Author: Game Infliction

Pokémon TCG: Surging Sparks Preorders Are Back in Stock at Amazon

The Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet—Surging Sparks set is now available for preorder at Amazon, bringing an electrifying twist to the TCG landscape ahead of its November 8 release. This expansion merges the highlights of two upcoming Japanese sets, Supercharged Breaker and Paradise Dragona.

At the center of Surging Sparks is a Terastallized Pikachu ex—a classic Electric-type Pokémon now supercharged to boost any deck. Pikachu is joined by Alolan Exeggutor ex, making a grand return with its Stellar Tera Pokémon ex status. With a mix of high-voltage power and formidable dragons, this set promises to be one of the most dynamic additions to the Scarlet & Violet series.

Pokémon TCG: Surging Sparks Preorders

Surging Sparks Elite Trainer Box

Packed with nine Surging Sparks booster packs, this box is a perfect starting point. The exclusive full-art foil Pikachu ex promo card is a must-have for any Pikachu fan, while the 65-card sleeves featuring Pikachu and other iconic Electric-type Pokémon keep your cards safe and stylish. Complete with energy cards, dice, and markers, this Elite Trainer Box has everything you need to electrify your gameplay.

Surging Sparks Booster Bundle

Surging Sparks Booster Bundle gives trainers a taste of the new set without committing to a full booster box. Containing six booster packs, this bundle is perfect for checking out new cards at a more accessible price point. It’s a great way to experience the mix of Electric and Dragon-themed cards that make Surging Sparks a standout expansion.

Surging Sparks Booster Box

Surging Sparks Booster Box holds 36 booster packs, offering a chance to pull some of the set’s most powerful and sought-after cards. Whether you’re chasing down the Stellar Tera Pikachu ex or looking for a new Dragon-type Pokémon, this Booster Box is where it’s at!

Surging Sparks Sleeved Booster

Surging Sparks Sleeved Booster provides one booster pack encased in a protective sleeve. Although we’d recommend a booster box for trainers looking to complete a master set or increase their chances of finding the best chase cards, Sleeved Boosters have an extra layer of protection that’s a massive win for collectors with grading in mind.

Surging Sparks Triple Blister Pack

Surging Sparks Triple Blister Pack combines value and variety with the bonus of an exclusive promo card and a collectible coin. Like the sleeved boosters, these boosters are well protected, and make sure those pulls are in the best shape possible!

We’re looking for the best Pokédeals daily, so don’t forget to stop by our Pokémon TCG and Pokémon Merch pages for the best deals! We’ve also recently previewed the upcoming Stellar Crown sets, and the pull rates are fantastic.

Christian Wait is a UK-based freelancer for IGN, you can follow him @ChrisReggieWait on Twitter/X.

The Nintendo Switch Game Deals I’m Hoping to See on Black Friday

Of all the first-party video game publishers, Nintendo is the most resistant to sales and discounts. The Switch is 7 years old, and Nintendo is still asking $59.99 for launch-year titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. That’s not great! However, there are certain times of year when Nintendo does drop prices, and Black Friday 2024 will absolutely be one of them.

With solid rumors and speculation pointing to the Switch 2 releasing next year, Black Friday 2024 is Nintendo’s last chance to make a big push to sell Switch hardware. Presumably, next holiday season will be all about the follow-up to the Switch (Nintendo expects to have plenty of stock available). So let’s hope for unprecedented discounts on all the best Switch games this year. Here’s what I’d like to see.

What We Already Know: Nintendo Switch Black Friday 2024 Bundle

Every year in the lead-up to Black Friday, Nintendo releases a Nintendo Switch + Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bundle for the price you’d usually pay for a Switch without a pack-in game. This year, Nintendo is also throwing in a 12-month individual Nintendo Switch Online subscription for good measure. These bundles (one for the standard Switch and one for the OLED) are already available. You can buy them at the links above.

First-Party Switch Games on Sale for $24.99, Please

On Black Friday, Switch games made by other companies besides Nintendo often drop to extremely low prices at retailers like Amazon and Walmart, sometimes under the $10 mark. I don’t expect Nintendo to go that far, but how about a Black Friday doorbuster sale that drops some of the older Switch games below half price? I’d love to see some Mario or Pokemon games from the first three or four years of the console’s life span drop to $24.99. I’m talking games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. We’ve seen some of these games go as low as $30 before, but not below that. It’s time, Nintendo.

