Game Infliction, Author at Game Infliction

I’ve Found the Best Magic: The Gathering Gift Ideas That Aren’t Just Booster Packs

Magic: The Gathering (MTG), the world’s premier trading card game, is as popular as it’s ever been. Aside from the cards themselves, longtime Magic players (like me!) know that there are countless accessories and other goodies to enhance your experience.

With Father’s Day coming up soon (June 15), I’ve compiled a list of great MTG gifts, from playmats and card sleeves to dice and merch, for that special Magic player in your life.

As a competitive player of 10+ years, these are products I’ve had and would buy for my personal use, so rest easy knowing that these suggestions aren’t without extensive trial and error.

TL;DR – Best Magic: The Gathering Gifts

Magic has been around for over 30 years, but thanks to the recent crossover sets with other IPs, what Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has dubbed Universes Beyond, its audience has grown monumentally.

Properties like The Lord of the Rings, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, and more have all received the MTG treatment, with Final Fantasy being the next crossover in June.

There’s even a full Spider-Man set coming later this year. So there’s plenty of great sets to choose from now, and incoming in the near future as well.

Sealed Product

Magic: The Gathering sets are released every few months, and with them come various sealed products to help supplement your collection.

You have booster boxes, collector boosters, starter kits, commander decks, the list goes on. I recommend starting with bundles of the most recently released sets, or looking ahead to expansions like Edge of Eternities.

They make great gifts, as they include nine booster packs, an alternate-art promotional card, extra land cards, a spindown life counter, and the box itself is a great storage solution for extra cards.

Card Sleeves

You have all these fancy new cards, what are you supposed to put them in? Card sleeves are the perfect solution not only for protection but for easily shuffling.

Ultimate Guard and Ultra PRO are some of the best MTG accessories brands around, but Dragon Shield sleeves are my go-to recommendation as a gift for dad.

The Ultimate Guard Katana sleeves are great, too. The matte sleeves are crisp and feel great in your hands. No matter what you pick, make sure you get standard size sleeves, not Japanese card size — Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are much smaller than Magic cards!

Deck Boxes

Your cards are now sleeved up and ready for battle. Now you need a reliable deck box. Here, you can’t go wrong with Ultimate Guard’s sturdy options.

I’m a big fan of the Flip ‘n’ Tray myself, as it can hold a fully sleeved deck, sideboard, and tokens, along with a built-in dice compartment.

For larger storage solutions, there are massive boxes that can hold up to 500 loose cards. All Ultimate Guard options come in a handful of different colors, and the Ultra PRO boxes sport some great official MTG art.

Playmats

Playmats are a must-have for any Magic player, since playing without one can make it hard to pick your cards up off the kitchen table.

Usually made of the same material as a standard mousepad, many people (myself included) like to use mats featuring art of their favorite cards or of their proudest Magic accomplishments.

You can even buy blank white playmats if you find yourself at a Magic Con and want to commission your favorite artist to make it look snazzy!

Dice and Counters

Keeping track of Planeswalker loyalty, +1/+1 counters, or Finality counters are a massive headache without an efficient way of doing so. Luckily, a set of D6 will set you right.

Some more unique cards, like Qarsi Revenant, give other creatures ability counters that are hard to keep track of, so I highly recommend a set of ability counters to go along with your accessories arsenal.

Binders

If you have rare or valuable cards you don’t want to store in a bulk storage box, binders are the way to go to keep them nice and pristine.

You can get various sizes and colors from both Ultimate Guard and Ultra PRO, but the Zipfolio from Ultimate Guard is my go-to for expensive singles. These fit great in your backpack for when you’re heading out to your local Friday Night Magic

Other Accessories

These suggestions are just scratching the surface of what these accessory makers have to offer. There are countless other sleeves, boxes, and mats to pick from, so pick your favorite Magic player’s favorite for a great gift.

Other accessories I recommend are lifepads; some Magic player prefer to write their life totals down and take notes instead of using the MTG Companion app or a spindown counter.

Dry erase tokens are great for cards with copy abilities. A playmat tube is a great storage solution to keep your mats dry and safe, and the Ultra PRO land station is a good way to sort your basic lands or have lands ready for your booster draft night.

Merch

Did you know that the IGN store has some awesome Magic: The Gathering merch? We have a handful of t-shirts, a crewneck sweater, and even a 17oz stainless steel water bottle for sale.

These make great gifts if you aren’t quite sure what cards, sets, or formats your favorite Magic player enjoys!

Myles Obenza is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Bluesky @mylesobenza.bsky.social.

Random: Yakuza 0’s Antagonists Reunite To Play Switch 2 Together

Even crime lords need to unwind.

