The very best Switch 1 & 2 games coming soon.
Following The Game Awards 2025, which was full of Switch 2 announcements, we’ve given this list a big overhaul and combined the Switch1 and Switch 2 games we’re most excited for in one big list. Enjoy!
Juggling two consoles is hard work for some, but not for Nintendo. While the Switch 2 is the primary focus for the Big N, don’t ever count the Switch 1 out.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Satire is a genre that you find often enough in mediums like film and television, but there is an argument to be made that it doesn’t happen as often in games, and that maybe, this is due for a reckoning. This is the argument that Davide Soliani (Mario + Rabbids) and Christian Cantamessa (Red Dead Redemption) are making about the game they’re co-directing, Bradley the Badger, a comedic, half-throwback, half-fresh-take platformer revealed at The Geoff Keighley Night this week.
Sanity is for the weak!
Warhammer, I have to say, is something that I’ve only come to really appreciate properly in recent times. I was never particularly bothered until I picked up a big starter pack of wee guys and big monsters to paint (y’know, for my kids), and then a proper, no-holds-barred addiction set in.
I needed lore. I needed more! And so video games, as ever, have ended up being a very important part in my journey, and this time it’s a journey towards a deep understanding of Warhammer. Something like that. Anyway, in short, I’ve been banging through your Warhammer Boltguns and Mechanicuses (Mechanici?) in order to get myself all up to pub-chat levels of knowing stuff about the franchise. Breezily japing with the lads over a bevvy without sweating being found out. That’s the goal.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
In a year where Hades II dominated the roguelite headlines, Evil Empire’s The Rogue Prince of Persia slipped by largely unnoticed. This is the second time Supergiant’s game overshadowed The Rogue Prince, with both titles entering early access at similar times last year.
In fact, the story you may best remember of Evil Empire’s game was the frothing criticism of the Prince’s art style – a unique blend influenced by Arabic miniatures, Mœbius comics, and the purple-skinned sprites from the 1990 PC CGA port of the first Prince of Persia game.
Sales for Mega Man, Resident Evil and much more!
Capcom had a big presence at this year’s Game Awards, and to go out with a bang, the company is celebrating its games with a special “limited time” sale, offering up to 85% off select titles.
So, if you’re looking for a deal on Mega Man, Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, or something else in Capcom’s game library, here’s what’s currently on offer on the Switch and Switch 2 eShop:
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Pre-orders open later this month.
If you played Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, you’re probably familiar with the Decayed Master Sword. First 4 Figures now has plans for a “life-size” statue of it, with pre-orders scheduled to open on 18th December 2025.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
It was fun while it lasted.
Yesterday, Kirby Air Riders got a major update, bumping the Switch 2 exclusive up to Version 1.2.0. It turns out this might be one of the final significant patches.
According to a roughly translated post on social media, the game’s director Masahiro Sakurai said the Kirby Air Riders development team will be disbanding in the near future. As a result, there’s only a short amount of time left to make balance adjustments.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
It was fun while it lasted.
Yesterday, Kirby Air Riders got a major update, bumping the Switch 2 exclusive up to Version 1.2.0. It turns out this might be one of the final significant patches.
According to a roughly translated post on social media, the game’s director Masahiro Sakurai said the Kirby Air Riders development team will be disbanding in the near future. As a result, there’s only a short amount of time left to make balance adjustments.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has officially been named Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025, alongside multiple other wins. If that winning sweep has you jumping in for the first time (or returning for another playthrough), IGN has you covered with guides, explainers, and wikis to help you get started for your journey across The Continent.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG (it’s kind of like Final Fantasy VII… kind of) set in the world of The Continent. It follows a group called Expedition 33 on a mission to destroy The Paintress, a mysterious figure who wipes out anyone over a certain age in a yearly ceremony called the “Gommage.”
Alongside extremely unique turn-based combat, which emphasizes various skills and parries to deal damage to bosses with “tells” and plenty of secret weak points, you and your party explore various different areas, encountering enemies, finding treasure, and discovering what happened to other Expeditions that ventured out to beat the Paintress – and failed – before. You also can also build your team to deal ridiculous combo-based damage, something that hardcore players have come to love about Expedition 33.
If you’re an RPG fan but don’t have time to sink 100+ hours into them, Expedition 33 may be perfect for you. If you solely focus on the main story, you can expect to roll credits in around 28 hours. With side quests, this increases to 45 hours. If you’re set on completing everything, it’ll take roughly 65 hours. And if you want to beat a bunch of optional bosses with crazy builds, you can do that, too. Oh and we gave Expedition 33 a great score in our review if you want a more in-depth take!
As mentioned previously, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 features turn-based combat, which means that everyone in battle, including enemies, attacks one at a time, rather than everyone at once – think classic Final Fantasy, Persona, or Baldur’s Gate 3.
You don’t just wait for enemy attacks to hit you, though. Here, one of the main selling points is the ability to parry, dodge, and jump to avoid and counter attacks. When an opponent uses a move, you’re able to press a button that, when timed right, either dodges, jumps, or parries to avoid damage completely or deal damage back to them.
When it comes to your own skills, these are powered by Pictos and Luminas. Pictos are special pieces of equipment that you equip to characters to grant special benefits and increase stats. Luminas, working hand-in-hand with Pictos, are special skills that unlock after you’ve won a battle with a Picto four times, and can be carried over and used with every member of your party.
