Resident Evil: Requiem is just a couple of weeks away, and while the first few trailers definitely made it look like a beautiful game, the Switch 2 trailer that debuted earlier this week, well, didn’t. But, the way I see it, that’s excellent news, especially for anyone on a budget gaming PC.
Ever since the RE Engine came to prominence starting with Resident Evil: Biohazard, Capcom has been impressing me with just how good it can make games look, without making them too demanding. Now, obviously, I haven’t had the chance to test Resident Evil: Requiem performance yet myself, but just looking at both the system requirements and the Switch 2 trailer, it seems like Capcom is continuing this trend.
Capcom hasn’t revealed what resolution and settings either of these spec sheets are targeting, but even if that recommended build is just for 1080p Ultra at 60 fps, the Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and Radeon RX 6600 are very attainable graphics cards. That’s not to mention only requiring a Core i7-8700 or Ryzen 5 5500 and 16GB of RAM, which is a very low bar to clear.
What Kind of Performance Can I Expect?
Again, because Capcom hasn’t revealed any specific settings that the system requirements are targeting, I can’t say for sure, but from my time testing Resident Evil Village for TechRadar when it came out, I was able to get nearly 60 fps at 4K with an RTX 3060 – and the 3060 is very much not a 4K graphics card.
However, it’s important to note that the requirements for Requiem are a bit heavier than they were for Village. The biggest difference is that instead of asking for a Radeon RX 5700 or a GTX 1070 for Village, Requiem is asking for an RTX 2060 Super or a Radeon RX 6600. And while the performance gap between these graphics cards isn’t huge on its own, the key difference is that Requiem is recommending a ray tracing-capable GPU – Village didn’t.
That makes a lot of sense, given the visual quality of some of the trailers that have come out for the game, but it may leave some folks with older GPUs out in the cold. It’s very likely that with an older non-RT GPU, the game will look a lot like the Nintendo Switch 2 footage. The bright side here, though, is that the GTX 1660 and Radeon RX 5500 XT sneak in the minimum specs, so you’ll still be able to play the game, it just might not look too great.
The Nintendo Switch 2 Equivalent
It’s important to highlight that the Nintendo Switch 2 is able to run Resident Evil: Requiem, even if it wouldn’t quite meet the system requirements if it were a PC. The Tegra T239 SoC in the handheld is roughly the equivalent of a mobile RTX 3050 – which is weaker than the desktop-class GTX 1660 Capcom is requiring. I wouldn’t get too caught up in this detail, though.
Primarily, that’s because the Nintendo Switch 2 is a console and every single unit will be running the exact same hardware. That means when Capcom was porting Resident Evil: Requiem over to the Switch 2, it was able to fine-tune the build to the exact hardware, likely finding optimizations that wouldn’t be there for the PC version.
Still, just going by the Switch 2 trailer earlier this week, it does seem like Capcom just barely managed to squeeze the game onto the handheld. But even if it is rough, I’m looking forward to seeing just how well it runs on the Nintendo console.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
The director of Yakuza 3 Kiwami + Dark Ties has broken his silence on Ryo Ga Gotoku Studio’s controversial hiring of Teruyuki Kagawa to play Goh Hamazaki, saying they needed someone who would make audiences think, “This guy’s a creep.”
This comes from an interview with Horii conducted by Japanese outlet GAME Watch, and independently translated by IGN. In the interview, Horii is asked directly about the decision to recast certain characters in Kiwami from their original Japanese actors. His general response as to why he recast both Hamazaki and Rikiya Shimabukuro is that while it would “certainly be safer not to recast them and avoid online criticism,” the studio “felt there was no use being afraid.”
Horii goes on to say that they based their decision on who they most wanted to see perform. When asked directly about Kagawa playing Hamazaki, this is what Horii had to say:
Hamazaki is a sleazy, persistent, and militant yakuza, right? Since he isn’t an explosive character like Kanda, when we tried to think of someone who makes you go, “This guy’s a creep,” naturally it was Kagawa – that was the main factor. Kagawa’s acting is fun to watch. Even when he’s chopping a pig’s feet off with a chef’s knife, it has a slimy feel. That feeling permeates his performance, so it brings a freshness to the scene and made it feel really fun.
Following the announcement of Kagawa’s casting, Yakuza fans reacted in anger on social media, getting #REMOVEKAGAWA trending on multiple networks and creating a Change.org petition that at the time of this writing has nearly 10,000 signatures. Fans have accused RGG Studio of suppressing the #REMOVEKAGAWA hashtag and deleting comments referencing the issue on its official Instagram page. And a number of them have pointed out that Sega has recast actors for offenses in the past – Pierre Taki was recast in Judgment back in 2019 after he was arrested for cocaine possesssion.
Up to this point, neither RGG Studio nor Sega has offered official comment on Kagawa’s casting, nor the accusations – Horii’s answer is the first statement that’s been offered on the subject. However, Sega did publish a trailer on its official YouTube after the wave of criticism, which introduced the Japanese voice cast and opened on a longer clip of Hamazaki. IGN reached out to Sega for additional comment ahead of this story, but did not hear back in time for publication.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Mobile games have existed for decades, but the market has grown immensely in recent years. So we decided it’s time to figure out which mobile game you think is the best of all time with a March Madness–style bracket, presented by our friends at McDonald’s and their limited-time Hot Honey sauce, which will make your faves more perfect.
The bracket is made up of 32 entries divided into two categories. On one side are classics like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Doodle Jump, and Candy Crush. On the other are modern hits like Genshin Impact, Balatro, Fortnite, and Roblox. But which game deserves to be crowned as the GOAT? Only you can tell us that.
The bracket will pit games against each other 1v1, with the winner of each matchup moving on to the next round. All the matchups in each round will be done at the same time, with voting conducted through polls on the bottom of the page you’re currently on as well as IGN’s Instagram stories. If you come back to this page on the dates listed below, the polls will be updated to the latest round and you can vote again.
The development team behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have been given the status of Knight under the French Order of Arts and Letters, in recognition of their significant contribution to the country’s art and culture.
