Category: IGN

There’s an old refrain among comedians that no joke survives its retelling, and you don’t need to look any further than the shoddy track record of comedy movie sequels to see the truth in that. Fortunately, funny video games tend to fare much better, from Borderlands 2 to Portal 2, and so you would hope that a weird, deeply inappropriate game about drugs and talking guns like High On Life 2 might enjoy the same kind of evolution. In some ways it does just that, with many of its existing bright spots shining even more brightly – the lovable weapons that serve as your companions are more amusing than ever, and movement outside of combat is greatly improved by radical new skateboarding mechanics. But other areas don’t hold up as well, like the significantly less polished story, jokes that don’t land quite as often, and performance issues that are even more shaky than the first game. I still enjoyed my time with High On Life 2, and truly relish the opportunity to return to a world this goofy any chance I get, but this is definitely closer to Zoolander 2 than 22 Jump Street.

High On Life 2 picks up right where our foul-mouthed cast of characters left off… sort of. After a dizzyingly fast intro recaps the events of the first game and gets you back into the action, you find yourself on the wrong side of the law and ready to begin the familiar process of hunting down a list of baddies to bring down an evil organization. Instead of a drug cartel, this time the villain comes in the form of a pharmaceutical company that I felt no guilt killing off members of over the course of the roughly 10-hour campaign, now playing the role of rogue assassin as I ply my trade of death illegally – a nice twist to the otherwise nearly identical setup of the original.

Sadly, the story built around this string of over-the-top murder missions is a bit sloppy, with a couple big reveals that don’t really land and a surprising number of monologues to explain motives and technologies. There’s a shocking amount of “tell, don’t show” for a game that is typically very intentionally about not sweating the details and following the rule of cool. It sorta reminds me of a D&D campaign that’s gone on way too long and starts to feel like the DM is twisting himself in knots trying to get to that cool payoff, missing the mark too often in the process. The good news is that the plot at least moves along at a pretty fast clip with a steady stream of silly gags to keep you guessing, even when the story gets messy.

Speaking of silly gags, like its predecessor, this is an adventure that relies a whole lot on the success of its goofiness and whimsy, and there are plenty of laugh out loud moments to be had. The high points are extremely memorable, like when you fight an incredibly annoying boss who transports himself inside your menus and starts messing with your game settings (appropriately voiced by the legendary Richard Kind), or when one mission concludes with a murder mystery that has you gathering clues and interrogating witnesses instead of shooting guns. Sometimes the lowbrow humor also just hits, like a side quest where someone wanted me to help them find a bridge troll and…y’know, I think I’ll just leave it at that. High On Life 2 is at its best when it’s trying weird and creative things, and when it manages to pull that off, there’s really nothing quite like it.

That talking Aussie blade cuts both ways though, as jokes fall flat a tad too often in this sequel, and it’s pretty tough to watch when they do. Granted, it’s always harder to pull off gags in a world that has had a lot of its juice squeezed out already – we know about the species of sentient guns, for example, and have already had most of the funny moments we’re going to get out of that surreal experience – but some of the jokes are quite literal repeats of things that happened in the first game. If I was having the most fun when High On Life 2 was trying new stuff, I was having the least when it was retreading old bits or just throwing a couple curse words onto the end of a sentence in lieu of actual punchlines.

The stars of the show in the original were the gun companions you met and befriended along the way, and that certainly remains true in this follow-up. Meeting a down on his luck pistol named Travis (who has a charmingly dorky voice from Ken Marino) and reuniting him with his estranged wife is both a satisfying arc and a clever way to introduce the first dual-wielded weapon when his spouse joins the party (I do wish they’d make out less though). All four of the new gun companions are awesome and have helpful abilities in both combat and puzzle-solving, like Sheath, whose harpoon “trick hole” attack can impale people during fights and create ziplines while platforming. Plus, most of the OG Gatlians make a return as well, including my favorite partner in crime (literally this time), Gus, the shotgun who looks like a frog and has the unmistakable voice of J.B. Smoove. Hell yeah.

