If you’re looking to upgrade your gaming PC and want to keep your budget to under $1,500, then one deal stands out above all the rest. Walmart is offering the iBuypower Element Pro gaming PC equipped with an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU for just $1499 with free delivery. This was the best “high-end” gaming PC deal during Prime Day – better than anything I found on Amazon – and it’s still the best deal I’ve seen so far at this price point. The Radeon RX 9070 XT is an outstanding graphics card that can run the latest games (like Battlefield 6) in 4K.
iBuypower Element Pro Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming PC $1499
The iBuypower gaming PC is generously equipped across the board. It features an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X CPU, Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and 2TB M.2 SSD. The Ryzen 9 7900X processor has a max boost clock of 5.6GHz with 12 cores and 24 threads. This is an excellent CPU for both gaming and multi-tasking and you won’t need to upgrade from it for a long time. It’s cooled by a very robust 360mm all-in-one liquid cooling system and run off an 850W power supply.
The Radeon RX 9070 XT Received a 10/10 at IGN
We rated the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT a “perfect” 10/10. Even though it costs $150 less than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, the 9070 XT beats it out in several of the games we tested. In a few benchmarks, the results aren’t even close. The 9070 XT is also comparable in performance to the older $1,000 RX 7900 XTX but with better ray tracing and upscaling performance than its predecessor. It does lose out on VRAM (16GB vs 24GB), but that isn’t really an issue for gaming. By “4K ready” I mean that this gaming PC can run pretty much any game at 4K resolution and at framerates of 60fps or higher. Any video card that’s weaker and you’ll have to compromise in order to get playable framerates.
The Battlefield 6 Beta Runs This Weekend
Battlefield 6 is out in October and there’s one final open beta that runs August 14-17. It’s shaping up to be a solid game that goes back to its true roots . Check out our initial impressions of the beta and go ahead and try the game. Battlefield 6 has fairly lax requirements for a new release title; EA recommends at last a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT GPU to achieve 30fps at 1080p, although an RTX 4080 or more powerful GPU is recommended for gaming in 4K.
Check out more Alienware Back to School deals
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
I know a multiplayer shooter is really clicking when my buddies and I are all swapping stories at the end of the night. There was the time my Banshee was skyjacked over a pit in Halo Infinite, and I used my Grappleshot to quickly re-skyjack it, sending the would-be thief to their grave. Or when we were down to just my friend Geoff against four opposing players in a game of Valorant, and he channeled his inner John Wick to suddenly become a shotgun god and win it for us. After a week in the trenches, streets, and crumbling buildings of Battlefield 6’s first two beta weekends, one thing is clear: we are going to have a lot of stories to share.
The first thing I noticed as I loaded into the Conquest mode was just how much destruction was happening all around me. Buildings were coming apart, trees were shattering, and walls were crumbling as dirt and dust filled the air. It looks like a war movie, and stopping to let the smoke from a car explosion clear made the area I was in feel less like a playground for a shooting game, and more like, well, a battlefield. On more than one occasion, I found myself drawing the unwanted attention of an enemy tank, and the sheer volume of wreckage all around as it’s cannon opened fire left me feeling like Lord Beckett walking across his rapidly disintegrating ship at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
That destruction is not just there for the vibes, either. Blowing away the other team’s cover with the Assault class’s grenade launcher forces a satisfying reevaluation of their strategy, and knocking down walls to breach an objective or create new sight lines is a tactical delight. That’s not to say you will be kool-aid manning your way around everywhere you go. Unlike The Finals, where the walls are (affectionately) made out of dried breadsticks, here cement walls act like cement, and you’ll need that aforementioned grenade launcher, some rockets, or a trusty tank to fully take advantage of the map, elevating the importance of your equipment selection.
There are four classes to choose from in the Beta, though you have a lot more control over their kit than in previous Battlefield games. Anyone can equip any gun, so if you want to be a sniper rifle-packing Support medic, you can. I’m a little weary of the possibility of meta builds cropping up that would be a mistake not to use, but so far, the variety I’ve seen across both friends and foes seems in keeping with what I would expect in any other shooter like this. Each class also gets special perks with their signature gadget, weapon, and trait. For example, the Engineer takes reduced explosion damage and the Recon can hold their breath to steady their Sniper rifles, which provides a nice push to match your loadout with your class.
Fights reward a keen eye rather than just being the fastest on the draw.
