Category: IGN

Normally, when a sequel is announced that’s a wild departure from the original, I welcome it with open arms – look no further than my inexplicable but everlasting love of Banjo-Kazooie Nuts N Bolts as evidence. But after just a day with Hyper Light Breaker – a follow-up (though not a proper sequel) to one of my all-time favorite indie games, Hyper Light Drifter – I feel like Vito Corleone telling y’all to look at how they massacred my boy. I’ve only sunk six hours into this incredibly challenging co-op roguelike so far, and although there’s clearly the skeleton of a good action-RPG in here somewhere, it’s currently buried deeper than the sun can see under sloppy combat mechanics, shallow and frustrating exploration, and scant content that began to feel repetitive only two hours in. Of course, this is its early access launch, so there’s always hope an initially rough package will transform into something much better with enough time – but in terms of what’s here right now, my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

The goal of a run is to hunt around a randomized map for better gear and key items before taking on three highly deadly and supremely irritating bosses hiding out on each map, then extract yourself back to base to regroup, buy some upgrades, and do it again. I’ve already bested a couple bosses, which summon minions endlessly and flop around erratically to do massive damage, but have yet to complete a map in its entirety, which I’m assuming won’t happen until I near the end of what’s currently available in early access.

Maybe the combat will grow on me once I get deeper in, but it makes an absolutely terrible first impression. There isn’t anything interesting about the melee hack-and-slash attacks you are given, the alternative third-person shooting option has very limited ammo, moving and dodging feel unresponsive and inconsistent, and the lock-on system constantly toggles itself off unexpectedly and gets me killed.

All of these things are especially frustrating when Hyper Light Breaker is immediately difficult – and I mean extremely difficult, and that’s coming from someone with all the achievements in Sekiro – but doesn’t bother to explain its rules and often punishes you with an onslaught of enemy attacks that feel cheap. It’s also extremely funny that you start with no healing items (and are only given them at great expense and extremely sparingly) when you’d think you would need them most at the beginning when you’re learning. Instead, you basically have to throw yourself at impossible odds until you can unlock the bare minimum you need to survive.

So I’ve spent most of my time running around procedurally generated worlds that at least look quite pretty, using a unique art style that channels Hyper Light Drifter in 3D quite well. But these repetitive areas are extremely irritating to navigate, filled with awkward cliffs and crooked landscapes that feel like I’m not actually supposed to be climbing them but offer me no other choice. On the bright side, they at least give you a neat hoverboard to ride around on and do tricks, and although the controls are as sloppy as everything else, hoverboards are indeed still dope as hell and there are definitely some good times to be had there.

I’ve got a whole lot left to do and see before I’m ready to finalize my review sometime next week, and it’s a little encouraging that combat is becoming a bit more bearable as I start to understand its unpolished ways and gain more than zero healing items. But so far I’m not having a good time, and that’s not what I was expecting from this long-awaited follow-up, even taking into account this is its early access launch.

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The Yakuza series has no shortage of weird and wonderful games. From the serious but goofy at times mainline entries to its plethora of historical spinoffs, prequels, and side stories. There’s something for everyone here, really. Whether you’re looking for the next installment in the long running Like a Dragon series, or just want to play something a little different, our last hands-on with Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii ahead of release suggests that it’s shaping up to be another solid spin-off that will plunder dozens of hours from you.

Ever since Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag dropped way back in 2013, I’ve been itching for another worthy pirate adventure. While there have been a few decent attempts released since then, none of them managed to capture my attention and made me excited to get to pirating until I got the chance to play Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. At first glance, Pirates and Yakuza may seem like a combination that’s about as compatible as oil and water. But upon closer inspection, Like a Dragon’s world, eccentric main character, and not too overly serious presentation makes for a surprisingly competent and fun pirate adventure.

In Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii you assume the role of longtime series favorite Goro Majima after he loses his memory and winds up on an Hawaiian island. From everything I saw during my few hours of hands-on time, the series’ weirdness is cranked up to 11 here. Outside of beating up roving gangs of pirates and the occasional bounty with my small tiger companion, I found myself recruiting a wide assortment of weirdos to my pirate crew, playing a plethora of fun and surprisingly addicting minigames – such as a home run derby, karaoke, and sailing the pacific ocean in my pirate ship, complete with ship-to-ship combat and aggressive weather. To put it bluntly, there’s a lot to do here.

Island Time

During my preview I spent a lot of time in the pirate city of Madlantis, an area overrun by pirates, criminals, and some genuinely strange people even by Yakuza’s standards. I was able to participate in numerous minigames and side activities such as claw games, ports of classic SEGA arcade games like Virtua Fighter, and the Pirates’ Coliseum, an area where I was able to engage in ship-to-ship combat to battle it out with an assortment of unique pirate crews, as well as other combat-based minigames.

