The writer of the infamous Sonic Adventure 2 song “Live and Learn” is suing Sega, claiming he owns the rights to the song in part, and alleging the company has been using the song without his permission and making money off it over the last 20 years.
In a lawsuit first spotted by Polygon and also viewed by IGN, John Gioeli, the writer and performer for Live and Learn, asserts that he has maintained his songwriting registration for the song for over 20 years since he first wrote and recorded it for Sonic Adventure 2. However, he says Sega has been improperly claiming it is the actual owner of the song and behaving as such, including licensing the song to “at least 25 video games, television shows, live performances/events, and films.”
Specifically, Gioeli’s suit claims that Sega is basing its ownership of Live and Learn off “a 2001 lyric agreement where Gioeli was paid $3000 to write lyrics for a as-yet-untitled song that would be included in Sonic Adventure 2.” He did so at his home studio, using his own equipment and own vocals, allegedly without Sega’s direct involvement. He did work with Sega composer Jun Senoue over the phone, with Senoue initially sending him a music demo that Gioeli was supposed to write lyrics for. But the suit claims that the scope of Gioeli’s work expanded over the course of his work on Live and Learn without amendment to the initial agreement, which was only for the lyrics. Allegedly, Gioeli revised the song significantly, communicating changes over the phone to Senoue.
As a result, Gioeli says Sega claims it owns both the recording and musical composition, but argues this is not actually the case and that there is no agreement stating such. And Gioeli also claims that Sega has acknowledged in the past that the composition is “likely jointly owned”, with one Sega lawyer allegedly telling Gioeli at one point that he is entitled to 50% of profits from its use.
Gioeli allegedly was somehow unaware that Sega has been using Live and Learn with regularity in a number of other formats over the last 20 years. This is despite Gioeli working closely with the company on a number of songs throughout this time, all of which had far more specific agreements signed about who owned what. Per the suit, he only found out about its myriad uses through a fan telling him, and has since identified 25 video games it exists in. These include multiple Yakuza and Sonic games, Super Smash Bros, Phantasy Star Online, the maimai series, and Monster Hunter Rise). Notably, Gioeli was involved in the song’s inclusion in the recent movie Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (which we’ve just reviewed), and even signed the deal with Paramount for song placement.
Gioeli is seeking a court decision as to the ownership of Live and Learn, as well as a restitution for any money he is owed and damages for breach of the 2001 Lyric Agreement.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
December is a big month for me. It’s a time to celebrate the holidays with friends and family, surprise loved ones with unique gifts, and attempt to reconnect with the ever-growing monstrosity that is my backlog. December is also a time for me to reflect on games that launched throughout the year – especially those that continued to demonstrate the rise in accessibility acceptance, as well as push the innovative boundary for future titles.
2024 was rife with accessible games, spanning across numerous genres and developed by various sized studios. As the industry’s understanding and implementation of features and designs continues to evolve, games are far more accessible than before. And with this year-end issue of Access Designed, IGN would like to recognize several games for their accessibility excellence.
Runner-up: Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Bioware’s latest installment in its fantasy RPG series, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, is the purest definition of normalizing and standardizing accessibility. Not only does it demonstrate the studio’s increased commitment to disabled players since Dragon Age: Inquisition’s release in 2014, but Veilguard’s accessibility offerings also impressively cater toward an array of disabilities.
Visual features like subtitle adjustments, colorblind filters, and both melee and ranged threat indicators allow deaf and hard of hearing users to process gameplay information without audio. For blind and low vision players, Veilguard’s options offer audio indicators for incoming attacks, dialogue options, and interactive objects – all of which are crucial for combat, storytelling, and overworld traversal. Physically disabled players can remap controls, toggle options for mechanics like blocking, aiming, and holding inputs, and even remove QTEs and combos with rapid button presses.
Veilguard’s greatest accessibility achievement, though, comes in the form of dynamic difficulty. Difficulty is not unanimous. Not only do the rules, methods and understanding of challenge vary between studios, individual games, and player experiences – the majority of difficulty settings only tackle enemy aggression, player damage output, and player health. But in Veilguard, disabled players can alter settings like enemy resistances, enemy vulnerability, timing windows for dodging and parrying, enemy health and aggression. You can even toggle player death, allowing you to remain alive no matter how much damage you take. Combine that with settings that allow players to continuously access previously learned information, have consistent waypoints for objectives and overworld items, and the capability to pause whenever you like, and disabled players are given the chance they need to process each encounter or recover stamina.
