We knew a PC adapter for PlayStation’s VR2 headset was on the way, and it looked to be fairly soon – and we were right! Sony’s shiniest virtual reality offering is now confirmed to be adding official PC support via a nifty wired adapter at the start of August. It’ll cost £50/$60 – but whether it’s worth the price given a number of key features will be missing is another question entirely…
“You never know when the Pokémon inspiration will strike!”.
In recent years, we have seen an increasing number of roguelikes on Switch. In even more recent years, we have seen the same happen for ‘Pokémon-likes’. Naturally, each genre has its respective highs and lows, but rarely have we seen both of them joined by the same game. That is, until we saw Dicefolk.
Dicefolk is a tactical roguelike. It’s also a monster catcher. It’s also a dice game. It’s a confusing combination of genres that seem disparate on paper but click in practice. The game launched on Steam earlier this year and quickly started racking up positive reviews. So, when developers LEAP Game Studios (Tunche) and Tiny Ghoul announced that the monster-based mashup would be rolling the dice on Switch on 20th June, our interests were quickly piqued.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
We’re only halfway through 2024, and it’s already been a banner year for indie games. These games from small developers offer big-time fun, showcasing new and unique approaches to gameplay, visuals, and storytelling. This year’s bounty of indie goodness offers an amazing variety of experiences, from old-school throwbacks to bold new experimental designs. Whether you want to immerse yourself in the foreboding wilderness on your big screen monitor or make some poker hands on the PlayStation Portal before bed, something here is sure to please.
As you awaken in the depths of a ship floating in space, a stunning neon landscape spreads before you, teeming with bizarre lifeforms and untold mysteries. What happened here, and what has transformed this craft into a womb of cosmic horror? Combat vicious foes with an arsenal of hard-hitting combat skills, then nurture the strange seeds you discover on your travels to sprout secrets. Strengthen yourself and explore all you can before a time loop engulfs everything and begins anew. Will you be able to escape the cycle of birth and destruction?
Publisher: Kepler Interactive | Developer: Hadoque | PS5, PS4
A rollicking 3D action adventure for all ages, Penny’s Big Breakaway sees the titular heroine getting up to comical shenanigans in a bright, colorful fantasyland. Small-time performer Penny thinks she’s found her path to success with a special string that brings her yo-yo to life, but when her newly sentient accessory pulls a humiliating stunt on Emperor Eddie, her freedom’s left hanging by a thread. Use Penny’s yo-yo to attack, swing around, and ride through the numerous skill-testing stages in this speedrunning-focused platformer that’s packed with charm.
Publisher: Private Division | Developer: Evening Star | PS5
Take it from a resident–the Pacific Northwest is a very strange place. There’s the constantly changing weather, the bizarre terrain, and so many trees. As beautiful as nature and wilderness are, it’s very easy to isolate and consume you, so how will you survive when it’s just you, your trusty station wagon, and a handful of other humans stationed in an abandoned garage against bizarre phenomena transforming hundreds of miles of wilderness into a life-sucking hellscape? Each trip is unique, exciting, terrifying, and perhaps the one where you’ll finally escape.
Publisher: Kepler Interactive | Developer: Ironwood Studios | PS5
Stop-motion animation’s distinct look and feel combined with Harold Halibut’s narrative-driven gameplay. Set in an alternate history where a space colonization expedition was launched in the 1970s, things went disastrously wrong, and now the ship’s stuck at the bottom of a hostile planet’s sea. As Harold, a wholly average handyman, you meet and befriend the various personalities onboard while doing your duties, learning about the various ideas everyone has to escape this decades-long rut. When the time to act comes, what role will Harold play?
Publisher: Slow Bros. | Developer: Slo Bros. | PS5, PS4
So, you think you’re a real card shark, huh? You might think you have an unbeatable poker face, but we all know the house always has the advantage, or does it? The first (and only) poker roguelike sees you constructing decks with special Jokers, Vouchers, Tarot, and Planet cards. Play your cards well, score big, beat the Blinds (or even strategically skip them), and take on the Bosses who have some of their own aces up their sleeve–then earn new decks to expand your strategic possibilities even more.
Publisher: PlayStack Limited | Developer: LocalThunk | PS5, PS4
Journey through a gorgeous world inspired by African tribal art, music, and culture. Abubakar Salim, the voice behind Beyek in Assassin’s Creed Origins, weaves a story of loss and self-discovery inspired by his experiences. As the headstrong shaman youth Zau, you must pass an arduous trial, offering up the souls of three beasts to the God of Death to revive your fallen father. Switch seamlessly between the Sun and Moon masks with different navigation and combat skills as you amass the power you need for your goal.