Meaningful Discounts on 2024 Nintendo Switch Games

This year hasn’t been the most fruitful for Switch owners, at least in terms of new games. Don’t get me wrong: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is phenomenal, Mario Party people seem to love Jamboree, and there’s more upcoming Switch games than you’d expect. But a lot of this year’s first-party Switch releases were either remasters or smaller games that didn’t make much of a splash with audiences.

For instance, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is a lesser game than the excellent Luigi’s Mansion 3. Endless Ocean: Luminous was a rare dud. Even Princess Peach: Showtime, the first game to star everyone’s favorite Mushroom Kingdom royal in forever, wasn’t exactly a blockbuster hit.

Maybe you took a pass on some of these games. So it would be great if we could see some deep discounts on them to entice Switch owners to pick them up before moving on to the Switch’s successor.

I’d also like to see deepest-ever discounts on other recent Switch games, like The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and Super Mario RPG. What better way to send off the Switch than by pricing these games low enough that fans will feel eager to pick them up?

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Threads and Bluesky.

If Sony Ever Gave a Diablo-Style Bloodborne Spin-Off the Green Light, It Might Look Something Like This

A fan-made top-down action RPG take on Bloodborne has given fans a clear picture of what a Diablo-style spin-off might look like.

Developer Maxime Foulquier, who had ditched plans to remake Bloodborne in Unreal Engine 5 out of fear of a cease and desist from franchise owner Sony, has now started a new project called ‘Bloodborne Top Down Arena,’ and in the tweet below, showed gameplay off.

The gameplay looks very much as you’d expect: FromSoftware’s hugely popular Bloodborne but with the camera pulled up into an action RPG perspective. The repurposed Bloodborne combat is action RPG snappy, perhaps a good fit for a Diablo-style game.

Foulquier said Bloodborne Top Down Arena is “less ambitious and different from a true remake” of Bloodborne, so hopes it will avoid falling into the crosshairs of Sony’s lawyers. “The Demake and the Minecraft Project didn’t receive CnD so I cross the fingers,” Foulquier added.

It’s worth noting that the developer behind Bloodborne Nightmare Kart ended up re-jipping the game after Sony got in touch, so perhaps Foulquier is being a little naive here. Foulquier insisted, however, that because Bloodborne Top Down Arena is not planned for release on Steam, it will avoid a similar fate.

Of course, what Bloodborne fans really want is a sequel to the PS4 classic, or, saving that, a next-gen update for the original game. Neither are so far announced from either FromSoftware or Sony. In February, ahead of the launch of FromSoftware’s Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erdtree, director Hidetaka Miyazaki said that because the developer doesn’t own the Bloodborne IP, he can’t speak about its future. He did, however, admit Bloodborne would benefit from releasing on more modern hardware.

In the meantime, IGN has had a look at Bloodborne running on the PS5 Pro, which launches November 7 priced $700. And then there’s the Bloodborne cameo in recently released PS5 exclusive Astro Bot, if you’re desperate for a fix.

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.

Gallery: Unboxing Superdeluxe’s Lush Switch Editions For Radiant Silvergun, Clock Tower & Wizardry

Full of Eastern promise?

Formed in 2022 as a collaboration between North American publisher Limited Run Games and Japanese localisation company 8-4, Ltd, Superdeluxe Games may be focused more on Japan than the West, but the company is doing some exciting things in the realm of physical releases that the whole world should see.

With this in mind, Superdeluxe was kind enough to send us some samples of its latest games so we could see first-hand what all the fuss is about (thanks to the always-excellent Jake Smith for making this happen, by the way).

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Discover Across The Obelisk – the Deckbuilder that Lets You Cooperate with Everyone

Discover Across The Obelisk – the Deckbuilder that Lets You Cooperate with Everyone

  • Javier de Miguel del Valle, Game Developer, Dreamsite Games

Summary

  • Across the Obelisk is out now for Xbox Series X|S.
  • All DLC and content from the PC version are available now.
  • Players can cooperate no matter where they play or what they own thanks to crossplay and DLC sharing.

Welcome to Senenthia, everyone! It’s an honor and a pleasure to invite Xbox players everywhere to join our adventuring party today, as Across the Obelisk is out today for Xbox Series X|S!