Unfortunately, a wider variety of guns hasn’t done much to make the sloppy and overly simplistic gunplay any better – in fact it even feels a touch worse. Some of the new weapons are quite crisp compared to the wonky slugthrowers of yore, especially Sheath’s burst-fire that reminds me of the battle rifle from Halo. But with so many enemies and projectiles flying around, claustrophobic rooms with odd geometry that enemies get caught behind and within, and weapon accuracy being a bit all over the place, combat leans into chaos more than anything else. Most of the time that’s fine because you’re playing a game that’s all about over-the-top nonsense, but when you occasionally die due to unfair circumstances or when a fight drags on for a bit too long, it can kill the mood. To its credit, the enemy variety is mostly decent, with a stream of ugly new creatures to blast apart introduced at a steady clip, from flying robotic freaks to spooky, scary skeletons – but if you were looking for a polished FPS with gunfights that feel at all coherent, look elsewhere.

The biggest and most interesting change with High On Life 2 is mobility, as you’re given a trusty skateboard in the opening minutes that serves as your travel companion throughout the adventure. Instead of fighting on foot, most encounters highly encourage or outright require you to be grinding on rails, riding on the sides of walls, and soaring through the air on your skateboard. When it comes to traveling from place-to-place or navigating your way through platforming sections, this is pretty awesome, and a shocking amount of your time will be spent rolling around like you’re playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. I didn’t really expect the skateboard to play such a big role, but honestly I can’t imagine going back to the relative sluggishness of running around on foot.

In combat, the skateboard’s influence isn’t so positive. You’re seemingly expected to never stop moving while fighting hordes of aliens, which makes the already chaotic encounters even more noisy and hard to read. Many fights take place in open areas where you’re surrounded by more bad guys than you could possibly keep track of, and staying put is a death sentence with so little cover, so you’ll have to take shots at passersby while leaping from various parts of the environment to keep yourself going as fast as you can. Combine that juggling act with slippery weapons, enemies that teleport around, and weird foes that are often hard to even understand what you’re looking at, and oh boy, the result is just an absolute diarrhea of pixels.

Those pixels seem to be pushing High On Life 2 to its limits as well, because I saw frequent framerate dips (some that caused my screen to freeze for several seconds before getting it together) and progress-hindering bugs that required me to reload the last checkpoint. Developer Squanch Games did include “various performance issues across the game” on a list of known problems with the review build that will apparently be addressed by a patch, but it didn’t specify the extent to which those would be resolved – and in my experience, a day-one patch rarely makes all of a game’s performance problems magically disappear when they are this extensive. Nothing I saw struck me as game breaking beyond a simple reset, but it was consistent and egregious enough to make me worried for the stuff people will find when this is out in the wild.

There are quite a few modern first-person shooters taking notes from the bullet hell arcade games from yesteryear. Games like BPM or Deadzone Rogue throw walls of projectiles and fodder enemies at you, and demand you thread yourself through them like a gun-toting needle to return fire without getting obliterated. Luna Abyss joins these ranks but certainly stirs the formula up a bit. When we took a look at the first level of gloomy sci-fi shooter a couple of years ago, we saw just enough to get intrigued by the potential quivering in the crimson glow between all of its shadows. Now that we’ve gotten our hands on a bit more, being introduced to a new weapon, movement mechanics, and a killer boss fight, I can safely say that the optimism was justified.

Warm-Up Round

I was dropped right back into Sorrow’s Canyon, a prison colony with the most accurate name in the universe. The grimy metal halls, scaffoldings, and makeshift walkways made out of piping mixed with occasional stone floors and weird organic growths all give a sort of Chronicles of Riddick, grim dark gothic energy. Giger-esque, without all of the phallic stuff. It certainly doesn’t matter what anyone was actually doing in a place like this before our hero, Fawkes, wakes up in an open coffin, finds a nifty gun, and starts shooting them all, because most of the things that move around down here that aren’t you are mindless husks who want to destroy you.

The almost sardonically chummy tone in which the sudden guiding voice in Fawkes’ ear, Aylin, takes with her charge does help add a bit of texture to what comes off as a pretty standard “everything here sucks and is bad” aesthetic. Most people, likely including her, would rather not be trapped here, but she is dangerously close to sounding like she’s having something that resembles fun, and that does make me want to know what this world is hiding, at the very least. It sits in contrast with the only other non-enemy character you meet in the demo, The Waif, who gives guidance in solemn riddles like a depressed Tom Bombadil.

