I’ve never really understood the charm of ultrawide monitors. I dare boldly to maintain that there is such a thing as Too Wide, a point beyond which the extra visual estate becomes a waste of electricity, unless you watch the screen in pairs. I can only assume people who use ultrawide monitors live in constant terror of flanking manoeuvres and demand the maximum amount of peripheral vision. Mind you, I tend to play games with my nose about 10 centimetres from the screen. Forget being flanked – it’s the prospect of snipers up ahead I’m worried about.
If you’re among the people who fret excessively about flankers, I’ve got great news from Uncle BioWare. Forthcoming RPGDragon Age: The Veilguard will support 21:9 ultrawide monitors. The ultrawide functionality extends to cinematics – you can disable “cinematic aspect ratios” to switch off the black bars that otherwise hem in the view. It’s one of several PC-specific flourishes they’ve just blogged about. Have a look.
We know that the ‘Switch 2’ is real. We know an announcement is coming this fiscal year. We know “Switch successor” is the most accurate description of it. All of the other big details — what form it will take, how big it will be, whether it will finally give us that flipping Wind Waker port — are all up to speculation and analysis for the time being.
Take, perhaps, one of the biggest questions of them all: How much will ‘Switch 2’ cost? In the absence of an official announcement, we still have no idea, but that hasn’t stopped certain analysts from throwing out predictions and it won’t stop us from looking to the past to try and determine the future.
Announced at Xbox Games Showcase earlier this year, Atomfallis the surprise new title from Rebellion (Sniper Elite, Zombie Army) that, on first glance, feels like a very British Fallout. A retro-future, post-apocalyptic setting, first-person RPG mechanics, and a world stuffed with weirdos all hearken back to Bethesda’s epochal series. But in my time with a first-ever hands-on build of Atomfall, it quickly became clear that there’s much more to this game than a location transplant.
Set in an alternate timeline following the real-life Windscale Nuclear Disaster of 1957, the first thing you’ll notice about Atomfall is that, for a game set after an atomic meltdown, this place is beautiful. Set in the rolling hills of the Lake District in Cumbria, this is a truly bucolic take on the end of the world – streams babble, nature grows unabated, and semblances of the old world still exist; never more so than in the picture-postcard village of Wyndham you’ll find early in your travels.
It’s a unique location for this kind of game, and sets the tone perfectly – this is less about a world destroyed than a world gone wrong. Outlaws roam the hills wearing cricket pads as armor, vicious rats with glowing blue eyes swarm around tumbledown farm buildings, and druids are said to be performing pagan rituals in the woods, towards ends unknown.
From the outset, how you choose to engage with all this is up to you. For the first portion of my time with the game, I simply hiked the backroads, taking down bandits to loot for their weapons, and scraps of material with which to craft bandages or throwables. Combat will be familiar to players of first-person RPGs, but comes with some distinct touches – you can only quickslot four weapons at any one time, and ammo is extremely scarce, making at least one melee item a must. You’ll also want to keep a stock of healing items, as death is quick here – it quickly becomes clear that avoiding a fight can be as helpful as starting one.
Once I felt suitably tooled up, I began to engage with what might be Atomfall’s most interesting design choice. In Rebellion’s take on the genre, you don’t get quests – you get leads.
From the beginning of the demo, it’s clear that my character is on a journey simply to find out what’s happened here – there’s no grand objective, no hero’s quest. You just have a simple question driving you: What’s going on? And to support that, your journal isn’t full of concrete explanations of what to do, but rather clues you’ve amassed. Early on, I met a trader, who’d throw in local gossip with every barter deal we made – that gave me a lead to a local bunker I might explore, and an approximate location on my map.
Later, I visited Wyndham, and decided to see what was inside the local church – and here’s where the promise of leads became very exciting. Inside, I found a vicar standing over a murder victim – he asked me not to investigate, for fear of inciting the wrath of the soldiers that have occupied the town. I could have left it here, but I searched the body and found a bloodied note that pointed me to a local hotel. Again, I could have followed that clue and gone to explore – but I chose to speak to the church caretaker, who revealed she’d seen the victim entering an out-of-the-way cellar the night before.
