When I played Escape From Tarkov for the first time in 2018, I remember being captivated by its obtuse, insanely challenging structure. Like PUBG was to the battle royale genre, this promising prototype of an extraction shooter had so many unique elements going for it that made me absolutely certain it would be the next big thing, even if it was sometimes completely broken in its Early Access state. All these years later, now finally hitting 1.0, it’s pretty shocking how much has changed while it also remains exactly as exasperating as I remember it. The hands-off approach to onboarding that forces newcomers to beat their heads against its unforgiving mechanics for dozens of hours before claiming even a single victory captures the same relentless challenge I’ve always adored, while other frustrations, like its continued bugs, poor technical performance, and inability to address an abundance of cheaters, remains disappointingly worse than ever. I’ve only spent 30 hours with the 1.0 version so far, which (as any veteran player will surely tell you) is no time at all, but right now it feels like this progenitor may have been left in the dust of the genre it spawned.
Escape From Tarkov isn’t just the original standalone extraction shooter, but also the one most fanatically adherent to the ruthless principles on which the genre was founded. Not only are you thrown into a deadly hellscape filled with lethal NPCs and merciless human opponents, but you’re given absolutely no guidance in your quest for survival and loot. Practically none of the progression systems are explained to you, there’s no map for you to look at while out in the field to indicate where the extraction points are, and you could easily spend tens of hours studying weapon attachments and ammo types just to understand how the heck to use the tools of death you’ll find in your journey.
In some ways, I really admire how unrepentant Tarkov is – its beautifully exacting game design, and the sense of discovery that takes place across hundreds of lessons learned the hard way can be incredibly rewarding. But then there are times where it’s all just so dang frustrating, like how atrociously the UI and menus are organized, as if they were designed specifically to offend you. Whether or not the payoff of finally feeling comfortable enough to bring your best equipment out and try for a proper extraction is worth it will ultimately depend on couple things: your tolerance for pain, and your drive to master something designed to really test your expertise of systems Tarkov refuses to teach you. At least in these early hours with 1.0, I find myself somewhere in the middle of enamoured by its harsh edges and utterly disgusted by outdated design choices.
Unfortunately, the intentionally punishing design is marred by completely unintentional issues that have made this full launch that much harder to enjoy. The servers so far have been incredibly unreliable, with regular disconnects and wait times greater than 15 minutes to get into a match, and cheaters are very prevalent since accounts and items can be sold for real money in the gray market. As a result, I decided to spend most of my time this first week just focusing on the PvE mode for the sake of my sanity.
There’s also the matter of just how bad this thing looks and performs by the standards of the day. I remember thinking Escape from Tarkov already didn’t look great when I last revisited it, and coming back to it again a few years later has not done it any favors. Objects in the environment are blurry and low res, and with the exception of the vendors you’ll chat with as you complete quests, human faces look like they were modeled using the monster-generator that is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’s character creator. It’ll take me a while before I’ve played enough to call this review final, so hopefully developer Battlestate Games will smooth out the worst of these issues before they drive me insane, but it’s been an incredibly rocky start.
Anyway, I should get back to it – between the PvE mode, PvP mode, and Arena, I’ve got plenty more to see and do before I can make a recommendation either way. For now, diving back into this influential, daunting game has been equal parts fascinating and irksome, but I’m looking forward to going as deep down the rabbit hole as I can.
Godfall developer Counterplay Games reportedly shut down earlier this year, so seeing it suddenly reappear with Armatus, a full-blown roguelite shooter coming to PC and consoles in 2026, might be somewhat of a shock.
A trailer, including everything from far-along cinematics and tense gameplay, materialized during today’s November 2025 Xbox Partner Preview. It’s undeniably got that Godfall flair to it, as its main character can be seen smashing and blasting their way through a post-post-apocalyptic Paris.
It’s not often a game developer seemingly closes down only to reemerge months later with a brand-new video game for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S. We sat down with Counterplay studio head and creative director Ming Zhang to learn more about Armatus, its roguelike gameplay, and what it’s been like for the team to continue its work when those rumors were kicked up. You can see the full interview below.
IGN: To set the stage, tell me about Armatus and this trailer we’re going to see. What are players looking at in this first trailer?
Ming Zhang: What you see in this trailer is snippets of gameplay, largely with a little bit of cinematic footage from our game. You know, it’s been a number of years in the making, and this is Counterplay’s next entry in our love of visceral combat. You see some of the abilities, some of the enemies, and some of the cool moves that you’re going to be you’re going to be able to do, in this case.