Veilguard isn’t perfect. Some features like single stick movement and robust guidance systems are missing. Yet it still acts as the quintessential modern accessible experience. The industry continues to rightfully praise games like The Last of Us Part 2, but Veilguard demonstrates it’s time to move beyond the notion that a single game deserves all the accessibility praise. Instead, accessibility is evolving across the industry, and Veilguard is one of this year’s prime examples.
Runner-up: Botany Manor
It’s a common misconception that accessibility can only be achieved by companies owned by wealthy megacorporations like Microsoft or Sony. This belief that accessibility requires dozens of developers and untold amounts of money continues to plague innovation. But Botany Manor, a low-budget puzzle game, is proof that such a belief is a fallacy.
Developed by Balloon Studios and published by Whitethorn Games, Botany Manor is a soothing puzzle solving game set in a stately home in 19th century England. This genre is, admittedly, not my favorite – I prefer action and turn-based RPGs. But the accessibility features and design of Botany Manor made this game an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. For starters, it offers full support for mouse and keyboard or controller, depending on your preferred setup. It also offers single stick gameplay, with an option to toggle the capability to look around. Finally, a toggle to sprint is also offered.
That’s an admittedly small selection of options, but they’re augmented by Botany Manor’s impressive use of inclusive design. There are no time limits for solving puzzles; instead players are allowed to take as much time as needed to figure out ways to grow specific plants. Furthermore, puzzles are relegated to a select number of rooms per chapter. Rather than opening the entirety of the manor to players, which could feel overwhelming, those with physical and cognitive disabilities can preserve energy knowing puzzles are within sections.
Botany Manor is by no means perfect, as blind and low vision players will undoubtedly struggle without specific audio-based options. But an indie studio that creates a game with such accessibility-focused attention to inclusive design should be rewarded for its efforts. Botany Manor is proof you don’t need an extensive budget nor dozens of options to make puzzle games accessible.
Winner: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
The winner of this year’s accessibility award is bittersweet. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown proved truly innovative for the Metroidvania genre. However, publisher Ubisoft recently disbanded the Montpellier-based development team and assigned them across several new projects, meaning that a sequel or future innovations from the studio has very little chance of happening. But I’m not awarding developers because of pity. Rather, I’m awarding the team because they created the most innovatively accessible experience of 2024.
The Lost Crown offers customizable controls, subtitles, audio indicators for varying attacks, and a toggle that automatically unfreezes your character when frozen by a frost status effect. But these options ultimately pale in comparison to the innovative Memory Shards and Guided Mode features.
The Metroidvania genre relies on extensive memorization and backtracking. Areas are meant to be explored numerous times throughout a playthrough, with each segment opening new layers on repeat visits as players acquire new tools or powers. Memory Shards allow players to place a screenshot of a location on the overworld map, reminding them of hidden items or barriers to new routes that can only be accessed with yet-to-be-acquired skills or equipment. Spotted a power up at the beginning of a zone that’s inaccessible? Just place a Memory Shard on the map to remind you to return when you’ve progressed. This feature has been praised as a gameplay tool in general, but it is an incredibly helpful tool for players of all cognitive abilities.
To coincide with Memory Shards, Guided Mode shows players precisely where their next objective is, as well as highlights any upcoming barriers along the path. Combined, these two features dramatically reduce the chance of cognitive overload while still respecting the core feature of a Metroidvania – exploration. While guides and placeable hints are not new to gaming, Metroidvania games have always been dense and obscure and, as a result, cognitively inaccessible. That is until the release of The Lost Crown. This year’s Prince of Persia really is a game (and genre) changer.
2024 continued the trend of improving accessible experiences for disabled players. No longer are we expected to follow specific studios for accessible games. From AAA to indie, disabled players are no longer confined to specific genres because of accessibility offerings. And while barriers still exist, 2024 is indicative of increasing support from studios that continuously adopt the best accessibility practices. Some shortcomings aside, 2024 was as accessible as ever, and another fantastic year for disabled players.
