Borderlands 4 publisher Take-Two has said that development on the game’s Switch 2 version is officially now on “pause” following its last-minute delay.
A Switch 2 port for the Gearbox looter shooter was initially announced during Nintendo’s big April 2025 Direct and then pegged to arrive on October 3, 2025, before its release was scrubbed just a week prior to launch. Pre-orders were cancelled, though Gearbox framed the move as a delay, not a full scrapping of the project.
Indeed, the developer said it hoped to “align” its Switch 2 release with the addition of cross saves to the game — something which now seems to no longer be on the cards.
Speaking to Variety this week, a Take-Two spokesperson has said that work on Borderlands 4’s Switch 2 edition was no longer ongoing, as Gearbox prioritized continued “improvements” to the game on its existing platforms.
It’s a curious situation, not least because the game’s Switch 2 version got so close to release, and had been played publicly in demo form at various events last year, such as at Gamescom 2025 in Cologne. Opinion on the game’s Switch 2 demo was mixed, though Borderlands 4 has also suffered from technical issues even on the more powerful PlayStation 5 Pro and Xbox Series X. The game’s Steam review rating has also suffered from negative comments regarding its PC performance, too.
“We made the difficult decision to pause development on that SKU,” Take-Two spokesperson Alan Lewis told Variety this week. “Our focus continues to be delivering quality post-launch content for players on the ongoing improvements to optimize the game.
“We’re continuing to collaborate closely with our friends at Nintendo. We have PGA Tour 2K25 coming out and WWE 2K26 [for Switch 2], and we’re incredibly excited about bringing more of our titles to that platform in the future.”
Earlier this month, a countdown appeared on the official Amazon website designed to look like a Fallout map. On it are locations in the Fallout map style which, when accessed, lead you to behind-the-scenes information on the show. For example, The Vault 33 outer door, from which Lucy first steps foot into the wasteland, is on the south of the map. The Caswennan, the airship that serves as a soaring fortress for the Brotherhood of Steel, is to the east. And, ahead of the debut of the Fallout Season 2 finale, in the top right was a locked point of interest alongside a timer pointing to February 4.
That got some fans’ hopes up that the countdown was leading to the reveal of the heavily rumored Fallout 3 Remastered, or the equally heavily rumored Fallout: New Vegas Remastered. It turned out to be neither. Instead, it’s yet another interactive node, this time for ‘The Penthouse’ at the top of the Lucky 38 casino, the lair of antagonist Mr. House.
“Once the private domain of Mr. House, it overlooks the Strip with a commanding view of New Vegas, equal parts luxury suite and control center,” reads the official description. “Step back in time to this intersection of decadence and authority!”
Clicking through leads you to a 3D interactive representation of the Penthouse, which includes a short video interview with Mr. House actor Justin Theroux about the genuinely impressive set, photos of the Strip, and even a creature gallery. This is all great if you’re after some extra Fallout information, but not the best if you’d hoped for a new Fallout game. In truth, some had suspected this would be the case. At best, some had said, it would contain a tease for Season 3 of the show.
In a recent interview with IGN, we asked Bethesda development chief Todd Howard if the success of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, which has seen over 4 million players since it shadowdropped last year, was a repeatable trick for a Fallout 3 Remastered. Howard kept his cards close to his chest, and reiterated a point he’s been making a lot in interviews lately.
“I will just say that the Oblivion Remaster, we’re really, really pleased with how well it did, it was a very long project too, and not just in how it was received, the ability to shadowdrop it, and the response to doing that,” he said. “I like to do that with games as much as possible. I love the moment that you find out about a game.”
The last mainline single-player Fallout game was Fallout 4, which came out in 2015 and recently saw the release of its Anniversary Edition. The multiplayer focused Fallout 76 followed in 2018, and while fans slowly flocked to the West Virginia-set open-world RPG, it wasn’t until the premiere of Prime Video’s Fallout TV show that the Bethesda series leveled up in terms of attention.