French studio Sandfall Interactive revealed the news this week via a post on LinkedIn, which included photos of the proud team wearing medals bestowed upon them by the French Ministry of Culture.
While somewhat similar to a British knighthood, the French Order of Arts and Letters does not allow holders to add a “Sir” to their names. Still, it is prestigious form of recognition awarded to just 200 people worldwide each year, for their work creating something of outstanding cultural significance.
“From Expeditioners to Knights!” the team wrote in celebration of their latest prize. “We were received yesterday at the Ministry of Culture to celebrate our game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. As such, the members of Sandfall Interactive were awarded the Order of Arts and Letters.
“This distinction honors us, and our deepest thanks go especially to our team who shaped this world and to the millions of players who have brought it to life. We hope that our journey will inspire all those who wish to take the plunge and create their own work.”
Recognition by the French Ministry of Culture for work in the field of video games is rare, and for an entire studio of people to be recognized is completely unique.
The honor of Knight status was first bestowed upon a game creator back in 2006, when Rayman, Rabbids and Beyond Good & Evil designer Michel Ancel received the honor alongside Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto and Alone in the Dark creator Frederick Raynal. Nintendo’s veteran Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma was similarly honored in 2023, meanwhile.
“Wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 paints itself into the pantheon of great RPGs with a brilliant combat system and a gripping, harrowing story,” IGN wrote in our Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review, dubbing it a “modern RPG classic.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Insomniac Games, the developer behind PlayStation’s beloved Spider-Man games and the upcoming Wolverine, just dropped a teasing hint at another Marvel hero who fans now think is likely to appear.
In a post on Twitter/X, Insomniac Games shared an image of Wolverine extending his claws and turning to face… someone, alongside the caption: “‘Claws?’ What’s that, some kind of fancy lawyer lingo?”
The line is a fun pun on Wolverine’s blades, and the kind of clause a lawyer might include in a legal contract — but which lawyer? Well, Marvel fans will know there’s only one legal representative who’d likely seek out Wolverine when he’s in another one of his moods.
Of course, fans have immediately taken the tease to be a nod at the appearance of Daredevil, otherwise known as Matt Murdock, as played by Charlie Cox in the Daredevil TV series and a swathe of other projects in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Fans have long been expecting Daredevil to make an appearance in one of Insomniac’s Marvel games, too, after numerous references to the character in the developer’s Spider-Man titles.
A sign outside Nelson & Murdock’s office appeared in Spider-Man 1, and was noted by fans as having been removed in Spider-Man 2 and replaced by an eviction notice. A post-launch Spider-Man 2 patch then re-added the Nelson & Murdock sign, hinting at some kind of story for the character being in the offing — something the game’s director Bryan Intihar even commented on in late 2023, teasing: “Stay tuned.”
Further references to the character have teased Murdock and Jennifer Walters apparently starting a legal firm together, and included other Daredevil-themed locations such as Josie’s Bar and Fogwell’s Gym. Clearly, the character has been on Insomniac’s mind for some time — perhaps Wolverine is where we’ll finally see him?
As you would expect, replies to Insomniac’s latest post have immediately picked up on the studio’s apparent Daredevil hint, and responded with numerous gifs of Charlie Cox in his iconic red suit. Well, why not.
The Disney Afternoon Collection is getting its own physical version for Nintendo Switch 1 and 2 later this year. For eager fans who can’t wait to jump into it for a good nostalgia hit, preorders are now live for the collection on original Switch for $29.99 and on Switch 2 for $39.99. While there’s still a few months to go until its physical version is released – May 29 is when you’ll have to mark you calendars for – it looks like it’s well worth the wait.
This is quite the packed collection, and a welcome addition to the list of existing Disney games on Switch consoles. It comes with all six games from the original set that was released back in 2017 – DuckTales, DuckTales 2, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Darkwing Duck, and TaleSpin – alongside two bonus games: Bonkers and Goof Troop. That’s not all, though. It also comes with a nice variety of collectibles when you buy a physical copy of the game, which you can check out below.
Disney Afternoon Collection Bonus Items
Buying the physical version of Disney Afternoon Collection on Nintendo Switch also nets you two sticker sheets, three collectible cards, and eight retro milk caps. For fans, it looks like quite a delightful assortment to have alongside the game.
Games Included
Here’s a list of all the games included in this Switch and Switch 2 version of the collection:
DuckTales
DuckTales 2
Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
Darkwing Duck
TaleSpin
Bonkers
Goof Troop
What Is The Disney Afternoon Collection?
The Disney Afternoon Collection originally released back in 2017 and included DuckTales, DuckTales 2, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Darkwing Duck, and TaleSpin. At the time, our review from IGN’s Samuel Claiborn said it “resurrects a few NES classics (and some not-so-classics) with a great rewind button.” This new release of the collection for both Nintendo Switch consoles adds in two bonus games alongside the original lineup: Bonkers and Goof Troop.
For the original games, it also includes some quality-of-life updates, and there are additional features included, such as a rewind feature. It also includes access to soundtracks, a behind-the-scenes gallery, along with boss rush and time attack modes.
Other Preorder Guides
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
There aren’t a ton of games that I’ve happily put more than 100 hours into as quickly as I have with Mewgenics. This feline-flavored, turn-based, roguelike tactical RPG takes place on a 10×10 grid, with mostly traditional classes like Fighter, Mage, Hunter, Tank, and Necromancer, among others. What sets it apart, aside from the cutesy macabre art style that slathers its creative zones with blood and poop, is that so many of the skills and attributes that your team will end up with are randomized and for the most part out of your control. That all but ensures no two runs will play out the same way, forcing you to improvise and play the hand you’re dealt. Combined with the absolute mountain of content here – so much that I’m still seeing entirely new enemies, skills, mutations, and loot pop up after more than 150 hours – it’s been able to draw me back in time and time again by dangling the possibility of an absolutely wild team coming together and bulldozing through the boss who turned my last party into kibble. I still haven’t seen the final ending after all that time (this game has several) but I can’t imagine I’ll be tired of it before I do.
