It’s nearly here: Black Friday sales are kicking off this week. And if you’re a fan of board games, you’ll probably want to have an idea of what to expect deal-wise on popular tabletop titles. You’ve come to the right place. I’m the board game editor at IGN, and I’ve been following all the Black Friday board game deals for years. Let’s dive in.
Buy 1, Get 1 Half Off on Board Games Right Now
You don’t actually have to wait for Black Friday to save on board games. Right now, both Amazon and Target have sales that get you half off a board game when you buy one at regular price. This applies to a decent number of popular games for board games, including Catan, Splendor, and Horrified. But tons of classics and family board games are also eligible, like Scrabble and Mouse Trap.
What Games Will Get Discounts?
When it comes to Black Friday board game deals, such a wide swath of games go on sale each year that basically nothing is off the table (please excuse the pun). If this year is like years past, you’ll be able to save on just about every board game on the market.
The discounts we saw last year ranged from 20% off games all the way up to 65% off. You could save on popular standards like Azul and Pandemic. You could save on family-friendly games like Exploding Kittens and UNO. You could save on horror-themed board games like Alien: Fate of the Nostromo and Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Whatever games you’re interested in, you can likely find something on sale that you’ll want to pick up.
Additionally, for Cyber Monday last year, Amazon ran a “Buy 2, Get 1 Free” sale. Since many of the games were already discounted, that was like a deal on top of a deal. So keep an eye out during Black Friday 2025 for opportunities to stack discounts.
Which Retailers Will Have Board Game Sales?
As for the retailers where the deals can be found, the main ones to look at are Amazon, Walmart, and Target. If you want to branch out a bit, Barnes and Noble is usually a good place to look for discounts as well. With Amazon’s Black Friday sale kicking off on November 20 this year, that will likely be the first place you should start looking for deals.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
Yoko Taro, the creator of the Nier and Drakenguard games, has been awfully quiet lately. Though he’s worked on some smaller projects (writing scenarios for Voice of Cards, and a few mobile games), the lack of a proper Nier follow-up or other new major game from him has been getting under fans’ skin. But according to Taro, he has been working on projects. They just keep getting canceled.
This comes from his remarks at Korean gaming convention G-Con 2025, which were reported on by 4gamer and translated by Automaton. The panel, which featured Taro and Bayonetta and Okami director Hideki Kamiya, saw the pair asked for updates on recent projects. Kamiya mentioned the upcoming sequel to Okami, while Taro said he’d been very busy with new projects, they just keep getting canceled partway through.
“I often get told stuff like ‘Why aren’t you making a new sequel to NieR’ or ‘Yoko Taro isn’t doing anything,’ but that’s because recently, a lot of projects I was involved in got discontinued midway through development,” he said.
“I’ve actually been working on some stuff, it’s just that it never ended up seeing the light of day. I got paid for it, so I personally have no issues with that, but people seem to think that I haven’t been doing anything just because none of the work I’ve done is being released.”
However, Taro isn’t discouraged by this, apparently. He continued, saying he’d rather fail repeatedly and eventually create something good, rather than put out multiple mediocre works. “I believe that if I’m going to release something weird, I’d be better off not releasing anything at all.”
So, potentially not *great* news for Nier fans who were hoping another Nier game was right around the corner. Especially since Nier: Reincarnation, which was effectively a sequel to Nier: Automata, is still completely unplayable by virtue of being a mobile gacha game that’s since been taken offline with seemingly no plans to rerelease.
So good luck to Taro, hopefully we see a new project from him that makes it to release sooner rather than later.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Ahead of the Black Friday sale event next week, there have been some excellent video game deals already popping up across various retailers.
If you’re using this opportunity to stock up your library with some new picks to play over the holidays, we’ve come across plenty of discounts worth your time and money.
If these games have been on your shopping list, now is a great time to grab them.
Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake usually retails with a price tag of $59.99, but this discount has dropped it down 17% so you can save $10 on it. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, on the other hand, is down a whopping 42% from its $59.99 price, which is a very nice deal for those who have been wanting to pick it up.
