Still Wakes The Deep and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 developers The Chinese Room have laid off a number of staff, seemingly as part of parent company Sumo Digital’s wider strategic decision in February 2025 to move away from original game creation and “focus exclusively on development services for partners”.
Dune: Awakening developer Funcom said it is aware that “players are reporting being cut out of the endgame due to the extremely competitive nature of the Deep Desert.”
Last week, Funcom assured players in an AMA it was already “formulating a plan” to improve PvP in the Deep Desert, which players have previously branded as “toxic” due to griefing even after patching out the ability for players to squish other people with their Ornithopter.
In a candid letter from the creative director, Joel Bylos said: “So let me start by stating this unequivocally — we want PvE players to be able to play the endgame and have access to the content of the endgame. Our goal is not to force PvE players to interact with a PvP system that they may have no interest in.
“We still believe in the core concept of the Deep Desert — an endlessly renewing location that resets every week and creates an activity loop for great rewards. The tension of heading out there, head on a swivel, eyes peeled for foes as you enter the most dangerous part of the most dangerous planet in the universe, Our wish was that players would embrace this loop, forming guilds to work together to overcome the bleakness of the Deep Desert. But as Stephen King says, ‘Wish in one hand, sh*t in the other, see which one fills up first.’ One of my hands is overflowing right now and sadly not with wishes.”
Bylos admitted that the “extremely competitive nature” of the Deep Desert was forcing players to engage when they may prefer PvP, and consequently, some areas of the Deep Desert will now be flagged as “Partial Warfare (PvE)” where players can grab rare resources without getting ambushed. The largest spice fields, shipwrecks and Landsraad control points will remain “War of Assassins (PvP)” as “high reward, high risk” areas.
That said, the whole game is balanced around guilds and groups, so if you prefer to be a lone wolf, you can expect it to be “grindy if [you] play solo.”
As for the Orni griefing? “Thopters will always be incredibly important for crossing the desert, but they shouldn’t also be the dominant force in actual battles,” Bylos said, adding that the following will be implemented “shortly”:
Finally, the Landsraad. Bylos defines it as “an umbrella for all endgame activities,” such as dungeons, contracts, and “more specialized delivery tasks.”
“As a system it is an activity driver that is designed to promote the conflict between the factions, internal politics between the guilds, while providing goal thresholds for individuals and groups to work towards getting personal rewards,” the director explained. “And the Landsraad should be doing that for everyone who wants to participate in the elder game, be they PvEer or PvPer. The Landsraad should be giving you things to do every day and every week.
“It’s nothing new, from a design perspective, we’ve seen daily/weekly quest systems in games for a long time. Our approach was to try and frame this system around the greater politics of the Dune universe, by having players engage in activities to earn the votes of the various Landsraad houses.” Consequently, Funcom will shortly be addressing “key flaws” in the Landsraad design, too, including stockpiling, which is currently rewarded but was not designed to be that way.
“Once a live game launches, it becomes a collaborative effort between the developers and the players to make it something amazing,” Bylos concluded. “We appreciate your feedback on what we hope is the beginning of a long journey together.
“Bear with us — our intention is to be clear and open in our communications and to make Dune: Awakening a game that everybody can enjoy.”
We gave Dune: Awakening a Great 8/10 in our review, writing: “Dune: Awakening is an excellent survival MMO that captures Frank Herbet’s sci-fi world incredibly well, mostly to its advantage and occasionally to its detriment. The survival climb from dehydrated peasant to powerful warlord of Arrakis is a joy almost every step of the way, and the story and worldbuilding filled this nerd with absolute joy. There’s still plenty for Awakening to work on though, as its combat never really hits its stride, the endgame is a bit of a chaotic mess not worth the effort.”
If all that’s got you interested, make sure to check out all the Dune: Awakening classes you can choose from, and keep an eye on our in-progress Dune: Awakening walkthrough for a step-by-step guide to the story. To help you survive on Arrakis, we’ve got Dune: Awakening resource guides that’ll help you find iron, steel, aluminium, and a Dune: Awakening Trainers locations guide.
Dune: Awakening has enjoyed a superb launch, with a ‘very positive’ user review rating on Steam. Within hours of going live on June 10, Funcom’s survival MMO had clocked up over 142,000 concurrent players on Valve’s platform, and hit a new high earlier this month of 189,333 players. And it’s already clocked up over 1 million players, too, making it Funcom’s fastest-selling game ever.
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.
Carcinisation comes for us all, in time. Today, it is Total War: Warhammer 3‘s turn. The crustacean nation mod adds four legendary lords, heroes, 27 crabulous units, new spells, plus custom tech and building trees for a complete crab-paign experience. It would have been shellfish of me not to share, if not downright altruistic to avoid any and all crab puns.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds removes “unfair” and “stressful” items.
