorraine and Ed Warren, now notrious from the Amityville case, as they help a family being haunted by a malevolent spirit in 1977. Whereas the first Conjuring movie brought about the Annabelle films, this one originally introduced The Nun, who would go on to receive her own prequel. James Wan also returned to direct.
The actual eighth film made in the franchise is also the next film you should watch if you're doing a chronological binge. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do brings us into the '80s with a ghoulish tale based on the real life trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, who claimed "demonic possession" after murdering his landlord. Lorraine and Ed Warren are drawn into the case after they'd apparently exorcised a demon out of a young boy's body... accidentally causing it to flee into Arne.
The final film on the The Conjuring timeline is now in theaters and is off to a tremendous start at the box office. The Conjuring: Last Rites is the fourth mainline film in the series and is being billed as the final movie in the franchise. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return as Ed and Lorraine Warren, paranormal investigators taking on their most dangerous case yet. Like other films in the series, Last Rites is based on the true story of the Smurl hauntings, a series of paranormal occurences at a Pennsylvania home in the 70s and 80s.
If you're looking to watch all the movies in theatrical release order, the correct list is below:
The Conjuring (2013)
Annabelle (2014)
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Annabelle: Creation (2017)
The Nun (2018)
The Curse of La Llorona (2019)
Annabelle Comes Home (2019)
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)
The Nun 2 (2023)
The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)
How to Watch The Annabelle Movies in Order
Within The Conjuring Universe exists two separate film trilogies: The Conjuring and Annabelle. The narrative chronology of the Annabelle movies differs from their theatrical release order, so we've created this quick viewing guide to help you out.
New York Comic-Con is always a gold mine for toy collectors hungry for new reveals, and this year's show was no exception. Hasbro brought an absolute mountain of new Marvel and Star Wars figures to the show. But surprisingly, they're also branching out to cover a less well-trodden Disney franchise, Tron.
Scroll down to see all the new Marvel and Star Wars figures Hasbro revealed at NYCC, along with a first look at their new HasLab crowdfunded set based on the original Tron movie.
Hasbro's Marvel Legends at NYCC
Hasbro brought quite a lineup of new Marvel figures to NYCC. The biggest of these (literally) is a new made-to-order Apocalypse figure based on the villain's appearance in X-Men: The Animated Series. The figure clocks in at 12 inches tall and includes a host of weapons and accessories.
Also a big focus at the show was the new Executioner Build-a-Figure wave, which features new figures of Enchantress, Phantom Rider, Warbow, Dark Avengers Spider-Man, Werewolf by Night, Iron Man Mark 72, and WWII Logan, each including pieces to build Enchantress' faithful bodyguard. Hasbro is also catering to Inhumans fans with a pair of two-pack sets featuring new figures of Black Bolt, Triton, Gorgon, and Medusa.
Hasbro's Star Wars Figures at NYCC
Compared to their Marvel Legends lineup, Hasbro's Star Wars slate was somewhat more restrained. That said, tehre were still some cool reveals to be had. The larger Black Series line will be receiving new figures of Boba Fett (based on The Book of Boba Fett) and Darth Vader (based on the iconic final duel from Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi). The smaller Vointage Collection line, meanwhile, will see new figures of Jedi Master Shaak Ti and Padme Amidala.
Tron: Heroes of the Grid Collector's Set
The biggest and most welcome surprise of Hasbro's New York Comic-Con lineup is that the company is kicking off a new line of Tron toys. Perhaps wisely, they're focusing on the 1982 original over the tepidly received Tron: Ares.
The Tron: Heroes of the Grid Collector's set is Hasbro's latest HasLab crowdfunded project and is priced at $259.99. Similar to the Vintage Collection line, these Tron figures are designed in a smaller 3.75-inch scale. The set includes a USB-powered light-up Grid display base, figures of Flynn, Yori, Sark, Program, and Tron, and two light cycles with removable light walls.
The HasLab campaign will run until 11:59PM ET on November 24, 2025. Assuming it's successfully funded, Hasbro expects the set to begin shipping to backers in Fall 2026.
The latest Steam Next Fest began this week, showcasing a wide range of upcoming titles. And as has become a trend, publishing platform indie.io has several titles featured. To celebrate, it has launched a campaign called Next Fest Party that will run from October 13–20 and includes free demos for 12 different games.
The games come from a variety of different developers in a variety of different genres, so we figured we’d give you a rundown of everything that’s available. Below you’ll find brief descriptions of each game, with each title linked to its free demos so you can try them for yourself.
This 2D top-down roguelite shooter is chaotic, silly, and a bit gross (well, as gross as a 2D game can be). Your city has been overrun with slime mutants who have one goal in mind: ripping your face off. The natural reaction should be to prevent that, so you’ll need to upgrade your weapons and special abilities to fend off the horde. The demo drops you into the game’s first level, and you just need to survive as long as you can. Simple, right?
Kriophobia also challenges you to survive, but in a VERY different way. You play as Anna, a geophysicist who’s trapped in a frozen Soviet bunker … and something else is down there with you. This is classic psychological horror, perfect for spooky season and for players who don’t want their hands held. Combat is tense and difficult, to the point it’s sometimes best avoided altogether. The demo is a standalone section of the game’s second chapter, where you’ll have to contend with the cold, mysterious abominations, and Anna’s traumatic past.
This pixel shooter is a bullet-hell roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic kingdom where an attempted cure for death resulted in an all-consuming plague instead. You were a doctor before this event, but now you must use cursed masks and plague-infused weapons to deal with escalating waves of enemies. The demo is a vertical slice that will give you a sense of the game’s fast pace and let you experiment with different cursed masks and power-ups.
It’s time to pick up your Battlemallet, go delving into mines, and try to safely make it out with as many riches as you can in this first-person extraction roguelite. The mines are randomly generated, so no two trips are the same. You’ll need to craft items like support beams and ladders to traverse dangerous areas, as well as utilize lanterns and floodlights to see in the darkness. Once you’ve grabbed your loot, you’ll need to be wary of traps and other dangers on your way back to safety.
Do you like stealing stuff and then causing untold destruction throughout the city as you try to make your escape while an escalating police force chases you? Well, great news. That’s the premise of the aptly named Heistfest. You’ll speed your way through hand-drawn environments, and things will get more intense the longer you evade capture. And if you think that means just adding some more cop cars and maybe some guns, think again. You’ll have to deal with spike traps, helicopters, paratroopers, tanks, and full-on airstrikes. Chaos and fun are more important than realism anyway. The demo is a vertical slice that gives you a sense of the core gameplay loop: rob a bank, spark a police chase, and see how long you can survive as public enemy #1.
It’s Halloween time, so of course there can’t just be one scary game on this list. This one is a psychological horror walking sim focused on atmosphere, exploration, and puzzle solving. You play as Yuki Tachibana, a Japanese high school student who recently moved into a new apartment with her family. Something sinister awakens within the walls of their new home, warping reality and dredging up sins of the past. With flashlight in hand, you’ll uncover notes, solve environmental puzzles, and reveal the secrets of Yuki’s family.
You are Solus, a scavenger drone sent to salvage the nullstar from a dying world. But there’s only one goal that really matters in this game: be faster. You’ll need to master the flying mechanics, thrusters, and momentum to make it through levels as quickly as possible. Those levels are high-risk, high-reward, and you’ll need to stay on your toes to deal with everything they can throw at you.
You probably haven’t seen a bullet hell quite like this one. In Air Hares, your main goal isn’t shooting enemies out of the sky; it’s using your plane to seed and water crops to save the starving people of the barren Winrose Warren. But your feathered foes in the Gale Gang want to stop you, so you’ll need to dodge, jab, and ram them to send them packing and get back to your important work.
Miniature golf gets a chaotic overhaul in Binary Golf, where you use your golf ball to eliminate targets until the final one becomes the hole you need to get your ball into. But this isn’t just any old mini golf course. You can jump over hazards, teleport across courses, and phase through objects to pull off trick shots. The demo includes the game’s first two episodes, which will teach you the ropes before pitting you against a boss to test what you’ve learned.
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a roguelike deckbuilder collided with a magical coin-pusher machine, The Cascadier has your answer, and it’s gloriously chaotic. Each run has you charging coins with elemental powers from your deck and dropping them into dazzling, pinball-like cabinets that erupt in chain reactions if you drop your coin just right. You’ll be guided by Fortuna, the trickster goddess of luck, and her envious brother Theodan as you chase divine rewards.
Each round starts with ten coins to drop and your deck of earned abilities. Like any good coin pusher, you’ll scoop up coins mid-round and play them back in to keep your score and ticket count climbing. Run out, and the round’s over, so make every toss count. Hit your score goal to move on, then choose new powersets to add to your growing deck and mix things up in the next run. You’ll spend your hard-earned tickets on upgrading Trinkets that grant new abilities and permanent boosts. The demo lets you try the first cabinet, a lush, nature-themed machine that hints at the elemental powers each new board will bring.
A multiplayer party game, Elemental Brawl tasks you with beating up your friends with the power of the elements. Each round begins with everyone only being able to punch and kick, but as time goes on, random elemental orbs will drop. Collecting them grants you powers related to that element, and you can combine elements as the round continues. And the maps aren’t static, you can use your elements to burn them, freeze them, turn puddles into steam traps, and more. It’s all about coming up with creative ways to eliminate your opponents.
A puzzle game with simple yet addictive gameplay, Chowdown Kitty presents you with a board filled with cat treats. Connect matching treats in a string of three or more, and those treats get pulled out and put in a food bowl for a cat. The more treats you manage to string together, the higher your score gets and the happier the cat gets.
EA and Battlefield Studios want players to know they are free to delete the Battlefield 6 campaign from their platform of choice after completing its story mode.
While many who hopped into Battlefield 6 after its October 10 launch quickly locked themselves away in its smorgasbord of multiplayer maps and modes, others dived straight into its new campaign. It’s a short shooter romp that spans nine missions and about five hours of gameplay, with some players, including leaker and X/Twitter user BobNetworkUK, beating it quickly enough to discover a pop-up window with an option to uninstall the story mode after it’s been completed.
LMFAO WHEN YOU FINISH THE BF6 CAMPAIGN IT REPLACES THE BUTTON WITH AN UNINSTALL BUTTON pic.twitter.com/emTntAMsBj
The official recommendation first directs players to explore in-game challenges for unique unlocks tied to the single-player portion before offering an option to delete the component to “save space.” It even goes as far as to present an uninstall button as a convenient way to be rid of the mode entirely.
With 2021’s Battlefield 2042 ditching a traditional story mode in favor of multiplayer destruction, Battlefield 6 is the first to offer a mainline campaign since Battlefield V in 2018. Still, players have found themselves divided about the new story component, with some feeling it accurately captures the chaos of the series, while others complain that it does little to leave a mark in its short runtime.
Those who move to uninstall after beating the campaign (or even before) could save about 15GB of storage space, or potentially even more after ditching relevant HD texture packs. That means those ready to wash their hands of the Battlefield 6 campaign will only need about 55GB of space left over to house its multiplayer offerings.
Battlefield 6 launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S last week. It’s since become the series' biggest Steam launch, hitting a peak of more than 740,000 concurrent players, according to SteamDB. While some players moved to check out its standard multiplayer and campaign offerings, others managed to successfully rebuild Shipment, the classic Call of Duty map, in its Portal mode.
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).
A year on from the infamous "Teraleak," further data hacked from the servers of Pokémon developer Game Freak has spread online — this time focused on the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
The content includes screenshots and gameplay videos that appear to show work-in-progress beta builds of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, including various features, mechanics and mini-games that fans say are not present in the final game.
