Including the Mii Fighters and Pokémon Trainer.
Since the final update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate earlier this year, Nintendo has been restocking the game’s amiibo.
With this in mind, the my Nintendo Store in the US has apparently had another big restock, and this time you can even get your hands on the Mii Fighters and Pokémon Trainer. Up until now, these were supposedly some of the “rarest” Smash Bros. amiibo.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Wave 1 is now available.
Nintendo is going all out with the launch of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on the Switch, and as part of this, it has added a new batch of icons to its ‘Missions and Rewards’ scheme for the online service.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Blizzard Entertainment is removing Overwatch 2’s Hero Mastery Gauntlet PvE mode as it felt it “hasn’t resonated” with players.
The developer announced the news on its forums, explaining the reasoning behind its decision in a statement. Starting with Season 11, the Hero Mastery Gauntlet, a round-based tower defense mode that sees players team up against robots, will no longer be accessible.
Hero Mastery Solo Courses will remain available as a single-player offering, with more courses promised to arrive in future seasons. You can see the full statement below:
Hero Mastery Gauntlet launched in March 2024, meaning it will have only been available for around three months before it’s dropped. Although the mode has been criticized by many, some are disappointed not only because it’s leaving so soon, but because it represents another scrapped PvE mode in the history of Overwatch 2.
In May 2023, Blizzard announced it would no longer be adding the long-promised PvE Hero mode to Overwatch 2. It had been touted as one of the biggest changes for the franchise, which was largely known for its PvP content, since Overwatch 2 was originally announced. Director Aaron Keller eventually apologized for the change of course, calling the mode an “exciting but gargantuan vision.”
Overwatch 2 launched in 2022 as a sequel to Blizzard’s original hero shooter. While we enjoyed it upon its release, giving it an 8/10 in our review, the hero shooter follow-up has changed in a few major ways in the last few years.
Following the decision to shutter the Overwatch League late last year, Blizzard announced that it would make new heroes available to all players to enjoy instead of locking them behind a premium battle pass purchase. The company made good on that promise with Season 10, delivering all past playable characters and its newest Damage hero, Venture, available to all.
The current season runs for another 28 days, meaning you have just less than one month to squeeze out that last bit of fun from Hero Mastery Gauntlet before the co-op mode is gone for good. For more on Blizzard’s future, you can read up on the cancelation of BlizzCon 2024 and check out the new Overwatch 2 Porsche crossover event.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.
Akuma has been in Street Fighter 6 for under a day, but fans have already discovered two secret super moves he can use. The catch? You can only use them after his secret taunt – the one that involves Akuma sitting on the ground, chomping on a rice ball for 30 seconds.
Most characters only have three super moves, but Akuma has a whopping seven, although that includes the two hidden ones that aren’t included on the move list. Despite that secrecy, various fans on social media were quick to discover both the hidden taunt and the supers that come with them, which IGN has verified independently.
As mentioned, it all starts with the secret taunt. To pull that off, perform Akuma’s back taunt by holding back and pressing all six buttons, then mash down on all those buttons. That’ll lead to a taunt that sees Akuma eating a rice ball, and once he’s finished his snack, you can perform the two hidden supers, which you can see below (along with some helpful instructions from my colleague Mitchell Saltzman):
The first is done by doing two quarter circles back and pressing kick. This one is actually a call back to Kage’s V-Trigger 1 in Street Fighter 5, Rikudo Osatsu. The other one is performed by pressing down, down, and all three punch buttons, and it’s essentially his super move from Street Fighter 5.
That’s not all, though! While in this state, he can also unleash his classic double air fireballs by doing quarter circle back and two punches while jumping forward in the air, and it doesn’t even cost meter.
Although, as fans were quick to point out, the moves aren’t super viable when it comes to competitive play, as the taunt literally leaves the warrior sitting with his back turned to his opponent for 30 seconds. Still, it’s a fun Easter Egg – and, as popular fighting game streamer Maximilian Dood notes, it gives Akuma players a way to open Evo matches in the funniest way possible.