Sega has released a new trailer for Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut in Japan and it’s an absolute doozy.

Rather than just showcase the game and be done with it, the trailer instead features actual actors from Yakuza 0; specifically the three lieutenants from the Dojima Family – Hitoshi Ozawa (Daisaku Kuze), Riki Takeuchi (Hiroki Awano), and Hideo Nakano (Keiji Shibusawa).

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Rematch: hands-on report

“Football is a relatively simple game. It’s one of the reasons it’s such a beautiful sport. But within that there’s a lot of depth to be found.”

With these words, spoken by Pierre Tarno, CEO of Sloclap and Rematch’s creative director, it’s easy to see the ethos behind the studio’s spectacular new football game, even before I boot up the final beta.

At first glance Rematch appears to be an arcade styled kickabout, sprinting past the typically super realistic examples of the genre. It’s fast, doesn’t require you to learn particularly complex controls, and pairs down the pitch to 3v3, 4v4 and 5v5 matches. Even the rules are more akin to ‘jumpers for goalposts’ fun, with no fixed positions, fouls, offsides, or breaks except for after goal replays.

And yet, nestled within Rematch’s action-packed gloss is a depth that football fans will not only appreciate, but keep coming back to.

Rematch’s grass roots

“I liked the idea of performing a body kick in third-person,” explains Pierre, when asked about Rematch’s origins. “I think body actions are some of the most beautiful and interesting actions in football, because that’s when the ball circulates the fastest. After that notion, we dug deeper to establish the experience we wanted for the game: to feel like an amazing player, feel part of a team and feel the pressure.”

All three of those things were definitely present during my time with the beta. Getting stuck into the tutorial and practice mode, the controls seemed easy enough, with the expected sprint, block and slide tackle buttons, but beyond that I encountered some interesting differences to other football titles. There’s no dedicated cross button, so the unusual R2 shoot config is also used for whipping the ball into the box. Similarly, the square button’s passes aren’t automatically guided, meaning you have to carefully aim using the left analog stick.

With a combination of button presses it’s easy to perform skilful moves like a rainbow kick, but many of your more dazzling shots specifically depend on your player’s inertia, position, and ball placement, resulting in amazing volleys and even more impressive goals. With one important nuance to factor in – your shots are aimed via an on-screen crosshair, which is determined by the right analog stick’s camera control. So simply pressing R2 won’t get the job done. Similar to passing, you need to be more discerning with your aim, otherwise you’ll be slamming the ball off the invisible walls that surround the pitch instead of scoring screamers.

Far from simple soccer

All of these subtleties and freedoms are what give Rematch its depth. With no player stats, the onus is entirely on you to bring the goods, and that pressure to perform within a team is very, very real. Using the camera to aim shots while also utilising after-touch for curving the ball (Rematch calls it a Magus Shot, suggesting Sloclap are fans of the sports manga Blue Lock) is a skill requiring practice, especially within the manic environment of a match.

I found the 4v4 and 5v5 games easier to get to grips with the intensity of Rematch, due to how quickly mistakes can be punished in a 3v3. Given the naturally fun chaos of players not having to stay in any one position, the ever-changing environment was easier to learn with more players, although it required a greater awareness of my positioning and tactics. The on-screen radar was essential to understanding the flow of the match and ensuring I worked with my teammates, as everyone chasing the ball only led to easy goals for the opposition.

With no single-player mode, Sloclap intends to add bots later into development to let you learn the ropes in something a bit closer to a match without the human pressure. But for now it’s all about playing live and gaining experience, both in-game and figuratively.

Team tips

This learning curve is very much an intentional part of Rematch’s design. “Incentivising team play was the biggest objective and challenge,” says Pierre. “So you’re more vulnerable when you’re in possession, and defenders can quickly hone in on you, which creates pressure to pass. Passing quickly to teammates is the best way to put pressure on your opponents.

“Checking your radar to know where other players are is also important. You see that with the best players in real life football, like Messi – they’re looking around them all the time before they receive the ball, developing their vision and positioning. That’s vital in Rematch.”

It’s this focus on dynamics and tactics which makes Rematch so rewarding. Sure, it’s not as easy as some of the highly skilled players make it look, but at its athletic heart Sloclap hasn’t forgotten that all we want to do is score incredible goals that make us run around our living room with our t-shirts pulled over our faces.

Appropriately, Benjamin Pavard’s classic goal for France against Argentina in the 2018 FIFA World Cup was a big touchstone for Rematch. “It was one of the most amazing body kicks ever,” says Pierre. Look it up, it’s hard to disagree – and those are the sorts of goals you’ll be scoring when Rematch laces up its boots for its big June 19 match on PlayStation 5.

