Category: IGN

Destiny 2’s next Episode, Heresy, is just around the corner. The “final epilogue entry” for the Light and Darkness Saga will have some unvoiced lines of dialogue though, due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

In the recent This Week In Destiny update, Bungie said its teams have taken care to deliver the narrative and story content, but warned that certain voice lines will be silent due to the ongoing Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strike.

Subtitles will be enabled by default so players don’t miss any story, and Bungie outlined a number of accessibility and visibility options for said subtitles. Heresy activities that have missing voice acting will display a warning before launch.

The SAG-AFTRA strike started last July after the union confirmed it had failed to reach an agreement with video companies following a series of negotiations. SAG-AFTRA cited a lack of agreement over regulating generative artificial intelligence (or GenAI) in projects.

Even games not subject to the strike have been affected. Activision, for example, recast several Zombies characters in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 after the voice actors reportedly chose not to sign new contracts in solidarity with striking union members. Some projects and teams have since struck an interim agreement, permitting members to work on those games.

The extent of Destiny 2: Heresy’s lack of voice-acting is unclear, though some fans have noted that it appears Sloane will be one of the silent characters. There’s no note on whether these voice lines could be added in a future update, if the studio and publisher reach a deal with the striking actors.

For more on how the strike has, and will continue to, affect the games you play, check out our feature from last year, What the SAG-AFTRA Video Game Actors Strike Means for Gamers. Destiny 2: Heresy goes live on February 4, 2025.

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.

Microsoft has announced the Xbox Game Pass February 2025 Wave 1 lineup.

Out today, February 4, is Far Cry New Dawn (Cloud, Console, and PC) across Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard. In a post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft described the Ubisoft shooter as follows: “Dive into a transformed, vibrant, post-apocalyptic Hope County, Montana, 17 years after a global nuclear catastrophe. Lead the fight against the Highwaymen as they seek to take over the last remaining resources.”

February 5 is a big day for Game Pass, with a number of additions to the Game Pass Standard tier. Another Crab’s Treasure (Console), Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (Console), and Starfield (Xbox Series X|S) all hit Game Pass Standard then.

And here’s a big one: on February 6, Madden NFL 25 (Cloud, Console, and PC) hits Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass via EA Play.

Fast forward to February 13, and Kingdom Two Crowns (Cloud and Console) makes a return to Game Pass via Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass Standard. “In Kingdom Two Crowns, players must work in the brand-new solo or co-op campaign mode to build their kingdom and secure it from the threat of the Greed. Experience new technology, units, enemies, mounts, and secrets in the next evolution of the award-winning micro strategy franchise!”

Then, on February 18, another big one: Obsidian’s Avowed (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) launches as a day-one Game Pass launch across Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. It’s worth noting that Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass members can buy the Avowed Premium Upgrade Addon to receive up to five days early access, two sets of premium skins, and access to the Avowed digital artbook and original soundtrack.

Xbox Game Pass February 2025 Wave 1 lineup:

• Far Cry New Dawn (Cloud, Console, and PC) – February 4
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard
• Another Crab’s Treasure (Console) – February 5
  Now with Game Pass Standard
• Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (Console) – February 5
  Now with Game Pass Standard
• Starfield (Xbox Series X|S) – February 5
  Now with Game Pass Standard
• Madden NFL 25 (Cloud, Console, and PC) EA Play – February 6
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Kingdom Two Crowns (Cloud and Console) – February 13
  Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Standard
• Avowed (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – February 18
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass

As always, as new games hit Game Pass, existing games leave the service. You can save up to 20% off your purchase with your membership to keep these games in your library.

Games leaving Xbox Game Pass on February 15:

• A Little to the Left (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Bloodstained Ritual of the Night (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• EA Sports UFC 3 (Console) EA Play
• Indivisible (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Merge and Blade (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Return to Grace (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Tales of Arise (Cloud, Console, and PC)

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.

The Bloodborne PSX demake has become the latest Bloodborne-related fan project to be hit with a copyright claim after the Bloodborne 60fps mod was struck last week.

Well-known Bloodborne 60fps mod creator Lance McDonald announced last week that he’d received a takedown notification on behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment “asking that I remove links to the patch I posted on the internet, so I’ve now done so.” The DMCA takedown arrived four years after the mod was released.

