Warner Bros. Games and Avalanche Software have finally shared a first official look at Hogwarts Legacy running on Nintendo Switch just a few days ahead of launch.
The Magic Awaits trailer, which you can watch below, shows just over two minutes of the hit Harry Potter game running on Switch ahead of its November 14 launch. Somewhat bizarrely, neither the publisher nor developer had shared a single glimpse of gameplay until this trailer, even with it already being available on other platforms.
A handful of cutscenes show the player character beginning their journey as a witch or wizard, by getting a wand at Ollivanders, taking part in their first magic lessons, and so on. The trailer also features some of Hogwarts Legacy’s baddies and monsters that players will need to take on.
In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, developer Massive Entertainment will transport us to the incredible world of James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbusters. But, unlike the studio’s previous Division games, Frontiers of Pandora is played in first-person. This is something that… well, a lot of you have issues with.
With such striking protagonists as the blue, cat-like Na’vi it’s understandable why many people would like to play in third-person. So why is Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in first-person?
“Because we want you to feel immersed, we want you to feel immersed and feel like you’re really on Pandora,” says Ditte Deenfeldt, game director on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. “So it was never really a big discussion for us.”
“This was something that we were completely in agreement with Lightstorm,” explains creative director Magnus Jansen, referring to James Cameron’s film studio, which is aiding in the creation of Frontiers of Pandora. Both Lightstorm and Massive consider Pandora to be the star of the game rather than the Na’vi.
“To be as close to Pandora as possible, to be as immersed into it as you can possibly be, which is (achieved through) the first-person perspective… to me, it was a no-brainer for us to go there,” says Jansen.
“We want you to get up close to nature, which is kind of the main character to some degree in the game, and the very best way of doing that is being in first-person,” sums up Deenfeldt.
We want you to feel immersed and feel like you’re really on Pandora.
With this philosophy, Frontiers of Pandora follows in the footsteps of other games that have placed immersive, tactile environments at the forefront of the experience; games like Thief, Dishonored, and BioShock. But while many games that value immersion stay locked into the first-person perspective, in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora you won’t be seeing the entire game through the eyes of your Na’vi protagonist. When it comes to flying through Pandora’s skies, the camera pulls right out to allow your Na’vi and their Ikran mount to take centre stage. However, as with Massive’s reasoning for using first-person, this second perspective is all about Pandora rather than your character.
“We decided to use the third person camera for the Ikran and also the [ground mount] Direhorse because of the framing that it provides on the world,” reveals associate game director Drew Rechner. “We really liked that [field of view] change. You can see a lot of the tree branches and the leaves and all of those things from the wings in third person that you wouldn’t really be able to see if you were in first-person. And same thing when you cut through the waterfalls with your wings, you get to see that part of the [Ikran] get wet and you see the water run off. Those kinds of details I think would be really difficult to see [in first-person].”
The switch between first and third-person perspectives for mounts will likely have many people asking why Frontiers of Pandora couldn’t offer the ability to switch between viewpoints at will. Afterall, Starfield developer Bethesda has long offered that choice in its RPGs. But Massive says that such a system is not simple to implement as the two perspectives require very different approaches.
“If you want to have high quality of both, you have to make a decision very early” explains Deenfeldt. She notes that creating first and third-person perspectives are very different disciplines – effectively two different games – and so offering both in the same project is “double the work.” A third-person perspective would require entirely different animations and a completely different approach to how you interact with the world.
“When you’re harvesting, or when you are hunting, or just moving around, if you are in third-person that becomes tiny little pixels touching tiny little pixels and you don’t get that particular sense of place and immersion that we really wanted this game to have,” she says.
[In third-person] you don’t get that particular sense of place and immersion that we really wanted this game to have.
By sticking to the first-person perspective Massive has been able to focus on creating incredibly detailed, intricate animations that show the world of Pandora close-up.
“When you are harvesting you grab the fruit and then, as you twist the controller, the hand is in concert with what you do,” explains Jansen. “And that’s sort of mimetic, that it mimics the tactility that comes from that. And the connection and the increased immersion that comes from that has been a huge focus for us.”