Elden Ring Nightreign Players Just Want More Info on Items That Have Dropped on the Ground

As players dive deeper into Elden Ring Nightreign‘s launch content, more discoveries are being made and Nightlords felled. Some Nightfarers would like a little bit of assistance, though, when it comes to knowing what’s dropped on the ground.

One post on the Nightreign subreddit that picked up a bit of traction is asking for more weapon info when items drop on the ground. Clearing a camp or point-of-interest in Nightreign tends to result in a decent amount of loot to sort through, and so the idea is that you’d like some more details to quickly scan over.

As commenters have pointed out — and I went in to verify with a quick run — you are able to see a weapon class type by hitting R3 for details. This also provides info on Weapon Arts and passives, which helps a ton. You can still get confused by an item name in the heat of the moment, but otherwise, you’ll need to pause for a moment and read over.

It still doesn’t account for scaling, though, and while commenters note scaling is incorporated into the overall damage number on a weapon, sometimes seeing scaling can help. For example, knowing a raw damage number only tells you the damage of one hit, not how fast you can swing it. It’s uncertain whether that incorporates split damage weapons, either.

In another, potentially more controversial post, one Redditor suggested loot names on the drops, in colored text. This one honestly got a mixed reaction from me, as I don’t know that seeing a bunch of cluttered names littered on the ground would help that much. I also like the stress of picking an item up off the ground and debating its merits, pit against the ticking clock and urgency of the Night closing in.

Still, in this thread, others are asking for the same clarity in the previous one. While scaling and other details can be found in the sparring grounds, through the equipment chest, that does mean internalizing a lot of knowledge or having a wiki handy. There’s some desire for even a few extra tidbits of info, to help make those swift calls and decisions.

It’s an understandable desire, even if I’m not sure that any of the suggestions yet have looked like the right implementation. FromSoftware is clearly paying attention to player feedback though, as evidenced by its quick patch to nerf solo player difficulty and the commitment to adding a Duos mode. We’ll see if this is an area FromSoftware feels like it needs to fine-tune, or if it’s left as-is. Either way, some study time in the sparring grounds could ultimately do every Nightfarer some good, in their quest to take down the Nightlord.

We’ve got plenty of Nightreign tips and tricks to help you take down all the eight Nightlord Bosses, and if you’re wondering how to unlock the two locked Nightfarer Classes, check out How to Unlock the Revenant and How to Unlock the Duchess, plus How to Change Characters.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Dead Finger Dice: A Billionaire Killing Game is about beating demon elites at finger-severing poker on a mega yacht

A game that sees you forcibly kidnapped, smuggled aboard a mega yacht dubbed The Avarice, and made to play demon billionaires at lethal dice poker just got a new trailer, and it looks as funky as you’d expect. Dead Finger Dice: A Billionaire Killing Game is its uber-snappy name, and it’s coming to Steam this summer.

Psychroma and Raptor Boyfriend developers Rocket Adrift Games released a trailer for this roguelike dice builder as part of yesterday’s The Mix showcase, and as soon as I clapped my eyes on it, I was intrigued.

The Nintendo Switch 2 edition of the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A can now be preordered for just £52.95 at Amazon, the lowest price we’ve seen from major UK retailers so far.

A new adventure set in Lumiose City of Gen 5’s Kalos region, launching on October 16th, Legends Z-A is on average priced a good number of pounds higher at other online stores.

The Switch 2 version of the game is currently priced at £59.99 at shops like Very, Smyths, and Game UK. Some retailers’ prices are even higher, with ShopTo asking for a whopping £66.85, making Amazon or TCG the best options by far right now.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A is also launching on the original Nintendo Switch at lower price points, like TGC for £42.95 or ShopTo for £42.85, for example. However, the higher cost comes with “improved performance with higher frame rate and resolution”, as stated on Nintendo’s list of upgraded Switch 2 games.

If the Pokemon Scarlet & Violet Switch vs Switch 2 comparison is anything to go by, following our first look at the older game’s free update, the new console’s upgraded hardware will make the higher price tag worthwhile.

While some older Switch games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have the option to buy an upgrade pack for the Switch 2, those two being for £7.99 each, it’s currently unconfirmed as to whether Pokemon Legends: Z-A will have the same option.

Based on that pricing, though, it’s possible the Legends: Z-A upgrade pack will cost even more since it will be a brand-new game. While still in stock at The Game Collection, we’d recommend jumping on this lower price for the Switch 2 edition now, so you won’t have to worry about potentially paying more in the future.

Fans reckon The Witcher 4’s tech demo featured a familiar voice from The Witcher 3, and if it did there’s an interesting extra wrinkle

Witcher fans have naturally been busy poring over The Witcher 4’s tech demo in search of interesting details beyond the big obvious teases. One group on Reddit reckon their ears picked up the voice of Witcher 3 actor Richard Hawley.

