I rarely need an excuse to grab more Pokémon cards, but every so often, something especially good comes along. Right now, a few premium boxes are actually worth it. Not because they’re stacked with guaranteed hits (they’re not), but because the sets inside are finally seeing a drop in single-card prices.
That opens two solid options: rip the packs and hope for something great, or skip the gamble and grab your chase cards while they’re cheaper. Either way, it’s one of those rare moments where buying in doesn’t feel like lighting your wallet on fire. With decent promos, good pack variety, and a few worthwhile extras, these boxes are the ones to watch.
Pokémon TCG: Iono’s Bellibolt ex Premium Collection
Yes, it’s one of the pricier premium collections out there. And yes, you get a Bellibolt ex promo, which is about as subtle as a battery-powered frog can get. But the real draw here is the 2 x Journey Together, Surging Sparks, Obsidian Flames, Twilight Masquerade and Paradox Rift packs.
Single prices from Journey Together are already coming down, which is great if you’ve been waiting to scoop up stuff like Perrin or Pecharunt ex without giving your credit card a stress headache. You also get an acrylic standee display and photo stickers, which is either a cute bonus or something you’ll shove in a drawer forever. I’m choosing to see it as décor. Don’t ruin this for me.
Single Card Options
Pokémon TCG: Infernape V Box
This is probably the easiest yes on the list. It’s cheap, it’s on sale, and it includes packs from Fusion Strike and Lost Origin. That’s a decent combo if you like old sets with some high highs and very, very low lows.
If you’re thinking of chasing Gengar VMAX or Giratina V, just know those prices are finally starting to cool off. So you can skip the suspense and buy singles now, or you can open these and pretend you’re immune to regret. Either way, the Infernape and Empoleon promos make nice binder filler, and the oversized card will make a great bookmark for someone who doesn’t read.
Single Card Options
Pokémon TCG: Ogerpon ex Premium Collection
This one’s for anyone who actually plays the game or just likes pretending they might. You get six Twilight Masquerade packs, a Teal Mask Ogerpon ex promo, and sleeves that don’t suck. Twilight Masquerade’s singles are already starting to slide in price, including cards like Carmine, Bloodmoon Ursaluna, and Dragapult ex.
So if there’s a card you’ve been eyeing, now’s the time to grab it without going through a box’s worth of filler. Still, if you do want to roll the dice, this is probably the best pack selection of the bunch. Plus, the magnetic card protector almost tricks me into thinking I own something valuable. Almost.
Single Card Options
Pokemon TCG: Stacking Tin (Q1 2025)
Is it weird that this is the one I’m most tempted by? You get three booster packs from three solid sets: Stellar Crown, Surging Sparks, and Temporal Forces. That gives you a shot at everything from Pikachu ex to Hydreigon ex to Iron Crown ex. Or nothing.
That’s also on the table. But with single prices dropping in all three of those sets, this is a decent way to gamble without spending too much. You also get two sheets of stickers, which is exactly the kind of freebie that tricks me into thinking I made a responsible decision.
Single Card Options
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
Primarily, Lushfoil Photography Sim is – spoilers – a photography sim. Then it’s a walking sim. Then it’s a photography sim again. Then more walking. Then it’s a photography teacher, and a very calm and cool one at that; the kind that would lay down in liquid mud to shoot a daffodil at just the right angle, then get back up and say “Ahhh, that’s lovely” in a gentle New Zealand accent.
This specific quality accounted for much of my initial interest, being someone who owns a DSLR yet has no clue what half the buttons are for. Lushfoil Photography Sim is a pretty effective instructor, though by choosing a series of stonkingly gorgeous natural beauty spots as its classrooms, it’s even more effective at provoking a general wanderlust that has – repeatedly but quite happily – derailed my studies.
Much coverage of Sid Meier’s Civilization VII has compared the Firaxis 4X to Amplitude‘s 2021 release Humankind. As our dirty turncoat strategy game columnist Sin Vega briefly explores in her review for Eurogamer, the game’s Age structure, which hands you a new culture at intervals in each campaign, is reminiscent of Humankind’s Era transitions.
Developers Firaxis have elsewhere observed that the impression of Civ cribbing notes from Humankind is an unfortunate coincidence. According to an interview with executive producer Dennis Shirk last year, the Civ 7 team came up with the concept on their own, pitching it to parent company 2K Games mere days after Amplitude unveiled Humankind. It’s also, of course, worth reiterating that as a historical 4X, Humankind takes plenty of cues from older Civilizations. Still, Amplitude co-founder Romain de Waubert de Genlis was tickled pink when he saw Humankind cited in Civ 7 reviews. “That was probably the best compliment I ever got when I read some of these articles on Civ 7,” he told me during an interview about Amplitude’s forthcoming Endless Legend 2, adding “I did not see that coming, to be frank.”