Both of these received very high praise from us with glowing 9/10 scores in their respective reviews. IGN’s Logan Plant said Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake “is a shining example of how to remake a classic RPG and a brilliant reminder of why the original is an essential work,” while writer George Yang said of the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake that it recaptures “the retro magic of the originals while giving them a modern facelift.”
If you’re wondering what video game deals are still to come as we get closer to Black Friday, check out our breakdowns of what deals we expect to see this year from PS5 and Xbox to see some of our predictions for the sale event. And for Switch users, Nintendo has already announced its Black Friday sale so you can see what deals the company has planned this year.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
The CEO of Genvid — the company behind choose-your-own-adventure interactive series like Silent Hill Ascension — has claimed “consumers generally do not care” about generative AI in games, stating: “Gen Z loves AI slop.”
Jacob Navok, a former Square Enix director, evidenced his claim by reminding us that the biggest game of the year, Steal a Brainrot, “had 30m concurrents or approximately 80x the Arc Raiders concurrents, and is named after/based on AI slop characters.”
“For all the anti-AI sentiment we’re seeing in various articles, it appears consumers generally do not care,” he wrote on X/Twitter (thanks, GamesRadar+). “All the brainrots are just 3D models of AI slop. Gen Z loves AI slop, does not care. The upcoming generation of gamers are Bane in Dark Knight Rises saying ‘You merely adopted the slop, I was born in it.’
The Alters developer, 11 Bit Studios, and Jurassic World Evolution 3 developer, Frontier Developments, meanwhile, similarly faced fan backlash recently when they were caught using undisclosed AI images, which doesn’t quite track with Navok’s assumption that “consumers do not care.”
Suggesting that a “tipping point has been reached,” Navok also stressed that because “Activision isn’t shying away from AI, neither is Arc Raiders,” the tech was here to stay.
“I should add that in-game art and voices are merely the tip of the spear. Many studios I know are using AI generation in the concept phase, and many more are using Claude for code,” he added. “It will be hard to find a non-indie title that isn’t using Claude for code, and ignoring Claude’s AI use because it’s code while focusing purely on art shows that a lot of AI sentiment is being driven by emotion rather than logic.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Escape from Tarkov game director Nikita Buyanov has apologized to players for the “rough” release of the extraction shooter’s 1.0 version and Steam debut, saying the team is “willing to continue fighting” to “finally crack the performance problems.”
On Steam, Escape from Tarkov currently has a ‘mixed’ user review rating, with most of the complaints around server issues that are causing long queues, performance problems, and bugs.
Writing on Twitter/X, Battlestate’s Buyanov thanked players “for this overwhelming interest for the game,” adding: “servers get full really fast so we[‘re] adding more and more servers worldwide to cut matching times more. We are also fixing all of the incoming bugs, and as I said, we will continue to improve and fix the game for the next months.
“The release was rough for sure, sorry for that. But we are willing to continue fighting for everything good against bad. We will continue to provide to you, actual fans of the game, things that you will enjoy. We need to finally crack this performance problems, outdated stuff and legacy bugs which [are] left. Yes, a lot of things were fixed in release version, but it’s not enough.”
In a separate statement posted to Steam, Battlestate thanked players for “supporting the project throughout all stages of development and testing, and for deciding to share this important event,” and said, “despite careful preparation, unforeseen situations may arise during the process. Your bug reports help us quickly find and fix issues, making your gaming experience more comfortable and stable.”
Battlestate also promised in-game compensation for all players in the near future: a Bear Classic and USEC Night Patrol set. If these sets have already been purchased, an in-game reward will be credited, the developer continued.
