Fortnite fans have gained a first look at how The Office characters Michael Scott and Dwight Scrute will appear in the game, when they become available later tonight.
The pair of new Fortnite skins include the likenesses of actors Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson, and come with a range of alternate styles and accessories. The Michael Scott skin includes the option to wear sunglasses, or unbutton his shirt and wear a backwards cap for his “Date Mike” look.
Dwight Scrute, meanwhile, comes with the option to wear his suit jacket or not — and without, the skin can be seen with a holster strapped to his uncovered belt (complete with banana, as seen in the show). Another reference comes in the shape of Dwight’s skin mask option for his face, as worn by the character after he memorably cut it off of a CPR dummy.
Said CPR dummy (without face) is appropriately Dwight’s backbling. Michael’s backwear, meanwhile, is a giant World’s Best Boss mug, as used by the character throughout the show. Further accessories include Dwight’s Broom-Stake and Michael’s Dundee award statue, both used as pickaxes.
There’s even a Megadesk glider, and emotes for Dwight’s convertible (which he leans out of yelling in his megaphone), and Michael’s Scarn dance. Both feature original dialogue from the show.
Today, the collaboration has been decrypted within Fortnite’s files, ahead of the items going on sale via the game’s shop at its next reset. This has allowed the game’s usual leakers such as ShinaBR, whose posts are embedded above, to show off the content early.
Fortnite launched into its Chapter 7 era in November with an Avengers Endgame-style team-up event. Crossovers added since then have included skins for Kim Kardashian, Bleach, and South Park. Next week will bring a skin for Ed from Ed, Edd n Eddy. Today also sees the launch of Fortnite’s 3v3 Fall Guys basketball mode Crown Jam, which is available for a limited time. Take a first look at that just below.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Ark Nova, a long, complex and richly strategic game of zoo-building and conservation, took board gaming by storm after its release in 2021. When a game gets that popular, while having big barriers to new players, a simplified spin-off is almost guaranteed – and now we have Sanctuary from the same designer. It has the same widely appealing theme and keeps some of the innovative mechanisms of its parent, but how much of its strategic clout can it retain?
What’s in the Box
Sanctuary comes in a big box with considerable heft. When you slide the lid off the reason becomes clear: it contains sheet after sheet of large, punch out, cardboard hexes. Like Ark Nova, these are all illustrated with photos of animals, zoo staff, or pertinent buildings and landscapes. Photo-art in the obviously artificial medium of board gaming can look odd but here it works well, re-enforcing the feeling that you’re building something real and tangible.
Most of the hexes are peppered with confusing icons which initially appear very mysterious but, once you’ve internalized the game rules, you’ll appreciate having all the information on the game state front and center. The game thoughtfully includes a plastic rack for each player to hold their “hand” of hex tiles during play.
Aside from the hex tiles there’s a bunch of other cardboard to pop out, not only tokens but also action “cards” for each player, which are made of thick cardboard rather than playing-card stock. There are two central boards, one for tracking objectives and another for holding the market of tiles which requires a little assembly, as the edges fold in and stick down to keep the tiles in place. Finally, there’s a two-sided hex map for each player to build their zoo on. Unlike the parent game, everyone here uses the same map during play, one side of the board or the other.
Rules and How It Plays
You can get some sense of how much more simple Sanctuary is than Ark Nova simply by comparing rulebooks, which otherwise have similar layouts and fonts. Ark Nova weighs in at 20 pages: Sanctuary a modest eight, with plenty of examples. It jettisons the bigger game’s separation of animals and enclosures, making everything a single tile that you lay onto the hex board representing your zoo.
One thing it keeps, however, is the notion of action card strength. You have four different actions arranged beneath your zoo board in a ranking from weakest to strongest. When you use one, it operates at a “level” equal to its current position in the queue. Then it moves into the weakest slot and the other cards all slide up one rank. All the actions allow you to place tiles into your zoo: three of them are for animals of different habitats while the fourth is for “projects”, which include things like specialist researchers, conservation efforts and the like. All the matching tiles have a strength requirement and the action card you use to lay it must be at that level or higher.