Now, Lilith Walther, creator of Nightmare Kart, which was previously known as Bloodborne Kart, and the eye-catching Bloodborne PSX demake, tweeted to say a YouTube video of the demake was hit with a copyright claim by a company called MarkScan Enforcement.

McDonald followed up to tweet that MarkScan are a company hired by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and the same company that “DMCAed my page about the Bloodborne 60fps patch.”

“And now they’ve DMCAed an old video about the Bloodborne PSX demake project. That’s pretty wild. What the hell are they doing??”

Bloodborne is of course one of the biggest conundrums in the video game industry. The FromSoftware masterpiece launched on PS4 to critical and commercial acclaim, but since then Sony hasn’t touched it. Fans are desperate for an official next-gen patch that would make the game run at 60fps, up from 30fps, but there are also calls for a remaster and a sequel.

Recently, fans managed to get PS4 emulators to deliver something akin to a remaster on PC. The tech experts at Digital Foundry released a video covering “a breakthrough in PS4 emulation” via ShadPS4, which means Bloodborne is now fully playable start to finish in 60fps. Could this breakthrough have triggered an aggressive response from Sony? IGN has asked Sony for comment, but it has yet to respond.

McDonald offered what he called his “copium theory,” though: that Sony could be working on an official remake.

“My copium theory is that Sony DMCAed the 60fps patch and the video about the Bloodborne demake so that when they announce a 60fps remake, google searching for ‘bloodborne 60fps’ and ‘Bloodborne remake’ won’t have collisions with our fan projects,” McDonald said.

“Let me cope.”

Then: “Like if they plan on trademarking ‘bloodborne 60fps’ and ‘Bloodborne remake’ they need to actually clean up in order to actually file a trademark request. Right??”

Despite these latest aggressive actions by Sony, the company has so far offered no indication that it plans to return to Bloodborne in any way. Last month, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida delivered his Bloodborne no-show theory in an interview with Kinda Funny Games:

“Bloodborne has always been the most asked thing,” Yoshida began. “And people wonder why we haven’t really done anything, even an update or a remaster. Should be easy, right? The company is known for doing so many remasters, right, some people get frustrated.

“I have only my personal theory to that situation. I left first-party so I don’t know what’s going on, but my theory is, you know because I remember, you know, Miyazaki-san really, really loved Bloodborne, you know, what he created. So I think he is interested, but he’s so successful and he’s so busy, so he doesn’t want, he cannot do himself, but he does not want anyone else to touch it. So that’s my theory. And the PlayStation team respect his wish. So that’s my guess, right? Theory. I am not revealing any secret information, to be clear.”

The upshot is Bloodborne remains dormant nearly 10 years after the first game came out. But is there hope? In interviews, Miyazaki often deflects questions about Bloodborne, pointing to the fact FromSoftware does not own the IP. But in February last year, Miyazaki at least admitted the game would benefit from a release on more modern hardware.

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.

New details about the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows are circulating online after an artbook purportedly leaked on, among other places, a hub for hentai.

Spotted over on r/GamingLeaksAndRumours, an artbook entitled “The Art of Assassin’s Creed Shadows” has been spreading like wildfire around the internet. It contains several hundred pages of concept art, quotations, and development info surrounding the next Assassin’s Creed.

The leak itself is notable, but the post on Reddit also alleged it originated from a site known for hosting hentai. Bizarre, to say the least. IGN has asked Ubisoft for comment.

The gallery had already been removed from the site in question, but has since been archived in other file-sharing sites and galleries.

Several interesting details are shown throughout, including concepts for famous historical characters, major cities, and a variety of weapons. The art also, presumably, leaks some potential spoilers for the plot of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. We can’t confirm as much until the game is actually out, but the images we have seen seem real enough.

The leak arrives just ahead of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ launch on March 20, 2025, after a previous delay pushed it out of 2024 into February.

At a recent preview event for Shadows, IGN spoke with Assassin’s Creed Shadows game director Charles Benoit, who confirmed that the month delay was “mostly about polishing” and did not change any big systems. The team did update “a couple of things in progression to make it more engaging, also balancing a bit more,” Benoit added, but the main feature that needed extra tweaking was the parkour system, which was running up against an obstacle unique to Feudal Japan.