Mewgenics is a game about cats, but it’s not necessarily going to appeal to people who passionately love them because it’s a dark comedy that treats them as meat to be put through a grinder. The name itself is a play on eugenics, a morally appalling practice of selective breeding that has historically led to things like forced sterilization to remove undesirable traits from the gene pool, so you know going in that it’s going to be a little spicy. If you’ve played any of Edmund McMillen’s previous work (here he’s collaborating once again with Tyler Glaiel), such as the infamously difficult Super Meat Boy or the infinitely replayable Binding of Isaac, you’ll have a sense of the type of humor to expect. It’s delightfully gross and endlessly weird at every turn.
It’s delightfully gross and endlessly weird at every turn.
Even knowing that, as a long-time cat owner myself, I was perhaps a bit too conservative with just how unsympathetic and detached you’re expected to be. I probably took longer than I should’ve to unlock crucial upgrades for my house because doing so requires shipping dozens of cats off to live with a set of goofy weirdo NPCs, never to be seen again. One of the most important and flamboyant, Tink, will only take newborn kittens, and in exchange he’ll give you tools that provide more information on how to breed more kittens – and he needs a lot, so you have to get accustomed to parting with them right away. Other characters want older cats, mutated cats, injured cats, or cats who’ve been on runs to specific places in order to improve stores or add new rooms to your house, among other things. Traditionally an RPG like this is about nurturing your characters and developing them until they become more powerful, but Mewgenics requires a different way of thinking: cats with low or unremarkable stats are lost causes who will weigh your squad down, so you’re best off spending them like currency and keeping only the picks of various litters.
Selectively breeding your cats takes place in the fairly simple house screen, a 2D side view where your cats chaotically mill around while you arrange furniture pieces that you find as loot or buy from a shop, inventory Tetris-style. The goal here is to improve stats like Stimulation and Comfort in order to get your cats in the mood to produce high-quality offspring and improve the chances they’ll come out with favorable mutations. Those can be things like a messed-up tail that makes their basic attacks inflict burning, or fur that gives them more health regen when they’re wet, or leech eyes, among tons and tons of others that are all represented visually on your increasingly weird-looking cats.
(You also have to clean up cat poop daily to keep your Health stat up by simply clicking on piles of various shapes and sizes. It’s a bit of a chore after a while, especially when it gets crowded and you have to move cats out of the way to get to it – somehow, of all the furniture items I’ve gathered, I’ve never seen a single litter box.)
When everything’s arranged to your liking, you hit the End Day button and your cats will choose their own mates based on who’s in a room with them, as well as their own genders, orientations (yup, there are gay and bisexual cats), and libedos. Then, out come the kittens after some bizarre cat humping and gooey birth animations that take obvious pleasure in being unsettling. (You can tone that down if you need it to be safe for work.) Optimizing this to produce the most powerful cats possible while also avoiding too much inbreeding (which, as Tink will tell you, isn’t cool even though it has the word “breeding” in it because it causes birth defects) is tricky – but you can’t really fail at this part because, even if you lose all your cats, you can just start again from scratch using the randomized strays who show up every day.
The real challenge is in finding the traits you want and ensuring they’re passed down to new generations without too many side effects, and that definitely takes some planning. Mewgenics doesn’t make it super easy, since there’s no way to view all your cats in a list or spreadsheet – you just have to tediously cycle through them one at a time. You do unlock some tools to label them (and view their gnarly family trees), but when you have 40 cats roaming around it can be a pain to find one with the stats and abilities you’re looking for when you go to put together a four-cat party (or fewer, if you want to live dangerously and level them up faster) for an adventure.
Building your team is another area where Mewgenics is unconventional and unpredictable because when you’re picking cats and assigning their classes you can’t see what all of their starting abilities will be. You’ll get their base stats, mutations, and basic attacks, and sometimes they’ll come with a spell or passive ability from one of their parents’ classes, but it’s not until you lock in their class that you’ll learn what you’re really working with and if they’ll synergize well. Considering that each of the 12 classes has 75 abilities that might pop up (even after all this time I’m still seeing new ones), I get the same thrill from this reveal that I do from picking up my hand in poker or seeing the modifiers on a daily run in Slay the Spire or Monster Train 2: sometimes it’s good news and I’m excited to see where it takes me, sometimes it’s not and I brace myself for a thrashing and hope for a surprise turnaround if I can survive long enough to level them up and unlock some better skills.
What’s inconvenient at this stage is that while you can see what items you have available in your house inventory before you set out on an adventure, and after you lock in your classes you’re taken to the equipping screen to deck your cats out with up to five pieces of potentially build-defining gear apiece, you cannot see those items when you’re actually picking your classes and your starting abilities are first revealed. That might be fine if you have a fantastic memory, but for the rest of us it’s frustrating to not be able to check if I have a good piece of gear to boost the stats of my summoned familiars at the exact moment I’m deciding if I should go with an animal-friend Druid or a robot-building Tinkerer, or if I should go with a Fighter or a Tank instead.
It’s tricky to keep track of what you have on hand because gear in Mewgenics doesn’t last forever. You can expect to get three, maybe four runs out of something before it breaks, and that’s assuming you don’t wipe and lose everything you took with you and picked up along the way (except for your choice of one item from several that a helpful weirdo saves for you after a failed attempt). If weapons breaking in recent Zeldas rubbed you the wrong way, you probably won’t enjoy that aspect of Mewgenics, but I actually do like the way it prevents me from relying too heavily on any one strategy. You can get something incredibly powerful and play with it more than once, without letting that item define every run you’ll do from that point on.
Taking gear on only two or three runs may not sound like much, but that’s more than the actual cats get. Another reason you can’t count on the tricks you used in the previous run working just as well on the next, even if you use the same classes and gear, is that each cat only gets one adventure in which to level up and develop their skills. (You’ll be able to use them in combat one or even two more times during special battles where major monsters attack your house.) That was tough to get my head around at first, because I’m accustomed to my RPG party members sticking around, at least until I get them killed.