From our humble beginnings in early access over three years ago, our team has been hard at work building Across the Obelisk, our unique party-based deckbuilding RPG, through expansions, updates, and improvements. Now, we’re adding a whole new group of heroes to our world – all of you – and we’re going to make sure you can jump right in whether you’re bringing more new friends to the party, or whether you’re catching up with folks who already know their way around our expanding world.

For those of you starting your journey with Across the Obelisk today, perhaps you’re wondering exactly what a “deckbuilding RPG” entails. It is firstly a deck-builder, where your abilities are tied to a deck of cards, and you have to choose a few cards to play during your turn to attack monsters, cast spells, put up defenses, etc. Over the course of the game, you will add more powerful cards and remove ones that are cluttering your selection, and thus build a deck that better fits your play style and can overcome the challenges in your path.

Now, mesh that with a four-character party – with each character managing their own individual deck – and a branching map full of decisions, sidequests, and key items that open new doors across the world, and you’ve got our game!

Across the Obelisk plays great for anyone familiar with managing a full RPG party in a single player game, but where the game truly shines is in multiplayer, with each of your four characters played and managed by a different person. Finding ways to support your friends, coordinate (or argue!) your group’s choices, and battle as a team all really come through when you’ve got a full party. That’s why we built our multiplayer experience with absolutely no barriers to entry. As anyone who’s ever had an RPG group can tell you: learning the game is easy. Getting four people to coordinate a game night is the hard part! We didn’t want there to be any challenges from the game itself in building your party, so our game has a few extra features to make life easier and your adventure more variable.

For starters, Across the Obelisk has completely open cross-platform multiplayer. All of you joining us from the Xbox community today can jump right in and play with folks on PC or consoles; it’s possible to have a four-player party where nobody is gaming on the same system!

 What’s more, we wanted to recreate that feeling at the RPG table where someone arrives with the latest expansion book and everyone can share the cool new options, so that’s what we’ve done with our own expansions. If anyone in your party owns any of our DLC, everybody gets to share! You can freely play any of our expansion heroes without worrying if your friends also own the DLC, and your party can travel to any expansion maps so long as just one of you has bought it.

With that in mind, we can’t wait to see what kind of adventures you all have in our growing realms. Load up on mages with four different damage types, build an indomitable defence and healing tank squad – go wild in a party with only animal characters allowed! We’ve got much more in store for you in Across the Obelisk, and we’re thrilled to have everyone on Xbox finally joining the party!


Across the Obelisk

Across the Obelisk

Paradox Interactive

☆☆☆☆☆
★★★★★

Get it now

Team up with your friends and experience roguelite deckbuilding like never before!
Craft decks of enormous power and lead your party on a thrilling quest to rescue a realm in turmoil.
Choose wisely; your decisions have consequences. Dare you go Across the Obelisk?

• Plan your strategy, but be prepared to adapt as you encounter procedurally generated events.

• Build decks from 500+ cards, over 300 items and 16 heroes in four different classes.

• Take sole control of your party of four heroes, or bring fellow adventurers along for the ride in 2-4 player co-op.

• Coordinate your party in tactical combat and experiment with different class combinations for entirely new ways to play.

• Encounter powerful bosses and navigate events and quests where your decisions affect how the story unfolds.

• Enjoy endless replayability with three in-depth game modes to master.

Your quest carries great risk: rescue your king’s daughter from the clutches of the treacherous Lord Hanshek before she meets her end.
Your party’s fate, and that of Senenthia, is in your hands. How will you proceed?

Plan Ahead, but Expect the Unexpected
• The goal of your quest is set in stone, but there are twists and turns on every path. How will you fare when no two journeys are the same?

• Your choices matter. Which road will you take this time? Who will you save? Who will you leave behind?

• Cooperation is vital! Decide together what’s best for your party. Will you help the people of Senenthia on your journey or selfishly search for epic loot?

An Evolving Adventure
• Customize and upgrade your decks by earning XP and unlocking perk points. Tackle four acts – each with its own fearsome boss – but beware of random events on your journey!

• Build your deck from a vast choice of upgradeable cards and items. New and more powerful combos are yours to discover each time you enter Senenthia.

• Combine character classes in different ways to find your favorite play style. Will you overwhelm your foes with mighty warriors or use your cunning and employ sneaky scouts?

• Looking for a tough roguelike challenge? Try obelisk mode. Draft unique decks and embark on a randomized adventure where being prepared for anything is everything!