Now I had two leads about the same thing – the game didn’t tell me if one was the primary quest, or give me any indication as to the right path, it was down simply down to my own interest. I chose to look through the cellar and, on first glance, thought I’d hit a dead end – until I saw a chink of light from under a wall and realized I could crawl through. Here I found a note that pointed to the local shopkeeper as the murderer, and a clue that he was in-line with the local faction of druids. I went to confront him, and was presented with multiple options – I could report him to the soldiers, explain his part in the murder to the vicar… or even make a deal for his silence.
I chose the latter, and wasn’t just given a physical reward, but an entirely new lead that seems to be drawing me to meet those druids rather than confront them. What the domino effect might be here is unclear this early in my time with the game, but the sheer number of choices I made after effectively stumbling over a quest by accident leaves me very intrigued.
You’re being rewarded for curiosity more than anything else, and I think this speaks to Atomfall’s key interest – this isn’t a game about just exploring a world, but following your own intuition, rather than what the game might tell you is the correct path. Even in this small slice of the game, I could have walked in a different direction – nothing told me to look in that church in the first place.
The secret to Atomfall may be that it’s as much a mystery game as it is a traditional RPG – every quest I’ve completed so far has led me to more quests, more questions, more leads. The game’s form might be familiar, but there’s something unfamiliar bubbling under the surface – I very much want to see more.
Atomfall arrives for Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC in 2025, and will be available with Game Pass on day one. Available to wishlist now.
A survival-action game inspired by real-life events, Atomfall is set five years after the Windscale nuclear disaster in Northern England.
Explore the fictional quarantine zone, scavenge, craft, barter, fight and talk your way through a British countryside setting filled with bizarre characters, mysticism, cults, and rogue government agencies.
From Rebellion, the studio behind Sniper Elite and Zombie Army, Atomfall will challenge you to solve the dark mystery of what really happened.
Player Driven Mystery: Unravel a tapestry of interwoven narratives through exploration, conversation, investigation, and combat, where every choice you make has consequences.
Explore this Green and Unpleasant Land: The picturesque British countryside, with rolling green hills, lush valleys, and rural villages belie the dangers that await you.
Search, Scavage, Survive: You’ll need to scavenge for supplies, craft weapons and items, and fight desperately to make it out alive!
Joining us today is the main producer of the highly anticipated game Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero Jun Furutani. This game has generated a lot of buzz in the gaming community, and we are thrilled to talk with him about it.
In Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, the team has taken this legacy series to new heights. Today, we have the privilege of peeking into the creative process behind the game, exploring the inspirations and challenges the team faced during development, and getting an inside look at what makes this installment so unique.
To understand the challenges behind this project, we will be asking Jun Furutani some questions about characters from the iconic Majin Buu saga, which will be playable for the first time in Europe at Gamescom 2024, giving attendees a first-hand experience of these beloved transformations and abilities. With that in mind, let’s dive into the details and explore what makes these characters and their transformations so special!
What challenges did you face when animating Majin Buu’s unique abilities and transformations?
First, the characters that can transform are getting stronger in the game. That’s why we have made adjustments that allow you to experience them in terms of tactile comfort, such as their speed and number of attacks, as well as their status.
However, it has been difficult to adjust so as not to upset the overall balance of the game, partly because of the large number of characters. Majin Buu has many special moves, and compared to human characters, he has many unusual movements, such as extending his arms and making his body look like a ball, so it was a little challenging. Hope you will pay attention to those points as well.
How did you ensure that the game’s combat system reflects the intensity of the Majin Buu Arc battles?
What we value is the recreation of the actions depicted in the original work. Many techniques of the characters active in the Majin Buu arc are modeled after scenes from the story. For example, Ultimate Gohan’s normal attack movements are based on his fight with Super Buu, and he has a special throw that only activates when fighting Super Buu. We have paid attention to these details so that players can recreate the original scenes and experience the excitement firsthand.