Speaking of combat, in main gameplay, it strays away from the JRPG turn based style of the two previous Like a Dragon games in favor of a more traditional beat-’em-up combat style. Majima has two fighting styles: Mad Dog and Sea Dog. While both fighting styles are rooted in the standard “heavy and light attack mixed in with dodges” formula, both styles play differently enough that I found myself swapping between them in order to keep the momentum on my side and deal out as much damage as possible. In Mad Dog mode, Majima will don his familiar getup and use a plethora of fast combos to quickly dispatch an enemy. Sea Dog, on the other hand, has Majima wearing a pirate getup and relies on pirate-themed weaponry such as two cutlass swords, a pistol, and a grappling hook. While Mad Dog was fun to play, the majority of my combat time was spent in Sea Dog due to its diverse assortment of weapons and abilities. Regardless of what fighting style I had selected, though I found myself having a ton of fun beating up dozens of rival pirates.

That’s not to say combat didn’t have its shortcomings, though. Blocking and dodging took a bit of practice to get used to, and the enemies can range from a total pushover to a challenge that had me seeing the game over screen more times than I had expected to in a Yakuza game. Still, once I figured out how to effectively switch between fighting styles and take advantage of every tool and ability I had available, the combat became a challenging but rewarding experience.

Set Sail

Naval combat is a welcome addition to the Like a Dragon universe. While some games tend to over complicate ship combat, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii goes with a “less is more” approach to its maritime warfare sections. My ship had a few methods of destroying enemy vessels the port side of my pirate ship was donned with short-range flamethrowers that could deal immense damage as long as I was close to my target, while the starboard side of my ship was equipped with long-range cannons. Firing off these two options in addition to the front-facing machine guns is how I spent most of my time in ship-to-ship combat. The third option was to leave the helm of my ship and use Majima’s rocket launcher. While this didn’t do as much damage as the other options, it was pretty fun to jump around my boat and take pot shots at enemy ships. Regardless of which method I chose to engage in, I found myself having fun drifting my boat around and sinking enemy vessels.

Based on everything I’ve played so far, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is definitely shaping up to not only live up to the high standards of the Like a Dragon series, but it also has the potential to become one of the better pirate games released since Black Flag. With its fun and creative combat, intuitive ship warfare, and genuinely interesting and wacky world, you’re going to want to pack your Hawaiian shirt.

Nintendo has officially revealed the Nintendo Switch 2 and Mario Kart 9 alongside it, which appears to confirm 24 person races for the first time in series history.

A brief reveal trailer for the Nintendo Switch 2 mostly focused on hardware but also unveiled its first confirmed game: Mario Kart 9. While Nintendo only shared a relatively tame look at what’s likely the opening track and characters, something new was seemingly confirmed.

In the opening shots of the race, a total of 24 starting positions could be seen on the track, twice the amount of the standard 12 used in previous games. And while this could solely be an aesthetic choice, the closing gameplay shots appear to show at least 14 individual racers on the track at once.

Not only this, but the track shown in the trailer looks excessively wide, likely to compensate for this increased number of racers (and chaos) Nintendo is deploying in Mario Kart 9.

It’s made similar moves in the past alongside leaps in technology too, as its fighting game Super Smash Bros. for Wii U introduced eight person brawls for the first time, twice the number possible in previous titles.

Fans will likely get a greater look at Mario Kart 9 and its number of racers in the Nintendo Switch 2 Nintendo Direct in April. The brief trailer has already confirmed a few things about the new hardware, of course, such as backwards compatibility features and the addition of a second USB-C port.

Most details, such as its other games and what the heck the mysterious new Joy-Con button does, were left out, though the Joy-Con mouse theory did gain a little traction.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Nobody should envy Firaxis. Once a decade or so, the legendary strategy game developer is asked to reinvent Civilization, a video game series that has been absent of any tangible weak points for quite some time. Nearly every entry has presented different flavors of that turn-based 4X recipe, but it’s hard to say that any one is substantially superior to the others. So, that is the burden that Civilization 7 carries with it. Here is a game that, after playing through the first of its three distinct eras, is shaping up to be very good, but the fact that it’s introducing a huge number of major tweaks and reinterpretations that—in both small ways and big—provide a brand-new way to play Civ means that it asks of its veteran players to enter with an open mind.

If you are new to this series, please know that the basic colors of Civilization 7 adhere to the time-tested formula: telling the story of humanity, one turn and one hex at a time. You begin nurturing a teensy village, armed with club-weilding warriors and torchlight, and evolve it into a globe-bestriding empire by balancing their cultural, scientific, diplomatic, and warfighting needs. Countless subsystems are woven into this pursuit, and when Civilization is at its best, it’s easy to enter something of a psychedelic zen as you remix human history. The marquee new feature of Civilization 7, which we detailed at length in IGN’s original preview last August. Rather than selecting one nation and charting a path to victory, you’ll wield control of a consistent leader, but you’ll switch from your original civilization to two others throughout history—which is divided into three ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern—before a win can be secured.