Gliding from room to room, strafing gracefully through enemy fire and returning with blasts of your own is a breezy process, thanks to the aim function that auto locks to the enemy closest to your crosshairs, letting you focus more on the moving than the aiming. I liked this at first, taking the mental load off of trying to line up shots while gliding from cover to cover helps you focus on defense. But as the encounters progressed, the challenge didn’t really follow suit. Skull-faced drones chased me around the room while floating eyeballs fired from floating perches, but things didn’t get anywhere near too hairy to deal with in the canyon.

The Water Begins to Simmer

I found a second weapon, a shotgun that specialized in shutting down gleaming blue shields, and some nuance and complexity started to reveal itself. Some enemies now were cloaked in these barriers, which had to be shattered by the shotgun before doing damage to them directly. Now I was sliding from cover to cover, switching back and forth between weapons to make certain enemies vulnerable while trying not to overstay my welcome in any one spot for too long. That auto lock feature began to make more sense, but still, I found getting to the end of the Canyon to be a pretty tame experience. I know this was the extent of the original demo, and I can see walking away from this feeling tepid about what the future could hold for this goth-person shooter.

Then I played the new additional mission from further into the game and yeah, Luna Abyss might be cooking with gas.

Full Boil

The Scourge Crater is a snowy, craggy mountain face with floating platforms and a heaping helping of sunlight and sky. There are a lot of floating bits of rock and far away platforms that put Fawkes’ new double jump and air dash to great use. Theres no real indication to what has happened to Fawkes between the Canyon and now to give them these powers, likw the ability to execute low health enemies to regain health, but I don’t necessarily require exposition every time theres an opportunity to do something badass.

It doesn’t take long to find a new weapon, a long ranged rifle that does big damage, but overheats in just a handful of shots (unlike your standard gun or shotgun that you can squeak many more rounds out of before havin g to cool it down). New enemies come with it, like some floating bundles of death that explode when touched, or a larger, scarier eyeball creature with its one big single-shot laser. This new weapon comes with a new color of shield to dispatch, too.

When we get off to the races, moving from little island to little island, staying fast on the trigger for the new enemies that pop up at a brisk pace, and staying on top of what the necessary weapon to take them down with was the faster-paced slobberknocker I was looking for. It’s not quite Doom-levels of expressive combat – every enemy there has a best weapon to kill them with but not necessarily a “correct” weapon, leaving room to flex however you see fit. But the limited offensive options are balanced with the sometimes overwhelming need for defensive finesse. At its best, every plan has a window of time where it will be most effective before you have to regroup and try something else, like dipping behind a pillar of rock to wait out a big beam, knowing that a handful of bomb drones are well on their way to clear you out of cover with a bang.

Traveling through this stage between combat introduced some environmental movement tricks as well, like boost gates that launch you when you dash through them, or weird flovating balloons that you can possess, jumping inside them to get a view from their perspective before erupting out of them to continue the climb. There’s a cool, if not a little garish, moment a little over midway through the wintry crater where you can actually possess a Goliath, some sort of giant minigun wielding monstrosity that can mow down a small battalion of enemies with ease. Though this level kept things pretty simple, I like the potential of Luna Abyss using possession in conjunction with air dashing and double jumps for some good platforming puzzles – or even in combat scenarios.

Eye of the Beholder

The rowdiest and most difficult combat in the entire demo was against the level-ending boss, a big eyeball monster in the style of a Dungeons and Dragons Beholder by way of Dark City. It stayed in the center, relentlessly firing walls of bullets (and occasionally lasers) making it tough to find the space to take advantage of how exposed it was. Phases where it is invulnerable and you need to deal with how to fix that change the pace up well, at first its juvst breaking the connection between power points in the walls that are blasting it with an impenetrable shield, but eventually it’s surviving waves of enemies and long stanzas of incoming fire, etc. At its busiest, it almost felt a bit like Housemarque’s excellent Returnal, but in a smaller arena. I can only hope Luna Abyss’s combat can crescendo like this for all of its boss fights.

With some patience for its soft-touch opening minutes, I found myself very on board with the Luna Abyss’s brand of crowded screen shoot-em up. It’s thick with moody vibes, which can be more than just a good backdrop for the action. And don’t let that auto targeting aim get you complacent, because when the more blustery bad guys turn up the heat, you won’t have aiming as an excuse as to why surviving the onslaught takes you multiple respawns. If the gunplay and platforming can evolve further, as it did between these two demo levels, then I can’t wait to stare into the Abyss when it opens wide sometime this year.