Maybe this is why you’re not allowed to name your own cats, and instead they come pre-named from a pool of (I estimate) a billion different silly possibilities: Mewgenics doesn’t want us to get too attached. After a while I stopped paying much attention to their names except to chuckle at them, preferring to think of my squad members as their classes rather than individuals. Only the ones I ended up using as my primary breeding stock really stuck with me. (Man, talking about this game makes you say some weird stuff.)
When you head out to one of the three acts’ adventure maps, which are all drawn in a jerkily animated, charmingly childlike style, you start with a single path that then branches off into two, each of which has two completely different stages packed with their own unique sets of enemies – so many you definitely won’t see them all even after several runs. You’ll definitely want to mouse over them and read their descriptions before diving into battle, because some of them have some extremely nasty tricks up their sleeves – including a few that can instantly and permanently kill a cat or infect it with a parasite that takes up a gear slot. The stakes are already pretty high given your cats are permanently injured every time they get downed, and can be outright killed if their body is destroyed by attacks or eaten by zombies, so you don’t want to get surprised if you can help it.
Each zone is also stocked with multiple bosses that range from powered-up versions of your own classes to huge, nasty monsters with their own creative game-changing mechanics, and one that’s basically just an evil Kirby. Yes, a few of them are annoying (I avoid going to Act 1’s Boneyard unless a quest demands it because that boss is a total jerk), but on balance they’re excellent battles that often make me think differently about how to manage my team’s turn order and abilities.
One thing that stands out to me about the structure of Mewgenics’ runs – aside from how they can take as long as two hours once you’ve unlocked all the zones (and some secret ones) – is that unlike most roguelikes, you rarely get to make decisions about the path you take between battles. You mainly get to choose between the default path and a harder one with better loot and one more battle to level up a cat in, and then very occasionally between two types of rewards (usually an equipable item or a piece of furniture for your house). That makes the between-battle encounters feel a little less interesting than in a lot of similar games, especially when the random encounters turn out to be basically a coin flip where you’re picking between a red pill or a blue pill, or pushing a button vs pulling a lever without any indication of which will give you a bonus and which will give you a debuff.
There are, of course, some more in-depth, multi-stage encounters where you’re picking between a set of options in a choose-your-own-adventure story where your chances of success for each one are determined by a cat’s stats. However, since the cat whose stats you’re working with is chosen randomly, there are two layers of luck involved before you get a shot at a good outcome. It often feels completely random, but that’s alright because so much of Mewgenics is doing the best you can with circumstances beyond your control.
During combat, there are so many different things in play that the interactions between cat mutations, passives, spells, gear, environmental modifiers, and enemies can get crazy complex, and figuring out exactly what happened – or predicting what will happen – can be like investigating a crime scene (often with just as much blood splatter). Why did that enemy pingpong between two trash bags, with each bounce doing one point of damage, until it died? How did one of my cats just straight-up eat a boss without me even telling it to move? Or, why did that giant Daddy Shark get to take another move and insta-kill my Cleric when I’d carefully placed him just outside what should’ve been his projected attack range? (That one stung.) All of those answers are in there somewhere if you know where to look and study the rules carefully. In one of those cases, it was related to – you guessed it – poop. The map does get chaotic when there are a lot of enemies and fire or plants or ice on the screen, but thankfully there’s a tactical view that usually clears things up… mostly.
Most of the time, if you think something might work, it will. Water and ice spells and spells will put out fire, water will conduct electricity and zap everything standing in it, that sort of thing. However, sometimes its rules aren’t super logical: a couple I’ve noticed is that robots are susceptible to bleeding, poison, and parasite infestations, and the Butcher class’s innate meat hook weapon can’t actually hook meat unless you luck into the right upgrade for it. But again, most of the time it works like you’d expect it to.
I do love when a powerful team dynamic emerges as you earn new skills (your choice from a random selection of three) or raise one cat’s stats after every battle. Recently I had a squad with a Monk who could toss out meat pickups that typically just heal the team, but when combined with a Butcher who can turn all of those meats into minion fly familiars and a Druid who can boost those flys’ stats and turn them into killing machines, it became a way to raise an army in a single turn. On another run I had a Cleric whose health regeneration applied to the whole team and an item that let me continually boost that regen multiple times per turn, allowing my Necromancer to run wild with a high-damage attack that also drained half of his own health. There are countless examples like this, and while you won’t win the lottery with a great combo every run, they happen more than often enough to make me excited about what might be next.
While you won’t win the lottery with a great combo every run, they happen more than often enough to make me excited about what might be next.
What’s a little frustrating when I’m planning out my moves in a tough fight where every action matters is that there’s no way to access a cat’s full character sheet while you’re in a battle, so you can’t see their list of mutations or all of their equipment’s full effects when you need that information the most. It’s almost all represented visually on your cats, at least, but you have to remember, for example, what a cat having a second head growing on its butt means. When the rules are changing so dramatically from run to run, I would love to be able to reference all of them at any time.
As if all of those variables weren’t enough, Mewgenics throws yet another curveball at you when it sends you on one of its story or side quests. Those all revolve around a unique and powerful item that changes the rules in a big way and telling you to take it to a specific zone. One of the most memorable gives you a five-second time limit for every action – and if you don’t make a move, the AI will take over and move for you. (I was glad I wasn’t playing that one on my Steam Deck because the controls there are serviceable, but not nearly as quick as with a mouse and keyboard.) Another shook things up by giving my cats random selections of abilities from every class when they leveled up, creating powerful hybrids that are usually rare. There are tons of these available, though it’s kind of a bummer that if you fail a side quest you don’t get a second attempt at that unless it randomly comes up again once you’ve paid enough cats. The story itself is pretty silly and light – don’t expect any Hades-style epics here – but good for a few yuks as you do the bidding of an incompetent mad scientist.
Another area where Mewgenics is truly exceptional is in its sound and music, which are fantastic in both big and subtle ways. It comes with a collection of original and hilarious songs that accompany each level and culminate in major boss battles that are designed to loop for as long as a battle takes, and there are multiple variations on each that include instrumental versions – your cats will even meow along to them sometimes. (My favorite is probably “Where’s That Smell Coming From?”) And those meows come from a vast selection of different randomly selected voices, including some celebrity cameos.