Many tiles have additional requirements. The most common is for arrows on the tile edge to line up with empty spaces: you start with a couple in your zoo map but you can add more by playing tiles from your hand face-down. Others need to be adjacent to tiles already in your zoo that carry certain icons. All have at least one icon representing an animal type, a habitat or a continent. Most tiles improve the appeal of your zoo, which is essentially your victory point tally. For many that’s a fixed value, while others depend on how many of a particular icon you have adjacent to that tile or on your map as a whole.
You can get bonus appeal by satisfying conservation objectives. Five are drawn randomly for each game, matching particular animal type and continent icons. To claim one you must simply have the matching number of icons in your zoo; the more icons, the more points. You can also spend conservation markers, in place of a missing icon, making these tokens very powerful. They can be obtained by getting matching male and female animal tiles of the same species next to each other on your map, or from certain project tiles.
These are the parameters of the puzzle that Sanctuary lays before you, fiendishly pulling you in multiple directions at once.
These are the parameters of the puzzle that Sanctuary lays before you, fiendishly pulling you in multiple directions at once. Many tiles reward you for specializing in particular icons. Conservation bonuses, meanwhile, reward you for diversity. Your challenge is to try and decide how, given the limitation of what tiles you pick up and the actions at your disposal, you’re going to balance this problem to eke out the highest score.
To complicate matters, each level of conservation bonus can only be claimed once. So if you claim one with two bird icons, say, and then get more birds in your zoo later, you can’t then go back and claim the bigger-scoring four- or five-icon rewards via birds later on. You need to have four or five of a different animal type or make up the difference with those precious conservation tokens. The whole thing is a mess of competing priorities that can make the game surprisingly tense for what is essentially an un-interactive game where you’re focused on building out your own map.
Because you’re being asked to do so many different things at once, how you pick up and hold tiles is very important. At the start of your turn you have to take one tile from the six in the display. However, you can only take that tile from the queue position up to the current level of your projects action card, making this one particularly important. After that you take an “official” action which involves either using a card to play tiles or you can take more tiles. Animal actions used this way give you two random tiles, while the projects action lets you take one tile of your choice from the display.
Again, given that the game is essentially a race, this results in surprising tension. Play ends when someone either fills their map or collects all five conservation bonuses, both of which are reliant on playing tiles. So missing a turn to take more tiles feels like you’re falling behind. But it’s always so tempting! There are often hexes available that you desperately want because their icons fit with the conservation objectives, or others in your zoo, or even male-female animal pairs but the more you collect them in hope of making combos, the further you risk getting behind in the race for points. The fact you can only hold six tiles at once adds a delightfully frustrating element to these decisions.
Your action order is the final plank in the game’s puzzle. Often, you’ll want to play a given tile and you won’t have the requisite action at a high enough level. So you have to muddle through potentially laying and taking less interesting tiles to get where you want to be. Forward planning your action chains to get cards to the required levels becomes a hallmark of experience when you’re selecting tiles from the display, muddied by the desire to keep projects high to maximize your choices. Cards can also be levelled up to get higher action levels by fulfilling four different criteria, such as claiming your first spot on the conservation track. As is typical for the game’s circular approach to strategy, fulfilling these is yet another competing priority to juggle.
There are times when all the different things going on become an active problem for the game, however. The need for tiles to support each other, and particularly the reward for animal gender pairs, can be frustratingly hard to fulfill if the tiles you want are simply not in the display when it’s your turn. As such, it works better at lower player counts: with five, especially, it feels overlong. The mechanisms also feel very abstract, especially compared to Ark Nova which at least presents an illusion of running a real zoo.
Once the game is finished, everyone has to tally up their points, which is an annoyingly time-consuming process. With the score offered by many tiles being dependent on many other tiles it takes a while to tot them up, and it’s very easy to make errors in what is often quite a tight game. While everyone is raring to know who won, the time and effort it takes to chalk up the scores has the unfortunate effect of deflating whatever excitement has built up during play, leading to the final result arriving as a bit of an anticlimax.
BioWare is slowly beginning to build itself back up following the downsizing it experienced in the wake of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, with hiring now underway for a new senior role on Mass Effect 5.