Following an unexpected delay in January, the first trailer for Battlefield 6 Season 2 is here, revealing a first look at its three-month roadmap, a limited-time nightfall event, and gameplay for two new maps.

EA and Battlefield Studios today offered a detailed breakdown and trailer for the second seasonal content update, along with a gameplay trailer for its troubled multiplayer FPS. Season 2 spans across three phases – Extreme Measures (phase one), Nightfall (phase two), and Hunter/Prey (phase three) – with the first set to launch next week on its previously announced release date of February 17, 2026.

The forest-covered mountains of the first new map, Contaminated, are the backdrop for most of the Battlefield 6 Season 2 trailer, providing a first look at new vehicles, such as the AH-6 Little Bird, and a new psychoactive smoke mechanic. First gameplay for the location, which supports all combat sizes, shows tanks and helicopters chasing infantry into at least partially destructible tunnels. Players can enjoy all it has to offer across standard multiplayer game mode as well as the new VL-7 Strike limited-time mode, which sees players battling (and hallucinating) through the smoke in its own dedicated playlist.

Extreme Measures kicks things off with Contaminated, the Little Bird, VL-7 smoke, new weapons, and more next week. Come March 17, phase two, Nightfall, will then finally add one of the community’s most-asked-for features… kind of.

Along with its new close-quarters infantry map, Hagental Base, Nightfall brings night gameplay to Battlefield 6. Players have wanted to turn out the lights since the sixth mainline installment launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S last October. Unfortunately, it seems lights-out action will be restricted only to the limited-time Nightfall event, which itself is only available on Hagental Base. REDSEC players can also try out the night map via the limited-time Gauntlet mode, with the Nightfall phase also adding the Defense Testing Complex 3 point of interest to Fort Lyndon, as well as the dirt bike, CZ3A1 submachine gun, and VZ.61 sidearm across both experiences.

Finally, phase three, Hunter / Prey, launches April 14. It does not add a new map, and instead brings the Operation Augur limited-time mode, Portal updates, a new bonus path for the battle pass, the LTV vehicle, and the Ripper 14” machete.

Norwegian electronics retailer Komplett has promised it will give away free copies of GTA 6 to anyone giving birth on the game’s launch day, exactly nine months ahead of its arrival.

The cheeky store chain has even encouraged fans to, er, get busy with their efforts to ensure this happens. Images on social media and reddit show posters for the campaign have been spotted, while the retailer’s Instagram has confirmed that this offer really isn’t just a joke.

“GTA 6 dropping in 9 months ;)” declares advertising posters seen in the Norwegian capital of Oslo this week, designed to promote the country’s major electronics chain. The posters also feature an image of a messy bed, strewn pillows, and a scattering of rose petals. It’s not subtle.

You can get GTA 6 for free if you give birth to a baby on the game’s release date in Norway. pic.twitter.com/d4fANWhAnr

— YabaLeftOnline (@yabaleftonline) February 12, 2026

On Instagram, Komplett describes the idea of having a baby on GTA 6 launch day as a “life hack” — with the obvious implication being that you could time your parental leave perfectly for when Rockstar’s highly-anticipated blockbuster drops.

(Of note, Norwegian parental leave offers a total of 49 weeks at 100% salary, or a total 61 weeks at 80% salary, shared between two people.)

“This is actually not nonsense,” Komplett wrote in a caption for an accompanying Instagram video. “GTA 6 is released in 9 months (🤞) and if you have a baby on the launch date, we’ll give you the game for free.”

Of course, the campaign is primarily designed to make headlines and get Komplett some attention — and it’s certainly doing that, even if the responses on social media are full of people pointing out that having a baby is quite a time-consuming thing all on its own.

“Lol, you’re not getting time to play gta 6 if you have a screaming baby at home,” wrote Low_Possibility_8893 as part of a lengthy thread on reddit.

“That baby is gonna cost alooooot more than 70 dollars…” suggested sopedound, hinting that actually this didn’t represent much of a financial saving.

“Haven’t slept in 6 days, nipples are like bullets and I’ve been hit in the face with explosive diarrhea,” concluded the appropriately-named PloppyTheSpaceship, suggesting what life with a newborn was actually like. “I don’t even know what my name is right now let alone how to turn on a game, but I’m sure it’s good.”