The release of further data from the Teraleak, just days before the official launch of Pokémon Legends: Z-A for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, is particularly eye-opening — as the suggestion here is that hackers held these files back from last year's deluge of details until the franchise's new game was (nearly) released. It also suggests that Nintendo's attempts at locating the hackers have not been successful — despite an legal bid by the company to subpoena Discord to divulge the hackers' identity in April this year.
Today's release of hacked Pokémon Legends: Z-A information comes after days of leaks from players with early copies — legitimate and not — that have laid the new game's Pokédex bare, including a long list of fresh Mega Pokémon species. Last week, IGN warned that the floodgates had opened on spoilers. As of today, fans reckon they've compiled a list of every Pokémon getting a Mega Evolution not just in the base game, but also in Legends: Z-A's post-launch DLC, which is already available to pre-order.
With the game's biggest secrets now available to view online for those who wish to go find them, it seems like the Teraleak hackers have decided now is the time to release what they have had on Pokémon Legends: Z-A — and it looks like they're not stopping there.
The Teraleak hackers have also now begun to release information they say relates to Pokémon's fabled upcoming "Gen 10" games, which fans widely expect to arrive in 2026 in time for the franchise's 30th anniversary. But as claims of these games' names and settings swirl, it's worth pointing out that this information appears to rely on documentation that's several years' old — rather than actual gameplay footage, as is the case for Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
In October 2024, Game Freak issued a statement confirming the company had suffered a data breach in August of that year, and noted that hackers had accessed the details of current and former employees. The company did not, however, comment on the spread of hacked game data taken from its servers. This included source code for numerous Pokémon games, unused assets that revealed scrapped Pokémon species, internal meeting notes and PowerPoint presentations, and more.
Dubbed the Teraleak by Pokémon fans, the hack rekindled memories of the infamous Nintendo "Gigaleak" of 2020, the largest leak of internal video game information ever released, which revealed previously unknown canceled games, prototypes, source code, development tools, and internal communications.
IGN has contacted Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for comment.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
"There's so many elements of the tone and the comedy that are so suited for animation," Kang told BBC in a recent interview. "It's really hard to imagine these characters in a live action world. It would feel too grounded. So totally it wouldn't work for me."
Appelhans agreed that it feels, ultimately, limiting with the magic they are trying to craft. "One of the great things about animation is that you make these composites of impossibly great attributes. Rumi can be this goofy comedian and then singing and doing a spinning back-kick a second later and then freefalling through the sky,” he told the outlet. “The joy of animation is how far you can push and elevate what's possible. I remember they adapted a lot of different animes and often times, it just feels a little stilted."
So what is next for the KPop Demon Hunters Cinematic Universe (the KPDCU obviously)? "Nothing official we can talk about,” Kang explained while noting "there's definitely more we can do with these characters in this world — and whatever it will be, it will be a story that deserves to be a sequel, and it will be something that we want to see.”
It’s an interesting move considering we live in an era where Disney is chomping at the bit to produce live-action remakes of nearly all of its most popular animated films. It seems Kang and Appelhans understand something fundamental that Disney doesn’t: that there’s a level of enchantment and whimsy that simply can’t be replicated in a live-action film. After all, many live-action projects end up employing CGI and visual effects to an insane degree to achieve that same magical quality that comes so easily with animation.
The decision on Kang and Appelhans’ part is especially noble considering the film’s Oscar prospects, as it seems to be a shoe-in for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song nominations, if not wins as well.
"We tried to do something new and it was really hard and I think we're really proud of how it came out,” Appelhans said of their chances. “But if people are going to reward that, that would be awesome."
Kang added: "Just seeing people bond over this movie has been so wonderful. So all the awards would be great, but I think we feel really incredible about what the movie has done already. So it feels like we've kind of won in a way."
KPop Demon Hunters is available to stream on Netflix now, both in its standard edition and a singalong edition.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
Enginefall’s greatest strength based on the limited time I had with it is that it doesn’t have that immediate signature identity of survival extraction battle royale-y sorts of games that it resembles on paper. The Tarkov or Fortnite experience might not get you as far as it would out of the gates in other games. This early learning curve comes from equal parts creative systems that create a faster and more dangerous pace than others, but the amount of all the little things you’ll need to learn to make good choices is intimidating.
Every run on the Titan Train starts a similar way: raiders, either by themselves or in crews of up to five, start at the back of the colossal city-state on rails. When the timer starts, it's off to the races, each party running, crafting, climbing, and shooting their way to the engine at the front of the train. It’s all very chaotic from start to finish, in ways that are fun and engaging, but also frustrating and confusing.
My group of five started hot out of the gate filling our pockets with as many scraps of metal and plastic we could find littering the ground, all important resources used to build bases and starting gear. We started with sledgehammers, useful for breaking the plastic off of the long plastic seats installed on the sides of the train, and busting up bundles of ceramic stuff into smaller, more useful pieces. These took more swings than expected to break off completely, but luckily each swing just put a bunch of plastic in your inventory and didn’t confetti to the ground for you to have to scoop up after. I felt extremely exposed breaking down this raw material, and if I didn’t have several people with me, there's no way I wouldn’t have been a victim. Solo players would likely have to approach this initial part more stealthfully, maybe missing out on gearing up early altogether.
Our first agenda, plotted by one of my team's developer-sherpas, Shaun “Flak” Stiglingh, was to find a cozy cabin of the train, reinforce the doors, and claim it as our first of likely several forward operating bases where we can store our plunder and upgrade our gear in relative safety. As he organized the resources we had, our second guide, Red Rover Interactive’s CEO Fred Richardson, led the rest of us out to find another good use for our sledgehammers, beating up other raiders and taking their stuff.
Eventually, we accumulated enough stuff to get some armor on our bodies and a layout of how the rest of our journey was going to proceed. This didn’t take a long time, and while the crafting menus and systems are pretty straightforward and serviceable, learning how to prioritize what you research and build first to get the best advantage seems like a daunting task only achievable through lots of trial and error. I was happy to let Flak handle it this time, as well as outline our strategy to get to the engine room. In order to get to the front of the train, we have to get keys that give us access to higher-class train cars (we start in 3rd, and need to work through 2nd, 1st, and eventually Conductor classes). We find these keys out there in the train cars we have access to already, be it among scraps, among loot in the assorted boxes tucked in every nook and cranny, or in the pockets of our rival raiders. Luckily, Fred’s previous hammer party produced a 2nd class ticket, so now all we had to do was get to the transfer gate without getting derailed.
Travelling in the rafters high above the main levels of the cars would keep you off of the ground, but the walkways are narrow and one fall would certainly kill you.
He and Fred decided the best way to go would actually be through the lower decks, mentioning that each train car has several alternative routes that chain to one another, each with their own set of risks and benefits. Travelling in the rafters high above the main levels of the cars would keep you off of the ground, but the walkways are narrow and one fall would certainly kill you. Some cars give you the opportunity to leave the train completely, exposing you to the harsh climate of the wasteland around you, but giving you some deadly shortcuts that would certainly help make up some ground if you can survive it. Similar story with the lower decks, where the exhaust of the train is pumped through. Our path through the cars and up to the 2nd Class section would be more straight forward and hypothetically safer from enemies, but we would all need to acquire gas masks or risk a breathtaking death down below.
With a little more farming of both people and objects, we had the requisite masks. Down we went under the lower tunnels, which as predicted, went rather smoothly. We would have to pop back up to the main level to switch cars every so often, but we took the gassy express lane straight through 3rd Class, and eased into the next zone without many issues.
The 2nd Class car is where I found a lot of friction, mostly from the servers themselves. This was a stress test for the Red Rover Interactive, the largest they’d done yet. So I don’t fault them for my fate, which found me rubberbanding in stressful times like firefights and while collecting a treasure trove of goodies from a resource drop that I would eventually die in because I couldn’t tell if the escape I made in my time actually happened in the eyes of my party mates (it didn’t). I spent a good amount of time just unable to do much in the game at all, locked in a death screen while the pandemonium unfolded within earshot. Though I appreciated the opportunity to learn what it was probably like to be one of those ghosts on that train in Final Fantasy 6, it did mean that I missed almost all of the shenanigans that went down in the 2nd Class cars. I was revived and returned to working order eventually, just in time to make a frantic dash to the 1st Class section. Frantic because over time, the lower class cars get sealed off for good, a Fortnite storm ring sort of mechanic that forces all survivors to move up the train or get crushed by the class barriers. Quite the metaphor.
Quite a few interesting happenings occurred to us as we traveled through 1st Class. Initially, we found a train car that was completely exposed, requiring breathing equipment in order to pass through safely. Our early investment in gas masks paid off, but this was not an obstacle I expected to hit, and would have had no answer for if I wasn’t guided by experts. When we got back into a covered car and set up a new base (in a relatively swanky cabin that was pretty large but also had too many doors to feasibly defend for long), we spent far less time shooting at the first people we saw and more time attempting to strike deals with them. There were squads who were already ahead of us making their way into the engine room, and assembling as much resistance as possible against them seemed like a stronger move than attempting to go it alone against a well fortified team with much more of an advantage than us. This is possible, and plausible, because teams who don't steal the train engine’s fuel core can still extract with all of the materials they’ve pilfered and plundered during the run, which can be used to build their own trains.
We didn’t see any of this system during our playthrough, but individual players can hoard materials and resources to upgrade their personal safe havens, and eventually pirate their own Marauder trains. According to Red Rover, players can become conductors of these claimed trains, and invite friends to crew it with them. These raiding clans can pool their resources to add cars and all sorts of upgrades to their marauders, but also will be able to use these battle barges to raid other players Marauders as well as the main Titan Train. This sounds like a hectic, somewhat asymmetrical version of Meet Your Maker’s player dungeons, except the dungeons meet on the rails and everyone inside them fights over scraps of toilet bowl. This is also something very much still in development and farther down the roadmap.
With a team already fortifying themselves inside the engine room, and a shaky alliance made between us and another hodgepodge raiding party, we pooled our efforts to secure entry to the conductor class car, and had ourselves a tense and awkward stakeout. The group we allied with got taken out by other stragglers before fully crossing into the car, and we were on our own again, building what would be our last base in a car full of verdant greenery and opulence. Here, we attempted to goad the enemy out, sometimes literally Flak and Fred barking insults through the door hoping to annoy them to death. We sort of had them in a hard spot - their only way off of this train should they decide to take the fuel core and bounce was through us. We weren’t exactly safe either, though, as straggling raiders were making their way up to the engine room, effectively pinching us between the conductors and them.
The conductors took advantage of the chaos to add a bit more, by pulling the fuel core and starting a meltdown sequence, filling the car with toxic gas and using all of the bedlam to escape past us.
The stalemate would eventually break after we were forced to turn our attention to the amassing amount of enemies crowding this final car. The conductors took advantage of the chaos to add a bit more, by pulling the fuel core and starting a meltdown sequence, filling the car with toxic gas and using all of the bedlam to escape past us. The clock starts ticking and everyone has the same primary goal now: get the hell off of the train. Practically, this meant a mad dash back several cars to an escape door and through other players who might be more motivated by spite than survival, shooting at anyone who isn’t them in hopes that we have goodies worth keeping as a consolation prize. It was hard to tell in all the desperate running and gunning who extracted and who didn’t. All I know is that we definitely didn’t, missing the chance to blow the train by mere seconds.