Are there any unique interactions between Majin Buu Arc characters and other characters in the game?
There are special interactions between certain characters before and after battles, and in this game, there are also characters who have interactions with characters from Dragon Ball Super. We hope you will enjoy these elements as you have in previous games.
How did you approach the storytelling for the Majin Buu Arc within the Episode Battle mode?
It’s not limited to the Majin Buu arc, but in order to deepen the experience of playing as a character, you can enjoy challenging battles against powerful enemies, and in some scenes, you can see a special ending depending on the outcome of the battle. I hope this feature will have everyone who plays wondering “What would have happened if I had done this in that battle?” and that leads them to try something new next time!
What are you most proud of in terms of the Majin Buu Arc content in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero?
This may overlap with the previous question, but I would like you to pay attention to the detailed reproducibility of the action. I would like everyone to experience the fun of fighting through a famous scene firsthand.
How did you handle the portrayal of Majin Buu’s absorption abilities in the game?
The performance is short, but like the original work, it is designed to highlight the absorbed character. Not only do Buu’s character and techniques change, but you can also enjoy reversals in a battle like those in the story, with status boosts and ki recovery.
What was the inspiration behind the visual effects for the Majin Buu Arc characters’ attacks?
We have heavily referenced the original anime, especially scenes with distinctive actions that differ from normal movements. For example, when Super Saiyan 3 Goku deflects Majin Buu’s Kamehameha using both hands, we incorporated it into the game. In the game, when deflecting a Kamehameha with Super Perception, Goku uses both hands, unlike other characters.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, the first entry in the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series in more than 15 years will be released October 11 on PlayStation 5, with early access opening on the October 8 when pre-ordering the Deluxe and Ultimate editions. The game is now available for both physical and digital pre-order.
The original Dying Light’s story ended with protagonist Kyle Crane suffering a miserable fate; either blasted to atoms by a nuclear bomb or twisted into an infected. But that, it turns out, wasn’t the end of his story. Techland’s new entry in the series, Dying Light: The Beast, appears to lock in the latter of those endings as canon, revealing Crane was held captive for 13 years, subjected to experiments by a villain known only as The Baron. Now free, Crane seeks revenge for the trials and tortures that have turned him into the titular beast. But, if what I’ve seen of this new Dying Light is representative of the entire game, it’s not the beast powers that change the game – it’s the guns.
Dying Light: The Beast began life as DLC for Dying Light 2, but developer Techland changed course after some of its work was leaked. The project bloomed into a full, standalone game (although if you did buy Dying Light 2’s ultimate edition you get The Beast for free – Techland promised DLC and intends to fulfil that promise). Perhaps because of this origin, The Beast feels very familiar. Much of what I saw in the 45-minute hands-off demo was very much a continuation of the 2022 zombie smasher, from the robust parkour, to the world design, to the ‘follow the yellow cable’ puzzles that activate UV-protected safe houses. This certainly doesn’t seem like a ‘full’ sequel, but there does appear to be enough fresh ideas to justify its transition to a standalone game.
The new map is more rural, with something of a ‘village’ feel. Yes, there are still buildings and rooftops to leap and vault across, but these are surrounded by dense woodland. The demo showed Kyle creeping through tall grass in an effort to avoid nighttime horrors (which, once again, are much stronger than the zombies that appear during the day). Kyle notably doesn’t seem to suffer from the same infection Adien did in DL2 – there’s no immunity gauge ticking down on the HUD – so he can seemingly stay out in the dark as long as he wants. His own mutations mean he can see the illuminated skeletons of approaching foes, Batman: Arkham detective vision-style, which should aid with stealth encounters.
In beast mode Kyle can perform a ground pound that sends damaging ripples through the concrete.