Komplett’s offer comes in the wake of GTA 6 publisher Take-Two giving its strongest indication yet that the long-awaited blockbuster will make its current November 19, 2026 launch date, after several previous delays. Last week, as part of its latest financial results, Take-Two said marketing for what will surely be the biggest entertainment launch of all time kicks off this summer. Take-Two also denied rumors that GTA 6 will be a digital-only release upon its initial launch.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Magic: The Gathering is kicking off its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set in a few weeks, and while we’ve seen plenty of deals on upcoming sets, Collector Boosters have been like gold dust… until now.

Amazon is offering a box of 12 Collector boosters for $449.99, but you’ll need to act swifter than one of the titular turtles to grab one.

Development studio ZA/UM has announced that a free demo for its upcoming espionage-flavoured RPG, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, will be available to play on PC as part of Steam Next Fest.

Launching on February 23 and available until March 16, the demo features a “tailored” version of Zero Parade’s opening hours. While not everything from this section of the full game will be available as part of the demo, it does include two full quests, a variety of side activities, and the freedom to explore the city state of Portofiro. You can get a small taste of what awaits in the gameplay video below, which showcases the very first minutes of Zero Parades.

The demo also allows you to choose from three different character archetypes, which dictate the skills and stats of protagonist Hershel Wilk. ZA/UM encourages replaying the demo with each of the archetypes to see how a physical, soulful, or analytical build affects your choices and opportunities.

IGN recently interviewed several developers from ZA/UM to learn more about Zero Parades, which tells the story of a spy brought out of retirement to complete one last job. Its key theme is failure, and ZA/UM states that it has designed its dialogue system around that. “Every door closed is an open opportunity to go through the window instead,” said the studio in a press release.

Zero Parades features a similar design to Disco Elysium, ZA/UM’s previous game, and has been created by a team made up of both old and new employees. The full game is scheduled to launch in 2026, first on PC through Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store, and then later on PlayStation 5.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.

Best Buy’s latest Deal of the Day has dropped the critically acclaimed Ninja Gaiden 4 down to just $42.99 for one day only on Xbox. Not only that, but this is the Deluxe Edition as well, making this discount all the more impressive.

The Deluxe Edition of the game retails for $89.99, so that’s a serious $47 saving, and available for just a few dollars more than the game was listed on sale for at the start of the year ($40), and you’re getting a whole lot more for it as well.

The heavily rumoured, but yet to be confirmed, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Remake/Remaster is getting its very own art book, at least according to this recent Amazon listing in the UK.

Preorders are also now available, strangely, before we’ve got official confirmation of the game actually being real and given its own release window. Its art book is listed at £29.95 right now, a slight reduction from its initial £39.99 RRP, and the Amazon listing also mentions a release date of March 24, 2026.

Layoffs have hit the development studio Wildlight Entertainment, makers of the recently released multiplayer shooter Highguard. This comes just over two weeks after the free-to-play game’s January 26 launch.

Former senior level designer Alex Graner posted on LinkedIn, “Unfortunately, along with most of the team at Wildlight, I was laid off today.” While the number of people who were laid off has not currently been confirmed, the studio’s LinkedIn page states that its size is/was 51-200 employees.

Wildlight’s official X/Twitter account confirmed the layoffs with a statement reading, “Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game.”

On BlueSky, Mat Piscatella from Circana (which tracks game sales and engagement) highlighted, “Highguard debuted in the top 10 in weekly active users on US Steam, was top 20 on both US PlayStation and Xbox (Circana Player Engagement Tracker week ending 1/31/26) and yet…” According to SteamDB, Highguard reached a peak concurrent player count of 97,249 on PC via Steam on release day and experienced a sharp decline with only 4,524 players two weeks after launch.

Graner also said, “This one really stings as there was a lot of unreleased content I was really looking forward to that I and others designed for Highguard.” While it initially had a 3v3 competitive mode, a 5v5 mode was implemented just days after release due to player reception to the small scale of the original mode. The team revealed a content roadmap on launch day that included updates with new items, modes, and characters each month throughout the year packed into seven separate episodes; it’s unclear how the layoffs will affect the studio’s plans as of now, but Widllight says it’ll continue to support the game.

This story is developing.