Through our session, I got the most mileage out of the snappy shooting and melee combat and tactical navigation decisions, but there are some systems present that never left the station this time around. A contract was started by a player that asked all of the active raiders to choose a side: either to rise up and overthrow the current conductor, or to fight on the conductor’s behalf. The outcome sorts the lobby into two teams and provides an extra reward if one side wins over the other. I wasn’t entirely sure how either team was supposed to do this? Was there a time limit, or a kill threshold? This is something I'm sure the average player would get the hang of after a few games, but I largely ignored this and didn’t feel like I missed anything. There are also some survival elements to contend with, specifically hunger and thirst. I was constantly picking up things that sounded like terrible meals, like roach nests and weird train grown mushrooms, but I died so regularly that I never had to worry about what a pie made of human ears, a more advanced meal option, might taste like.
There's a lot I didn’t see in my first run of Enginefall, from the alternate pathways players can take making every run to the front of the massive Titan Train unique, to the player-driven or environmental events that incentivize raiders to take higher risks for higher rewards. It can be messy to learn and difficult to know how to proceed at first, and the fast pace of this death race makes it impossible to stop and smell the roses for too long, but the fun shooting and looting really has me interested in getting back on the rails when its first public playtest goes live October 24th-26th.
October’s IGN First continues with even more gameplay from Crimson Desert. This time we’re taking a look at a main story quest, one which brings us face to face with one of the campaign’s most imposing foes: Golden Star, a colossal mechanical dragon.
So far, we’ve shown off a lot of combat. Crimson Desert is an open-world action game, of course, so naturally combat is key to the entire experience. You’ll see plenty more sword-slinging in the video above. But we also wanted to showcase a little more of the story and help contextualize where some of those… stranger elements come from.
But first, the basics. You play as Kliff, leader of the Greymanes free sword company. Not that he’s doing much leading right now. Crimson Desert’s prologue sees the Greymanes attacked by their sworn rivals, the Black Bears, and the assault leaves the company wounded and scattered (a bloody opening you can see in action here). Alone, Kliff sets out on a mission to seek out his lost allies, rebuild the Greymanes, and exact vengeance on the enemies who tore the company apart.
That mission takes Kliff on a journey across Pywel, a massive continent made up of numerous regions, including the titular Crimson Desert. As he explores, he learns of a number of powerful artefacts that grant immense power – a power that some are using to wreak destructive havoc rather than enact good deeds. Kliff takes it upon himself to get involved and finds himself falling down a rabbit hole that leads to a grander destiny.
In the quest we’re showcasing today, "Master of the Forgotten Lands", Kliff has found himself wound up in the affairs of Marni, a scientific genius. Fans of Black Desert Online, developer Pearl Abyss’ previous game, may recognise the name Marni, and while Kliff’s new acquaintance is not the same character, they are somewhat mirror images of each other – both incredibly intelligent scientists who make the impossible possible via unorthodox methods. In Marni’s secret cliff base, you can see one of the origin points of Crimson Desert’s steampunk aesthetic. His array of strange devices suggest he’s much more advanced than Pywel’s wider Medieval-like society.
This quest takes Kliff on a journey along the Great Ocean of Pywel’s coast, up Mount Benus, and into Marni’s Masterium, where an army of unexpected foes await. And then, at the castle’s summit, Kliff must hold his own against the colossal Golden Star. Will he succeed? You’ll have to watch our brand new gameplay video to find out.
Stick with IGN throughout this month for even more from Crimson Desert. Later this week we’ll be revealing how Pearl Abyss created Golden Star, taking you behind the scenes to see how sound, vision, and gameplay mechanics combine to create a striking boss battle.
Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.
When a franchise reaches the hulking size of Pokémon, it finds its way into everything. The Pokémon Company’s games have touched almost every genre, we’ve seen its characters rendered in almost every art style, and we’ve seen them battle a pantheon of gods and monsters. A universe of Pokémon games exists outside of the core series, and this month we’re treated to a new major spin-off from the franchise in Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
Some may bristle at Z-A being labelled as a "spin-off," as developer Game Freak itself considers Legends a "main series". But, for the purpose of simplifying this list, we're considering any game that isn't part of the "core" mainline series (Red and Blue through to Scarlet and Violet) as a spin-off. By moving away from the classic turn-based RPG formula, spin-off games allow us to see different shades of the Pokemon universe and experience it in a new light. While the core Pokémon games can be boiled down to the competitive side of things, they’re also about building an emotional attachment to your team, immersing yourself in this strange, utopic universe and, most importantly, being enchanted by the lore of the world and interacting with myths and legends. The best spin-offs focus on those other aspects and enhance that sense of wonder.
With Z-A just around the corner, this is the perfect time to celebrate all the different ways the pocket monsters have deviated from their usual turn-based RPG roots, and rank the top 10 Pokémon spin-off games.
10. Pokémon Ranger
As already mentioned, the best spin-offs approach Pokémon from a fresh direction. Instead of playing as a trainer, in Pokémon Ranger you’re… well, a Ranger. Your job is essentially taking care of your local community. If a Pokémon is distressed, you’re tasked to calm it down. If one goes missing, you have to go find it. If there’s a fire, you can use a nearby water Pokémon to help put it out. Cute missions like these are strung together in a run, which replicates the sort of little tasks you’d see in cosy games. And they’re funny, too! Pokémon has always been fun, but rarely has it displayed actual comedic chops in the way it does here.
While Ranger definitely has its fans, it’s not higher on this list because the missions can get… repetitive. The main gameplay loop is literally about loops – you have to physically draw circles around the Pokémon you want to temporarily capture for each task using the Nintendo DS’ stylus. This has more depth than it sounds, but even the most challenging captures don’t feel completely satisfying. It’s an example of a really fun idea that doesn’t quite fully hold up in execution. Nonetheless, Pokémon Ranger benefits from that funny dialogue and some cool worldbuilding, allowing you to experience the universe from a very different, more vocation-focused perspective.
9. Pokémon Stadium 2
During the Nintendo 64 era, the Pokémon Stadium series was the best visual representation of our beloved little monsters we had in the video games. Taking advantage of Nintendo’s first 3D system, we were treated to detailed, tactile character models and unique attack animations that brought the worlds of the games and the anime as close together as they had ever been. Though lacking in significant story beats for lore-hungry fans, Pokémon Stadium 2 in particular was a dream for the most competitive members of the fanbase, offering a myriad of battle formats. It also introduced Earl’s Pokémon Academy, which both taught battle strategies and tested newfound skills.
But there’s more to Stadium 2 than just the stadium itself. Let’s not forget the endlessly entertaining Pokémon mini-games and quizzes of the Kids Club, or the returning magic trick introduced in the first game: importing the exact same Pokemon you had raised in GameBoy games straight into the Nintendo 64. Taking your favourites on a cross-console journey to the big Stadium hit upon one of the core appeals of the series: strengthening the lasting connection you have with these digital creatures. Even as graphics have improved, nothing has compared to the thrill of seeing your original GameBoy starter duke it out on the TV screen for the very first time.
8. Pokémon Colosseum
When Pokémon Colosseum arrived on the GameCube in 2003, it was an important first: finally, a 3D Pokémon game that featured a full storyline. With its double battle format, lack of random encounters, and a compelling plot, it was an exciting evolution beyond Stadium’s battle-focused format. While it’s a similar style of RPG to the classic games, instead of starting out as a young trainer with a level five starter looking to become the Pokémon champion, you’re dropped into the shoes of a more experienced protagonist who uses the decidedly cool (and level 25!) Espeon and Umbreon. Your adventure begins right after escaping from the nefarious Team Snagem with stolen technology, a story set up that, along with a Star Wars-inspired desert community setting, ensures Colosseum occupies its own distinct space in the Pokémon library.
Colosseum was where Shadow Pokémon were first introduced to the franchise. These are Pokémon who have been "closed off from their hearts" and need to be purified before they can properly be used in battle. This system offers a unique slant on Pokémon’s classic collect-and-train gameplay, forcing you to balance levelling up your team with purifying it, too.
7. Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness
Improving on the solid foundations of Colosseum, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness deepens the lore around Shadow Pokémon and has become a bit of a cult classic amongst fans. It lends new weight to the idea of Shadow Pokémon, explored through the addition of Shadow Lugia – the only pocket monster to get a full, dark redesign, and said to be the ultimate Shadow Pokémon, unable to be purified.
Set five years after the events of Colosseum, you’re tasked with taking down the Cipher criminal syndicate and purifying Pokémon across the Orre region. While inheriting Colosseum’s gameplay style, complete with the excellent doubles battle system that brings Pokémon a little closer to feeling like a party-based JRPG, Gale of Darkness differentiates itself from its predecessor by casting you as a rookie trainer. This change means the experience falls more in line with the typical Pokémon journey, which arguably robs the game of a bit of originality. However, the 3D world and continued exploration of the Shadow Pokémon phenomenon makes up for any feeling of repetition, with each new story beat deepening the worldbuilding and adding more layers to the Orre region. All that, in tandem with the excellent battle system and that carefully balanced purification mechanic, makes Gale of Darkness a Pokémon spin-off worth seeking out.
6. Pokémon Conquest
Developed by Koei Tecmo, Pokémon Conquest is a crossover with the historical Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, a line of strategy games that have a very different feel to Pokémon. This crossover introduces a variety of elements you’d never expect to see in a Pokémon game, including historical figures from Japan’s Sengoku period, such as daimyō Oda Nobunaga himself. It also combines Pokémon’s traditions with very non-traditional characters, art style, and dialogue. This makes for an unusual game, but it becomes easy to accept such a strange mixture as soon as you jump into a battle.
Pokémon fits the strategy game genre like a glove. Conquest’s type match-ups, interactive battlefields, and each Pokémon’s hidden abilities all make for a compelling strategy battle system that can, at times, feel even more engaging than the core series’ turn-based combat.
Conquest may not scratch the itch of those looking to immerse themselves further in the traditional world of Pokémon, as the game probably takes place in its own universe with its own rules. However, its completely fresh approach makes it a genuinely unique prospect in a franchise that can often fall foul of delivering the same experience over and over again. It’s a real shame that the franchise has never returned to the strategy genre since.
5. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team
What better way to immerse yourself into the world of Pokémon than to become one yourself? Blue Rescue Team kicks off the Mystery Dungeon sub-series with one of the coolest ideas Pokémon has ever had: What if you played as a human who was transformed into an amnesiac Pokémon and now works as a bounty hunter in a little community, all while attempting to work out how on earth you became a Pokémon to begin with? It’s a completely ridiculous premise, but one that’s endlessly charming in practice.
In some Pokémon games it’s easy to feel as if the story is simply happening around you, rather than you having any agency in it. Blue Rescue Team doesn’t just bring you closer to the mythos of the Pokémon world, it makes you feel like you’re at the very centre of it, with each of your actions crafting new lore that’ll be etched into the history of this world. Its roguelike gameplay sees you explore randomly generated dungeons, rescuing stranded Pokémon, delivering items, and completing other simple tasks. This approach has its merits and faults (and the dungeon crawler design is certainly an acquired taste), but Blue Rescue Team’s story makes up for any shortcomings by being imbued with such a strong sense of wonder.
4. Pokémon Snap
The great thing about a fictional world as fleshed out as Pokémon’s is that you could be tasked with doing any job and it would still be interesting. Working as a wildlife photographer in the Pokémon universe is a vocation guaranteed to further immerse you in the world, allowing you to get much closer to its magic (thanks to the power of a camera’s zoom) and see Pokemon like you’d never get to see otherwise.
