Amazon is running a terrific “Buy 1, Get 1 Half Off” sale on popular items like books, movies, and games. (Please ignore Amazon’s confusing language that makes it sound like you have to buy two items at regular price – that’s not the case). The sale includes all three of the Fourth Wing books, but it also has a bunch of excellent board games in it, many of which are already on sale. You can shop the whole sale here, or read on for some of the standout board games in the sale.
Board Games for Adults
Tons of the best board games are eligible for the sale, including recent(ish) classics like Azul, Catan, Carcassonne, Pandemic and the like. Plus there are tons of bigger, longer, deeper selections on sale, like Twilight Imperium, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, and the Lord of the Rings, as well as many more strategy board game.
Classic and Family Board Games
If your shelf could use some more timeless classic board games or family board games to entertain your guests, you’ll find plenty of those in the sale as well. We’re talking board games for kids like Mouse Trap and Guess Who, as well as Monopoly Junior, which makes that interminable old standby mercifully short in play time. And if you want to commune with the spirits of the dead, there’s that old family classic Ouija, which is only kind of a board game, but I’m including it anyway.
There are a lot more games on sale as well, plus expansions for many of the games listed above. There’s a lot to sift through, and that’s before you even start thinking about the movies and books you can mix and match to get the discount. So feel free to peruse the sale at your leisure and pick out whichever items you want.
Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Bluesky @chrislreed.com.
I was smitten with Compulsion’s South of Midnight well before I got to play a little more than an hour of it recently. From the first enigmatic trailers hinting at this Southern gothic, dark fantasy, magical realist stop-motion game set in the Deep South, to IGN’s own first look, to the bigger gameplay overview at the recent Xbox Developer Direct – South of Midnight struck me as a deeply moving, highly stylized game that would almost definitely make me cry. When I told the Art Director, Whitney Clayton, that I had immediately thought of that decade-plus-old movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, she confirmed that was one of their early major inspirations for its “Mythical Bayou-type location, folklore creatures, and this really heartwarming protagonist.” That, along with the “darkness and folktale fantasy” of Pan’s Labyrinth from Guillermo del Toro. Huge yes to all of that.
In the section that I got hands-on time with, I absolutely got the sense that all of the intrigue and hype-building was no bluff, and yet a couple elements of the gameplay still needed more time in the metaphorical oven before it’s ready to ship out. Even with those minor blemishes – which are slightly concerning because we’re just a couple months away from its April 8 release date – I left still enamored with the setting and bubbling with curiosity about the bigger story about ghosts and environmental catastrophe driving South of Midnight.
I played through Chapter 3, far along enough to have some magical combat tricks as a Weaver going up against spooky figures called Haints – which is exactly where I began. (Though the question of “What exactly is a Weaver?” is yet to be explained.) Diving pretty much headfirst into a fight was expectedly disorienting, but I was reassured that all of the mapped techniques – push, pull, and what’s basically a stun move – are introduced at a pace that’s much easier to get acquainted to naturally. Part of the struggle was the autolock feature being a little loosey-goosey at times; because of the volume of Haints and where they appear in the combat area, the camera spun around the main character, Hazel, in a way that made me a tiny bit woozy.
South of Midnight’s charm is, well, basically everything else besides combat.
I eventually got the hang of the Weaving moves, plus the timing of dodging for its magic recoil against nearby Haints, and found it challenging enough but not necessarily revolutionary. But I hardly think it needs to be: South of Midnight’s charm is, well, basically everything else. As long as it’s fun (it was) and not horribly repetitive (it wasn’t), then it can, in fact, run almost purely on vibes. From each encounter with the Haints, I felt a sense of eerie dread from the lighting and fog, the blaring drums-and-horns score, the general spore-like creepiness of the Haints and their corruption. And when I finally beat their spooky asses, it culminated in a cathartic cleansing of the land, both physically and spiritually, that had been choking on its past. Hazel wasn’t just clearing out the wreckage of environmental disaster from a devastating hurricane where she lost her mother, setting her on this very journey. She was healing the ghosts of history that were haunting the land, too.