People often gravitate towards assault classes, but Battlefield 6 continues the series’ history of making the support options viable, if not essential at times. Engineers are a necessity in bigger maps with vehicles, as their rockets hammer away at map-dominating tanks, and their blowtorch repairs friendly vehicles. Any class can raise the near-dead, which is a change from previous Battlefield games, but the long activation time is often a fast way to join your injured buddy, so the Support’s ability to instantly get the down-but-not-out to their feet using their defibrillator can turn the tide of a close skirmish. This is especially valuable in match types where your side has a limited pool of respawns to draw from.
The shooting itself errs on the easy side, which I think is the right fit for the massive number of players you can see in a given match. Weapons are very accurate, and the minimal recoil means they remain accurate through sustained fire, resulting in a relatively high skill floor, with even bottom-of-the-leaderboard players contributing a decent number of kills much of the time. That’s not to say that skilled play isn’t rewarded. I’ve been on both sides of a fight where one player shoots first, hits a body, and is taken down by a perfectly placed headshot in return.
The fast time-to-kill rewards a keen eye rather than just being the fastest on the draw, and the importance of decision making above almost anything else is a great differentiator compared to other military shooters. Do you take the slow route through back alleys to your objective, risking some potential ambushes on the way, or do you try and find the right time to spring across the wide open road, hoping a sniper isn’t watching or an armored vehicle isn’t on patrol? It’s supremely satisfying to set up an ambush inside a key building, shotgunning players that are foolish enough to run by without checking their corner.
The match types available in the beta don’t break any new ground, but I don’t mind, given how well they play. Conquest is the headliner, with 64 players mixed between infantry and vehicles, and wide open maps with control points to fight over and hold. Eliminating enemies or owning those points drains a limited supply of respawns on the other team, which means playing the objectives or looking for fights both contribute in satisfying ways. Breakthrough is similar, though with a more defined offense (which has those same limited respawns) and defense (with infinite reinforcement). There are more options like Rush, which is a bit like Counterstrike without rounds, or classic Team Deathmatch alongside a few others, but I haven’t been able to peel myself away from the joy of Conquest long enough to spend much time with them yet.
We are still in the beta period, but I’m already having an absolute blast with Battlefield 6’s multiplayer. The action is sublime, with a cinematic quality to the constantly raining debris that is enhanced by how legitimately effective it is to take strategic advantage of that destruction. The accurate guns and short time-to-kill mean anyone has a chance in a gunfight, but the other classes bring enough to the table to make focusing on keeping your team alive or your vehicles operating a viable way to contribute, even when direct combat isn’t your strength. I still need to spend more time with the various vehicles, which is a game unto itself, and I need to play the maps a lot more before I can really render any informed opinions on them (I’m looking at you, sniper-infested cliffs on Liberation Peak). It will also be interesting to see what, if anything, changes or is retuned for the official launch in October – but right now, even in beta form, Battlefield 6 might be the most fun shooter I’ve played this year.
Dell has a great deal on a current generation PC that will get you ready for upcoming games like Battlefield 6. Right now you can get an Alienware Aurora R16 gaming PC equipped with the GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card for as low as $2,149.99 with free delivery. That’s one of the best prices I’ve seen for an RTX 5080 prebuilt, which is impressive considering you would typically pay more for the Alienware brand. Although GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card prices are trending downwards, you still can’t find it for under $1,000, so you’d be hard pressed to build your own diy PC for cheaper.
Alienware Aurora RTX 5080 Gaming PC From $2,149.99
There are three tiers of this Alienware RTX 5080 gaming PC currently discounted. The base model costs $2,149.99 and is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F CPU, GeForce RTX 5080 CPU, 16GB of DDR5-5600MHz RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD. The mid-line model upgrades the CPU to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor (currently the most powerful Intel CPU available) and doubles the memory to 32GB for $2,599.99. The top-end model quadruples the memory to 64GB, and doubles the storage to 2TB SSD for $2,749.99.
The Core Ultra 7 265F is part of Intel’s newest Arrow Lake-S lineup released earlier this year and boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.3GHz with 20 cores and a 36MB L2 cache. This is a good all-around CPU for gaming, multi-tasking, and general workstation performance. For gaming, you won’t see much of an improvement upgrading to a Core Ultra 9, especially if you plan to play at high resolutions where the GPU makes much more of an impact. However for multi-tasking and workstation and creator tasks, the Core Ultra 9 is superior because it has significantly more cores.
The GeForce RTX 5080 GPU will run any game in 4K
The RTX 5080 is the second best Blackwell graphics card, surpassed only by the $2,000 RTX 5090. It’s about 5%-10% faster than the previous generation RTX 4080 Super, which is discontinued and no longer available. In games that support the new DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation exclusive to Blackwell cards, the gap widens. This is an outstanding card for playing even the latest games at 4K resolution with high settings and ray tracing enabled.