Publisher: Electronic Arts | Developer: Surgent Studios | PS5
Do you love the gameplay and exploration of games like Demon’s Souls and Elden Ring, but feel a bit weary of dark fantasy? Another Crab’s Treasure is an undersea adventure with a colorful, cartoony aesthetic and all the skill-testing challenges you’ve come to love. Take over the claws of hermit crab Kril, whose underwater paradise is ravaged by pollution. Use the trash you find as weapons and armor to take on the nastiest underwater baddies on this side of Amity Bay. Find the legendary treasure and get back your precious shell!
Publisher: Aggro Crab | Developer: Aggro Crab | PS5
The debut game from new publisher Bigmode takes players on a dark, wild exploration adventure. Here in the labyrinth, there’s very little light–but plenty of creatures, several of which are less-than-docile, let’s say. You control an odd little something and are here to delve into the labyrinth’s mysteries, assuming you can survive. Beautiful, atmospheric pixel art blends with exquisite exploration and an atmosphere that’s both beautiful and terrifying to create a game packed with secrets, discovery, and replayability.
Publisher: Bigmode | Developer: Billy Basso| PS5
Edward Crow’s famous amusement park, Crow Country, shuttered years prior, and its founder went missing, but something remains in this wonder-wasteland. Travel back to the 90s in this survival horror adventure inspired by ‘90s PlayStation classics. As special agent Mara Forest, you’ll traverse the abandoned park to discover why it abruptly closed, savoring the creepy atmosphere packed with brain teasers, environmental storytelling, dangerous encounters, and terrifying surprises.
Publisher: SFB Games | Developer: SFB Games | PS5, PS4
Developer 11 Bit Studios has announced an upcoming playable demo of The Alters, the team’s alluring and unique new survival game. Check out the stellar new trailer above, and then play the demo for yourself on Steam on June 10 until June 17.
So what is The Alters? Well, we encourage you to watch our recent hands-on preview below, but in short, you play as Jans. But not just one Jans. Lots of Jans. See, you’re a miner on a hostile planet who must pull in versions of yourself from other realities in order to survive. But they’re not mere clones. Rather, they’re you but they’ve lived their own completely unique lives, and as such they’ll bring different looks, skills, and personalities to your tall task at hand.
Our exclusive month-long IGN First coverage starts now with the demo announcement trailer at the top of this page, and it continues tomorrow with exclusive gameplay footage from the very demo you can play for yourself on Monday.
And be sure to check back all June long for lots more coverage of The Alters as our June IGN First “cover story”! Check out more of The Alters on their Steam page.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
This week we finally got our raging bear gauntlets on Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree, an even dingier and danker edition of 2022’s best and dankest open worlder, but perhaps you’d rather play a Soulslike with a Florentine flounce and the warmth of a Mediterranean sunset on its brow. A brighter, stagier variety of action-role-playing, which deepens the connection between Italian folklore and Soulsliking established by last year’s Lies Of P. Well then: cast aside those ursine mitts, slip on a pair of immaculate white theatre gloves and get your thumbs into Enotria: The Last Song, which has a demo on Steam.
Shenmue fans are so desperate for another game in the long-running action adventure series they bought an advertisement in New York’s famous Times Square to campaign for Shenmue 4.
Fan website Shenmue Dojo launched a campaign on June 4, 2024 to “support the continuation of the series and attempt to spread global awareness to find [developer] Ys Net a potential partner for Shenmue 4.” Part of this campaign involved renting a 15-second advertisement on Times Square, which can be seen below, that displayed a handful of characters from the series alongside “#LetsGetShenmue4.”
“Shenmue fans do some insane things to try and get recognised,” an X/Twitter post from Shenmue Dragons said. “Are you watching Sega?” While a 15-second advertisement at Times Square can cost as little as $40, a fanbase paying to promote a series over its developer or publisher is still an unusual move.
Broadcast live during our #Shenmue Day stream, #LetsGetShenmue4 hit the streets of New York with a full on 15 second advertisement on Times Square! 🏙️
Shenmue fans do some insane things to try and get recognised…are you watching @SEGA @SEGA_OFFICIAL?👀 pic.twitter.com/gzfLzQWZb9
— Shenmue Dojo 🐉 (@Shenmue_Dojo) June 4, 2024
The effort paid off too, as Shenmue was trending on X/Twitter around the advertisement and campaign. “Thank you to everyone that helped to show their support with the timed mass tweets/posts today,” Shenmue Dojo wrote. “It was very much appreciated and proves that together, as a collective, we can spread the awareness that we are not going to sit back without a fight. We will continue to strive until Shenmue 4 is a reality.”