A technical update released on Monday, November 17, issued a handful of issues. Patch notes are below:
Fixed an issue with a broken character model appearing in the Hideout in certain cases;
Fixed the game client freeze when switching to Trader interaction screen from the Hideout;
Fixed the incorrect lighting for Jaeger when SSR is enabled in graphics settings;
Fixed the cause of main menu elements appearing during matching in certain cases;
Disabled several PostFX settings;
Fixed the cause of bots teleporting while using stationary weapons in certain cases;
Fixed the cause of bots flying in the air in certain cases.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Rebecca Heineman, known best for co-founding original Fallout developer Interplay alongside Brain Fargo, Jay Patel, and Troy Worrell in the early 1980s, has died aged 62.
The news was shared by her friend Heidi McDonald, who wrote on BlueSky that “my trailblazing game industry bad-ass friend Rebecca Heineman has passed away. F**k cancer. Friends, let’s not forget her.”
On a GoFundMe page set up by Heineman shortly after her diagnosis, she described herself as “the very first video game champion, creator of Bard’s Tale 3, Dragon Wars, and one of the founders of Interplay Productions and MacPlay. Creator of Sailor Ranko the webcomic and software archivist.” The fund remains open to support Heineman’s family.
In her final message, penned yesterday, November 17, she wrote: “It’s time. According to my doctors. All further treatments are pointless. So, please donate so my kids can create a funeral worthy of my keyboard, Pixelbreaker! So I can make a worthy entrance for reuniting with my one true love, Jennell Jaquays. My daughter Cynthia Elizabeth heineman, will be making the arrangements.”
Heineman rose to fame when she won a national Space Invaders tournament in 1980 aged 14, then carved out an impressive gamedev career, having taught herself to code by reverse engineering. Her development and publishing credits include Wasteland, Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, and The Bard’s Tale 3: Thief of Fate. She most recently served as CEO of Olde Sküül.
Bard’s Tale 3 stands out as one of her defining moments at Interplay and of her entire career, Heineman told Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play in 2024. “Being able to head the project and be the decision maker was what started me on the path to being a studio head,” she said. Heineman stayed at Interplay until 1995, watching it grow to upwards of 500 employees. She departed for a new entrepreneurial adventure, desiring a return to small but passionate teams.
She was honored as the 2025 Gayming Icon Award for “her advocacy for LGBTQ+ inclusion, accessibility, and diversity in tech has inspired countless developers and players,” (thanks, PC Gamer).
Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo called her “one of the most brilliant programmers around,” and said news of her death was “a real gut punch.” “Rebecca Heineman sadly passed away. Known her since the 80s when I’d drive her to work, one of the most brilliant programmers around. A real gut punch earlier today when she messaged me: ‘We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!'”
Rebecca Heineman sadly passed away. Known her since the 80s when I’d drive her to work, one of the most brilliant programmers around. A real gut punch earlier today when she messaged me: “We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!” 🙁 pic.twitter.com/lu3i0fyt5C
Other game developers have also shared their memories, including Rami Ismail and Josh Sawyer, with many others sharing stories of Rebecca’s mentorship, kindness and support.
A game industry legend died a few mins ago, Rebecca Heineman (@burgerbecky), taken away by aggressive lung cancer. She oversaw the porting of Wizordum to the Mac OS most recently for Apogee. My local friends would often have dinner with her and I loved her industry stories and…
— Scott Miller – Apogee/3D Realms Founder ☢️ (@ScottApogee) November 17, 2025
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Desmond’s death in Assassin’s Creed 3 was ambiguous enough that voice actor Nolan North didn’t realize he’d just recorded the character’s last gasp — and now, North has said that the series’ original modern day protagonist is “technically” still alive.
North played Desmond in five games until the character’s big sacrifice at the end of 2012’s Assassin’s Creed 3. But despite stepping up to save the world — and collapsing in the process — Desmond’s death scene apparently only clicked with North after he checked Twitter following the game’s launch.
“That technically was Desmond’s death scene, and I didn’t know it,” North told Fall Damage. “I found out on Twitter. ‘Are you upset Desmond’s dead?’ And I’m thinking, what? Because there’s no ‘Argh!’ There’s nothing that you’d expect from a main character’s death, although the good people at Ubisoft have told me that he’s not technically dead.”