That’s kind of how the beats of the chapter went: platform around a swampy area with double jumps, glides, and magic skills to find what I’ll call “Haint holes,” clear ‘em out, and pick up little pieces of a bigger story that all point back to a Mythical Creature – this one in particular at the behest of a giant talking magical Catfish who is both narrator and seemingly Hazel’s mode of transportation around different areas. Chapter 3 didn’t end with a boss battle against one of the giants highlighted in earlier videos; instead I climbed up a giant man-shaped tree to clear the Stigma of its Wound. I swear, the game explains why it exists at all through the collected ghost stories, and houses and spaces are littered with ephemera that help fill out more of the character-building picture. But even so, the ultimate answer still felt like a cliffhanger: Who were these people and how were they connected to the bigger tapestry of South of Midnight? I gotta know!
This storybook narrative meshed peachily – pun intentional – with the luxuriously textured elements of its habitat. Clayton told me the basis of these details was rooted in making the animation feel tactile: “What would this look like if it were actually handcrafted in real life?” she said. “What kind of materials would they have been made out of to look like the thing that they’re supposed to be made out of?”
Speaking of stop-motion: The team knows that not everyone is going to love the style, Clayton said, and that’s fine: “Anytime you do something a bit bold, you’re gonna get polarizing feelings.” (For what it’s worth, if it’s that distracting, you’ll be able to turn it off outside of cutscenes in South of Midnight’s settings.) I will say, I did catch a couple of moments with frame rate issues that haven’t been fully ironed out yet, but Compulsion is aiming for 60fps on Series X by launch. And when everything is running smoothly as it ought to, South of Midnight should be a uniquely beautiful game that might even make you cry a little bit, too.
While Henry Cavill may be the most famous actor to have played Geralt of Rivia, he’s not the first name many will think of when discussing The Witcher. Certainly amongst the gaming community, Doug Cockle — the voice of Geralt in CD Projekt Red’s series of critically acclaimed RPGs — is considered the original and ultimate white wolf. But the paths of Cavill and Cockle’s Geralts have now merged, with Cockle bringing his unmistakable voice to Netflix’s interpretation of the character in the new animated movie, The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep.
While he’s not playing the same version of Geralt who appears in the games, Cockle was not asked to alter his performance to sound more like or include the mannerisms of Henry Cavill or Liam Hemsworth, who replaces Cavill as Geralt in the next season of the live-action show. This creative decision meant Cockle was able to draw upon the same method and approach that created the unmistakably gravelly tones of his Geralt of Rivia. And so you’ll still hear the same voice you’ve known and loved for nearly 20 years.
Cockle formulated that voice back in 2005 when recording dialogue for the first Witcher video game. “The thing I found most challenging about recording Witcher 1 was actually the voice itself,” Cockle recalls. “When I first started recording the game, (Geralt’s) voice was very, very far down in my register. It was something I had to push towards.”
At the time there was little guidance as to how long voice actors should spend recording in a single session, and so Cockle was spending eight or nine hours per day delivering that gravelly voice. “I was going back to my hotel just going, ‘Wow, my throat is ripped’,” he recalls. The struggle continued into the recording of The Witcher 2 a few years later, but Cockle’s vocal chords eventually strengthened and began attuned to what was required of them — a process he sheepishly likens to an athlete’s muscles getting into shape.
As soon as The Last Wish came out in English, I tore through it.
Cockle’s vocal chords adapting to better support Geralt’s voice wasn’t the only major change that happened during the development of the second game, though. “The books started to come out in English while I was recording Witcher 2,” he explains. “Before that, it was the developers from CD Projekt Red who taught me everything I needed to know about Geralt. So as soon as The Last Wish came out in English, I was down at the bookstore buying it, and I tore through it. And I understood things about Geralt just from reading just that one book that I didn’t understand at all before.
“The developers kept saying, ‘He’s emotionless’,” Cockle says. “And I was like, ‘Okay, I get it, I get it, but I’m an actor. I want to play with emotions.’ But I better understood [when reading] the book why they were pushing for as flat as possible of an emotional life for him.”
