Crack open Kaizen like a disposable camera, and you’ll find the parts inside are very similar to a subgenre of puzzle game called Sokoban. Developed in the late 80s, these games put you in control of a worker shoving crates around a warehouse floor until they reached their designated position. These sliding puzzles in which you push objects around a space appear throughout gaming. Whenever you’re shoving a great stone block in Tomb Raider, you owe a small salute to Sokoban’s creator Hiroyuki Imabayashi. Though, make sure the block’s not on a slope when you do it, otherwise that’s a quick way to make a jar’s worth of Lara paste.
“AI adoption can face strong resistance in creative areas”.
While rivals such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft have jumped into the world of Generative AI development with both feet, not every company in the games industry is willing to throw caution to the wind.
During a Q&A session following its recent Q2 financial results, Sega‘s top brass addressed the use of AI when it comes to making games (thanks, VGC) and how it will help tackle the increasing costs of development.
Nintendo fans are unhappy about a $30 Metroid Prime 4: Beyond amiibo figurine that lets you turn on your motorbike’s radio.
As previously announced, the Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Samus amiibo unlocks a range of in-game features, including an energy shield that blocks 99 damage — limited to one use per day. But fan discussion has now centered on the fact this amiibo also unlocks a jukebox feature for Samus’ Vi-O-La motorbike, which allows you to hear other themes from the game.
Discussion around the rights and wrongs of Nintendo providing extra features for amiibo owners is nothing new, and dozens of Nintendo games include exclusive additions for people who own associated figurines (or borrow them from friends). Additionally, in this case, there have also been a number of inaccuracies shared over the radio’s usage, with some reports incorrectly stating that it includes otherwise exclusive music, or that the bike’s main Sol Valley area is silent otherwise.
It’s true that the Sol Valley’s etheral, ambient music is relatively sparse — the desert-like area is meant to be a wasteland, after all, and a notably different environment from the game’s main areas that Samus once again explores on foot.
Still, some fans have suggested that it would have been nice to have the option of turning on the in-game radio without buying a $29.99 toy, which — while a familiar argument for Nintendo games with amiibo-exclusive features — seems fair enough.
“Couldn’t they have given us that jukebox mode in the first place instead of having us buy an accessory to unluck said jukebox mode?” wrote Nintendo fan knightedwolf851 on reddit. “Spending more money on a game we already bought for 70-80 bucks?”
“Honestly, if the DLC is something that doesn’t effect the gameplay and story then I’m fine with this,” countered another fan, Kerrpllady. “It is a cosmetic that doesn’t impact the game. (Unlike the the Skyward Sword teleport, which I think that mechanic removed some decision making from the game anyways.)”
“30 dollars to kill the intended ambiance? Okay then,” quipped a third fan, The_Pepper_Oni.
i genuinely think the desert would have been at least 3x better if they had put some BANGING music behind it. But it just feels so…vapid #MetroidPrime4pic.twitter.com/xqCAPxBgWP
“Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is an excellent, if relatively uneven, revival that reaches heights worthy of the Metroid name in its best moments,” IGN wrote in our Metroid Prime 4: Beyond review, scoring the game an 8/10.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who played Shang Tsung in the original Mortal Kombat movie as well as video game Mortal Kombat 11, has died aged 75.
The star of The Last Emperor, Memoirs of a Geisha, and The Man in the High Castle, died Thursday in Santa Barbara due to complications from a stroke, Deadline reported.
Tagawa famously played evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in the 1995 adaptation of the Mortal Kombat video game, becoming an instantly recognizable face for an army of fans. In the movie, Shang Tsung points to a helpless Liu Kang while holding his brother, Chan hostage, and declares: “your brother’s soul is mine!” Tagawa would go on to make his ‘Your soul is mine!’ line an iconic part of Shang Tsung lore, and it has endured in the 30 years since. After the original Mortal Kombat movie, Tagawa went on to play Shang Tsung multiple times, including in 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11, where his voice and physical likeness was used — much to the delight of fans.
Other film roles included Kwang in James Bond movie Licence to Kill, Commander Minoru Genda in Pearl Harbor, and Heihachi Mishima in the 2009 Tekken movie and its 2014 sequel, Tekken 2: Kazuya’s Revenge.
Tagawa’s last major role came in 2015, when he played one of the lead characters in Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle. His final role was voicing Eiji the Swordmaker in Season 1 of Netflix’s well-received animated Blue Eye Samurai.
Ed Boon, development chief at Mortal Kombat studio NetherRealm, paid tribute to Tagawa in a post on social media. “We lost a legend today,” he said. “We had the privilege of his portrayal on the first MK film but also as an amazing voice actor in the Mortal Kombat 11 game. Cary was one of a kind. He combined danger, swagger and athleticism to his roles and will always be remembered as the man who first brought Shang Tsung to life on film. Rest in Peace. Your soul is eternal.”