The Last of Us is back for a second season, and – naturally – this time we’re seeing an adaptation of the second game in the series. However, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have taken a different approach this time around. Where the first season was largely a one-to-one recreation of the game, with a huge chunk of the runtime dedicated to replicating the original cutscenes in live action, this second season appears to be making more changes to the game’s story. Events are restructured, reordered, and recontextualised with the addition of new characters and story ideas.
That’s not to say that the scenes we know and love have been scrapped, though – far from it. It’s just that they might not always be exactly how you remember them. And so we’ve taken the key moments from episode one that recreate the game and compared them against the source material, analysing what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. You can see both versions in the video above, or read on below for our written explanations.
Tommy’s Sniper School
Due to the show having been re-arranged to tell the story in a more linear fashion, the sequence in which Tommy teaches Ellie how to shoot across long distances is now one of the earliest scenes of The Last of Us season 2. In the game, this was told in flashback as part of the Finding Strings chapter, which occurs during day two of Ellie’s time in Seattle – many hours into the campaign.
That’s not the only change. As you can see from the thick blanket of snow, the time of year is completely different. While Ellie and Tommy trek through the sun-kissed Wyoming mountains in the game, they’re lying prone in a freezing winter landscape in the show. There is a connection, though; in the game, Tommy mentions that hordes of infected move through this region in the winter. Since it’s currently winter in the show, perhaps such a horde will turn up in the next few episodes?
Despite the changes to timeline and climate, the fundamentals remain the same. Show Ellie uses the same Springfield Armory M1A rifle as game Ellie does, while Tommy provides advice about how to snipe at shambling infected. He suggests she compensate her aim for distance, which is what you must do during this sequence in the game, as bullets drop over very long distances due to gravity.
Ellie and Dina’s Patrol
The midpoint of the season two premiere sees Ellie and Dina head out on a patrol. This is one of the earliest sequences from the game, and is replicated quite closely. In both the game and show, Ellie takes Shimmer from the stables, gears up to head out, and is scolded by Jesse for being late. The most significant change here is that, where in the game Jesse lists off all the things that must be achieved on a patrol, in the show Dina sarcastically explains their goals before Jesse can instruct them. This helps construct the show’s version of Dina, who is more brash than her game counterpart.
The conflict between Jesse and Dina helps set up the horseback conversation between the two women. This same chat, about Dina’s breakup with Jesse, also happens in the game, but Dina’s attitude to her former boyfriend is softer, discussing how Jesse’s parents will always feel like her family. In the show, the pair’s relationship is somewhat brushed off as more of an on/off thing.
Both the show and game’s patrol is interrupted by the discovery of the gory corpse of an animal – in the game it’s a moose, while in the show it’s a bear. This encourages Ellie and Dina to search out the infected who killed it. The key difference here is that in the show Ellie and Dina are just two of a larger patrol that doesn’t want to get into any unwarranted danger. In the game, Ellie and Dina are patrolling on their own.
Infected Attack
Ellie and Dina’s search for infected brings them to the same place in both the game and the show: the Greenpeace Market. In both versions they climb over the store’s truck to enter via the upstairs window and proceed to search inside. From here the events diverge – in the show, the pair take down a clicker and then Ellie falls through the floor alone. In the game, both Ellie and Dina fall through the collapsing floor, and Dina saves them both from a clicker by shooting it several times.
In the show, it’s not a clicker in the main store area but a stalker, a new, more intelligent infected type that doesn’t appear until much later in the game. Ellie must face this foe alone, and the resulting fight sees the stalker bite her stomach, something that doesn’t happen in the game. Dina arrives too late to help, but by that point Ellie has already shot her attacker. This somewhat echoes an earlier scene from the game, in which Dina arrives to help a runner that’s attacking Ellie outside of the supermarket – in that instance Dina shoots the infected to save her partner.
Barn Dance
One of the most famous scenes from The Last of Us Part 2 is recreated in almost perfect detail for the show, but once again it comes at a very different time thanks to the reordering of the story. The barn dance, during which Dina and Ellie kiss for the first time, was originally shown as a flashback and occurred just before the game’s final act, but in the show it’s the last major scene of the season two premiere.
Despite the shift to show this scene in chronological order, everything else about it remains largely the same, even down to the music, dance choreography, and camera direction. The dialogue between Ellie, Jesse, and Dina is almost word-for-word the same as the game’s original script, including Dina’s “I think they should be terrified of you.”