Cockle immediately fell in love with the books, noting that author Andrzej Sapkowski “is such a wonderful writer.” Having grown up on Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Cockle quickly forged a connection with this new fantasy universe. Of all Sapkowski’s novels, he most fondly remembers Season of Storms. It’s a story he’d love to be a part of, should Netflix ever need a voice for Geralt again.
“It’s one of those stories that when I read it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is horrible. This is awful.’ [But] it’s thrilling at the same time,” he says. “There’s some really graphic fight scenes that Sapkowski gives to us, and I think that would be a really fun story to turn into an anime or a TV episode.”
I enjoy the gravitas of Geralt when he’s all serious and mopey and whatever, but I do also like those moments when he’s trying to be light.
Maybe we’ll see that story in the future, but right now Doug’s Geralt can be seen and heard in Sirens of the Deep, Netflix’s latest animated Witcher adventure. Based on the short story A Little Sacrifice from the Sword of Destiny collection, it’s a dark and twisted interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. After a mermaid and a human prince fall in love, Geralt finds himself caught up in a conflict between two very different kingdoms. But while there’s plenty of blood-splattering action and serious political drama, it’s the story’s lighter moments that interest Cockle the most. He notes a humorous conversation between Geralt and Jaskier, where both are sitting around a campfire after a long day, as a good example of that lightness. The scene demonstrates Geralt’s softer side, which is often overlooked as an important part of the monster hunter’s personality.
“Part of liking acting is liking all those different aspects of a character’s personality and the different choices that could be made and how they might approach those choices,” Cockle explains. “I enjoy the gravitas of Geralt when he’s all serious and mopey and whatever, but I do also like those moments when he’s trying to be light. When he’s trying to crack a joke and it just doesn’t go very well for him most of the time because he’s just not funny.”
While much of Cockle’s work on Sirens of the Deep simply required him to use a voice that’s become second nature, the anime did pose a unique challenge: learning how to speak mermaid. Yes, for the first time in his career, Cockle had to perform in a fictional language.
“I found doing this really difficult,” he confesses. “I got phonetic spellings of the words and things so I could get familiar with it and hopefully be okay on the day. And then I got in front of the mic and… it wasn’t like performance anxiety or anything like that, it’s just that it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Things should be much easier when Cockle returns to the world of video games in The Witcher 4, which was revealed with an exciting trailer at The Game Awards last year. Returning to his original version of Geralt should be like putting on an old pair of favourite slippers. Even easier, actually, because he won’t have to record anywhere near the amount of dialogue that he did for the previous three games. This time around Geralt is set to be a supporting character in a story that puts Ciri, his adoptive daughter, in the protagonist role.
Naturally, Cockle has little to say about The Witcher 4. He claims to only know as much about it as we do. But he’s eager to see what happens in CDPR’s next chapter of The Witcher story, and thinks it’s already headed in the right direction.
“I think it’s a really good move,” he says of switching the story’s perspective from Geralt to Ciri. “I mean, I always thought that continuing the saga, but shifting to Ciri would be a really, really interesting move for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because of things that happen in the books, which I don’t want to give away because people, I want people to go read. So yeah, I think it’s really exciting. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see what they’ve done.”
Sony allegedly turned down a sequel to PlayStation 4 game The Order: 1886 due to its poor critical reception, the co-founder of developer Ready at Dawn has said.
Andrea Pessino told MinnMax that Ready at Dawn pitched an “incredible” sequel and would’ve “signed [its] life away” to make it purely for the sake of players. The Order: 1886 arrived in 2015 as an action game about werewolves in Victorian London but, despite being among the best looking games of the generation, it received middling reviews from critics.
“It would have been an incredible sequel, I can tell you that for a fact,” Pessino said, though admitted he couldn’t say much because he doesn’t own the franchise rights. “We pitched the sequel to Sony regardless of [the critical reception] and, in a way, it’s better that they passed because if we thought we were going to be screwed before, man, with the sequel, we would have signed our life away.”
Pessino said Ready at Dawn had a difficult relationship with Sony while making the original game and ultimately had to cut myriad elements in order to hit deadlines and eventually released The Order: 1886 before it was ready.