Now, as work on Mass Effect 5 quietly continues, BioWare is hiring a Production Director for the game who will report directly into the project’s overall boss, BioWare and Mass Effect franchise veteran Mike Gamble.
“Hi, I’m hiring a very important senior leadership role,” Gamble wrote on social media. “They’ll report to me and it’s gonna be awesome.” A job description notes that the role will involve partnering with Mass Effect 5’s “creative leadership, studio teams, and internal and external partners to champion the game’s vision and ensure its execution at the highest quality bar.”
“Since 1995, BioWare has been dedicated to creating games defined by rich storytelling, unforgettable characters, and expansive worlds,” the job description continues. “Over the years, the studio has earned recognition for developing some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed titles. Today, BioWare is building on that legacy with the development of the next Mass Effect game, continuing one of the highest-rated and most celebrated series in video game history.”
BioWare first announced plans to make Mass Effect 5 back in 2020 — a date that now feels a lifetime ago — in part to simply reassure fans that it remained committed to the franchise. In reality, though, the company was still busy devoting most of its development efforts into getting Dragon Age: The Veilguard done and out the door.
During this time, BioWare is believed to have had only a small team working on its next Mass Effect game concept, while the bulk of the studio was busy elsewhere. With The Veilguard finally launched in late 2024, Mass Effect 5 became the sole focus of the studio — albeit in its newly-slimmed down form.
Gamble previously confirmed that Mass Effect 5 was being led by a team of fellow Mass Effect veterans who served key roles on the franchise’s original three games, including art director Derek Watts, creative director Parrish Ley, senior level designer and Normandy programmer Dusty Everman, and game director Preston Watmaniuk.
The leadership team behind Dragon Age: The Veilguard, including its lead writer, senior systems designer, various editors, producer and both its co-directors, Corinne Busche and John Epler, are all no longer at the company following the studio’s downsizing, meanwhile.
Consecutive years have seen BioWare release snippets of concept art and other brief teasers for the game, which is expected to be set hundreds of years after the end of the original Mass Effect trilogy and feature at least one returning character. At the same time, pre-production has also begun on Amazon Prime’s Mass Effect TV series that will also be set after the events of the trilogy.
“Let’s start by setting the record straight: the next Mass Effect game is in development, and EA and BioWare remain committed to telling more stories in this universe,” Gamble wrote in a blog post last November. “The truth is, the last few years have been an incredibly busy time at BioWare,” Gamble continued today. “But currently, the team is heads-down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect. We have a lot of universe to cover, lots of features to build, and lots of romances to figure out.”
BioWare has given no indication of when Mass Effect 5 will arrive, though here’s hoping 2026 brings a better sense of the company’s progress as development ramps up.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Remember those mockumentary-style interview sections in the original reveal trailer for Fable? Well, those will actually be in the game, and they’re inspired by an unlikely source — The Office.
Fable is a distinctly British video game series, and one where comedy has always been allowed to thrive. Both deadpan and absurdist British humor were at the centre of Lionhead’s original trilogy, and it’s great to see that ethos carrying forward into Playground Games’ 2026 reboot, which we recently got an extended look at during January’s Xbox Developer Direct.
Speaking to Xbox Wire, Playground founder and general manager Ralph Fulton mentioned a handful of classic 21st-century British sitcoms as touchstones for Fable’s tone. “We were inspired by the incredibly rich variety of British comedies that have been around over the last 20 years, like Peep Show, The IT Crowd and so many others,” Fulton revealed. “We started with The Office, which again started out as quintessentially British, but also travels really, really well.”
“Not just that IP, but a lot of the techniques and the devices that it’s popularised, you know. It’s that really grounded, awkward style of humour which really appeals to us. And the actors who have been in a lot of these shows — and indeed some of whom are in our game — they’re known all over the world.”
It isn’t just the style of humor from these comedies that Playground is taking inspiration from, but filmmaking techniques, too. “The other cool thing about The Office is something we’ve kind of nicked,” Fulton revealed. “You’ve maybe seen in our trailers that we have a sort of mockumentary interview style. I think a lot of people assume we just did that for those trailers, but it’s actually a device we use throughout the game.”
