A handful of fun Lord of the Rings board games are on sale at Amazon as part of its Black Friday sale. Most of these are Amazon Lightning Deals, meaning they’re only available while supplies last. You can save between 15% and 30%, depending on the game you pick, and they vary in play style from hours-long campaign style games to shorter sessions for a quick game night.
The Lord of the Rings Board Games On Sale For Black Friday
Risk: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition is a classic with an iconic skin. This version of the popular board game comes with maps of Middle-Earth locations like Gondor, Mordor, and more, making you feel like you’re actually doing battle with hordes of orcs. There’s also The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth card game and the Spreading War Expansion, two very in-depth campaign games that’ll definitely make you lose a few hours.
For a little quicker and lighter, the Duel For Middle-Earth strategy game has players choose between the Fellowship or Sauron in an epic battle that only takes about 30 minutes to complete. In our hands-on review of the game, we said “Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth deserves to be lauded for presenting such an exciting and varied game off the back of such an accessible setup.”
I’d also recommend the Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking game we reviewed earlier this year. This roughly 20-minute experience takes you through the story of the first book, using cards to either progress or avoid peril. In our hands-on review we mentioned “Its simple rules and working together gameplay make it great for families, but its twists on the trick-taking formula and storytelling beats make it deserve a much wider audience.”
Whichever game you decide to try out, it will offer plenty of replayability for dozens of hours of board gaming.
When I fired up Cricket 26 for the first time and hopped into a quick five-over game to get my eye in, I was pleasantly surprised by how substantially smoother it all seemed in contrast with the messy launch state of 2023’s Cricket 24. Cricket 26’s lighting and player models all really pop, the inputs feel far snappier, and the fielders all seem like they actually know there’s a game being played – unlike the dawdling doofuses in Cricket 24 who all seemed to stand around with their hands in their pockets. Then my match between the Mumbai Indians and the Delhi Capitals crashed at the change of innings. At which point I reloaded it, and it crashed again. And again. In fact, the longer I played Cricket 26, the more obvious its numerous technical flaws became, to the point that I’d have to say that my experience with Big Ant Studios’ latest has been a bit like playing on a cricket pitch in Perth – the grass looks greener on day one, but it’s not too long before the cracks start to show.
Still, there’s no question that when it works, Cricket 26 presents a much more enjoyable representation of the sport than Cricket 24 was ever capable of. Batting, in particular, feels far more responsive and natural – whether you’re using the arcade-style button controls or the more intuitive dual-stick setup. For the first time in a long time with this series, I feel like I’m able to consistently direct my strokes where I actually intend them to go, unlike Cricket 24 which often felt a bit predetermined in the way I’d keep knocking off-drives straight to the same cover fielder no matter where I aimed or how well I timed it.
That’s not to say that scoring runs has become too easy, however, and I’ve found myself playing down the wrong line and getting beaten on the inside and outside edges of the bat, which also feels far more true to life. Even on the default difficulty setting, batting in Cricket 26 has provided an absorbing challenge for the most part. I’m yet to feel the need to dig deep into the menus to painstakingly fiddle with the various timing and physics sliders in an effort to make it feel more realistic like I did with Cricket 24, which takes a lot of the trial and error out of the experience.
Bowling, on the other hand, hasn’t changed quite as much but it still feels engaging. I had hoped that the wobble seam delivery would have been added to Cricket 26, especially given that it’s become such a common variation these days that Pat Cummins has basically made it his stock ball, but sadly that’s not the case here – and the floaty knuckleball that a number of Indian pacers have added to their arsenals over the past decade or so hasn’t been included either. However, while the delivery types themselves remain the same, there has been some added nuance introduced in the form of the effect of wind on the ball. An arrow on the edge of the pitch map indicates the direction and strength that a gale is blowing, and that can be used to enhance the amount of swing on a delivery (or if you’re batting, how much further a lofted shot will travel should you aim it downwind). It’s a thoughtful addition that brings some extra strategy to each ball you face or deliver.
Cricket 26 presents a much more enjoyable representation of the sport than Cricket 24 was ever capable of.