Jansen says the team wanted to push this mimetic quality forward and so many smaller details work in concert with those mechanics. For instance, as you walk through the undergrowth, your character’s hands will reach out and push aside grass and branches. This obviously mimics the way Jake Sully explored Pandora in the first Avatar film, but the aim is to help create a tactile bond between the player and the world. As such, first-person was the obvious route.
Putting the camera directly in the head of your protagonist comes with another benefit, too: it really emphasises just how tall a Na’vi is. Seriously, humans are like children in comparison.
“That sense of scale is a really important thing for our game,” says Deenfeldt. “The main enemies are humans and some of the main combat spaces that you fight in are human spaces, so you really get to feel that scale difference.”
“I mean being three metres tall is a huge part of it,” says Jansen. “You go up to a foot soldier and they’re quite small and then you kick them or punch them and they go flying. It’s great fun and a great show of strength, but we try to [show scale] in a lot more [other ways]. Because almost all of the human environments, they’re built for human size. So often when you have to go into a control room, you have to crouch down and you go through this tiny doorway and you really feel your size when you do that.”
That sense of scale contributes to the overall sense of immersion, which as we’ve discovered is the reason that Frontiers of Pandora has been developed as a first-person game. And so while many players were hoping for a third-person Avatar game, hopefully it’s now clear why Massive Entertainment opted for a different route. And, having played two hours of it for our recent preview, I genuinely think the perspective works to properly anchor you into the strange, beautiful world of Pandora.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.
Update, November 10: Argos is the best deal on this bundle at £399.99 while stock lasts. This Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 PS5 bundle is proving to be extremely popular, and has sold out at many retailers already. Amazon, GAME, and Currys also have the deal left for around £409 as well. While these aren’t as good as the original deal, this is still an excellent offer and a tremendous £130-£140 in savings vs the RRP of buying each of these products separately. The original story continues below.
This early Black Friday deal in the UK is already a cut above the rest, and could well be the best discount we see over the holiday shopping season. With the PS5 Slim launching soon globally, we’re already starting to see huge discounts on the previous standard PS5 Disc model and its relevant bundles.
At select UK retailers, you can currently find the PS5 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (2023) bundle for just £399.95, which is already a tremendous discount from the RRP of £539.99, but at the EE Store, you can currently get the bundle for £389.49 with code 5GAMEDAYEE. This will be one of the best Black Friday deals this year, but it’s definitely an early deal as it will expire on November 7 — so act fast to secure your order and avoid disappointment.
Considering the best PS5 deal we had this year was a discount to £400 standalone, this deal which now includes a brand new £70 is hard to ignore. While we also have the PS5 Slim to look forward to, for now, this is absolutely the best PS5 deal available before Black Friday officially kicks off.
If you don’t need the PS5, Modern Warfare 3 is also down to £61.99 at Amazon right now for PS5 and Xbox. We’re expecting to see a lot more deals like this in the coming weeks and throughout November, so stick with IGN or follow @IGNUKDeals on Twitter/X for even more Black Friday updates.
Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.
The mid-gen refresh PS5 — unofficially dubbed the ‘slim’ model — is now available to purchase in select markets. It costs $499.99, and as previously anticipated, this new PS5 slim bundle will feature Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Spider-Man 2 at no additional charge; offering potential buyers savings of $70 compared to purchasing the items separately. For those interested, you can see the new Call of Duty bundle listed at Best Buy, GameStop, or Target.
Buyers should consider all of these a Black Friday deal since it includes a console and a new game at a discount price of $499.99. Remember, if you don’t want either game included in the bundles, you can also just sell on the digital code for additional savings.
In other Black Friday news, DualSense Controllers have once again dropped to its sale price of $49.99 (see here), a reasonable $20-$25 discount depending on which color variant you choose. Amazon is also putting on some early deals, with its latest Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale that includes a whole bunch of PlayStation games like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Mortal Kombat 1, Street Fighter 6, and a slew of others. But, these new PS5 bundles will still likely be the biggest offering this week for PlayStation fans.
Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.
Sledgehammer Games reportedly pitched Call of Duty Advanced Warfare 2, its follow-up to 2014’s Advanced Warfare, only for it to be shelved in order to create Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. This reportedly led to heavy development crunch within the studio.
According to Bloomberg, Sledgehammer Games had to make Modern Warfare 3 in a year-and-a-half rather than the typical three-year development cycle. The development of Modern Warfare 3 was reportedly rushed because of another Call of Duty that was delayed out of the 2023 release window.
Previous reports revealed that Modern Warfare 3 was originally conceived as an expansion to Modern Warfare 2, but that Activision decided to make it into a full sequel. It initially was supposed to take place in Mexico, but finished version fully rebooted the story and instead featured the villain Vladimir Makarov. Sledgehammer studio head Aaron Halon took to social media to say that the game was conceived as a premium game from the beginning.
“On behalf of the extremely talented team across Sledgehammer Games and our partner studios with whom we’ve collaborated on development, this has been a labor of love to lead the first ever back-to-back sequel in Call of Duty,” Hanlon explained.
Statement from Aaron Halon, studio head, SHG. “We’re incredibly proud of Modern Warfare III – both the full game experience at launch and the upcoming year of content we have planned for the community. On behalf of the extremely talented team across Sledgehammer Games and our…
Modern Warfare 3 allows players to carry forward their operators and skins from Modern Warfare 2, which in a sense makes the game the franchise’s first “true” sequel. Unfortunately, former and current employees reportedly were under the impression that it was an expansion at first until much later in development.
As a result, the studio reportedly had to work nights and weekends to finish the game. There were also pipeline inefficiencies as Sledgehammer had to check in with Infinity Ward, the studio who usually handles the Modern Warfare games for feedback. Additionally, they reportedly felt betrayed as they experienced a similar short development cycle with Call of Duty: Vanguard, and the company promised that it wouldn’t happen again.
Furthermore, Sledgehammer also pitched a follow up to 2014’s futuristic Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, codenamed Anvil. However, it was put aside so that the studio would work on another Modern Warfare game that would include the popular zombies mode, multiplayer maps, and a single-player campaign.
Modern Warfare 3’s campaign has been critically panned. In IGN’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 campaign review, we said, “Underbaked, rehashed, and cobbled together from multiplayer parts, Modern Warfare 3’s single-player campaign is everything a Call of Duty story mode shouldn’t be.” The game launches on November 10 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
I wish I lived in Sandrock. It’s a place where a cat can be a celebrated member of the town guard and every street gets fully decked out for the holidays. It’s where newcomers are enthusiastically welcomed, contrary to other Western stories where folks “not from around these parts” are met with suspicion. It’s got plenty of Western staples though; a ranch managed by a salt-of-the-earth family (even if the husband is a little unhinged), a cute main street with a saloon and general store, plenty of lovely Western accents, and of course, a touch of danger. My Time at Sandrock is an excellent entry in an ever-growing list of cozy games, consistently fun while managing to stand apart from the crowd thanks to its theme of optimism grown out of hard times.
As a sequel to the post-apocalyptic RPG town sim My Time at Portia, the desert-based follow-up My Time at Sandrock is deeply familiar. Like its predecessor, you’ve come to this struggling town to assist in improving and growing it by building items and relationships. Learning to build an efficient workshop was a great joy, and I’m proud of how I can take on townie requests and build main story items with relative ease by the end of the 75 hours I’ve spent with it so far.
Along the way you’ll have to gather resources, use those resources to build specific items for main story quests, side quests, or optional commissions, and then use the money earned (combined with the increased prestige of your workshop) to invest in better equipment to make even more items. It can be a grind early on, but it’s just the calm kind of grind I’m looking for in these games. Progression is steady both in terms of new quests and new things to create, which meant I never lost interest.
