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Guild Wars Reforged, a big update to 2005 MMORPG Guild Wars that’s designed to make it a lot more convenient to play on modern hardware, is set to hit Steam on December 3rd. Steam Deck verification, modern controller support, and an interface revamp are among the tweaks developers ArenaNet and 2weeks have made, with the possibility of further “improvements” down the road being teased.
Ahead of the Black Friday sale event next week, there have been some excellent video game deals already popping up across various retailers.
If you’re using this opportunity to stock up your library with some new picks to play over the holidays, we’ve come across plenty of discounts worth your time and money.
At the moment, Amazon is offering very nice deals on Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake for Nintendo Switch 2 (which has dropped to $49.99) and Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake for Nintendo Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X (all down to $34.99).
If these games have been on your shopping list, now is a great time to grab them.
Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake usually retails with a price tag of $59.99, but this discount has dropped it down 17% so you can save $10 on it. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, on the other hand, is down a whopping 42% from its $59.99 price, which is a very nice deal for those who have been wanting to pick it up.
Both of these received very high praise from us with glowing 9/10 scores in their respective reviews. IGN’s Logan Plant said Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake “is a shining example of how to remake a classic RPG and a brilliant reminder of why the original is an essential work,” while writer George Yang said of the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake that it recaptures “the retro magic of the originals while giving them a modern facelift.”
If you’re wondering what video game deals are still to come as we get closer to Black Friday, check out our breakdowns of what deals we expect to see this year from PS5 and Xbox to see some of our predictions for the sale event. And for Switch users, Nintendo has already announced its Black Friday sale so you can see what deals the company has planned this year.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
“They were very courteous”.
Earlier this week, we got the news that Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars was being ‘reforged’ once again, into a new Switch 2 Edition this time.
Huzzah, we thought, as we pondered who would be the best person to talk to about the 1996 point-and-click adventure making its way to Nintendo’s latest hybrid. The answer, of course, is Charles Cecil MBE, the co-founder of Revolution Software, and someone who has worked on the series from its very inception right up to the present day.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Arrrrre you ready?! Dive into a bubble-blowin’ adventure with SpongeBob as he makes his biggest splash ever with ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants’ Xbox controllers – and see the new movie, only in cinemas!
Introducing the all-new Xbox Wireless Controller – The SpongeBob Movie Limited Edition and Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 – The SpongeBob Movie Limited Edition.
Whether you’re exploring Bikini Bottom or Davy Jones’ locker, ready your gear for any adventure that comes your way. This collection celebrates the latest chapter in SpongeBob’s story, featuring his iconic smile adorning the official The SpongeBob Movie Limited Edition top case and side cap design. X marks the spot, so kick off the journey by pressing the Xbox button and go where no Sponge has gone before.
The Xbox Wireless Controller – The SpongeBob Movie Limited Edition is available now, for a limited time, at the Microsoft Store. Looking to create your own unique design with endless customization and upgrade options? Both The SpongeBob Movie Limited Edition Xbox Wireless Controller and Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 are available now with Xbox Design Lab.
Hold onto your SquarePants and play with ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants’ Limited Edition controllers. Keep an eye out for marine mysteries with the ABXY buttons. Find your way with bright yellow thumbsticks and an orange D-pad. Take on the depths of the deep sea with metallic blue triggers.
Create your own unique design for this Xbox Wireless Controller with Xbox Design Lab – with near-endless customization options to help you play your way. Whether you want to showcase your inner goofy goober, or a vibrant ocean aesthetic, choose from a variety of button styles curated for your movie-themed color scheme. Add more of your style with upgrades like metallic triggers and D-pads, rubberized side and back grips, and even include an engraving for a personalized touch.
The Elite Series 2 version of this design comes with all the features you’ve come to love from our best-in-class controllers, including adjustable-tension thumbsticks, wrap-around rubberized grip, and shorter hair trigger lock for even more precise gameplay. For even greater customization, you can add back paddles for enhanced input control and near-limitless customization with exclusive button mapping options in the Xbox accessories app.