Some Civilization fans were understandably nervous about this pivot. It’s a big change! One of the things people love most about the previous six games and their spinoffs is their ability to tell strange and funny stories, creating a timeline where, say, the dogmatically Catholic people of China build the Parthenon. Will that still be possible if we’re abandoning our flag when the calendar tips over? After experiencing the change between the age of Antiquity to Exploration myself, I can say with certainty that this new approach will be intriguing for Civ-heads that love getting under the hood. There are so many distinct civilizations to choose from, and in tandem with your chosen leader, if you play smart you’ll will be able to uncover some devastating wombo combos. (For example, a highly expansionist Augustus Caesar, who shepherded the proud Egyptians in Antiquity, might find a perfect home with the Mongols during the Exploration Age.) It brings to mind the compositional choices one makes when assembling a League of Legends roster, but with the world at your feet.

The same thing can be said about the way Firaxis has refreshed its diplomacy system, which again chips away at some thematic richness in service of gameplay. If you are a veteran of Civilization 6, you are likely familiar with how mercurial the other barons on the map could be, and the exorbitant fees they’d charge for simple strategic agreements like open borders. All of that has been stripped away. Diplomacy in Civilization 7, like everything else, has become a currency. You accrue and spend “influence points” in the same way you might have spent faith or gold in generations past, and the accords available on the diplomacy screen all have non-negotiable costs. Want a research partnership? Or a denouncement? The price is on the menu. Some might miss the roundabout negotiations of earlier games, but personally, I think this streamlining is long overdue.

In fact, outside of the radical switch to a three-act structure, much of Civilization 7’s other big changes are remarkably subtle, and seem designed to iron out some of the murky micro-decisions that tend to gum up a campaign. Remember how, since the switch to only allowing one unit per tile in Civ 5, mustering an army required you to line up an unwieldy battalion that would inevitably become chokepointed by its own mass? Now you can rally multiple units on an Army Commander and use them to dictate group orders—like a powerful combined assault—on a single target, which should hopefully make military action less of a grind. (Those commanders are now the only units that can be leveled up, allowing you to tailor different ends of your fighting force.)

A change that sounded like a bigger deal than it actually turns out to be is the elimination of worker units. In Civilization 7, your cities lavishly sprawl outwards, upgrading tiles of your choice as they grow. You know the downtime in the early game where you’re mostly waiting around for your population to grow? This time you’re supplied with progression goals for your nation’s economic, cultural, scientific, and military pursuits. If you complete these you can unlock bonuses at the end of the age, and that makes sure that you always have something to do instead of mashing the end turn button.

The goal, from what I can tell, is to ensure that even in the doldrums, Civilization 7 has the capacity to surprise us. The best illustration of this might be the narrative choices threaded across the campaign, where your leader might encounter some flavor text and a branching pair of dialogue options where both are tied to a short-term boon. (In one early game instance, I found an abandoned mine and could either strip it for gold or convert it into a permanent silver resource on the map.) It is the slightest dusting of Crusader Kings-style roleplaying in a series that has typically steered away from any inkling of morality. I can’t wait to see what ethical quandaries the modern age holds.

I played my Civilization 7 campaign into the Exploration Age, when the map begins to open up for startup empires to venture beyond their home continents. Units can begin to trek across the ocean with wooden fleets, and I was pleased to see that, just off my native shores, enticing archipelagos were ripe for the taking. It was interesting to see how quickly my priorities changed between the eras, and how incentivized I suddenly became to explore the open seas. It makes me wonder if the Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern Ages will function more like siloed gameplay experiences, and given how Civilization 7 allows you to boot up a run at the beginning of each of them, I imagine that is Firaxis’s intent.

But even after 10 hours, I was still scratching the surface of all Civilization 7 had to offer. For instance: On the leader selection screen, there is a meta-progression system built into its DNA, allowing you to slowly unlock perks for the characters you invest the most time in. That represents a huge shakeup to how we’ve all played Civ all this time. How will all of these pieces come together? The answers will be revealed in modernity, and beyond.

Video game piracy has entered a new era as Japanese police have arrested, for the first time, someone accused of modifying Nintendo Switch hardware.

As reported by NTV News and translated by Automaton, a 58-year-old Japanese man was arrested on January 15 on suspicion of violating the Trademark Act. He is suspected of modifying Switch consoles to run pirated games before selling them.

This was allegedly done by welding modified parts to the circuit boards of second-hand consoles that allowed them to run pirated games. The man is accused of loading the hardware with 27 illegally accessed games and selling the consoles for ¥28,000 (around $180) each.