By framing its Pokémon as wildlife rather than collectable fuzzy warriors, whose lives are filled with adorable small interactions between each other, Snap makes it feel like the world of Pokémon still lives and breathes even after you power down your console. That approach meant Pokémon Snap was a cosy game before cosy games really became a thing, with relaxing gameplay and a calming set of tasks you can tick off in each play session. As is true of real wildlife photography, many of your snaps will be of common creatures you’ve seen dozens of times before. But every now and then your camera lens will catch a rare glimpse of a legendary or mythical Pokémon, which immediately evokes that sense of wonder that powers the best games in the franchise.
3. Pokémon Go
It’s become a meme to say that the summer Pokémon Go dropped was the closest we ever got to world peace, but the fact this simple augmented reality mobile game became as ubiquitous as it did is a testament to something only this franchise could do. Any adult Pokémon fan will tell you that, if a genie came to them as a child, their number one wish would be for Pokémon to be real. Go is the closest we’ll get to that, barring any Jurassic Park-style scientific abominations.
An incredible idea that could only be realised through mobile phones, Niantic’s pioneering design sees you explore your actual surroundings in search of digital Pokemon, which can then be battled at virtual gyms that are linked to real-world locations. Its physical requirements – you actually have to walk around to find randomly-spawning new Pokémon – genuinely manifests the adventurous spirit of Pokémon in your own neighborhood. It is wish fulfillment for those who dreamt about running around catching Pokémon, building a connection with these creatures, and exploring the world around you with wide-eyed wonder.
Mobile gaming comes with so much baggage, often representing the worst of the gaming industry, but Pokémon Go is its most pure innovation.
2. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky
The Mystery Dungeon sub-series has evolved over the years, and Explorers of Sky is one of the best examples of how it's improved and expanded. An enhanced version of 2007’s Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness, it takes everything that makes the Mystery Dungeon series great, combines it with one of the best stories the franchise has seen, and adds a number of much-appreciated quality of life improvements.
Despite starting with a familiar premise (you’re once again a human-turned-Pokémon),Explorers of Sky quickly morphs into a time-bending tale, true to the new lore introduced in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. It’s a story that actually showcases the mystical abilities of the world’s legendary creatures, rather than leaving them as descriptions in a Pokédex entry. And while this story is mostly a retread of Explorers of Time, five new Special Episodes enhance the tale with additional storylines that explore the lives of side characters.
All of the feelings we associate with a good Pokémon game are successfully evoked here, right down to your partner genuinely feeling like your best friend. Mystery Dungeon excels here because your partner Pokémon is someone you can actually speak to, and that communication really cements your bond. When the credits roll, you really feel like you’ve gone through something life-changing together, a feeling many Pokémon games try to create but don’t always succeed at. The Mystery Dungeon games offer a peek into the Pokémon world unlike any other strand of the franchise, and this is the best of them. We’re way overdue a new one, and this is the one to beat.
1. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Lifelong Pokémon fans will forever be chasing the high of booting up Legends: Arceus for the first time. The opening cutscene sees you meet Arceus, the Pokémon god himself, before being plunged back in time to the ancient Sinnoh region. But the moment that really sets fireworks off in your brain is the instant you take control of your character and throw a Poké Ball.
Legends: Arceus is the first “Open Zone” game in Pokémon history, and that new approach to world design made it feel like the franchise had finally been unshackled from the classic-formula mainline games, which had become increasingly restrictive since they transitioned to 3D. Having the freedom to run up to a Pokémon in the overworld and capture them without having to endure multiple battle turns felt like tasting seasoned food after years of eating only boiled chicken. Legends: Arceus’ modernised design makes for the most satisfying and immersive gameplay loop the Pokémon series has ever had, and that’s paired with dozens of captivating lore revelations. Your task in Legends: Arceus is to construct the first ever Pokédex, to use the first ever Poké Balls, and create the bond between man and monster that forms the basis of every other game in the series – it’s a prequel to the entire franchise, and just as brilliant as such a position would demand. With a wondrous setting and compelling gameplay, Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the very best, like no spin-off ever was.
And those are our picks for the 10 best Pokémon spin-off games. Did we miss your favourite, or would you rank one of these games higher or lower? Let us know in the comments.
Smartphones aren’t exactly the most exciting gadgets to splash out on. Glass rectangles that most people use to message their friends, watch YouTube videos, scroll social media, and snap photos – they might be essential for day-to-day living, but cost a pretty penny if you want the latest and greatest. That’s why we’ve picked out the best smartphones to buy by seriously weighing the value against price.
TL;DR – These Are the Best Smartphones:
Of course, what everyone finds valuable is different. Some people will want excellent photo quality from their phone. Others will want to get extreme performance for gaming on the go. If you watch a lot of TV and movies on your phone, it’s natural to look for a phone with a stunning display. Fortunately, we’ve tested phones that cover all the bases.
Here, you’ll find phones that let you do a bit of everything, from the best Android phones and iPhone alternatives to the latest and greatest from Apple. Some may prioritize certain aspects over others, but you won’t find a phone that’s practical garbage or one that makes too many sacrifices just to hit a low price. You also won’t be looking at just the newest phones. Every now and then, the advantage an older model has from price reductions makes it all the more valuable, helping it to undercut newer alternatives. So, keeping in mind what you want out of a phone, have a look at the best options across the market.
Samsung makes some of the best smartphones, and while I can’t deny that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is a great phone, it’s also just a little too boring this year to stand out, especially when it sells at such a premium price. Between that and OnePlus truly hitting its stride this year, the OnePlus 13 lands a huge victory in 2025. It delivers on design, performance, and value for a trifecta that helps it stand above the crowd.
On the face of the OnePlus 13, you’ll find a display that’s ready to rival the best around. The 6.82-inch OLED display offers everything you’d expect from a high-end phone: a sharp resolution, a fast and variable refresh rate, and a staggering peak brightness, which OnePlus claims hits 4,500 nits. While I couldn’t verify the exact degree of brightness, I can confirm it’s a gorgeous and dazzling display that doesn’t struggle with visibility.
Inside, the OnePlus 13 makes the most of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. This comes with a powerful CPU and GPU combo that rivals the best iPhones and runs circles around them in 3DMarks’ graphics benchmarks. Whether it’s everyday performance or gaming brawn, the OnePlus 13 has it in heaps. Plus, the phone comes with 256GB of storage as a baseline, providing plenty of room for games and apps, and the 6,000mAh battery helps the phone run longer.
Circle around back, and you’ll find a triple-camera array. Each sensor offers a 50MP resolution for clear details. The sensors work together wonderfully, offering great colors, tons of flexibility, and even powerful video capture. The OnePlus 13 may not be quite as adept at zooming in, since it relies on a 3x telephoto sensor instead of the 5x you’d find in the iPhone 16 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro, or Galaxy S25 Ultra. But in just about every other aspect of photography, the OnePlus 13 is competitive with these other flagship phones.
All of this quality is packed into a phone that looks and feels great. OnePlus offers a few different styles, going beyond just changing colors and actually swapping out materials and textures. The exterior protects the guts of the phone with robust ingress protection that can keep out water when submerged or hit with pressurized jets.
Getting all of this in a phone is what you should expect from the best phone any given year. But OnePlus 13 really pulls a fast one by delivering it all for $899. The Pixel 9 Pro XL is the next closet phone that can compete reasonably, and that still costs $1,099 and has just half the storage. The iPhone 16 Pro Max and Galaxy S25 Ultra cost even more. It’s this lower price that really juices the value of the OnePlus 13 to push it to the top.
2. Google Pixel 9 Pro
Best Camera Phone
The Google Pixel 9 Pro is a brilliant phone when it comes to photography. It offers a triple-camera system on the rear that provides a ton of flexibility, and each sensor in the stack snaps quality photos, whether you want to punch in on a distant subject or zoom way out to capture a landscape. Even the selfie camera snaps vibrant, sharp photos.
The phone itself is no less pretty than the photos it takes. Google has refined the design of its Pixel line again, and the Pixel 9 Pro benefits greatly. It’s still somewhat tame with aluminum and glass, not opting for the titanium of Apple’s and Samsung’s flagships. But it comes together elegantly.
Thin bezels wrap around a modest 6.3" display, which is a bit of a star. It’s reasonably sized without making the Pixel 9 Pro an unwieldy behemoth like the iPhone 16 Pro Max or Galaxy S24 Ultra, though you can go that route by upgrading to the Pixel 9 Pro XL. The display is also excellent, with a super-bright OLED panel, smooth refresh rate, and poppy color.
The Pixel 9 Pro may not be the fastest phone on the market, as its Tensor G4 chip lags well behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Apple’s A18 Pro, but it’s plenty peppy for everyday use and works quickly with AI applications. And it still runs games reasonably well too. Google is also backing the phone up with longer-term software support than you’ll find on a lot of Android devices.
3. Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max
Best iPhone
Apple’s phones always deliver a lot, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max is the latest delivering the most. It packs the biggest screen of the new lineup, and it's the brightest we’ve seen from an iPhone. Our reviewer flashbanged herself in testing from turning on the screen in a dark room. That brightness combines with the pitch-black pixels of OLED technology to make for a stunning display that’s as good for gaming and movies as it is for general use. The screen also boasts an anti-reflection finish to make it that much easier to see, and Apple’s strong Ceramic Shield 2 should help keep it blemish free for the long-haul (although a screen protector and case never hurt).
This new model has a renewed design, featuring a serious aluminum frame that doesn’t just wrap around the edges but also stretches across portions of the back to give the phone more rigidity and act as a heatsink. That combines with a vapor chamber to keep the powerful internals running strong and avoid hotspots. In testing, our reviewer found that the phone got warm under heavy loads, but didn’t have any painful hotspots thanks to its ability to spread heat well. The new design also adds a large shelf on the back to house the cameras and provide extra room for key internals. The upshot of this shelf is that the phone sits stably on flat surfaces in a way prior iPhones haven’t.
While the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s performance isn’t a huge leap over the 16 Pro Max model, it will make a more dramatic leap for anyone coming from earlier generations. Camera performance is also upgraded with an updated rear suite that sees all three cameras fitted with 48MP sensors, providing greater consistency in quality between them. The sharper front-facing camera also works to automatically frame up selfies and video calls, supporting landscape and portrait photos regardless of the orientation you hold the phone.
All of this comes at a high price, with the iPhone 17 Pro Max starting at $1,199 and storage upgrades pushing that as high as $1,999 for 2TB of storage. But if you demand the best iPhone, this is it.
4. Google Pixel 8
Best Mid-Range Smartphone
The Pixel 8 might not be the best of the best or a new model in 2025, but it’s still got a lot to offer. The Tensor G3 chip inside improved on the G2 not only with increased performance but, critically, with better thermals. Since heat is the enemy of most phone components, being able to avoid it will help the longevity of the device.
The other big get for the Pixel 8 is that Google promised seven years of OS, security, and feature updates when it launched. That means it still has a long life ahead of it. Thanks to its age, the price of the phone has dropped considerably though. So you can snag the Pixel 8 for a mid-range price of $500. While many people may think the Pixel 8a is the smart mid-range option, the full-fat Pixel 8 at just $100 more is a smart pick thanks to the superior design, which includes Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and back, improved water resistance, and better cameras.
On the note of cameras, the Pixel 8 boasts an excellent 50MP main camera that snaps great shots in light or dark settings. The ultra-wide sensor is solid in daylight, but struggles in the dark. And the selfie camera is nice and sharp with a wide field of view. The Pixel 8 may not offer the best cameras out here, but it’s great for the price.