Hawley voiced a few characters in Gerry from the Riviera’s RPG clash with the Wild Hunt, with Caleb Menge, Francis Bedlam, and Redanian schemer Sigismund Dijkstra all boasting his dulcet tones. It’s that last one that’ll likely have lodged the actor’s voice into your brain.

Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney believes small teams will soon be able to use AI prompts to make video games on the scale of Nintendo masterpiece The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Speaking to IGN at Epic’s State of Unreal 2025 event (where CD Projekt revealed a stunning The Witcher 4 tech demo), Sweeney said AI prompts will be “a fundamental part” of game engines, and will result in “entirely new genres of games invented that weren’t possible or practical before” without it.

“Every significant advance in technology has led to the rise of new games,” Sweeney explained.

“I remember 3D gaming just became possible and then Doom and Wolfenstein introduced the 3D shooter. The battle royal genre itself only became possible when you had enough performance on hardware and engines that you could have a hundred players in a single play space.

“AI characters giving you the possibility of infinite dialogue with a really simple setup for creators means small teams will be able to create games with immense amounts of characters and immense and interactive worlds. What would it take for a 10-person team to build a game like Zelda Breath of the Wild in which the AI is just doing all the dialogue and you’re just writing some character synopsis? That’s totally going to be within reach over the next few years.”

Sweeney’s enthusiasm around AI is no secret, of course, and Epic Games is all in. AI Darth Vader hit Fortnite last month in a first for the all-encompassing battle royale. He can serenade you, join and leave squads at will, respond intelligently to the player, issue impromptu dialogue, summarize gameplay events, and warn the player if something’s about to go down.

Darth Vader is voiced by the inimitable James Earl Jones, who died in September 2024 at the age of 93. This AI version of his voice, powered by Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash model and ElevenLabs’ Flash v2.5, is used with the Jones family’s permission.

This sparked a debate about the ethics of generative AI, particularly when it comes to NPCs such as Darth Vader that revive the voice of dead actors. Sweeney, though, believes AI technology is ultimately of net benefit to society, despite some drawbacks.

“I see AI as technology that’s ultimately there to empower human creators to create stuff more efficiently,” he said. “I think that’s a good thing. It’s unfortunate that the advent of modern AI has been tainted by companies just ripping massive amounts of content off of other companies and individuals on the web. But as a base level technology, it should be a multiplying factor and multiplying force on our abilities.

“Certainly enabling indie teams to build bigger and better games means also enabling AAA teams to build staggering, immense huge games and to polish it ever further. So I think there’s going to be a massive evolution as everybody scrambles to learn new skills as you get on top of what’s possible here. But I think as with any other technology that’s improved our lives, the ultimate net opportunity for people is higher.”

Undeterred by any backlash to AI Darth Vader, Epic has announced plans to let people create their own AI NPCs in Fortnite.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Could The Witcher 4’s Kelpie be the best video game horse yet? We asked an expert

If you caught The Witcher 4‘s tech demo at yesterday’s Unreal showcase, you likely spent an above-average amount of time for a Tuesday being impressed by horse muscles. Still, however excited you were about that horse, I’d wager you weren’t quite as happy as Alice Ruppert – creative producer on the upcoming Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, consultant, and owner of the very best website about video game horses on the internet. Ruppert’s initial reaction? “Tears of joy in my eyes when they showed the slow mo horse movement”.

“I’m a big fan of the of the Witcher books, and so I knew that Ciri has a horse named Kelpie in the books,” Ruppert tells me over a call, “so, that’s part of it”. But it’s also the care that’s been put in. “Like: here’s our gorgeous horse. We care about it, and we know you care about it. And that made me feel very seen. I think that’s what brought the tears to my eyes. Of course, I am so profoundly a horse girl that you can, depending on my mood of the day, you can show me a slow mo footage of a horse galloping and I will cry in any case. That’s just my horse appreciation brain rot.”

Poll: So, Did You Order A Nintendo Switch 2?

Are You Sold?

On the eve of Nintendo Switch 2’s global launch (OK, technically it’s already the 5th in some locations), there is one burning question we have for you, the Nintendo Life audience: Will you be buying a Nintendo Switch 2?

It’s fair to say that Nintendo Switch 2 seems about the “safest” console Nintendo has ever produced, but with good reason — the Nintendo Switch was a huge success. Has Nintendo managed to convince you that the shiny new console is worth the money? Maybe you’re holding out for a mid-gen refresh? We’re keen to learn where you are at as we swiftly head into the launch period.