What can you tell me, in a little more detail, about its gameplay, its story, and, especially, the world it takes place in?
Zhang: It’s a third-person roguelite shooter, and in order to build the world, what we did, is we took the concept of urban fantasy, which is the grim supernatural underneath the real world, and we took it to the nines. What happens in the post-post-apocalypse of an urban fantasy world? Well, you know, the real world kind of starts to break apart, and underneath, all the supernatural stuff starts to spill forth, right? When you think about, ‘What is a city that evokes classic but also modern, and has all the right tone and tambre, even un-supernatural?’ It would be Paris. Starting from there, we then said, ‘Well, what is the kind of character that we would have bring here? We wanted to create the supernatural character, who was powerful and had access to these celestial abilities that you would be able to use, but we also wanted to take the sound and fury of modern firearms and put that in the hands of this supernatural being. So, you’ve got the magic and the firepower, and put it together.
I saw The Vanishing is what triggered this Paris to look like this. What can you tell me about that event and how it resulted in something like that?
Zhang: There’s something about the word spoiler that is coming up (laughs), so you’ll have to, you’ll have to play and find out, but it is the pivotal event. That kicks off the game.
That’s totally fair. You talked about it a little bit there, but what else is it about Paris that makes it the location you go to for this instead of somewhere else around the world?
Zhang: Paris just has incredible visuals, as a city. Again, when you think urban fantasy, it’s impossible to avoid a lot of the gothic undertones. The architecture of the city already evokes the emotions that we wanted from those from the supernatural side of the world, so combining that real world with the supernatural was a big part of the setting as well.
I’m curious if you can tell us more about the different tools players will have at their disposal. Are there different guns, weapon modifiers, or abilities? What can we generally look forward to?
Zhang: This is a run-based game, and the primary, I say, means of combat that the player has is, of course, your gun. So, you have your gun, you will be able to shoot it, but you also have a melee weapon at your disposal, and you have several locomotion kits and several abilities that you will be able to pick. One of the things that was really important to us was that players do this thing that we internally call ‘creative expression through combat,’ where not only is it that, you have all these amazing tools that you can use in your in your player kit, it’s that you get to customize the player kit that you’re taking on the run as you play each run. Just as it’s important to have visceral fidelity in the gameplay, it was important for us to have the build craft to go along with it.
Armatus is described as a third-person, roguelite shooter. Are there any specific games that inspired Counterplay when crafting its gameplay?
Zhang: We have a lot of references, as all game designers do. I think you’ll have to play and discover all the references, but I think fans of the genre will be very pleased with what we have to offer.
I don’t know if maybe you’d have the same answer, then, for some of the different movies, books, and games or shows that inspired the story and universe this takes place in?
Zhang: Well, one of the things that we always look for at Counterplay, and we’ve done this since the beginning, was interesting genre blends. Without getting you know too nerdy (laughs), we always look for combinations. We always look for the chocolate and peanut butter or whatnot, and so I think a lot of the fun in doing that is for our players to figure it out on on their own, but I think you’ll see the inspirations worn pretty heavily on our sleeves.
Roguelite, I think, is a term that a lot of people hear, and they feel like if they’ve played one, they’ve played them all. What does Armatus do to stand apart from other rogue lights and shooters?
Zhang: I tend to think of roguelite as a design framework. It’d be like saying, ‘If you played one RPG, you played them all.’ The design framework is the thing that you scaffold the game on top of, but it’s not the only thing in the game. As we emphasized, our game really sings when you get into the combat. Creative expression through combat is a core pillar of what we wanted to do. If you came into this game and you just wanted to slaughter demons using abilities and guns and melee, this is the game for you, and if you wanted to be the kind of person who strategically picks every single upgrade in order to hit the perfect combination and eradicate rooms that way, this is also the game for you. So that’s kind of how we think about it.
How long is your average run going to be? Is this the kind of thing where you can play quick run before bed, or do you really need to sit down and lock in for hours and hours?
Zhang: We’re still working on the game, so I prefer not to give a number at this at this point, but what I will say is, like many games that have come before and after, both in the third-person action genre, as well as the roguelite genre, the choices that you make have a big impact on how much you can do.
I think at the end of the trailer, you tease a boss fight. I’m not looking for specifics here, but are bosses something players can look forward to in Armatus, and what can you tell me about them?
