Silent Hill series producer Motoi Okamoto has opened up on why Konami revealed three new Silent Hill games after a full decade of silence, saying the publisher was keen to stress to old fans and new that it was “serious” about resurrecting the flailing horror series.
“Three years ago, in 2022, we announced three titles: Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill f, and Silent Hill: Townfall,” Okamoto explained on Twitter / X, as transcribed by Automaton. “We didn’t want to just announce a single remake to ‘test the waters.’
“We wanted people to feel how serious we were about reviving the series. Developing a remake and a new title simultaneously naturally involves risks, but we wanted to convey our commitment first and foremost. Only when a new game is announced can the future of a series be seen. Users won’t feel motivated to engage with an IP unless they can sense it has a future. If the company takes a wait-and-see approach, so will the players. The company needs to show how serious it is so that users can get genuinely excited. I think that’s only fair.”
Silent Hill 2 Remake has sold 2.5 million worldwide, which pushes sales of the franchise overall to 10 million. Silent Hill f has sold 1 million copies. IGN’s Silent Hill 2 Remake review returned an 8/10. We said: “Silent Hill 2 is a great way to visit – or revisit – one of the most dread-inducing destinations in the history of survival horror.” Our Silent Hill f review also returned a 7/10. We said: “Silent Hill f presents a fresh new setting to explore and a fascinatingly dark story to unravel, but its melee-focussed combat takes a big swing that doesn’t quite land.”
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.
In so many ways, Ninja Gaiden 4 is exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s a collaborative effort between Team Ninja and Platinum Games, two of my all time favorite developers; it builds off the combat from Ninja Gaiden 2, which has the best action of the series in my eyes; and it comes packed with small touches that make it a bit more approachable without sacrificing the tough-as-nails difficulty that longtime fans like me expect. But while I’d even go so far as to say this combat system is among the very best I’ve ever seen, Ninja Gaiden 4 stumbles in many other areas – from its bland new lead character, to its uninspired level design, to its predictable story that falls completely flat. The action is still so good that a lot of those shortcomings get deflected like bullets against Ryu Hayabusa’s sword, but others slip through that defense and wound what is otherwise an incredible revival for the Master Ninja.
Story has never been a selling point of the Ninja Gaiden series, so it didn’t come as a surprise to me that Ninja Gaiden 4’s plot was one of its weakest elements. It introduces us to our new protagonist, Yakumo, a skilled ninja of the Raven Clan whose initial goal to kill a priestess of the Dark Dragon instead quickly turns into a mission to escort her to a handful of magic seals in an effort to really for realsies kill the Dark Dragon for good this time.
What follows is an extremely predictable 10-hour campaign with attempts at big emotional moments that fall flat because the legwork to make you care about these characters is never done. There is some banter that happens between Yakumo, his handler, and the other members of his little Raven Clan squad, but it’s never charming or endearing, and certainly never develops to a point where I ever got a real sense that these characters were actually close. Yakumo primarily communicates with grunts, growls, acknowledgements of the mission objectives, and angry threats, and as a result just comes off as a lame edgelord most of the time.
You do get to play a couple of chapters as Ryu toward the end, and while these are a welcome reprieve, they also feel like a huge missed opportunity. His levels have him retracing Yakumo’s steps, fighting through the same environments, mostly the same enemies, and the same bosses, but this time with fewer combat options since Ryu only has access to one weapon, a far less interesting Gleam Form to replace Yakumo’s Bloodraven Form, and just four returning Ninpo super attacks. Imagine Dante’s missions from Devil May Cry 4, except he doesn’t get any new weapons, his playstyle is almost exactly the same as Nero, and there’s none of the cool Dante trash talk.
Ninja Gaiden 4’s combat isn’t just good, it’s phenomenal.
I am willing to forgive an action game for a lot if the action itself is good, and fortunately Ninja Gaiden 4’s combat isn’t just good, it’s phenomenal. It’s incredibly fast, the enemies are intelligent and won’t let you do the same thing over and over again, there’s a great deal of flexibility that allows you to change up your approach to each fight, it looks slick as hell, and it has that trademark Team Ninja fluidity mixed with the over-the-top craziness that Platinum Games is renowned for. It just checks every single box.
The secret sauce here is enemy aggression. Enemies are absolutely ruthless in Ninja Gaiden 4. They don’t politely wait their turn as they attack from off screen, hit you with unblockables, grab you if you try to turtle up, armor through your regular attacks, and overwhelm you with sheer numbers. It’s a style of combat that is totally unique to this series, and that suffocating pressure from enemies is what makes every combat encounter such a thrilling fight for survival.