Resource gathering starts with digging through scrap piles and kicking trees, eventually working up to diving into old world ruins that are generally safe apart from the occasional trap. Mining is once again a relaxing and quiet activity that has an added drop of excitement thanks to a special rat enemy that appears at random when breaking an object. If it’s slain, it’ll drop gold and other valuable rewards. I appreciate that this wrinkle kept me on my toes without interrupting the flow of mining much.
My Time at Sandrock makes excellent use of its desert setting
Getting wood poses a unique challenge; as a city nestled in a desert plagued with sandstorms, keeping any deep-rooted plants alive is a priority for the townsfolk. With that in mind, cutting down any trees in Sandrock’s city limits results in a fine for offenders and damages relationships with townsfolk. It’s one of several ways Sandrock makes excellent use of its desert setting. I may have accidentally forgotten this once, leaving me with a warning from a cheery but concerned member of the church. The stump of the tree I almost destroyed still stands just outside my workshop as a good reminder of my mistake.
Sandrock’s story has three main plotlines; one is about defending the town and general area from mutant lizards called Geeglers; another is about discovering how to reverse the desertification brought on by a “relic rush” that sucked the town dry of resources; and finally, a hunt for a bandit called Logan, a former child of the community who went bad after mysterious events. One of the three storylines is almost always active with maybe only few days of downtime between them, so they kept me busy. I was excited whenever a new thread began as it’s hard to guess what storyline is going to kick up next.
All three of these threads are enjoyable to pull, though I was most interested in Logan’s story as his turn to banditry befuddled many in the town. It got even more enticing as his actions against the town intensified. I love how almost everyone in the town has something new to say after a major story beat as well. As you’d imagine, most story objectives are completed by building new essential items and structures, like a new water tower, or occasionally going out and clearing out baddies from old world ruins.
Combat in Sadrock is similar to Portia’s in that it’s still a basic but serviceable hack-and-slash system that’s best in short encounters, which is what occurs most throughout Sandrock. Aiming down the sights of guns for an alternate third-person perspective is a nice addition, but doesn’t drastically improve a given fight. Dungeons in Sandrock are woefully straightforward and tend to err on the side of boring if you attempt to explore them in their entirety. Some enemies have interesting attack patterns and designs, including bosses, but with combat being so simple and my character being rather tanky, you’re only ever in any real danger if you go into an area where you’re drastically under-leveled.
Combat is still a basic but serviceable hack-and-slash system.
Sandrock allegedly boasts tons of weapons, but aside from boring throwing rocks, I only saw stronger variants of five melee options and two different guns. Finding a meaningful puzzle element or a new weapon for every forced dungeon crawl could have made them more appealing. There’s an attempt to have side rooms with optional treasure chests, but exploring these dungeons to find every chest just doesn’t feel worth it. Chests in dungeons and around the world rarely have anything of significant value, ranging from a small handful of money to a new food recipe. The latter is nice, but I’d prefer to get a unique clothing item, a new weapon, or maybe even a complex component that I could put toward a new project instead.
In addition to the main story, there’s a constant stream of side quests born out of the needs of the Sandrock residents. Some seem to happen based on the time of year, but most come from relationship benchmarks. Sandrock’s residents are excellent, and I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface on a handful of their stories. Where Portia’s residents could be dull or too stereotypical, I found Sandrock’s residents to be vibrant. Plenty of residents have a mix of accents, including thick western ones that lend an air of authenticity to the Wild West setting. They lean on melodrama and iconic movie and TV references for humor, too, and it usually works well – yes, I did enjoy the mention of the knockoff Gundam show and reversals of iconic Star Wars quotes. But even so, the character writing is smart, both in being clever and going over my head when it came to some of the local researcher’s in-depth science talk.
There’s an impressive number people to meet too, with more than 45 friendable characters in Sandrock, and even more new townsfolk moving in as the story progresses. Occasional NPCs come through town for story beats as well and aren’t necessarily available for friendship activities like gifting, but they add to the feel of Sandrock as a growing town worthy of people just passing through. Some of my favorite characters included a rancher named Cooper who has a knack for highly detailed rants that usually wind around the bend to end in an odd place. If you listen to his rants rather than choosing an option to fall asleep and skip them, you can even gain minor stat buffs, which was a funny surprise. Not every character is written to be friendly or chatty, though. Another one of my favorites, the doctor Fang, hardly talks at all and instead lets his raven X speak for him. He doesn’t even accept gifts until you’re able to convince him otherwise through persistence and eventual side quests.