Bring your SpongeBob Movie aesthetic even deeperwith the 3.5mm jack, connect any compatible headset to experience sound that no Sponge has heard before. And just like SpongeBob bounces from one adventure to the next, the controller’s dynamic features ensure you’re always ready for whatever master plan an evil villain throws your way! Jam like a jellyfish and head over to Xbox Design Lab today to design yours.
These controllers are available today, exclusively here.
SpongeBob and his Bikini Bottom friends set sail in their biggest, all-new, can’t-miss cinematic event – ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants’. Desperate to be a big guy, SpongeBob sets out to prove his bravery to Mr. Krabs by following The Flying Dutchman – a mysterious swashbuckling ghost pirate – on a seafaring comedy-adventure that takes him to the deepest depths of the deep sea, where no Sponge has gone before. Only in cinemas!
The post Go Big with The SpongeBob Movie Limited Edition Xbox Controllers appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Here at PlayStation, we’re excited to celebrate the holiday season and another year of gaming experiences with PlayStation’s Black Friday offers which kick off this week. Starting from November 21 for a limited time* gamers and gift givers alike can explore a range of incredible deals on PS5 consoles, games, accessories, and more across PlayStation Store, direct.playstation.com, PlayStation Gear, and at participating retailers.*
Visit the official PlayStation Black Friday site starting on November 21 for updates on local offers, as promotions will vary by region and retailer.
This year, save on hardware and accessories including PlayStation 5 console offerings, PlayStation VR2, PlayStation Portal, DualSense controllers and more. You can find these offers on direct.playstation.com where available as well as at participating local retailers.
Deals on PS5 Console offerings include:
There will also be offers for PS5 accessories and games,* including:
Players in participating countries who join PlayStation Plus during PlayStation’s Black Friday promotion can save up to 33% on a 12-month membership. Current PlayStation Plus members can save 33% on the remainder of their membership when upgrading from PlayStation Plus Essential/Extra to PlayStation Plus Premium/Deluxe.
PlayStation Plus offers fantastic value, with access to hundreds of games including hit titles like The Last of Us Part II, Cyberpunk 2077, Mortal Kombat 1, and Hogwarts Legacy*** in the Extra and Deluxe/Premium tiers.
All PlayStation Plus members get access to monthly games, exclusive discounts, online multiplayer, and more. In addition, Premium members can also Cloud Stream select digital PS5 games from their library**** and the game catalogue directly to their PS5 and PS Portal remote player – which is also part of our Black Friday deals.
Additionally, within the Sony Pictures Core app, PlayStation Plus Premium members also have access to the Sony Pictures Catalog with up to 100 movies to stream on demand.***** During the Black Friday promotional period, all PS5 and PS4 players can enjoy movie discounts, while PlayStation Plus members can enjoy even deeper discounts on recent releases including BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE, TAROT, and more.
Head over to PlayStation Gear to save 60% off sitewide on all merchandise including apparel, drinkware, and more from fan-favorite titles like Astro Bot, The Last of Us Part II, and God of War Ragnarök – no promo code necessary. Visit gear.playstation.com for more details.
Check out offers on hundreds of PS5 and PS4 digital games with savings of up to 75% on PlayStation Store. Visit PlayStation Store when the promotion begins on November 21 to view the full selection and find out your local savings.
*Actual retailer prices and availability may vary. Products may have different sales periods. See specific offer details on product detail pages or retailer sites.
**Flowering Chaos Bundle is a PlayStation exclusive until 11/26/2026.
***Availability of Classics and Game Catalog varies over time, region/country, and plan. See https://www.playstation.com/Plus for details and updates on PlayStation Plus offerings. PlayStation Plus is an ongoing subscription subject to a recurring subscription fee taken automatically (at the then-current PS Store price) at the frequency you choose at purchase until cancellation. Terms apply: play.st/psplus-usageterms
****Digital PS5 games available to stream from Your Library will vary over time, region, and country. See PlayStation Store to check eligibility.
*****Catalog content varies over time, region/country, and plan, and requires separate download and use of Sony Pictures Core App. Movie credit, if available, may be applied instead of discount.