One of the best touches, though, is the crowd sounds. Mainly you’ll hear this after beating a battle: there’s cheering and clapping with varying enthusiasm based on how quickly you pulled off your win. That’s fine, but the best part is the shocked gasps when one of your cats is killed in action. That gets me every time – and trust me, I’ve heard it a lot.
Lastly, Mewgenics has a fun and surprising approach to the practice of “save-scumming,” where you quit out of a battle you’ve messed up and restart it with knowledge of what not to do. I won’t spoil what happens, but there are consequences if you abuse it. Thankfully, you do get some flexibility in case of a power outage or spouse demanding you stop playing that game you’ve been playing for 150 hours and do the dishes, and it’s kind of implicit that you have permission to save-scum once per run – and yes, I use it regularly.
The latest trailer for Resident Evil Requiem shows experienced agent Leon S. Kennedy whiffing every one of his shots — and fans think Nintendo is to blame.
Yesterday’s Nintendo Partner Direct featured a fresh look at the highly-anticipated survival horror title, which features newbie agent Grace Ashcroft alongside veteran zombie fighter Leon S. Kennedy. But watch yesterday’s trailer and you’d think Leon was fresh out of the academy, as he is unable to land a single bullet.
The Nintendo showcase included new footage of Leon kicking zombies to the ground, but then firing over their shoulder. At one point he picks up a rifle, then fires at a tree. Leon’s even able to miss with a chainsaw, spinning at a zombie only to graze some furniture.
Nintendo making Leon miss every shot and attack to keep the show PG is so funny pic.twitter.com/fknXycULvQ
Online, Leon’s sudden lack of fighting prowess has not gone unnoticed, with Nintendo itself believed as being to blame.
“Nintendo making Leon miss every shot and attack to keep the show PG is so funny,” wrote nin10doland in a long thread on social media. “I can feel the frustration from the guy who was recording this game footage,” replied NikTek. “How many years of service does Leon have exactly?” added HuhShalien.
The Partner Direct broadcast was rated as being for an 18+/Mature audience, though some fans have suggested the footage used here was likely the same seen in the stream’s separate Japanese version. In Japan, Resident Evil games are frequently censored, and Nintendo may feel a particular need to keep gore and violence unseen.
Others, meanwhile, noted that this was nothing new for a Nintendo Direct.
“They did the same thing with The Great Circle during the boat action shot, where they were shooting the water in front of the enemy boat instead of the actual boat,” wrote Donnyboi.
“Reminds me of the Hitman trailer when they’d cut right before he’d kill anyone,” added RileyEatsGood.
“This is also why the initial reveal for The Duskbloods from FromSoftware looked super underwhelming,” concluded VBandit47. “They couldn’t show literally ANYTHING that is core to the Soulsborne experience cause they couldn’t show any blood. Watch it back, you’ll see what I mean lmao.”
But it wasn’t just Leon’s aim that came under fire during the Nintendo Direct. The beloved character’s new amiibo figurine also took flak for its facial design — “hot uncle” it is not.
“Honestly, they look like the hot chocolate chocolates you put in a cup of hot milk to dissolve,” wrote Iv0ry_Falcon on reddit in a thread dissecting the look of both Leon and Grace’s amiibo.
“This 20$ Leon is on 20$ shrooms judging by his look,” claimed PhysicalKick3812. “Grace looks good.”
Arc Raiders, an extraction shooter and the second game from developer Embark Studios, has taken the world by storm.
This sci-fi, third-person PvPvE experiment launched with little more than a $40 price tag and an enticing premise back in October and almost immediately established itself as one of the biggest games of 2025 – and maybe even 2026. Now, with a post-launch roadmap paving the way with the promise of new map updates and new apocalyptic AI enemies, all eyes are on Embark to see if it can keep the momentum up for months – or maybe even years – to come.
We caught up with CEO Patrick Söderlund to learn more about the surprise success of Arc Raiders, its huge impact on the studio, the battle with cheaters, content updates, hotels in Italy, weird pants, and more as Embark heads into its first full year with a mega hit on its hands.
IGN: I’d like to start with PvE. Like so many others, I’m fascinated by how players have chosen to communicate and interact with one another in the game. What is Embark doing to encourage that behavior and capitalize on the special sauce that makes this element unique?
Patrick Söderlund: I think you said it well. I think it’s, maybe, not just capitalizing on the aspects of PvE, but it’s capitalizing on the unique sauce that we managed to cook that makes this game special. I think PvE and PvP are both ingredients in that sauce. I could sit there and pretend like, ‘Yes, everything that happens in the game and everything that people do in the game, of course, was intended.’ That’s not the case, of course. When you build a game, and you structure it to a large extent with elements of a sandbox, the stuff that happens in Arc Raiders is just the output, which is incredible and very rewarding for us to see as developers.
What we do is we look at, ‘OK, what do we think we should double down on?’ I, personally, am touched by all the social elements to this game and the things that make me and, I think, everyone else, believe in humanity again. There’s something very kind about that, in many aspects. Just as sometimes PvP can be exciting, frustrating, and thrilling, as well. Those are the aspects that we have to look into. I think we look at it from a holistic perspective and try to understand what more we can do to foster and to nurture both those sides.
One of the discussions that I think is, to some extent, public is ‘What’s Speranza?’ I think Speranza is heavily underutilized, personally. I think that’s something that we want to, probably, improve and make into something else. Are there elements of the game where there could be meeting points? Again, these are personal ideas, right now, that I’m basically brainstorming with you, but the Speranza idea is obviously something that I think people have told us about, something that I think could be cool.
Could you meet up with people there? Could that be a social hub to some extent? What more can we do with that? It also deepens what I think is something that players maybe want more of, which is the lore of Arc Raiders. So, we look at it from multiple angles and multiple perspectives, and then, as we build content as quickly and fast as we can, we try and push updates and changes into the game that does more of what we believe is great about this game.
IGN: A quick offshoot: are there any plans for more instruments?