The campaign began after series creator Yu Suzuki told Shenmue Dojo he’d potentially make Shenmue 4 if he found a publishing partner to fund it.
Shenmue follows a teenage martial artist called Ryo Haz as he hunts his father’s killer in 1980s Japan and China. Shenmue 1 and 2 were released in 1999 and 2001 respectively but the franchise then went quiet for almost two decades before Shenmue 3 arrived in 2019, partly funded by a Kickstarter campaign.
Suzuki told IGN in 2023 that he wants to create another entry but, following the poor critical reception of the third game, would look to make it more accessible to new fans.
“I want Shenmue 4 to be enjoyable for newcomers,” he said at the time. “To make that possible, the most important thing is to make it enjoyable without knowing previous events in the story.
“I don’t think that a new player wants to know 100% of the story. 20% or 30% could be enough. In Shenmue 3, we implemented a digest movie that teaches the player the main events of the previous games, but for Shenmue 4 I want to integrate that part into the main game. It would be great if the player could naturally learn about previous events just by playing the game. For example, rather than watching a separate movie, having playable flashbacks could be a way to do it.”
Suzuki also said he’d thought about making a prequel instead of a sequel, but didn’t indicate anything was being actively worked on. He has other projects in the works too.
In our 5/10 review of the last game, IGN said: “Rejoining Ryo Hazuki’s quest to avenge his father is exciting, but Shenmue 3 feels like a game that has ignored the innovation and progress of the last 20 years of video game development.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
In Sorry We’re Closed, an axe-murdering entrepreneur called Jenny is described in newspaper clippings as both a serial embezzler and as the city’s “wealthiest bachelorette”. Aside from being a dry reflection of tabloid reporting on women who commit crimes (bad woman! sexy, bad woman!) this is also the kind of incidental character-building you can expect in this perky, retro-styled survival horror. It plays like Silent Hill charged with the hot pink body horror of Porpentine interactive fiction. And judging by my hour of unsettled strolling through the decrepit tube station of the game’s demo, it’s a powerful combo.
GTA Online is getting its own take on Dog the Bounty Hunter with the game’s next major update.
Developer Rockstar Games announced this summer’s update to the hugely popular GTA Online lets players set up their own bail enforcement and bounty hunting business. There’s very little to go on at this point, not even a release date, but already fans are getting excited by the prospect of living out their Dog the Bounty Hunter fantasy within the virtual world of GTA Online.
Elsewhere, players will get to “conduct a range of off-the-books enforcement activities” across Los Santon for Vincent. There are new tools and props to create custom Drift and Drag Races in the Creator, and “much more” later this month.
Here’s the official blurb, per Rockstar:
This summer’s action-packed GTA Online update also delivers a collection of new rides to covet and collect, boosts to payouts across a number of existing modes and missions, including Taxi Work, Open Wheel Races, Operation Paper Trail, and more.
Creator upgrades include the aforementioned expansion of custom Drift Race tracks and Drag Race circuits, and new units in all tracks — from drivers doing donuts and bouncing lowriders, to crowd animations, and more.
The summer update also makes various improvements to GTA Online, including an increased Sell Mission timer to make it easier for solo players taking on Biker and Gunrunning sales, snacks automatically replenishing when launching most missions, and buffing defensive and armor capabilities for the Sparrow and Bombushka.
“As we continue to monitor and balance payouts to ensure all mission types are fun and rewarding, we will be increasing base payouts for players taking part in Open Wheel Races, Taxi Work, and many Contact Missions,” Rockstar said.
The GTA Online summer update comes amid increased excitement around GTA 6. So far Rockstar has dropped a solitary, record-breaking trailer for the game, due out fall 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. Rockstar is yet to detail its plan for GTA 6’s version of GTA Online, or say what becomes of the existing GTA Online once GTA 6 comes out. Until then, however, GTA Online remains hugely popular, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars for parent company Take-Two each quarter.
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.
Supergiant Games has released Patch 2 for the Early Access version of Hades 2, which adds more night time encounters, refreshes the UI, and more.
Outlined in a Steam post, Supergiant first thanked fans for playing this early version of Hades 2 and for providing feedback which influences patches. This second update arrives less than three weeks after Patch 1 but features dozens of changes, improvements, and bug fixes.
Balance changes take up a large part of the spoiler heavy patch notes, available below, but Supergiant has also made larger gameplay changes including the ability to encounter up to one additional Olympain each night, increased the invulnerability duration after Death Defiance, and the option to press and hold to continuously harvest Crescent Pick outcroppings.