The Battlefield 6 Beta Runs This Weekend
Battlefield 6 is out in October and there’s one final open beta that runs August 14-17. It’s shaping up to be a solid game that goes back to its true roots . Check out our initial impressions of the beta and go ahead and try the game. Battlefield 6 has fairly lax requirements for a new release title; EA recommends at last a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT GPU to achieve 30fps at 1080p, although an RTX 4080 or more powerful GPU is recommended for gaming in 4K.
Check out more Alienware Back to School deals
Not everyone is the DIY type. If you’re in the market for a prebuilt gaming PC, Dell is one of the best brands we’d recommend. Nowadays, the best Alienware deals are competitive compared to the cost of building your own PC with equivalent specs. Alienware desktops and laptops feature solid build quality, top-of-the-line gaming performance, and excellent cooling (further improved on the newer models). Best of all, there are plenty of sales that happen throughout the year, so it’s not difficult to grab one of these computers at considerably less than their retail price.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
Last month, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers developer Leenzee Games promised fans that a number of performance and optimization issues plaguing the game since launch would be patched out promptly. Now, patch 1.5 does seem to address many of these issues, but with a strange cost: it also makes sweeping changes to many of the game’s enemies, dialogue, and story that have fans even more unhappy.
If you look at the patch notes for 1.5, they initially seem pretty inocuous. There’s some bug fixes, and a lot of good improvements such as a sped-up healing animation and the ability to dodge cancel out of the recovery animation. There’s also an “optimization” in there that the patch notes say is in preparation to allow players to respawn closer to bosses they’ve died to, which will be another welcome change when it lands.
But tucked in the lengthy patch notes are a couple oddities:
Added dialogs for some NPCs to complete some plots. We will further optimize the exhaustion animations in the future to improve the plot performance.
Fixed the faction bug in Chapter 4, adjusted the level design, and increased the performance effect of BVB.
Added some ‘Wuchang’ voice to complete the story, and added some NPC dialogues.
So what’s all that about? As documented on Twitter/X by Lance McDonald, the update has made significant changes to certain NPCs, bosses, and enemies to make it so they canonically do not die.
Looks like the latest update to WUCHANG which makes dodging way easier and healing way faster also sadly censors the game’s story a bit. A historically significant character no longer dies but runs away happily ever after, and you can no longer kill innocent farmer enemies.
Prior to the patch, you were able to target and kill certain human NPCs you encountered throughout the game. These characters were passive, uninteractable otherwise, and didn’t attack you, but you murdering them affected your character’s “madness” mechanic in a way that made for legitimately interesting gameplay. Now, that’s no longer true — the NPCs are untargetable and unkillable, effectively removing the ability to choose to interact with the madness mechanic in that specific way.
Additionally, this change also significantly impacts the game’s fourth chapter, which was previously quite chaotic and difficult to manage due to a number of human enemies trying to attack you. Now, a large portion of those enemies aren’t hostile at all, turning what was once a very challenging chapter into a bit of a cakewalk.
Oh wow, the entirety of chapter 4 is now insanely easy because 50% of the enemies are now non-hostile to the player and you can’t attack them during the rebellion outbreak. What a mess.
On top of this, multiple challenging bosses no longer “die” when you defeat them. Instead, they simply stand there, “exhausted,” or run away to live happily ever after, or claim the intense battle that just took place was all just a “trial.”
One of the most difficult and epic boss fights now ends with the boss no longer dying but instead saying “it was all just a trial! And actually the path you are on is good! Hahaha!” Holy wow https://t.co/SYYFhlUkXm
While the first two issues impact gameplay directly, the boss changes are being roundly criticized by players for how they impact the game’s story. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers heavily focuses on themes of death, and being able to accept the death of a loved one or a period in one’s life. Many of the enemies in Fallen Feathers are actively trying to thwart death, or prolong something that will inevitably come to a close. So in several of these cases, them not dying at all completely flies in the face of the game’s message of accepting death’s inevitability.
As of yet, developer Leenzee Games has not explained why these changes were made, or made any statement at all beyond the patch notes (IGN has reached out for comment). However, many players are correctly pointing out that the characters impacted by the changes seem to have something in common: they’re all humans who are affiliated with the Ming Dynasty in some way.