The CEO of Genvid — the company behind choose-your-own-adventure interactive series like Silent Hill Ascension — has claimed “consumers generally do not care” about generative AI in games, stating: “Gen Z loves AI slop.”
Jacob Navok, a former Square Enix director, evidenced his claim by reminding us that the biggest game of the year, Steal a Brainrot, “had 30m concurrents or approximately 80x the Arc Raiders concurrents, and is named after/based on AI slop characters.”
“For all the anti-AI sentiment we’re seeing in various articles, it appears consumers generally do not care,” he wrote on X/Twitter (thanks, GamesRadar+). “All the brainrots are just 3D models of AI slop. Gen Z loves AI slop, does not care. The upcoming generation of gamers are Bane in Dark Knight Rises saying ‘You merely adopted the slop, I was born in it.’
Arc Raiders has enjoyed huge popularity and big sales despite an online controversy around its use of generative AI to generate character voice. Streamer Shroud has suggested this AI controversy held Arc Raiders back from being considered for the Game of the Year award at this year’s The Game Awards.
Yesterday, November 17, we reported that Assassin’s Creed publisher Ubisoft was forced to remove an image found within Anno 117: Pax Romana that contained AI-generated elements after fans complained, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 players promptly took to social media to complain about AI-generated images they had found across the game, following a trend of AI-Ghibli images from earlier this year.
The Alters developer, 11 Bit Studios, and Jurassic World Evolution 3 developer, Frontier Developments, meanwhile, similarly faced fan backlash recently when they were caught using undisclosed AI images, which doesn’t quite track with Navok’s assumption that “consumers do not care.”
Suggesting that a “tipping point has been reached,” Navok also stressed that because “Activision isn’t shying away from AI, neither is Arc Raiders,” the tech was here to stay.
“I should add that in-game art and voices are merely the tip of the spear. Many studios I know are using AI generation in the concept phase, and many more are using Claude for code,” he added. “It will be hard to find a non-indie title that isn’t using Claude for code, and ignoring Claude’s AI use because it’s code while focusing purely on art shows that a lot of AI sentiment is being driven by emotion rather than logic.”
In Navok’s defence, it certainly feels as though his comments ring true, at least across other big developers and publishers, too. EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said AI is “the very core of our business,” and Square Enix recently implemented mass layoffs and reorganized, saying it needed to be “aggressive in applying AI.” Dead Space creator Glen Schofield also recently detailed his plans to “fix” the industry in part via the use of generative AI in game development, and former God of War dev Meghan Morgan Juinio said: “… if we don’t embrace [AI], I think we’re selling ourselves short.” Conversely, Nintendo has bucked the trend, with Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto previously stressing that the company would rather go in a “different direction” than the rest of the video game industry when it comes to AI.
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.
The word “morsel” comes from the Latin “mordeo”, meaning “I bite”. Every time you play Morsels, you are bitten and eaten by a horrible cat. The beast’s incisors crash shut around the screen, and you tumble slowly down its oesophagus after the game’s squealing mouse protagonist.
I could write a whole article about the bastardly antics of cats – there’s one living next door who’s at that stage of feline youth when she really, really enjoys playing with her food. But the first time I succumbed to those jaws, I thought instead of the plughole in my bathroom sink, a trivial hellmouth full of hair and toothpaste. I thought, too, of the tenacious little flies that keep emerging from that soap-scummed porcelain sphincter, the life that keeps surfacing from a conduit of my filth.
Escape from Tarkov game director Nikita Buyanov has apologized to players for the “rough” release of the extraction shooter’s 1.0 version and Steam debut, saying the team is “willing to continue fighting” to “finally crack the performance problems.”
On Steam, Escape from Tarkov currently has a ‘mixed’ user review rating, with most of the complaints around server issues that are causing long queues, performance problems, and bugs.
Writing on Twitter/X, Battlestate’s Buyanov thanked players “for this overwhelming interest for the game,” adding: “servers get full really fast so we[‘re] adding more and more servers worldwide to cut matching times more. We are also fixing all of the incoming bugs, and as I said, we will continue to improve and fix the game for the next months.