“The Japanese architecture, the roofs [are] super complex,” he said. “Probably the most complex thing that I ever worked with if we compared to Odyssey and Syndicate. We needed specific codes and specific animations to support something super fluid, changing the transition of the parkour to make it even more fluid. So that’s one of the specific feedback that we heard that we wanted to address, and it really improved since the last few months.”

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.

Arrowhead has released Helldivers 2‘s first big update of 2025, making a number of important changes to the game.

Patch 01.002.101, out now, increases the duration of the gas status effect from spray weapons, returns the ability to emote while flying or ragdolling, and makes a number of other balance changes and fixes.

Helldivers 2 is nearing its first anniversary, and with the arrival of the Illuminate enemy faction breathing new life into the game, players are wondering what’s next in the ongoing meta narrative that is the Galactic War. Fans also suspect this update sneakily adds new content as well as the balance changes and fixes, given it weighs in at over 5GB.

And it’s worth highlighting this particular change, just because it’s so… troubling!

• Fixed a small visual bug with the Stalker’s tongue (you don’t want to know what it took to fix it)

Helldivers 2 update 01.002.101 patch notes:

Balancing

General Changes

• The duration of the gas status effect from spray weapons has been increased from 6 to 10 sec
• Implemented a timer for the Illuminate dropship wreckages to despawn to prevent them from obstructing paths in the colonies

Helldiver

• The Ministry of Humanity has added a clause to its Principles of Correct Posture for Safe Lifting, now allowing Helldivers to jog while carrying two-handed items such as barrels and SEAF Artillery Rounds

FRV

• Helldivers have now also been authorized to deploy grenades and stratagems while leaning out from the FRV
• Tuned FRV handling for a better driving experience when cornering

Sidearms

• Starting magazines increased from 2 to 3
• Spare magazines increased from 4 to 5

Stratagem Support Weapons

TX-41 Sterilizer

• Removed the crosshair drift recoil
• Decreased the camera climb recoil
• The duration of the gas status effect from spray weapons has been increased from 6 to 10 sec

Armor Passives

• After hearing player feedback, we have decided not to fix a bug with the Siege Ready Armor Passive which gives more ammo to all magazine-based weapons, instead of just primary weapons as described. We will eventually update the Armory description to reflect this but for now we’re evaluating if it’s causing any other additional unforeseen bugs

Backpacks

AX/TX-13 “Guard Dog” Dog Breath

Has been reworked to increase its effectiveness and to ensure it remains distinct, focusing on its unique gas-based mechanics.

• It will now preserve ammo by only prioritizing enemies unaffected by the gas status effect. Once an enemy is affected by gas the drone will move on and target another unaffected enemy
• The targeting logic has been reworked to prevent the drone from roaming too far. The origin of the targeting will be from the Helldivers position rather than the drone itself
• The targeting range has been increased from 10 to 20m
• The duration of the gas status effect from spray weapons has been increased from 6 to 10 sec

Stratagems

MD-6 Anti-Personnel Minefield

• Cooldown decreased from 180 to 120 sec
• Damage increased from 350 to 700
• The deployment spread of mines has been increased by 20% to minimize the risk of chain explosions

MD-I4 Incendiary Mines

• Cooldown decreased from 180 to 120 sec
• Damage increased from 210 to 300
• The deployment spread of mines has been increased by 20% to minimize the risk of chain explosions

MD-17 Anti-Tank Mines

• Cooldown decreased from 180 to 120 sec

SH-20 Ballistic Shield Backpack

• Now blocks melee attacks until it breaks from taking enough damage

Fixes

Resolved Top Priority issues:

• You can once again emote while falling or ragdolling! It should no longer reduce fall damage, but you’ll be able to freely express yourself as you fall to your imminent death or severe injuries – Nothing a stim can’t fix!
• Fixed Illuminate spawner ship shields not taking impact grenade damage
• Fixed an issue with collision gaps inside the Illuminate spawner ship, preventing grenades thrown in close proximity to the door from destroying the ships
• Health packs now fully restore all of the Helldiver’s stims
• High damage weapons will now detonate spawned Hellbombs on the map