If two Akuma players at @Evo start the set with this taunt, the roof will blow off the convention center. https://t.co/w8BDsKG2Ds
— Maximilian Dood (@maximilian_) May 22, 2024
As mentioned, Akuma entered the Street Fighter 6 fray in an update just earlier today, which has led to a spike in interest for the fighting game. According to SteamDB, there were 70k players on Steam just earlier today, quite the jump from the 5k-25k that were playing in the days prior to the update. Akuma’s a bit of a classic boss for the Street Fighter series, having been introduced all the back in Street Fighter II, so it’s little surprise the see fans psyched for his addition.
IGN gave Street Fighter 6 a 9/10 a year ago, with Saltzman writing at the time, “Street Fighter 6 is the most feature-rich a Street Fighter has ever been at launch, but even beyond that, it’s roster of 18 characters is excellent, the new mechanics revitalize the one-on-one fighting formula, and it absolutely nails all of the little things that make for a stellar fighting game.”
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
We’re officially halfway through the week, and new deals have popped up at various retailers. If you know where to look, you can almost always find great deals and save some extra dollars on games, technology, and more. The best deals for Wednesday, May 22, include a 27″ 165Hz QHD Dell Monitor, Super Mario RPG, Super Mario Odyssey, Tekken 8, and more.
This Dell Gaming Monitor is perfect if you’re looking for a new monitor or an upgrade. At QHD, you’ll be able to play titles in 1440p, which looks significantly better than 1080p. Additionally, this monitor supports 165Hz, leaving a smooth and quality visual experience. The G2724D is also FreeSync and G-Sync compatible. At $179.99, it’s hard to find many better deals than this one.
This Nerf Needler Blaster is a perfect replica of the iconic Halo weapon. Fit with a rotating drum, you can hold up to 10 darts to unleash each in a row without compromise! Additionally, the needles on the top of the blaster light up when you shoot off the darts. If you’d rather just display the blaster on a wall, you can turn on display mode, where the lights go in and out on the top.
The remake of Super Mario RPG is $42.93 at Amazon right now, which is a great price for this classic title. If you’ve yet to either play the original or check out the remake, this is the perfect time to do so. Composer Yoko Shimimura returned to compose the remake’s original soundtrack, and each boss and environment has been expertly recrafted for the Nintendo Switch. It’s the perfect Mario title to check out if you’re looking for a fun title while awaiting Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door tomorrow!
Elden Ring is one the greatest RPGs of the past decade, with many praising it as FromSoftware’s greatest title. Right now is the perfect time to pick this one up, as Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, a major expansion, is due out next month on June 21. This PS4 copy has a free upgrade to PS5, so rest assured you can play either version on your console.
Tekken 8 is still on sale for $49.99. With Summer approaching, the next DLC fighter is likely not too far away. This title runs on Unreal Engine 5, delivering a massive improvement in visual clarity over Tekken 7. 33 characters are playable as of now, which is the largest roster of any current fighting game. In our 9/10 review, we stated Tekken 8 is “an amazing new entry in the long-running series.”
Super Mario Odyssey is still one of the best games available on Nintendo Switch. From the stunning Kingdoms to the numerous new gameplay elements, this is a title any Switch owner should have in their collection. Odyssey is best known for its Capture mechanic, which allows Mario to use Cappy and take over different enemies and objects in the environment. This title doesn’t go on sale too often, so pick up a physical copy at a discount this week!
Currently, Amazon has the WD_Black 2TB SN850X SSD available for just $139.99. Normally priced at $189.99, this 2TB SSD features speeds up to 7,300MB/s to ensure your games load as fast as possible. This model will work with PlayStation 5, but you will need to purchase an SSD heatsink separately.
If you’ve been holding off on the first Metal Gear Solid collection, now is the time to pick it up. Target has the Nintendo Switch version of Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 for just $19.99 with Target Circle. You can score this deal for a limited time, so be sure to pick it up before it’s gone.
Both the Sony WH-1000MX4 and WH-1000MX5 headphones are available on sale. These are two of the best over-ear headphones on the market, especially in the noise-canceling area. Eight microphones are utilized to ensure you have the best listening experience possible. You can instantly silence all of your surroundings with the press of a button, or choose to listen to close sounds like voices, horns honking, etc. Overall, you can’t go wrong with either of these headphones.