5. Poco X5 5G
Best Budget Smartphone
If your budget is tight, you can still get a surprisingly good phone with the Poco X5 5G. While it launched in 2023, it’s still offering a lot for just $220. It’s even received updates to Android 14 since its launch. That kind of support isn't always a given on a budget device. That said, there’s no saying how many more updates it might get going forward.
The Poco X5 5G immediately sets itself apart from other budget phones with its display. You’ll get a large, 6.67" display on the front, and it’s not really compromising on quality. That screen offers a sharp 1080x2400 resolution good for 395ppi. Better still, it’s an AMOLED panel running at 120Hz, making for smooth and punchy visuals. It may not be as bright an AMOLED panel as some flagship phones out there, but it’s great for the money.
The Poco X5 5G also runs a competent SoC in the Snapdragon 695 5G. It’s not winning any speed awards, but when I tested the phone, it kept up with everyday operation and even some gaming in Call of Duty Mobile. It also had enough memory to tackle some multitasking. With insufficient memory being one of the quick ways to end up with a device that doesn’t stand the test of time, it’s good to see Poco opted for a 6GB base.
Unfortunately, some corners had to be cut, and the cameras on the Poco X5 5G are simply not the best. The main sensor does OK in bright conditions, but the ultra-wide is seriously lacking. At least the selfie camera is half decent.
6. RedMagic 10 Pro
Best Gaming Smartphone
While most of the phones on this list have respectable gaming performance, the RedMagic 10 Pro goes above and beyond as I found in my review. It not only made the jump to the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which provided a considerable performance boost, but it also makes the most of that chip with its cooling performance. Since the RedMagic 10 Pro has an active cooling fan, effectively pulling air through a duct across that Snapdragon chip, it can let the processor run at extreme speeds for longer without running into as much thermal throttling as the competitors.
In my benchmarking, the RedMagic 10 Pro had some of the absolute fastest results of any phone I’ve tested, especially where gaming is concerned. And even if it was occasionally beaten in a single benchmark run, the RedMagic 10 Pro’s ability to sustain its performance ultimately makes it better suited to gaming. Factor in the stunning 7,050mAh battery, and this phone is geared up for gaming like very few others.
The 6.85-inch display on the RedMagic 10 Pro is also brilliant. It’s large, high-resolution, fast at 144Hz, and completely uninterrupted from corner to corner. That is to say, there’s no visible selfie camera cut out to interfere with your view of your games. The selfie camera is cleverly hidden underneath the display, and while that does reduce its quality, everything is secondary to gaming on this phone.
As a proper gaming phone, the RedMagic 10 Pro also has some enhancements for the experience. It features boosted touch responsiveness on the display so inputs are detected faster. It includes two remappable, capacitive shoulder buttons that are incredibly convenient to have while gaming, so you can move and aim with your thumbs and handle skills with your index fingers. For select games, the phone also supports upscaling and frame interpolation, effectively letting your game look sharper and smoother even if the game itself doesn’t natively run at higher resolutions and frame rates.
All of this comes packed into rather respectable hardware. The phone’s build and design are sturdy and elegant, not too gaudy for a gaming phone. You get quality stereo speakers and even a headphone jack. And RedMagic packs in a case with the phone. You don’t get the best cameras in the world, and network support won’t be a match for mainstream phones like the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup, but if gaming is your focus, RedMagic stands apart. It’s all the more mind-blowing that the RedMagic 10 Pro costs just $649.
7. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7
Best Flip Phone
With its seventh generation of foldables, Samsung looked to radically change things up. And while the Z Flip 7 doesn't get the same kind of thinness that makes the Galaxy Z Fold 7 such a wonder to behold, that doesn't mean it didn't get the same amount of love.
The biggest change here is the outside display. It's larger now, covering an entire half of the backside of the phone, stretching from edge to edge when folded up. And while, yeah, it looks nicer, the bigger change is in what it can do. Now, you can run full apps on it, so you don't have to settle for the weird half-app widget things you had to use on the (admittedly incredible) Z Flip 6. Though, you will have to fiddle with some experimental settings to enable full apps on the smaller display.
The Flip 7 didn't get the same kind of chassis reduction that the Fold 7 did, but that doesn't mean Samsung just left it alone. While the device has larger screens both on the inside and the outside, Samsung maintained basically the same weight as the last generation, with the Flip 7 weighing in at 188g, compared to last year's 187g. That's basically not even a difference.
Powering the phone is the Exynos 2500, rather than the Snapdragon 8 Elite that powers the Fold 7. This is a pretty massive change, given the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 were both powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It also marks a change of direction, with Samsung essentially positioning the Flip 7 as the device you get when you want long battery life, rather than the raw power offered by the more expensive (and bigger) Fold. In our review, this paid off, with the Flip 7 now lasting all day, which is something the small foldable has struggled with in past generations. Now, keep in mind that due to the size of this device battery life and performance are just something you're trading off for the portability – but at least that trade-off isn't as severe as it's been in past generations.
8. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
Best Foldable Phone
Samsung overhauled its top foldable this year, and it’s proven a worthy change. The new Galaxy Z Fold 7 has shrunk down by 26% compared to the earlier Fold 6. That makes it just over 4mm thick when unfolded and 8.9mm thick when folded. It's plenty to close to the thickness of other non-folding smartphones, like the 8.9mm-thick Asus ROG Phone 9, for example.
Even as Samsung managed to trim down the dimensions of the phone, it still kept the battery capacity from the prior model at 4,400mAh. While this doesn’t make it a two-day warrior, our reviewer found the Galaxy Z Fold 7 easily lasted through the day during testing, generally with some charge left the next morning. That's even after playing games for four hours one of the days.
While the Galaxy Z Fold 7 may not be specifically for gaming, it still can hold up. Part of the equation is the new screen sizes. The Z Fold 6 had a very tall outer display that wasn’t ideal for a lot of games that targeted different aspect ratios. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a more common 21:9 aspect ratio on the outer display. When combined with the thinness of the phone, it’s easy to use the Galaxy Z Fold 7 just the same as any ordinary smartphone. Of course, when you want to go big, you can unfold the device and use the 8-inch interior display for gaming, media, multitasking, or whatever else you feel like.
Another key aspect of the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s performance is the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, a potent chip in every device I’ve seen it in so far. The device manages solid bursty speeds, and it has enough horsepower to run games like Honkai Star Rail. One downside of the thin design is that it will heat up considerably during long, sustained workloads like gaming, and its performance will sag. So you’ll still be better off with a gaming phone or even just something thicker if you’re planning to do a lot of gaming.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7’s $1,999 price tag may be a hard pill to swallow. It’s more than what you’d pay for a OnePlus 13 and Redmagic Astra – an excellent phone and great gaming tablet – combined. But if the convenience of one gadget that does it all is worth it to you, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is a great device that fits the bill and stands out as the best foldable on the market right now.
What About the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge?
Having wrapped up testing, I've concluded the Galaxy S25 Edge won’t be joining the ranks of the best phones on the market. While it is a surprisingly thin phone, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it impressively thin. Phones have been this thin in the past, and I think there’s a reason they’ve gotten thicker over the years. The S25 Edge makes sacrifices to get that thin. It has a smaller battery than comparable phones. It may offer the same speedy Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset powering other great phones, but it quickly runs into thermal throttling when trying to take full advantage of that chip. And the S25 Edge only gets two rear-facing cameras when it’s priced like a phone that should have three or four quality cameras to offer. All of those trade-offs to shave a couple millimeters from the device just don’t work out in this phone’s favor.
What We’re Looking Forward to:
Apple released its latest smartphone lineup in September, including the iPhone Air, getting on board with the trend of extremely slim phones (for not such a slim price), that had been rumored for the better part of the year. We'll be testing to see how the Air stacks up against the other super-skinny phones on the market right now.
How We Picked the Best Smartphones
The mobile phone industry relies on upselling. It tells consumers time and again their phone needs replacing with the flashiest new release, or that their standard model pales in comparison to the Pro, Max, or whatever other upgraded version has just hit shelves. To an extent, this is true. Those pricier versions always bring a clutch of useful new features. But for many people, those features will go unused.
I picked out the smartphones at a variety of budgets that offer the best value for money. Unless you’re a wannabe influencer, hobbyist photographer, or enthusiastic gamer, you probably don’t need all the snazziest features that are being sold your way, and can find a more suitable pick from the selection here. Additionally, I also opted for phones that are durable and hard-wearing, and guaranteed to receive ongoing software support from their manufacturers, extending their lifespan. You can also learn more about how we test phones here.
Best Smartphones FAQ
Is Samsung better than Apple for smartphones?
Not necessarily. Both Samsung and Apple have earned a reputation for producing high-quality, feature-rich premium phones that leave more than a dent in your wallet. Both the and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra are fast, sleek, sport excellent cameras that are capable of capturing crisp images in both high and low light, and are guaranteed software updates for years to come. More important is how familiar you are with their different operating systems: Android versus iOS.
Are iPhones better than Android phones?
For all the effort that Apple has put into cultivating a popular perception of itself as an unrivaled premium brand, modern iPhones are strikingly similar to premium Android alternatives. Any obvious lead that Apple once possessed has now all but diminished. Android and iOS operate similarly, are designed to fulfill almost identical functions, and are updated to new versions yearly. More important than which one you should pick is which you’re currently familiar with. iPhones sync with other Apple products more easily, while Android phones pair better with Windows devices.
Which Android phone is the best value for money?
The Google Pixel 8 is a superb phone for its price. It may be a little older, but it has potent performance, an elegant design, and gets one thing that most budget-friendly devices don't: long-term software support. At $500, it'll be really hard to do better. And going lower than this, you'll end up giving up a lot.
Mark Knapp is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything electronics and gaming hardware. He has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry with bylines at PCMag, Reviewed, CNET, and more. Find Mark on BlueSky at @Techn0Mark.
Marvel’s Spider-Man set for Magic: The Gathering has finally swung into stores (after its recent prerelease), and the unique combination of comic book icons and fun new play designs is making it pretty popular so far.
So popular, in fact, that one rare card has already sold for $10,000 (and is even now getting listings for over $30,000) while others are also making a strong case for collectors themselves, tallying in the hundreds for market value.
If you're looking to hunt any of these rare cards down, your best bet is picking up a Collector Booster set from Amazon right now, but be prepared to pay around $480 for just 12 packs.
Otherwise, buying cards standalone is perfectly legit as well, especially for some of the less pricey picks from the latest Universes Beyond set. For now, these are the most expensive Spidey cards to look out for when cracking packs, courtesy of data from our friends at TCGPlayer.
10. Cosmic Spider-Man (Extended Art)
Keyword soup on a five-color card? We may not have got Commander decks for Marvel’s Spider-Man, but Comic Spider-Man makes a great argument to helm one.
He powers up every Spider you have, giving them the same keywords, and that applies to Spider heroes, too. So, if you want to build a Spider-Verse deck, this is the way to go.
9. Norman Osborn/ Green Goblin (Borderless)
Norman's standard card is fairly good value as well at $12.95, but if you want the full borderless art, it's not much more to pay standalone. Featuring some of the MTG x Spidey sets coolest art, I can see why Green Goblin is attracting some attention.
8. Gwenom, Remorseless (Extended Art)
Kicking off the list with a banger, Gwenom, Remorseless is a Venomized version of Gwen. It’s 4/4 with Deathtouch and lifelink, which lets you spend life to play extra cards from the top of your library.
It’s a neat idea, and one I’m curious to see players build around. The card was around $37 last month, but is now sitting at more steady $16-$20.
7. Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer (Extended Art)
An awesome card is a 5/5 that brings back a card from your graveyard, Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer can also power up as it takes damage.
You could, in theory, end up using him as a game-ending play if it takes enough damage from other players, or you could use him in a deck that’ll have your own creatures damage him to make him a juggernaut.
6. Gwen Stacy/Ghost-Spider (Borderless)
Sticking with Gwen, but a much less spooky version, this borderless card shows our heroine relaxing before flipping into action against Electro.
This version of Miles Morales is currently fetching close to $65, which is pretty spenny, but much less than it was demanding closer to release when it was sitting at $150 or more. Miles powers up others and then transforms into a camouflaging web-slinger with first strike and haste.
If you're looking for something a little less expensive, he's got another transforming Miles Morales card that was sitting at around $40 during release week, but you can expect to pay just over $14 for him these days, and that's a bargain.
4. Peter Parker/Amazing Spider-Man (Borderless)
He had to show up eventually, right? This card looks like the iconic moment Peter Parker gets bit by a spider on one side, and his first appearance alongside Marvel’s Fantastic Four on the other.
It’s currently sitting at around $100, a significant drop from its recent highs of $200.
3. Eddie Brock/Venom, Lethal Protector (Borderless)
This Eddie Brock/Venom, Lethal Protector card is another one with a comic-book cover on the flipside, and the iconic antihero is fetching a mean price at $200.
As for gameplay, Venom lets you sacrifice cards to draw and play other spells, potentially shifting your board state pretty quickly.
2. Spectacular Spider-Man (Various)
The Spectacular Spider-Man cards from this set were bound to be popular, both because the card is great and its artwork is awesome, but if you have a textured foil one, you might be in for a windfall.
The Soul Stone is not only a piece of Marvel history - its card is exciting in its own right.
To play it, you’ll exile a card in order to trigger its ‘Harness’ ability, which essentially brings a creature card back from your Graveyard every turn. It’s going for around $100.
This powerful card is up for big money in its borderless format, but the Soul Stone’s Cosmic Foil variant is even harder to find.
As I mentioned, one has reportedly already sold for $10,000-$15,000. Right now, it's listed at $40,000, with a market value of $32,000. Wow.
Yes, there’s also a less flashy version of The Soul Stone, to consider as well, but this Thanos artwork looks amazing... if you're lucky enough to pull it, or have a spare $2000 to blow.
The Borderless version of the card is currently going for around $1,500 on TCGPlayer, but the site lists its market value as closer to $1,700.
Otherwise, the cheapest way to pick this card up is via its standard variant, which still goes for around $100 right now as well. Not exactly cheap, but miles better than $40k.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He's a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife's dismay.
Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days sale had plenty of excellent video game discounts, and even though Black Friday isn't until next month, the retailer isn't making us wait for more. It still has some discounted surprises for shoppers to check out between sale events, and right now that includes a great offer for PS5 users on Gears of War: Reloaded (see here at Amazon).
This game has dropped to $34.99 from its $39.99 list price, offering a sweet little $5 discount on it. More importantly, though, it's the first big price drop for this game, marking its lowest price yet. So why wait to pick it up? If you've been wanting to jump into the world of Gears on PlayStation, now is your chance to do it and save a little cash in the process.
Gears of War: Reloaded (PS5) for $34.99
For those who don't know, Gears of War: Reloaded is a remaster of the first Gears of War game, now made for PlayStation 5. This release comes with all post-launch content for the original game, including a bonus campaign act and multiplayer maps alongside characters and cosmetics. The game itself features 4K resolution, up to 60 FPS in the campaign, up to 120 FPS in multiplayer, and more which you can see below courtesy of Xbox Wire's announcement of it from earlier this year:
4K resolution
60 FPS in Campaign
120 FPS in Multiplayer
High Dynamic Range (HDR)
Dolby Vision & Dolby Atmos
7.1 3D Spatial Audio
Variable Refresh Rate (VRR)
4K assets and remastered textures
Enhanced post-processing visual effects
Improved shadows and reflections
Super resolution with improved anti-aliasing
Zero loading screens during Campaign
Gears of War: Reloaded even supports cross-play, so friends can join in on the fun no matter the platform they're playing on.
Our Gears of War: Reloaded review update by IGN's Miranda Sanchez said of the PS5 version that, "The core of Reloaded is the same between all three platforms, but the DualSense adds a twist with the adaptive triggers and any comms done through radio output through the controller's speaker. It was a neat surprise having dialogue and sound effects – like hitting the perfect active reload – presented this way." If it's your first time jumping into the Gears games, you're in for a treat.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
A six-episode documentary series detailing Taylor Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour has been announced, as well as a full concert film of the tour's final performance.
"Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The End of an Era" will premiere its first two episodes via Disney+ on December 12, with two further episodes releasing each of the subsequent two weeks.
December 12 will also see the arrival of "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show," a full recording of the final Eras Tour performance in Vancouver, on December 8, 2024.
For Swifties, today's announcement ends years of speculation that a documentary detailing the world-dominating Eras Tour was in production. The launch of a second Eras Tour film, meanwhile, will allow fans to watch the tour's revamped setlist featured in shows held from May 2024 onwards, which included a major section featuring then-new album The Tortured Poets Department.
Much debate was had when Swift changed the content of the Eras Tour to include material from The Tortured Poets Department, her April 2024 album that released mid-tour and is widely seen as one of her most mature outings to date.
Some of those who'd seen The Eras tour already said they had missed out on the new material, while others yet to see the show said they would now miss out on some of Swift's classic back catalogue, which she jettisoned to make room for the extra album within the tour's mammoth three-and-a-half-hour runtime.
This recording of the tour's final show will mean Swifties can now choose which version of the Eras Tour they want to watch, as the artist already released Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour back in 2023, also via Disney+, with the concerts' original setlist. Swift performed 149 shows from March 2023 to Decemeber 2024, earning over $2 billon in revenue.
It's been a busy week for Swift, who has just completed a media blitz after the launch of The Life of a Showgirl — the album she recorded while on the road during the Eras Tour itself. The pop banger-filled record arrived last week to enormous sales, though mixed critical reviews.
Photo by Emma McIntyre/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Code Vein getting a sequel, as announced at Summer Game Fest earlier this year, was a pleasant surprise. The original was good! It was one of those games that necessarily didn’t blow people away, but was fun popcorn for action-RPG fans who like deep character creators, over-the-top plots, and far more weapons and customization choices than any person can reasonably keep track of. But good or not, loads of excellent games in this genre never resurface after their initial debut, so Bandai Namco being willing to return to its twist on vampires and take another crack at perfecting the pitch is some seriously good news. Sure, the developer has disavowed any plot connections to the original, which has some fans worried. But I just got 45 minutes of hands-off time with Code Vein 2, and came out feeling confident that direct sequel or no, this follow-up feels like a far more fully realized vision of the fast-paced, flashy action RPG that Code Vein 1 was always striving to be.
Dress to Impress
I did get a very, very brief stint of hands-on time with Code Vein 2, in that Bandai Namco let me mess around in the c haracter creator before they took over. No huge surprises here, but if you liked the robustness of Code Vein 1’s character creator and can spend hours tweaking eyebrow shapes, I’ve got good news for you. You can choose from preset designs, of course, for folks who don’t want to sit on this screen all day, but you can also adjust minute details like teeth and ear shapes if that’s more your bag. I had a lot of fun picking out a really big, silly hat for my character to wear. One of my favorite elements of the creator is the ability to select an outfit, and then turn on and off certain pieces of it. Love a cute dress but hate the weird garter it makes you wear with it? Just turn it off!
Once I had settled on a cute hat and hairstyle, I handed the controller back over to the devs, and sat back to watch what they had to show me. The mission they elected to demonstrate was one where the player is sent off with a partner (a buddy) named Josée to restore power to a city area. They selected the quest area from a large overworld map and traveled there instantly, though they arrived not in a closed dungeon but in a large, lovely, ruined city with multiple dungeons available to them just by running (or driving a motorcycle) around. I got to watch some gameplay both from an optional dungeon near where we landed, and from the actual objective dungeon itself, a substation where the hero might be able to get the city’s power running again.
Define “Open”
One big question I had going into this preview was whether Code Vein 2 was open world, or open zone, or something else. After chatting with the team, asking about the issue several times, and watching the demo, I’m still not 100% sure how to answer this. The team says it’s not open world, but also kept saying Code Vein 2 had “one single overworld” and that traveling is “a bit more open” than in Code Vein 1. There does seem to be a lot of interconnectivity – I watched the he=ro zoom around the outdoor area on a motorcycle (with Josée adorably sitting cross-legged on the back) and covering some meaningful distance without running into artificial walls, but it’s possible there were some much further along. Director Hiroshi Yoshimura also told me that the overworld is “significantly” bigger, while the dungeon sizes are roughly the same as Code Vein 1. Make of all that what you will for now.
When I asked about the world, director Yoshimura repeatedly pointed out that the focus was less on exploration and more on the various character companions you’ll meet in Code Vein 2. You’ll be traveling to points in the world specifically for missions tied to these characters that will let you get to know them better. Much of Code Vein 2 does indeed seem to be centered around these buddies, or partners as they’re now called, even more so than the first game since the sequel won’t feature co-op.
Friend Circle
In my preview, I got a decent look at some of the partner dynamics between the main character and Josée. Josée’s got a big ol’ sword she swings around, slow but powerful, and at different points I saw her light it on fire for both close-up and long-range attacks. Without actually playing myself it’s hard to say whether or not the AI has improved from Code Vein 1 (where it could be a bit finicky or, at times, suicidal). Though, if you hate dealing with AI partners at all, they can assist you in Code Vein 2 via “assimilation” – effectively removing them from the battlefield, but giving yourself significant stat boosts and powerful new abilities to compensate. One other feature I did appreciate was the ability of partners to revive you when you fall in battle, and vice versa if your partners fall, wisely on a cooldown so it can’t be spammed for immortality.
From what I could see, Code Vein veterans will be perfectly happy with the sequel’s bursting larder of combat abilities and character customization. Code Vein 2 wants you to get really comfortable cycling through different types of skills, and boy, you better keep track of all those Proper Nouns. But here’s the jist: you’ll attack with your weapon to start building up bleeds on an enemy, then use your equipped auxiliary “Jail” weapon to gain a resource called Ichor. Ichor can then be spent on far more powerful abilities, such as “bequeathed formae”, special, powerful weapons like a huge bow and arrow or a powerful shield. Or, you can activate your Jails for huge finisher moves, like swinging an enormous scythe or briefly gaining big, vampiric wings.
Code Vein 2, like its predecessor, seems to benefit from just trying stuff out and seeing what’s fun and effective.
I don’t mean to spend this whole preview lamenting that this was a hands-off demo, but man, I wish I could have gotten ahold of a controller just to muck around in the menus! Code Vein 2, like its predecessor, seems to benefit from just trying stuff out and seeing what’s fun and effective, and even with just the options I saw in the demo I feel like I could waste a lot of time wildly flailing around with different combinations until I was happy with my particular expression of it.
When This Baby Hits 88mph…
I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to see anything from one of Code Vein 2’s most intriguing key features: time travel. It takes place in a present day where a horrible calamity has taken place in the past, and you and your companions are given the ability to travel back in time and change history. Though you’re strongly urged not to meddle with the past, obviously, you do anyway. I’m told you’re allowed to freely travel between past and present most of the time (occasionally you’ll be locked out of doing so), and things you do in the past can influence what’s going on in the present, even to the point of making it impossible to return to the present. But I wasn’t able to see any of that in action during my preview, so it’s hard for me to say how extensive or interesting this element actually is.