Crash Fixes, Hangs and Soft-locks:

• Fixed a crash that occurred when aborting missions with the Democracy Space Station effects active on them
• Fixed a crash that could occur when hot-joining a mission on a planet with the Democracy Space Station present
• Fixed a crash caused by quickly switching between different emotes before another client interacted with the emoting player
• Reduced the chance for crashes caused by fires
• Fixed a rare crash that occurred at the end of the drop-in sequence when hot-joining a game in session
• Fixed a crash that occurred when the player returned to the ship while reloading their primary weapon
• Fixed a soft-lock during drop-in when the host left or disconnected the session right after loadout
• Fixed a crash that occurred when repeatedly changing armor pieces in the armory
• Fixed a crash that occurred after finishing the tutorial and after naming your Destroyer
• Fixed a crash that occurred during extraction
• Fixed a crash that occurred when returning to the ship during heavy projectile fire
• Fixed a crash for clients when the host was holding a carryable objective and quit the game
• Fixed a crash that could occur when a player left the game when an encounter started
• Fixed a crash that could occur when changing text language
• Fixed a crash that could occur when reloading the SG-20 Halt

Social Issues & Matchmaking

• Improved the matchmaking logic to better match players with players from nearby regions
• You’ll now be more likely to get matched with the same difficulty lobbies as the one you have currently selected
• Fixed an issue where the chat history was cleared when going to a mission and returning from it

Weapons and Stratagems

• Opening and closing the text chat while in an emplacement now allows the player to remain in the emplacement instead of switching to their weapon
• Fixed Arc weapons not reliably hitting the Impaler’s tentacles if aimed at the lower parts of the tentacle
• The E/AT-12 Anti-Tank Emplacement now has the correct armor penetration tag in the ship menu
• Stratagem turrets will no longer target Illuminate Tesla Towers
• Fixed a visual bug where heat weapons would show numbers over the progress bar in the weapon wheel menu
• Melee weapons should no longer send civilian cars and other objects in the world flying long distances
• B-1 Supply Pack will now once again provide stims to other players. Remember Helldiver, sharing is caring!
• Fixed a bug where players could get stuck in the E/AT-12 Anti-Tank Emplacement after depleting all of its ammunition

FRV

• Following an investigation into the effects of severe survivorship bias during FRV Impact Testing, all FRVs have been reinforced. Minor parking mishaps will no longer result in catastrophic FRV explosions
• General improvements to the FRV camera to make it look cooler and prevent it from getting stuck underground when driving downhill. Absolute cinema!
• Reduced the chance FRVs get dropped on rooftops when being called in
• The FRV movement key bindings should now accept non-QWERTY keyboard inputs
• Fixed a bug where some enemies such as the Brood Commander was launched away further than intended when hit by the FRV

Helldiver

• Fixed an issue where player ragdolling into the FRV would cause the vehicle to be yeeted into space
• Fixed an issue preventing Helldivers from climbing and vaulting over civilian cars
• Helldivers should no longer slide around on the ground after ragdolling from a blast (despite it being the year of the snake)
• Fixed an issue where ragdolling into shallow water caused a stuck prone gliding animation
• Fixed an issue where the Helldiver was not playing the sample pick up animations

Enemies

• Fixed a small visual bug with the Stalker’s tongue (you don’t want to know what it took to fix it)
• Fixed an issue where enemies wouldn’t react to missed shots from projectiles or melee attacks near them

Miscellaneous Fixes

• Fixed an issue where clients would trigger the wrong audio when waiting for the host to join the loadout
• Fixed an issue of Helldivers exiting the hellpod right after readying up and before transitioning to the loading screen
• Fixed an issue of civilians being blocked from finding the shuttle door during Emergency Evacuation missions
• Purple question marks should be encountered less frequently during Illuminate missions on Sandy and Arctic planets
• Fixed the floating head syndrome affecting Helldivers donning the AC-2 Obedient armor while using certain helmets
• Fixed a bug that was introduced in December where weapons with lower armor penetration than the target’s armor incorrectly dealt one (1) damage rather than zero (0), resulting in misleading visual feedback and negligible extra damage to enemies and Helldivers alike
• Enemies will now start sinking into the ground when killed near terminals or the extraction point, preventing players from being physically blocked