Fallen Feathers is historical fiction, and takes place in 1600s China at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the last dynasty ruled by the Han Chinese before the Qing took over. Though the story of the game originally used the ending of the Ming Dynasty to effectively frame its message about death and moving on, now, none of the Ming characters die or move on, rendering the premise ineffectual. As a result, a number of negative Steam reviews and posts on various social platforms are accusing Leenzee of self-censoring, allegedly due to feedback from a segment of largely Chinese players upset about the game’s treatment of the Ming characters.
“Improving game performance is welcoming,” reads one “not recommended” Steam review from August 13, by someone with 58 hours in the game. “But this must be the first time I’ve heard of story plot change post release. As far as I am aware. Plot change made the story completely different, and even make some of the characters motivation pointless. I don’t know what kind of pressure Leenzee got to go as far as changing the games plot. I’ve read that it was criticized by some gamers for not being historically accurate. But the story is ficiton is it not? I have decided to stop playing for now, and hope Leenzee undo the plot changes. Or at least make it possible to rollback to patch 1.4.”
IGN reviewed the release version of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers at launch and gave it an 8/10, calling it “yet another great soulslike to add to the ever-increasing pile, featuring excellent combat, wonderful level design, an incredible skill tree, and fearsome bosses.” So if you can find a way to play on the pre-patch version, it seems like that’s the way to go for now.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
With so many great games coming down the pipeline, now’s a great time to hop on the Xbox Game Pass bandwagon. If some titles joining the catalog this year have caught your eye and you’re itching to join in on the fun, you can choose between one or three month Game Pass Ultimate membership options at Amazon. Unfortunately, there aren’t any discount deals available at the moment, but we’ll update this when a new one drops.
You can learn more about options for signing up, what’s coming soon to Game Pass this month, and the big releases still to come below.
While there aren’t any deals available at the moment, we’ve included where you can buy a one month Game Pass Ultimate membership above at Amazon. This will set you back $19.99. Amazon also has a three month Game Pass Ultimate membership option available for $59.99, if you want to stock up on a few months to get you started.
What’s Coming Soon to Xbox Game Pass?
Game Pass has a nice rotation of new titles to play every month. If you’re curious about what’s in store for August, we’ve got you covered. The Xbox Game Pass August Wave 1 lineup is:
Rain World(Cloud, Console, and PC) – August 5 Now with Game Pass Standard
Aliens: Fireteam Elite(Cloud, Console, and PC) – August 7 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard
9 Kings (Game Preview)(PC) – August 14 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
It’s important to note that the Game Pass Standard tier (available for $14.99/month) does not give users access to day one releases – that’s exclusive to the Game Pass Ultimate tier. If you’re looking to play big Xbox exclusives and other new games on the day they release, you’ll need to be subscribed to Game Pass Ultimate.
What Games Are Leaving Xbox Game Pass?
Unfortunately with new games joining the catalog it means a few must take their leave. Below, we’ve listed the games that’ll be leaving Xbox Game Pass on August 15.
The latest big release on the platform is Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. In our review, IGN’s Mitchell Saltzman said, “Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is yet another great soulslike to add to the ever-increasing pile, featuring excellent combat, wonderful level design, an incredible skill tree, and fearsome bosses. Just watch out for some steep difficulty dips and spikes, and a reliance on cheap-feeling “gotcha!” ambushes.”
If you’re looking for even more savings on all things Xbox, have a look at our roundup of the best Xbox deals. There, we’ve highlighted all of the latest and greatest discounts on the platform, from incredible game deals to fantastic offers on high-quality headphones. Or, if you’d rather see what’s going on with other platforms, check out our roundups of the best PlayStation deals, the best Nintendo Switch deals, and our overall roundup of the best video game deals.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.
Cal Kestis, the hero of EA’s Star Wars Jedi video games, will appear in a spin-off TV series — marking his first voiced appearance in another medium.
The redheaded Jedi will play a role in new episodes of Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy set to debut on streaming service Disney+ next month. A non-canon spin-off set in a “What If?”-style remixed Star Wars universe, Rebuild the Galaxy previously introduced the world to Darth Jar-Jar. Who knows what this second round of episodes will see Kestis (or an alternate universe version of him) get up to.
As in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Kestis will once again be voiced by Cameron Monaghan, in the actor’s first voice role as Kestis outside of a video game. News of Monaghan’s return, as well as Kestis’ appearance on a poster for the series, come amid fan speculation the Jedi may eventually turn up in live-action form — something Monaghan himself has said he is open to.
“I don’t want him to just kind of show up to stand around and be there. I want him to mean something and for there to be a significance for the character itself. So, it would have to make sense. But in the right context then, yeah, absolutely.”