The pair’s dance is once again interrupted by Seth, but Joel’s reaction to his bigotry is much more violent. In the game, Joel only shoves Seth to indicate his anger, but the show’s version of events sees Seth thrown to the floor.
The Overlook
The episode’s final scene is a recreation of The Overlook section of the game’s first chapter. We see Abby and Owen climb up to an outcrop that overlooks the town of Jackson. In the game, Abby and Owen are talking, expressing relief of finding their goal and surprise at how large it is – “it’s a fucking city!” The show instead opts to keep the characters in total silence, building an ominous tension as they survey the town where their target lives.
A modder for Tekken 8 has pared back the fighting game to its bare essentials by removing most of its flashy new features, in an effort to “get us back to [Tekken 5] days.” The mod is called “Good Ass Tekken” and it basically turns the game into a good-looking remake of older versions.
The Nintendo Switch 2 hands-on experience is already in full swing, giving those lucky enough to attend the chance to play through a handful of new games coming to the system. As you might expect, Mario Kart World is one such title and, while seeing what the racer has to offer, fans are already uncovering some of its secrets (thanks for the heads up, VGC).
For example, those who watched the game’s reveal trailer with an eagle eye might have seen Birdo drive into the back of a huge truck and seemingly take command of it for a section of the course, but did you know that there are other vehicles in the world where a similar process can happen? We didn’t!
I think we can all agree the Pokémon TCG is a wallet-endangering hobby, but that doesn’t mean we have to overpay for cardboard. Amazon clearly got the memo because a bunch of solid bundles just dropped , including Surging Sparks, Journey Together and Paldean Fates. If you’ve been telling yourself you’re just buying “a few packs for the kids,” this is your moment to stock up and pretend it’s not for you. I’m not judging. I’m doing the same thing.
Catch Surging Sparks, Journey Together and Paldean Fates
I also want to point out the Mass Effect statues in the IGN Store, because apparently my bookshelf wasn’t crowded enough with plastic space heroes. Commander Shepard and crew are up for pre-order, and yes, I already added Jack to my cart because I enjoy chaos. There’s also a Humble Bundle packed with narrative indies that scream “you have emotions, deal with them.” All in all, it’s a good day to make impulsive but justifiable purchases.
Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet – Surging Sparks
I picked up Surging Sparks because six booster packs under $50 is lower than what Amazon has been charging recently (It’s still above MSRP though) Honestly, I wanted something new to crack open. It’s part of the latest Scarlet & Violet expansion, so if you’re trying to keep up with current sets or just enjoy the chaos of pulling a good card, this one’s a smart grab.
Pokémon TCG: Iono’s Bellibolt ex Premium Collection
This one’s for the collectors who care as much about presentation as they do the pulls. Iono’s Bellibolt ex Premium Collection comes with six packs, a full-art promo, and a display sheet that’s more elaborate than it needs to be — in a good way. It’s also a cool way to snag Journey Together packs with a fantastic promo card.
Mass Effect Merchandise
I think anyone who’s replayed Mass Effect more than once knows exactly why these statues are tempting. I pre-ordered Jack immediately because, well, it felt necessary. The line includes Shepard, Tali, Legion, and others, and they look good enough that I’ve already made space for them on the shelf. If you’re still quoting Garrus unironically, these are for you.
Pokémon TCG: Scarlet and Violet: Paldean Fates: Booster Bundle
Paldean Fates is priced a double MSRP, but it’s also very hard to come by in 2025. I grabbed it because the baby shiny sub-set is awesome, but if you just want to grab the single cards from this set, it might actually save you money.
Fellow Traveller Publisher Bundle
This bundle has some of the better narrative indies from the last few years. I paid the $12, added the games to my backlog like I always do, and immediately booted up The Pale Beyond. It’s a strong lineup if you like character-driven games and don’t mind occasionally being emotionally wrecked by minimalist storytelling.
Pokémon TCG: Scarlet and Violet Shrouded Fable Elite Trainer Box
I think of this one as the all-in-one box for when you want cards and a bunch of gear you probably won’t use but still want around. Nine booster packs, a promo, sleeves, dice, and enough extras to make you feel like you’re doing more than just opening packs. It’s a solid option if you like having a little structure with your chaos.
Pokémon TCG: Terapagos ex Ultra-Premium Collection
I hesitated on this one, then immediately remembered it includes 18 booster packs and a playmat. It’s definitely a big spend, but if you’ve been waiting for a premium bundle that actually justifies the price, this checks out. I picked it up more for the experience than the individual cards, and that’s the right way to approach it.