One other, somewhat fangirly note - hey, I love Go Shiina’s music? Shiina returns as composer for Code Vein 2 after working on Code Vein 1, and he’s also composed for my two favorite Tales games (don’t laugh at me for this): Tales of Legendia and Tales of Zestiria. His excellence was on full display both in my preview and in the story trailer I watched ahead of time, with soaring strings and chaotic vocals backing Code Vein 2’s intense battles. Sign me up for another banger Shiina soundtrack, thanks!
While Bandai Namco has confirmed that Code Vein 2 is a complete departure from the story and universe of the first game, it’s familiar enough in gameplay and style that I came away feeling pretty happy with the direction. I’ve seen fans calling it a “soft reboot” and I think that’s an accurate summation: it’s true to the philosophy of Code Vein without being beholden to its lore Wiki. Nothing I’ve seen has shocked me so far, but I don’t think it needs to: everything good about Code Vein 1 is here, just bigger, shinier, and slash-slash-slashier. Now just let me tinker around in the character creator for just a few more minutes…
In case you missed it, a new era is dawning for the Pokémon TCG. The long-running card game has finally stepped away from the Scarlet and Violet block of expansions and moved into a new era dubbed ‘Mega Evolution’. Not only that, but preorders have already begun for the next set in this new block, Phantasmal Flames.
And, while this upcoming expansion brings all the usual stuff like Elite Trainer Boxes, booster packs, and bundles, IGN is lucky enough to reveal a first look at two cards from Phantasmal Flames. They’ve each featured in Japan's Inferno X set already, but this is the first look at Togedemaru, and its stunning Special Illustration Rare, in English. Let's take a look.
Exclusive Phantasmal Flames English Card Reveal
The first card here has the adorable ‘Roly-Poly’ Pokémon walking atop a neon sign. Togemaru is a Metal type, weak to fire and resistant to grass, and it has a single damage-dealing attack in Gnaw that’ll cost you one Metal energy,
It can also use any type of energy card to use Find a Friend, letting you find any Pokémon from your deck and put it into your hand.
The second version is a full-art card, which is even cuter. This shows one Togedemaru snuggled up, sleeping with another behind, either waiting to pounce playfully or just keeping a watchful eye for intruders.
It’s bright, and I love the detail of the light shining through. Again, we may have seen these cards in Japanese already, but they really are very wholesome even now, and it's great to get a first proper look at some new cards incoming with Phantasmal Flames when it launches on November 14 this year.
"Togedemaru is an often overlooked pseudo-Pikachu for generation VII, which is why Illustration Rares are such a cool proposition in Pokémon TCG. This IR proves how amazing these full art cards are at showcasing Pokémon that often get overlooked. The simple and colorful IRs always get a spot in my binder, and I think this will be a popular card."
"In terms of having Togedemaru in a deck, playing this early and drawing out the Pokémon you need and getting them on your bench is going to be very handy for decks that require a bit of setup like Mega Venusaur ex from Mega Evolutions base set. Although I think I'd cry a little inside seeing an Illustration Rare being played instead of the standard common card."
I also spoke with fellow Pokémon TCG entusiast, Ben Williams, who was recently digging into the most valuable Mega Evolution cards you can find in boosters right now.
He said this about the English card reveals: "I love it. As someone who's excited for Mega Charizard ex X, this Togedemaru card's easily my #2. Not only is the 'Find a Friend' ability's incredibly useful for all kinds of decks, but the adorable artwork on that Special Illustration Rare's to die for."
High praise indeed! What do you think of the new cards? Let us know in the comments below. For more on Pokémon TCG, consider checking out the full release schedule for the rest of 2025.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He's a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife's dismay.
This article contains contributions by Robert Anderson, Ben Williams, and Christian Wait.
Gearbox has revealed Borderlands 4 Bounty Pack 1: How Rush Saved Mercenary Day, the first seasonal mini-event for the game, an invincible boss, and more.
Bounty Packs are paid DLC that bring new “bite-sized-yet-flavourful” narrative content to Borderlands 4. In Bounty Pack 1, due out November 20, players team up with Rush and “show the Timekeeper's Minister of Culture the true meaning of Mercenary Day, a jolly time for gift-giving and gunslinging with friends and family.”
Bounty Pack 1 also includes a Vault Card with new rewards that players will earn through gameplay, with 24 cosmetic items to unlock and four pieces of rerollable gear. The rerollable gear can be earned as many times as players like, so it can be an opportunity to obtain a roll with stats that perfectly suit a specific build, Gearbox said.
Here’s the official blurb:
Rush, the affable leader of the Outbounders, is feeling homesick and nostalgic for the holidays he's cherished in years past. By his calculations, it's about to be Mercenary Day, a jolly time for gift-giving and gunslinging with friends and family, and he'd like to bring that same festive cheer to the people of Kairos. But his hopes for holiday merriment stand in direct opposition to Screw, the Timekeeper's Minister of Culture who's charged with keeping celebrations as bland and homogenous as possible. Across a series of all-new Main Missions, you'll show Screw the true meaning of Mercenary Day by any means necessary, and maybe score some new Legendary loot in the process.
Here's the full breakdown of the Borderlands 4 Bounty Pack 1 Vault Card loot:
4 rerollable weapons
4 Vault Hunter Heads usable by Vex, Rafa, Amon, and Harlowe
4 Vault Hunter Skins usable by Vex, Rafa, Amon, and Harlowe
5 Weapon Skins
5 Vehicle Skins
4 ECHO-4 Drone Skins
2 ECHO-4 Attachments
Bounty Pack 1 also features a few extras to find:
1 New Digirunner Vehicle (available shortly after starting the first Main Mission)
1 Vault Hunter Style usable by Vex, Rafa, Amon, and Harlowe (available after beating the boss and completing the Bounty Pack's final Main Mission)
1 ECHO-4 Drone Skin (available after beating the boss and completing the Bounty Pack's final Main Mission)
To access Gearbox has revealed Borderlands 4 Bounty Pack 1: How Rush Saved Mercenary Day, the first seasonal mini-event for the game, an invincible boss, and more., you need to have either bought the Borderlands 4 Deluxe or Super Deluxe Edition (both include the Bounty Pack Bundle), or bought the Bounty Pack Bundle that includes Bounty Pack 1, or bought Bounty Pack 1 individually.
Meanwhile, Gearbox revealed Borderlands 4’s free seasonal mini-event, Horrors of Kairos. This limited-time event celebrates Halloween from October 23 to November 6. Players will encounter a terrifying new weather effect of blood rain when fighting world bosses, and killing them has a chance to earn you new Legendary loot, Gearbox said. Seasonal cosmetics will be offered through SHiFT codes, too.
"Murmur" Legendary Tediore Assault Rifle: Executes weakened enemies with guaranteed crits on targets under 35% health
"Skully" Legendary Order Grenade: This death-dealing grenade fires out projectiles as it seeks out the nearest target
And finally, there’s a free endgame update in the form of Bloomreaper the Invincible. This is the first of the endgame Invincible Bosses coming to Borderlands 4 as free DLC, and is due at some point in December.
The "Invincible" moniker is a throwback to the raid bosses of Borderlands 2, so these aren't literally unkillable enemies, Gearbox explained, but players' skills “will be tested by the massive health pools, extremely lethal attack damage, and new modifiers of these all-new bosses.”
The December update also adds a new Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode level for an added layer of difficulty.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Deadpool and Avengers: Doomsday star Channing Tatum has said he's still keen to make his previously-planned Gambit solo movie, though believes Marvel and Disney would never film its planned superhero sex scenes today.
Speaking to Variety, Tatum said there was "a world where Gambit could finally get his due" after the positive reaction to his character's return in the R-rated Deadpool & Wolverine, a love letter to his 20th Century Fox-era origins.
However, Tatum said he believes Disney would still require changes to the Gambit movie he still had in mind, which he describes as "an R-rated romantic comedy" featuring "mutants having sex."
"If we'd made our Fox version, that script would’ve never gotten made – ever," Tatum said. "It was an R-rated romantic comedy. And when I say R-rated, I mean we went for it. We made Gambit the kind of character who could only exist in a movie with Deadpool. We had mutants having sex! It was wild.
"That’s something Marvel and Disney would never do," he continued, "You don't always know what Disney will be, but you definitely know what it's not going to be. It's not gonna be horror. It's not gonna be sex. But I think Marvel needs that kind of tonal diversity; something to balance the other side. Gambit’s a great opportunity for that."
While not R-rated, Marvel did show Gemma Chan's Sersi and Richard Maddon's Ikaris having sex in The Eternals. As for horror, many fans consider Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to feature plenty of horror elements — not least the scenes where Benedict Cumberbatch's sorcerer is pursued by Elizabeth Olsen's bloodied Scarlet Witch in the latter half of the movie.
While Tatum may not yet have got his Gambit on solo (or otherwise), the actor is primed to return in next year's Avengers: Doomsday, which picks up his character after the events of Deadpool & Wolverine. It's unknown exactly what Gambit will be up to, exactly, though he will appear alongside a host of other actors from the Fox era of Marvel movies, including most of the main X-Men.
Speaking about his role in the film last month, Tatum teased a big X-Men versus Doctor Doom showdown, and also addressed how the movie will handle his character's accent — which was played for laughs in Deadpool & Wolverine.
“[Marvel] really had to wrap their mind around the accent and how people are going to understand him," Tatum said. “I’m not gonna go full Cajun. [They] want things to be funny, but they don’t want to go full Deadpool. They want to keep the drama and keep it tight. When Gambit gets serious — when he drops the Mardi Gras mask — things do matter.”
Avengers: Doomsday is currently set to launch in theaters on December 18, 2026. Should Gambit survive, here's hoping we see the full Cajun again some day.
Image credit: Earl Gibson III/Penske Media via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
A French retailer has all but confirmed Assassin's Creed Shadows is indeed coming to Nintendo Switch 2, and it looks like it'll be another controversial Game-Key Card game.
As noted by the eagle-eyed members of the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit, however, the key art used in the new retail listing also suggests the game will come as a Game-Key Card. This means that unlike, say, Cyberpunk 2077, which is fully contained on a 64GB cartridge on Switch 2, players will instead have to download part or all of a game before they can play.
It'll likely divide fans who continue to debate the practice of publishers providing Game-Key Cards in Switch 2 boxed games instead of a physical cartridge. It's proven to be a divisive practice among some, not least because while it allows collectors to have a game's box on their shelf, they're essentially useless unless your console is connected to the internet.
Nintendo recently launched a survey designed to poll the Switch 2 userbase on its thoughts surrounding digital and physical games, with questions designed to probe the reasons you might consider one option over another. Nintendo's also interested in finding out if your attitude to digital downloads has shifted over time.
In September, a Ubisoft developer who worked on the Nintendo port of Star Wars Outlawsdefended the use of Game-Key Cards, saying the real reason why the Switch 2 version of Star Wars Outlaws uses a Game-Key Card was due to the Switch 2's data speeds, and how quickly the hardware can read information from its bespoke cartridges, versus games downloaded to the console's internal memory.
If you missed Assassin's Creed Shadows the first time around, now may be a good time to try it out. Released back in March, it returned 8/10 in the IGN review.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Borderlands 4 chief Randy Pitchford has said that if other developers better understood why gamers love making decisions about loot, Gearbox would have “good competitors.”