Kestis’ appearance in Rebuild the Galaxy marks the latest appearance of his popular character outside of Respawn’s Jedi series, alongside other elements from the games. Kestis already has a spin-off novel, Jedi: Battle Scars, and popped up in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, a smartphone game also published by EA.
Over time, various elements from the Star Wars: Jedi series have popped up elsewhere. A droid of the same model as Kestis’ loyal companion BD-1 is featured in Episode 5 of The Book of Boba Fett (you can also buy the droid as a LEGO set), while Season 1 of Ahsoka saw the titular Jedi use psychometry. This rare force ability allows Jedi to detect echoes of the past by interacting with objects or locations, and was taken by some as an indication that Ashoka had encountered Kestis at some point in her past.
Is this just Disney having fun with its vast cast of Star Wars characters, a reminder there’s still a third Star Wars: Jedi game from Respawn on the way, or a tease that fans can expect yet more from Kestis (and Monaghan) in future? Time will tell.
For now, Rebuild the Galaxy launches via Disney+ on September 19.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
What I’d consider the best parts of horror in games aren’t jump scares or gruesome monsters chasing you, rather an eerie atmosphere or a lingering feeling of dread – knowing something is a little off. I’ve long heralded the 2008 cult-classic OFF, an RPG Maker (2003) game from developer Mortis Ghost, for how it wields its lo-fi art style to evoke that powerful sense of dread and reveal things that are truly horrifying. As a small-scale game that only had an English version via fan translation in 2011, this official remaster in 2025 is important for preserving an influential retro-style RPG, especially as it is largely faithful to the original. In some respects, it hasn’t aged quite as gracefully as I’d hoped (partially due to the hindsight of having played so many amazing games it inspired in the years since), but OFF’s blend of goofiness embedded in a deeply unsettling story has stood the test of time.
OFF is one of those games where its limitations are part of its strengths. Color and the absence of it are used to shift the vibe of the overworld in chilling ways as you progress. The hand-drawn sketch-like character designs give a deranged look to enemies that complements their desolate, off-kilter world. And the low-tech pixel art has a way of being a powerful tool for creating a foreboding atmosphere, letting your imagination tease out an underlying psychological horror. These are some of OFF’s defining features, and also remain effective as you unravel its disturbing truths.
You control The Batter, a guy rocking a baseball uniform and armed with a bat who is ready to hit some dingers, and you’re on a mission to “purify” a dystopian world of evil ghosts. Without much explanation, a nightmarish cat called The Judge speaks to you in a philosopher’s tone to ponder how your decisions will be accounted for. Aside from one specific moment, there aren’t choices to make, but it’s interesting context for a story that reveals itself through the actions you have to take. I, as the player, felt increasingly uneasy about where things were going – but to The Batter, it’s just another plate appearance. That contrast is still quite effective, and OFF makes this distinction clear in its breaking of the fourth wall from the very start.
It’s a fairly short game, taking about seven-to-eight hours to finish and defeat the secret bosses, including a few new ones. The world is made up of five zones, some of which represent industrial production where workers are ground to the bone by authoritarian figures. Liquid plastic makes up its seas, meat and metal are harvested ad nauseum, and the sugar mines bring about the worst parts of its society. A few dialogue sequences use obscure sketches like they’re out of an old textbook and items you inspect in the environment feed into its cryptic worldbuilding. More often, however, it’s the unconventional way characters talk to you and accept their meager existences, which grows more disturbing as you see the consequences of your mission.
Exploration is met with basic puzzles that often require you to pay closer attention to the clues embedded in the environment, playing into slightly bizarre changes in the world – door codes hidden in seemingly nonsensical texts, numbers scribbled on the wall guiding you in switch-hitting puzzles, or navigating sets of rooms that break conventional logic. I wouldn’t call these things particularly engaging, but it’s the surrealist subtext tucked within them that adds to its uncanny nature.
A mix of random battles and NPCs patrolling the overworld make up encounters, and this is one aspect of OFF that hasn’t really held up: its primitive turn-based combat system. The Batter and the floating circles called Add-Ons, which are very nondescript party members you gather throughout the story, each have a basic attack and special attacks with turns running on an ATB-style system. While The Batter is the heavy hitter, Add-Ons provide more of a support role. Other than prioritizing certain targets and accounting for a few elemental affinities, there isn’t much depth or strategic nuance to combat, which becomes a tired exercise outside of a few challenging secret bosses. OFF isn’t really about its combat as it’s more of a vehicle for everything else it does, but it’s a shortcoming nonetheless.
You don’t have to love OFF, but you damn well better respect it.
