We didn’t really know what to make of KarmaZoo when it was first revealed in this year’s Wholesome Direct. The co-op platformer from Devolver Digital and Pastagames looked sweet, for sure, but pretty pixel-art platforming is hardly a rare species in the jungle that is the Switch eShop. What was going to be the hook to separate this one from the rest of the pack? The answer: Sharing the love.
Of course, helping your teammates get to the goal should be the objective of any team-based platforming (we say, as our mind furiously flashes back to memories of being thrown off cliffs in New Super Mario Bros. U), but Karmazoo takes things up to another level where helping your teammates — and racking up some good karma in the process — is the name of the game.
Last week, we asked you to share pictures of Miles Morales moving through the world of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:
calisarah1998shares Miles shooting webs wearing the Shadow-Spider Suit
FrameCaptureVPshares Miles perching in the snow wearing the Miles Morales 2020 Suit.
stabbed_jawashares Miles hanging from a wall wearing the turtleneck-focused 10th Anniversary Suit.
AreeLyBadPunshares Miles swinging in front of a dynamic advertisement
txfoh_shares Miles’ silhouette standing out against the green neon of Mysterio’s Coney Island attraction
thefrostysmshares Miles swinging past a colorful wall in the Evolved Suit
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – Villains
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on November 22, 2023
Next week, #SpiderMan2PS5’s villains are taking the spotlight. Share venomous, villainous moments using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.
PS5 Black Friday deals are in full swing, and we’ve already seen siginificant deals on PS5 slim bundles, 30% off PS Plus, DualSense controllers for just $49, and now we’re starting to see discounts on first and third party PS5 video games. Some of these discounts are great and likely the best we’re going to get, and others are good — but will likely be surpassed by Black Friday next week (November 24). Read on to find out what deals get our seal of approval, and what offers you should wait on.
God of War Ragnarok on PS5 for $34.99 – Buy
One of the standout games from 2022 was God of War Ragnarok. If you haven’t played this game yet, then you’re missing out — it’s truely incredible. We expected this title to pop up among the deals for Black Friday this year, and we’re just very excited that the 50% discount has gone live so early. Pick up your copy in the next week for the crazy price of $35. Walmart will have this for $40 next week, but we imagine that’ll be price matched before then.
Star Wars Jedi Survivor for $34.99 – Hold
While $34.99 is still a very good deal for one of the best Star Wars games ever made, $34.99 is not the best deal we will be getting on the sequel to Fallen Order. From November 22, Walmart will have Star Wars Jedi Survivor for just $30, which is a whole $4.99 less than every other retailer right now. So, if you have the patience, hold on that order and wait for the bigger and better Black Friday sales next week. If you simply want the game now, we’ll leave a link just below as well.
Final Fantasy 16 on PS5 for $39.99 – Buy
You can pick up 2023’s entry into the Final Fantasy saga for just $39.99, that’s a fantastic 43% off in Amazon’s Black Friday sale. If you’ve yet to play this game, then you should move fast to snap it up. We gave it a 9 back in June when it first came out, and we stick by that rating still. The 16th installment in the franchise is a little bit of a departure from what FF would usually expect from the series, but it’s absolutely worth playing. As far as we’re aware, this is the best deal we’re going to get on Final Fantasy 16.
Resident Evil 4 for $39.99 – Hold
In all honesty $40 for a Game of the Year contender is a great deal, it’s just not the best deal we’re going to get throughout Black Friday. Next week Resident Evil 4 will drop to just $30 at Walmart, and you can get early access to that deal if you’re a Walmart+ member.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage on PS5/ Xbox for $39.99 – Buy
You get a choice between consoles for this one, as Assassin’s Creed Mirage has dropped to just $39.99 in the early Black Friday sales across most retailers. This is the best deal we’re getting on AC, with Walmart not dropping it any further when their deals go live on November 22.
The Last of Us Part 1 for $39.99 – Buy
Let’s be honest, this is probably the price it should’ve been in the first place, rather than a whole — checks notes — $70? Well, at least it’s come down quite heavily in price now to $39.99. If you were hoping for any further discounts, you’re out of luck as this is the best we’re getting. Still, we think this is quite a good deal for the perfect version of one of the best games ever made.
Street Fighter 6 for $39.99 – Hold
Another good deal, but another hold for now. Just like its Capcom brother RE4, Street Fighter 6 is down to $39.99 at most retailers right now, but will fall to just $30 at Walmart when their proper Black Friday deals kicks off on November 22. So, for now, be patient and you can get an even better deal. Or, just ignore us and buy it now anyway cause you’re bored and want a game to play ASAP.
Metal Gear Solid – Master Collection Vol. 1 for $39.99 – Buy
Here’s another one where you get to go, hey it should’ve been that price in the first place! Well, we’ll let you have your fun. The MGS collection isn’t something to write home about, but it’s the best way to play the classic games on modern consoles right now, and it does come with a lot of content. So, at $39.99, you’re getting a reasonable deal here. It’s not getting any cheaper, either, so this is the best deal you’re going to get.
Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.
“Night Cascades is on sale,” a Steam notification informed me this week. I didn’t remember adding it to my wishlist, and honestly I didn’t remember what it was. Still, a visual novel about lesbians solving occult mysteries? Oh, and it’s made by the studio behind RPS favourites Long Live The Queen and Black Closet? For under £5? Ah, go on. Having now played it, yeah, I’m happy with the spooky investigation and clueless yearning that I got for a fiver.
Ark: Survival Ascended’s publisher has declared its launch successful after the dinosaur survival game sold over 600,000 copies on Steam in the two weeks following launch.
Ark: Survival Ascended quickly shot to the top of Steam’s best-selling games list upon release, but players ran into performance issues that marred the launch. The game currently has a ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating of 56%. Studio Wildcard has acknowledged these issues, admitting to “a few bumps” since launch. But, it stressed, it’s working to address issues players report with patches. At the time of this article’s publication, more people were playing Ark: Survival Evolved than Ark: Survival Ascended.
Snail said it was “pleased” with Ark’s performance on the likes of YouTube, where it became the top live game within 24 hours of release, and Twitch, where it became one of the top six games streamed with over 5.6 million minutes watched during launch day. “The Company is confident that Ark: Survival Ascended will continue to captivate broader audiences worldwide through highly anticipated console releases,” Snail said.
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.
Hades is one of the many GOTY award winners I feel extremely guilty about barely spending any time with. I think I’ve played a couple of hours tops. Nobody must know! Oh drat. Anyway, despite my lack of expertise, the Supergiant action-roguelite was the first comparison that came to mind while watching the trailer for Realm of Ink, which has just been announced.
It makes use of a similar angled perspective, appears similarly focussed on build customisation, with hundreds of magic items to equip, and sees you playing out the backstories of various mythological personalities – derived, in this case, not from Ancient Greece but China and Buddhism.
It feels like only yesterday that we were wrapping up our Black Friday coverage last year, and all of a sudden here we are again bringing you the fledgling deals from this year’s event. We’re being spoiled this month as retailers are starting to offer huge discounts as far out as a week away from the big day itself.
We like to stay on top of these early deals and one thing we’re always looking out for is savings on a PS5 SSD. If you head over to Amazon, you can find the Crucial P5 Plus 2TB Gaming SSD with Heatsink for just £99.99. That’s the lowest price it’s ever been.
You might see us banging on about on SSDs for PS5s a lot, but you may have wondered why we go on about them quite so much? Well, if you’re used to constantly having to juggle space whenever you install a new game, then you’re going to want to get yourself an SSD.
It will free up space, improve performance, and enhance your overall experience. Now is the time to grab one at a great price. Plus, you you don’t want to drop £100, the 1TB version is also down to just £57.99 right now as well.
More Great Early PlayStation Deals For Black Friday
PS5 fans can be particularly smug today as Sony has decided to officially go live with all of their Black Friday deals today. The deals on offer right now are pretty amazing too. First of all, you can grab a PS5 for just £379, or you can get a bundle that includes two free games for just £400.
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! In this weekly feature we cover all the games coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows, and Game Pass! Get more details on these upcoming games below and click their profiles for further info (release dates subject to change). Let’s jump in!
In this 2D active, turn-based, platformer, players will explore intricate and interconnected areas full of secrets and mysteries to uncover with a plethora of abilities like dashing and wall-jumps.
A stylized 3D action adventure with light RPG and narrative elements. Inspired by the alien atmosphere of Out Of This World, Deserted combines narrative storytelling with survival and fast paced strategic combat to deliver a thrilling adventure.
A strategy puzzle board game in which you must construct farms, roads, and surround it with windmills and water-towers to score points. To make points you must own a completed farm, road, windmill or water tower.
Relax and enjoy brainteasing block puzzles with a chill undersea theme. A block-arranging puzzle game in which players fit various shapes into empty squares on the puzzle board and fill all empty squares to clear the stage. Pieces must be rotated and flipped to fit together and be successfully placed in the right order.
Drive forward the industrial revolution in this train tycoon micro-management game! Build railroads, upgrade your locomotives, and keep your trains on schedule without delays or accidents to meet the ever-growing demand of the cities and industries in your tiny valley.
A roguelike deckbuilding tactics game that combines elements from Slay the Spire and Into the Breach. Play as a gladiator to survive. With roguelike deckbuilding and hex-based tactics, no longer bound by simple attack and defense. Make use of dodges and knockbacks to stay alive!
Explore the beautiful Ikonei Island, befriend magical creatures, and fight monsters with your friends or adventure solo. Gather resources, craft tools, and gear. Farm the land, build your base or a cozy home, and decorate it however you like.
Train Traffic Manager isn’t your grandpa’s model railway set. Think fast, plan faster, and keep those trains from turning into flaming metal confetti. In this strategy-puzzle game, you’re in charge of everything from switches and signals to drawbridges and, oh yeah, preventing cataclysmic train disasters.