Zhang: Yeah, bosses are definitely a part of the game. Thank you for that. Bosses are definitely a part of the game, and we call them Greater Demons. What they represent is, if you think of the demonic incursion that’s happening in Paris, in the post-apocalypse that we talked about, the Greater Demons are the ones that anchor. They’re more solid than the other ones. They’re bigger, they’re scarier, they are figures of nightmare, and I think players will have a great time being killed and killing them as well.
So would you call Armatus a particularly difficult game, then, or is that in the hands of the player through different options?
Zhang: I think that’s going to be up to the player, but I guess you’ll have to wait and see on that one, too.
What are some of the lessons the team learned from, specifically, Godfall, because it’s really easy to compare these two, that the team brought into the development of Armatus?
Zhang: I think the biggest one is this: Coming out of Godfall, one of the things we consistently received feedback on, and it was almost all positive, but basically the big discussion point was the starting point in the game felt almost primordial. Then, as you unlocked moves in the skill tree, suddenly you were doing this and you were doing that. The combat in that game felt like a conversation with the developers. Again, I’m paraphrasing, you know, one or two reviews here, but that was a major source of feedback we got across the board. Fans really resonated with the dynamic combat that we had in Godfall, and they really liked this conversation with the developer-style of play that they had. So as we moved into our next project, we said, ‘Hey, we did it for melee. Can we pull it off for shooters as well?’ So we took that, and that’s where this emphasis on build craft comes from.
I saw a lot of rumors earlier this year that Counterplay had shut down, and sitting here now, that’s obviously not the case. So, I’m curious if you have any comment on that situation you’d like to share, and more specifically, what it’s been like for the studio to see those rumors swirl while knowing full well that Counterplay’s next game is very much still in development, despite that.
Zhang: I think most of the studio was too busy working on the game (laughs) to really pay attention to rumours that don’t really apply to their day-to-day. I think the only comment I really have on it is, the announcement and future release of Armatus is a celebration of Counterplay Games, of our camaraderie, and this team that has gone through thick and thin together. It means the world to us that players are going to be able to see this game. They’re going to play it, and we think that people are going to have a lot of fun. So, my comment is, go play Armatus, and then you can tell us how you feel about, right? (laughs)
Moving back to the game itself, I couldn’t tell based on the trailer alone. Is this an entirely single-player experience, or are there any multiplayer elements, even scoreboards, or anything like that?
Zhang: It’s a single-player game, and as for features, again, we’re, we’re still in development, so wait and find out.
I get it. It’s hard to talk about these things when the pieces are always moving, I’m sure.
Zhang: I think it’s harder not to talk about these things, right? That’s kind of the challenge here.
PC, PlayStation, and Xbox versions are on the way, but I also saw that a Nintendo Switch 2 version is in development. Were there any challenges in bringing Armatus to that console, and is the Switch 2 version expected to launch at the same time as other platforms?
Zhang: Yes, they are all expected to launch together. The challenge with these things is always optimization, but if you’ve seen Godfall, a PlayStation 5 launch title, you know that, if there’s one thing that we do well, it’s optimizing game systems.
Is there anything about Armatus that you want to talk about or that you want players to know now that they’re finally seeing what this looks like?
This game is a love letter to action combat in all its forms. It’s a love letter to the urban fantasy, gothic horror inspirations that we see in so many games and fiction all over, and the thing that is most important to us here at Counterplay is for players to see this letter that we’ve written. So, I can come up here and yammer about systems and features all day long, and all I would be doing is making promises to the audience, but the promise I will make is that if you play our game, you’re going to have a really great experience of butchering all these demons.
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).
Reanimal, the upcoming co-op horror game from the creators of Little Nightmares, now has a release date announced at the Xbox Partner Presents. It’s coming out on February 13, 2026 for Xbox, PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.
We got a look at a new trailer today during the presentation, which showed off the pair of siblings you play as traveling through some new locations.
Reanimal is incredibly unsettling, as is fitting for the Little Nightmares folks. First announced at Gamescom 2024, you play as a brother and sister trying to rescue their missing friends. You’ll solve environmental puzzles and travel both by land and boat on this quest, haunted by horrible monsters and pieces of the childrens’ past.
The good news is, if you don’t have a friend to play with, you can play Reanimal in single-player, as well as with both local and online co-op.
You can catch up on everything announced at today’s Partner Showcase right here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Microsoft will soon dive into the November 2025 Xbox Partner Preview as Xbox Series X | S closes out the year with a brand-new showcase.