All of that may sound brutal, but Yakumo’s own toolset is extremely powerful as well. You have the iconic Flying Swallow technique that allows you to zip towards an enemy, potentially slicing their head off in just a single hit; the Izuna Drop air combo that ends in a flying piledriver that will instantly kill most enemies in a single blow; the plethora of powerful unlockable attacks for each weapon; and most importantly, ultimate techniques that let you absorb essence from defeated enemies to charge up a flashy combo that is completely invulnerable, can hit multiple enemies, and does extremely high damage.
None of this is new to Ninja Gaiden 4, and in fact is just a basic overview of what’s always been great about the combat in this series. But it’s important to talk about because my biggest concern coming into Ninja Gaiden 4 was that it would feel less like Ninja Gaiden and more like a Platinum Games game – not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not what I’d want out of a return I’ve been waiting 13 years for. Fortunately, that’s not the case. This is a Ninja Gaiden game through and through with a light touch of Platinum flavor to enhance it even further.
This is Ninja Gaiden through and through with a light touch of Platinum flavor.
That flavor mostly comes in the form of one big addition to the combat system: Yakumo’s Bloodraven Form. By holding down the left trigger, Yakumo will transform his weapon into a slower, more extravagant version with a completely new set of moves and the ability to break an enemy’s guard or interrupt their super attacks. These attacks are sick as hell, and definitely bring to mind some of Bayonetta’s Wicked Weave heavy attacks, especially the Rapier that turns into a huge drill, or the staff that turns into a giant hammer.
But more than being cool to look at, they add a new dimension to combat that forces you to be reactive to how the enemies are dealing with your offense. If you go into autopilot and spam light attacks, enemies will block your strikes and deliver a damaging counter of their own. But if you notice that they’re flashing white and shrugging off your attacks, you can hit them with a Bloodraven Form attack to not only deal big damage, but also open them up to even more punishment after breaking their guard.
Bloodraven Form moves are tied to a meter that drains pretty quickly, adding an extra layer of resource management I enjoyed. These blood infused attacks are also generally pretty slow, which makes them a bit risky to try and interrupt a faster armored attack. So you need to decide whether to risk wasting your meter by pre-emptively using a blood attack to try and catch an armored move during its initial animation, whether to risk your health by trying to wait and react to one of their slower and more telegraphed armored moves, or or whether to use the meter defensively instead to try and perfectly block otherwise unblockable techniques. Whatever the case, having multiple different options to deal with a challenging combat encounter is crucial in a game like this, and Ninja Gaiden 4 is stacked with options to play around with.
One departure from previous games is that instead of individually upgrading your weapons and having each improvement come with new moves and increased power, this time around you must buy all of your upgrades a la carte. Universal upgrades that affect every weapon cost Ninja Coin, which is a currency gained primarily from completing side missions, optional Purgatory challenges, and as a reward for completing a chapter. Weapon specific techniques on the other hand must be purchased with Weapon EXP, which is gained simply by fighting enemies. The better you perform, the more Weapon EXP you get. I enjoyed always having something new to unlock the whole way through, even though I do think Ninja Gaiden 4 is a little stingy with your starting set of upgrades.
You’re not even able to absorb essence to instantly charge your ultimate technique, quickly charge it after landing from a jump, or even charge it up to level two by default. All of those techniques have to be purchased, along with staples like the aforementioned Flying Swallow and Izuna Drop. And that same currency is also used to purchase consumable items, leading to a brutal economy in the early going. Especially if you didn’t purchase the Deluxe Edition, which gifts players with a whopping 50,000 Ninja Coins right from the start. That’s enough to buy virtually every starting upgrade and fill up your inventory. If you only have the standard edition, the first couple of hours can be pretty rough as you slowly build up the arsenal of techniques that bring Ninja Gaiden 4’s combat to life.
The final new combat wrinkle is the addition of a Berserk Meter that fills up as you deal or take damage, as well as when you defeat delimbed enemies with Obliteration Techniques. When the Berserk Meter is full, your charged-up Bloodraven Form attacks will trigger Bloodbath Kills, which are basically cinematic one-hit kills. It’s another fun element of resource management that gave me a way to satisfyingly clear a whole screen of tough enemies in just a few seconds, if I managed to survive long enough to be able to build up the meter.
The Berserk Meter adds another fun element of resource management.
Platinum also injects a healthy dose of style and creative expression into the combat by giving Yakumo the ability to hot swap between his weapons with just the press of a button. So you can do cool things like launch an enemy with the dual swords, hit them twice in the air, switch to another weapon, hit them twice again, switch to a third weapon, max out that air combo, and then send them crashing down with an Izuna Drop. We’re not talking Devil May Cry levels of potential for combo creativity, but there’s still a lot of fancy stuff you can do between the many techniques that you’ll unlock for each weapon, and there’s even a training mode so you can practice optimizing your damage and stylish combos. Variety like this goes a long way for me in terms of making combat feel fresh and exciting throughout the entire campaign.