There’s clearly been a lot of work put into player animations too, especially as far as unique bowling actions are concerned. It’s great to see Nathan Lyon’s signature right-handed flick to the side as he leaves the top of his mark, or Mitchell Santner’s shark fin-like front hand carving through the air above his head as he’s about to release the ball. Some of these unique bowling actions aren’t just for show, either – I’ve found facing Jofra Archer to be noticeably more awkward than other fast bowlers, not just because of his speed on the ball but also the way he seems to lumber in so casually before suddenly exploding through the crease. It’s kept me more conscious of making subtle adjustments to my shot timing as the opposing team rotates from one bowler to the next.
Elsewhere, fielding has been substantially overhauled, although certain frustrating quirks still remain. There’s now much less of a delay between a fielder gathering the ball and making a return throw, and there are some new catching animations that see them diving and sliding around in a more agile fashion than they ever did in Cricket 24. However, the slow-motion runout system almost always makes me throw to the opposite end that I intended, and wicketkeeper behaviour is erratic. One moment they’re stubbornly refusing to swipe the bails off during a genuine stumping chance, the next they’re taking a superhuman catch around their ankles down the leg side. Yet, by and large, Cricket 26’s fielders display a level of alertness that more closely resembles the real thing, and it’s nice to see them run in pairs for relay throws or dive towards the rope for a tap-back.
Un-urned
Given that it’s been branded as ‘the official game of the Ashes’, you’d think that Cricket 26’s special mode dedicated to the freshly reignited Australia-England rivalry would have been given extra attention from the developers to ensure that it really capitalised on what has been one of the most hyped test series in recent memory. However, there appears to have been about as much thought and effort put into it as England’s approach to batting on day two of the recent first Ashes test. Sure, you do get to play all five test matches in the series in all of the relevant Aussie venues, including a day-night pink ball test at the Gabba, but there really is little else here to distinguish the mode from just building a series yourself using the tour creator that returns from Cricket 24.
There are no practice matches to play for the touring side, although given English coach Brendon McCullum’s ‘it will be alright on the night’ philosophy for player preparation, perhaps that’s true to life. Instead, the build up to each of the five matches in the series goes like this: you press a button to travel to the city hosting the match, complete a fairly modest and non-tailorable training minigame that involves bowling precisely three deliveries and a handful of batting strokes, select your final 11 from your squad of 16, mindlessly spam your way through painfully generic answers in a press conference, and then play the match itself. Repeat that four more times and you’re done.
There appears to have been about as much thought and effort put into [the Ashes mode] as England’s approach to batting on day two of the recent first Ashes test.
There is a team confidence meter to maintain, and optional match objectives to complete as well, but it all feels a bit nebulous. Team confidence fluctuates depending on match results, success or failure in the training minigames, and your responses to press conference questions, but it’s all applied so inconsistently and absolutely none of it seems to have a measurable effect on anything. I failed my first training session and my team confidence took a dive, meaning I went into the opening test at Perth with my Australian team seemingly flagging at 55% confidence. It clearly didn’t make much of a difference, though, since I still ended up smashing England inside three days.
The pre-match press conferences are particularly hard to engage with, given that the questions you have to field are often factually incorrect. I kept getting asked about how I felt about securing a draw in a previous match, even though I’d won it, or I’d be asked to reflect on my performance at a certain venue even though I hadn’t played there yet. It feels less like facing a press room full of proper sports journalists and more like being punked by a crowd of teenage TikTok pranksters.
Successfully completing optional match objectives also gives team confidence a boost, but these goals seem to veer wildly from the realistic to the ridiculous. In one match I was tasked with scoring 64 combined runs with the tail, which was tricky but ultimately attainable, while in another my objective was to bat at above eight runs an over, which is an insane demand for a test match innings. You could field a team of 11 Harry Brooks and still struggle to score at that rate. You couldn’t field a team of 11 Brendan Doggetts, though, or even a single Brendan Doggett for that matter, given that he’s disappointingly absent from Australia’s Ashes squad in Cricket 26 despite making his international debut last week.
Armchair-man of the Board
So the Ashes mode is more slapdash than fierce clash, and Cricket 26’s only other new mode of note, the management career, is equally as half-baked. To be honest, I’m typically not one to dabble in the front office side of sports simulations, so perhaps I’m not best equipped to evaluate this series’ first crack at allowing players to run a cricket club. However, after investing several hours into this fairly superficial squad management sim let’s just say I’m unlikely to become a convert any time soon.