OFF doesn’t necessarily tell a complex story with tons of layers to peel away, nor is it a straightforward one where everything is spelled out for you. It doesn’t try to be too clever, yet leaves room for interpretation where all roads lead to a… well, really sad story. For all its accomplishments as a uniquely disturbing experience, something beyond that still sticks with me – it’s a strange kind of emotional resonance because of how blunt and unapologetic it is, increasingly off-putting especially with what it ultimately asks you to do. And with each bizarre twist along the way is a unique artistic vision that makes for a memorable experience.
There are a few things that have changed in this remaster, one of the biggest being the soundtrack, which is somewhat polarizing to those familiar with the original such as myself. In light of not being able to bring the original composer back on board, this version of OFF features new songs that try to capture the unsettling, industrial, and discordant sound it once had. It largely succeeds, even if I do miss the specific low-tech flavor of the original. In a full circle moment for both parties, Toby Fox (of Undertale and Deltarune fame) contributed to a few tracks, lending his sound in small ways, which was nice to hear. This isn’t a soundtrack you’re going to bob your head to or throw onto a playlist to evoke memories of a whimsical experience, but it’s an important part of OFF’s identity. It’s one that complements the ghastly barks of its characters and faint ambient sounds that feed into its discomforting vibe.
I appreciate OFF as a relic of the old gaming forums where it gained traction and tumblr blogs that harnessed dedicated fandoms, and as a product of a certain era of the internet I look back on quite fondly. Discovering the original felt like unearthing a gem you wouldn’t find anywhere else, shaping my taste in horror and helping identify what it is that activates that part of my brain, alongside other RPG Maker hits like Yume Nikki. Evidently, it resonated with others, having paved the way for games like Omori and being a stated inspiration for all-timer Undertale. Replaying OFF was like dusting off the blueprints of some of my favorite games, fascinating to revisit and one you have to put some respect on in spite of the ways it aged.
Coming hot off of Deltarune’s latest chapters and having been deeply moved by the series so far here in 2025, I have a certain fondness for its progenitors and I can’t help but see how OFF’s influence persists to this day. Indie games that delve into morality, break the fourth-wall, and subvert expectations have grown and evolved in the years since, meaning OFF doesn’t come across quite as deep as it once did in retrospect. But it is foundational material for the indie RPG scene, and this is a good excuse to play it all these years later regardless of your history.
This week is the Pokémon World Championships in Anaheim, and with it, the first playable demo of Pokémon Legends: Z-A. I had the chance to play two different ten-minute segments of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and though I’m still left with a lot of questions, I did play just enough to develop some first impressions about the mechanic I’m the most curious about: its battle system.
But first, a quick aside, to answer a big question many of you no doubt have: I played the Pokémon Legends: Z-A demo on a Nintendo Switch 2, and it ran well and looked moderately better than the new Switch 2 versions of Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet. Of course, this is just a demo, and thus I didn’t get to experiment with draw distance or put it to the test with dozens of wild Pokémon on screen.
Back to the demo: one portion of my play session was set in the early-game of only the fourth main mission: Battling in the Z-A Royale. Here, I entered a Battle Zone marked by a red area on the map, where I needed to earn enough ticket points in trainer battles to get a Challenger’s Ticket, which is needed to take part in a Promotion Match. Winning that Promotion Match for the Z-A Royale would upgrade my rank from Z to Y.
If a trainer attacks you when you aren’t looking, that means the opponent’s Pokémon gets that free first attack on your Pokémon, which is also a guaranteed critical hit.
We already knew about this core gameplay loop, which I assume we’ll be taking part in repeatedly until we reach Rank A and earn the vague prize of a single wish. It’s an entertaining enough system, where, at night, you roam the streets of a predetermined area to face other starry-eyed trainers. In expected Pokémon fashion, as soon as a trainer sees you, the battle is on–but in Legends: Z-A, if a trainer attacks you when you aren’t looking, that means the opponent’s Pokémon gets that free first attack on your Pokémon, which is also a guaranteed critical hit.
Personally, I find this to be an incredibly rude tactic that goes against the friendly competitive spirit of Pokémon, but of course, I took advantage of it myself when one of my stylish teammates, Lida, suggested I try it out. The tight corners of city streets mean it’s easy to get surprised, but it also offers opportunities for you to crouch and sneak in close to a target yourself.
Battle begins seamlessly, just like in Legends: Arceus, but Legends: Z-A does away with Legends: Arceus’ slightly modified version of the core turn-based battle mechanics we’re all most familiar with. Instead, Z-A is full real-time action. At least, that’s how it presents itself.