I did my first playthrough of Ninja Gaiden 4 on Hard, and while that was the sweet spot in terms of difficulty for me, it’s worth noting that you can change this setting at any point (except in Master Ninja mode), which is a great feature for anyone struggling with its demanding challenges. Hero mode has been added as well which allows you to enable auto-block and auto-dodge at low health, along with an auto-assist that allows you to do damaging combos with just single button presses. It’s not for me, but I appreciate its inclusion nonetheless as a way to let more people enjoy the spectacle and action of the Ninja Gaiden series.
While the action is pristine and the combat arenas themselves have some great interactable elements that give you the freedom to zip around from point to point, cutting up enemies along the way, the actual level design is pretty uninspired. There are occasional splashes of interesting architecture across the futuristic version of Tokyo that’s been twisted by the evil power of the Dark Dragon’s husk, but far more often you’ll just be wandering around very bland rooftops, identical looking corridors, and boring city streets. It doesn’t get much better once you’re out of Tokyo, either. You just trade those drab streets for foggy cliffsides, ugly sewers, and samey looking military bases.
There are a couple of fun travel sequences that break up all of the limb liberating sword slashing, like Sonic-esque rail grinding sections, bits where you have to glide on wind currents to soar over a mountain range, and some sewer surfing, but they’re repeated throughout the campaign with little to no variation or evolution. As a result, they end up feeling more like filler than anything else.
While the action is pristine, the actual level design is pretty uninspired.
There’s a new sidequest system that allows you to gain some extra currency by completing optional tasks, like finding and defeating secret minibosses, capturing hidden collectible monsters called Gourdies, or just simply defeating a certain number of enemies in a specific area. It’s a nice addition that gives extra incentive to be thorough and not just run past optional fights, even though the drab and exceptionally linear level design doesn’t make it very exciting to actually explore.
My favorite thing to find hidden in a level though are the Purgatory Gates. These are optional challenge rooms with the cool twist of letting you decide how much health you want to attempt them with. The greater the health handicap, the greater the reward. These fights are by far the most intense and most fun challenges available, and I loved pushing myself to try and get through the hardest difficulty and then being handsomely rewarded for the effort.
Bosses have never been a strong suit for the Ninja Gaiden series but, funny enough, have always been a strength of Platinum Games. The mixture of the two seems to have gone about how you would expect, as the bosses in Ninja Gaiden 4 vary wildly in quality. There are a couple of truly great scraps against tough enemies with adrenaline pumping soundtracks that brought to mind some of Metal Gear Rising’s best fights. Meanwhile, others are just underwhelming battles against giant monsters with too much health and some frustrating gimmicks – from bosses that obnoxiously teleport around a large arena whenever you get close, to giant fiends that spawn annoying fodder enemies to distract from their own extremely dangerous attacks.
After beating the campaign, you unlock the Master Ninja difficulty, the ability to replay any stage, boss, or unlocked Purgatory Gate as either Yakumo or Ryu, and most substantially, 18 combat trials that feature unique modifiers and even a few enemies that I never encountered in the main game. These combat trials might have you clearing waves of enemies without using your Bloodraven Form or cause your health to tick down continuously, forcing you to balance using your ultimate technique to clear out enemies while also making sure to occasionally pick up the life-restoring orbs that are used to quickly charge it – or a trial might just prevent you from healing all together. I haven’t beaten all of these yet, but I am having a blast going through each of them and look forward to challenging my friends to top my scores on the leaderboards.
Battlefield 6 is giving fans some of the most cinematic FPS action they’ve seen in years, but one of its hard-to-reach Recon skins has the community in stitches.
Die-hard fans of military shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield have spent the last few years arguing about what place — if any — goofy skins have in their favorite video games. Although EA and Battlefield Studios’ latest has largely dodged the conflict with its commitment to a more grounded approach to cosmetics, it’s not managed to emerge from the wreckage completely unscathed.
Discussion about one questionable launch skin kicked off when Reddit user BOSS_Clan_Intl shared an image of what appears to be the Recon class’ Dead Sight skin. It’s one outfit for the sniper-heavy class that could likely require dozens — if not hundreds — of hours of playtime, requiring players to not only complete all three standard Recon Assignment challenges but also several Recon Specialist challenges.
Battlefield 6 players know all too well how demanding some of its many challenges can be, making Dead Sight an especially tough get for anyone looking to collect every infantry skin. The main problem here, though, is that, at least in the image shared here, Dead Sight makes you look at bit like a traffic cone.
On what appears to be one of Battlefield 6’s sunnier maps (of which there are many), the Recon skin practically glows, mixing orange and black colors that look more Black Ops than Battlefield. When nearly every other skin sticks to muted tones and traditional military camouflage, Dead Sight sticks out like a sore thumb. Making matters worse is the fact the skin is designed for Recon players, ditching something more practical, like a ghillie suit, for an outfit that an enemy may be able to point out as easily as a far-off flare.