As promised earlier this week, today’s third-party-focused presentation will soon unveil a slew of announcements for some of Microsoft’s gaming partners. Fans have been told to expect showings for 007 First Light, Tides of Annihilation, and Reanimal, with the rest of the show’s contents keeping fans guessing.
Today’s Xbox Partner Preview has a lot to live up to after the last equivalent showcase, which arrived October 2024 and featured highlights like Phasmophobia, Animal Well, and Alan Wake 2. We’ll know more when the show begins at 10am PT / 1pm ET, so be sure to keep checking in with this story for every new game and game update for Xbox players.
Developing…
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).
It’s happening — the brilliant Silent Hill 2 Remake is finally arriving on Xbox Series X/S, and it’s being released with a hefty 50% launch discount.
Fans have spotted that the game is already available to purchase via the Xbox Store in Australia, where it’s already Friday, November 21. Store pages for the game in other regions are also available, though the game cannot yet be purchased elsewhere.
When it does become available — likely when midnight passes tonight — the game looks to have launched at half price. The Australian version has a recommended retail price of AU $99, currently reduced to AU $50, which is something at least after the long wait.
As of yet, publisher Konami is yet to make the launch official, though we are just hours away from Microsoft’s impending Xbox Partner Preview showcase, where the console maker is set to detail a raft of new third-party announcements. You can tune into that later today, Thursday, November 20 from 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern, or 6pm UK time.
Silent Hill 2 Remake has sold 2.5 million worldwide, something which has propelled sales of the overall franchise past the 10 million mark. IGN’s Silent Hill 2 Remake review returned an 8/10. We said: “Silent Hill 2 is a great way to visit – or revisit – one of the most dread-inducing destinations in the history of survival horror.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
The time has come: Best Buy has kicked off its Black Friday sale, and it’s full of excellent deals to look through. This is especially true on the video game front, where we’ve spotted quite a few exciting deals already. One that’s jumped out to us is Silent Hill f, which has received a $20 discount that’s dropped its price from $69.99 to $49.99.
This applies to both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game (see the deal here at Best Buy), so no matter the platform you play on, you can still save if it’s been on your radar.
Silent Hill f Drops to $49.99 for Black Friday
For Silent Hill fans, or even those who are interested in the games but haven’t jumped into one yet, we found in our review that Silent Hill f “serves up a fresh new Japanese setting to explore, a fascinatingly dark story to unravel, and plenty of twisted freaks to torment you with.” We even consider it one of the best Silent Hill games, so you’re in for a treat when you play.
On top of that, it was also recently nominated for Best Narrative, Best Audio Design, and Best Performance fromKonatsu Kato for this year’s Game Awards. If you’ve been hoping to pick it up, now is as good a time as any.
Best Buy isn’t the only retailer that’s dropped its Black Friday deals today. Amazon’s big Black Friday sale has also kicked off, and if you’re looking for more video game deals, it has plenty up its sleeve for shoppers to scoop up. To stay on top of discounts as they pop up from other retailers, check out our breakdown of Black Friday 2025 for information on start times and what we expect to see this year.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
Games Workshop is once again expecting big profits despite an expected slowdown in licensing revenue from blockbuster video game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.
In a trading update, the Nottingham, UK-based tabletop wargame company said it now expects revenues of at least £310 million for the six months to the end of November 2025, which would amount to a 15% rise from the same period last year. Pre-tax profit is expected to be about £135 million for the half year, up from £126.8 million last year. Shares in Games Workshop were up 12.8% on the news this morning.
That’s despite expected licensing revenue of at least £16 million, which would be down from the £30.1 million reported during the same period last year.
Space Marine 2 may well be the most successful Warhammer 40,000 video game ever made. It sold over 7 million copies less than a year after going on sale, and, according to Saber Interactive exec Tim Willits, changed everything for the studio. Even Games Workshop itself has talked about the money it’s made from Space Marine 2, and protagonist Titus is now leading the charge on the next narrative expansion of the Warhammer 40,000 setting.
In January, Games Workshop said it was on the hunt for the next blockbuster Warhammer video game, but CEO Kevin Rountree also expressed a degree of caution on potential future video game success, admitting hits like Space Marine 2 are few and far between. “We recognise that successes like these for Warhammer are not a given in the world of video games,” Rountree said at the time. “Clearly we are looking for the next one. We remain cautious when forecasting royalty income.”