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.
If you just finished watching the finale of Fallout season two, hopefully, you hung around until the end for its post-credits scene. That’s because within it hides the blueprints for “Liberty Prime Alpha” — a name that will excite you if you’ve played the Fallout games, but may confuse you if you haven’t. Rest assured, though, because we’re here to tell you exactly why you should be eagerly anticipating its apparent arrival in Fallout’s third season.
To cut to the chase, Liberty Prime is a giant robot originally built by the United States Army in the years before the Great War that turned America into the wasteland it is today. A 40-foot-tall metal monster packed with extreme power, including highly destructive head-mounted energy cannons and a seemingly endless supply of throwable explosives, it’s quite the weapon of mass destruction. Think the Iron Giant, but nowhere near as friendly.
Initially conceived in 2072 and planned for deployment against the communist forces of China in Alaska, Liberty Prime never actually made it into battle, despite being fully constructed, as a sufficient power source was never obtained. That doesn’t mean it would never see any action, though, as this colossus appears in both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. Let’s take a look at what it got up to in those games, as well as theorise a little about how it could be deployed in season three of the show.
Fallout 3
Liberty Prime would sit dormant for many, many years after the bombs dropped, until it was rediscovered in 2255 amongst the ruins of Washington, D.C., the setting of Fallout 3. For over 20 years, the Brotherhood of Steel worked away on restoring the war machine with mixed results, until its eventual revival in 2277. Its first taste of action would come in a battle against the Enclave, where it destroyed many of the shadowy faction’s forces as the Brotherhood laid claim to the fallen capital’s Jefferson Memorial.
The Brotherhood would repeat this tactic for another couple of weeks, with Liberty Prime too strong a foe for the Enclave to handle. But soon this tactic would prove predictable, and the giant robot would eventually be lured into a trap that would see orbital weapons descend upon it. Following its destruction, the Brotherhood attempted to rebuild it, but to no avail. Instead, its shattered remains would be left to rust deep in storage until the next person was bold enough to build it again.
Fallout 4
A decade later, in 2287, someone would try to do exactly that. This time, a chapter of the Brotherhood headquartered in Boston decided that it needed the power of the walking superweapon to turn the tide in its battle for the Commonwealth. This effort would take many years to come to fruition, as Liberty Prime’s components had to be airlifted along America’s East Coast and pieced together in Massachusetts. Such a mammoth effort was required to combat the newly risen synth threat — an AI lifeform created by the scientific faction called the Institute.
A newly improved Liberty Prime MK II, packed with a laser capable of carving tunnels down into the earth and the ability to deploy mini nukes, then took to the streets of Boston. Depending on your actions at the end of Fallout 4, Liberty Prime can either be destroyed again or live to fight another day as it roams the Commonwealth in the service of the Brotherhood.
Fallout: Season Three
So, this brings up the curious case of how Liberty Prime will be deployed in the Fallout TV show. Set in 2296, nine years after Fallout 4, the show could directly tie into the events of the Brotherhood’s Boston bust-up by having Elder Quintus claim components for Liberty Prime from the Commonwealth. However, considering his civil war antics and the death of Paladin Harkness, it seems unlikely his Boston brothers will consider Quintus an ally anymore. It’s also worth considering that the blueprints are for “Liberty Prime Alpha”, which is presumably a model that pre-dates the MK II version deployed in Boston, and perhaps even the original robot created for the Alaskan front. It seems possible that we’ll be seeing a brand new version of the iconic robot, designed especially for the show.
Declaring himself “Quintus the Destroyer”, it seems like the Knights of San Fernando chapter will be on a nuclear warpath next season. But who will be in his crosshairs? Will his mission be to wipe out the other chapters, or will the violence see The Brotherhood put on a collision course with the New California Republic?. Will season three’s apparent Colorado location be the backdrop for their war? The potential imagery of a looming Liberty Prime walking a warpath towards Denver could well be on the horizon. A mile-high robot in the mile-high city? We wouldn’t say no.