Known Issues

Top Priority:

• Black box mission terminal may be unusable if it spawns clipped into the ground
• Stratagem balls bounce unpredictably off cliffs and some spots
• Balancing and functionality adjustments for DSS
• Pathfinding issues in Evacuate Colonists Illuminate missions
• Dolby Atmos does not work on PS5

Medium Priority:

• Players can get stuck on Pelican-1’s ramp during extraction
• Explosives can cause Helldivers hidden behind terrain to ragdoll
• Currently equipped capes don’t display properly and show a blank grey cape in Armory tab
• Players who use the “This is Democracy” emote on their ship might unintentionally send their fellow Helldivers on unauthorized unscheduled spacewalks
• AX/TX-13 “Guard Dog” Dog Breath does not show when it is out of ammo
• The Barrager Tanks turret has armor 0 and no weak spots
• Higher zoom functions do not zoom the camera in through the scope on the LAS-5 Scythe
• Weapons with a Charge-up mechanic can exhibit unintended behavior when firing faster than the RPM (Rounds Per Minute) limit

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.

ID@Xbox is kicking off IGN Fan Fest this year with an exciting new showcase on February 24. Get ready to see trailers, gameplay, and reveals from indie studios including Raw Fury, Team 17, Akapura, 11 Bit, and many others. Highlights include the next big collaboration for Balatro, and much, much more.

The ID@Xbox Showcase will stream on Monday, February 24, 2025 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST across IGN platforms. Along with all the new reveals, IGN’s Podcast Unlocked will be breaking down the biggest moments from the showcase in a special IGN post-show, which will immediately follow the main show.

Check out the some of the studios who will be a part of the ID@Xbox showcase, below:

• 11 Bit
• BigFan
• Critical Reflex
• Daedalic
• Game Source Entertainment
• No More Robots
• Panic
• Playstack
• Raw Fury
• Thunderlotus
• Cult Games
• Team17
• Curve
• Akapura
• Don’t Nod

While we wait for all things Xbox, make sure to check out the biggest reveals from 2024’s ID@Xbox partnership with IGN, where it shared exclusives from games including Dungeons of Hinterberg, 33 Immortals, Astor: Blade of the Monolith, Vampire Survivors, and many more.

And throughout February, stay tuned to IGN for more information about the exclusive reveals, interviews, gameplay, and trailers that will be showcased during IGN Fan Fest the week of February 24 – 28. From games like Monster Hunter Wilds, WWE 2K25, and Alien Rogue Incursion, to shows including Daredevil: Born Again, Mythic Quest, and it’s new spin off Side Quest, to comics such as TMNT, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Godzilla, IGN Fan Fest will be a week full of exciting reveals you won’t want to miss!

One Punch Man has arrived in Anime Royale as part of update 5, and he’s brought new units, cosmetics, quality-of-life changes, and codes with him.

The anime-themed Roblox tower defense experience’s latest update takes players into Saitama’s superhero world with a fresh batch of additions to enjoy. Patch notes reveal everything players can look forward to when they log in, including a selection of units inspired by characters from the One Punch Man anime, such as Tatsumaki, Sonic, Metal Bat, Boros, and, of course, Saitama himself. It breaks down to two Secret units, seven Mythical units, two Legendary units, and one Epic unit, but Anime Royale update 5’s changes don’t stop there.

IGN Fan Fest is back and bigger than ever with an expanded lineup of games, movies, series, comics, collectibles, and more.

Tune in February 24 – 28, 2025 for a live showcase every day highlighting huge reveals, tons of trailers, gameplay, never-before-seen clips, and exclusive conversations with your favorite movie and TV stars.

For IGN Fan Fest’s epic 5th anniversary, the fun kicks off with a brand-new ID@Xbox showcase on Monday February 24 and continues throughout the week with special streams dedicated to games, anime, horror, superheroes and more!

EA has confirmed the end of support for Need for Speed Unbound just over two years after the game came out as its developer goes all in on the next Battlefield.

