Author: Game Infliction

33 Games Under $10 in the Steam Winter Sale

It’s the holiday season, which means festive activities, family time, and, most importantly, the Steam Winter Sale. With discounts on everything from massive open world RPGs to pixel-art platformers, it can be tough to limit yourself to just a few games. While I’m all for splurging on 2024 releases, if you’re looking to maximize bang for your buck, you could also pick up a solid bunch of slightly older (but still amazing) PC games. For example, right now you can get over 10 copies of Fallout: New Vegas for the price of one S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

A starting point for Steam sales should always be checking your Wishlist, but if you’re looking for something new (or want to make sure you’re not missing an obvious deal), I found 33 of the best PC games for $10 or less.

The Complete Edition of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for $10

The Witcher 3’s massive open world, compelling characters, and meaningful approach to player decision-making raised the bar for RPGs back in 2015. After The Witcher 4 was revealed at The Game Awards, what better time to play (or replay) one of the greatest RPGs of all time? Especially now that the Complete Edition, which includes the base game and every DLC, is down to just $9.99.

More RPGs Under $10:

If you’re looking for a narrative-driven RPG, I highly recommend Disco Elysium, which is also down to $10. Other RPGs with deep discounts include Bethesda properties like Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas, and (of course) Skyrim. Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3 fans who have a hankering for more turn-based combat can pick up one of Larian’s older games, Divinity: Original Sin, for just $3.99.

40% Off Stardew Valley

Leave your office job to inherit your grandfather’s farm and help rebuild (or price out) the local town in Stardew Valley. IGN re-reviewed Stardew Valley after the farming game got a massive update and ended up giving it one of the only 10/10 game reviews for all of 2024. Given that Stardew was somehow my most-played game on Steam and Nintendo Switch, I have to agree that “Masterpiece” is a fair assessment.

More Cozy Games Under $10:

Cozy Grove, which I feel is more like Animal Crossing than Stardew, is on sale for under $5. If you’re the type of person who enjoys organizing, I’d recommend Unpacking, while Spiritfarer brings the management game genre to the afterlife.

DOOM Eternal for $10

The DOOM series was pretty foundational to the FPS genre, and one of the best DOOM games of the modern era has dropped to under $10. In IGN’s 9/10 DOOM Eternal review, Ryan McCaffrey highlights the game’s satisfying difficulty: “This excellent refinement of the already outstanding 2016 reboot makes you an unspoken deal: if you can keep up with it, it will keep up with you.”

More FPS Games Under $10:

For more single-player shooting, you can get six Halo games for $10 with The Master Chief Collection. Multiplayer shooters like Siege and Battlefield 2042 are also under $10 for the time being.

50% Off Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is one of the most rewarding gaming experiences I’ve had, and also the closest I’ve come to throwing my Switch at the wall in frustration (that’s a positive, by the way). Per IGN’s 9/10 review: “The world of Hallownest is compelling and rich, full of story that’s left for you to discover on your own, and built with branching paths that offer an absurd amount of choice in how you go about discovering it.” Now you can find out why there’s always a chorus of comments begging for a Silksong release date for just $8.

More Platformers Under $10:

Like Hollow Knight, Celeste doesn’t shy away from challenging the player, and additional “B-sides” for every level up the ante for even platforming veterans. I recommend Little Nightmares to any horror fan, while the 2020 Ori sequel offers particularly creative puzzles.

Civilization VI for $2.99

With Civ VII set to release in just a couple of months, most of the Sid Meier franchise is on sale. While I prefer Civ V’s map mechanics, Civ VI, in my experience, is better optimized for setting up multiplayer lobbies. Convince your friends to drop a couple of bucks, and you can all lock into an empire-building marathon that will most likely end in some form of betrayal.

More Strategy and Simulation Games Under $10:

Most Total War games and DLCs are discounted, though one of the best deals is the Warhammer base game for $6. And if you’ve ever wanted to travel across the entirety of Europe for $5, now you can (with Euro Truck Simulator 2).

75% Off Overcooked 2

If you’re looking for something cheap you can convince your friends to pick up and play with you, look no further than Overcooked 2. The cooperative cooking game allows up to four players to hop into a campaign that, with arcade-style levels and goofy physics, will probably lead to some screaming. But, as IGN’s Overcooked 2 review describes, this “frantic and inventive co-op game… manages to turn frustration into charm.”

More Co-op Games Under $10:

For larger groups, I also recommend For the King and Castle Crashers. It Takes Two is one of the best games for two-player co-op, and only one person has to buy the game courtesy of Hazelight Studio’s “Friend’s Pass.” And, of course, Portal 2, down to just $2, will always be a co-op classic.