Builds are a crucial part of combat in Expedition 33, and you’ll need to pay mind to not only your Pictos and Luminas, but weapons and attributes. No matter the character, we’ve got Build Guides to help you plan, so you’re always suited up in the best gear and stats.
If all this sounds confusing or overwhelming to you, head to our Combat Guide that explains everything you need to know about Expedition 33’s battle system in more detail, including the more intricate mechanics we haven’t covered here. For more combat and party-adjacent Game Help, check out:
After you set off on your journey to defeat the Paintress, you’ll arrive at The Continent, which is essentially a giant overworld. Not only is this how you travel to new areas during the main story, but there are also enemies that roam around, waiting to be defeated (or avoided).
In addition, The Continent is home to various collectibles to find, Optional Bosses to take down, and Side Quests to complete. If you’re a completionist, you can spend hours just on The Continent overworld alone, tracking down every item, Secret, and Easter Egg possible.
Our Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 interactive map is the perfect companion tool to aid you in exploring The Continent. Not only does it lay the entire area out to help you plan your next move, but it also tracks essential locations, such as new areas, side quests, collectibles, and bosses, so you always know where to go to meet your objective.
We have plenty of Game Help available to help you in exploring and collecting everything that The Continent has to offer, including:
Released as a thanks to the community, the free Expedition 33 “Thank You” update was surprise-dropped during The Game Awards on December 11, 2025. It added new content, such as Luminas and weapons, bosses, Photo Mode, and a new environment to explore, plus a handful of improvements and bug fixes.
We’ll have a full walkthrough of the new content soon, which we’ll link here when available. For now, you can check out everything that was added on our Update 1.5.0 Patch Notes page.
Meg Koepp is a Guides Editor on the IGN Guides team, with a focus on trends. When she’s not working, you can find her playing an RPG, getting Victory Royales in Fortnite, or cuddling her corgi.
If you, like me, still have visions of last night’s grotesque trailer for a new Divinity game from Larian Studios burned into your head, then you’ll be delighted to know there’s already a whirl of fan theories as to what it all meant. Specifically, some fans think they’ve worked out who the man burned alive inside the wicker man is, or at least, who he’s supposed to represent.
I’m going to get into some spoilers for basically all the other Divinity games here, so if you intend to play through some of those in advance, read on at your own risk.
So, there are a few possibilities being floated for who that guy in the fire is. The first, and most probably, is Lucian, the human player character of Divine Divinity and a recurring figure throughout the Divinity games. There’s a ton of history behind Lucian, but what you probably need to know is that he was at one point worshipped as the “Divine”, chosen by the Seven gods of Rivellon. He stands in opposition to a force known as Chaos, the source of Rivellon’s demons which seeks to invade and consume Rivellon, but he also at one point adopted a baby named Damian who was known to serve as a vessel for the Lord of Chaos, which goes about as well as you can imagine.
Lucian is also the founder of The Divine Order. If you’ve played Original Sin 2, you’ll remember those guys as the folks rounding up Source users, but also will recall that at the time of the game, Lucian had already passed away…or so everyone thought. The end of the game has you discover him hiding in his tomb, having faked his death and is quietly working to purge the Source from Rivellon entirely. Depending on your actions when you meet him, Lucian might end up dead, or alive and still Divine. Sort of.
Which leads to the theories that the guy in the fire is Lucian. In the ending of Original Sin 2 where you allow all the world’s Source to be purged, Lucian is reinstalled as Divine ruler. However, unbeknownst to most, he doesn’t possess Divine powers anymore. He’s just a dude. One theory being floated is that somehow the people of Rivellon have figured out that Lucian is powerless and the gods are dead (you actually kill all seven of the world’s gods in Original Sin 2) or otherwise gone. Lucian’s committed a lot of pretty atrocious crimes over the years against a lot of people in the name of the greater good, so it’s not shocking that folks would be pissed and turn on him as soon as it was clear he had no real power. But even just beyond the lore, look: the guy looks like Lucian!
He’s the right age, he’s got the beard and the bushy eyebrows. He’s wearing a crown, suggesting royalty. And most importantly, check out the star-shaped scar on his chest. As pointed out in the Reddit post above, it matches the star on the end of Lucian’s staff pretty well.
Of course, it’s not totally certain that this is Lucian. Some other possibilities floated are that this isn’t Lucian himself, but an annual ritual where some other guy is tortured and killed as a stand-in for Lucian, who would already be long-dead at the time this is happening. There are other suggestions that this isn’t Lucian, but Damian, the kid Lucian adopted. Damian is a vessel for Chaos, so him being executed for that reason and Chaos bursting out of him when he dies would make a lot of sense. And both the Lucian and the Damien theories work with the game’s promo text shared yesterday: “The gods are silent. Rivellon bleeds. New powers stir.”
But then we’ve got folks elsewhere pointing out that the presence of a Blood Rose suggests ties to the former tyrannical Source King, Braccus Rex, who’s also theoretically dead by this point but has come back from the dead twice now.
Of course, that’s all assuming this game takes place after all the other Divinity games. There are plenty of folks suggesting it takes place somewhere in the middle of the timeline, or even as a precursor (given its name), and others reminding us that Larian’s Divinity lore hasn’t always been consistent.
There’s a lot to unpack here and it’s going to take some serious Divinity lore nerds to understand it all. Or, Larian might just tell us in a few months. Maybe they’ll make it easy. If you still want to unpack it a little further, we have an explainer on what exactly we do know about this new Divinity game so far, especially in relation to the kinds of games Larian Studios has made up til now.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