Unicorn Overlord is available at Amazon for only $39.99. This title was developed by Vanillaware, most recently known for 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. Over 60 unique characters are available to choose from within Unicorn Overlord, where you command armies in tactical battle. We gave the game a 9/10 in our review, stating, “Unicorn Overlord is a visual delight that’s brimming with creativity, and an absolute must-play for any fan of strategy RPGs.”
Target has the JBL Flip 6 on sale this week for only $99. If you’re looking for a fantastic speaker to use throughout the Summer, this is the one for you. The JBL Flip 6 is completely waterproof, which means it is perfect for the beach or pool. With exceptional sound quality and a heavy focus on bass, the Flip 6 will deliver a quality listening experience no matter where you are.
Persona 5 is one of the most important RPGs of the last ten years for a variety of reasons. It brought millions of new fans into the scene with its exciting combat, gripping story, and interesting characters. Persona 5 Royal is the ultimate version of P5, and it’s now playable portably with Nintendo Switch! This deal was also available at Target but has since sold out. With Persona 6 still a ways out, now is the time to experience this installment. Be sure to pick this one up before it is sold out.
Like what you see?
Fans of the Netflix series The Witcher were understandably up in arms when leading star Henry Cavill announced his departure only to be replaced by Liam Hemsworth.
Alas, it’s happening, but judging from the newly-released ‘first look’ teaser for the upcoming season, our confidence in Hemsworth has been given a slight boost. Granted, we don’t see his version of Geralt of Rivia do anything other than turn to the camera in a suitably brooding and manacing manner, but it’s a start.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The great appeal of pocket-sized board games is the ability to take them anywhere. A family get-together, office lunch room, or group camping trip–just toss a game in your pocket or bag and everyone is sure to be entertained. The portability of these smaller games allows you to carry them around just in case the opportunity for play arises.
One of the really wonderful things about this hobby is the sheer variety of styles on offer. This quality extends to these tiny boxes. This list is comprised of 10 titles that offer a wide range of mechanisms and playstyles, all while containing those experiences into a modest package. Some may require cargo pants, but all of these offerings are modest in profile and easy to transport.
TL;DR: The Best Pocket-Sized Board Games
This stylish wonder arrives courtesy of prolific designer Reiner Knizia. The pitch is enticing: in the aftermath of an art heist, players bicker and fight over splitting the loot. This conflict is resolved through card play. You alternate taking turns by playing a single card, with these cards mapping to loot tokens in the center of the table. By playing a card you snatch the corresponding token and place it in front of you. The twist is that you can steal a token from another player instead of taking it from the middle. The second twist is that some of the lower scoring tokens offer alibis. At the end of the game, the player with the fewest amount of alibis is eliminated from play, regardless of their final score. The result is an entertaining back and forth where you gank loot from others yet must balance high scoring options with those that offer protection.
Everyone is familiar with the classic board games Go Fish and Memory. Trio splices the two, asking players to flip over three cards of the same number. These cards are facedown on the table, but some are also spread among the hands of the players. When flipping a card from a player’s hand, however, you can only ask them to reveal their highest or lowest card. The goal is to claim three of these trios or just the set of sevens. It’s a simple thing, but it’s one that elicits little moments of drama where a player has flipped two of the same number and is trying to remember where the third card is. It features hand management and surprisingly clever play.
When Love Letter hit the market in 2012 it created quite the stir. This little 16-card game has players holding and playing only a single card on their turn. It’s maddeningly simple, but it works, capturing a degree of bluffing and risk management. Love Letter is fun and flexible, but it’s particularly noteworthy as it kicked off the microgame movement that spawned dozens and dozens of offspring. Most of those titles have long since faded, while Love Letter remains a clever and engaging experience. There are now a bevy of different versions of this game, including a Star Wars, Batman, and wedding-themed set. They all play similarly, so you can’t go wrong whichever you choose.
Radlands is one of the best head-to-head card games in recent years. Each player draws from a shared deck of mutants, raiders, and weirdos, playing these fighters down into one of three lanes on their side of the table. Each lane corresponds to a base that must be protected. The goal is to vanquish your opponent’s defenders and destroy their bases. The magic is in the multi-use aspect of each card. Beyond using them for the characters depicted, they can also be discarded for a card-specific resource. Performing well requires strong tactical intuition and judicious play you’d use in all the best strategy board games. All of the interlocking abilities and effects collide to produce a swift-playing and tense battler.