Fatal Fury Series Returns with First New Entry in 26 Years

The Fatal Fury series from SNK began back in 1991 as part of the fighting game boom that dominated arcades across the world, and its popularity led to the series releasing several games throughout the ’90s. In the years since, those classic games have been ported to consoles, but there hasn’t been a new entry in the series since 1999.

Until now, that is. The series is returning with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves in 2025, ending a drought of 26 years without a new title. It will feature the return of characters from past games, most notably series star Terry Bogard and his protege Rock Howard. Other fan favorites, like Mai Shiranui and Billy Kane, will also be included and get updated designs.

City of the Wolves will act as a continuation of the previous game in the series, Garou: Mark of the Wolves. The T.O.P. system, now called the S.P.G. system, makes a return. It allows you to pick a section of your health bar (either the start, middle, or end), and when your health is in that range, your S.P.G. will activate.

When your S.P.G. is active, you’ll regenerate health, have boosted attack power, your power gauge will fill faster, your REV Meter will fill slower, and you can perform REV Blows. Those last two points are part of an important new mechanic in City of the Wolves called the REV System. REV Blows blend together offense and defense, allowing you to strike hard while also shrugging off enemy attacks.

You can combo into these after REV Arts, which can be used after a special move to perform a stronger version of said move. And REV Guard is a unique type of block that creates more space between you and your opponent than a regular block and also eliminates chip damage from special attacks.

All of these actions build up the REV Meter in the bottom left corner of the screen, and once the meter is full, you’ll become overheated. While in this state, you won’t be able to use REV actions anymore and your guard gauge will decrease whenever you block attacks. If the gauge runs out, your guard will be crushed and you’ll take longer to recover from being hit.

Your REV Meter slowly reduces as time passes, as well as when you walk or dash toward your enemy, land an attack, or successfully use Just Defense or Hyper Defense. The former happens when you block an attack at exactly the right moment, while the latter happens when you do a forward input at exactly the right moment of a multi-hit attack.

This REV System adds a strategic layer to each fight, since you can’t simply use powerful REV actions over and over. You need to keep an eye on your REV Meter and balance aggressive offense with well-timed defense to avoid overheating.

For the first time in the series, you’ll also be able to choose between two different control schemes that will determine the button inputs needed to execute each of these moves. Known as Arcade Style and Smart Style, they’re designed to provide options for players experienced with the series as well as newcomers diving in for the first time.

If you’re excited to dive into Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, it’s available to pre-order and wishlist now ahead of its release date of April 24, 2025 on PC, PS4/5, and Xbox Series X/S. Pre-order bonuses include Terry’s classic costume from Fatal Fury 2 and early access to the game on April 21, three days before release.

The base price of $59.99 also includes Season Pass 1 and five DLC characters. We already know who two of those characters will be: Ken and Chun-Li from Street Fighter, the first non-SNK collab characters ever featured in a Fatal Fury game. This marks the continuation of a collaboration between the two franchises after Terry and Mai were featured in Street Fighter 6.

If you’d like to pre-order, you can visit the official website to pick the platform you’d like to play on. Or if you want to join the community, you can follow SNK on Twitter or Discord.

Review: DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou (Switch) – Cave’s Vicious Shooter Is Close To The Series’ Best

Elemental rage.

Holding the Guinness World Record for “Most prolific developer of danmaku shooters” — a tenuous plaudit seemingly concocted entirely for their receipt — Cave’s five DonPachi entries form bullet points in the company’s evolution, from Toaplan-esque beginnings to a full-blown, bullet hell renaissance.

SaiDaiOuJou, the series’ final entry and Cave’s last arcade shooting game, makes the clean stylings of its predecessor, DaiFukkatsu, even cleaner; a shiny blue aesthetic wrought from 3D renders and a billion pixels. It also carries over adjustable difficulty options and an auto bomb on/off feature. Its core, however, is similar to DoDonPachi DaiOuJou, the greatest and most beautiful of Cave’s work.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Sonic the Hedgehog Film Writers Reveal the Big the Cat Cameo That Almost Was

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 zipped into theatres this past weekend, and so far we’re having a pretty good time with it. Amid the delight of learning there would be a fourth Sonic the Hedgehog film and finding out that the film’s ending teases yet another new Sonic character for that film, there’s still one major question on everyone’s minds: where is Big the Cat?

Okay, sure, it’s maybe not the most pressing question ever, but we did have a chance to sit down with Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller to ask where everyone’s favorite fisherman kitty has been all this time. And it turns out, they actually did write a cameo for Big the Cat into the second Sonic the Hedgehog film… only for it to be a bit too grim to make it to the final cut.