A cornerstone of the Mario Kart experience is, for better or worse, the dreaded Blue Shell.
Seen as a means of keeping the playing field (relatively) level, this item targets the player in first place, and has been the cause of much frustration over the decades—to the point where some people argue it’s actually a disadvantage to be in first position for much of each Mario Kart race.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Update: The Pokémon Company has officially announced its new series for its popular trading card game, Mega Evolution. Its first expansion will be titled “Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution.” More information will be revealed on July 10, 2025.
It’s expected to launch in September this year, while Japan’s equivalents, “Mega Brave” and “Mega Symphonia”, will launch in August. The original story continues below.
Just when you thought the Pokémon TCG had enough going on with Destined Rivals and Black Bolt and White Flare, in comes a brand new series altogether with the Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia sets (Update: Mega Evolution for English markets).
Originally announced at Japan’s Championship tournament, as reported by PokeBeach and later confirmed by The Pokémon Company, the two new sets featuring Mega Lucario ex and Mega Gardevoir ex mark the popular trading card game stepping away from its Scarlet and Violet era.
Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia will release on August 1, 2025, in Japan, and in September for English markets as “Mega Evolution”.
Instead of the long-running Scarlet and Violet block, it will now focus on the Mega Evolutions from the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A game.
Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia will contain 63 cards each, before secret rares are taken into account, and officially kick off the new Mega block of cards. Visually impressive full-art Pokémon and item cards were shown off as well. These include Rare Candy, Night Stretcher, Bulbasaur, Vulpix, and Inteleon.
Both sets have been reported to have a Pokémon Center Mega set, including 60 packs of cards amongst two boxes, a card storage box featuring the respective set’s cover Pokémon, four dividers, a deck box featuring Acerola or Lillie, and card sleeves featuring the same character. This has been priced at 12,800 yen (around $87 today), although the official US pricing hasn’t been revealed yet.
Better quality images of Bulbasaur, Vulpix & Inteleon AR’s from Pokemon Mega Brave & Mega Symphonia pic.twitter.com/VTMqIui97d
— Magic Madhouse (@magicmadhouse) June 23, 2025
There will also be a Premium Trainer Box releasing at 6,350 yen in Japan (around $47), with the official US pricing also currently unknown. This will contain 20 packs, 10 of Mega Brave & Mega Symphonia each, 51 unique cards, a storage box, a Poison/Burn marker, damage counters and case, and a damage storage box.
As also shared by PokeBeach in early June, The Pokémon Company informed tournament organisers at the time that pre-release allocations will be even lower than usual, adding to the TCG’s continued problem of stock shortages.
For when we have more concrete details on preorders for the Pokémon TCG’s English versions of Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia in the US and UK, we’ll update this article so you can try and get a jump on them right away.
For more on Pokémon TCG, check out IGN’s full release schedule for 2025 expansions, our Black Bolt and White Flare preorder guide, and our full breakdown on the most valuable cards you can still find in packs right now.
Ben Williams – IGN freelance contributor with over 10 years of experience covering gaming, tech, film, TV, and anime. Follow him on Twitter/X @BenLevelTen.
Checked out.
Many libraries offer services where you can experience and even borrow video games. Unfortunately, a 45-year-old Oakland man named Jamal Reed-Obafumi has been arrested after being accused of stealing “approximately $10,000 worth” of Nintendo Switch video games from Marin County Libraries, located in Northern California.
Marin County’s Sheriff’s Detectives arrested Reed-Obafumi last week after he was “connected to a string of at least seven different burglaries of Marin County Libraries”. This took place between April and June 2025 across multiple branches.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Go on, tell us.
Apart from the new free roam mode in Mario Kart World, Nintendo’s latest kart racing outing also brings a new racing mode known as ‘Knockout Tour’. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically Mario Kart’s take on the battle royale genre, where it’s the last kart standing as racers are eliminated after each section of the course.
It’s now almost been one month since the new entry hit the track and it’s got us wondering how much success our community has had so far in this new mode. Have you won a race yet? Have you been on the cusp of greatness but denied by a blue shell at the last minute? Vote in our poll and let us know in the comments below.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Great news, everyone: The latest Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set has arrived, and it includes some great cards.
The arrival of a new set has already given rise to refreshed synergies with some forgotten cards seeing a boost, but naturally, the latest influx of cardboard has caused prices to climb and others to fall.
We’re seeing serious drops across Final Fantasy cards as more cards enter the market and things start to settle down post-release. That’s a good sign for anyone looking to pick up a few chase cards standalone rather than ripping open more packs than your bank account can handle.