The most significant new idea, though, is a more prominent use of guns. If you’ve played Dying Light 2 with its recent Firearms update then you already know a little of what to expect – the pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle featured in this demo were all the same as those added to DL2 earlier this year. But they seem key to the experience here, not just a powerful accessory. The Baron’s henchmen are all paramilitary types with body armour and rifles of their own. That means combat encounters with them are very, very different from the melee scraps with zombies and raiders that Dying Light has previously almost exclusively survived on. The Techland employee playing the demo for us used grenades to flush out entrenched gunmen and flanking tactics to snipe others. These encounters were lengthy, too; Kyle seems able to carry more than enough ammunition to chew through multiple squadrons.
Techland’s franchise director, Tymon Smektala, emphasised that Dying Light hasn’t been turned into a shooter. But I’d estimate nearly half the demo was played as an FPS. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though, provided the combat encounters, associated level design, and weapon feedback all prove successful. It’s a smart way to provide a new spin on Dying Light’s otherwise largely unchanged formula. Not being able to play myself means I can’t say how good all this actually is, but it at least looked like a competent shooter – hardly Call of Duty, but solid enough.
The search for The Baron led Kyle into an underground lab where some kind of huge creature had torn its way out of a cage. A scientist there revealed it could be lured by a special gas, and so a cylinder of it was loaded onto a flatbed truck and driven to a junkyard. Yes, driving returns from Dying Light: The Following, although the truck doesn’t look quite as fun as the expansion’s buggy. Still, being able to hit and run zombies looks as enjoyable as ever, as their undead bodies burst and splatter against the headlights.
Releasing the gas in the junkyard summoned the Behemoth, a hulk-like freak with an inflated health bar and the strength to hurl cars. Firearms were effective at whittling that HP down, but when ammunition ran dry it quickly became clear that melee weapons wouldn’t cut it. And so, with just a few minutes of the demo left, Kyle let the titular beast out of its cage.
In beast mode Kyle becomes stronger and faster. He can pick up stone blocks and hurl them at enemies, as well as perform a ground pound that sends damaging ripples through the concrete, Hulk style. Easily tearing through the Behemoth’s remaining health, the battle concluded with Kyle ripping the monster’s head from its shoulders in a gory victory move. Safe to say beast mode looks very powerful, but also quite similar to the infected powers Aiden had in Dying Light 2. Unlike Aiden, though, it seems like Kyle can transform into the beast freely rather than only at specific story moments.
I’m surprised that Techland left the titular power to the very end of the demo. It meant there was little room to properly explore why the beast is so central to the game, so much so that I do wonder if it actually is as important as the title suggests. Instead, I left more interested in how guns and soldier enemies will change the overall rhythm of Dying Light. Hopefully they’ve been smartly woven into the campaign and feel fully integrated rather than awkwardly tacked on. If so, The Beast could well prove a worthy standalone game rather than just a respectable DLC sold separately.
Gamescom is exploding all around us, but there is still time to lower a pincer into the pile of Steam indie game announcements and reel up the occasional treasure. In this case, it’s the demo for Cupiclaw, which is possibly the first ever “roguelike deckbuilding claw machine game”. You know how Balatro made you feel about Joker cards? Well, this game wants to make you feel the same about claw machines. It’s a terrible turn of events, frankly. I’m sorry for inflicting yet another potential bingeplay upon you. Here’s a trailer.
At the moment, our favorite deal on Game Pass is over at Woot (an Amazon company). They still have an incredible offer available where you can score 3 months of Game Pass Ultimate for just $36.49. This is a great deal on its own, but then you can get an additional $3 knocked off that price by using the code ‘VIDEOGAMES’ at checkout, bringing it down to $33.49! This price definitely won’t stick around for long, so act fast to secure these codes before they’re gone for good.
Considering the new price of Game Pass Ultimate is $19.99/month, you’re saving $26.48 with this 3-month deal. This is the best way to avoid the upcoming Xbox Game Pass price hike in September. By stacking these codes, you can set yourself up to play all of the upcoming Game Pass releases at a lower price. You can prepay for up to 36 months for Game Pass Ultimate, so there’s no better time to stock up.
What’s Coming Soon to Xbox Game Pass?