Pokémon TCG: Shining Fates Collection Pikachu V Box
I grabbed Shining Fates Pikachu V mostly because I never actually opened it when it first dropped, and now seemed like a good excuse. Four booster packs, a Pikachu promo, and the oversized card that ends up somewhere near your desk — standard stuff, but still a nice throwback if you missed it the first time around.
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
It’s fair to say Verdansk is breathing new life into Call of Duty Warzone, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The internet had declared Activision’s now five year-old battle royale “cooked” before the nostalgia-fueled Verdansk turned things around. Now, the internet has declared Warzone “back.” Didn’t Activision nuke Verdansk? It doesn’t seem to matter, as lapsed players who fondly remember Warzone as their lockdown game are returning to the map that started it all, and those who stuck with the game through thick and thin over the past five years are saying Warzone is more fun now than it’s been since it exploded onto the scene in 2020.
This back-to-basics gameplay experience was a deliberate design decision on the part of developers Raven and Beenox. Pete Actipis, game director on Warzone at Raven, and Etienne Pouliot, creative director at Beenox, both worked on the multi-studio effort to bring Warzone back. In this sweeping interview with IGN, the pair discuss how they went about it, the success of Verdansk’s Casual mode, reveal whether they considered limiting operator skins to mil-sim for a more 2020 feel, and answer the crucial question: is Verdansk here to stay?
Read on to find out.
IGN: I imagine I fit the typical profile, which is someone who played a lot of Warzone during lockdown and was enticed back by the return of Verdansk. Was that the point of all this, to get lapsed Warzone fans back in the game? And now it’s been out for a while, is that what you’re seeing happening?
Pete Actipis: We hit our fifth year anniversary for Warzone and we wanted to bring back Verdansk for quite some time now. It just felt like the right timing. When we were talking about bringing it back, it wasn’t just bringing back the map. It was more than that. Over the last five years we have learned a lot, experimented with a lot. The one thing you can say about Warzone, it’s constantly changing for good or for bad. It is something that we just try to keep evolving. And we listen to the players and we take some shots and sometimes they land, sometimes they don’t. But when we talked about bringing Verdansk back, it was very important for us to bring back a nostalgic moment in time as best as we could and be respectful of that as well.
During Covid it was just a special time in the world, it was crazy, it was something that we all experienced together individually, but Warzone created this social experience in a way that was pretty new to Call of Duty. So we wanted to pay homage to that as best as we could. We looked at every single component of what made Warzone special back in 2020 and we wanted to really treat it right.
I’ll let Etienne talk about the map side of it, but at least on the gameplay side, we wanted to make sure that we looked at all the design principles and all the reasons that we added the things that we did back then, and are they still viable? Are those still fun mechanics and loops? And if we were to bring them back, we wanted to make sure we did it with the right intent. And that’s why I think it’s stuck around so well. Post-launch, right now it’s getting great feedback from the community. They seem to really be enjoying it. We’re players too, so we wanted to build an experience that we fell in love with back in 2020. So yeah, it’s worked out. We’re really careful about what we do to the game right now because we hit that sweet spot of that nostalgia bit and people seem to be enjoying it. So we’re pretty excited by it as players too.
Etienne Pouliot: We know that gaming in general goes pretty fast. Five years of Warzone just went by really, really fast, and we’ve tried so many things. But each day Verdansk was still in the discussion and in the bucket of ideas of, ‘oh we will need to return to that place someday.’
But it was just not a matter of, ‘oh we’re going to port that thing toward that new engine or that new Call of Duty.’ It was really more like, ‘let’s bring the best version of Verdansk.’ So, just to be sure that we remade everything from the ground, the sky, the player visibility, the audio. There is a lot of stuff that we put a lot of energy in. And we see the result right now. We were playing the game and we were like, ‘yeah, it feels great.’
So we were just eager to give it to the player. And the answer is really successful right now. So we are really, really happy. And just like Pete mentioned, I think it’s only a beginning and we’ll continue to challenge ourselves to see if we need to make some changes, improvements.
IGN: The online sentiment does look positive right now, and you’ll know that the online sentiment across places like Reddit and social media has certainly not always been positive about Warzone. Is that something that you’re seeing in the data? Are you seeing more people returning to play Warzone?
Pete Actipis: It has been pretty successful, and I think you can tell in the experience, right? Look, I’ll take it when Reddit says positive things about Warzone! That is an anomaly and I’m excited by it. Like Etienne said, we recreated Verdansk to be the best experience possible. But then we didn’t stop there. This is the starting point. It is not an anomaly for where Warzone is going.