“In one draft of Sonic 2, we actually, when they’re going through the snowy mountains to the cave, we had a bit, because Sonic 2 was sort of an Indiana Jones,” Casey told us. “Indiana Jones, it’s a trope that at some point a skeleton pops out at you and scares you. So we were going to do that, but with a skeleton of a, I would say, a Big the Cat, not necessarily-“

Miller cuts in here, “Not necessarily the Big the Cat.”

“But we ended up cutting it,” Casey concludes. “It didn’t make any sense.”

Alas, we almost had a… dead Big the Cat in Sonic 2. The two writers said that “Big the Cat” is usually their joke answer when fans ask them who they want to add to the films, though they also informed me they’ve been unsuccessfully trying to get Rouge the Bat in as well for three fims straight.

Keep your eyes here at IGN for our full interview with Casey and Miller coming later this week, as well as all the latest on the Sonic the Hedgehog movies.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Space Marine 2 Modders Put the Axe From Secret Level’s Warhammer 40,000 Episode Into the Game

Space Marine 2 modders have once again answered players’ prayers by putting the axe from Secret Level’s Warhammer 40,000 episode into the game.

The Secret Level Warhammer 40,000 episode, called And They Shall Know No Fear, is a sequel to Space Marine 2 and stars protagonist Titus as he battles alongside his brothers to defeat the forces of Tzeentch. But while Titus appears in the animation as he looks in Space Marine 2, the episode also features a weapon players have yet to see in-game.

It sounds innocuous, but the action scene in which this mystery Power Axe is used steals the show. We see it wielded with brutal efficiency to tear apart cultists and Tzaangors. There’s even a super cool moment in which a Space Marine bashes the helm of the axe in order to shift it into the upright position in his glove.

After the release of Secret Level, Space Marine 2 fans let it be known that they wanted to see developer Saber Interactive and publisher Focus Entertainment add the axe to the game, expanding upon the arsenal of weapons already at their disposal. So far, neither has indicated plans to do so.

Modders, as they so often do, have stepped into the breach. Astartes 2.0, from Space Marine 2 modder Warhammer Workshop, has just released a new update that adds the much-anticipated Power Axe, inspired by Secret Level, to the game, as well as the Chain-Axe and the Space King’s Hate Mace complete with its unique heraldry. (Space King is a fan-made Warhammer 40,000 parody.)

Generally, the Astartes overhaul mod adds loads of new content, including lore-accurate Space Marine classes, reworked combat, and even new missions. Space Marine 2 has a thriving modding scene that makes a significant number of improvements and changes to the record-breaking third-person melee / shooter hybrid. IGN has reported on Space Marine 2’s modding scene a number of times, shining a light on everything from more in-depth customization to a fix for one of the game’s biggest problems.

Officially, Space Marine 2 is now up to Patch 5, although Focus has already talked about what to expect from Patch 6 and 7, both due out in 2025. The Year 1 roadmap for Space Marine 2 includes new content up to Season 4, which is set to kick off at some point in 2025 (we’re currently in Season 2). Space Marine 2 is set for long-term support, and dataminers have uncovered information on cosmetics set to hit the game up to Season 9. IGN has reported on the availability in-game of what looks like a Battle Barge expansion set to hit Space Marine 2 with Season 3.

In September, Saber Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits told IGN how the breakout success of Space Marine 2 had “changed everything” for the company. Eagle-eyed fans have spotted the Space Marine chapter now all-but confirmed to get a cosmetic pack after the Dark Angels, too.

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.

Opinion: It’s Not My GOTY, But This Nintendo Game Was A Standout 2024 Memory

How Nintendo World Championships helped me ‘git gud’.

I’ll admit, I’ve never been fond of speedrunning. The thought of shaving milliseconds off a time in a video game while playing the same sequence over and over sounds, in theory, more frustrating than fun. Sure, as a spectator, there is definitely joy in appreciating the wizardry of players pulling off pixel-perfect feats and shattering a runtime record. But I have neither the time nor the mettle to contemplate doing so myself.

Fortunately, this year gave us a game that weaved together 8-bit era charm, bite-sized accessibility, and addictive skill refinement. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition was my gateway to finally “getting” speedrunning, and it’s some of the most fun I’ve had gaming in 2024.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Shuhei Yoshida’s favorite PlayStation indie games of 2024

Hello everyone! 2024 was another incredible year for indie games, and today, I’m very excited to share 11 of my favorite titles that were released on PlayStation this year.