“I’ve never seen it in games before,” Fulton continued. “But it allows you a way to really neatly tell a joke or drop a little bit of character detail in a way that would feel really clunky in a dialogue, but suddenly feels entirely natural when you do it to ‘camera’.”
This can be seen in the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase trailer for Fable, above, in which Peep Show’s Matt King speaks to us straight down the lens as Humphrey the Golden, Guildmaster of Albion. It’s a sitcom technique pioneered by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the original BBC version of The Office, before, obviously, making its way overseas for the likes of Pam and Jim to take full advantage of with their knowing looks to camera in its U.S. edition. This mockumentary-style has spawned dozens of similar TV shows since, but, as Fulton said, it’s something we’ve never really seen in a game before, which makes for an intriguing proposition.
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.
Magic: The Gathering has kicked off 2026 with a return to Lorwyn, and Lorwyn Eclipsed might be the most excited I’ve seen the community since, well, Edge of Eternities (the last Universes Within set).
It’s a trip back to a simpler time, without bagels (Spider-Man), bending (Avatar), or the Buster Sword (Final Fantasy) – just fantasy creatures throwing spells at each other all day long.
Not only is it the first set of a packed year, but it marks big changes to the product lineup. Theme decks are back for Standard play, while a new Draft Night boxed product encourages players to, well, draft cards to build their decks. Then there’s our first Commander decks since Edge of Eternities, and both look pretty great, actually.
Here’s everything on offer (including some brand new discounts to consider), and where you can find it now that the new set is regularly available. Just be warned that prices are still all over the place, and many products are running low on stock even on release day.
The preorder price guarantee means you may pay less, too, and each pack has a guaranteed foil. Since we published this article, though, they’ve been flying off shelves – you’ll need to move fast to secure one.
Bundle
As is the case with pretty much any Magic set, a Bundle is available, too. This one includes 9 Play Boosters, a deck box, 30 lands and a spindown life counter.
After no Commander Decks for Marvel’s Spider-Man or Avatar: The Last Airbender, they’re back with Lorwyn Eclipsed.
Blight Curse is a Jund (Black, Red, Green) deck which promises -1/-1 drain and creature combos, while Dance of the Elements is a rare five-color precon with a gameplan of summoning huge elementals and sacrifice.
They’re both up for $49.99 on Amazon, but there’s every chance one (or both) spike in the coming weeks.
Up next, Collector Boosters are where you’re likely to find the more sought-after variants of Lorwyn Eclipsed cards, with these packs full of foils, full-arts, and special treatments.
They’re not going to come cheap, however, and they’re sold out at Amazon already. With launch closing in, there’s every chance more stock arrives, though.
Draft Night Box
To my knowledge, this is a debut for the Lorwyn Eclipsed set, and this Draft Night box is still without a price on Amazon.
It contains 12 Play Boosters, 1 Collector Booster, and 90 basic lands so that players can draft a 40-card deck with friends and pit them against each other, and the winner gets the Collector Booster.
Theme Decks
Finally, Lorwyn Eclipsed is bringing back Theme Decks for Standard play, and I’m pretty excited to have an easy way to jump into the format since Commander can be overwhelming to newcomers.
They come in Pirates (Izzet) and Angels (Selesnya) forms, with both available right now. If you’re interested, they’re $23.99 each.
UK Preorders
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
The Pokémon TCG: Pokémon Day 2026 Collection is back in stock at Amazon right now for $26.99, a steep drop from its $49.99 list price and easily the best price seen for this release so far (especially since market price is around $60 right now).
Timed to celebrate Pokémon’s 30th anniversary on February 27, the commemorative set officially releases on January 30 alongside Ascended Heroes, letting fans mark the milestone a little early. First announced in December 2025, this is a relatively small anniversary collection, but one that includes an exclusive card and a mix of bonus items.
Inside the box is a stamped foil Pikachu promo card, a metallic Pokémon Day coin featuring the anniversary logo, and three Pokémon TCG booster packs from different sets.
Available product images suggest the packs include one Phantasmal Flames booster and two Mega Evolution packs, although, as always with these collections, pack selection can vary between units, so keep that in mind when ordering as well.