We knew there was going to be a lot of new players or lapsed players, word of mouth of like, ‘hey come check out Verdansk.’ We added this Casual mode, which is doing really well for us. We wanted players to come in and re-experience it at their pace, or experience it for the first time in a safe way where they don’t feel like they’re getting sweated out or outplayed. We were very careful with crafting this experience this season, and the data is showing us that it’s been really successful and we just hope to keep that momentum going into the future.
Etienne Pouliot: Yeah, it’s really impressive how much Call of Duty touches different players from all different backgrounds. We’ve seen that during the pandemic and we’ve seen that today. So it’s really a privilege to work on that level of successful franchise. We have that approach of, we want as many players as we can. So having that Casual mode, having more quality of life, having more ways to have a stable, performant game is really important. Down the rest of that chapter and so for the rest of Warzone, how can we be a place to welcome new players and make sure that if you were there back then you will return to what you love?
IGN: Casual mode is where I’m playing right now as a lapsed player returning to Warzone. However, I am starting to see the sweats maybe looking at Casual mode and going, ‘we can have some fun here.’ You can tell when you’re playing it when someone shouldn’t be there, this is too easy for you. Are you seeing that internally?
Pete Actipis: The whole spirit of the Casual mode was to give people that were scared about getting into a time commitment or a game commitment or a skill commitment with Warzone, but do it on their terms. The nice thing about this is, this is the first rev of it. It just went live and we’re going to look at the data, we’re going to evolve it over time to make sure it retains the design principles and spirit that we wanted it to have. So if we see sweats come in there wrecking the whole server, then we will have to come up with plans against that. It’s still pretty new right now. I think it’s still giving players what they need in it right now, and we’ll just keep monitoring and involving it. But it’s a fun mode. I can’t lie – I enjoy playing it myself and I can play with people that never played Call of Duty before. It’s a little less intimidating that way, and I think that’s what makes it so appealing for myself.
Etienne Pouliot: And you get the sense of learning the tension of the game. It’s not just you get thrown away and after that you go to the Gulag and that’s it, it’s done. Internally we have a lot of great players, and maybe we call them ‘demon players.’ It’s funny to just have those discussions with them about the game and how they see it, how they approach it. And on my side, me I’m more on the downfall skill player – I was great before and now I’m just getting worse and worse. So I think it’s really important to just have those conversations with those great players and see how we can tweak that experience in a way that everyone gets something out of it.
And I’m pretty sure that we have a lot of players who are going to get inside ranked down the road of BR. So I see that as a more broad, different mode to just engaging depending on your skillset.
IGN: Yeah, I guess when ranked starts, the sweats will probably gravitate towards that and they’ll have had their fun. I want to talk to you about Call of Duty lore. I remember reporting on Warzone and how everything became unified and all the different brands became mashed together in a timeline. And I remember in 2021 you blew Verdansk up, and it was publicly said: ‘this is never coming back.’ And I believed it! So are we just supposed to go, ‘you know what, actually it doesn’t really matter, it’s about the fun.’ Or have you come up with a story explanation for how we’re back?
Pete Actipis: I don’t want to spoil any sort of narrative story bits. And that’s not confirming nor denying either way. It’s just, what we wanted to do for this moment was take a pause from any sort of timelines or anything like that and just say, ‘look, let’s just celebrate this moment in time and just have a great time with it.’ If and when we introduce a narrative we may or may not figure out if we have to resolve this. But again, I’m not trying to spoil anything or say or mislead in any direction. But this season’s launch was just, let’s have a fun moment and go back to the nostalgic bits.
Etienne Pouliot: And I don’t know if you’ve seen some clips around it, but all I can say is that there is stuff in the map that I’m pretty sure that players who know the map will definitely find some bits of information. And after that they can figure it out. But at the same time it’s important to acknowledge some of the historical moments of five years of Warzone. So Verdansk is part of that five year celebration.
IGN: A lot of people are wondering, is Verdansk here to stay? Is it like a celebration, one-shot type thing that you’re doing, or is this something that players can expect longer term and you iterate on it on that basis?
Pete Actipis: We brought Verdansk back for a reason. It wasn’t just to bring it back for a season and kind of say goodbye to it again. A lot of effort went into it. So for the time being Verdansk is sticking around and this is just the beginning of the Verdansk 2025 journey, and then we’ll see how things go from there. So again, no confirmation or anything on the strategy on the maps moving forward, but we love Verdansk. It was a nostalgic map that we loved and it’s fun to play on, and so we just want to keep investing on it and continue to make it a better experience for our players moving forward for at least the time being.
IGN: I’ve seen players go back to unlock Price’s ghillie suit from Modern Warfare 2 now Verdansk is back. Have you seen this?
Etienne Pouliot: Yeah, I’ve seen that.