Do you think we’ll see a fully rebuilt Liberty Prime in Fallout season three? Or do you think the showrunners have different plans for The Brotherhood’s iconic massive robot? Let us know in the comments!
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
Within the first three missions of Menace, I am talking to my squads of snappy space marines as if they are action figures on my bedroom floor. “Fan out and move up. Good shooting! That was clean, girl.” My roommates are probably used to me talking to myself when I’m playing video games at this point, but it speaks to how engrossed I got in this turn-based interplanetary war that I was already developing that kind of relationship with it. There’s a lot still missing from the Early Access release. But the tactical, bug-blasting fun is already dialed in.
Probably the biggest way in which it’s obvious that this is an Early Access game is the overall lack of context. I know that I’m a Major on a military ship that suffered some kind of FTL drive accident that destroyed many systems and most of the crew, leaving me as the senior commanding officer. I know that we’ve wound up in an area of space called the Wayback that is home to a handful of interesting, competing human factions and also a species of giant alien bugs. It’s not all that difficult to get a grasp of the basics.
But I’m not actually sure why we’re here, what the original mission was, what kind of faction we’re representing, or what the Wayback even is. Why is it called that? How long have these other humans been here? There are references to some kind of in-game lore encyclopedia, but it doesn’t seem to have been implemented yet. At the end of the day, none of this really gets in the way of my ability to shoot at things. But it does make the early game feel a bit aimless, and I find the setting interesting enough that I’d like to know more.
It’s not like Menace completely doesn’t care about story, either. There is clearly something brewing here, as unfinished as it is, with tension between the Wayback factions and the marines playing out in voice-acted cutscenes every few operations. It’s just unclear where it’s going or what I’m ultimately building up to other than harder missions, better gear, and upgrading my ship. In about 35 hours, I didn’t run into anything that seemed especially like the main plot. There is a steady escalation of stakes and difficulty, though, which at least does a good job of helping me feel like I’m not just spinning my wheels.
Hit the Ground Running
As a squad-based tactics game, man, I really like Menace. The pacing and action economy are so cleverly crafted to encourage you to play in more active and interesting ways. You can’t just set everyone on ov erwatch and creep forward, for example, which is a rut I tend to fall into in similar games. There aren’t a lot of passive or reactive abilities, so victory comes from making proactive choices. Moving up the field requires thinking about who still has turns left to spend, and how you can make sure your advance elements have adequate support if they run into trouble.
Suppression is a huge deal, at least when fighting other humans, and this adds a feeling of authenticity to every firefight. In actual warfare, they say hundreds of rounds get fired for every one that hits a target, and that’s exactly how Menace works. It’s often far more important to keep every enemy in line-of-sight pinned down than it is to inflict casualti es. That gives your second wave safety and freedom of movement to either charge in or flank and win the fight, and this creates a constantly engaging tactical loop. Your own squads who get suppressed will have their action points and accuracy penalized, but will also hunker down or hit the deck intelligently depending on the amount of heat they’re under, further making them feel like real soldiers.
This blends nicely with the fact that every squad is led by a named character you can recruit, level up, and customize. They all have distinct personalities and backstories along with a unique ability that defines them. There’s sort of an over-the-top Jagged Alliance vibe, though a bit less goofy. Jacques, a private security contractor I hired from the Wayback, can regain action points when he’s under heavy fire, so he thrives at the tip of the spear. Marta begins every mission with a major debuff that turns into a strong buff the more turns that pass, making her a clutch asset for closing out a long mission.
And unlike in, say, XCOM, these flagship characters only die if their entire squad is wiped out and you can’t get anyone over to them to render medical aid, so it doesn’t feel like playing a little bit risky will rob you of your beloved blorbos. On the othe=r hand, accompanying each of them (excluding vehicle drivers, which are their own thing) are up to eight renameable squadmates with no dialogue or special abilities. And these guys are… kind of expendable.