There’s just not an enormous amount to it. You don’t get to manage the budget for player salaries, or hire a coaching staff, for example. You basically just pick your team and either play the matches or simulate them, not unlike the existing player career mode minus the training minigames and net sessions in between. It also seems a shame that there’s no option to watch a generated highlights package when you simulate the result like you can in the Football Manager series. Unless you want to be fully hands-on with each match, your only exposure to the team’s performance is via static scorecards and text-based match reports that pop up in your email inbox, which feels pretty dry.
If you do opt to play the games yourself, there doesn’t appear to be any management options during a match that make it feel any different to the general gameplay featured elsewhere. You can’t, say, run tactical team instructions out to the middle with the 12th man during a drinks break, or send a substitute fielder on because your ageing opening batsman injured his back playing a golf tournament the day before the game. Strangely enough it also doesn’t seem to factor in the unavailability of players with national team duties either. I was able to steer the NSW Blues to the top of the Sheffield Shield, largely because the likes of Australian test team stars Steve Smith, Pat Cummins, and Mitchell Starc were inexplicably available to be picked for every match of the domestic summer.
Cricket 26’s management career just feels underdone and, in some aspects, partially broken. You can adjust training schedules for each of your players, like assigning them recovery sessions to reduce fatigue or team bonding sessions to boost their individual morale meters. However, I struggled to really get a feel for the impact of these options given that the training section of the management menu often just completely failed to load. I also encountered a bug that would cause Cricket 26 to crash everytime I tried to finalise my line-up. The irony that the design of Cricket 26’s dedicated management mode appears to have been somewhat mismanaged certainly isn’t lost on me.
The irony that the design of Cricket 26’s dedicated management mode appears to have been somewhat mismanaged certainly isn’t lost on me.
Elsewhere, Cricket 26 possesses most of the same feature set as Cricket 24, from the largely unaltered player career mode to the microtransaction-riddled card collecting of Pro Team – with the latter featuring a new mode called Centurian. At the time of writing this just has a ‘Coming Soon’ message posted on it, leaving me completely in the dark as to what it might actually entail. The robust suite of customisation tools for everything from players to bats to stadia remain present and useful, while the actual number of licensed teams stays more or less the same. On the upside, all but one of the 10 IPL teams are now officially included, but on the downside you still need to rely on the talents of community creators to import Indian and South African squads into Cricket 26, and New Zealand’s Dream11 Super Smash competition has seemingly been ditched entirely.
Patches Fix Matches
In every area in which Cricket 26 excels, though, the shine is regularly taken off it as though it’s been polished with a piece of 60 grit sandpaper pinched from David Warner’s kit bag. It feels exhilarating to setup a batsmen by pushing a few straight balls across him before pulling the trigger on a hooping in-swinger than cannons into his pads, but it’s infuriating to slave away in search of a wicket only to watch a thick edge sail into the keeper’s gloves and have it given not out for no clear reason, with no option to challenge the umpire’s decision (at one point, this happened to me three times in the space of one over). It’s satisfying to swivel-pull a short ball into the crowd for six, but absolutely deflating to hook it down to deep backward square and get caught on the boundary, only to watch the fielder very clearly step on the rope, and still be given out anyway.
I like that matches can now be affected by rain and outcomes can be decided by the Duckworth-Lewis method, but so far my only exposure to it came when I was a mere three overs into the first innings of a T20. Without warning, the game was abruptly called off due to rain and my team was declared the winner – even though I was the only one who’d had a chance to bat. This is not to mention the regular crashes I’ve experienced during the 20 hours or so I’ve invested into Cricket 26 on the PlayStation 5 so far, or the many UI glitches – like the scoreboard for The Hundred that seems to be a placeholder hastily cobbled together in MS Paint. Or the many unrealistic AI behaviours, like bowling a bunch of short stuff in the opening over of a test – or indeed opening the bowling with one of its batsmen.
The shine is regularly taken off it as though it’s been polished with a piece of 60 grit sandpaper pinched from David Warner’s kit bag.
Meanwhile, and as has long since become customary with Big Ant’s cricket games, the in-game commentary is about as accurate as often as a broken wristwatch. I welcome the presence of cricket luminaries like David Gower and Adam Gilchrist to bring their insights to the game, but not when it seems like they’ve been blindfolded and spun around in a circle before they entered the commentary box like they’re playing a verbal game of pin the tail on the donkey.