Here, North is likely referring to the ending of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, where the actor returned to the franchise as a mysterious character named The Reader. Valhalla makes it pretty clear that The Reader is Desmond — or his consciousness which now lives on inside the Animus, at least. And, seemingly, Ubisoft has confirmed this to North.
Desmond’s death (or his physical body’s demise, at any rate) came as a surprise to some fans who’d followed the character since the franchise’s origins. But Ubisoft developers have said that as the Assassin’s Creed series grew in scope, each game began to struggle to onboard new players. Following the end of Desmond’s arc, the series experimented with other ideas for its modern day sections, and currently pushes players directly into the historical action instead.
“I think the original idea was eight or nine games with Desmond,” North continued, referencing Ubisoft’s ever-changing original plans for the Assassin’s Creed series, “but, as it so often goes in the entertainment industry, different developers, different creative directors come in, and they have their own way of continuing the story — and it’s done very, very well.
“I was very sad to step away from the role of Desmond,” he concluded, “because Assassin’s Creed is one of my favorite stories I’ve ever been part of.”
There are a lot of different jigsaw puzzle brands out there, but one of my overall favorites is The Magic Puzzle Company. What really makes them stand out is how unique their approach to puzzling is. Each piece is odd and interesting, and the puzzles themselves feature a secret ending you can only uncover once you’ve fully completed it. True to its name, these puzzles feel like a mix of magic and puzzling as you’re making your way through them. Although they usually cost $25 each, Amazon is currently running a buy 1, get 1 50% off sale that includes quite a few of them. If you’ve been looking for a good gift to buy the puzzle fanatic in your life, I’d definitely recommend checking these out while the sale lasts.
Magic Puzzle Company Sale at Amazon (Buy 1, Get 1 50% Off)
Each of the Magic Puzzle Company puzzles is 1,000 pieces and features artwork from different artists around the world. There are hidden Easter eggs in every puzzle and the secret endings are all unique and interesting. There have been 13 Magic Puzzle Company puzzles released across five different series so far, but only eight of them are part of Amazon’s early Black Friday promotion. Series One and Series Two are underrepresented here, but many of the newer releases are eligible for the discount.
Most notably, the only Series Five puzzle that’s been released so far is included in this sale. The Drippy Trip came out back in early August and features some interesting ties to the animated series Adventure Time. I haven’t had the chance to put this one together myself, but as a fan of that show I can’t help but admire the resemblance to Adventure Time artwork I’ve grown to love.
Should you wait for Amazon’s Black Friday sale?
In case you aren’t keeping up with Black Friday sale dates as closely as I am, it’s worth noting that the Amazon Black Friday sale actually starts on Thursday this week. While I do recommend taking advantage of this discount right now, there’s no guarantee that there won’t be a better deal once that sale actually kicks off. I’d expect at least some of the Magic Puzzle Company puzzles to get discounted during Black Friday, but we won’t know which ones until Thursday (or next week even).
With that in mind, this sale is definitely worth checking out if you’re looking to buy more than one puzzle at once. You may be able to find a lower price on some of these next week, but the extra 50% off now isn’t likely to last forever. Amazon launched a similar sale on books last week that has already ended, so it’s probable this week’s promotion will expire before we even get to Black Friday as well. You may want to check out some of the board games included in these early Black Friday deals while you’re at it.
Spoiler note: This review avoids any of the specific twists and turns of the story, but it does mention some unlockables and characters in case you want to go in totally fresh.
I spent the last week embodying Wade Wilson in Marvel’s Deadpool VR, slicing and shooting my way through Mojo’s twisted interdimensional reality show, and I can confidently say the fast-paced parkour combat on offer here is nothing short of a blast. This is the first Deadpool VR game, built exclusively for Meta Quest 3 and 3S, and it’s way more comprehensive than I expected from what could have easily been a shallow licensed tie-in. It didn’t get old to see Deadpool’s head roll off his shoulders (my shoulders) mid-battle or watch my severed arms flop around on the ground to the backdrop of a comedic one-liner delivered by Lady Deathstrike. This is a relentlessly witty, often fourth-wall-breaking, and highly replayable single-player campaign that stands out as the best superhero VR game on Meta’s marketplace since 2024’s Batman: Arkham Shadow.