Patrick Söderlund: You’re going to laugh. If you ask the team, ‘Who has been the biggest advocate for instruments?’ They will send you a picture of me. I was so upset that we only had one at launch, and I kept [saying], ‘Where are my instruments?’ There are so many of them that have been designed and built, and I happen to be in a position of decision-making authority [laughs]. So, the answer is yes, there will be more instruments. For sure. I love them, and they create such cool moments. What the team basically wanted to make sure was that, not only can they be played separately, but they can be played in unison, and that makes sense. That makes it a little bit more complicated for us to add them. Then, they want, obviously, appropriate animations, but all the instruments and everything that you play has been recorded by the people that work at Embark, which is pretty cool.
Frankly, what you say there is something that I believe we need to lean into and do more of. Those types of things. I don’t know what another instrument can be, but the joy… When someone told me that we’re going to do fireworks, I’m like, ‘Why would we do that?’ Then I see these crazy things people do with them. I said, ‘We need more of this stuff.’ I think the things that are maybe not centered around going out there, shooting Arc, looting, or other things, they’re just there because they’re fun. They’re just there to bring joy. That’s been, frankly, our biggest surprise with this game. I’ve read a bunch of articles saying the Arc Raiders is almost like a social experiment, and it kind of is, and I love that.
I genuinely love the fact that that’s what it is. I actually had a conversation at dinner three days ago with a very prominent professor in neurology that had gotten to know about the game, and said, ‘Listen, you have no idea what you’ve built. Forget about the game itself.’ From just the whole idea of psychological experimentation and social experimentation, and what this game can be. She, a good friend of mine, basically said, ‘You should go and do a collab or work with people from the medical field to study what behaviors are triggered in Arc Raiders.’
We may not go that far. That would not be anything to do with the game itself, but it points to something that I believe is so fundamental with this game, and I believe is a big component to why the game has been successful. We knew that we had elements of that, but we could never anticipate that it would take the route it took.
IGN: When I play, I sometimes hear players outright comment on being in ‘friendly’ or ‘unfriendly’ lobbies. I’m not sure if this is something you know off the top of your head, but is Embark aware of how much of its playerbase is intentionally taking advantage of the aggression-based matchmaking to place themselves in PvE or PvP-centered lobbies?
Patrick Söderlund: I don’t know the answer to that. It’s obviously something that we are and need to continue to monitor. That’s not the intent of the game’s design or our ambition to segment the game in that aspect and make it so that people can sneak in. That’s not, of course, what we want. We want you, as a player, to have the experience that you’re looking for and makes you happy. We have to deal with the factor of the human beings and real players, which we can’t curate that 100%. It’s impossible because humans make decisions. I can be the friendliest guy and then, all of a sudden, I can decide to start shooting people – or the opposite. It is just the nature of a multiplayer game, but we understand that is a concern. We understand that could be the case, and sometimes is the case.
We are obviously pushing our systems and thinking about other means of trying to just give players the experience they’re looking for without going into any deep details around this, because it is pretty complex, to be honest. You are, frankly, like me for the most part.
I’m PvE to a large extent, but I’m also PvP sometimes because I think it’s fun. You have other players that just want to PvP, and for them, it’s completely fair. I think the game should cater to all types of players, but what we don’t want to have happen is for you to feel like you’re in a situation that you don’t want or that you didn’t wish for. That’s kind of the important aspect of this.
IGN: So the aggression-based matchmaking is still something you guys are tweaking every day, then?
Patrick Söderlund: All systems, when it relates to matchmaking, will undergo changes continuously. That’s a part of running a live service. We have to, and it’s not just that element of our matchmaking. Matchmaking, it’s not as simple as, ‘Are you someone that shoots a lot of people or not?’ It is far more sophisticated than that. The PvP, PvE aspect of it is a small portion of it. There are other aspects, and then we need to take into consideration, how do you play the game? How good are you? You obviously shoot a lot of Arc enemies, we will determine your abilities to shoot in general and your ability to shoot against AI and shoot against other players.
Matchmaking is a complex system as a whole, and as a developer, pretty hard to get right. I’ve been working with matchmaking systems for the majority of my video game career. All the way from Battlefield to a bunch of different games. Frankly, some of the first multiplayer games, no one even knew what matchmaking was. It was like, ‘Play the game. Have fun.’ Then, as games and multiplayer games evolved over time, it obviously became a necessity. It’s a formula of many, many, many things, where PvE and PvP is one aspect of them, and all of it gets continuously tweaked, of course. There are probably other systems that we are working on, or that we probably should be working on, that will be added as well.
IGN: Embark said it was going to start cracking down on cheaters in January. Could you give me an update on the anti-cheat process and how that’s gone so far? If you, again, would happen to have a rough estimate on how many cheaters have been banned?
Patrick Söderlund: I’m not going to give you a specific number, but I can give you ballpark. We have been pretty aggressive on this. The game wasn’t prone to so many cheaters in the beginning, but as with all multiplayer games that get successful, this becomes a component, unfortunately. For us as developers, just like a DDoS [Distributed Denial-of-Service] attack, it’s one of these things that you just have to try and be a step ahead. To be very honest with you, it’s not always easy because the minute you do something, the minute you come up with something, they’ve come up with something else to do. The banning process is obviously delicate because we need to make sure that we ban people that deserve to be banned, if that makes any sense. If you take general figures, anywhere between 0.1% to 1% of any multiplayer crowd in a large-scale multiplayer game is cheating, and therefore, to some extent, should get a temporary or a longer, or permanent ban.
It could be a minor thing that you’re trying. An aim bot that may get you a 24-hour suspension, to doing something that, frankly, means you shouldn’t be playing the game anymore. So, we’ve put together a system. We’ve started banning players, and why do I know that? Because I see an influx of people trying to get to the studio, and to me. ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything.’ We’re seeing a pretty substantial change in that, but I know that we have banned probably tens of thousands of players so far, that I know. Again, we need to make sure that we get it right. That we are fair, and that, in the case where it’s clear that we didn’t get it right, that we can quickly remedy the situation so that player isn’t affected in an unfair fashion or way.