“The release was rough for sure, sorry for that. But we are willing to continue fighting for everything good against bad. We will continue to provide to you, actual fans of the game, things that you will enjoy. We need to finally crack this performance problems, outdated stuff and legacy bugs which [are] left. Yes, a lot of things were fixed in release version, but it’s not enough.”
In a separate statement posted to Steam, Battlestate thanked players for “supporting the project throughout all stages of development and testing, and for deciding to share this important event,” and said, “despite careful preparation, unforeseen situations may arise during the process. Your bug reports help us quickly find and fix issues, making your gaming experience more comfortable and stable.”
Battlestate also promised in-game compensation for all players in the near future: a Bear Classic and USEC Night Patrol set. If these sets have already been purchased, an in-game reward will be credited, the developer continued.
A technical update released on Monday, November 17, issued a handful of issues. Patch notes are below:
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.
Rebecca Heineman, known best for co-founding original Fallout developer Interplay alongside Brain Fargo, Jay Patel, and Troy Worrell in the early 1980s, has died aged 62.
The news was shared by her friend Heidi McDonald, who wrote on BlueSky that “my trailblazing game industry bad-ass friend Rebecca Heineman has passed away. F**k cancer. Friends, let’s not forget her.”
On a GoFundMe page set up by Heineman shortly after her diagnosis, she described herself as “the very first video game champion, creator of Bard’s Tale 3, Dragon Wars, and one of the founders of Interplay Productions and MacPlay. Creator of Sailor Ranko the webcomic and software archivist.” The fund remains open to support Heineman’s family.
In her final message, penned yesterday, November 17, she wrote: “It’s time. According to my doctors. All further treatments are pointless. So, please donate so my kids can create a funeral worthy of my keyboard, Pixelbreaker! So I can make a worthy entrance for reuniting with my one true love, Jennell Jaquays. My daughter Cynthia Elizabeth heineman, will be making the arrangements.”
Heineman rose to fame when she won a national Space Invaders tournament in 1980 aged 14, then carved out an impressive gamedev career, having taught herself to code by reverse engineering. Her development and publishing credits include Wasteland, Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, and The Bard’s Tale 3: Thief of Fate. She most recently served as CEO of Olde Sküül.
Bard’s Tale 3 stands out as one of her defining moments at Interplay and of her entire career, Heineman told Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play in 2024. “Being able to head the project and be the decision maker was what started me on the path to being a studio head,” she said. Heineman stayed at Interplay until 1995, watching it grow to upwards of 500 employees. She departed for a new entrepreneurial adventure, desiring a return to small but passionate teams.
She was honored as the 2025 Gayming Icon Award for “her advocacy for LGBTQ+ inclusion, accessibility, and diversity in tech has inspired countless developers and players,” (thanks, PC Gamer).
Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo called her “one of the most brilliant programmers around,” and said news of her death was “a real gut punch.” “Rebecca Heineman sadly passed away. Known her since the 80s when I’d drive her to work, one of the most brilliant programmers around. A real gut punch earlier today when she messaged me: ‘We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!'”
Rebecca Heineman sadly passed away. Known her since the 80s when I’d drive her to work, one of the most brilliant programmers around. A real gut punch earlier today when she messaged me: “We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!” 🙁 pic.twitter.com/lu3i0fyt5C
— Brian Fargo (@BrianFargo) November 17, 2025
Other game developers have also shared their memories, including Rami Ismail and Josh Sawyer, with many others sharing stories of Rebecca’s mentorship, kindness and support.
A game industry legend died a few mins ago, Rebecca Heineman (@burgerbecky), taken away by aggressive lung cancer. She oversaw the porting of Wizordum to the Mac OS most recently for Apogee. My local friends would often have dinner with her and I loved her industry stories and…
— Scott Miller – Apogee/3D Realms Founder ☢️ (@ScottApogee) November 17, 2025
Image credit: GoFundMe.
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.
Battlefield 6‘s latest set of additions, dubbed the California Resistance update, have arrived today, November 18th. Alongside the unboxing of the new suburban skirmish setting that is the Eastwood map and a sabotage mode, the update brings a sizeable patch with tweaks aimed at the likes of ensuring bullets do end up where you intend and making sure mortars are clean enough to eat meals off of.