Manpower is a limited resource you have to manage on the strategic level, so you can’t just go throwing background extras into the meat grinder all the time. But especially as you get more advanced medical facilities online that can rehabilitate casualties, the grunts kind of become a wager you can afford to risk by making aggressive plays. And this is such a clever way of getting me to command more actively and break out of my usual, turtle playstyle.
Alien Menace
Encountering the alien bugs changes things up quite a bit. They’re much harder to suppress, though heavy losses can force them to flee. And especially later on, some of them are so heavily-armored that your standard assault rifles are all but useless. They don’t really take cover, and a lot of them only have melee attacks. But simply holding your ground and grinding them down at range isn’t always an option. Having to switch up my gear and my thinking depending on what I was fighting, in addition to the wide variety of mission types, made me come up with new tactics constantly.
Squad customization is also deep and satisfying. There is no standard currency in the Wayback, so all gear is either a mission reward or purchased using the barter system on the black market. But even once you do build up enough scrap bombs and alien guts to trade for the best stuff available, there’s a supply budget on each mission that takes into account every piece of equipment and keeps you from simply buying your way to victory. I think this could use some tuning, since it currently feels like the missions are getting harder a bit faster than my supply budget is increasing. It’s almost there. Maybe just a nudge is all it needs.
It seems like a lot of thought has gone into the various veterancy upgrades squads can earn from promotions, as well. They’re pretty well-balanced, feeling powerful enough to be meaningful but not so game-changing as to trivialize combat on their own, like increasing evasion based on how many tiles you moved. Each has a clear role in mind, and almost none feel like they wouldn’t be at least situationally useful. It’s an area of progression where I can really tell developer Overhype Studios has a strong footing in what works and what doesn’t about this genre.
The strategic layer is not quite as well-developed yet. There are a few different things you can buy with the components gained from completing each multi-mission operation. You have ship upgrades like the med bay and the recruiting office for managing manpower, along with armaments that can be deployed from orbit a limited number of times per mission. Then you have loyalty tracks with each of the three major Wayback factions that can unlock their unique buildings, which can do things like give you an extra chance at post-mission loot or allow you to call in supplies in the middle of a mission.
They can be neat, but still feel a bit limited in both scope and depth. It’s a good first iteration, but this is for sure somewhere I’d like to see more love given to over the course of Early Access. There are also only three planets so far, which can start to feel a little samey after a while. More are in the works. Technical bugs have been relatively sparse, though my main file is afflicted by a fairly annoying one right now where my manpower counter seems to be permanently broken.
Battlefield 6 players aren’t happy after EA and Battlefield Studios’ changes to two of its most controversial cosmetics failed to live up to expectations.
Following promises to address fan feedback last week, the Battlefield community was quick to see how update 1.1.3.6 adjusted the Objective Ace skin and Winter Warning sticker when the patch went live this morning. The problem is the changes are almost too small to notice.
The ‘Objective Ace’ Battlefield 6 Skin with the similar #CallofDuty Ghosts Logo has been UPDATED 👀
Let’s first take a look at Objective Ace. The skin drew criticism through Season 1 when players noticed it bore a striking resemblance to the Call of Duty: Ghosts logo, with both sharing even a few finer details, such as cracks and paint streaks. The Assault skin also caught flak related to the large white armor piece located on its chest.
The updated version of the cosmetic received the more noticeable facelift of the two impacted, with its updated look now featuring new details and a slimmer design overall. Still, it’s not enough for the players who were expecting more significant changes.
“[I] think the damage has already been done,” one player commented.
“Why did they copy COD in the first place?” another added.
The Winter Warning sticker, on the other hand, was the center of controversy when players noticed details that suggested it may have been created using generative AI. Battlefield 6 update 1.1.3.6 seems to have brought no change to its design, with its soldier finger placement and double-barreled M4A1 still plainly in view despite being two of the bigger talking points amongst fans.