Meanwhile, Games Workshop had warned that Donald Trump’s tariff plans could damage its profits by up to £12 million, but it seems the impact has yet to significantly dull financial performance.
Games Workshop’s primary business is of course the sale of tabletop wargames and their miniatures, with an expansive bricks and mortar retail business providing a foundation for the hobby. In July, Games Workshop said that a “cute looking pipistrelle bat” was “delaying our work on our new temporary car park.” Yes, really.
Photo by Uli Deck/picture alliance via Getty Images.
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.
Major gameplay leaks have offered a glimpse at the next era of Fortnite, in which its ever-popular battle royale mode will transition to a fresh map based on the USA.
Previously, official hints from Epic Games have pointed to coordinates based in Hollywood, while another leak suggested the game would feature a Las Vegas-esque location (and a Quentin Tarantino crossover). And now, thanks to footage that has leaked from a preview event attended by media and influencers, Chapter 7’s USA-style setting has been confirmed.
Footage now widely circulating on social media shows an arid area with palm trees. In the distance, the game’s map references an area named Sandy Strip. Signage names Chapter 7’s first season as being titled “Pacific Break.”
LEAKED CHAPTER 7 INFO FROM CREATOR EVENT 💀
– Hot air balloons – Driveable Reboot Vans – Solo VS Bots mode – Rift A Palooza events that spawn rifts – Gameplay UI update – Battle Pass has Marty McFly and The Bride pic.twitter.com/l9lBrLZMIz
Other changes visible in the footage look to include driveable reboot vans, and the option for a new Solo vs Bots mode (although it’s unclear if this was provided just for the preview event).
Fortnite has followed up the leaks with its own, official look at Chapter 7, via a top-down view of the game’s new battle royale map that shows a more urban area, complete with wide city streets and homes with backyard pools. (The top-down view here is a bit GTA 1, isn’t it?)
Last night, Fortnite also publicly shared footage of Quentin Tarantino appearing at the aforementioned event, standing next to a Fortnite version of Kill Bill’s infamous Pussy Wagon car. Here, the word “pussy” has been replaced by a picture of Meowscles, the game’s fan-favorite swole cat. Leaked footage from the event, meanwhile, shows a new in-game skin for Uma Thurman’s Kill Bill character The Bride. Oh, and also Marty McFly from Back to the Future.
Fortnite typically works on its big annual map change around a year in advance, and it’s fun to consider the idea that, 12 months ago, Chapter 7’s USA-inspired setting was being planned with the expectation that a certain other big game with a USA-inspired setting would launch at the same time.
Of course, GTA 6 has now been delayed — twice. But up until May this year, Rockstar was still saying the game would arrive this week, around the time Epic Games has launched a fresh Chapter of Fortnite for the past few years.
This year, Fortnite will hold its big Chapter 6 finale event on Saturday, November 29. Chapter Seven will then launch imminently after, though some period of downtime is expected. A teaser trailer for that in-game event released officially last night and featured Fortnite going full Ready Player One and Avengers: Endgame with its plans, while tying up story threads from the past few years.
In recent weeks, the secret bunkers in Fortnite’s OG mode have been flashing messages in morse code, such as “Zero Hour”, which we now know is the name of the upcoming event, and “Titans”. After seeing that teaser trailer, fans think “Titans” refers to the game’s current main antagonist, The Dark Presence, a towering demonic entity that rules Chapter 6’s Spirit Realm, but also to the forces now squaring up against him.
In the coming battle, players look set to fight alongside a series of other looming figures: the returning Godzilla and King Kong, plus the newly giant-sized Homer Simpson. Is there a clue to a much longer story arc here too? Think back to Fortnite’s Chapter 5, which introduced the current era of storytelling focused on blue-haired hero Hope, and you could also link in the mysterious giant hand that erupted from the ground holding Pandora’s Box.
Are all of these Titans? And how will Fortnite wrap all of these things together (plus Star Wars’ X-Wings, Uma Thurman, and Marty McFly) as it moves to its new USA-based home? We’ve just over a week to go until we find out.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
18 years ago, NASA lost an asteroid. Officially designated 2007 FT3, the Empire State Building-sized rock was tracked for around 24 hours before it slipped back into the solar system’s darkness — and it hasn’t been spotted since. It remains the fourth-largest space object with a better than 1-in-2 million chance of smashing into Earth, but scientists remain unsure where it is now.