To attack, you essentially use Z-Targeting by holding the ZL button and then pressing the face buttons to instruct your Pokémon which move to use. This is the same whether you’re in battle, initiating a battle, or instructing your Pokémon to attack an obstacle–like some rocks I saw at the beginning of the mission that none of my Pokémon were strong enough to break.
As expected, each Pokémon can know four moves at a time, and those are the moves you have access to on the four face buttons. Surprisingly, the moves don’t seem to have PP (Power Points), meaning that they can be used an unlimited number of times, with consideration to their cooldown, a new mechanic for Pokémon commonly used for skill-based action games. Different moves have different cooldown times, but the moves I had access to this early in the game all had relatively short cooldowns (around six or seven seconds) and short “casting” times as well that aren’t communicated in any menus.
Regardless of these limitations, I was pretty much always able to attack with another move as soon as my Pokémon was done attacking with the first. The moves will “fill up” with color as the cool-down counts down, indicating when you can attack with it again, but I do wish that feedback was more clearly communicated. I ended up just using almost all of the moves available in rotation pretty mindlessly. You can’t instruct your Pokémon to dodge or perform any other maneuvers besides those four attacks, though Pokémon can miss attacks if the opponent is too far from the attack’s range.
Battle actions appear on the right side of the screen, informing you of things like attacks performed, debuffs, and critical hits. The feedback for missing attacks, however, seemed to be nonexistent, so I can see learning when the best time to attack could be a bit difficult.
In trainer battles, you can’t be damaged or take the hit for your Pokémon (I tried. Mareep still fainted.) But you can get hurt in battles against wild Pokémon and the more dangerous Rogue Mega-Evolved Pokémon, the other core gameplay plot device in Legends: Z-A. (And you still can’t take a hit for your Pokémon, at least it seemed to be that way.)
The second part of the demo pit me against a Rogue Mega-Evolved Absol after following the dog-like Zygarde 10% forme to it as part of another early-game mission, this time, the ninth. Somehow, the small-ish Zygarde carries you up to the roof where the Absol is, but apparently your character closes their eyes while this happens as the screen fades out and suddenly you’re on the roof.
Anyway, this early in the game, you don’t have the ability to Mega Evolve a Pokémon on your own, so the mysterious AZ lends you a Mega Ring, a Lucario, and the Lucarionite Mega Stone so you can face the Rogue Mega Absol without getting your butt categorically handed to you.
In this battle, you must dodge to avoid the opponent’s attacks, as Absol is coming for you–not just your Pokémon. I found it a bit cumbersome to balance attacking and avoiding enemy attacks, as you can attack only while you’re locked onto a target with ZL, but you can’t dash or dodge while targeting. I’m sure this is something I’d develop better muscle memory for as I play more, but it felt odd to have my actions restricted like that.
There’s also a secondary goal to pay attention to when up against Rogue Mega-Evolved Pokémon: you must collect Mega Power orbs to build up enough energy to Mega Evolve your Pokémon, and keep collecting them so your Pokémon doesn’t de-Mega Evolve. Attacking the Rogue Mega-Evolved Pokémon forces the Mega Power orbs out of them, which you then must pick up yourself. It’s a pretty clever way to force you to put yourself in danger and use the dodge mechanics.
Legends: Z-A didn’t feel like a full action game to me, but kind of more like an MMO, with its casting times, cooldowns, and behind-the-scenes math happening.
This fight was much more interesting than the trainer battles, as is expected considering all the extra things I needed to worry about besides pressing the attack buttons. Another thing I noticed is that, although you can’t tell your Pokémon to dodge, they will default to returning to your side when you’re not locked on to an opponent. So if you start avoiding the enemy’s AOE (area of effect) attacks, your Pokémon will too, as long as you give them enough time to retreat.
Overall, Legends: Z-A didn’t feel like a full action game to me, but kind of more like an MMO, with its casting times, cooldowns, and behind-the-scenes math happening. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I do hope Legends: Z-A gets challenging enough to make me more intentionally dish out commands and think about switching Pokémon at just the right moment. I can see the potential, but with just twenty minutes of experiencing the early game, it’s much too soon to tell if this real-time battle system will scratch the strategy-itch Pokémon games usually do for me.
Some last-minute housekeeping, as I did briefly explore the menus: Pokémon have the common six-stat spread, no abilities (just like in Legends: Arceus), but do have Natures that affect their stats (unlike in Legends: Arceus). I also found a shop that sells Mints to change these Natures while I played through the ninth story mission.
Like I said before, I have a lot of questions and I’m very keen to play more Pokémon Legends: Z-A, but for now, we’ll have to wait until it’s out on October 16 to know more.