At its current Amazon price, the collection undercuts the wider market by a significant margin. The same box is currently selling for around $60 on TCGplayer, making Amazon the clear value option while stock is available. Given this is a limited anniversary release, prices are unlikely to soften once retail stock dries up.
Amazon is on a real hot streak with Pokémon TCG deals in January, most recently on the Pokémon TCG: Pokémon Day 2026 Collection, and also on several Mega Evolution – Phantasmal Flames sets as well.
From aggressive Mega attackers to powerful evolution support, Phantasmal Flames brings a fiery mix of competitive threats and high-demand pulls.
Robert Anderson is Senior Commerce Editor and IGN’s resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter/X or Bluesky.
If you’re in Melbourne Australia this holiday long weekend, you’ll get the chance to step into the world of Azeroth’s prime real estate. Ahead of the launch of the next World of Warcraft expansion, Midnight, Blizzard have constructed an impressive interactive display, appropriately called the “Midnight House & Lounge” in Federation Square.
Just in time for a certain racquet-swinging international sports event in town, this interactive slice of Atherothian lifestyles of the rich and orcish allows fans to experience a so-called “home away from home… a sanctuary crafted for heroes of Azeroth to relax and unwind and explore what’s next forWorld of Warcraft.”
Plus, Blizzard will be giving away exclusive gifts at the venue until they run out – so be quick if you want to get your gauntlets on them, adventurer.
Check out a peek below:
Also on hand to celebrate the moment is Paul Kubit, Associate Game Director for Midnight, in town to chat all things World of Warcraft Midnight.
“As we enter the home stretch before the launch of World of Warcraft Midnight, I’m excited to be here in Australia connecting with local fans and sharing insight into the exciting new features arriving in this next chapter of World of Warcraft” said Associate Game Director, Paul Kubit.
“With fans already embracing the excitement of Housing Early Access, we’re thrilled to offer a first real‑world taste of this highly anticipated feature on Fed Square’s Top Court.” said Alexis Boulton, Blizzard VP, International Marketing.
Over the weekend, Melbourne fans will be able to make themselves feel right at home in Federation Square, exploring the world of World of Warcraft Midnight, experiencing the new housing features, and getting their hands on epic exclusive gifts (while stocks last) ahead of the game’s launch.
The Midnight House & Lounge is open from Friday 23 until Sunday 25 January, between 1:00pm-8:00pm daily (subject to weather adjustments). Stay tuned to @Blizzard_ANZ socials for any changes.
There isn’t really a better way I could describe Hytale, the new survival crafter from some former Minecraft modders, than to say it’s basically Minecraft 2. From the block-by-block breaking and building, to the stylized environments and enemies, to the procedural world generation, this feels like the, “What would we change if we had the chance to start over again?” version of the now legendary 2009 classic. Many games have been influenced by Mojang’s trendsetter, but this one is more of a cover song than a subgenre. And while developer Hypixel Studios’ lawyers might not love hearing me say that, I honestly don’t think it’s a bad thing. Even in Early Access, it’s a good cover!
All of this will be pretty familiar if you’ve put any time at all into Minecraft, but with some streamlining here and there. You no longer have to begin your journey punching trees, for instance, since basic tools are made with sticks and rubble that can be collected easily with your bare hands. Also, breaking the trunk of a tree will cause everything above it to collapse and drop its resources, which was almost enough to win me over on its own. I still to this day hate having to chop upwards to hollow out a tree in Minecraft!
Movement is also a lot more modern and fluid. You can jump up to three blocks high and pull yourself up, which feels like such a huge quality-of-life improvement over the one-block jump limit in Minecraft. It’s even possible to take a running leap at a ledge, hit the side, and pull yourself up. We’ve got proper parkour now, and I don’t know that I would ever want to give it up.
Building has some welcome additions as well. There are actual roof pieces, for instance, so you don’t need to repurpose stairs. Most block types can be rotated using the R key before placing them. Half slabs can even be placed vertically to create thinner, interior walls. However, the way they’re aligned on the grid and the lack of corner pieces mean you either end up with oddly offset layouts or missing corners, which is a bit of a shame. I wish they could dynamically snap together the way fences do.