This year, the internet has taken great interest in 3I/ATLAS — only the third interstellar object ever detected, though also the third since 2017. (The overwhelming scientific consensus suggests 3I/ATLAS is a comet, though one rogue astrophysicist has sparked endless online speculation by suggesting it is an extraterrestrial spacecraft.)
Now, as NASA unveils fresh images of 3I/ATLAS this week and as the hunt for 2007 FT3 continues, one thing is certain: we are finding more things flying through space than we used to. That’s a good thing, YouTube scientist and author Hank Green tells IGN — as it shows we’re getting better at spotting them. But how prepared are we for something on an impact trajectory with Earth, and should we be getting worried that space is actually far busier than we thought?
“The first thing is we’re way better at spotting them than we’ve ever been,” Green begins, when IGN asks why new asteroid and comet discoveries seem more prevalent now than ever. “Literally, like as of two weeks ago, Vera Rubin went online [Chile’s new observatory which contains the biggest camera ever built]. We’ve got three different systems for detecting different threats now, to the point where if we were going to be hit by a really big rock, like a dinosaur-sized rock, we’d know. Which is amazing. We had all of this ignorance leading up to now, and now we have certainty.
“But once in a while there’s enough uncertainty about a particular rock, that’s big enough that if it hit in the wrong spot would be really bad,” he continues. “And there are way more of those than there are the big ones. So we have to continue to be vigilant and we have to figure what we would do if we actually spotted one that might cause a problem.”
“Once in a while there’s enough uncertainty about a particular rock…”
Earlier this year, Green was contacted by Supercell, the maker of hit smartphone game Clash of Clans, with a novel idea. The city-building strategy app was planning an in-game event where it threatened players’ hard-built bases with destruction by an asteroid. And not just any asteroid: it would be the long-lost 2007 FT3.
Months later, and the event is now live, fronted by a flashy trailer that sees the mystery of 2007 FT3 seemingly explained. In the world of Clash of Clans, the rock’s disappearance is revealed to be Green’s doing, as he zaps the asteroid away from Earth by digitizing it — sending it careening towards the Clash of Clans universe instead. Now, all these years later, the asteroid has finally loomed close enough to Clash’s world that it’s become your problem.
“There’s an element of just the cleverness of using this old science story that I thought was clever,” Green says of his involvement, sparked by the hunt for 2007 FT3. “But it was mostly like, ‘I’ve never done anything like this before, I’ve never gone out to LA to make a little movie.’ It was like, directors and third assistant directors and everybody was on it. It was wild. I feel like I learned so much just about how things get made and also what I’m capable of.
“Also,” he adds, referencing the prosthetics he wore to make himself briefly look over a decade younger, “that was my first experience with spirit gum.”
Sadly, however, aiming a giant laser at the sky and digitizing an asteroid isn’t an effective method of stopping doomsday rocks in the real world. Not yet, at least. So what could we do if do spot a dangerous-looking space object given enough warning?
“We’ve started to do that work,” Green says. “We’ve sent probes to smash into asteroids to change their trajectory very slightly, and the nice thing about that is if you get them when they’re very far away, a very slight change of trajectory is enough. We’ve done the first of those missions and we’ve shown that we can.”
All of this still relies on finding the rock first, but Green is pretty confident. “There’s a chance that something could come from a weird interaction somewhere out in the far reaches of the solar system, and a comet could get surprise flung in and we can track those less well, but as far as asteroids go, the big ones are easy to spot.”
“They’ve been flying through the solar system the whole time…”
Comets are trickier, as typically they have longer orbits and spend a lot of time lurking in the outer solar system (or beyond, as 3I/ATLAS appears to show). But Green isn’t overly worried here either. ATLAS was spotted by an asteroid detection system (on explaining this, he pulls up the comet’s acronym, which stands for the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System that found it). And the other thing Earth has going for it? Well, space is really, really big.
“When we turn on Vera Rubin for real, we’ll probably start detecting even more of these interstellar objects, and we’ll kind of understand they’ve been flying through the solar system the whole time,” Green says, estimating that a single-digit number of interstellar objects will be discovered passing through each year.
“But as far as them being a potential threat, the odds are just so tremendously… there are so many rocks already in the solar system that could get close enough to be a potential problem and none of them are, because Earth is very small in comparison to the size of the solar system,” Green affirms.