In spite of these issues, I find myself far more invested in Cricket 26’s future because the core experience out in the field is such a major step up from the previous game that I’m willing to live with the noticeable rough edges. Assuming that Big Ant can stamp out most of the bugs, this could yet turn out to be one of the best cricket simulations the Aussie developer has ever produced. Yet even though the developer does have a track record of providing plenty of post-release support to its cricket games – and there have already been four patches for the PlayStation 5 version in the first week since launch – it’s hard at this point to be confident that it will rectify all of my complaints. As if to justify my slight pessimism, I fired up Cricket 24 this week to compare it side by side with Cricket 26, only to discover that Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett’s facial textures had disappeared completely. I know the English batting order has a tendency to lose their heads, but this is ridiculous – and then my test match crashed before I could even bowl a ball. To be clear, that’s after more than two years of post-launch patching.
The legendary Black Friday sales are here, and hundreds of amazing video game deals are live across Amazon, Target, and Best Buy. Among these, the latest Yakuza game – Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii – is down to only $25. If you missed this one back in February, there has never been a better time to jump in and sail the seas with Goro Majima.
Score Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii for $25 During Black Friday
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii might just be the most unique entry in the entire Like a Dragon/Yakuza series. Goro Majima wakes up on an island without his memories, and before long, he’s the head of his very own crew of pirates. It’s got the usual Yakuza beat ’em up gameplay, but Pirate Yakuza gets naval combat too, letting players command a pirate ship and attack others on the high seas.
If you’ve never played a Yakuza game, you can start with Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii if you wish. While the stories are all interconnected, each one stands on its own, too. Some events may not hit the same if you jump around, though, so we recommend playing in order, if possible.
While the next Yakuza game is a much-needed remake of Yakuza 3, Pirate Yakuza will still be a key piece of the story for the next mainline entry. As such, if you’re aiming to catch up on the series anytime soon, this is a game you likely will need to play to be prepared for what’s to come.
More Amazing Black Friday Video Game Deals
Noah Hunter is a freelance writer and reviewer with a passion for games and technology. He co-founded Final Weapon, an outlet focused on nonsense-free Japanese gaming (in 2019) and has contributed to various publishers writing about the medium.
Disney Lorcana continues to go from strength to strength, and while we’re a few sets deep at this point, there’s still something special about having so many recognizable characters, songs, and moments printed to cardboard.
The bundle, which would usually set Illumineers back $34.99, is now down to $24.99 as part of the sales event. It’s an ideal way to kickstart a collection, offering two Starter Decks that are playable right out of the box, as well as four additional booster packs and a Mickey Mouse Pirate Captain promo card.
That’s an ideal combo because when you want to upgrade your decks with fresh cards, you already have packs to rip open. The decks included are fun ones, too, with the unlikely duo of Peter Pan and the Dalmatians helming one, and Moana and Scrooge McDuck in the other. Each deck contains a booster pack, too, so you’re really getting six in total.
It’s worth noting that Lorcana now rotates sets. This set isn’t currently standard legal – so competitive players should look elsewhere. Thankfully, though, it remains a fantastic deal for collectors or casual players looking to learn the ropes.
At the time of writing, the Into the Inklands bundle has gone past the ‘50% claimed’ mark, so you’ll want to move swiftly!
EA and Battlefield Studios have launched the first Battlefield 6 free trial, giving new players on PC, PlayStation 5 (PS5), and Xbox Series X | S the chance to try Season 1 multiplayer maps and modes all Thanksgiving week.
The limited-time event runs from today, November 25, at 4 a.m. PT / 7 a.m. ET to December 2 at 4 a.m. PT / 7 a.m. ET. It’s a scheduled test period for anyone wondering if the new Battlefield is worth it, following what EA has called the most successful launch in the FPS shooter franchise’s history.
“We are extremely proud of what our amazing teams at Battlefield Studios have accomplished and tremendously excited about the community’s passion as we continue to build Battlefield for and with our fans,” general manager of Battlefield Byron Beede said in a statement. “Today’s launch of a free trial for Battlefield 6 is the perfect opportunity for new players to have the All Out Warfare experience that millions of players around the world are raving about.”
As detailed in a blog post from EA, the Battlefield 6 free trial week offers three playlists for new players: Initiation Breakthrough, Close Quarters Battle, and All-Out Warfare. The first is meant to ease newcomers into the entry’s destructive gameplay with 48-player matches mixed with real-world people and bots. Close Quarters Combat focuses on fast-paced gunplay in smaller maps with Team Deathmatch and Sabotage modes. Finally, All-Out Warfare presents Battlefield 6 multiplayer unrestricted, giving free trial players access to Conquest, Escalation, and Breakthrough modes on the biggest maps it has.
