Fishing, I think, is the truest of all video game power fantasies. Action hero combat, romance wish fulfilment, god like abilities, all of that sort of thing pales in comparison to the act of fishing in a game. Just you, your rod, and a whole load of open water. I love to fish in video games, despite not being someone that has a strong desire to 100% genres like collectathons, I do love getting as many fish as I can, and I love a twist on the format. Enter Out Fishing, a mysterious sounding horror fishing game.
We’ve already had a look at Nintendo’s official Switch 2 carry case and scored it a super solid 8/10, commenting that it had too few cart spaces (at just six), but was nevertheless a compact and good-looking case for the money.
Now it’s the turn of Skull & Co., or ‘Savage Raven’ as the company has now rebranded, with the Switch 2 EDC Carry Case. I’ll be honest, it makes me feel a little bit like I should really be dressing up as The Crow when I’m out and about with my console rocking a name like that on its little protective jacket, but hey, this is actually a very strong alternative to Nintendo’s rather less street-wise offering. It also has two more cart spaces than that case. Upgrade unlocked!
Pik-Sen Lim, an actress known for roles across British and Malaysian television, has died at age 80.
Per Malay Mail, the Penang-born actress appeared in numerous roles over the years, including appearing on Doctor Who as Chin Lee in The Mind of Evil. Lim also gained international fame for her role as Chung Su-Lee in Mind Your Language, a British comedy from the 1970s.
She also appeared in series like Coronation Street and Spearhead, as well as American TV shows like Vampire Academy and The Nevers. On the film side, Lim played the Killer Cleaner in Johnny English Reborn.
Lim also played an important role in video games, as the narrator for the opening cinematics of Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 3. These cinematics laid the groundwork for the story ahead, and are often remembered and quoted in the Souls and FromSoftware fandom.
Actor Daniel York Loh posted a fond remembrance on Instagram, recalling seeing Lim on Mind Your Language before eventually working with her on stage plays, readings, and workshops.
“She was so affectionate, so witty, so brilliantly scabrous and absolutely honest about the rubbish this industry deals actors of our heritage – unlike a fair few others who actually try and cape it,” said Loh. “We’ll miss you so much but thank you, Pixi, for blessing our lives with your unique presence.”
I find Fortnite’s desperation to be the everything game both fascinating and overwhelming. There’s always something new for you to do around the corner, some new game mode that’s attempting to tap into current trends of whatever it is that kids are into at any given moment. Currently, on the younger audience side of things with Lego Fortnite, Epic Games are launching Expeditions, a new wave-based mode that looks like a bit of a blend between a hero shooter and Left 4 Dead.
Preorders for the upcoming Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet expansions, Black Bolt and White Flare, are starting to roll out at major US retailers ahead of the release next month on July 18.
Walmart has confirmed its listings will go live on June 18 at 6 PM PT / 9 PM ET. Amazon and Target are also expected to follow up with wider availability soon, potentially even around the same time, so keep an eye out and bookmark the following links if you’re looking to secure early stock.
Amazon’s listings are up but not live yet, so bookmark each so you’re ready to lock in your preorder ASAP when each set goes live.
You can also see our full list of trusted retailers just below that will likely host preorders between now and release on July 18.
Best Buy is also putting restrictions in place for those looking to preorder, so make sure to check the following on your Best Buy account, as well as every other retailer:
Make sure you have an account set up and logged in.
Confirm your location and address for store pickup or shipping.
Add the item to your cart as soon as you can for account verification and inventory checks.
Make sure to follow on-screen prompts and not refresh or close your browser window.
Don’t try and use multiple devices to secure stock, retailers usually track your IP Address (Sometimes bypassing VPNS).
Complete the purchase as soon as possible when adding to basket.
Where To Preorder: Pokémon TCG Black Bolt
Like previous sets, Black Bolt and White Flare will likely sell out incredibly quickly, so it’ll be a massive task to find the expansions in stock.
I’ll be keeping track on retailers and updating this article as preorders go live, as I’ll be looking to pick up a few sealed boosters myself.
The everything below also be found at The Pokémon Center, although its currently out of stock, and its queue system when new stock is added can take a rather long time with no guarantees.
Pokémon TCG’s release schedule is looking chock full over the next few months, alongside the split explansion set Black Bolt and White Flare, there’s also Destined Rivals that recently released at the end of May.
Black Bolt and White Flare will have a staggered release between July 18 – August 22, and you can find all the relevant dates to note down just below.