Take Lightning, Army of One, for example. Her Borderless variant was sitting around $90, but has now dropped to around $50. Will it climb again? It’s hard to say, but we’ll keep an eye on it.
The latest version of Rhystic Study, dubbed ‘Stay with Me’ and featuring gorgeous full-art of Tidus and Yuna is also down to around $100, having been over $230 not long ago. It’s one of the most popular cards from the “Through the Ages” collection, so well worth keeping an eye on right now.
The Borderless version of Cloud, Midgar Mercenary is also down to around $50 now, a drop of around $60 from launch week.
Vivi is also still rising in value this week, but it’s still a sharp drop from the $100 market demand last time we looked at him. He can be found for around $55-60 right now, so keep an eye on this one.
Finally, Sephiroth, Fallen Hero’s Extended Art version has crash-landed from around $100 to just $7 since the pre-release day pricing, that’s a big ol’ drop, and a good example as why it’s good to wait and see on how the market will fall post-release of a big set like this.
As we covered recently, Final Fantasy’s cards have bizarrely given some syngizing Doctor Who cards a mega boost in value. For starters, Danny Pink’s ability to draw cards from counters makes him an ideal pickup for your Tidus Commander Deck, but the price has climbed steeply from $4 to over $12 already.
Next up, Barbara Wright might not be the first card you think of when playing Final Fantasy cards, but her Read Ahead ability means she can manipulate Summons from the new set to get to the best effects more quickly. She’s still going for around $4, so she isn’t as pricey as Danny, but she was a dollar not long ago.
Another Tidus synergy, Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus is a Phyrexian Horror that, admittedly, wouldn’t look out of place in a Final Fantasy battle. He can double your proliferation of counters, which is ideal for Tidus’ deck. He’s gone from $6 not long ago to over $14 now.
Aside from our Blitzball star, Vivi Ornitier is getting plenty of love from players (I packed one myself, hooray!). One card that works well with him is the Flame of Anor, an instant with a trio of effects you can pick one of. If you control a Wizard (like our adorable friend), then you can pick two. It’s up to around $3, with the foil going for over $4. Not big numbers, sure, but not long ago it was a $2 card and it could climb yet.
If you’ve ever wanted to upset pals in a casual game of Commander, Mesmeric Orb can pair nicely with either Final Fantasy’s The Water Crystal or if someone at your table is playing the Mothman Fallout deck.
The first of those combos will get your friends milling themselves endlessly, while the latter can spread so many Rad counters that it could end up being the shortest game of Commander in history. Mesmeric Orb just hit $24 and could climb higher, a $7 increase week-on-week.
Everything else Final Fantasy is pretty hot right now, so if you manage to find anything in stock, it might be worth picking up ASAP to avoid disapointment.
Looking for more TCG discussion and market watch? Check out the full MTG release schedule for 2025, last week’s MTG price movers and shakers, or, on the Pokemon side of things, our latest crashers and climbers for Pokemon TCG and the most expensive cards going right now for Pokemon trainers.
Lloyd Coombes is Gaming Editor @ Daily Star. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay. He’s also a tech, gaming, and fitness freelancer seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar, Tom’s Guide, IGN, and more.
Thanks to the lovely folks at TCGPlayer for the info and data that informed this article.
Reach is one of the coolest VR games I’ve played in a long time. Chasing the high of classic cinematic action games like Tomb Raider or Uncharted, I had a blast climbing ledges, jumping between buildings, and popping enemies while dual-wielding pistols in NDreams’ latest. With dynamic movement and a surprisingly accurate sense of full-body awareness, I can’t wait to see more from this one, even if I got a little dizzy jumping as I platformed my way through the first level.
VR games often need to tow a delicate balance. Moving in a 3D space with stick-based movement is a surefire way to cause motion sickness for a lot of players, so a majority of VR games are designed in a way that takes both point-and-teleport-based movement and stick-based movement into account. But after a demo that featured a lot of running, jumping, and platforming, I’m pleased to say that I didn’t feel that creeping, bottom-of-the-stomach sensation I sometimes feel in VR.
A majority of the demo I played focused on platforming; I scaled up walls and grabbed onto ledges like in The Climb or Horizon: Call of the Mountain. Combined with sprinting, jumping, and even jumping between holds while climbing, the movement here felt surprisingly smooth and dynamic. Before long, I felt like an acrobatic action star pulling off the kinds of stunts only Tom Cruise could accomplish. Multiple times in my demo, I nearly bungled a jump but managed to snag a ledge in the nick of time, swinging in in a way that felt far more real and natural than I could’ve imagined in VR.