Looking at Dead Sight in the Battlefield 6 in-game gallery of class skins reveals that the suit is really more of a brown color instead of orange. The exact environment the above image was captured in remains unclear, but on a bright map with these settings, the contrast with the rest of the costumes is hard to ignore.
Of course, one bright Battlefield skin is a far cry from the superhero, celebrity, and sci-fi skins that have divided Call of Duty fans, but that doesn’t mean Battlefield players aren’t taking the opportunity to poke fun at the Dead Sight skin.
“If you’ve mastered the class you’re too good for camo,” one Reddit user joked. “It’s not for sneaking, it’s an open challenge to the lobby,” one person added. “Gotta say, for a mastery skin for the ‘stealth’ class, this is absurd lmao,” another joked.
Under the right circumstances, Dead Sight may be the most colorful skin — but that doesn’t mean it’s the only one that pops. Before Battlefield 6 launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on October 10, players caught wind of the Assault class’ System Override skin, which features bright green patterns and is only available via a special promotion with gaming tech company Razer. There’s also the Get Loud skin, which swaps out green marks for orange ones on the legs and face mask.
Dead Sight’s time in the sun has spawned laughs among the Battlefield 6 community, but not everyone thinks the outfit is something to joke about. Some have commented on the original post, saying the skin looks “horrible,” while others swear off using it even after it’s unlocked. Then, there are those who fear EA and BF Studios will only introduce more goofy skins as post-launch development progresses.
Meanwhile, the developers suggest they have no plans to change course any time soon. During an interview with IGN in September, Ripple Effect technical director Christian Buhl and senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson touched on fears that goofy skins could infiltrate Battlefield 6. At the time, they confirmed the team is “really happy with where we are.”
“We want to be a gritty, realistic shooter,” Buhl said. “Other games can and should be whatever they want to be, right? [laughs] Like we’re not, I don’t know… Fortnite is pretty goofy, and that game is pretty good. So, I think where we end up is we’re pretty happy with where we are. We are a gritty, grounded, realistic shooter. That’s what we intend to be, and that’s what the game is going to look like for a while.”
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).
The Nintendo Switch-era has been a frustrating one for Pokemon fans. The evolutionary line from Sword and Shield, to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, to Scarlet and Violet was one of slow but steady progress as Game Freak refined its ideas for how capturing, exploring, and battling should look in a fully 3D world. But this era has also played host to a major downhill slide in terms of overall polish, appearance, and performance across those three games. Pokemon Legends: Z-A, I’m happy to report, puts an end to that slide on basically all counts. It continues to successfully experiment with Pokemon’s gameplay by translating its carefully cultivated turn-based battle system into an action-based one. And it does so while scaling back its ambitions for a massive world to a more manageable size, resulting in a tighter, more polished, and far more fun Pokemon than we’ve seen in several years.
Pokemon Legends: Z-A takes place entirely within the bounds of Lumiose City, a Paris-inspired metropolis that I fondly remember from Pokemon X and Y, the events of which took place five years prior to this new story. A sudden rash of Wild Pokemon invading its city limits has resulted in conflicts between them and the people that live there, and necessitates “Wild Zones” within the city to keep them separate. It’s into this tense environment that you show up via train: a young adult (For real! Not a ten-year-old child! Your peers talk about getting jobs and paying rent! Holy Sharpedo!) with seemingly no agenda or reason to be in Lumiose beyond casual tourism. You’re immediately adopted by a group that refers to itself as Team MZ, which is dedicated to protecting the city by day, and becoming strong enough to do so effectively by climbing the ranks of a local competition every night: the Z-A Royale.
Never before has a Pokemon game’s setting been so integral to its story and themes. The way its characters and story focused so tightly on Lumiose as a place and a community reminded me in many ways of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. By not asking you to cross vast distances on a fairly abstract badge-collecting journey all by yourself, Z-A is able to tell the stories of more characters in more detail. You have a crew of pals who hang out at a hotel with you, and who constantly show up in the city to help you out in battle or with whatever else you need. Unlike rivals in past games, they’re given more space to develop as characters and actually have a relationship with you beyond throwaway lines about type alignments.