Pacific Drive

Pacific Drive is a ‘road-lite’ survival game, where you navigate a stormy, mysterious forest with your car as your only companion. Each time you set off on an excursion, your car will slowly breakdown due to strange anomalies, and you must return safely back to your garage. Otherwise, you’re required to start over. You can restore and upgrade your car with resources gathered during your runs. Each trip into the wilderness is unique and randomized, which makes the gameplay all the more engrossing and addicting.

Animal Well

The pixel-art world of this beautiful game feels nostalgic yet somehow completely novel, with its surreal lighting that illuminates the map. Animal Well is a Metroidvania with a world filled with endless surprises. The sense of accomplishment you’ll feel after conquering its challenging platform sections and cryptic puzzles is truly unique and exhilarating.

V Rising

The massively popular vampire survival PC game is now available on PlayStation. Players awaken as weakened vampires and hunt for the blood of enemies and animals to regain strength and acquire their powers to conquer the map. As vampires, players are vulnerable to sunlight. You must hide in the shadows and avoid sun exposure in order to survive during the daytime.

SCHiM

When you were a child, did you ever pretend that you could only move around by jumping from shadow to shadow? SCHiM allows you to relive those nostalgic moments by playing as a frog-like creature who can only navigate the map by hopping between shadows. It’s also a visually stunning game with its unique color pallet and art style.

The Plucky Squire

Plucky Squire is a charming action adventure where you jump between 2D and 3D worlds.

One moment, you’re enjoying a 2D action game inside the pages of a storybook, but the next second, you’re embarking on an adventure in the outside 3D realm, and before you know it, you’re back inside the book, solving puzzles. Full of delightful gimmicks, the game delivers an experience that players of all ages can enjoy.

Palworld

An indie game coming from Japan, Palworld is an open world, crafting and survival game full of adorable creatures (Pals), that took the gaming world by storm. The gameplay loop of collecting Pals, expanding your base, and venturing out further out into the world is very addicting and hard to put down.

Neva

The latest title from the visionary team behind GRIS, a beautiful yet heartbreaking adventure game released back in 2018. Neva chronicles the story of the player and a wolf cub, Neva, who together embark on a journey through a vibrant world that progresses from season to season. The story is told without dialogue, and the ending will move you to tears.

Fear the Spotlight

Fear the Spotlight is an atmospheric horror adventure featuring a retro low-polygon art style reminiscent of the original PlayStation era. Two teenage girls sneak into school after hours, only to be separated by disturbing paranormal activities. They must solve puzzles and stay out of sight of the monster who wanders the hall to be safely reunited.

Slitterhead

From the mind of Keiichiro Toyama, the legendary creator behind Siren and Gravity Rush. During the ‘90s, Kowlong, Hong Kong, is faced with a series of gruesome murders. The player is a body-less entity that possess NPCs roaming the streets in order to battle Slitterheads, a monster that feasts on human brains. Finishing off the monsters as ordinary middle-aged men and women is an absolute blast.

Nine Sols

A new game brought to life by Red Candle Games, the studio behind Detention and Devotion. Taking inspiration from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Nine Sols is a hardcore action game centered on deflection-based combat. Pulling off a perfect parry and counterattack is tremendously rewarding and invigorating. The atmosphere blends cyberpunk with ancient Chinese mythology and Taoism, is also unique and fascinating.

Balatro

A fusion of poker and roguelike? You might think, “What’s that?” But once you start, you won’t be able to stop. This worldwide hit game is the creation of a single developer. Incredible!

Following Stalker 2’s Success, Developer GSC Game World Contends With ‘This New Reality’

Stalker 2 is a hit. Officially, it’s sold one million copies across PC and Xbox Series X and S, with many more playing on Game Pass. Reports coming out of Ukraine, where developer GSC Game World was originally based before Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, indicate Stalker 2 is already profitable. There’s even talk of a Netflix series.

But what does this success mean for GSC Game World itself and the future of Stalker 2? IGN interviewed GSC CEO Ievgen Grygorovych and creative director Maria Grygorovych at BAFTA in Piccadilly, London following a screening of War Game: The Making of Stalker 2, to ask if Stalker 2’s big sales were a game-changer for the developer.

Discussing the impact of Stalker 2’s release in English, which is obviously not their first language, Ievgen and Maria talked about how the studio now faces “a new reality” and with it a bigger audience than it’s ever had to contend with. The first steps as part of this new reality will revolve around working to improve Stalker 2 itself, something GSC has already done with multiple patches, but also to expand its plans for continued support.

“You need to think properly because we now have a really big audience and sometimes different parts of this audience want to see different things,” Maria cautioned.