The side quests in question are almost always about a character’s background or ambitions, or both, and there wasn’t a single one I felt was a waste of time. Completing some side quests is the only way to get access to new minigames and activities in Sandrock. Doing these extra tasks earns relationship points with the involved parties, which in turn leads to new dialogue lines, bonuses like the occasional gift or shop discounts, and the potential chance for romance. There are a whopping 21 romanceable characters in Sandrock and I’ll admit it was hard to choose one person to woo. Getting closer to a character isn’t only an opportunity to get an extra hand at your workshop in the future, but also leads to special relationship quests. Though it can take a bit of time to build up to friendship through gifting, daily chats, and completing quests or commissions, Sandrock does a stellar job with this system and relationship progress feels much faster than Portia’s.
I appreciated the extra challenge managing water brought.
Aside from the obvious difference of featuring new characters, another major change from Portia to Sandrock is how the desert setting plays into the town’s economy and other challenges. I love how water is a focal point of not only the story but also the gameplay itself. Water is essential for running your workshop – if the water tank is empty, the machines don’t work. Water can actually be crafted by gathering dew from shrubbery or using a dew collector, or barrels of water can purchased from Sandrock directly. However, if something like, say, the town bridge blows up resulting in no water being imported, water prices rise significantly.
Though I didn’t struggle too much with the water economy, I appreciated the extra challenge it brought when considering how I wanted to expand my workshop. For instance, when I was first introduced to farming, my other workshop machines were forced to a halt as I had to use all my stored water for the plants. Since then, I’ve been able to manage the water needs of plants and machines much better. Seasons impact water usage too, with the cool days of winter requiring significantly less water for your machines. There’s even the occasional sandstorm that alters the residents’ schedules, which also causes completed workshop items to blow away and a buildup of sand on machines that needs to be cleaned in order for them to work efficiently.
In addition to the new setting, Sandrock has a great number of quality-of-life improvements, including better menus, icons above creatures to indicate whether or not they’re friendly or hostile, free sprinting rather than limiting sprinting with a stamina bar, the ability to save and leave at any point rather than having to wait to go to sleep, and so much more. One of the biggest improvements is being able to build and complete item requests with items stored away in chests back at your workshop rather than needing them actively on hand. There are tons of items coming and going and getting processed into new things constantly, so not having to meticulously manage each was a huge relief.
And in addition to crafting items, farming, taking care of animals, relationship building, sandfishing (fish live in sandpools here), cooking, decorating my house, and mining, there’s even more to do with minigames. Some of these pop up during special holiday events, but there are also one-off games to play at almost any time at the local game center. My favorite was a simple whack-a-mole with various difficulty settings that could be played with NPCs or solo. Another great one requires you to find constellations in a star-filled night sky based on NPC requests. One of the unlockable sand racing minigames could use some tweaking to make the steering better, but I appreciate it as an option for multiplayer competitions. Sandrock is truly jampacked with choices, and like with Portia, they’re almost all fun in short bursts as you jump between them.
Sandrock suffers from some wavering polish on the technical front.
There’s even more to do on top of all that; there are tons of upgrades, including ones that I still don’t have for my horse, for my mining jetpack and sensor goggles, and for various machines throughout my workshop. There are still romances I have to pursue (of people not even in the town yet too!), and many more side quests. Even with as many hours as I have played and all the quests I’ve done, I still don’t have my four skill trees completed (gathering, workshop, combat, and social). That said, I do wish some of the skills were geared toward the endgame rather than the first dozen hours or so. In the gathering tree, one is specifically for digging in piles of junk for resources, which is something you only need to do in the opening few hours. I put my early points toward skills that got me more in the long run instead, so that dirt pile skill still sits unlearned.