That’s why the approach should probably be a little bit more cautious than what I think some people want for that specific reason. Regardless of how cautious you are and what systems are in place, there are always people that are going to feel like they’re treated unfairly that, ‘I didn’t do anything,’ and then there are absolutely people that will get caught or that are unfairly banned that we need to deal with. We try and look at it from that perspective, but we will continue to go after people that are doing things in the game that they shouldn’t do.
IGN: It sounds like there’s a lot planned for the next four months, though I have seen some players dissatisfied with the roadmap. What do you say to the people who saw that four-month plan and feel like it’s not enough to keep them coming back?
Patrick Söderlund: First and foremost, what I say is, I hear you. I understand what you’re saying, and I would maybe even feel the same if I were you to some extent, because they don’t have the details. We opted for a pretty generalized plan for now because, to be very honest, we’re developing things as we go. It’s a live service, and we know what we’re going to do, but we don’t actually know whether something that we’re working on may or may not make it on time for that particular release. As we get closer to releasing something, you’ll see – and I think you’ve seen it in our latest patch notes – they’re pretty detailed. We’re not trying to hide anything. We’re just trying to be as transparent as we can be at this point in time, but if we get into the studio development schedule and make that public, we’re probably going to be in a world of hurt.
People may or may not be as forgiving of some of the things that we are not able to deliver, but our goal is to make sure that this game gets continuous updates, that we build things that people love, and that we do it as much as we possibly can. I feel that if I paid $40 for this game, I would’ve felt like I’d gotten probably a decent value out of the game. We’re not resting.
We did take some time off for Christmas. The team had been working day and night, so they needed, frankly, a rest. I realize that if you’re a player, you probably don’t care about that, but as the CEO of the studio, I have to care about those types of things and make sure that people can rest and that we are fair to the people that work there. But from the beginning of January, whenever everyone was back, we’re working around the clock to deliver as much content as we can to players.
IGN: Generally, what does a map update for Arc Raiders look like? Is this the kind of thing players should expect to be a frequent part of the live-service roadmap going forward?
Patrick Söderlund: The answer is yes, they should. For us, we look at the existing maps as… When you build something, you test it, and you test it extensively, and you do whatever you can, but nothing can compare to 10+ million people playing your game. You can’t test for that, and also over time. So, for instance, Stella Montis is a good example of a map that I think has divided our player base to some extent. Some people love it because it’s high action. It also did something that we didn’t really realize. It changes not only how people play the game, but also the emotions that map evokes compared to others. Sometimes, I don’t know if you recognize this, but when I play it – and I do play it – I feel like I’m in a horror movie, and I think that’s pretty cool for a game to be able to give me that feeling.
I like for the game to be that, but at the same time… Some maps require an additional area, some maps require a redesign of an area because we don’t like the flow of the map. We can monitor everything from our data. For instance, we can see, utilizing a heat map, where action happens and where players mostly spend their time. If there’s an area of the map that’s not frequently visited, that feels like it’s underutilized. How can we change that so that people get a better gameplay experience as they play the game? We for sure want to bring up new content, but we can also evolve and update existing content to make it more fun and better for players, and that’s the intent of the map changes.
IGN: There was a recent report going around claiming that Arc Raiders had a $75 million budget. Is that figure something you can confirm or comment on?
Patrick Söderlund: We haven’t communicated our development number, and we won’t do that, but it’s not hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, it’s not. I don’t know, frankly, where that number came from [laughs]. It didn’t come from me, but it’s not too far off, if that makes sense.
IGN: I saw it floating around there without the confirmation, so I wanted it just straight from the horse’s mouth. That makes sense.
Patrick Söderlund: Yeah. We’re not going to give a specific number, but ballpark? Yeah.
IGN: If you could, I’d like for you to comment on how profitable Arc Raiders has been for Embark, or at least how that success has changed the studio and its team for the better.
Patrick Söderlund: Well, you don’t have to be a math professor to realize that the game has done well for us and that we’re obviously incredibly happy with the performance from a financial perspective. So, of course, it’s been very profitable for us. What does it mean for us? Well, first and foremost, it means that… Unfortunately, it’s not something that I’m happy about, but our industry has been riddled with layoffs and studio closures for the past, I would say, 24 months. At some other time, we can discuss what I believe is the root cause of that, which is going to take far longer than what we have today, but for us, it means stability, long-term security.
We can live for a long time on the money that Arc Raiders has been generating, and that does give financial security and employment stability for the people that work there. We’re growing our studio, we’re hiring people, we want to build more of Arc Raiders, we want to build more of The Finals. We also have two new games in development that we hope to finish someday. So for us, it’s a sigh of relief, obviously, for any developer, and we’re incredibly happy for that, of course, and thankful for everyone that’s been supporting us by buying the game. It feels great. Obviously, hopefully, we can have competitive salaries, good bonuses for the people that have done all this hard work and deserve to be taken care of adequately.
IGN: One of the funnier conversations I’ve seen online had to do with the Abyss set, and specifically its pants.
Patrick Söderlund: [Laughs].
IGN: I guess the natural question I have after that is, what guide or philosophy, if any, does Embark follow in creating cosmetics to add to the game?
Patrick Söderlund: Well, Robert Sammelin, who’s the art director, does all this stuff. First and foremost, we want to make sure that everything fits the fiction of Arc Raiders, and that it’s something that sits well within the Arc Raiders universe. I mean, there are other games, very successful games out there – The Finals being one of them – in which the IP is designed so it basically happens to be very elastic. You can do whatever the hell you want, and people are like, ‘That makes sense. It’s completely plausible.’ I can be a pink banana, and you can be whatever, and everyone’s like, ‘That makes sense. It fits the universe. No problem.’ Arc Raiders has a more curated lore, curated world, so we have to stick within boundaries slightly to a different extent than maybe The Finals or Fortnite or another game in which Batman can shoot Bart Simpson.