It’s been cause for concern for those who feel EA and BF Studios may have misled fans. However, the developers have since stepped in to say the timing relayed in last week’s patch notes, which promised to adjust Winter Warning with the February 3 update, was “incorrect.”
“The latest update notes communicated that a change would be made for the Winter Warning Player Card Sticker to bring it more in line with Battlefield’s visual identity,” a message shared today says. “This timing was incorrect. Winter Warning will be updated when Season 2 launches on February 17th.”
It’s unclear what the new version of the sticker will look like when it launches with Season 2 in about two weeks. For now, players have taken to social media to call attention to both the delay and the relatively small changes to the cosmetics.
Battlefield 6 saw a strong start when it released October 10, 2025, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S but has faced backlash in recent weeks as players hope for fundamental changes to how BF Studios is handling post-launch content. The fallout from a disappointing end to Season 1 reached a boiling point in early January, with the team eventually announcing that Season 2 had been delayed.
Following an extended Season 1, Season 2 will launch February 17. Players got a first look at its new map, Contaminated, a few weeks ago, and more content (including the return of a Battlefield 4 map) is in the works for the future.
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).
The CEO of Take-Two Interactive has denied ongoing rumors that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be a digital-only release upon its initial launch.
This comes from Variety, which spoke to CEO Strauss Zelnick today ahead of the company’s Q3 2026 earnings release. When asked if subsidiary Rockstar would delay the release of physical copies of GTA 6 until 2027 to avoid leaks, he replied, “That’s not the plan.”
Rumors of such a physical delay emerged late last month, when an alleged insider industry source shared that Take-Two had no plans for a physical edition of the game at release due to concerns about physical copies falling into hands early and leaking online.
Notably, the report suggests that physical copies could be delayed into 2027, or delayed just a few weeks, which would make Zelnick’s answer somewhat unclear. IGN reached out to Take-Two to get more clarity on what his statement meant, and was informed that Zelnick’s statement was denying any delay plan at all, not just a move to 2027 specifically.
GTA 6 is still set for release on November 18, 2026, a date that Zelnick reaffirmed confidently to us today, alongside plans for Rockstar to spin up its marketing machine this summer. The game has already suffered from multiple leaks, both of development footage and of its first trailer, alongside a number of AI-generated fake leaks. We also spoke to Zelnick today about Google Genie ahead of the company’s Q3 earnings report, in which Take-Two announced it had brought in net bookings of $1.76 billion for the quarter, and that it’s raising its expectations for the year to have net bookings between $6.65 billion to $6.7 billion.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Last week, Google announced Project Genie, an AI-powered virtual world creator still in its infancy that seemed to spook a number of video game investors. Following the announcement, stock prices of companies such as Take-Two, Roblox, and Unity took a noticeable dip, seemingly due to a belief that Genie was going to mostly or fully replace user-generated content down the line. But at least one of those companies’ CEOs isn’t ruffled by the price drop: Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick.
Speaking to IGN today ahead of the company’s Q3 earnings call, Zelnick responded to my question about whether or not he saw Genie as a threat to Take-Two’s business. He doesn’t. Quite the contrary, he sound pretty positive. Here’s his response in full:
“This company and its products were built upon machine learning and artificial intelligence more than 25 years ago. That’s the story of this business; we use computers to create what we do. So we’re energized and excited by these new tools and the prospects that they bring. We have actively embraced new AI, I said so when we spoke about it in the last couple calls. [Author’s note: I ask Zelnick something about AI most quarters as news-relevant, here’s a summary from 2023 of what has been his consistent stance.] In fact, we have hundreds of pilots and implementations [of AI] across our company including with our studios. I think tools are what drive additional innovation in what we do, drive efficiency, and drive creativity, and that’s our three-part strategy.