It also just runs better than Minecraft on my Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB RAM, and RTX 4070 Ti-powered system. Even with the draw distance cranked up, my framerates sit comfortably above 60. I haven’t had time to stress test it with anything as elaborate as a 1:1 recreation of Minas Tirith or whatever, but for now it’s like butter.
It’s almost like someone’s wishlist of things Minecraft can’t or will never do.
Combat is fine. There are a handful of different weapon types, from swift-slashing double daggers to a classic sword and shield setup with more defensive options. Each one has its own unique charge attack and a special meter that can be filled up to release a devastating finisher. Archery can be exciting, but I feel like arrows drop off too quickly to allow for really impressive long-range shots. And I suspect this has to do with the fact that enemies shot from even the current max range often have a really hard time figuring out where the shot came from, which makes it a bit too exploitable.
I’m quite impressed with the enemy variety already, with everything from goblin bomb-throwers to really terrifying lava toads that can catch you with their tongues and pull you in for a very painful bite attack. There are a handful of new creatures to fight in every biome, like yetis in the cold mountains and flying insects in the desert. The way they spawn can feel strange and off-putting though. Especially when exploring underground, it seems like they’ll tend to clump up just on the edge of the small safe zone around a player, so I often turn back to leave the way I came only to find an almost literal wall of enemies behind me.
The biomes themselves have a pretty good variety as well, ranging from a chill fairy tale forest all the way up to intimidating basalt islands that can only be accessed with some intense mountaineering. What’s even cooler is that every surface biome has its own associated subterranean environments that can spawn below it. Underneath the desert, you might run into harrowing hives for giant insects. Deeper underground are scorching lava tunnels filled with fire-themed enemies.
As someone who usually plays Minecraft on Large Biomes mode, though, they do feel a bit cramped, and this can’t be adjusted yet. If you’re standing in the desert and you can see a swamp and a lava island just over the next hill, it gives the impression that the world is more of a theme park patchwork than a real place. Hytale also doesn’t support the kinds of extremely deep caverns and monumental mountains that came to Minecraft in the last couple years when they raised both the floor and ceiling for world generation significantly, which contributes to that diorama feeling.
That said, the generated structures scattered around enhance exploration quite a bit. Trork strongholds full of hidden loot chests, often guarded by about a dozen minions and a stronger chieftain, offer exciting targets with worthwhile rewards, at least the first time through. There are even villages of neutral Kweebec, though at this point they only have a limited selection of items to sell. And some of them, like recipes and new seeds for farming, feel a little bit pointless at the moment since there isn’t much difference between the dishes you can cook other than the broad tiers of quality.
There’s very little direction in the Early Access launch version of Hytale, either. The main hub area, the Forgotten Temple, is a rotunda of literal Under Construction signs. I even stumbled into some dungeons out in the world where I’d be excited to throw the doors open only to find one of these barriers promising there will be something here, some day. It’s not clear what the larger, overarching goal is supposed to be. You can progress through the different tiers of materials that are found in increasingly dangerous biomes, but I quickly ran out of things to do after that.
I’m not sure if there will eventually be a story or bigger bosses to find or anything like that. I haven’t run into them yet if they exist already. The only really specific endgame activity revolves around craftable Fragment Keys, which teleport you to a smaller challenge map to collect rare resources within a strict time limit. I found the whole system a bit underbaked so far, though they are one of the only efficient ways to acquire certain late game materials.
After watching Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade’s gorgeous opening cutscene on Switch 2, I instinctively reached for the PlayStation 5 controller sitting on my coffee table instead of my Switch 2 Pro Controller. That’s not to say VII Remake looks exactly as good on Switch 2 as it does on the beefier PS5, but this is an impressive port that’s easily up there with the best third-party games we’ve seen so far in the Switch 2’s first year, and I’m still not used to games looking this beautiful on my Nintendo console.
That strong first impression held up as I blasted through the familiar first hours of Cloud’s adventure in Midgar – which remains one of my favorite RPGs of the decade – with solid performance both handheld and docked. Digging through the menus also revealed tons of options to streamline progression for newcomers looking to see what all the hype is, or for returning fans who just want to blast through the epic adventure at a quicker pace on the go. No matter your experience with prior editions of VII Remake, the new Switch 2 version checks pretty much every box you could ask for from a portable version. If you’re a Nintendo-only gamer who’s been waiting for this one for a while, you shouldn’t hesitate to dive in.