The graphical fidelity of the game’s initial pitches and reveal led Sony to expect the same quality of builds to be submitted at certain milestones in its development, Pessino said, but payments were withheld when Ready at Dawn had to prioritize other things and temporarily couldn’t hit the same graphical standards.
While Pessino said this is industry standard for third party publishers, it led to a frustrating relationship between Ready at Dawn and Sony. The team was ready to sign up for a worse situation to make a The Order: 1886 sequel regardless.
“We were going to do it just because we wanted to deliver it to the players but we would have been… Terrible budget, budget would be small, we would have been completely at the mercy of any decisions and things because we had no leverage whatsoever,” Pessino said.
“We were not in a position to negotiate a reasonable contract; they could have done whatever. But we would’ve taken it because we wanted a chance to redeem the franchise. All of the groundwork was really, really good, I can tell you that for a fact. There was so much there that just needed to be built on.”
The Order: 1866 was also left on a blatant cliffhanger so fans were desperate for a sequel to come. Ten years on and those hopes are dashed, of course, with Ready at Dawn being shut down by owner Meta in 2024.
In our 6/10 review, IGN said: “Though a stylish adventure, The Order: 1886 emphasizes its cinematic polish at the crippling cost of gameplay freedom.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Civilization 7 developer Firaxis has released patch 1.0.1 just in time for the strategy game’s full launch following an advanced access period that was met with a ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam.
Firaxis is working on addressing various community complaints, most of which revolve around the user interface, a lack of map variety, and a feeling that the game has launched without a number of key features fans have come to expect.
Now Civilization 7 is available to all and not just those willing to pay more for advanced access, Firaxis has released Patch 2, which is only for PC/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck. In a post on Steam, Firaxis said it is “the first in a series of upcoming patches” intended to address feedback from advanced access. The patch notes in full are below.
It’s worth noting that Firaxis has temporarily disabled crossplay multiplayer “to expedite” updates to the PC version. This means the developer will sometimes deploy patches to PC at a different “cadence” than on consoles, and indeed that includes patch 1.0.1. This will have no impact on console players attempting cross-platform play with other console players, nor on PC-to-PC multiplayer, Firaxis clarified.
Civilization 7 1.0.1 Patch 2 – February 10, 2025 Gameplay Windows PC/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck
Fixed an issue causing Ages in Epic and Marathon speed games to be shorter than intended.
City States will now turn into Friendly Independent Powers on Age Transition instead of disappearing completely. They will also now start with more units in Exploration and Modern Ages.
Fixed inconsistencies with Naval Combat.
Naval Units will use the correct Combat Strength values when attacking another Naval Unit in all instances.
Naval Units will properly take reciprocal damage after attacking another Naval Unit.
Naval Units will more consistently move into the attacked tile after defeating another Naval Unit.
Completing the final milestone of a Legacy Path no longer adds Age Progress in the Modern Age to ensure you have more time to complete a Victory.
Towns will now switch their focus back to Growing town automatically if they are no longer eligible for their chosen Focus (for example, if their population decreases) until they are eligible again.
Future Civic is now repeatable in all Ages. The cost of Future Tech and Future Civic will now increase more when repeated.
Fixed an issue after too many bonuses to Growth where Food needed for the next growth event became negative.
Improvements to Rail Networks aimed at increasing the reliability of Settlements connecting to the Rail Network over water by building Ports. This should apply as long as the Capital either has a Port or is connected by rail to a settlement with a Port.
Made improvements to the Loyalty Crisis in the Antiquity Age, including giving the ability to purchase Villas in towns during this crisis, giving another way to manage the happiness of your settlements.
A note about cross-play multiplayer: To expedite updates to the PC experience, we will sometimes deploy patches to PC at a different cadence than we do on consoles – including today’s Patch 1.0.1. As a result, cross-play between PC players and console players is temporarily disabled. This will have no impact on console players attempting cross-platform play with other console players, nor on PC-to-PC multiplayer.
AI Windows PC/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck
AI will now offer high-value Cities less often during Peace Deals.
In Modern, AI will now declare war less often at the start of the age.
In Modern, AI will now consider Ideology more before Declaring War or offering Peace.
Other Leaders now have a decreased desire for war if neither party has an Ideology.