Z-A is also stuffed with side quests that give you ample opportunity to get to know the inhabitants of Lumiose. Delightfully, most of them aren’t Pokemon trainers. You’ll help a Furfrou groomer teach her Scyther styling techniques, and a perfume maker sample Pokemon odors for her wares. A cafe worker needs you to lure Trubbish away from her cafe, and an electrical worker needs you to chase off Pokemon messing with his elevator (er, “Holovator”). To keep the comparisons to Yakuza going, the vast majority of these side quests are, frankly, pretty silly. They often feature creative or weird scenarios that are resolved by your character, like Kiryu, inexplicably being far and away the toughest person in the room. There are over 100 of these side quests, and they involve all sorts of tasks, such as battles, catching certain Pokemon, teaching Pokemon specific moves, trading, evolving, acquiring certain items, doing parkour, and a lot more. It took me 35 hours to roll credits while mostly staying on top of side quests as they gradually popped up during the campaign, but I still haven’t managed to finish every single one in the post-game.
Never has a Pokemon game’s setting been so integral to its story and themes.
Also like the Yakuza games (this is the last comparison, I swear), Z-A’s plot is civic-minded. Rather than just being about becoming stronger or filling up a monster encyclopedia, your goal is centered around training to protect the city you now call home. As you grow, you encounter a cast of characters with different ideas about what Lumiose City needs to thrive, some of whom clash with one another. Z-A wrestles with some actual, real-world ideas as it questions what it means when multiple groups of people (or, I guess, creatures) inhabit the same space but have very different needs, and who should be prioritized when those needs conflict. Z-A doesn’t come away with easy answers, but it does provide some pretty interesting metaphors for real-world issues both civic and environmental, and above all else, emphasizes compassion for others in trying to solve them.
(Also there’s a literal benevolent Japanese mafia faction in this game. Okay, now I’m done for real, I promise.)
One sour note in all this is the lack of voice acting. I’ll be honest, I’ve played Pokemon games so often and for so long without it that Z-A not having voice acting didn’t really bother me during all the time I spent running around, doing sidequests, and reading main quest text boxes. Where it did become a problem, however, was during the major story cutscenes, where characters dramatically move their mouths and flail their arms around while absolutely no sound comes out. This wacky pantomime was jarring and immersion-breaking. I don’t know what Game Freak was thinking here. It’s long past time Pokemon caught up to every other story-heavy game and hired some dang voice actors, at least for major cutscenes.
Speaking of Game Freak needing to play catch-up, take a deep breath with me, because we gotta talk about performance.
It’s… fine? It’s fine. It’s actually fine.
On the Nintendo Switch 2, Z-A runs at a smooth and consistent 60 FPS. NPCs and objects do still pop in rather suddenly and a bit too close for comfort, but it’s substantially better than the wonky phasing in and out at spitting distance we saw in Scarlet and Violet. I didn’t see any character animations move at agonizingly slow framerates. I didn’t personally run into any game breaking bugs. None of my Pokemon got stuck in the floor or the wall. The loading screens are almost too fast to read the tips shown on them. Taken all together, I was able to play through the entire game barely thinking about performance, which is so much more than I could say for Z-A’s two predecessors.
That doesn’t mean Z-A looks great, though. One major, oft-pointed-out problem with Z-A is that it takes place entirely in a plain, unattractive city. Most of the time, you will be looking at the same five or six building exteriors, all of which are flat, ugly images with no detail or depth: just some windows and balconies painted onto a wall, Looney Tunes-style. There’s some variety in town, like a Wild Zone that gets covered in snow, a graveyard, and a sandy area, but for the most part, Lumiose is made up of a lot of the same parks, the same cafes, and the same paving stones again and again and again. You can’t go inside most buildings.
But not all of Z-A is aesthetically disagreeable. The building interiors you do get to see are detailed, colorful, cozy-looking, and not repetitive. Character models are more expressive than before, too, and there’s a wider visual variety in NPC designs than ever before thanks to small, long overdue touches like distinct facial features and differently colored outfits within trainer classes. Your own character’s face customization capabilities continue to improve from past games as well. Outfit customization is pretty good, with lots of options to choose from, no gender-locked clothing, and the ability to mix and match colors of jackets, shirts, belts, and other items in certain cases for a wider variety of looks.
Lumiose is visually uninteresting, but that doesn’t mean it’s uninteresting to explore.
While I’ve dinged Lumiose for being visually uninteresting, that’s not synonymous with it being uninteresting to explore. Z-A mostly solves one of the biggest issues I had with both Arceus and Scarlet/Violet: they were both big, empty worlds devoid of real reasons to explore beyond the surface. Those two predecessors tried to capture the vast scale of the Pokemon world, but the actual open areas lacked real detail. Much of their maps consisted of enormous fields full of the same Pokemon and meaningless items sort of scattered randomly around. Their caves were empty tunnels, their mountaintops often barren, and their landmarks rarely offered an interesting reward for visiting. Why even have a giant world if you’re going to make it so boring? Z-A isn’t like that.