“So we need to live now with this new reality, with a live community and talking with them and try to understand them maybe deeper because we really want to make our relationship good.”

Ievgen went into more detail, saying that while GSC’s plan for the development of future video games remains unchanged, it plans to invest even more in post-launch support of Stalker 2 than it had previously earmarked.

“Around five years ago or maybe six years ago, we had a plan of what we were going to do in the nearest 10, 15 years,” he revealed. “What projects we want to do, how we’re going to look like. And all these years we are slightly updating this plan by just moving the dates forward until we release the game.

“And so six years passed and we still want to do the same games as we planned earlier and nothing changed. The only things that changed is that we didn’t think that we would like to invest much more time in live updates of Stalker 2 after game release, that we would want to add much more things in this game in live updates.”

What does this mean for Stalker 2 and its players, then? Ievgen confirmed that GSC is now in a position to add ideas it was forced to cut from the game before launch because they weren’t ready, and even add new ideas that have sprung up in the wake of Stalker 2’s release.

“We didn’t expect that we would go back to improving Stalker 2 for a lot,” Ievgen explained. “And now we still have the same plan for 10, 15 years of development of other things we want. But also putting much more in development of Stalker 2.

“Because actually I love the world we built. I still find a lot of things that we can make better and we want to make better. And now we have players for whom we can do that, for whom we have to do that. And for me it’s very driving.”

Those same reports coming out of Ukraine suggest Stalker 2 will get at least two expansions and even multiplayer, which may be one of the ideas Ievgen was talking about. The hope, it seems, is that Stalker 2’s success could help put Ukraine on the game development map, as CD Projekt’s The Witcher 2 had done for Poland.

In the shorter term, updates to fix issues with Stalker 2 continue, including a much-needed patch that improved the crucial A-Life 2.0 feature. Previously, GSC explained what went wrong with Stalker 2’s A-Life 2.0.

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.

Dedicated Baldur’s Gate 3 Fan Digs Through Thousands of Lines of Dialogue to Discover Which Characters Agree and Disagree the Most With Each Other

A dedicated Baldur’s Gate 3 fan has searched through thousands of lines of dialogue to discover which characters agree, and disagree, the most with each other.

As reported by The Gamer, Reddit user Tarrasque-Named-John datamined the beloved Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game to calculate which characters — like Astarion, Karlach, Shadowheart, and the entire Baldur’s Gate 3 party — have the most aligning morals.

The fan used the Approving and Disapproving mechanic of Baldur’s Gate 3 to do so. When the player character makes certain decisions, messages such as “Gale Approves” or “Halsin Disapproves” pop up, and Tarrasque-Named-John looked to see which characters approved and disapproved the same decisions the most.

Minsc and Karlach agreed the most, aligning on 97% of all decisions. They’re followed by a few pairs at 96%: Wyll and Halsin, Minsc and Halsin, Jaheira and Halsin, and Karlach and Halsin.

[Dataviz] Which companions agree the most with EACH OTHER?
byu/Tarrasque-Named-John inBaldursGate3

The opposite was revealed too, with Astarion and Wyll emerging as the most disagreeable pair with just 50% alignment. They’re followed by Minthara and Halsin at 51%, and both Wyll and Minthara and Karlach and Astarion at 52%

Tarrasque-Named-John also calculated who would become “best friends” by the end of Baldur’s Gate 3, ignoring percentage and looking directly at the total number of times characters agreed with each other.

Astarion’s bestie would be Lae’zel, and Lae’zel’s would be Astarion. Gale’s would be Karlach, but Karlach’s would be Wyll. Awkward. Wyll’s bestie is therefore Karlach, as is Shadowheart’s. Jaheria’s is Wyll, Minsc’s is Karlach, Minthara’s is Astarion, and finally, Halsin’s is Wyll.

This data is true as of Patch 7, but developer Larian Studios may shake things up a touch with Patch 8, which is due sometime in 2025. Though it may not shake up the morals of each character too much, it is set to add 12 new subclasses to the game alongside loads more.

Baldur’s Gate 3 arrived in 2023 but, incredibly, is even more popular this year than last. This is due in large part to official mod support, which are even available on console and not just PC as standard.

Players downloaded more than 50 million mods via the official mod support tool in less than two months, and this number doesn’t include the thousands made unofficially. Mods released so far include one that adds real-time combat to the otherwise turn-based RPG and another that brought entire new maps to Faerûn, including the highly requested Avernus.

In our 10/10 review of Baldur’s Gate 3, IGN said: “With crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the new high-water mark for CRPGs.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.