“I think the confusion in the marketplace is somehow that tools equals properties…and tools and properties are very different things. Creators use tools to make amazing entertainment, and of course that will never change, and once you make amazing entertainment you have to market it worldwide, and the people who are best at marketing entertainment worldwide are big, significant entertainment enterprises with the balance sheet to actually support those launches, companies like us. So I feel more optimistic than ever that new technology is going to allow us to supercharge our business.”
In the past, including in the aforementioned 2023 conversation with Zelnick, I’ve asked him if he thinks generative AI will ever be able to create a GTA-like game wholesale, and his response has always been that it won’t. But I asked him today if the appearance of Genie had changed anything for him; it hasn’t.
“I don’t think theres any tool by itself that you can press a button and make a competitive property,” Zelnick said. “Some romance novelists for example are using AI tools to write certain parts of their book, but they still have to come up with the concept, the characters, and the structure. I don’t think you’re going to find hit movies, hit novels, hit songs, being entirely created with technology with no creator interaction, it’s just not the history of creativity. So I think perhaps people are confusing tools and technology with hits, and they’re really different things, and I would never want to underestimate the importance of human genius, even with fantastic tools. I think fantastic tools unlock human genius to do great things.”
Okay, but what if those fantastic tools, available now to anyone, are used to make a clone of a GTA game? Does Zelnick have any intellectual property concerns? Sort of, sure, but he’s seemingly of the mind that it’s better to work with the community than against them.
“We protect our intellectual property and we are respectful of toher people’s intellectual property,” he said. “At the same time we’ve allowed a lot of users to engage with a lot of our games and of course the FiveM business is an example of that. User-generated content can be and already is a big part of what we do around here. I also feel that user-generated content sort of stands side-by-side with professionally-generated entertainment. For example, YouTube is a huge business, but it represents about 12.5% of overall linear entertainment consumption. 87.5% is still old-fashioned, professional content made by human beings.” [Take-Two cited Activate Consulting as the source of this stat following the call.]
We also spoke to Zelnick about his confidence in GTA 6’s release date, and Rockstar spinning up marketing for the game this summer. In today’s earnings report, Take-Two announced it had brought in net bookings of $1.76 billion for the quarter, and that it’s raising its expectations for the year to have net bookings between $6.65 billion to $6.7 billion.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
It never ceases to amaze me all the different types of games that designers can create from the same source material. One property that exemplifies that in recent years is The Lord of the Rings. Last year, we took a look at The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game, and now the adventure continues with the next entry, The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game, designed by Bryan Bornmueller and published by Asmodee. Whether you played the previous game or not, it’s time to don your leather armor, because The Two Towers is well worth picking up.
As the name implies, The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game plays like your typical trick-taking game, with players competing to win hands of cards – referred to as tricks – by playing and following a special suit that is led at the start of each round. What makes The Two Towers (and its predecessor) unique is that it’s a purely cooperative game.
While I knew this going in, having not played The Fellowship of the Ring, I wasn’t entirely sure how this was going to work – but in a few moments, it quickly became clear, and I found it rather clever. In order to progress, each character has to succeed in their respective goals, such as the Gimli player being required to win six mountain-suited cards or Boromir winning two tricks before the Black Tower card is played, and no more afterwards. What makes The Two Towers (and the previous game) a cooperative experience is that, while you are still competing against other players to take the tricks, the team is working to complete every one of the active characters’ goals.
Included in the small box are 19 chapters to play through, though “scenarios” would be a more apt term to describe them. Each of the chapters gives you a number of options. You have different playable characters to choose from. You can play either a short or long version of the chapter. You can even add in new characters or objectives. With short missions, you only need to complete a single game with all players successfully completing their goals. Long missions require you and your friends to play through multiple games back-to-back in order to complete all the possible characters’ objectives, with losing scrapping any progress you’d made so far (though you can just opt to replay those characters too).
What makes The Two Towers (and its predecessor) unique is that it’s a purely cooperative game.