IGN: People are asking each other how to get it again, going back to Modern Warfare 2 or even buying it to unlock the ghillie suit.
Etienne Pouliot: It’s really interesting how the community is engaging with the game. We have the chance of having all the different operators from Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and all the different games. It’s something that I really love from the game, is that all the different battle passes and Blackcell, I can change every time my loadout and my operator. And sometimes I even use really, really old weapons that maybe are not meta, but I have the feeling that I’m back, I’m there the way I want to play. So I’m pretty sure a lot of people are just using all the different content we gave them across all those years and having fun right now.
Pete Actipis: On launch day I went back and picked an old Ghost costume that looked very similar to the launch trailer versions. I’m like, ‘okay, I’m back in it too.’ That’s part of the fun, picking your operator and the look and trying to relive that moment as you remember it.
IGN: I’ve been having old debates again about whether to play aggressive or just camp on a rooftop and snipe, or just hide, in the same old places. When you were thinking about bringing back the map, did you consider tweaking it in such a way to encourage certain gameplay types or gameplay styles, or did you want to recreate it as accurately as possible so the same gameplay styles in the same places would happen once again?
Etienne Pouliot: We wanted to recreate those moments, but again, we’ve learned a lot. So just to give you a quick example: player visibility is really better right now than back then. Maybe people will remember Roze, but there were a lot of dark corners. That was an experience that a lot of people were not attracted by. So we’ve made slight adjustments like this to make sure it’s fun for everyone.
And another thing is audio was really, really, really important for us. So just making sure that you understand from each corner where you’re in this, where will be the enemy, and how you need to react. So again, just making sure that it’s the best Verdansk version we will deliver. That was the goal and I think that we are on the right path to continue.
Pete Actipis: We also didn’t want change too much because then it wouldn’t be what you remembered in Verdansk. The map itself had a lot of that sandbox-y kind of like, ‘do I want to play long range and go camp at the top of ATC Tower or the top of Stadium roof with a helicopter?’ There was a lot of play potential, a lot of opportunities for close range, long range, you name it; great fighting in the woods areas north of Quarry, or south west of Hills.
To make that a reality we went back into the core experience and made sure we were able to pay those moments off. So we retuned the circle back the way it worked originally. So we allow these wild swings for these first and last circles so you can get more of these dynamic and crazy experiences where you’re, the first part of the match you’re playing in a dense area, maybe like Downtown, and then it ends somewhere where there’s an opening, and you’re like, ‘oh crap, I got to go hit my loadout again, let’s go get some money so we can acquire a loadout so I can get more of a mid to long range weapon to be able to handle late game.’
And we also made vehicles more impactful, so we had to remove things like the redeploy drone beacons and all the other fast travel mechanics, to make the rotations a little bit more difficult, which made you think of, ‘how do I want to move with my team and what kind of weapons do I need to carry and what sort of equipment do I carry?’
All of those things might look like individual things, but they all compound together to really form the experience. And so we were very careful. It was like, ‘what’s the experience that we really want to go after when we brought back Verdansk?’ So then that started peeling back the onion of, ‘okay, we have to change this, we should change this and this and this.’ And so all of it together as the sum of the parts of that beat that we were going after.
IGN: I wanted to get some insight into TTK (Time to Kill) and how you approached what you wanted to achieve there for Verdansk coming back. It feels shortened to me, but exactly what happened there, and why did you make the changes you made?
Pete Actipis: Comparatively to last year, the Urzikstan year, it is a faster TTK. It’s pretty equivalent – I don’t know the exact numbers offhand – but the original experience and what we wanted to go back for now was make it more of a casual, friendly kind of, ‘if I’m not good at hitting straight shots, I have an opportunity, I’m not going to get destroyed every gun battle.’ There’s also a lot more excitement of like, ‘oh, I have an opportunity to get a kill.’
That being said, it is not like we’re trying to remove skill from the game. There’s still a lot of skill involved in this game, but it’s approachable, which is the key difference there. And part of this was not only how do weapons handle, but then also how does your movement handle in response to that? Do I feel like I can engage in combat and get a bead on somebody and react to how someone’s moving or get away from shots?
So movement and gunplay are very tied to the hip. And this is again the peeling onion approach. We like right now where the TTK sits. We will evaluate as the game progresses and see what our fans think. We’re always evolving and we’ll react appropriately based on that. But right now it seems like people are enjoying it. I know TTK is… some people either love it or they hate it. It depends on their player type. It’s okay to be opinionated. That’s cool! We’re just trying to do what’s best for the community at large.