This small box is unique in that it’s for solo board game play only. This card game is based on the story of Robinson Crusoe. You take on the role of his companion Friday, attempting to help Robinson survive and prepare him for the impending pirate attack. This is a deckbuilding game where you add cards to your deck during play. Each turn you confront a jungle hazard and then play fight cards from your hand in order to overcome the challenge. If you do, the hazard is then added to your deck and may be used in a later fight. You must pick your battles wisely, as you can’t win them all and must be careful in how you shape your deck for the big finale. This is a difficult game that offers a tremendous amount of play and strategic depth.
For Sale crams the buying and selling of real estate into a brief yet satisfying 30 minutes. In the first phase of the game, players bid on a set of buildings by using a limited pool of personal currency. You must bid higher than all previous bids on each of your turns, or bow out of the round and claim the lowest value property available. Determining how long to hang in the auction depends on the value of the property on offer, as well as how stubborn your opponents are. The second portion of the game reverses the process with money cards worth various amounts flipped faceup in the middle of the table. Players secretly select a property they’ve purchased from their hand in an attempt to secure these monetary bids. You all reveal simultaneously and the money is split. It’s an exceedingly easy game to learn, but it’s one full of subtle play that relies on intuition. It’s paramount to squeeze every ounce of value out of your resources, and the player who manages their assets most judiciously will secure victory.
This is the type of game that is both maddening and hilarious. Each player is dealt a card that sits out in front of them faceup. Cards depict simple objects with black and white line art. These are common things such as a basketball, lava lamp, or a hat. Once play begins, players take turns flipping their card facedown and passing it to an adjacent player. Soon, all cards are hidden and players are trying to track which is which. When you pass a card to a neighbor, you claim what the object is. The receiver of the card may challenge your claim, creating a confrontation of memory. It’s simple but sparks moments of laughter as it’s surprisingly easy to lose track of what card sits in front of you. Eventually someone messes up and the game begins again. This is a wonderful design that consistently delivers joy.
Regicide is a fully cooperative board game where players work together to overthrow the royal line and claim victory. Each of the 12 enemies must be dealt with one at a time. These bosses map to the face cards in a standard set of playing cards. They are shuffled together and one is revealed. Players then take turns placing a single card on the table to attack the enemy and deal damage. The value on the played card is the strength of the attack with the suit triggering a special power. There’s a fairly thoughtful decision point here in weighing the needed attack versus the desired effect that would most help the other players. It’s a fairly intuitive card game where hand management and timing is everything. The strongest trait is that it’s full of tension as the group is constantly on the brink of defeat. Often, it will appear hopeless until another player tosses out the exact card the group needs, allowing everyone to refill their hands and persist. Regicide is an intriguing experience with a distinct feel. It’s a wonderful little pocket game.
The Mind is a special game. Players are dealt a hand from a deck of cards numbered 1 to 100, with a portion of the cards left out and unknown. Play then flows in real-time. The player with the lowest card in hand must play it on the table. Then the next lowest card must be played atop the previous, and so on. The enormous twist is that players cannot communicate. You can’t talk or nod or gesture. You can just look into each other’s eyes and try to divine the proper time to play your card. It sounds ridiculous, but I assure you, there is a game here. It’s about pausing and feeling out the situation, eventually playing the proper card when it feels like enough time has passed. If approached with the right attitude it can brush up against a metaphysical element, achieving a playstate with similar vibes to a Ouija board. This may not have universal appeal, but it’s a game that presents a singular vision that is capable of achieving transcendent entertainment.