UK studio Criterion Games, best-known for the much-loved Burnout series, developed Need for Speed Unbound for launch in December 2022 and recently rounded out its second year of updates. IGN has confirmed with EA that this marks the end of new content for Need for Speed Unbound, and the Need for Speed team within Criterion is now, alongside the rest of the studio, working on Battlefield. The game will remain on-sale so players can continue to play the base game and all nine content drops.

“The Need for Speed team at Criterion are joining their colleagues working on Battlefield,” a statement from Vince Zampella, Head of Respawn & Group GM for EA Studios Organization, sent to IGN reads.

“As a company, it was important to us to take the last year to listen to our Need for Speed community and use their feedback to create content for Unbound. With an increased understanding of what our players want in a Need for Speed experience, we plan to bring the franchise back in new and interesting ways.”

That’s a rather vague hint that Need for Speed will return at some point, but it’s unclear when and in what form.

It’s a different situation for Dead Space remake and Star Wars: Squadrons developer Motive, which EA told IGN is still working on both the future of Battlefield as well as an Iron Man game. DICE and Ripple Effect, the other two studios that form part of what EA calls Battlefield Studios, are only working on Battlefield.

The Need for Speed news comes as EA starts to reveal more about the new Battlefield, including a first official look at pre-alpha gameplay and the establishment of Battlefield Labs, where players can test the game ahead of launch. There’s no word yet on when the game will be released.

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.

There’s one historical movie scene that comes to mind for me when I think about Sid Meier’s Civilization 7, and it’s not a flashy arena fight in Gladiator or mission control cheering as we safely bring Apollo 13 back home. It’s Leo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, running his hand along an airplane fuselage and insisting that he doesn’t want to see any rivets. There’s some method to the madness of smoothing out the texture in its design, and at times I can see why Firaxis went in this direction. But while its takes some good swings with combat and diplomacy and it is still overall a good time to build a civilization from the ground up, I find that this obsessive streamlining is more often than not to the long-awaited 4X successor’s detriment.

Let me just restate for emphasis right from the jump that I don’t hate playing Civ 7. It retains a lot of the series’ signature charm and polish. There’s an almost indefinable quality of craftsmanship to it that none in the barrage of recent Civ competitors has been able to replicate. It’s more that it’s like this iteration was designed by Apple, trying to be “user-friendly” by taking away the ability to dig into the guts of its systems or fine-tune your experience. And I’m an Android person.

The biggest culprit here is the interface, which simply doesn’t provide enough of the information I would hope to find in a strategy game of this complexity. Learning to play Civ 7 is downright frustrating, and while I eventually figured out how to live with its woefully inadequate tooltips and barren Civilopedia entries, I never liked it. I constantly found myself hovering over things and left-clicking, right-clicking, holding down Shift, Alt, Ctrl, screw it, ScrollLock – anything in the hope that I could bring up more information. But it’s just not there.

In one of my first campaigns, I saw a little guy called a Kahuna wandering around my territory. Now, I could open up the Civilopedia and type in “Kahuna” and find out that he’s a unique missionary available to the Hawaiian civ. But bar that, I don’t have any information available here on the map about what he is. Is he a military unit? Is he dangerous? What is he doing here? Can I eat him? Likewise, clicking on a city center will bring up a basic info view, and you can click a button to show more information. But not a lot more information. Rarely enough.

It’s cool that every building is represented on the map, but hovering over them doesn’t remind me what they do. Again, I have to go into the Civilopedia and type out the name. There’s not even a shortcut to click on a unit or building to bring up the Civilopedia entry that I could find. I can’t even see where my specialists are placed unless I’m prompted to place a new specialist. That’s kind of bewildering.

I know Civ 7 is the first one to launch simultaneously on consoles, but information-dense games like Stellaris and Caves of Qud have done absolutely admirably at making all of their vital details available at the touch of a controller. The absolute worst solution to the problem is just to go, “Eh, you don’t really need detailed tooltips, do you?” That’s exactly what Civ 7 has done, and while not catastrophic, it gets on my nerves constantly.

This minimalist philosophy even extends to the set-up screen, which has a paltry number of options compared to any previous Civ game in the past couple of decades. There are three world sizes and six different map types, but if you want to know what the difference between “Continents” and “Continents Plus” is, again, you’re out of luck, buddy. Go Google it maybe. There’s no explanation of the different difficulty levels, either. And while “Standard” does feel fairly large, even on “Archipelago” it generated maps where more than half of the world is land, so I was really missing Civ 6 options like world age, rainfall, sea level, or any of the neat tweaks I’ve come to expect.