FFVII Remake on Switch 2 Looks Great When Docked
When playing on my TV, VII Remake on Switch 2 impressed across all aspects: cutscenes, exploration, and most crucially, its fast-paced combat. It’s a small shame that it runs at 30 fps both handheld and docked, but I didn’t notice a single dropped frame during gameplay. It might’ve occasionally hiccupped during cutscenes, but I only noticed while examining it with a hypercritical eye for the purposes of this evaluation. It’s pretty safe to say that when docked, you can expect extremely consistent performance. It may not be 60 fps like on the other consoles, but it felt perfectly playable and responsive at all times.
I’m impressed with the little details I remember loving in VII Remake back in 2020 that have carried over here: the way the light reflects off Cloud’s Buster Sword as you run around still looks really nice. It targets 1080p while docked, missing out on the Switch 2’s highest capabilities but still looking really good nonetheless, with detailed character models and environments. Some NPCs popped in the distance when I was exploring the Sector 7 slums, but to my memory, that’s how it was on PS4 as well. And whether I was fighting a swarm of Shinra security officers or the hulking Scorpion Sentinel within a Mako reactor, VII Remake always kept up with the action, even when swapping between Cloud, Barrett, and Tifa to perform flashy abilities and Limit Breaks. Pro tip for Pro Controller users: I mapped the left and right d-pad to the GL and GR backpaddles on my controller, using them to conveniently swap between characters in combat.
Handheld Is a Totally Reasonable Way to Play
Playing in handheld is similarly impressive, but all of the minor complaints I noted about docked mode are slightly magnified. It’s still a solid 30 fps for the most part, but I noticed more dips during cutscenes specifically. But that doesn’t impact the combat, which always felt really smooth and totally fun. The resolution also takes a hit as you’d expect, and I noticed certain details like Cloud’s hair looked a lot blurrier. But when everything is in motion, VII Remake still looks nice on the Switch 2’s small screen, and it’s a completely viable way to play through it. It’s eye-catching to see modern AAA games run this well on a handheld device, and I think this era of games that originally came out on PS4 are the best fit for really solid ports to Switch 2. Final Fantasy VII Remake, as well as things like Street Fighter 6 that we saw last year, are third-party games that have dedicated versions on both PS4 and PS5, which have generally seemed to scale well to Switch 2.
Intergrade’s DLC Expansion Is Here, Too
Unlike Nintendo, which is still selling Breath of the Wild’s nine-year-old DLC content separately from its new Nintendo Sw itch 2 Edition, Square Enix has included everything in the Intergrade package for $40. That means you also get Episode INTERmission, an additional bite-sized campaign starring Yuffie, an optional party member from the original Final Fantasy VII who is now a central part of the Remake project. It takes about five hours to reach INTERmission’s credits, and it’s a really solid followup to the main campaign.
Streamlined Options for Casual Players or Double Dippers
There’s a lot here that makes a full replay pretty enticing. First, you can fast-forward through cutscenes at either 1.5- or 2-times speed, making it a snappier revisit for those who already know everything that happens but still want to see it play out. And, the brand-new Streamlined Progression menu adds options you’re probably used to seeing in modern remakes and remasters of old-school RPGs, like the HD-2D Dragon Quest games or even the most recent version of the original Final Fantasy VII itself. Having access to things like constant maximum health and magic points, an infinitely full Limit gauge, or the ability to deal 9999 damage on every hit lets you tailor your playthrough however you’d like, and it’s really cool to see those options come to a modern game. There’s also a nifty Head Start mode that hands you high-level characters and plenty of money, equipment, and abilities right from the beginning. I’d never recommend someone plays with these activated for their first playthrough, but it’s definitely fun to revisit old favorites by way of a frictionless power trip that lets you see all the sights again. It’s worth noting these features aren’t exclusive to Switch 2, Square Enix also updated the PS5 and PC versions with the same options, and everything is included in the new Xbox Series X|S release as well.