Pitchford was speaking in an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live to discuss the release of Borderlands 4 and Gearbox’s journey alongside the series’ success. The outspoken developer said that even though the Borderlands franchise will break through 100 million units sold with Borderlands 4 (publisher 2K Games has yet to announce a sales figure), he insisted “we suck!” because that 100 million is but a drop in the ocean that is the total number of potential gamers globally.
“Our mission is to entertain the world,” Pitchford said. “Which means we suck! Because there are billions of people in the world. We got a lot of work to do. Borderlands, with 4, we’re gonna cross probably 100 million units sold, with Borderlands 4, of the franchise. That’s awesome compared to a lot of things. But it kinda sucks if your goal is to entertain the world. So I feel like we’re just getting started.
“I’ve been working on Borderlands for over 20 years now. And it feels like we’re starting to get pretty good at it. It feels like we’re starting to figure it out. I feel like we’ve probed a lot of the end points. But I don’t think we’re anywhere near the end of a journey.”
Pitchford then entered into a rather philosophical debate about why people love looter shooters like Borderlands so much. This is a game that revolves around the hunt for better loot — in the case of Borderlands 4 billions of potential weapons are available — and players fuss over whether to equip something new that’s just dropped or stick with what they already have, even if it’s inferior.
This is a constant loop in the Borderlands games, which are packed with enemies, crates, chests, and even toilets that spit out loot. Perhaps to a greater extent than any other looter shooter, loot is everywhere in Borderlands, and the player is constantly having to pause to wonder, is that item that just dropped worth my time?
Most of the time, the answer is no. But sometimes the answer is yes. Either way, as you play Borderlands and fuss over the minutiae of your build, you're always asking yourself whether this item or that item will help make the numbers go up within your playstyle. Farming for these items is all part of the loot hunt and, for so many millions of fans, the whole reason to play Borderlands.
Borderlands games are tuned to present these sorts of loot conundrums “by design,” Pitchford explained, before saying he expected the franchise to have more imitators by now because of how addictive this loop is.
“You’re poking at some fundamentals, which is part of why I think Borderlands as a game has worked, and does work, and why it’s a very delicate design that I think is one of the reasons why there haven’t really been many successful imitators since we first showed how a shooter looter could work with the original game,” Pitchford said.
Borderlands doesn’t have the looter shooter genre to itself, of course. Perhaps its most high-profile rival is Bungie’s Destiny, although that Sony-owned franchise has seen better days. Other examples include People Can Fly’s Outriders (no sequel in sight), and Ubisoft’s The Division (The Division 3 is in the works). If we’re stretching the definition of looter shooter, we might include games like Warframe, Remnant 2, or The First Descendant. Rocksteady’s disastrous Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is perhaps the most high-profile of looter shooter failures. Certainly, Borderlands and its various entries dominate the space.
And it all comes down to nailing the “gratifying” decision around loot in Borderlands. It is something, Pitchford said, humans love to do because it scratches an itch in our brains.
“That decision, that choice about, do I keep what I have or do I try the new thing? That is a very compelling, fundamental, both need and skill that our brains have, to make choices like that,” he said.
“We’ve reduced it down to this simple moment with this interface in this system. It’s a gratifying loop. It’s a gratifying decision. Our brains need to do it, and our brains like doing it. And we’re better off when we do it. The more we exercise that muscle, not just in the video game but literally in life — this is what separates our species from a lot of others, and how we developed language and how we developed all kinds of high levels of consciousness and cognition that allow us to analyse the world. Most of what our prefrontal cortex is for — why that adaptation exists and what it’s used for — is that skill, or versions of it. We’ve reduced it down into this design. And yes — the is the thing I’m looking at better than the thing I’ve got, and managing the cognition between the objective, almost scientific analysis of that choice, versus the emotional impact on that choice, and having those at odds with each other frequently, is very interesting, and dare I say it addictive.”
Pitchford continued: “We don’t do it because it’s addictive. We do it because it’s stimulating and because we kind of need that. Part of why games exist are to… yeah. we can live a fantasy that we might not be able to have in the real world, and we can explore themes and ideas in a safe place that we can’t explore in the real world, but we also can, because it’s an interactive simulation, we can test our thinking and our decision making and put our brain to work in really interesting ways that we kind of need and want.”
And then, the puzzlement that other developers haven’t taken Borderlands on at its own game, and the associated suggestion that Gearbox’s rivals aren’t thinking about the looter shooter on the same level as the studio.
“If other game designers that were trying to get in on the action, so to speak, understood that, we’d have more competitors, or we’d have good competitors,” he said. “But we haven’t so far. It’s weird. The kinds of people that just want to go after it, they’re not thinking about it on that level. They’re just putting into motion something because of market analysis. It’s not a designer’s or creator’s drive that’s doing it. It’s either a business drive or a wishing to be something that you’re not kind of drive.
“It’s so weird. I fully expected after the first game came out that everyone would be hip to exactly what you mentioned, and we’d immediately see lots of other games imitating and aping, and we’d be dead, because we can’t compete with a lot of other folks, especially back then. We were the scrappy underdogs.”
Certainly, the critical reception to Borderlands 4 suggests Gearbox has once again successfully presented a looter shooter that ticks all the right boxes. IGN’s Borderlands 4 review returned an 8/10. We said: “Borderlands 4 gives the series the massive kick in the pants it has needed, with a fantastic open world and greatly improved combat, even if bugs and invisible walls can sometimes throw off that groove.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Now, a series of fresh Everwild screenshots has cropped online via the portfolio of a former staff member. MP1st reports that the screenshots are believed to show a version of the game "relatively close to its cancelation," depicting a silver-haired hero character exploring ruins in a forest.
While we've seen glimpses of Everwild before via teaser trailers, Rare has always remained tight-lipped around what its gameplay would actually entail. But there are clues here, gleaned from a look at the game's inventory screen, which shows an extensive list of items and tabs.
Inventory sections shown include "favorites," "figments," "tools," "mosaics," "seeds" and "plants." Figments appear to be plantlike creatures — a little like Pikmin, albeit with onion heads. One pale green creature is labeled as a "Light Figment," with other variants shown in blue, white and brown colors.
The game's extensive seed compendium includes an item named the "Shrub Seed," from which you can grow shrubs. Mosaics, meanwhile, include creatures seen in previous Everwild teasers, such as a deer-like animal with a large orange crest.
Se han publicado screenshots del cancelado #Everwild a través de un artista que estuvo en #Rare para el proyecto.
De acuerdo a lo informado a MP1ST, estas imágenes serían de una versión del juego bastante cercana a su cancelación en Junio de este año. pic.twitter.com/FN9ci0VOMn
A settings menu can also be seen, which would reportedly have relied on Sea of Thieves player data when suggesting common gameplay configurations.
Everwild was expected to be a third-person fantasy adventure game with god-genre elements, though its development underwent several changes, including a full reboot following the the exit of creative director Simon Woodroffe in 2020. Rare filled the director's chair with veteran designer Gregg Mayles, who previously worked on Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Pinata, and Sea of Thieves. Mayles is now believed to have left the studio entirely following Everwild's cancelation.
The set will incorporate boosters, the new Draft Night box debuting with January’s Lorwyn and those extremely expensive Collector Boosters, but I was most interested in a new Commander deck and preordered the Turtle Power precon instantly. Yes, I know people don’t like Universes Beyond, and for the most part I’m right there with you - but I couldn’t resist this time.
Why I Preordered The Turtle Power Precon
I can’t remember the last time a set came with a single Commander precon. In 2025 alone we’ve had sets with no precons (Spider-Man, Avatar), sets with two (Aetherdrift, Edge of Eternities), a set with four (Final Fantasy) and a set with five (Tarkir Dragonstorm).
Wizards is seemingly easing off the Commander decks as this year winds down, but as a big fan of the format I’m thrilled we’re getting just one for the TMNT set since I fully expected I’d need to pick my favorite turtle and buy one of four.
I’m also very curious to see how it plays, because the Partner mechanic isn’t one we see all that often. I’d also say we don’t see a great number of five-color preconstructed decks, but we’re literally getting one in Lorwyn Eclipsed, too.
All four turtles, plus Splinter? That’s an easy pickup - and Amazon’s preorder price guarantee might mean that it drops lower than the $64.45 I’ve committed to pay already.
At the time of writing, there are no Collector Booster Packs or Boxes up for sale, but you can find one of the sought-after packs in the Draft Night box for £114.99. We’re still waiting on the new Pizza Bundle to show up in the UK, too.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He's a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife's dismay.
Ghost of Yotei gives its revenge-seeking protagonist Atsu a wide range of traditional Japanese weapons to wield, including bows, swords and spears. Last week, however, a Japanese-speaking user on X questioned whether it was realistic or even possible for Atsu to draw a very long sword from her back, prompting a flood of video comments from traditional Japanese martial arts practitioners.
In Ghost of Yotei, you’ll pick up the Odachi (literally ‘big sword’) in The Way of the Odachi quest (check out our walkthrough here). It is a useful addition to Atsu’s arsenal, especially when facing off against larger enemies (brutes). It allows her to block heavy attacks and then push back against the opponent, opening them up for a devastating slice.
As she already has two swords at her hip, Atsu opts to sheath the Odachi on her back, however X user ikazombie questioned how on earth you’d pull this off without dislocating something. Upon slowing the clip down, they realised that you could theoretically draw and sheath it from over your left shoulder, but seemed unconvinced about how this would be accomplished in real life.
Japanese martial arts practitioners commented with videos. User Harima_mekkai (a member of the Tenshinryu school) decided to try out Atsu’s way of wearing and drawing an Odachi. She posted a video of herself successfully unsheathing a 1m long sword weighing 1.5kg from over her left shoulder. This shows that the drawing part of Atsu's Odachi technique is actually doable, albeit it takes effort and training to pull it off that smoothly.
Another user by the name of Lornplum replied with a video of himself drawing and sheathing a back-mounted sword and described the way Atsu deals with the length by holding the blade as she draws it as a "brilliant touch of realism."
Sucker Punch did get members of the Tenshinryu school to do motion capture for the sword fights and stances in Ghost of Yotei. Tenshinryu is a traditional Japanese martial art which dates from the 1600s and covers the art of a wide variety of weapons, including spears, swords and chain sickles. PlayStation Japan recently posted a side-by-side video of Ghost of Yotei footage and Tenshinryu members enacting the fight scene.
However, there is still a bit of video game coolness trumping realism here. The clips of real-life pros show them moving the sheath up and over their shoulder more (or even around their body) to make it easier to draw and sheath the weapon. This is especially apparent when sheathing the sword. It seems that the amount of movement in Atsu’s Odaichi sheathing was reduced, likely to make whipping out and holstering the weapon smoother and more responsive for players.
As Lornplum commented on Harima_Mekkai’s demonstration of drawing a Odaichi Atsu-style: “As you can see, with some effort anyone can manage to draw it, however sheathing it (like Atsu does) is pretty much impossible.”
While they look cool in games, it goes without saying that having a sword on your back in real life makes it much more awkward to access than if it was at your hip. Last year, a Link cosplayer found it impossible to unsheath their back-mounted sword Breath of the Wild-style. However, they received a bit of unexpected advice from none other than Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai, who explained that they made Link’s sword skills a little more realistic for Smash Bros. Ultimate by having him move the scabbard.
IGN's Ghost of Yotei review returned an 8/10. We said: "A predictable but well-executed story takes you through Ghost of Yotei's gorgeous landscapes and satisfying, fluid action – it may not be revolutionizing open world games, but it's a great distillation of the samurai fantasy."
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.
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