Moreso than any kind of cool action setpiece or stealth encounter, this kind of little detail – snagging a ledge just in time, saving myself from falling to certain doom – helps break free from the often on-rails feeling VR games can have. In sections where I wasn’t so lucky and wound up replaying a few times, I found myself skipping jumps and getting from point A to B in new ways each time. I love finding ways to maximize the tools in my toolkit to improve my movement in any game I play, but that kind of drive is rarely satisfied in VR. Reach answered that question in spades.
Exploring Reach’s first level wasn’t all running and climbing, though. I wound up in a handful of shootouts with generic militia guys as I made my way to rescue some hostages. There’s a bow with unlimited ammo strapped to your shoulder. With just a reach over your shoulder, you can snipe away at enemies from a safe distance before climbing, jumping, or running to where you need to go. While the section I saw didn’t really focus on stealth, I did run guns-blazing into what was probably supposed to be a stealth segment set in an office space.
There seemed to be some kind of enemy alert system, though by the time I realized what that little bubble above my targets’ heads meant, the arrow destined for my last enemy’s chest cavity had whistled off my bowstring. After that, there were a few more shootouts, though they didn’t task me with navigating an enclosed space in quite the same way. Instead, they took the shape of more traditional shooting gallery-style encounters like you’d find in plenty of other VR games with guns. Bad guys popped out of shutters and stood on balconies, with conveniently placed pistols littering the level for me to grab and unload.
These were considerably less fun and interesting than that stealth segment. As anyone who’s spent even a little time in VR will tell you, plenty of VR games make their bones in these shooting galleries – they have for nearly a decade at this point. So going from a more open, interactive design to a handful of moments I’d already seen before in a handful of other VR shooters was pretty disappointing. But after I cleared them, I went right back to platforming, exploring the very ledges my victims fell off of.
After one last shootout, things escalated. A helicopter started firing at me as I clambered my way to safety after a truck barreled through and propped open a gate, letting me scurry up a high wall. This little extra jolt of danger and tension, with walls exploding and ceilings collapsing behind me as the helicopter closed in on my location set off a last-ditch moment of platforming madness.
Blazing through Reach’s first level was the most fun I’ve had in VR in months, capped off with a charming way to end a demo like this. I can’t wait to see the rest of what NDreams cooks up when it eventually releases sometime later this year on Meta Quest 3, PlayStation VR2, and SteamVR.
Tucked into a corner of Summer Games Fest, Spine is definitely the kind of game meant to turn heads and grab attention. There is a decidedly late-’90s arcade style to the third-person action title that compels players to grab a controller and see what is going on for themselves. While it’s still early, in my hands-on demo with Spine, I can safely say that it’s absolutely something I’m excited to see evolve as it develops.
Aesthetically, Spine fits the cyberpunk-Blade Runner mold of an overcrowded dystopian city with profuse neon-yet-dark corners everywhere. The player assumes the role of a street artist named Redline who, in the demo, has been accused of a crime she did not commit and quickly finds herself surrounded by thugs at a bar. Redline fights off the enemies with deadly force and keeps going while punching and shooting everything that gets in her way.
Players familiar with Sifu will notice an immediate resemblance to that game in the form of the quick jabs, special attacks, and parry-driven finishing moves, but the developer shies away from that particular comparison. Instead, they insist it is a little bit more like Rocksteady’s Arkham series of Batman titles, with a heavy focus on reading tells more than predicting enemy movements.
Regardless of inspiration, the true carnival-game feel of Spine comes from the flashy and over-the-top finishers that are earned by parrying enemy attacks. Not for the squeamish or meek at heart, Redline will often force enemies to swallow a bullet with a gun shoved between their teeth or spin around them like John Wick with a well-placed shot to the back of the skull. The camera zooms, spins, and pans around the finishers to showcase the most dramatic and cinematic angles for her gunkata before Redline quickly moves on to the next goon coming her way.
Parrying also works at enemies throwing things or shooting at her as well, allowing her to spot-dodge the incoming projectile with a quick lean or turn that feels immensely satisfying, regardless of the ease to pull off.
Occasionally, Redline will pick up another weapon with limited ammo, such as a shotgun, and blow enemies away in one hit. These sections feel more like Hotline Miami than anything Batman has ever done, and sometimes even adopt that overhead camera angle to complete the allusion, intentional or otherwise.
There is some degree of Sega Genesis vibe going on with Spine that I cannot quite put my finger on, but it absolutely evokes an alternate reality where beat-‘em-ups became the biggest genre in the world in the ‘90s and iterated on that formula for decades. While there is a lot more to see before deciding where in that storied hierarchy Spine will land, I am more than interested in watching it get there.