Other Leaders now have an increased desire for war with players of Opposing ideologies.
Other Leaders now have a decreased desire for Peace with players of opposing Ideologies.
Camera Windows PC/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck
Fixed an issue on native-resolutions where the camera would focus on the lower end of the map when clicking on the minimap.
UI Windows PC/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck
Replaced the Simplified Chinese font with the font used in Civilization VI while we work on additional improvements for future patches.
Fixed an issue where the Settlement menu fails to open when clicking on a non-player’s Settlement Banner in gameplay.
Fixed an issue where yield icons fail to populate on the now available buildings when converting a town to city.
Fixed an issue where some text was cut off on the Global Yields Breakdown screen.
Added a notification for completed Espionage actions, so that you can more easily check the results of their Espionage actions.
City projects no longer appear to be purchasable.
Your current religion is now displayed first in the belief picker tabs.
Fixed an issue where a District’s health bar would remain on-screen after being fully healed.
Fixed an issue where Leaders fail to have a portrait when the relationship has changed during gameplay.
Improved the alignment of leader names and portraits on the Age Summary, when viewing the Overview screen of the Victories Rankings.
Fixed an issue where the background color remains the default color when the user changes it in the Player Customize tab.
Improved the spacing between Civ descriptions, unique units and building icons on loading screen.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Anker quietly released a new high-capacity power bank earlier this year that sits alongside their Anker 737 and Prime series of power banks. This particular model boasts a massive 25,000mAh battery capacity, 165W of total charging output, and two built-in USB Type-C cables in case you forget to bring your own. It’s also attractively priced at under $100, and there’s even a deal today that drops the price by another $10 to $89.99. This is a great complement to your power-hungry gaming handheld PC like the Steam Deck, Asus Rog Ally, or Lenovo Legion Go.
New Release: Anker 25,000mAh 165W Power Bank
The new Anker power bank features a 25,000mAh battery capacity, which is the second largest capacity we’ve seen from Anker in a compact form factor. So how much juice will that offer to today’s gaming handheld PCs? A 25,000mAh battery equates to a 95Whr capacity. An 80% power efficiency rating (which is standard for power banks) means you get about 76Whr of usable charge. That means this power bank will charge a Steam Deck or ROG Ally (40Whr) from empty to completely full 2 times, an Asus ROG Ally X (80Whr) 1 time, and a Nintendo Switch (16Whr) about 4.75 times.
The Anker power bank has one USB Type-C port and one USB Type-A port. In addition, there are two built-in USB Type-C cables. One is a retractable cable that can extend up to 2.3 feet. The other is a fixed 1-foot cable that doubles up as a lanyard when not in use. Each USB Type-C port is capable of up to 100W of Power Delivery with a total 165W maximum output. That means all three USB outputs are capable of charging any gaming handheld PC at its fastest rate, including the Asus ROG Ally X, which supports up to 100W of fast charging.
Another feature common to Anker’s other premium power banks is the digital LCD readout. It displays a wealth of information like remaining battery capacity, current charging rate, input/output wattage, battery temperature, battery health, charge cycle count, and more.
TSA-Approved
TSA states that power banks must be under 100Whr in capacity for carry-on (check-in is not allowed under any circumstances). This Anker power bank is rated at 95Whr. You might get checked simply because this is a relatively hefty power bank, but you shouldn’t have any problems getting it cleared.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
Marvel Rivals will round out The Fantastic Four team when The Thing and Human Torch launch as playable characters on February 21, 2025.
The release date for the new heroes in Marvel and NetEase Games’ popular hero shooter was announced today, revealing that they’ll arrive alongside an update for the second half of Season 1. Although the team has yet to spill the beans on what exactly this Season 1.5 update has in store, a Dev Talk blog post on the Marvel Rivals website teased “major balance adjustments.”
As for The Thing and Human Torch, we have yet to see exactly how the two classic heroes will light up the roster with their new moves and abilities. Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman were introduced as the first post-launch Marvel Rivals heroes when Season 1 launched last month. Both characters brought along unique tools to shift the multiplayer game’s meta in a new direction, with Reed Richards able to take stretchy (and goofy) swings at enemies thanks to his elastic powers while Sue Storm introduced invisibility mechanics to the battlefield. Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm will surely do the same when they launch in a few weeks, but let’s hope NetEase reveals some gameplay before then.