And even if there were more map types, I don’t know if it’d make a difference with the way things are balanced right now. A farm on flat desert is just as productive as one on flat grassland, so trying to switch things up by making a desert world would be a mostly visual change. It really feels like Firaxis wanted to give us a very specific, narrow experience with almost no room for customization.

But as I said, that narrow experience is not by any means a terrible one. There is something to be said for a lean, mean, streamlined Civilization game a la Civ Revolution. And once I settled into its awkward, one-size-fits-all throne, I was having a pretty good time for most of it.

The music and sound design deserve a prominent mention. Christopher Tin only puts out bangers, and “Live Gloriously,” which features lyrics in Ancient Greek taken straight from The Iliad, is no exception. I also enjoyed Gwendoline Christie’s narration, and the sound effects for everything from plopping a new district to opening fire with a rifle company are punchy and satisfying.

Also, in a first for this series, well-written narrative events pop up to bring a touch of human character to the broad sweep of history, and I particularly liked that there are some impactful ones for specific Civs. Playing as the Shawnee, upon unlocking factories, I got the option to keep true to our people’s old ways, which reduced the production output of my industries but gave me a bonus to culture. For Persia, I got a miniature quest chain that rewarded me for sending one of my Immortals on his own little hero’s journey. And the crises that happen at the Age transitions – which can be anything from barbarians at the gates to a super plague that wrecks tiles – are varied and exciting. I’m pretty sure I haven’t even seen all of them yet.

The re-imagining of smaller eras as three larger, more distinct Ages with their own mechanics and victory conditions feels a bit too broad, though – particularly the middle one, Exploration. This period stretches from basically the end of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and it feels like it’s trying to cover too much to have a coherent identity.

And, peculiarly, Civ 7 only really covers history up to about 1950. You get planes and tanks, but there are no home computers or helicopters in this tech tree at launch. The final science victory condition is launching the first manned spaceflight – quite a step back from setting up an exoplanet colony. Again, it feels like the conceptual space Civilization exists in has been sliced down to the bone for the sake of simplicity. And it leaves us with some awkward edge cases, like the Mughal Empire, which was politically irrelevant by the mid-1700s and completely dead by 1857, being a Modern Age pick. Even just having four ages instead of three, I think, would have made this much less awkward.

Overall, though, I like the idea of changing which historical culture your civ adopts with each age, an idea that Amplitude introduced in Humankind a few years ago and Firaxis has improved upon by putting semi-realistic restrictions on who you can pick next. I never liked the idea of American tribesmen founding Washington D.C. in the Stone Age, and civ switching shakes up the gameplay and allows you to pivot from military to culture to science without ruining your whole run. But it has its drawbacks, too. Given that Civ 7’s otherwise slick-looking animated leaders don’t change at all visually through the Ages, you end up with some confusing situations like having Ben Franklin declare war on you and then having to look up what civ he’s actually controlling right now. Persia? Ooookay.

As is tradition, warfare is the most fun way to play, and I love the clever solution of army commanders letting several units ride on their backs to move around the map, then deploying to actually fight. That’s a good compromise between stacks of doom and one unit per tile, and having the commanders be the only ones to earn XP cuts down on micromanaging per-unit upgrades. The AI still can’t present much of a challenge to an experienced player who knows how to exploit the terrain and focus fire on priority targets unless they outnumber you three- or four-to-one, but hey, it’s Civ. What else is new?

Well, for one thing, when you end your turn all enemy units move at once, and your view will never be taken to the site of a battle when your units are being attacked. So if you’re fighting on multiple fronts, or you just happen to be looking somewhere else, the start of each turn becomes a crime scene investigation to figure out what happened. You’ll get notifications if a unit dies, but not if it’s reduced to its last few hitpoints. If the idea here was to make the end turn time faster, the cure is definitely worse than the disease.