Hades 2’s menus and UI were also updated to include several new icons, the Chaos Trials have been reduced in difficulty, and some resources are now easier to come across in certain areas. As for weapon and ability buffs and nerfs, Nocturnal Arms, Keepsakes, Daedalus Hammers, Hexes of Selene, and more are all affected.
Hades 2 arrived on Steam in Early Access on May 6, 2024 (delaying fellow roguelite The Rogue Prince of Persia as a result) and immediately proved a hit after doubling the original game’s peak concurrent player count in a single day.
As a sequel to the critically acclaimed Greek mythology themed action roguelite, Hades 2 returns players to that world as they meet legendary figures like Odysseus, Nemesis, and Dora through a blend of storytelling, action gameplay, and dungeon crawling.
In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “Even in its Early Access state, Hades 2 is just about everything one could ask for in a sequel to one of the best roguelites of all time. Featuring excellent refinements to its roguelite progression, a fantastic new main character in Melinoe, and two unique sets of levels that have you fighting foes on the surface and in the underworld.”
General Gameplay
Nocturnal Arms & Abilities
Aspects of the Nocturnal Arms
Keepsakes
Daedalus Hammer Upgrades
Hexes of Selene
Foes & Encounters
Level Design & Environments
Fated List of Minor Prophecies
Chaos Trials
Oath of the Unseen
Menus & UI
Art & Visual FX
Music & SFX
Voice & Narrative
Miscellaneous
Bug Fixes
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Katsuhiro Harada, chief developer of the Tekken series, has offered a fascinating insight into the making of the fighting game franchise’s characters, specifically their dialogue — and in the process revealed why one Tekken character in particular became popular despite saying nothing at all.
Harada tweeted in response to one user who asked about a line of dialogue spoken by the character Reina in the recently released Tekken 8, but the answer went on to describe the process of adding dialogue to Tekken characters, kicking off with Bryan and Yoshimitsu in 1997’s Tekken 3. Before that game, Tekken characters did not speak, but it was felt that with the demise of the arcade scene in the West and a shift toward consoles, there was a need to strengthen characterization.
This is when Bryan’s famous “Muwahaha!” laugh comes in, but only when the camera was not pointed at the character’s face as much as possible due to hardware limitations.
“So I decided to include dialogue such as laughter or yes!! in the throwing scene where Bryan turns his back to the camera’s gaze and in the scene where Bryan is down (and Nina stomps),” Harada said. “I also wanted to express Bryan’s character as both a sadist and a masochist.”
Subsequent Tekken games released on more powerful hardware added more characterization, although, as Harada points out, there’s an irony in Bryan becoming a character known for not speaking much at all. Another Tekken character who does not speak is Dragunov, and Harada offered an insight into how that came to be — and revealed his surprise at the character’s popularity despite his silence.
In short, Dragunov was designed as the “negative” to Lili’s “positive”, with the expectation that Dragunov would not be a popular character, whereas Lili would be. Indeed, Harada asked the developers to “keep his personality down, keep him plain, and he doesn’t need to be so popular.”
And so, Dragunov does not speak in Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, the 2005 update to Tekken 5 in which he was introduced. This also helped lighten the load on the development team, as Dragunov had few facial animations, very little lip-sync, and no more dialogue to localize.
Harada said he was nervous about Dragunov because he had become “soooo plain and brooding.” But then something unexpected happened: “the sober Dragunov, who did not speak at all, on the contrary, became popular among Tekken players because he was unique.”
The conclusion: times have changes, Harada suggested.
“In the 90s, if you didn’t have characters speaking dialogue as soon as possible, ‘they wouldn’t have any characterization!’ I thought.
“But I see, in a world where it is normal for game characters to speak after a generational change, I learned the opposite, that not speaking is also a matter of individuality.
“And even today, it is rare to find a fighting game character who does not say a word at all while fighting, at the start of a round, or throughout the entire win-pose (even Kuma and Panda communicate). Is there any other fighting game character that doesn’t talk as much as Dragunov?”
This is not “iisou” but “iizo” (like “iizoou!” a little stronger than “iizo!”). The nuance is NOT JUST “That’s good,” but includes a “Good! Go ahead, I dare you!”.
Originally, this specification was developed by me during the development of TEKKEN3, when Nina made a specific… https://t.co/lQqTCbuOfh
— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) June 5, 2024
So there you have it! Harada just dropped Tekken deep lore, delighting veteran fans of the series. But this isn’t the only hot topic Harada has discussed on social media recently. This week, months after he was made painfully aware of fans’ grassroots movement to get an official Waffle House stage in the long-running fighting game series, and having received tons of information about the American Southern diner chain via memes, viral videos, and earnest replies from fans, Harada said he was still baffled at the “culture” of Waffle House.
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.