Todd Garner, producer on the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie as well as its upcoming sequel, also took to social media, saying: “Sad news. Great man. Great actor. He will be missed.”
We lost a legend today. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa @CHTOfficial played Shang Tsung in the 1995 Mortal Kombat film and sadly passed away at age 75. We had the privilege of his portrayal on the first MK film but also as an amazing voice actor in the Mortal Kombat 11 game.
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.
If you’re a fan of gruff blokes punching goons and putting the pedal to the metal in muscle cars, Samson looks like it’ll be up your alley. It’s the debut game of Liquid Swords, the Swedish studio founded by former Just Cause and Mad Max developer Christofer Sundberg, and mirrors the gritty open-world destructive mayhem both of those are known for.
Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP players can look forward to a free update in “mid-December” which will see the release of the fan-designed “Cutie Zombie Hunter” costume for Juliet.
This costume won a special costume design contest and will be followed by additional winning designs from the same competition in future updates. You can see the other submissions on the game’s official campaign page. And here’s a look at the winning design:
It’s not every day there’s a new Metroid release, and after an 18-year wait since the last major entry in the Prime series, the fourth adventure is finally here.
To mark this occasion, Metacritic has now rounded up every Metroid game in its database to share a look at each title’s metascore (based on the aggregate score of critic reviews). This includes not only the Prime games but also the spin-offs, Samus’ 2D outings, and the re-releases.
Many Switch games have been receiving compatibility updates for the Switch 2, and following an update to one of Square Enix’s games earlier this week, it seems the indie developer Brace Yourself Games has now rolled out a fix for Crypt of the NecroDancer.
If you’ve been experiencing any crashes when playing this rhythm-based Switch game on the Switch 2, the good news is that a patch has now been rolled out to fix this issue.
World of Warcraft’s housing feature launched this week for everyone who purchased the upcoming Midnight expansion early. Though the feature is still in its early stages, players (including yours truly) are already losing hours upon hours creating elaborate homes with the decor available. But Horde players in particular are really struggling to contend with one major issue: their house exteriors are ugly.
Okay, that’s a little mean. If you play an orc, or are into the orc aesthetics of spikes, flames, haphazard metal plates, and slapdash wooden boards nailed on, the Horde exteriors are fine. The issue is that a lot of the Horde – namely, everyone who doesn’t play an orc – generally prefers a less…grungey aesthetic. Alliance players also only get one exterior housing option, but their homes are fairly standard, inoffensive cottages that most people will find tolerable at worst.
Unfortunately for anyone unhappy with what’s on offer, until Midnight fully launches, this is it. You can customize your exterior in various ways by changing up roof colors and chimney styles, but it’s all in your faction’s default aesthetic. Blizzard has promised that Night Elf and Blood Elf exteriors will arrive on Midnight’s release, with more options planned for later on. But for now you’re stuck with either a cottage or a spike shack one way or another.
Some players, like myself, are just trying to make the best of it with outdoor decorations. Here’s my modest hut. You’d never know that inside is a cozy Shaman retreat, complete with a small magical library, a snug kitchen, and a stone altar dedicated in honor of the elements.
But a lot of players are getting far, far more creative in their attempts to subvert the shabby exterior design. You see, Blizzard’s decoration tools are very, very precise if you want them to be, and can ignore collision if you want them to. Which has led to Horde players trying to mask the orc-ness of their huts by covering them with…well, all sorts of other things.
For instance, this person turned their house into a nice cave:
Unfortunately, in doing this, one issue players are running up against is that there is a limit to how much decor you can put outside, and many of the objects people are using to cover up the orc turrets use up a significant portion of that limit. As a result, if you want to cover your house in rocks, you can’t do much else with your yard. It seems like everyone is begging Blizzard to raise the exterior decor cap, an issue they told us they’re well aware of and working on.
Realistically, this is not a massive issue at the moment: we knew going in that this was effectively an early access feature and some functionality would be limited. More than anything, it’s funny to see the lengths players will go to in order to get creative with the tools they have available to them. Just imagine what they’ll be capable of once they don’t have to waste all their outdoor decor space on big wooden platforms.
World of Warcraft: Midnight launches on March 2, 2026. If you want to get your hands on housing before then, you’ve got to pre-order the expansion – any version of it will do. We recently spoke with Jesse Kurlancheek, housing lead and principal game designer, and Joanna Giannullis, senior UX designer, about the housing feature, including how its gone in the beta so far, and what to expect in Midnight.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
There’s a new game from Fullbright on the way, revealed tonight at the PC Gaming Show, called Springs, Eternal. The studio’s obviously best known for narrative focused games like Gone Home and Tacoma, and Springs, Eternal unsurprisingly looks like more of that, albeit with more of a lo-fi, not-quite PS1 but certainly lower poly kind of vibe, this time set in a hot spring. Sure!