Sandrock suffers from some wavering polish on the technical front, too. On PC, assets and textures pop-in noticeably unless you manually go in and bump the settings to the highest options, which isn’t ideal for a game with relatively low recommended PC specs. Xbox had similar issues as well, though the performance or quality mode didn’t help with the asset loading much. While that is more of a minor annoyance and is easy to get used to, I’ve seen other persistent visual bugs. I’ve watched conversations happen through my character’s skull, shrubs fly oddly in the sky, and other weird interactions. There hasn’t been anything game breaking as far as I’ve seen, but I hope we see the sheer number of weird visual bugs get patched out over time.
PC Co-Op Multiplayer
Where the campaign asks for your help in saving Sandrock from economic collapse, Sandrock’s multiplayer asks for your help in building up Sandrock from its basics. While currently exclusive to the PC version, I was shocked at first to see places like the general store, scrap yard, and even the train station and train tracks were missing from Sandrock entirely. There are rockslides and junk blocking shortcuts through town, too. Up to four players can work together to clean up the town and determine what new facilities get built. Town planner progression is paced first by the group’s workshop level and then by resources required to build the facility and its potential upgrades. So, like the campaign, building prestige for yourself as a builder allows you to access more. It’s still a solid system and a neat spin on the campaign. New facilities also mean new people in town. I can see myself trying to convince friends to help prioritize unlocking the buildings for characters I like most from the campaign.
Other key differences include removing the need for sleeping by a certain time. In the campaign, you pass out immediately if the clock hits 3:00 AM, but players can keep at it in multiplayer for as long as they want. It rocks. Better yet, there’s an added nap function that can be used once per in-game day that quickly refills stamina and health. The skill trees are completely different as well, and there’s an excellent daily task system and achievements not present in the campaign that can earn you extra money and experience. The three daily challenges reset after an in-game day, too, and are the same (but not shared) across all players. Players also have to share a plot of land and money and can share resources and contribute parts to build items.
One of the best things about Sandrock’s co-op is that anyone can hop into the multiplayer town even if the person who hosted it is offline, which isn’t the case for one of my favorites, Stardew Valley. There’s even a board where you can leave messages to friends. I was also impressed by how difficulty in dungeons scale based on the number of people going in, and they did seem more challenging than in the campaign as a result. The chests in dungeons and around the world even have good loot, with fully built machinery and items that award stat bonuses to all when they’re used as decor on workshop grounds.
While I was only able to play a few hours of co-op multiplayer before this review, after my brief stint I’m determined to get lots more in. There’s enough that’s changed between multiplayer and the campaign to justify digging deep into both – besides, it’s the perfect opportunity to choose a different person to romance, too.
This article contains spoilers for the story of Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2.
Insomniac’s latest patch has removed a popular glitch for Spider-Man 2, which allowed players to escape the confines of a main story mission to free roam through the digital streets of New York city while controlling the symbiotic supervillain Venom.
After playing through Spider-Man 2’s expertly crafted main story, some fans were left disappointed with how little time they got to spend playing as the title’s main antagonist: the shape-shifting alien symbiote Venom.
Sadly, the glitch was something of a monkey’s paw, as while it did grant players their hearts desire of exploring as Venom, it also had a nasty habit of corrupting the save file in which it was exploited. As a result, Insomniac’s latest patch included a fix for the game-breaking aberration, much to the disappointment of some players, who live in hope that the developer may add more symbiote-centric content to its game.
“Here’s hoping they actually give us more Venom gameplay as a bonus in the future,” chimed in Reddit user InvestigatorUnfair. “Clearly they saw people having fun with free-roam Venom. Surely they wouldn’t just completely ignore the people that enjoy playing as the big buff goo alien.” Others went even more ambitious with their Venom thirst, asking for bespoke game modes, or even an entire spinoff title centred around the comic book inspired character.
“They need to add Venom challenges or something so we can go back and play as him,” said SVALTACT. “Imagine a roguelike open world mode where you have to try to survive for as long as possible while being hunted.”