Whether you’re a Deadpool fan looking to step into the Merc with a Mouth’s shoes or just here for a good old-fashioned VR shooter with tons of secrets and a good sense of humor, Deadpool VR is surprisingly complete. The campaign took me roughly 10 hours to finish, but there are secret levels to find and alternate Deadpool variants like Lady Deadpool and the Deadpool Kid to unlock, each with unique dialogue and Easter eggs that could easily push playtime much further.
Portaled out of existence by Mojo with the promise of making money – like, a lot of money – Deadpool sets out to capture villains from the Marvel Universe for the tyrant’s interdimensional streaming service. This story’s premise is delightfully silly and simple, played entirely off the cuff, and each villain’s domain is ripe for themed cherry-picking. The ninja school level, for instance, is packed with weeb gamer humor and anime references, while Omega Red’s stronghold is full of “in Soviet Russia, game beats you” type jokes. Each area feels as much like an arena for combat with uniquely themed enemies as it does a playground for Deadpool to poke fun at the player, the game industry, virtual reality, and whatever tropes the respective zone represents. None of these areas overstay their welcome, as you’ll typically clear a zone in about an hour, and the campaign’s roughly 10-hour runtime strikes a good balance between feeling substantial and staying fresh.
The reality show framing isn’t just window dressing, either. Each battle ends with a ranked score and Mojo bucks reward based on your performance, while your “viewer count” (basically experience points) ticks upward as comments roll in on the right side of the display that match how well you did. These segments are often hilarious because of how wild the comments are, genuinely making me feel like I was livestreaming to a chaotic Gen Z audience watching Deadpool massacre his way through the Marvel Universe.
The combat itself is immediately arcadey rather than going for deep VR immersion territory like Half-Life: Alyx – which, at one point, Deadpool VR gleefully mocks itself for not doing, in a very Deadpool-like manner – but for what it sets out to do, it feels way more thought through than most VR action games. The very first mission hands you dual pistols and katanas, and shows you a nice big group of enemies to experiment on. That’s what Deadpool VR is all about: kinetic movement through dynamic environments, creative kills, and irreverent goofs. This implementation really does capture what makes the character work. You can wall run, double jump, grapple across arenas, strafe around opponents, or divekick into clusters of enemies, and it all feels great without ever getting too easy or unbalanced.
The arcadey combat feels more thought through than most VR action games.
Plus, Deadpool can lose arms mid-combat, or even his head or legs during key story moments, creating surprisingly interesting segments where you’re fighting with one arm while waiting for the other to regenerate, or remotely controlling your body from your severed head’s perspective. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it in VR, and it creates a layer of dynamism that Deadpool VR regularly riffs on in low-brow fashion, including a memorable segment where – after losing the lower half of my body – I had to race a recurring antagonist up an obstacle course with nothing but a grappling gun.
Deadpool VR’s combat system has a satisfying rhythm where you have to time things right if you want to score the slickest kills. It’s enabled by wall-running, powersliding, and dive-kicking, which all feel really good in VR because the arenas are built with plenty of open space to get creative with your maneuvers. You can use your katana to disable an enemy up close, dive-kick into them to push them away, pull out your pistols to finish the next guy off, grab an assault rifle from a nearby locker to blast the big baddy coming down the lane, throw that rifle at him to instantly reload it and refill the ammo meter, then wall-run, dash, and powerslide around to get the next target. It’s super kinetic and satisfying, made even better by the grappling gun and plenty of grapple points scattered around most arenas.
There are always a few other tactical considerations at play too, adding layers of variety to the carnage. For example, blocking too many attacks can make your swords break, and your wrist grenades take a few seconds to refill between uses. At least your dual pistols are quick to reload and never run out of ammo, though they’re kind of weak on their own. The real fun comes from grabbing superior weapons off enemies, like assault rifles, shotguns, SMGs, grenade launchers, missile launchers, or even melee weapons like flaming swords, shock batons, and in one memorable instance, a chainsaw-bladed axe. All of them feel excellent to use and are so much fun to mix into your arsenal as you rip and tear across each arena.