That’s not the vision for our game, but at the same time, the game, as it is now and from launch, is the start of the Arc Raiders lore. We obviously want to take it, expand it further, and also the art direction further, but the core of Arc Raiders’ art direction and lore will still remain the same. That won’t change. I think that’s going to be very important. I personally never believed that I would care about what I was wearing in a video game. Listen, I’m just being very honest with you, but I’m like a child. Whenever something new comes out, I need to have it. I swap my gear. I swap my backpacks and things and charms.
I just love to play around with it, and I think many people do as well. So what we have to do is to challenge ourselves and always make sure that we build things that have the right type of edge. Some things just need to be OG – if there’s such a thing as that spot in the middle of what Arc Raiders is – but we also need to build things that are on the fringe of what the lore and IP can tolerate without them being a pink banana. That is something that, I think, we’ve done to some extent, but I think we can probably do more of. Again, we will probably have a slightly segregated user base when it comes to what they like, but that’s probably fine given that they’re cosmetics. That’s probably how it should be. So, yeah. That’s kind of where we are.
IGN: I’ve seen some chatter about map conditions and events. Some players don’t like that they are on a rotating schedule. Does Embark have a response or explanation for those players?
Patrick Söderlund: They are on a rotating schedule for multiple reasons. Obviously, we believe that it’s a part of how the game should be played, that not everything is available at all times. We believe that creates tension. It’s an element of fun. It’s a way for us to move people from map to map, which we believe to be important. More so, I saw something online, that there were no events going on. Sometimes it could be, frankly, a malfunction or a bug that’s entered the system that we need to fix. We don’t want all the map events to be available at all times. That’s per design, and that most likely won’t change. Sometimes we’ll let them stay for longer. Sometimes we run two or three in parallel, but they may be different, but we believe that to be a part of how the game should be experienced.
IGN: With multiple new map conditions coming throughout Escalation, how will more map conditions affect how Embark schedules and rotates events? Will some conditions be rotated out for an extended amount of time as more find their way to the game?
Patrick Söderlund: Probably, yes, some of them will be removed, and some they may return, or they probably will return at some point but maybe slightly updated with a different edge. As we built the game and as we launched the game, we were working very late on the [Electromagnetic Storm], I remember playing that, and I told [executive producer Aleksander Grondal] and the team, I’m like, ‘I don’t get this. It’s not fun. It’s just annoying.’ That was a previous version of it. I said, ‘What’s the intent of this stuff? Are we really sure?’ I mean, I knew the intent, but, ‘Are we really sure that this is an important part of the game?’
The team said, ‘Yeah, we believe so,’ and all of [the map conditions] got tweaked all the way till the end. Cold Snap to me, I’m like, ‘That sounds like a dumb idea.’ But then, when I played it, for me, I loved it. I thought it was really cool. It gave me an edge. I loved the fact that I got cold, that I need to find shelter. It gave me another meaningful way of playing the game. Some people may not feel that way. I did. The Electromagnetic Storm, for me, still felt a little bit annoying, but some people loved it.
I think, as a game developer, when you build something, you just have to be fine with the fact that that’s the case. When we bring something out of rotation, we have to look at the data and say, ‘Can we make this more interesting? Can we make this more fun? Let’s have it make a comeback and see when that makes sense.’ I also know that some of the map conditions will be amazing. Some of them, we won’t get right, and we are fine with that. Then, when we don’t get them right, we will listen to people, and we will either remove them or change them rapidly.
I really hope that people out there realize that we don’t sit on all the answers. We are players and developers. Our goal is to try and make the best damn game we can with all you guys out there, and when we don’t get it right, you can trust in us to rectify that and try and get it right immediately. That’s kind of what I hope for people to understand. Most of these updates will be free, so just see them as that, please, and see we’re really trying hard here to give you even more value than we’ve given you. I hope people can see it that way.
IGN: I’m wondering if you’ve seen that, and if you can confirm or deny if the Stella Montis location in the game is named after this hotel.
Patrick Söderlund: I don’t know the answer to that question, but [CCO] Stefan Strandberg… [laughs] I’m reading them now. I see. ‘I don’t recommend this for solo players’ [laughs]. I didn’t know about that. That’s amazing. I feel sorry for the poor hotel, though. I’ll probably have to call them and apologize. But no, everything is inspired by locations in Italy. Stefan, it’s not a secret, he’s an Italian lover. He loves wine. He loves Italy. So there’s absolutely something there. We also felt like Italy is a good place for a lot of this to happen for multiple reasons, but I will have to defer to Stefan Strandberg for that specific question. I can find out – I will find out because now I’m intrigued – and I probably will call up that hotel and apologize for what we’ve caused them. That wasn’t intended, but I’ll promise to get back to you with a reply on that!
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
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).
Borderland 4‘s first premium DLC, Bounty Pack 2: Legend of the Stone Demon, will drop February 26, 2026.
Described by Gearbox as an “all-new bite-sized yet flavorful narrative content,” the DLC includes a new mission and Legendary loot to collect, as well as a themed Vault Card featuring 24 cosmetics and four “rerollable pieces of gear unlocked through gameplay.”
While the team held back on the story details, promising that we’ll find out more about Legend of the Stone Demon “closer to the launch,” we do get more info about the “major” update that will be released alongside Bounty Pack 2: Pearlescent gear. A new rarity tier “with power levels superior to even Legendary gear,” this new rarity will be available to all players regardless of what edition of Borderlands 4 they own, although some pieces of Pearlescent gear will be exclusive to Bounty Pack 2.
We were also treated to a little update on what’s still to come, too. The first Story Pack for Borderlands 4, entitled Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned, will arrive next month and introduces multiple main and side missions set in a new zone of Kairos, as well as new gear and cosmetics, of course.
The story will center on the “return of the indomitable fan-favorite Ellie,” and “focuses on a cosmic horror theme with a bloodier, darker tone.” It’ll also include the first new playable Vault Hunter, C4SH, a former casino dealer bot.
“Borderlands 4 gives the series the massive kick in the pants it has needed, with a fantastic open world and greatly improved combat, even if bugs and invisible walls can sometimes throw off that groove,” we said in IGN’s Borderlands 4 review, which returned a 8/10.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