Casey DeFreitas is a deputy editor of guides at IGN and has been catching Pokémon since Red and Blue. Catch her on socials @ShinyCaseyD.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition is out now, and of course modders are already pushing it to its limits. But the way they’re doing it is a lot of fun — and is perhaps the closest we’ll get to seeing a Waaagh! visualized on-screen.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is Relic Entertainment’s much-loved real-time strategy game set in Games Workshop’s grim dark sci-fi universe. It launched in 2004 and proved to be an entry point into the Warhammer 40,000 universe for a generation of PC gamers, while also pleasing existing fans with its authentic representation of the setting.
Now, over 20 years later, Dawn of War returns in Definitive Edition form, and some of the modders who have spent years tinkering with the original are excitedly moving over to this new version to see what it’s capable of.
Much of this early testing is being done by people involved with Dawn of War’s wonderful Unification Mod, which lets users seamlessly combine almost all community-created races. Within hours of Definitive Edition’s release this week, modders started seeing how many Ork Boyz they could spawn in-game before it crashes, because, well… what else would Ork Boyz do?
One member of the Unification Discord, Gunnisson, led the charge by summoning Ork Boyz as soon as they got their hands on the Definitive Edition:
Then, a progress update at nearly 1,000 Boyz spawned:
Over 3,000, and according to Gunnisson: “They’re pathing through each other exceptionally well.”
The Ork count kept on increasing, to the point where, after more than 10,000 Orks, Dawn of War hit single-digit frames per second and became unplayable. But it still ran! “I mean, 10,000+ models on screen, I call that a win for performance and stability,” Gunnisson said.
Gunnisson was eventually able to make 47,504 Ork Boyz “before the game died.” It took over seven hours, they said, while publishing the screenshot below: “At the end it was still chugging along at 10 seconds-per-frame.”
“Performance is fantastic,” Gunnisson added. “It took a lot of corpses to start impacting.” Then: “I’m hyped to try some big matches.”
This is a herculean effort, and for Warhammer 40,000 fans is about as close as we’ll get to a good old Waaagh! For the uninitiated, this is the name given to the wonderful moment when enough Orks gain enough collective momentum to launch devastating system-wide invasions. The Orks don’t really understand what’s going on or why it’s going on — they’re just happy they’re in a massive scrap — but for anyone on the receiving end, it’s bad news indeed.
In a post on Steam to mark the release of the Definitive Edition, Relic thanked modders for helping to test the game ahead of launch.
“We want to say a huge thank you to our community modders who we have been working with for many months,” Relic said. “They’ve put in a lot of work both in helping us to support legacy mods, and in readying their own mods for the Definitive Edition.”
It’s exciting to imagine what modders will be able to do with the Definitive Edition in the coming years as they get to grips with the game. As Gunnisson suggested, massive battles involving tens of thousands of units may now be possible, if the game can stand up to it. Perhaps then we’ll get truly lore accurate body counts.
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.
Diablo 4 fans believe Blizzard has leaked the action RPG’s next class via an internal build name.
Wowhead reported that the Paladin class, perhaps the most-requested by fans since Diablo 4’s June 2023 release, is coming soon, potentially even as part of Season 11. That’s because the word Paladin was found in the name of a build uploaded to Blizzard’s servers (2.5.Xpaladin67961).
The Paladin is one of the most popular classes from Diablo 2, so its arrival in Diablo 4, should it happen, would be celebrated by the game’s community. Now, this may be nothing (and Diablo 4 fans are already joking that the Paladin will be added as a Mercenary rather than a new class), but a new class is expected from Diablo 4’s second expansion, and the Paladin would certainly be a crowd-pleaser.
Diablo 4 hit the headlines last week after development chief Rod Fergusson announced his exit from Blizzard. “After five years of driving the Diablo franchise forward with four big launches, it’s time for me to step away from Blizzard/Microsoft, sword in hand, and see what’s next,” Fergusson wrote. “The teams are set up for success, with an exciting slate of releases ahead. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built together and looking forward to what comes next for Diablo, and for me.”
Then, this week, Blizzard’s Story and Franchise Development team (SFD) voted in favor of unionization with the Communications Workers of America. “After more than a decade working at Blizzard, I’ve seen all the highs and lows,” said organizing committee member and principal editor Bucky Fisk. “For years, Blizzard has been a place where people could build their careers and stay for decades, but that stability’s been fading. With a union, we’re able to preserve what makes this place special, secure real transparency in how decisions are made, and make sure policies are applied fairly to everyone.”
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.