By shrinking the world down to a manageable size, Game Freak was able to find the time, or ideas, or whatever it was that was lacking before to fill it with thoughtfully placed rewards. Sometimes those are items such as TMs or collectible Colorful Screws that wait at the end of Z-A’s rather amusingly cumbersome platforming segments. But more often those rewards are rare Pokemon. You see, while most Pokemon are confined to Wild Zones, some monsters do still lurk in the city streets, and they’re genuinely exciting to find. At first, you’ll only see common Pokemon: Pidgeys and Fletchlings pecking around in parks, Kakuna dangling out of trees, maybe a Trubbish munching on some garbage. But explore enough, and you’ll start to find alleyways, courtyards, and rooftops hiding rarer monsters: an Ariados dropping suddenly from a sewer ceiling, Gastly leaping out from a dark corner at night, a single Eevee trotting down a narrow backroad. I squealed once when I saw a single, rare Dratini on a rooftop I’d worked painstakingly hard to reach. It’s moments like these that really flesh out Lumiose and make it such a delight to explore.
In fact, there’s so much to see that I’ve somehow gotten this far into my review without digging into Z-A’s most revelatory change yet: the battle system. Pokemon is an action game now! They threw the last of the turn-based elements out the window! It’s great!
It’s genuinely impressive how well Game Freak managed to translate a familiar system of monsters, moves, status effects, items, and types into a completely different genre. Instead of taking turns, you move your character around the battlefield while the monsters are fighting. Your Pokemon will follow you by default, giving you an indirect and interesting way to control their positioning somewhat and even dodge your opponent’s moves. If you hold down ZL, your Pokemon will instead square up with its opponent and you can select and use moves. If you’re in a battle against a wild Pokemon, you’ll need to do all this while also moving your character out of danger, as they can damage and even knock you out, adding an interesting new layer of strategy to how you position yourself, and thus your monster, for optimal offense and defense.
It’s impressive how well Game Freak managed to translate combat into a completely different genre.
I was concerned, based on early trailers, that all this would amount to just smashing the same offensive moves into opponents with little actual strategy, but that’s far from the case. The indirect movement system, while a little clunky to get used to, introduces an interesting strategic layer of positioning as you play with the flow of dodging and attacking. The moves themselves are delightfully complex in both their variety and the ways Game Freak has changed them to fit the action genre while keeping their spirit alive. Short-range moves, for instance, can be used very quickly, but put you in danger of being hit. Long-range moves take a bit of time to wind up, but you stay at a distance while you do them. Moves like Protect and Detect have been reconfigured to be used almost like a parry. Fire Spin and Sand Trap form areas-of-effect on the ground you can try and lure enemies to stand in, while Spikes throws a bunch of hazards all over the place.
Status effects have been overhauled, too: paralysis slows you down significantly, while confusion sometimes causes your Pokemon to wander off in weird directions. Mega Evolutions also got a revamp that adds even more complex layers including a meter to fill, the ability to Mega Evolve multiple different Pokemon in the same battle, and Plus Moves, which are essentially moves with the power of a Mega Evolved Pokemon but usable by any monster on your team under the right conditions.
One of the best parts of this system is how it still rewards past Pokemon knowledge even in this entirely new framing, with everything working roughly how you’d guess it might. While I hope Pokemon doesn’t fully abandon turn-based battles, I would love it if the Legends spin-off series adopts this action system going forward and continues to refine it – Arceus introduced a revolutionary new system for catching Pokemon, so it feels like a fitting that Z-A has revolutionized the other key half of the series. Besides, I cannot wait to watch the competitive community get its hooks into this and see what meta develops.
Until then, we have the campaign’s own challenges to overcome. Even casual players are likely to breeze through some of it – the Z-A Royale, for instance, has you collecting points by defeating trainers until you get enough to instigate a Promotion Match and move up a rank. These battles are a joke. The Battle Zones you fight through to collect points try to shake things up by allowing you to sneak up on enemy trainers for an advantage attack, or be snuck up on yourself. But it’s trivially easy to sneak up on opponents and knock out their first monster in a single blow, then thrash their second immediately after.
To an extent, that may be intended, as you can increase monetary rewards from Battle Zones by beating as many trainers as possible before daybreak, so you’re encouraged to just Rapidash your way through battles. But the Z-A Royale’s relative ease nonetheless mutes the accomplishment of ranking up, particularly in light of the fact that the story actually forces you to jump a whopping 17 ranks at once at one point. Would the story have been an agonizing 100 hours long instead of a normal 30 hours if Z-A had not done this? Yes. Does it still feel real silly when it happens and make the Royale into a bit of a joke? Also yes.