IGN: My first Verdansk match back I was in the plane and there were four of us getting ready to jump out, and one of the players was a giant Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and the other was this fairy thing. I was like, ‘this is not how Warzone was back in lockdown.’ Was that on your minds as you were thinking of rekindling the feeling exactly as it was back then, when some of these crazy skins weren’t so prevalent in the game? Did you ever think at any point that actually, just for the relaunch, at least at the start, we’re going to limit it to mil-sim [military simulation] stuff, or some of the stuff that people remembered? Or was that just never a consideration for you?
Pete Actipis: We talked about everything. We left no stone unturned really. But we wanted to create the best version of Verdansk possible. And part of that is just understanding the reality of where we’re at. We’re in a Black Ops 6 year. So at the end of the day we still are dealing with differences in loadouts and weaponry and even operators. We tried to pay homage and pay off the spirit of that nostalgic experience as best as possible. But our intent was never to be a facsimile of that old experience. It was supposed to be the best version of Verdansk and Warzone to date.
Part of that was respecting players’ purchases. As a player, I’ve invested X amount of time, money, whatever it is, and this is who I like to play with. Okay, we could have restricted weapons and operators, but then it creates this big friction moment for players who are like, ‘I just want to play the game. I want to have fun in my mode.’ I know some players might have more of a stance on it, like, ‘I want it to be pure mil-sim.’ But the spirit was to make it welcoming for all players.
Etienne Pouliot: I remember sometime with my friend, we were like, ‘yeah, today we all buy a different turtle and we wanted to be the four turtles winning a match. It was pretty crazy. So I think just having those possibilities in front of the player.
Mil-sim – one of my friends is really hardcore, he plays only with one attachment. That’s his rule. Because he feels that it’s cheating. He’s like, ‘no, it’s not a usable case of a weapon. So I will only use one.’ And I’m like, ‘okay man, if you want to do it, but I will never go toward that path.’
So I think that just having all those different possibilities so you can engage the way you want. And after that, like Pete just mentioned, I think that it’s really important for us to respect all the time and money you spend in the game and making sure it’s still worth it for you.
IGN: Your friend must be very good at Call of Duty if they can get by with just one attachment.
Etienne Pouliot: Yeah, it’s really incredible how many people I’ve seen through all the years that they have such a great skill that from my point of view I’m like, ‘hey, are you using something else that I’m not aware of?’ But yeah, you’re a true player.
IGN: That does lead me on to one of the final questions I wanted to ask. Activision has increased communication around cheating in Warzone and made changes recently, like with crossplay. But are you seeing any improvements now with Verdansk coming back?
Pete Actipis: To be honest with you, that’s not our area of expertise, the whole cheating side. I would defer those questions to the Ricochet team and how that stuff has been working out. Anecdotally, the games have been feeling good. I don’t feel like I’m getting cheated on. I think that’s even what our streamers are saying. But again, that’s not really a data point.
Etienne Pouliot: And something just to add, it’s just that it’s always something on top of our mind. So we’re just making sure that the right person speaks with the right team and makes sure that we put a lot of effort. Because everything we saw from the community, it’s important for us too. So just making sure that yeah, we will put all the energy needed to prevail and making sure the game is at the right condition that we want.
IGN: Do you have any message to the community about your plans for Warzone in 2025 now that you’ve gotten to a place where there’s positive sentiment? What can players expect?
Pete Actipis: First of all, thank you for either coming back or continuing with us on this Warzone journey. We are players too and we strive to make the game as good as possible. The launch of Verdansk, the simplification of our systems and our mechanics and just the flow, is the beginning. We’re going to cultivate the game and we’re pretty excited for our roadmap moving forward. We’ve got some great surprises that I’m not going to spoil today in store, but we hear the community and we want feedback. We listen. We take all opinions. We have our own, and we like hearing what the players think and feel. The passion is really important for us because that fuels us. We’re excited to continue on with our journey here.
Etienne Pouliot: Yeah, totally. The first thing is just to thank all the players for all the love. And even the bad things. I think it’s important to know both sides of the community. We’re all passionate, and we have a lot of great ideas that are coming down the path. Warzone has so much room to continue to grow and opportunity in front of us. So I just hope that with all the different players we will get to those moments, and after that they will stick as memories for them for quite a long time.
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.
I’ve heard things, Microsoft, and I think I’d rather die. About Windows 11, I mean, although there’s also that other stuff. Instead, I’m choosing to escape to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by enshittification: the past (moon’s done for already). Actual human immortality is due to launch by Q2 of 1999, and then all I’ll have to do is upload my soul to HeavenX. This means I’ll miss both the UK TV debut of The Sopranos and Roy Walker’s final episode of Catchphrase but, eh, swings and roundabouts.