The free trial isn’t quite the full Battlefield 6 Season 1 experience, but it does give players a chance to try out its core gameplay without leaping into a $69.99 purchase (or a little cheaper if you act fast). Maps players can expect to enjoy through the free trial playlists include Siege of Cairo, Blackwell Fields, and Eastwood.
EA has also clarified that those who have enjoyed Battlefield REDSEC, which introduced free-to-play battle royale and Gauntlet modes when it launched late last month, will notice their progress carries over to the Battlefield 6 free trial. Additional progress made during the trial will also carry over to the full experience, should a player choose to purchase the full game. Those who log in to either experience by November 30 also gain access to the free long-range Lethal Force Weapon Package.
If you’re hunting for the best offers this week, we’re actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
Walmart has officially joined the party of Black Friday sales, bringing a massive selection of video game deals. If you’ve been hoping to fill up your library with some new picks to play as early nights and colder weather sets in, now’s your chance to score Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater for just $30, or Elden Ring for a mere $15.
You read that right. Only $15 for a game we gave a 10 out of 10 to and called Game of the Year back in 2022 is a stellar offer, and what better way to spend your holiday break than becoming Elden Lord? There’s no better time to journey to the Lands Between, truly.
Walmart Black Friday Video Game Deals
Unfortunately, Walmart’s Elden Ring deal doesn’t include the expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree. The good news is, you can pick up the Shadow of the Erdtree Edition instead at Amazon for $49.99, a $30 discount. That’s a touch cheaper than buying the two separately, even with the $15 deal on the base game. Elden Ring Nightrein is on sale, too, if you happened to miss FromSoft’s co-op adventure take on the series.
Outside of Walmart, other retailers are offering some excellent discounts on video games right now, too. Be sure to check out our breakdowns of the best deals on PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo games and accessories.
Magic: The Gathering has big plans for Universes Beyond in 2026 with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Trek, but before then, there’s the small matter of the game’s Avatar: The Last Airbender set.
With the discount, a box of 30 packs is now $149.95 instead of $209.70, a steep drop but perhaps not unexpected.
After all, the Spider-Man set saw a similar sort of drop within days. The difference, however, is that this set feels much more cohesive and enjoyable to play than its Marvel counterpart.
At the standard list price, you’re essentially paying $6.99 per Play Booster pack, but with this discount it drops to $4.99 per pack.
Each pack has 14 cards, so you’re getting 420 with this deal, and while they’re less likely to be the alternative art treatments you’d find in a (grossly overpriced) Collector Booster pack, you could easily pull enough to build an Avatar deck around – or have plenty to trade with.
The set marks the last of Magic: The Gathering’s 2025 offerings, but there will be even more sets next year starting with Lorwyn Eclipsed. Preorders are already live for the 2026 curtain-raiser.
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.
Magic: The Gathering gets a lot of new Commander Decks each year, but it’s been a while since Wizards of the Coast printed some ‘Starter’ decks.
The last time was 2022, and those decks are getting harder to find. Thankfully, one of them can be found in Amazon’s Black Friday deals, with a whopping saving of over 50% on a deck I hold near and dear to my heart – Draconic Destruction.
This Epic Commander Deck Is $25 Right Now
Amazon is offering this Red/Green deck for just $25, a steep drop from the $53.38 MSRP – although these decks were always meant to be affordable.
But, because they haven’t been printed for a while, and because this one is actually a pretty cohesive preconstructed offering, it’s hard to find new.
Draconic Destruction, as the name suggests, is all about Dragon cards, and it’s a great deck for players who want to cast big dragons and through an army of them at their opponents.
It’s a deck that plays fantastically out of the box, but can be pretty swiftly upgraded, too. Its Commander, Atarka, World Render, is super cheap these days to buy on its own, but its ability to give your dragons double-strike (when they’re already flying) is a potential game-ender.
This was actually my first Commander deck, so I have fond memories of playing my first games in the format with it, and that makes it a shame its hard to find nowadays. With this deal, though, it’s an easy one to recommend.
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.
Helldivers 2 is finally getting a minigun and other weapons fans have long-called for as part of the jungle-themed Python Commandos Warbond.