Trash is Fun offers exciting graphics, combining a harsh post-apocalypse theme with a bright stylized style. The soundtrack, featuring a blend of electronic beats and environmental sounds, enhances the overall experience, pulling you deeper into the post-apocalyptic universe.
For just short of a year, Guerrilla has been working with the team over at Steamforged Games to bring you a fully cooperative, narrative-driven tabletop experience set in the world of Horizon.
Horizon Forbidden West: Seeds of Rebellion is launching on Kickstarter on November 21, and today, we wanted to give you a sneak peek at what this adventure will hold for players. Taking our learnings and feedback from Horizon Zero Dawn: The Board Game, Guerrilla and Steamforged Games have worked closely together to elevate what a Horizon board game experience can be.
Guerrilla’s Senior Copy & Game Writer, Emil Cholich, sets the scene: “Seeds of Rebellion is set about six months before Regalla’s attack on the Embassy in Horizon Forbidden West. The story puts you and your friends in the boots of newly minted Marshals tasked by Hekarro to investigate troubling reports of unrest among the Tenakth. This quest will take players across Red Blight-ridden Clan Lands, pit them against colossal machines, and allow them to uncover Regalla’s Rebellion in its earlier days, a period players have yet to explore.”
“By the time Aloy arrives in the Forbidden West, Regalla’s rebels have established many strongholds across the Clan Lands. Seeds of Rebellions offers not only an insight into the formative days of this rebellion, but also the vengeful, hotheaded, or sometimes misguided young Tenakth that feel drawn to it.”
This board game was created to be a deeper, more enriching experience for Horizon fans than its Zero Dawn predecessor. Players will have to work together to discover the truth and save many Tenakth lives in the process. “Seeds of Rebellion is a fully cooperative campaign game divided into 13 chapters. Each of which is split into two main gameplay sections – narrative and combat,” says Steamforged’s Product Owner Fraser McFetridge.
“During the narrative sections, players will experience the game’s story via choose-your-own-adventure text entries. As they do, they will make decisions regarding which NPCs to speak to, how they’ll trade their hard-won resources, and face all manner of challenges beyond the already thrilling combat. What’s most exciting is that the players’ decisions influence upcoming combat encounters, where they will place their unique miniatures onto encounter maps to take on enemy miniatures in a more zoomed-in setting.”
Let’s dive deeper into machine combat, something Horizon fans will know a lot about, in Seeds of Rebellion. “We’ve designed the narrative of Seeds of Rebellion in such a way that players could come across machines in a number of ways, depending on how they decide to explore,” shares Fraser. “Things like sneaking through cover to ambush a Clawstrider; finding a way to trap a Tremortusk, so you can escape its devastating weaponry; or avoiding a charging Bristleback while it tramples anything in its path. Then, of course, there is the classic fight-to-the-death against a coiled Slitherfang.”
Taking the intricate machines from the world of Horizon and creating them in miniature form is no easy feat. Steamforged tackled this head-on. “Of course, we can’t ignore the Tremortusk in the room: the miniatures, which are highly detailed, mini representations of the machines fans know and love. Our sculpting team have forever imprinted the phrase ‘most complex miniatures we’ve ever created’ into my brain,” says Fraser. “I’d go so far as to describe Forbidden West’s machines as ‘perfect’ for tabletop translation, given the careful precision they’re designed with, combining form and function. I’m told some of the sculpting references we received from Guerrilla were over a billion polys. I’m not a sculptor myself, but I’m assured that means they’re extremely detailed!”
It’s not just the machines that are important to translate well into board game form. “We’ve been working closely with Guerrilla to integrate memorable in-game locations and characters into the encounter maps and narrative,” shared Fraser. “We’ve also taken great care in our game design to authentically recreate the experience of playing and exploring the Forbidden West. From stealthing your way through tall grass to precisely targeting a machine’s components, weakening its attacks, and collecting its valuable scrap.”
Enhancing the woven story has always been at the forefront of all Horizon experiences. “This is inherently a story of unity and teamwork,” says Emil. “The player characters must work together to overcome increasingly slim odds against deadly machine and human threats. The co-op gameplay style and narrative engine developed by Steamforged gave us the room to bring the compelling characters Horizon’s world is known for to the tabletop.”
For those who also supported the Horizon Zero Dawn board game, Steamforged has good news. “Compatibility with the Horizon Zero Dawn board game is particularly important to us. That said, we are keeping details on this close to our chest (I am sure you’ll understand our desire to avoid too many spoilers),” says Fraser. “What we can confirm right now is there’ll be a backward compatibility pack, available at no extra cost for returning backers who pledged for Horizon Zero Dawn: The Board Game, which will let you take your Zero Dawn miniatures straight into the already-challenging lands of the Forbidden West.”
Horizon Forbidden West: Seeds of Rebellion will be available to back on Kickstarter from November 21, and you can already sign up to be notified on launch here.
Horizon Forbidden West: Seeds of Rebellion will be available in English language only.