But, wait, there’s anomalies in the system. Typical millennium shit. You know how it is. To fix them, you’ll need to enter cyberspace and play with guns and cards. HeavenX bills itself as an FPS deckbuilder but stands out through 1. Exactly the kind of break beats I like writing to 2. Looking like the inside of your eyelids might if you pressed your fingers into your eyes for a bit after staring at a screensaver for three hours. You bet your sweet Roy Walker’s final episode of Catchphrase I’m down. I couldn’t find a trailer so just look at these cards with me for a bit.
Minecraft has been one of the biggest games on the planet for over a decade now, and the new Minecraft movie has only added a whole other level of interest. Since ithat orginal game’s release, it has appeared on nearly all of the big video game platforms and sold millions upon millions of copies to become one of the best-selling games of all time. It’s a massive, open-ended game that offers nearly limitless possibilities for players young and old. So it’s no surprise that a mountain of books about Minecraft have flooded the market over the years in an effort to help players figure out how to do what they want to do.
Minecraft books are easy to come by nowadays, but it’s not always easy to tell which ones are worth picking up for yourself or the Minecraft player in your life. We’re here to help. We’ve compiled all the best Minecraft books for a wide variety of needs and uses, from beginners to epic players looking for inspiration. Let’s dig in.
Minecraft is such a vast game that it’s hard for beginners to get their bearings, or to know what to do first. That’s where this book comes in. It provides an easy-to-follow high-level overview of all the different parts of the game.
It starts out by offering all the basic info you’ll need, like what Minecraft is and how the controls work. After that, it gives you a step-by-step guide that helps you learn the ropes. You’ll find guidance for what to do on your first day, how to eat, mine, and equip yourself with new tools and armor. Then it goes into day two and beyond. This is a great starting point.
You can also check out IGNs full Minecraft guide for a lot of this same info.
If you’re looking for a book (or set of books) that covers the basics of Minecraft in a good deal of detail, the Guide Collection is hard to beat. This collection has everything you need to know to move from a novice Minecrafter to an experienced one. While this line of guides does expand further than this box set of four titles, these are the most helpful books for pretty much anyone.
It includes guides to Exploration, Creative, Redstone, and the Nether & the End. The Guide to Exploration helps you with the keys to surviving in Survival Mode, while the Guide to Creative gives you a great baseline education about building. The Guide to Redstone helps you understand how circuits work and how you can use them in your builds, and the Guide to the Nether & the End is all about advanced survival. This collection covers all the bases anyone starting off in Minecraft needs to know.
The Ultimate Unofficial Encyclopedia for Minecrafters
If you’re in the market for a Minecraft reference book, this unofficial encyclopedia is a good one to put on your shelf. Like any encyclopedia, it’s not meant to be read cover-to-cover. Instead, it’s a book you can skim for anything that interests you, or dip into whenever a particular question pops into your mind.
The reference book Minecraft: Blockpedia is another one to keep on your shelf and use as needed. It’s a gorgeously full-color (and official) guide to every kind of block you’ll find in Minecraft. And since blocks are the basis of the entire gameworld and everything you build, it’s good to be able to look up the unique properties of all the different kinds of blocks at a moment’s notice. And in case you think a whole book dedicated to block types is overkill, there are several hundred different types. So, definitely not overkill.
For any Minecraft players who want to dabble in a little dark magic, a book of hacks is in order. The Giant Book of Hacks is an excellent starter guide to, essentially, breaking the game. It’s a thick book that’s filled with ideas for how to input cheats, program command blocks, play with mods, and use redstone to create all kinds of useful contraptions.
This book covers a lot of ground, but by the time you’re done with it, you’ll be able to give yourself a level boost, build retractable staircases, and set devious traps. Lots of fun to be had in this one.
Making enormous homes and castles might be a big ask for new or younger Minecraft players. This book sets its sights on simpler builds that anyone can do. But just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re boring. You’ll find step-by-step instructions for building everything from a survivalist’s vault and fairy treehouse to a bouncy castle and deep-sea submarine.
And once you master these bite-size builds, you can use what you’ve learned to venture forth and build ever bigger and more impressive creations. See our guide on ideas for what to build in Minecraft for more like this.
Done with the bite-size builds, or just feeling ready to attempt something a bit bigger? Minecraft: Epic Bases is the book for you. Made with advanced builders in mind, this book offers tips for making massive constructions like an ancient mummy’s tomb and a macabre hotel. While it doesn’t break down the builds into steps like the Bite-Size Builds book does, it offers ideas and highlights so you can create massive structures that are like the ones you’ll find in the book, if not exact replicas.
Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