The upcoming Marvel Rivals Season 1 update will also see Ranked players hit with a rank reset. Come February 21, expect to see your Rank drop four divisions, meaning if you’re a Diamond I player on February 20, you’ll be brought down to Platinum II the following day.
NetEase explained how this process will carry on in the future, saying that brand-new seasons will hit players with a six-division drop, while half-season updates will bring a four-division drop. As Marvel Rivals continues to tweak its Ranked offerings to players’ desires, NetEase said it will “tune this as necessary.”
It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as competitive Marvel fans in the Gold rank can look forward to new costume rewards with the launch of the second half of Season 1. NetEase will also be introducing new Crests of Honor to “recognize players at Grandmaster, Celestial, Eternity, and One Above All (the top 500).”
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
The eminently popular live service game Roblox is involved in an active investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) according to a new report, though the extent is unclear.
As reported by Bloomberg, a Freedom of Information Act request elicited a statement from the commission, confirming Roblox had been referenced in an “active and ongoing investigation.”
“We have confirmed with Division of Enforcement staff that there are responsive emails between Enforcement staff referencing Roblox and that these emails are a part of an active and ongoing investigation,” the SEC told Bloomberg.
The extent to which Roblox is involved, or even the subject of the investigation, is unclear right now. The commission told Bloomberg it couldn’t share staff correspondence referencing Roblox, as it would cause “harm to the ongoing enforcement proceedings.” Bloomberg could not confirm the subject of the investigation, nor did Roblox respond to the outlet’s requests for comment. The SEC declined to comment further.
Roblox has been under some scrutiny from various sources, however. Last October, a report accused Roblox Corporation of deliberately inflating its daily active user (DAU) statistics and fostering a “hellscape” for children. Roblox responded at length on its own site to strongly deny the accusations, asserting “safety and civility” are foundational to its live service platform. It’s also acknowledged that undetected fraud and unauthorised access to Roblox may contribute to an overstatement of DAUs. In 2024, Roblox announced major updates to its safety systems and parental controls.
Further back, families sued Roblox in 2023, accusing the corporation of being misleading about its “ability to make the site safe and appropriate for children.” A 2021 report from People Makes Games looked into the user-generated content of Roblox, and whether it was exploiting creators.
Last week Roblox shares fell 11%, as the Roblox Corporation reported 85.3 million daily active users, short of a StreetAccount estimated 88.2 million. Roblox CEO David Baszucki said the company would continue to invest in its virtual economy, app performance, and “AI-powered discovery and safety, empowering creators and enhancing the user experience.”
In a tweet confirming the recovery of its network services, Sony apologized for the downtime and thanked the PlayStation community for its patience. As a make-good, it’s giving all PlayStation Plus members an additional five days of service.
However, some PlayStation customers are demanding more information on the cause of the downtime beyond the vague “operational issue,” and have pointed to the high-profile PSN data breach of 2011 that saw personal details from approximately 77 million accounts compromised.
“Given what happened in 2011 we need to know if we need to call our banks for new credit cards and need identity protection services,” one social media user said in response to Sony’s statement.
“Sweet, but can you also tell us what happened and how you’ll be working to avoid it in the future?” another asked.
“Your lack of transparency is disturbing,” said another.
Some are also calling on Sony to outline the measures it’s taking to prevent similar “operational issues” from knocking out PSN in the future.
PSN going offline not only affected online gaming but single-player games that require either authentication with a server or a constant internet connection. Embattled U.S. retailer GameStop tweeted a joke at Sony’s expense while PSN was offline, saying “bet y’all want physical copies now.” But this joke was met with ridicule across social media, as users pointed out the declining shop chain’s penchant for selling products other than video games these days.
Some third-party publishers whose games were affected have announced extensions to in-game events or limited-time modes. Capcom just announced an extension to the next Monster Hunter Wilds beta test after last weekend’s was cut short by the PSN issue. EA was forced to extend FC 25’s most hardcore multiplayer event, too.