Additionally, it’s awesome that you can buy new dual pistols and katanas with your Mojo bucks between levels in the hub area, including useful variations like basic shotguns or “Penetrator” pistols equipped with laser sights. Upgraded katanas include really fun ones that extend when you slash or spin back to you like a boomerang when you throw them. In total, there are about eight pistols, eight wrist-mounted grenade types, and eight katanas to mix and match between. No upgrade is too expensive or too difficult to earn, and the differences between each are significant enough to make playstyle customization feel robust.
When you fill up your Big Money Time meter, you can press the X button on the left controller to activate it, which puts an incredibly powerful weapon in your hands for a short period of time, increasing your Mojo dollar yield after a battle if you activate it. For most of the campaign, I stuck to the default option – the exploding cards wielded by Gambit – but there are other purchasable Big Money Time abilities like Thor’s Hammer and Star-Lord’s Element Guns that add variety if you want to switch things up.
There’s a decent collection of enemy types to maneuver around, too, including the typical grunts that you’ll rip through like tissue paper, shield-carriers that need to be disarmed with a little more tact, and more powerful zone-unique enemies that you’ll typically want to pick off earlier in a battle before they can make things difficult. The gore is cartoonish but consistent and appropriate with Deadpool VR’s humor and graphical style – think very detailed cartoon dismemberment and giblets rather than realistic splatter. Each zone also introduces unique weapons that fit its theme, keeping combat fresh throughout the campaign rather than letting it devolve into mindless repetition.
Weapons are different enough to make customization feel robust.
My only real problem with combat is that the boss battles feel way too choreographed. Time slows down, and you need to make specific moves in a row or else a cutscene will pull you out of VR entirely. That part is kind of jarring. Worse still, if you’re executing one of those timed combat moves against a boss and you’re not standing in the right spot, it can jar you entirely out and push you back to the Quest lobby until you reposition yourself. It’s not clear why that happens, and it feels like a bug that needs patching.
Deadpool VR at least stays fun beyond the initial playthrough thanks to its alternate Deadpool variants and secret levels. When you replay zones as variants like Deadpool Kid or Lady Deadpool, the gameplay itself doesn’t change, but the way each variant reacts is appropriately silly and adds new flavor to familiar encounters. Deadpool Kid brings a cowboy twang to all his lines and in-jokes, while Lady Deadpool constantly points out that NPCs still refer to her as “sir” because the developers didn’t re-record those lines, even calling out their laziness as part of the joke in true meta fashion. Each level also contains hidden doors aligned to specific Deadpool variants, meaning when you return as the correct character, you’ll unlock secret levels with unique challenges or puzzles that reward extra Mojo bucks and collectibles like comic books, music tracks, concept art, and weapon skins. It’s a smart replayability hook that actually incentivizes multiple playthroughs rather than just padding out runtime.
Things like the multiple variants repeatedly contrast how seriously its characters (and Marvel Universe mythology as a whole) take themselves against the lewdness and unseriousness of Deadpool himself, shredding any pretense of urgency and making things go boom for s***s and giggles. The villain roster – pulling liberally from across the Marvel Universe with lesser-known fan favorites like Ultimo and Lady Deathstrike – helps enable a decent variety of levels, and the jokes are typically more three-dimensional than just playing off tropes. For instance, there’s a hilarious sequence where Deadpool bemoans having to fight Ultimo because VR game developers couldn’t afford to include Ultron. These are all well-performed and serve Deadpool as a character rather than forcing him to awkwardly traipse around trying to make sense of why the hell he’s involving himself with all these random Marvel characters. It knows it’s wacky and stupid, and that’s just part of the joke.