Available July 18, 2025:
Scarlet & Violet: Black Bolt or White Flare Elite Trainer Box, each containing nine booster packs, an illustration rare promo card featuring Thundurus or Tornadus, and gameplay accessories
Binder Collection, including five booster packs and a nine-pocket album featuring Zekrom or Reshiram
Unova Poster Collection, with two booster packs from each expansion, three promo cards featuring Snivy, Tepig, and Oshawott, and a full-size double-sided poster
Unova Mini Tin, including one booster pack from each expansion, one art card, and one sticker card
Available August 1, 2025:
Tech Sticker Collection, with three booster packs, a promo card featuring Reuniclus or Gothitelle, and a themed sticker sheet
Unova Victini Illustration Collection, with four booster packs, a foil promo card featuring Victini, a premium parallel Poké Ball version of Victini, and an oversized foil card
Available August 22, 2025:
Booster Bundle, including six booster packs from either Black Bolt or White Flare
Key Features: Black Bolt and White Flare
Six Pokémon ex
Eight ultra rare Pokémon and Supporter cards
One illustration rare or special illustration rare card for each Unova Pokémon
One special illustration rare Supporter card
A new card style, called Black White rare, will also debut. These cards will feature full artwork in either black or white monochrome, depending on the expansion.
Players will also be able to access Scarlet & Violet: Black Bolt and White Flare digitally starting July 17, 2025, through the Pokémon TCG Live app on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows. The digital release allows players to collect and battle with new Unova-region cards and earn in-game login bonuses.
Pokémon TCG: Best Deals Today
Checking these prices against TCG Player secondary market values, a lot of these products aren’t far off the mark. Make no mistake, they’re still way off MSRP, but finding Pokémon products on shelves that haven’t been marked up past the point of anyone caring is a positive.
Still refusing to pay over MSRP for new sets? Well played, I’m proud of you. Here’s some single card highlights for you to shuffle through instead. Spoiler, there’s plenty of deals to be had.
Destined Rivals Singles Are On The Rise (Again)
It’s hard to stick a pin on Destined Rivals single card values right now, and the dips in value seem to match the little bits of stock distributors release to stores.
Looking at the tracking charts for each of these cards, we can see mostly plummets from day one, then either upticks or cards for sale that exceed the original value at launch.
It’s crazy, but we now know how low these cards can go. Sure there’s always attempts at market manipulation, but I wouldn’t buy any cards on the rise right now.
Journey Together Singles Are Settling In Value
Having keeping an eye on the market since launch, Journey Together singles are now more affordable than ever.
Many of these cards have stabilized, with the main chase card – Lillie’s Clefairy ex SIR, settling at around $150.
If you were planning on getting into Journey Together at some point to collect the illustration rares and SIRs, now is a great time to jump in.
Epic Primastic Evolutions Cards That Aren’t Umbreon
There’s so many great cards in this set that aren’t Umbreon ex SIR, all of which are a damn sight more affordable right now.
Because I hate anything popular (Yes, I know I’m a massive fan of the most popular IP on earth), my two favorite cards are Dragapult ex SIR and Roaring Moon ex SIR.
The former is now down to a respectable $125, with the latter holding it’s value well since launch, floating towards the $200 mark. These prices and below are great deals for these cards, so don’t miss out.
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.
Additional contributions included by Robert Anderson.
If you wondered why it worth making such a fuss to save Super Earth from the Illuminate in Helldivers 2 not too long ago, you might want to take a look at the game’s latest Galactic War twist. A fresh major order has players embarking to cities that the squids have twisted in their image, and they’re a sight to behold.
Urban warfare’s the thing in the shooter at the moment, with the divers having just resisted a big bug invasion of a bunch of cities. Now, they’re dropping in to try and save innocent citizens that might already have been, uh, squidified.
Traverse punishing environments, looting, crafting and evading the constant threats to your life. The unprecedented levels of character customization and progression are your ultimate tools for survival.
It’s easy to get drawn in by the unmistakable chrome and neon look of the Tron movies. It definitely made Tron: Catalyst, a top-down action game set in a different virtual world than those we’ve seen in the films, catch my eye. But in this case, those aesthetics only carried me so far. It doesn’t make any critical system errors, but almost every part of it seems like it could have used a little more compute time.
Catalyst focuses on a determined and likeable courier program, Exo, who gets mixed up in a sweeping conspiracy relating to a potential hard reset of the server she and her fellow digital consciousnesses reside on. This Arq Grid was created by Kevin Flynn, AKA Jeff Bridges from the films, and is currently the stage for an interesting political struggle between the authoritarian organization Core and their free-thinking opponents, Automata. Getting to explore this world held my attention, but a lot about it felt two-dimensional.
Most of the life it has is injected by occasional dialogue scenes with fairly respectable but somewhat inconsistent voice acting, and I’m not sure the cartoon character art hit quite the right tone. It almost reminds me of the animated kids’ shows Disney often does these days to follow up many of their popular, live-action blockbusters. And that doesn’t quite fit the gloomy, noir vibes of apocalyptic intrigue. I did like the character designs conceptually, though. Every major player is certainly distinct and imaginative.
Catalyst really is the picture of a game that is merely pretty good and rarely ever great.