This isn’t the first time Insomniac has removed a popular Spider-Man 2 bug. Just last week the developer patched out an error that caused Peter and Miles’ character models to be replaced by a small white cube, which was quickly dubbed Spider-Cube by the fanbase.
Here are the Spider-Man 2 version 1.001.005 patch notes in full:
General Fixes & Polish:
Addressed an issue where NPCs could spawn on top of each other in boats
Addressed an issue where MJ could be defeated in one hit on higher difficulty settings
Addressed multiple issues where hiding the HUD would cause some missions to fail to trigger
Addressed an issue where collision was missing on the floor in the harbor
Further addressed issues where players could become stuck in the finale of Marko’s Memories
Addressed an issue where players could switch character during the defeat sequence.
Addressed an issue where the player could become stuck running on a wall
Addressed an issue where the wrong Spider-Man could receive phone calls if the player switched characters during a call
Addressed an issue where the player could lose the ability to jump
Addressed multiple issues where inputs would not register after zipping to a point
Addressed an issue where the game would not properly reload after being defeated by a boss.
Addressed an issue where Peter Parker could become stuck on a bench or railing.
Addressed an issue where Spider-Man could clip through the map and become stuck during combat
Addressed an issue where the Hang Ten Trophy would not count flips accurately
Addressed an issue where inputs would not register after grabbing a memory crystal
Further addressed issues where models would not load properly after long play sessions
Addressed an issue where the player character could leave a mission and enter the open world resulting in corrupted saves
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
Braid, considered by many to be one of the greatest indie games of all time, is set for an Anniversary Edition on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, PC, and Netflix on April 30, 2024. A Mac and Linux release is due out later.
Braid is a puzzle-platform game originally released in August 2008 by designer Jonathan Blow at the height of the Xbox 360’s Xbox Live Arcade service. Gameplay revolves around an eye-catching time-manipulation mechanic players use to progress.
The Anniversary Edition includes improved sound and new mixes and variants of the soundtrack by Martin Stig Andersen (Control, Inside) and Hans Christian Kock. Crucially, there are ‘hand-repainted’ graphics by original artist David Hellman, and animations with extra frames for smoother in-game motion.
You’re able to switch back and forth between the old and new Braid on the fly. There’s a developer commentary track, too.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Microsoft has released a handy Xbox update that makes it nice and clear if a game you play is leaving Game Pass soon.
As reported by Pure Xbox, players will now be presented with a pop-up message when they go to play a game that will soon leave the subscription service. “This game is leaving Game Pass after November 15,” the current message reads for this month’s departures.
“[This game] will no longer be a part of the Game Pass library,” the message continues. “Add it to your wishlist so you’ll know if it comes back or goes on sale. Or buy it now for up to 20% off to keep on playing.”
(New Feature) Xbox adds new Feature to remind you when games are Leaving #XboxGamePass soon
This is a great QOL feature that’s great for both Xbox and consumers. They give you a link to the store to purchase the game with the game pass discount before the game leaves the… pic.twitter.com/xXysYOP5BR
The less wholesome part of this is Microsoft steering players towards actually buying the game, of course, though it is an undeniably useful feature regardless and many users will want to continue playing their games. Microsoft also offers Game Pass games for 20% off if bought proper, so players will now have a heads-up to buy their games before they go back to full price.
The message appears when players go to play a game that’s leaving Game Pass soon, whether it’s already installed on the console or played via cloud streaming, and seems to appear two weeks before the game’s leaving date.
Star Wars Hunters was delayed to ensure the development team meets “that highest level of quality”, Zynga said, but just like last year it didn’t offer anything more specific.
What makes the seemingly troubled development even more bizarre is that Star Wars Hunters is already available to some players through a soft launch in select countries. “We are thankful to all of our fans who have played Star Wars Hunters in soft launch and have loved the engagement and enthusiasm for the game shown in our soft launch territories,” Zynga said.
“Game delays are frustrating, for both fans and us as developers, but our top priority remains to ensure players have the best possible experience. We continue to strive towards that goal on Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS devices. Thank you for your understanding and we’ll see you in the arena soon.”