Back in the plus column, the centering of Influence as a base game currency is probably my favorite change from Civ 6 to Civ 7. The highlight is that it can be spent to engage in a tug-of-war for War Support, which penalizes your opponent’s happiness and combat ability when you swing it in your favor. It feels way less annoying to get declared on by surprise when the systems recognize that there are diplomatic and tactical consequences for such naked aggression, and I can press a button to make them worse by denouncing that jerk Isabella. It also effectively forces would-be conquerors to supplement their bloodlust with a good PR team that swings public opinion to your side even when you’re clearly the aggressor, which makes the military path more interesting.

If conquest isn’t your ambition there is still another “instant” victory condition for winning the space race, but otherwise, the overall winner is determined by these “Legacy Paths” for Military, Economic, Scientific, and Cultural achievements, which have different objectives each Age and don’t penalize you for changing up your strategy in each one. I found that they do, however, encourage generalization over specialization, since being declared the winner by total legacy score at the end often comes down to simply completing as many objectives in as many different categories as possible. Conquering a couple cities as a science player or making a few treasure fleets as a culture player is typically the tie-breaker in a close match. And I wasn’t crazy about having to dabble in everything to avoid falling behind.

Some paths are better designed than others – I’m looking at you, Culture. Flatly, it’s bad. There’s no tourism anymore, so it’s mostly just about collecting artifacts by racing for a very limited number of dig sites with your explorers or vomiting out so many wonders that your starting cities end up looking ridiculous and the wonders themselves don’t feel so singular or special. Then, the religion-flavored Exploration Age culture objectives suck even more. I hope you like missionary spam and endless whack-a-mole conversions that you can’t guard against. There’s a little bit of strategy to it, like the fact that each settlement can now have a rural and an urban faith that need to be converted separately, but otherwise it’s just spending production to churn out as many Bible-thumpers as you can. I know we all like to make fun of Civ 6’s “theological combat,” but at least it was something, right? It was gameplay. This is a chore.

Sure, this whole one step forward, two steps back thing is par for the course when it comes to comparing a brand-new Civ to previous ones with years of patches and DLC to refine them. It’s not lost on me that people said the same things about the launch of Civ 5, my all-time favorite of the series. So I have an optimistic outlook on Civ 7, despite all my kvetching – and believe me, there’s a lot more minor grievances I could list. I do think a lot of what bugs me about it could be fixed without redesigning the entire thing. They could add better tooltips and game set-up options in a patch. Civ 6 didn’t let you rename cities at launch either, but that was soon added. And naturally, history teaches us a lot of lacking systems can and probably will be fleshed out in expansions. It’s not a great game right now, but I believe it could be with time.

At least it comes out of the gate looking slick. One of the only hills – er, mountains – I will die on is that I really don’t like the way mountains look. They kind of remind me of a big pile of rocks, or like a kid’s papier mache volcano project they made for science class. They don’t have the appearance of a nice, realistic range of snow capped peaks like the ones I can see out my window here in Colorado. I’m also really not a fan of the new board-gamey look for undiscovered territory, even though the reveal effect is nice. Give me clouds or an old-timey map over this shiny nonsense any day.

But the units and cities look incredible, if sometimes a bit cluttered. City-states got a big glow-up, both visually and mechanically. They all have unique 3D dioramas with culturally-specific clothing and props for dozens of miniature “civs” that didn’t make the cut, which is kind of incredible considering how many there are, and each can grant you a unique tile improvement. The way you compete for them, though, has again been streamlined. It’s just a race to fill up the suzerain bar first, and you can no longer “steal” them away from another leader once they’re committed. Not that it mattered that much in single-player, since it seemed like the AI was simply not interested in competing for them the vast majority of the time.

There’s also some meta progression where you can unlock equippable items for specific leaders or cosmetics like new profile backgrounds for playing the same leader multiple times and completing specific challenges. It’s… whatever. I’m not annoyed by its existence, but it could completely disappear and I probably wouldn’t notice or care.

But before we wrap up here, where the heck is Gandhi? How are you going to release a Civilization game without Gandhi? To be fair, the quirky leader choices are neat. I like that we’re branching out from exclusively executive-level political figures. But come on. That’s like Halo without Master Chief, or Mario without… well, Mario. The lack of recognizable faves just comes across to me as, “We’re going to sell them to you individually later,” even if the intention was simply to vary things up. If that’s the case, why are there two different Napoleons?