Sony is yet to expand on the PSN downtime beyond two single tweets: one to acknoledge PSN was offline, another to say it was back up with the vague explanation and compensation. Clearly, some customers want further communication from the company.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Civilization 7 dataminers have unearthed evidence to suggest the game is set to receive a fourth, unannounced Age — and developer Firaxis has teased its plans in an interview with IGN.
A full campaign in Civilization 7 is one that goes through all three Ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Once the Age is completed, all players (and any AI opponents) experience an Age Transition simultaneously. During an Age Transition, three things happen: you select a new civilization from the new Age to represent your empire, you choose which Legacies you want to retain in the new Age, and the game world evolves. The Civilization games have never had such a system.
Based on the unit types and victory conditions currently in-game, the Modern Age ends before the Cold War. In an interview with IGN, Civilization 7 lead designer Ed Beach confirmed this timeline, explaining how Firaxis settled on ending the current version of the game at the conclusion of World War 2.
“We spent a lot of time looking at the ebbs and flows of history,” Beach said. “Once we knew that our game would benefit by breaking it up into chapters, obviously the first thing we ask ourselves is, ‘well, when does a chapter start and when does a chapter end?’ And our senior historian on the project, Andrew Johnson, was working very closely with me, comes from a study of Southeast Asian history. My tendencies are way too focused on Western history, but he’s very good at making sure that we’re looking at the whole picture worldwide. But we did notice that all the big empires of antiquity, it wasn’t just the Roman Empire, but even the big empires over in China and India crumbled under outside pressure in the rough same time period, the 300 to 500 common era time period that Rome was being challenged. Those big empires face challenges across the world.
“So we’re like, okay, that’s a great ending chapter for the first block of our game or what we’re going to call the Age. So that’s where Antiquity ends. And so we started looking for other places where the other chapters should end. The transition from Exploration to Modern is all about those big monarchies that were established, especially in places like Europe being challenged by people’s revolutions, like the French Revolution or the American Revolution. There were a lot of revolutions in Europe in the 1840s as well. So that felt like a good grounding point. And then the nations emerging from it, the Americas and the French and so forth, could be in the Modern Age that follows.
“Then we looked for where’s the next big shakeup worldwide in history, and it was the World Wars. We had to feel like there was a big pivot in history in 1945 essentially after the World Wars. Especially because we have new gameplay systems that can be unique for each Age, so we can change the rules of diplomacy or the rules of warfare, which commanders you have access to, whenever we change Ages, we need to make sure that those breaks have enough conformity to what happened in real life that they make sense to us.
“So yeah, we very deliberately did not push into the Cold War time period because that is one that just felt very different than the rest of the Modern Age. It just sort of dips its toes in the Cold War, like you’ve identified with the thermonuclear device being the one that ends the military victory path there.”
The inevitable follow-up question is, of course, whether Firaxis plans to expand Civilization 7 down the line with the addition of a fourth Age where players may, perhaps, go to space, land on the moon, and get to play with up to day units.
Executive producer Dennis Shirk wouldn’t confirm this outright, but did tease the developer’s future plans.
“You can imagine the possibilities with this, honestly,” Shirk said. “The way that the design team set it up so that each age is chockfull of systems, visuals, units, Civs, all specific to that age, and what you could do with that and where you could take it… we can’t talk about the specifics. We can just talk about it in generalities. We’re excited for where this is going to go.”
Hot on the heels of this tease, Civilization 7 players have already datamined the game, which is available in advanced access to those who paid more, and found reference to the Atomic Age.
Redditor ManByTheRiver11 revealed mention of unannounced leaders, civilizations, and word of the Atomic Age. New leaders and civs are of course expected, given Firaxis’ DLC strategy for previous games in the series. And this Atomic Age would certainly fit the bill with where Civ 7 currently ends and Shirk’s tease in our interview.
In the shorter term, Firaxis is working on addressing various community complaints that have led to a ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam. In an interview with IGN ahead of the release of its third quarter financial results, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick acknowledged that Civilization 7 had received some negative reviews from press and players, but insisted that the “legacy Civ audience” will come around the more they play, and called Civilization 7’s early performance “very encouraging.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