He has admitted to the charges and is currently being investigated for other possible violations, according to police.

Video game companies like Nintendo have long battled with piracy. A takedown request in May 2024, for example, saw Nintendo target 8,500 copies of Switch emulator Yuzu after the emulator itself was taken down two months prior. Its initial lawsuit against creator Tropic Haze said the $70 game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo’s premiere video game release of 2023, had been pirated one million times before it was even released.

Legal action like this is becoming more and more common in an attempt to thwart piracy, however. Other successful lawsuits include those against game file sharing website RomUniverse, which was ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages to Nintendo in 2021, while a similar case saw it receive more than $12 million in damages in 2018. It also blocked GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin from releasing on PC game platform Steam.

This week, a patent lawyer representing Nintendo lifted the lid on the company’s approach to piracy and emulation, discussing how the propagation of emulators could lead to software piracy. Nintendo’s Assistant Manager of the Intellectual Property Division, Koji Nishiura, said: “To begin with, are emulators illegal or not? This is a point often debated. While you can’t immediately claim that an emulator is illegal in itself, it can become illegal depending on how it’s used.”

Image Credit: Nintendo

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

It is one of the biggest conundrums in the video game industry: why hasn’t Sony followed up Bloodborne with… anything? A remaster (Sony loves a remaster)? A sequel? A next-gen update? Fans of FromSoftware’s PlayStation 4 masterpiece have begged for more ever since the game launched to critical and commercial acclaim a decade ago. So, what gives?

Fresh from the reveal of his first voice acting gig following his exit from Sony, PlayStation legend Shuhei Yoshida has delivered his Bloodborne no-show theory. And we must be clear up front: this is Yoshida’s opinion, which in an interview with Kinda Funny Games he stressed is not inside information, or the reveal of the current deliberations within the bowels of Sony itself.

“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.”

Let’s unpack Shuhei’s comment here. Miyazaki-san is of course Hidetaka Miyazaki, the boss of FromSoftware. And yes, he’s incredibly successful. Not only for the influential Dark Souls series, but, most recently, the mainstream hit Elden Ring, which propelled FromSoftware to new heights. So much so that it’s getting a multiplayer spin-off this year.

And it seems obvious to say Miyazaki will be incredibly busy with multiple projects to direct and a company to run. After Bloodborne came out in 2015, Miyazaki directed Dark Souls 3, then 2019’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for Activision, then the aforementioned Elden Ring for Bandai Namco. What’s next? Miyazaki has yet to say.

What Shuhei is touching on here is a potential desire from Miyazaki to do something with Bloodborne, but he doesn’t want anyone else to do it. And Sony, Shuhei suggests, respects that wish, despite owning the intellectual property. Certainly Miyazaki has earned that respect and the ability to pick and choose his projects.

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.

As for Sony, some Bloodborne fans feel a tad… trolled by PlayStation. For example, last month, Bloodborne fans freaked out over a potential announcement after Sony ended its special PlayStation 30th Anniversary trailer with a clip from the beloved FromSoftware game and the phrase “it’s about persistence.”

Perhaps, given Shuhei’s theory, fans will need plenty of it.

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.

A mod dedicated to recreating Liberty City within Grand Theft Auto 5, as a mod, has shut down.

Insider-Gaming reports that the Liberty City Preservation Project, a mod meant to recreate the setting of GTA 4 as a mod for GTA 5, has been taken down at the request of Rockstar Games. In a statement on Discord, user nkjellman said “Due to the unexpected attention that our project received and after speaking with Rockstar Games, we have decided to take down the Liberty City Preservation Project.”

There’s a new mod on the block for GTAV “Liberty City Preservation Project”, I tried out the mod. It’s AMAZING, it has a working subway network, the police and ambient traffic are faithful and it’s so polished.

Amazing work to the team of devs who worked on this! pic.twitter.com/aLLtOMvwsc

— Ben (@videotechuk_) December 31, 2024

Rockstar is well-known for asking modders to take down various mods like this AI-powered GTA 5 story mode mod, or a VR mod for Red Dead Redemption 2. The Liberty City Preservation Project take down is also not without direct precedent as Rockstar issued a take-down for a mod that tried to recreate Grand Theft Auto Vice City within GTA 5.

One interesting development is that while Rockstar is judicious when it comes to taking down mods, they also sometimes hire those very modders to work at Rockstar Games. And some mods, like the Vice City mod, were taken down only for Rockstar themselves to announce remasters of those very games.

This isn’t to say Rockstar is working on a GTA 4 remaster, by any means, but there’s certainly precedent. Still it may be years away before we get an answer as we know Rockstar is currently hard at work trying to ready the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 for a 2025 launch.

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.