This Isn’t the Final Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy VII Remake is just part one of Square Enix’s currently unfinished Remake trilogy, with 2024’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth representing the middle chapter, and a third and final entry yet to be formally revealed. If you’re worried about starting the series with just one entry on the platform so far, Square Enix has already committed to bringing Rebirth to Switch 2 and Xbox Series X|S, as well as the in-development third game. So you can jump in worry-free: the full story will eventually make it to Switch 2, and this first port is a great way to get things started.
The Nintendo Switch 2 was the best-selling console of 2025 in the U.S., both in unit sales and dollar sales, selling a total of 4.4 million units in the U.S, and continuing its streak of selling faster than the original Nintendo Switch.
This comes from Circana’s full-year reporting on the U.S. games market courtesy of analyst Mat Piscatella, and shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. The Switch 2 has been at the top consistently since it launched earlier in the year, amid a period of decline for the steadily aging PS5 and Xbox Series consoles.
Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game of last year, and the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller was the best-selling accessory.
Overall, the U.S. games market reached $60.7 billion in sales for all of 2025, and $7.8 billion in December alone. That’s up 1% and 3% year-over-year, respectively.
In hardware, spending was up 9% year-over-year to $5.4 billion for the year, and up 6% year-over-year to $1.2 billion in December. The Nintendo Switch 2, as the best-selling console of the year, managed to sell 4.4 million units, 94% higher than the original Switch at the same amount of time after its own launch, and 35% ahead of the PlayStation 4. It also continues its reign as the fastest-selling video game console hardware platform, with Piscatella pointing out on Bluesky that the Game boy Advance remains the fastest-selling hardware platform overall after seven months on sale.
Over in software, December spending was up 3% to $5.9 billion, with subscription services seeing the biggest increase of 24% year-over-year. Overall full-year spending was only up 1% year-over-year, with subscription spending increasing 20% offsetting declines in everything else except mobile spending.
While Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game of the whole year, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 took the crown in December, despite its precense on Game Pass making its impact on Xbox much harder to tally. Fortnite saw the highest total active users across PlayStation and Xbox in 2025 of any game, with over half of all active users on the two platforms playing Fortnite at least once.
As for other games, the top five sellers for the full year should shock no one who’s been watching the numbers all month: after Battlefield 6 was NBA 2K26, Borderlands 4, Monster Hunter: Wilds, and Call of Duty Black Ops 7, again noting that Call of Duty was a Game Pass Day 1 title. The rest of the list was populated by a series of expected sellers, with some standouts such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Remastered coming in at No.9, Elden Ring: Nightreign at No.14, Pokemon Legends: Z-A at No.17 (though Nintendo doesn’t report digital sales, so it’s possible this would have been higher), and Split Fiction at No.19. Grand Theft Auto V clocked in at No.20 as players await the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, probably this year.
And finally, just looking at December, standout games including Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which launched into No.7 overall for the month, and Flight Simulator 2024, which released on PlayStation in December and shot from No.114 in November to No.16 last month. Over on PC for December, both Elden Ring and Elden Ring: Nightreign saw jumps likely due to the new Nightreign DLC.
December 2025 U.S. Top 20 Best-Selling Games:
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
NBA 2K26
Battlefield 6
Madden NFL 26
EA Sports FC 26
Pokemon Legends: Z-A*
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (NEW)*
Minecraft*
Donkey Kong Bananza*
Ghost of Yotei
EA Sports College Football 26
Grand Theft Auto V
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
Forza Horizon 5
Red Dead Redemption II
Flight Simulator 2024
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Kirby Air Riders*
Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2*
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Full Year 2025 U.S. Top 20 Best-Selling Games:
Battlefield 6
NBA 2K26
Borderlands 4
Monster Hunter: Wilds
Call of Duty Black Ops 7
Madden NFL 26
EA Sports College Football 26
EA Sports FC 26
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Remastered
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Ghost of Yotei
MLB: The Show 25*
Minecraft*
Elden Ring: Nightreign
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Forza Horizon 5
Pokemon Legends: Z-A*
WWE 2K25
Split Fiction
Grand Theft Auto V
* Indicates that some or all digital sales are not included in Circana’s data. Some publishers, including Nintendo, do not share certain digital data for this report.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