This small box is basically the classic 20 Questions with the inclusion of a traitor. One player receives a word they must get the group to guess, and everyone else is allowed to only throw out “yes or no” questions. At least one person in the group is a werewolf trying to trip up the villagers. They know the word before play begins and can attempt to mislead or stall the group. If everyone fails to figure out the correct word, however, they get to vote as a group to hang a player they suspect to be the werewolf. If they select the villain, the villagers win regardless of failing to land on the proper word. This strongly mimics the structure of social deduction games such as One Night Ultimate Werewolf and The Resistance: Avalon, but it allows for a more simple and streamlined process with a broadly enjoyable classic game at its core. It’s frankly surprising how effective this concoction is, but it manages to offer inspired play with all kinds of players and tastes. This is one of the most reliably fun pocket-sized games ever designed.
Video games with deep levels of strategy are becoming increasingly unappealing, according to a new study.
The report from Quantic Foundry collected nine years of data from the researcher’s own Gamer Motivation Profile tool, which tracks how appealing different aspects of games are to different people. Categories include Destruction, Excitement, Competition, Community, Challenge, Strategy, Completion, Power, Fantasy, Story, Discovery, and Design.
Quantic Foundry looked back on what’s motivated gamers across the years and found all of these have remained relatively consistent except one: Strategy. “Gamers who score high on this component enjoy games that require careful decision-making and planning,” its summary states. “They like to think through their options and likely outcomes.
“These may be decisions related to balancing resources and competing goals, managing foreign diplomacy, or finding optimal long term strategies. They tend to enjoy both the tactical combat in games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, as well as seeing their carefully devised plans come to fruition in games like Civilization, Cities: Skylines, or Europa Universalis.”
But across its 1.7 million surveys, Quantic Foundry found that two thirds of strategy fans worldwide (except China, where gamers “have a very different gaming motivation profile”) have lost interest in this element of video games. “67% of gamers today care less about strategic thinking and planning when playing games than the average gamer back in June 2015,” the report reads.
“When we looked for long-term trends across the 12 motivations, we found that many motivations were stable or experienced minor deviations over the past nine years,” Quantic Foundry said. “Strategy was the clear exception; it had substantially declined over the past nine years and the magnitude of this change was more than twice the size of the next largest change.”
The trend was analysed but Quantic Foundry couldn’t find any distinct separations between, for example, men and women or gamers based in or out of the U.S. It was likened to other trends related to a decrease in attention span, like shorter YouTube videos now generating more views and shorter lengths of time between cuts in films, but Quantic Foundry admitted “it’s difficult to pin down cause and effect” and said there’s a lack of evidence to solely blame social media, as many do.
The likes of Facebook, X/Twitter, TikTok, and other social media apps could have “accelerated the underlying trend”, however. “Another potential hypothesis is that the increasing negativity, polarization, intrusiveness, and emotional manipulation in social media has created a persistent cognitive overload on the finite cognitive resources we have,” Quantic Foundry said. “Put simply, we may be too worn out by social media to think deeply about things.”
Regardless of the cause, Quantic Foundry said “it’s clear that gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking over the past nine years,” which “implies that gamers are now more easily cognitively overloaded when they play games and are more likely to avoid strategic complexity.”
This trend may even affect how developers create and market games, though there are still plenty of strategy titles on the way. Capes, a gritty turn-based strategy role-playing game about villains ruling the streets and a new batch of superheroes having to rise up, launches just one week after this report was released on May 29, 2024.
Firaxis Games, the developer behind XCOM: Chimera Squad and Marvel’s Midnight Suns, is also developing a new Civilization game but there’s no word on a release date yet. A team of former Blizzard developers are working on Stormgate too, a real-time strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic future due out in the third quarter of 2024.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Everything And Then The Licensed Kitchen Sink fighting game MultiVersus returns next week after an almost year-long self-imposed post-beta exile. With the decision to pull the game from sale and turn off its servers for months on end after allowing people to sink their real-life money into unlocking costumes and such (with no refunds), its developers are now looking to seemingly give something back in return.
A new (Midnight) Sun rises.
We first caught wind of Capes in the hazy days of early 2023. The turn-based superhero tactics set-up sounded like a novel idea, albeit one that we were worried might tread on the toes of one Marvel’s Midnight Suns which, remember, we were still expecting to see on Switch.
That Switch port was eventually cancelled, and we Nintendo fans were left with an ‘XCOM-meets-X-Men’ gap in our game libraries. Almost one year on, Capes is set to fly into that gap.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