Due out December 2, the Python Commandos Premium Warbond adds new armor and weapons to Arrowhead’s explosive third-person action game. As well as the new minigun, which Helldivers 2 has been crying out for since launch, the warbond includes a chainsword and a flame dog.
But it’s the minigun that’s the star here, and this, coupled with the jungle theme rekindles memories of the original Predator movie, in which Jesse Ventura fired a minigun called ‘Old Painless’ at hapless enemy soldiers as well as a Yautja, while uttering the iconic line: “I ain’t got time to bleed.”
Of course, if you’re fighting back against the Automatons, perhaps Helldivers 2’s new minigun will give off Terminator 2 vibes. After all, Arnold Schwarzenegger was partial to the occasional minigun, wasn’t he? At least he kept those cops alive.
In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Katherine Baskin, Social Media and Community Manager at Arrowhead, leaned into the long overdue arrival of the minigun with a fun, in-universe message to players:
“The Ministry of Defense received thousands of requests from squad commanders for a minigun and we’re excited to finally give our Helldivers access to the M-1000 Maxigun! Belt-fed with ultra-high ammo capacity, this one is sure to make those bugs bleed.”
The AX/FLAM-75 “Guard Dog” Hot Dog, meanwhile, is a drone equipped with a flamethrower “to coat your foes in the fires of freedom before returning to your backpack to refuel.” And then there’s the CQC-9 Defoliation Tool, aka a chainsaw. The new primary weapon is a combination assault rifle and grenade launcher called the AR/GL-21 One-Two. “Heavy to wield, but the damage dealt is heavy too, making your primary slot more versatile than ever with two guns in one,” Arrowhead explained.
The armor, too, leans into the Predator vibes. The RS-20 Constrictor light armor set is the official uniform for the League of Patriotic Arm Wrestlers, Arrowhead said, “so it’s guaranteed to give your squad bigger and more rippling biceps to intimidate the enemy.”
And here’s a fun Rambo reference: “but if you’re carrying the team, maybe you need the RS-40 Best of Prey: a heavy armor set patterned after legendary Helldiver, Ronald Mambo and his famously powerful and burly physique.”
Both of these armors are equipped with the Rock Solid passive, which makes your Helldiver more steadfast against staggering and ragdolling attacks.
You’ll also have two capes and coordinating player cards available: Foe Rent Asunder, which is pre-tattered to give a battle-worn appearance, and Mark of the Constrictor, for Helldivers who strangle out any anti-democratic behavior they encounter.
If you’re hunting for the best offers this week, we’re actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.
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.
Activision has revealed significant changes to the Call of Duty battle pass for Season 1 of Black Ops 7 that should make progression a lot quicker.
The battle pass has been the subject of much debate in recent years, with Call of Duty players often bemoaning how long it takes to unlock all its content — even if you pay for the premium version and, on top of that, the more expensive BlackCell version.
In a new blog post, Activision said it had “taken learnings” from Black Ops 6 battle pass completion times and made tuning adjustments for “a more satisfying journey.” The result is each season’s battle pass in Black Ops 7 should be “more rewarding for your time spent in-game, no matter where you’re playing across all parts of the game.”
So, how does this work? Earlier pages in the Black Ops 7 battle pass can now be completed faster with fewer tiers needed to unlock High-Value Target (HVT) content at the end of the page, while later pages in the battle pass will contain more rewards. This means players will earn more HVT content sooner across all 100 tiers, Activision said.
And, for the first time, Activision is adding the ability to earn battle pass tokens through completing daily challenges, which are now available not only in Multiplayer, Zombies, and Call of Duty: Warzone, but also Co-Op Campaign and Endgame. On certain days in the season, completion of your bonus daily challenge will grant you a battle pass token, which can be used right away to unlock a tier.
Call of Duty players who regularly grind through the battle pass will welcome these changes, particularly the addition of earning tokens via challenges. That should speed things up by default, but it remains to be seen how progression overall will feel now the later pages of the battle pass have more content to work through.
The Season 1 battle pass includes up to 1,100 COD Points, 11 operator skins, 26 blueprints and weapons, and 119 total rewards, 23 of which are free to earn, including two new base weapons. You can buy the battle pass for 1,100 COD Points, or get the battle pass bundle for 2,400 COD Points, which also grants you 20 Tokens to use.
If you’re hunting for the best offers this week, we’re actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.
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.