The plot is also just alright. At the risk of repeating myself, Catalyst really is the picture of a game that is merely pretty good and rarely ever great, in just about every arena. I was interested in the various factions and sub-factions, but they never got fleshed out enough to matter. I was intrigued by the central mystery and the looming threat of the server ending, but I rarely felt a strong urgency to unravel those threads. The writing at least does what it needs to do to move things, but frequently relies on what feel like deliberate leaps of logic to avoid breaking up the flow of a level.
The best example of this is the Glitch, a condition affecting Exo that allows her to reset the server to an earlier state. This is essentially a way to start the current chapter over from the beginning, but retaining any knowledge you’ve gained, abilities you’ve earned, and shortcuts you’ve unlocked remaining open. It’s a very clever idea, but I feel like this mechanic had a lot more potential than what it ends up being used for.
The Glitch mechanic had a lot more potential than what it ends up being used for.
Most of the time, I simply pressed the reset button when the quest objective told me to, or when I’d goofed up big time by getting too much heat from the Core enforcers. There weren’t enough instances in which I felt like I could use it in a clever or dynamic way to open up optional paths or gain an advantage I wouldn’t have had simply by following the main quest rigidly. It’s a time loop story without a lot of opportunities to exploit the fact that you know what’s going to happen. Time travel is always tricky to work with, and Tron: Catalyst mostly plays it safe in that regard.
Combat is also, and I’m sorry again for sounding like a broken record, but… it’s fine. The controls are very responsive and the animations are kinetic and snappy. It looks cool as hell to dance back and forth through a pack of cyber cops, bouncing the light disc off walls and slashing away with stylish violence. But it started to feel fairly repetitive and never really got my blood pumping or my neurons firing in the way a better action game might because its attempts to keep me on my toes never succeeded at breaking me out of the same basic hack and slash routine.
There’s a respectable difficulty curve, introducing new mechanics along the way like the ability to steal an enemy’s code to copy their fighting style, or bosses that can only be damaged by parrying one of their attacks first. But too many fights can still be concluded swiftly and with token effort by spamming dodge and melee attacks. Eventually Catalyst introduces a stealth system, but I didn’t use it except when I was forced to because it’s pretty dull, and fighting through a level the loud way seemed so risk-free that it didn’t even offer a meaningful advantage.
There’s a respectable difficulty curve, introducing new mechanics along the way.
The key problem with combat is that it usually doesn’t feel necessary to think very tactically to progress on the default difficulty. This is the entire skill tree right here, and it’s possible to fill it out completely long before the end of the journey if you’re meticulous about looking for secrets like I am, so there aren’t a lot of either/or choices to make. Even stolen enemy abilities that can power up your attacks like this blade module didn’t end up feeling all that impactful for me, to the point that I wasn’t bothering with them in the majority of fights. To be clear, it’s not bad. It’s fun enough. But that’s all it ever is.
Of course, a Tron game without light cycles would be very odd indeed, so Catalyst gives you one pretty early on that makes it quick and enjoyable to navigate some of its larger areas. Many outdoor zones still ended up being a bit cramped for how fast this thing is, though. And the few instances of light cycle combat or chases highlighted how clunky it can feel in certain circumstances. There’s even a light jet you get to pilot later, but this felt even more like a minigame and less like a well-thought-out mechanic.
Maybe the aspect I was most underwhelmed by, though, was the music. At this point, I associate the Tron universe with the likes of Daft Punk and Trent Reznor. And that’s a high bar, I’ll admit. I doubt any of those guys are available to create bespoke music for a project of this modest scale. But Tron: Catalyst’s subdued, understated, overly safe blend of orchestral and electronic never gave me the chills I was looking for, even when I put my nice headphones on and turned the volume way up.
The score often fades into the background because it’s too repetitive, and it doesn’t vary enough in intensity between stretches of low-key exploration and the biggest plot reveals or action sequences. Sure, it does the job. But if there’s one aspect where I would expect a Tron tie-in to go above and beyond, it would be the music. So it was harder to accept “merely acceptable” on that front.
While it might sound like damning with faint praise, I honestly think one of the aspects of Tron: Catalyst that works best is its restrained scope and length. It didn’t even take me 12 hours to finish, playing pretty meticulously, and that’s just about exactly how much attention I had to give its digital world. It would have been really easy to overstay its welcome, especially with the meager trickle of new mechanics it doles out, so it was definitely a smart decision to not pad this out. Playtime isn’t directly correlated with quality, and I respect how much this adventure respected my time.
Rejoice, GameCube fans – Nintendo has finally made the dinky little console part of its Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription tier, meaning you can now enjoy select titles on the Switch 2 with bonus quality-of-life features.
Some of these features, including the ability to create restore points and apply a CRT filter, are standard across the whole catalogue. But, just in case you’ve not yet discovered it for yourself, you can also set select games to be played in widescreen mode.