But it’s not all a walk in the PokePark. You’ll still find challenge in other places, such as Wild Areas, where a powerful Alpha Pokemon can summon a gang of smaller guys to overwhelm you if you’re not careful. Most difficult, and most fun, are the story battles against Rogue Mega Evolved Pokemon. These monsters are big and mean, deliberately going directly after your trainer a lot of the time and forcing you to carefully balance dodging attacks yourself and positioning your Pokemon well to slowly whittle down a big health bar. Some of the Rogue Mega Evolutions have devastating second phase attacks, such as turning the entire arena into a bullet hell, making copies of themselves, or spontaneously popping up behind you for a painful swipe attack. Game Freak really goes out of its way to ensure all its new Mega Evolutions get their moment to shine through these encounters. Just wait until you see Mega Starmie!
An impressive new mod for The Simpsons Hit & Run has rebuilt the game to instead feature Futurama, catching the attention of the cult classic’s original lead designer.
Futurama Hit & Run, as the mod is called, is available now in demo form as a free download — you’ll just need a copy of the original Simpsons game on PC in order to play.
The Simpsons Hit & Run originally launched for PC, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox back in 2003, and was heavily inspired by the Grand Theft Auto games of the era. Gameplay for this Futurama mod also feels familiar, as you run around as Fry and complete missions for characters such as Bender, Professor Farnsworth and Dr. Zoidberg.
ANNONCE 📣 🎮 : La démo de Futurama Hit & Run, sera disponible le 19 octobre ! Une idée juste parfaite ! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/cy8WBhoLYL
There’s driving too, of course — with Fry able to zoom around a section of New New York in a hover car. One particular mission has Fry escorting Bender back to the Planet Express headquarters while avoiding police in hover cop cars. But there’s no sign yet of actual flying — perhaps in future.
Currently, the demo includes four story missions, plus a set of street races, vehicles, costumes and other Easter eggs to find and unlock. The demo also comes with an acknowledgement that it currently uses AI-generated dialogue as a “temporary placeholder.” The mod team states: “Professional voice artists are already engaged, and their recordings will replace the placeholder content in a future update.”
Response to the demo has been positive, not least from Joe McGinn, who worked on the original The Simpsons: Hit & Run over two decades ago. “As the lead designer of the original game, I can only say… this looks awesome!” McGinn wrote in a comment on the mod’s trailer. “I want to play it.”
Here’s your weekly Pokémon TCG pricewatch and stock update, and it’s an absolute banger. Amazon seem to be listening to me and the rest of community calling out their ridiculously high pricing on Pokémon TCG right now, but probably not. Regardless, we’re seeing their exclusive Blaziken ex and Volcanion ex Premium Collection in stock for MSRP. That’s right, no price hikes and no where near it’s market value that’s north of $90. Could this mean something positive for the future of Pokémon TCG at Amazon?
TL;DR: Deals for Today
Unfortunatley that’s where the hope ends for big box retailers. TCGplayer is cheaper on every in-stock Pokémon sealed product on Amazon right now. There’s usually one or two, but it’s looking grim for them. For you it’s great, as you’re getting the proper market value from Prismatic Evolutions Booster Bundles ($59.96) and Surprise Boxes ($43).
Blaziken ex & Volcanion ex Premium Collection
Trainers and collectors will get five Destined Rivals Boosters and five Journey Together Boosters in this bad boy, so that’s about the right kind of ball park for ten booster packs, plus you’re getting the promo Volcanion ex and Blaziken ex promo card and a jumbo version of Blaziken ex.
I think these promo’s would work great together in a fire-themed deck. Use Blazikens Seething Spirit to grab fire energy from your discard pile to build up Volcanion. In the meantime Volcanion can burn opposing Pokémon then use Scorching Cyclone for 160 damage then transfer all it’s energy to a benched Pokémon. So many possibilities here.
Poké Price Check: Mega Evolution In Stock
Mega Evolution seems to be a well-printed start to the next era of Pokémon TCG. I’m seeing boosters in convienience stores and some products on physical shelves, not to mention the Booster Bundle ($52.89), Gardevoir ETB ($88.81) and Three Booster Blister ($28.90) available on Amazon. Like the rest of the products in this carousel though, the cheapest is TCGplayer right now.
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.
The third instalment of Frontier Developments’ moreish dinosaur park sim, Jurassic World Evolution 3, is almost here. You’ll get to manage your very own park full of dinosaurs in this much-anticipated park management simulator sequel that yes, really does feature the Megalodon this time. Gulp.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 will be open its doors again for players on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S on October 21. As a global release, it’ll unlock simultaneously for all players regardless of where they are in the world — here’s when that will be in your timezone (and unfortunately, no, there’s no way to unlock the game in early access ahead of its street date).
“Just about everything I’ve seen so far of Jurassic World Evolution 3 has me excited to thrill my guests and make my lawyers nervous,” we wrote in IGN’s Jurassic World Evolution 3’s final preview. “From dino breeding to dramatic and different new park locations to extremely robust customization tools, it feels like it truly deserves its spot at the table with Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster now, rather than relying on the, you know, freakin’ dinosaurs to make up for some of what it was missing.”