• Discover endless combinations of cards, items, heroes and classes. And just as many ways to strategize your way to victory.

A Deckbuilder for the Ages
• Regular updates and content drops will keep you coming back to Senenthia time and time again.

• Want to test yourself against other players? Take on the weekly challenge mode. The deck and map are predetermined; success comes down to your skill.

• Team up with other players on whichever platform they own, thanks to crossplay.

• Let your friends follow along on your adventure when Story DLCs you own are shared across platforms with your entire party.

• “Just one more run.” Enjoy unrivaled variety and endless replayability – Across the Obelisk rewards experimentation and keeps you coming back for more!

Paradox Account required for certain features of the game. You have to be 16 years or older to create a Paradox Account. See https://legal.paradoxplaza.com/eula for details.

The post Discover Across The Obelisk – the Deckbuilder that Lets You Cooperate with Everyone appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Pokémon TCG Pocket Has a Secret Mew Card That’s Not Super Difficult to Get

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket contains a secret, full art Mew card and continues the long-running tradition of only letting players grab the mythical pocket monster by completing some interesting quests.

The Mew card, which is part of the Genetic Apex set but comes unnumbered due to its status as an alternate art card (despite there not actually being a regular version), can only be obtained after players complete the Kanto Pokédex.

This means players must acquire the first 150 Pokémon from the original Red and Blue generation, meaning everything from Bulbasaur to Pikachu to Dragonite to Mewtwo. Once players have collected one of each of these Pokémon the 3 Star Mew card will unlock.

The only condition is the cards must also be from Genetic Apex, meaning, for example, that collecting the promotional Butterfree card from the special Lapras ex event won’t count towards the 150 total despite it being among the first 150 Pokémon. Any version of the Pokémon from Genetic Apex will work, however, whether it’s an ex or alternative art or regular or whatever else.

While simple, collecting so many cards may still take some time. One player recently worked out it could take almost two years of daily play to collect every card in the set, though thankfully hitting the 150 necessary for Mew will require considerably less time.

Mew holds a special place in the set as one of just four 3 Star cards, meaning it’s one of the special immersive cards with fully animated artwork. It joins Charizard, Pikachu, and Mewtwo in this category, the three Pokémon which feature on the booster pack covers of Genetic Apex.

Pokémon TCG Pocket arrived in October as a streamlined, digital version of the beloved trading card game. It has players opening packs, collecting cards, building decks, and battling others; a simple formula that’s already proved popular given it made $12 million in four days.

Players may otherwise want to keep an eye out from cards from the two decks currently dominating the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta, headlined by usual suspects Charizard ex and Mewtwo ex. Those who love a conspiracy theory can also discover what some players think is the best way to obtain such cards.

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

Oh thank Horace, our comments system is up and running again

“Never read the comments,” is a truth much-rehearsed by senior games journalists, but I have long since levelled-up past this axiom and entered into a new world of benevolent narcissism. I always read the comments, for all commenters are my children. They exist to glorify and preserve me in my dotage. True, occasionally my children say things like “I think your writing and opinions are appalling, and that you deserve to be repeatedly run over by a herd of deer”, but it is the nature of children to rebel.

Read more

It Takes Almost 2 Years to Complete Just the First Pokémon TCG Pocket Set, Unless You Spend Money

A Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket player has calculated just how long it takes to complete the first set, Genetic Apex, and those not looking to spend any money can expect to be collecting ’em all for towards two years.

Kotaku spotted a Reddit post from TCGPCollector, who broke down how different methods of collecting resulted in different completion times, revealing that the most optimal way to collect the 286 Genetic Apex cards without spending money will take 655 days.

Those put off by the huge amount of time, which requires players to log in every single day and always have access to a card they need in the often unreliable Wonder Pick feature, can take solace in knowing this number includes the 60 alternate art cards not included in the regular numbered set (which totals 226 cards).

It also doesn’t take into consideration the incoming (but currently undated) trading feature, which will allow players to pick up those last few cards much easier than using the otherwise random odds. Those paying $9.99 a month for the Premium Pass can collect all cards in 437 days, though the subscription would add up to almost $150 in this time.

Those not desperate to collect every alternate art card, identifiable by their artwork expanding beyond the normal borders to cover the entire card, can do so in just 130 days, or 87 with the Premium Pass. Developer Creatures Inc. will presumably release a new set of 200 to 300 cards every three or four months, so those playing every day should just about be able to complete one before another comes out.