All that’s needed are a few fragments of location data and scientists can begin to model if any object may become a problem over the coming decades or centuries, Green explains, “because the solar system is pretty much Newtonian, it’s pretty much just doing physics.”
Or, back in Clash of Clans, all you need is to hit things with hammers — which seems a lot more convenent. Happily, the game’s ongoing event has progressed to the point where players have successfully completed a meteor catching device, though at least one meteor shard has landed, helpfully bringing with it a new Town Hall.
“It can be quite intimidating at first because you can see some of the things people have done and think ‘I will never get there’,” Green says of the game. “It’s like seeing someone do a backflip and think, ‘well that’s great for you but I am really far away from that.’ But the great thing about the structure of it is it does keep you engaged and pulls you from that early [gameplay] when your Town Hall looks like a villager’s house.”
Will the real 2007 FT3 ever be found? Green seems confident it will. NASA has lost asteroids before, and typically it catches sight of them again within a few decades — and none of those were on a collision course either. “As we’ve seen, we were able to detect 3I/ATLAS fairly early on in the process,” he concludes. “But I’m certainly in favor of having a system ready to go, just in case.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Omelet You Cook, a roguelike cooking game on Steam, has been having a great early access it seems. It recently passed 500 player reviews, and every last one of them was positive, making it one of a rare few games on Steam to have 100% positive reviews.
Until today.
As pointed out to us by developer Dan Schumacher of SchuBox Games, the game received its first negative review today. And sure, negative reviews are just part of the deal when releasing a game on Steam. But what really bothered Schumacher is that according to the text of the review, the reviewer didn’t actually dislike the game. They played for 0.8 hours total, 0.2 hours when they posted the review, and wrote the following:
“Game is amazing. I just like to be different.”
IGN reached out to the reviewer for further comment ahead of this piece but didn’t hear back.
The community appears to have sprung to Omelet You Cook’s defense, as the game has received almost 40 new positive reviews in the 14 hours since the negative review was posted, and a number of people have commented scolding the negative reviewer for ruining the positive streak just for kicks, though some of those comments are unfortunately far harsher than the negative review itself.
“Seeing this review was very draining for us,” said Schumacher to IGN. “We knew 100% wouldn’t last forever but it hurt to have the streak ended by someone who in their own words thinks the game is amazing. Emotionally I think I’d feel better if it was someone complaining about bugs, or design choices, or just feeling the game isn’t for them.”
A single negative review is hardly the end of the world for SchuBox Games, but it does make a difference. There are very, very, very few games on Steam with perfectly positive reviews, or at least in meaningful amounts like this. The more you get, the more likely it is someone will have something bad to say. There’s a game called Shooters, Ready! on Steam that’s only available in Japanese and similarly has over 500 positive reviews and 0 negative ones. But at least using the built in search by user reviews, there don’t seem to be any others.
According to Schumacher, having no negative reviews actually did afford him some benefits, too:
“Having 100% positive reviews was a huge benefit for us because it’s extremely abnormal for a game with hundreds of reviews,” he told IGN. “People see 100% and become curious enough to read through some of the reviews to understand why it’s so beloved or to check out the demo for themselves. We’ve had multiple people join our Discord or leave their own review and mention that they gave the game a chance because they couldn’t believe it was maintaining 100% for so long.
“…The biggest impact this will have on Omelet You Cook is losing that mystique of a perfect 100%. That led to some opportunities for Omelet You Cook to be mentioned because it was atypical. But honestly for players coming across the Steam page, I don’t think 99% vs 100% makes any difference at all. Some users like to filter by negative reviews to understand where the pain points are and I have to appreciate that this negative review frames Omelet You Cook in a very positive light.”
It’s long been known that engagement with games on Steam in the form of Wishlists and reviews can be a massive boon, especially for small developers. There are simply too many games, and getting attention on such a crowded storefront is impossible if you don’t already have a built-up audience or a lot of advertising money. Having lots of positive reviews and few negative ones gets games like Omelet You Cook visibility when searching under certain filters or ranking systems, including third-party ones. That’s certainly been the case for Omelet You Cook
“We’re very fortunate and grateful to have reached 507 positive reviews before our first negative,” Schumacher said. “We worked incredibly hard to achieve that with 15 content updates over 5 months. But we also got incredibly lucky and it’s nowhere near a flawless game. There’s plenty of valid reasons somebody might have a negative experience with the game and we’re grateful to all 507 chefs who took the time to write a positive review. Each one helps Omelet You Cook reach a wider audience.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