The Two Towers is billed as a standalone expansion, but a standalone “continuation” may be more appropriate, which would make sense considering the source material. If you played The Fellowship, The Two Towers will feel incredibly similar. There are a couple of new types of cards, including the Orcs, which can only be played when you can’t follow, can never win a trick; worst of all, if you are forced to lead with an Orc, you all lose the chapter.
The White and Black Tower cards are also new, with each one always winning the trick they are played during but canceling each other out if played during the same one. The White Tower also fills in for the One Ring from the previous game, with whoever is dealt the card assuming the role of Aragorn and the first hand’s leader.
Individual games are pretty quick, with a typical short mission only taking up maybe 10–15 minutes. The length of longer missions, since they are composed of multiple full games to complete, fluctuate depending on how many games you end up needing to play. The short turnaround makes this a great option to bust out whether you only have time for a quick-playing game, or you want to do a marathon and get through a bunch of chapters in a single go over the course of an afternoon.
I appreciate when games offer that sort of flexibility. These short game times are helped along with the overall small footprint the game takes up, both in terms of its box and tablespace. As someone who loves to frequent my local tavern much like a hobbit, the fact that the box can easily fit into a backpack or purse is a nice touch.
My experience with the trick-taking genre has been mostly with straightforward, competitive games like Euchre, where I’ve only had to deal with navigating around a trump suit. I’ve found myself enamored with The Two Towers and its cooperative approach. Celebrating a shared victory with the entire table thanks to a clutch trump on the last hand to secure the win has a vastly different feeling than pulling a surprise trick in Euchre that wins a game for just your team. There is also no feeling quite like being forced to play an Orc card and losing it all in Euchre, either.
From a visual standpoint, I adore the stained glass aesthetic of all of the cards and artwork, and busting this game out at my local brewery, its visuals have caused more than a couple of fellow tavern visitors to stop and ask, “What’s that?!”. The cards themselves almost garnered more glances than our random outbursts cursing orcs (but only just).
There is a solo and a two-player mode, and while I only dabbled in the solo mode, my wife and I enjoyed the two-player variation. This variant features a third game-controlled player whose hand of cards is placed in a reveal pyramid, with only cards that aren’t covered up able to be played. It reminded me a lot of 7 Wonders Duel, but I enjoyed it more than managing multiple hands in solo mode. To be fair, though, I’m not much of a solo board game player in the first place.
As much as I have enjoyed actually playing The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game, my favorite part of the game has surprisingly been the moment each new chapter scenario is revealed. As someone who loves fantasy books, and especially The Lord of the Rings, I always get a kick out of seeing how the next moments of the book will be represented, what new character cards are pulled, and what we have to do next. Much like Fellowship, once all of the chapters are complete, a repeatable mode rule is there to let you and your group play afterwards, coming up with challenging character combinations and goals as you want. And for those who own Fellowship, there are rules to mix the two games’ characters together, though both games’ cards have unique backs so you will always be able to separate them back out again.
For those who own Fellowship, there are rules to mix the two games’ characters together.
My main critique, and a minor one at that, is that I would have appreciated heavier strategic elements. Even with the various goals of the characters and twists of the chapters to keep things interesting, I would have loved some aspect that lends itself more to strategy than the more luck-based nature these sorts of games lean toward. But even this complaint is more a “wouldn’t it be neat if…” sort of wish.
After playing The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game, I was instantly searching online to get myself the Fellowship version, as I just wanted more. The cooperative take on the trick-taking genre, mixed with beloved characters and the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, meshes wonderfully into a solid and replayable package. That it is a cooperative game makes this a solid choice to introduce the genre to folks who haven’t tried it out, but if you aren’t a fan of trick-takers at a mechanical level, I’m not sure this will win you over. Still, thanks to its small footprint and easy setup, The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game is an easy recommendation, and a must-get if you loved the Fellowship version.
Blizzard Entertainment is getting ready to showcase a sneak peek at “huge reveals” for Overwatch with a Spotlight event – and it’s all happening in less than 24 hours.