My sole issue with how the story is presented is that it does make you sit through long cutscenes and dialogue sequences with no way to skip them, meaning you’ll have to experience an entire level again – exposition and all – if you just want to go back and unlock a secret level with a new character. This can drag down Deadpool VR’s pacing a bit, even when you’re going through and experiencing new(ish) dialogue with a new variant.
At least Neil Patrick Harris absolutely nails Deadpool’s humor, so much so that I almost thought he was Ryan Reynolds for a bit. He brings the perfect mix of snark, self-awareness, and chaotic energy that made playing as this version of Wade Wilson a genuine delight throughout the entire campaign. The supporting cast also has a mix of standouts and phone-ins. John Leguizamo’s Mojo is fantastic, chewing scenery with the perfect amount of grotesque sleaze, while Julia Jones’s Spiral falls flat with delivery that feels uninspired.
Deadpool VR looks much better on Quest 3 than on Quest 3S.
Visually, Deadpool VR looks much better on Quest 3 than on Quest 3S, and after the first few levels I just stopped trying to play on my 3S at all. Performance was smooth overall across both platforms, but the cel-shaded graphical style just goes so much harder on the standard Quest 3. It’s enjoyable to look at and listen to through and through regardless, even with all the chaos from combat making the Quest 3 work harder to render everything at 90 FPS – with vibrant colors, intricately detailed levels and characters, punchy weapons, and high-fidelity cartoon gore that pops. The sound design and music are also pretty good, though there were definitely points where the audio got blown out or the Quest started making a buzzing noise because it was too stressed – typically during particularly hectic sequences with vehicles or tons of enemies on screen.
Deadpool VR has a variety of comfort options that’s always nice to see. I’m a longtime VR user, so I went straight for the no-holds-barred “VR Hero” experience, but I’m glad there are three comfort modes available, the easiest of the bunch setting a baseline for beginners: snap turning with comfort blinds and no screen shake. Even though I took the most intense one, I appreciate that the most visually intense sequences, usually passenger shootouts in vehicles, are still entirely skippable if needed. There’s also a Kidpool mode that removes as much vulgarity from Deadpool VR as it can, which is cool to include I guess, but kind of defeats the point.
Magic: The Gathering saw a nice, very welcome shake-up this week with the reveal of fresh bans – and the age of Vivi Ornitier is over as a result.
That’s meant the troublesome mage has dropped in value, but there are PlayStation synergies abound for Secret Lair and more. Here’s this week’s Crashers and Climbers.
Climbing
Dockside Extortionist is getting another mention this time around. It’s getting a reprint in the Avatar Bonus Sheet, and while it’s not unbanned as yet, that could always change. The non-Universes Beyond version is climbing to about $24 right now, having been $20 or so just a week or two ago.
Next up, those clever folks at Wargamer have spotted another climber with Dystopia. A card that dates back to 1996 (good lord), and it’s on the up, having been $4 recently and now reaching close to $20.
Thanks to some synergy with the PlayStation Secret Lair Nathan Drake card, Thieving Varmint is climbing to around $10 and gives you mana to play on spells that aren’t yours – ideal for Drake’s thievery.
Case of the Uneaten Feast, from Murders at Karlov Manor, is climbing, too. For a single mana you get life per creature entering the battlefield, and then you can bring cards back from your graveyard. It was 30 cents, but it’s up to 50 cents and climbing.
Crashing
Look, it had to happen eventually. Vivi Ornitier, which has been a pain in the rear end for some, while completely homogenizing the meta for others, is crashing after the ban announcement.
Sticking to Final Fantasy, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER is now under $30 for the first time in a while and flips over to turn into the One-Winged Angel variant, while Tifa, Martial Artist, is now under a dollar having been one of the more interesting card designs in the Commander decks from the set.
Starting Town, which taps for colorless or any color at the cost of one life, and acts as a perfect early game ramp, is down to under $10.
Finally, I picked up more of the Warhammer Commander Decks, and was surprised to find that the headline Commander of the Necron Dynasties Deck, Szarekh, the Silent King, is well under a dollar – neat!
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