Jurassic World Evolution 3 Launch Times
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
PDT (San Francisco):
7am
EDT (New York):
10am
BST (London):
3pm
CEST (Paris, Rome, Berlin):
4pm
EEST (Turkey):
5pm
HKT (Hong Kong):
8pm
CST (Beijing):
8pm
JST (Tokyo):
11pm
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
AEST (Sydney):
12am midnight
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.
Escape from Duckov is an unlikely hit on Steam after half a million sales and big concurrents over the weekend.
The parody of extraction shooter Escape from Tarkov is riding high with 173,394 peak concurrent players on Valve’s platform. That’s enough to make it the sixth most-played game on Steam right now. Only Delta force, Battlefield 6, PUBG, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike 2 are more popular right now.
Escape from Duckov is a PVE top-down looter-shooter game in which you scavenge for resources, build your hideout, and upgrade your gear. “Start from nothing and rise to the top,” reads the official blurb. “Outwit hostile ducks, survive, or make it out alive.”
Following its launch on October 16, Team Soda’s game sold an additional 500,000 copies over the weekend. Its Steam user review rating is sitting pretty at ‘Overwhelmingly Positive.’ “At this moment, the entire dev team is quacking with joy and flapping our wings in excitement!” reads a statement.
Escape from Tarkov, meanwhile, hits Steam on November 15. It will be interesting to see if it beats Escape from Duckov’s concurrent player peak on the platform. A console version is in the works.
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.
The first draft of the script for the movie adaptation of Sleeping Dogs is “done.”
That’s according to Marvel star Simu Liu, who revealed over the weekend that the script for the film was complete, albeit carefully redacting some details from the screenshot. He marked the news by sharing a photo of his own sleeping dog.
in honour of our sleeping dogs script draft being done, here’s my sleepy dog 👍 pic.twitter.com/l1KsFNDj5V
When a commenter responded to the good news and asked if the actor and producer had “worked things out” with the game’s publisher and IP-holder Square Enix, Liu said: “They’re absolutely great, it’s the studios that don’t seem to understand how important this IP is BUT we will get them there.”
If you were hoping for more, I’m afraid Liu shared little else, but it should be good news nonetheless given the adaptation has been languishing in development hell for at least eight years.
As IGN has reported, Story Kitchen is leading the Sleeping Dogs live action feature film project, with Simu Liu, who plays Shang-Chi in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, producing and set to play the lead role of Wei Shen. Story Kitchen has form when it comes to video game adaptations, having worked on everything from the Sonic the Hedgehog films to Netflix’s animated Tomb Raider series.
Sleeping Dogs was first released in 2012 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC and tells the story of detective Wei Shen as he infiltrates one of Hong Kong’s notorious Triad crime syndicates. While it failed to meet publisher Square Enix’s lofty sales expectations, it is much-loved by fans and sequel hopes have followed it ever since. We thought Sleeping Dogs was great, writing in IGN’s Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition review: “Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition doesn’t mess much with what made the original game so great. And that’s a good thing.” It returned an 8.5.
A sequel was canceled in late 2013 just before it entered production, and its original developer, United Front Games, shut down three years later.
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.
Lana Del Rey looks to have gotten a second chance at recording a James Bond theme, this time for the upcoming video game 007 First Light.
Eagle-eyed fans on reddit have spotted a fresh song titled “First Light” that has been registered by Del Rey, real name Elizabeth Grant, to the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers).
While not a full confirmation, Del Rey performing the game’s theme would be a neat fit, after the singer’s 2005 track “24” was snubbed for Daniel Craig outing Spectre, the franchise’s 24th movie. IGN has contacted IO Interactive for more.
Last year, Del Rey revealed she had written that track as a Bond theme, only for Sam Smith’s “Writing’s On the Wall” to ultimately get picked instead.
“I wrote that for them,” Del Rey told BBC News previously. “Sam, you did a wonderful job. One day, maybe… But I’m going to continue to do my little Nancy Sinatra thing every now and then and just pretend it’s the title track.”
The Bond franchise typically commissions several potential theme songs for each movie release, with numerous “lost” Bond tracks recorded by famous artists over the years. Johnny Cash recorded a theme for Thunderball, for example, while Pulp had a take on Tomorrow Never Dies.
And, like Del Ray, Radiohead also recorded a theme for Spectre (just titled “Spectre”) which they also previously released.
As for the promising-looking 007 First Light, developer IO Interactive seems more than happy teasing details out over time — such as the long-awaited confirmation that, yes, Dexter: Original Sin’s Patrick Gibson is indeed playing its fresh-faced Bond. More recently, we also learned that Marvel star Gemma Chan will also portray a character in the game.
007 First Light has set a release date of March 27, 2026, for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.