Pokémon TCG Pocket, like many other free-to-play mobile games with microtransactions, floods players with dozens of packs on their first day as they complete simple quests and gain large amounts of experience. But this generosity soon dries up as the option to pay real money for packs is waved in front of players, and those not willing to spend can open one new pack just every 12 hours. The Premium Pass lets players open one extra pack a day.

TCGPCollector also provided some tips on how players can optimize their collecting, recommending that Wonder Picks only be used to collect 2 Star rarity cards. Pokémon TCG Pocket cards are classified by rarity, with the standard 226 ranging from 1 Diamond to 4 Diamond.

The 60 alternate art cards range from 1 Star to 3 Stars, followed by three super special gold background Crown cards. Regular alternate arts are 1 Star, ex Pokémon are 2 Star, and the special immersive cards with fully animated artwork are 3 Star.

The most efficient way to collect cards is therefore only to pick out alternate art ex Pokémon in Wonder Picks, though it’s far from guaranteed one will appear in the regularly rotating spots.

Elsewhere, players should only use Pack Points to obtain the 3 Star and Crown cards. These are the points players acquire for opening regular booster packs, obtained at the rate of five per pack. Cards at 3 Star cost 1,500 points, demanding the opening of 300 packs, and Crown cards cost 2,500 points, meaning 500 packs.

It will obviously take a long time to get there, but TCGPCollector is essentially recommending players play the long game and not be tempted to exchange Pack Points for cheap cards they’ll come across in booster packs eventually.

Finally, the last recommendation implores players not to use Poké Gold to buy packs, noting that the Premium Pass and, again, a little patience, is a much better way to spend money. Spending $9.99 on a Poké Gold bundle instead of the Premium Pass, for example, would allow players to open just nine packs compared to the 30 accrued over the course of a month.

Even the best shop bundle, which grants 690 Poké Gold for $99.99, grants just 115 packs and therefore averages out at 87 cents per pack. This is much more than the 33 cents per pack average from the Premium Pass.

This financial logic isn’t enough to stop many, many players from buying bundles of Poké Gold, of course. Pokémon TCG Pocket pulled in a whopping $12 million in its first four days, so the simple routine of opening packs, collecting cards, building decks, and battling others is certainly enticing enough to open the purse strings of players.

The digital, streamlined version of the traditional Pokémon Trading Card Game is keeping players entertained in other ways, with Creatures Inc. having already launched two events including one that allows players to win a Lapras ex.

Players may otherwise want to keep an eye out from cards from the two decks currently dominating the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta, headlined by usual suspects Charizard ex and Mewtwo ex. Those who love a conspiracy theory can also discover what some players think is the best way to obtain such cards.

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

Bloodborne on PS5 Pro: Can You See The Difference?

One of the biggest selling points of the PS5 Pro is that it can boost the image quality of PS4 games, even though they have not technically been “enhanced” for the console by either Sony or developers. And while there are over 3,000 PlayStation 4 games to date, there’s one many of us hold dear to our hearts: Bloodborne. With a sequel now seeming little more than a pipedream, we’re left with only one option – to play through the original again on PS5 Pro to make the most of the console’s Enhanced Image Quality feature.

But does the PS5 Pro actually make Bloodborne look any better? If you’ve pre-ordered a PS5 Pro then you can check it out for yourself, but if you’re still sitting on the fence then check out the video below and see if you can tell the difference.

We’ve also compared some of the other 50-plus games that are enhanced for PS5 Pro at launch, starting with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. We tested it in both Pro modes – Fidelity and Performance – and you can see the results for yourself in this 23-minute gameplay video.

Hogwarts Legacy was one of the big showcase games from the console reveal. We’ve now had the chance to play it on PS5 Pro in Fidelity mode with ray tracing, which promises to improve lightning and shadows, as well as adding better reflections. Take a look at the game running on PS5 Pro.

Finally (ahem), we have 16 minutes of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth running in Versatility mode, which enhances the quality of the visuals and delivers better frame-rates.

Can you tell the difference? If so, is it enough to make you pay the extra money for a PS5 Pro? Let us know in the poll below. Meanwhile, make sure you check out IGN’s full review of the PS5 Pro, which tells you everything you need to know about PlayStation’s latest console.