Game Pass has a nice rotation of new titles to play every month. If you’re curious about what’s in store for the latter half of August and start of September, we’ve got you covered there as well. The Xbox Game Pass August wave 2 lineup is:
Star Trucker (Cloud, Console, and PC) – September 3
Another massive piece of Game Pass news is that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is officially available to play on Game Pass right now for console, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Ultimate users. This features the full package for CoD fans: the campaign, multiplayer, and Zombies. Subscribers can also expect to see Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 day-one on Game Pass when it releases on October 25. However, for those subscribing to the new Standard tier (available for $14.99/month), this does not give Game Pass users access to day one releases, meaning Black Ops 6 will likely not be available to those on that tier.
What Games Are Leaving Xbox Game Pass?
Unfortunately, with new games joining the catalog, it means a few must take their leave. Below, we’ve listed the games that’ll be leaving Xbox Game Pass on August 31.
While most of the games listed above have release dates in 2025, or no release dates at all at the moment, the one to keep an eye on for now alongside Black Ops 6 is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Gamescom’s Opening Night Live revealed that Indy’s latest adventure will be available to play on December 9 for Xbox users, so there’s truly no better time to hop on the Game Pass bandwagon to add this one to your library in the future.
If you’re looking for even more savings on all things Xbox, have a look at our roundup of the best Xbox deals. There, we’ve highlighted all of the latest and greatest discounts on the platform, from incredible game deals to fantastic offers on high-quality headphones. Or, if you’d rather see what’s going on with other platforms, check out our roundups of the best PlayStation deals, the best Nintendo Switch deals, and our overall roundup of the best video game deals.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.
Microsoft has announced two new Xbox Series X consoles and one new Xbox Series S console will be released on October 15, 2024, including a digital-only Xbox Series X.
The All-Digital Xbox Series X is only available in Robot White and comes with a 1TB SSD hard drive for $449.99, down $50 from the launch Xbox Series X which has a disc drive installed. The Robot White 1TB Xbox Series S, meanwhile, costs $349.99, the same as the Carbon Black version already available.
The Special Editon Xbox Series X is available in black but speckled with green and white, and its 2TB hard drive and inclusion of a disc drive ramps the price up to $599.99. The controller has a black front and green back, though the speckled design seeps into the directional pad too.
These console variants don’t come with any extra power or features but are simply alternatives to Microsoft’s current offerings, likely targeted at brand new buyers. Increased hard drive space is becoming increasingly more relevant, however, as the size of video games continues to rise.
The release of these three new Xbox consoles comes amid plummeting sales of the Xbox Series X and S, which lag behind competitor PlayStation 5 as both sets of consoles near their fourth birthday, and tough questions over Microsoft’s committment to the console business from its hardcore fans.
In our 8/10 launch review of the Xbox Series X, IGN called it “a quiet, compact, laser-targeted games machine that should make 4K/60fps gaming the wonderful new norm” that “still lacks as many must-play games as the competition.”
The Xbox Series S received a 7/10 in our review, though its base storage of 512GB was raised as an issue even then. “The Xbox Series S has its place and could shine as a second console, but it’s hard to recommend as your primary gaming platform due to its 1440p resolution and claustrophobic storage capacity,” we said.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
I’ve only managed to carve out the time for about two hours of staff-bonking simian action in Black Myth: Wukong thus far, but it’s been enough that I’m already quite enamoured with just how consistently novel and creative it’s been. I’m enjoying it enough to wish I’d encountered it in a vacuum.
When the Nintendo Museum opens up on 2nd October 2024, we’re sure a bunch of fans will be piling through the doors, eager to get a look at all of the beautiful exhibits and play with the interactive stations. But, if you’re one of the lucky ones who manages to snag a ticket, there will be a delightful little surprise even before you enter the museum.
Spotted by Nintendo Wire, your unique entry ticket — if you get one, that is! — will show your Mii on the front. That’s a superb little touch, especially given that you need a Nintendo account to grab tickets to the museum.