Last week, the company announced plans to deliver updates for games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and more directly to fans with a series of showcases throughout late January and early February, and all eyes are on the team behind its controversial hero shooter to see what the future holds. There are plenty of rumors going around regarding what will be shown during the February 4, 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET show, as players look forward to seeing what comes after Overwatch 2 Season 20: Vendetta.
As of last week, however, there is one big question on everyone’s mind: Why did Talon take control of Overwatch? Blizzard issued a hostile takeover hotfix last week, changing all iconography from the familiar Overwatch logo to that of the in-universe antagonist faction, Talon.
It’s been an unexpected, unexplained villain arc that’s continued through to today, with even official social media accounts affected by the changes. With confusion in the air, it would be strange if Blizzard didn’t talk about Talon during tomorrow’s showcase, so we’re hoping to find out what role it might play in Season 21.
“Overwatch Spotlight is a shared moment with our community, for our community,” a recent blog post from the Overwatch team says. “A chance to see where the game is headed, hear directly from the team, and step into the next chapter side by side.”
Meanwhile, several clues have the community expecting a more fundamental change for Overwatch 2. Specifically, fans across the internet believe this so-called “next chapter” will see the number 2 dropped from the Overwatch title altogether.
Speculation began when Blizzard announced the event last week, as audiences noticed the Overwatch logo featured on official artwork was missing its 2. It’s led many to assume the first-person live-service game could either soon drop the number, or that tomorrow’s showcase should cover information outside of Overwatch 2 itself. Theories for the former started to hold more weight when players seemed to find evidence suggesting its story-centered Invasion Bundle had dropped the two from its name, as well.
The hero shooter, which first launched in 2016 and will celebrate its 10-year anniversary this year, went through a major revamp in October 2022 that saw it transformed into Overwatch 2. It gained three new heroes – Sojourn, Kiriko, and Junker Queen – a visual overhaul, gameplay changes across its dozens of heroes, and a lot of hate, as players criticized its unstable launch and the controversial adjustments to its monetization strategy.
Many of the more problematic changes have been reverted or altered in the years since launch, with 6v6 queue options, additional heroes, map adjustments, and even loot boxes all added within the past year alone. It’s resulted in a small resurgence for the game, as players turn up as Blizzard attempts to steer toward a brighter tomorrow.
Another talking point players are hoping to see brought up includes what could be in store for next Season, such as potentially new maps, another collaboration or crossover, Perk reworks, and a theme. Fans are also hoping to see what its next hero may look like after Vendetta was added in Season 20, though the Overwatch team typically launches just one hero every other season, so we may have a slightly longer wait in that regard.
The last time the studio put hype like this behind a showcase was last year’s February event, suggesting that whatever the developers have planned for tomorrow will likely be huge. Like the 2025 Spotlight, Blizzard has parternered with a long list of some of the biggest streamers for this year’s show.
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).
The developer behind Dispatch — the superhero game that’s censored on Nintendo Switch — has said it is “legally unable” to explain why it is unable to launch an unedited version of its game in specific regions — as CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk 2077.
“This is the key point,” AdHoc added. “Nintendo has content guidelines. Our game didn’t meet those guidelines, so we made changes that would allow us to release on their platform. That’s what happened here. Honestly we thought this would be obvious since we’re the devs that released the fully uncensored version of the game on other platforms.”
While AdHoc has stated that this explanation was obvious, it has not been able to explain why Cyberpunk 2077 released unedited in most countries around the world, while Dispatch did not. Indeed, many fans have called for Dispatch to get the same treatment, with a censored version released in Japan, where the country’s strict rating board has been blamed for not allowing the game to launch unedited.
Now, AdHoc has responded on this point too — if only to say it is prohibited from explaining the situation in more detail.
“AdHoc is legally unable to provide further comment on why separate SKUs were not possible for different regions,” the company said in a statement to GoNintendo, adding that there was “no possibility” for an uncensored physical edition either, and that it had no physical edition plans to announce.