Grant Stoner is a disabled journalist covering accessibility and the disabled perspective in video games. When not writing, he is usually screaming about Pokémon or his cat, Goomba on Twitter.
The comeback wasn’t going to happen. I was blowing it. I lost my first character in my first match of The Hidden Ones because I didn’t cash out with my Ultimate Skill, but I made a comeback with my mid before losing her to my opponent’s anchor. I didn’t have a great answer for what he was doing, and I was convinced I was going to waste what had started off as a great comeback. Then my anchor came out. It was my first game; I’d never used her before. And at first, it was going about the same, and then I realized what I was doing. I canceled my default combo into another combo then another, and cashed out with my Ultimate. And on the last hit, I got the kill. God, I love fighting games, and if my time with it is any indication, The Hidden Ones is living up to what makes the genre so great.
If you’re not up on The Lore ™, The Hidden Ones is based on the anime Hitori No Shita: The Outcasts, which in turn is based on Under One Person, a Chinese webcomic. Whew. Okay, so the history is a little complicated, but you don’t really need to know what’s going on with the other parts of the series to vibe with The Hidden Ones. I have no experience with the anime, but I was able to follow what I saw pretty easily. I started with the story mode, which dropped me into the shoes of Wang Ye. Ye is one of the Outcasts, blessed with one of the Eight Secret Arts, which were generally believed to have been lost to time. Once people figure out what Wang Ye has, though, they go after him to get it.
Wang Ye tries to nip this in the bud by speaking with Li Gaofeng, the head of the Li Troupe, and trying to convince him to leave Wang and his family alone. Impressed by Wang’s gumption and fighting prowess, Li agrees to let him go and leave his family alone. Of course, things don’t go as planned and Wang finds himself framed for Li’s murder and battling the Li Troupe as he tries to escape.
The Devil’s in the Details
Whew, okay, set up. What’s cool, though, is the game Morefun games has made out of this. The Hidden Ones would probably be best described as an arena fighter, but you don’t just go from fight to fight. Between the fights themselves, you’ve got the ability to run around and check out The Hidden Ones’s world, whether that means enjoying the environmental detail on display or checking out a ledger or diary you find in the world. This attention to detail is important: during an interview that happened between my two play sessions, Lead Game Designer Fox Lin and Senior Game Designer Stan Fan told me that the team at Morefun spent a long time capturing the detail of these environments, many of which are based on actual, individual Chinese streets. They wanted the world of The Hidden Ones to feel real, and that comes across even in the relatively small area I was playing in.
The same is true of The Hidden Ones’s visual style. This game is stunning, and that attention to detail is clear in everything from the characters to the way they fight. This is intentional, too. The story and world of The Hidden Ones are based heavily (though not exclusively) in Chinese martial arts and myth, and that meant getting the little details right, right down to the motion capture done by real martial artists.
These are regular people, and that’s a major part of the story here, even if they are throwing punches and casting magic.
Morefun is also quick to note that while the Outcasts are incredibly powerful, they’re also folks going about their day. Maybe they’re going out to buy groceries or just using their abilities to accomplish their goals in subtle ways. The point is these are regular people, and that’s a major part of the story here, even if they are throwing punches and casting magic.
Like a Flowing Stream
Speaking of the fighting, The Hidden Ones feels great when you’re throwing punches. This is an arena fighter, so movement is crucial, but the rock-paper-scissors interactions of what makes a fighting game a game fighting work are here, too. You’ve got your basic attacks, which lose to special attacks; those losey to your defensive stance; and your defensive stance loses to attacks, which become throws if they’re in that stance. There’s also a dodge, which costs a limited amount of stamina, and you can time perfectly for a Witch Time-style slowdown that will allow you to retaliate when you otherwise wouldn’t, and a parry that you can perform out of your defensive stance during special attacks, so you can swap from defense to offense with a well-timed button press.
Stamina also comes into play on offense. You can spend it to cancel actions — whether they’re physical or special attacks — allowing you to build custom combos and combos into your Ultimate Skills, which is how I won that match I told you about at the start. If you’re the one getting your face rearranged, you can also spend stamina to break out of combos and reset to neutral. Put together, all of this means that, despite The Hidden Ones’s fairly simple control scheme and combo structure, you’re constantly making interesting choices where you’re alternating between playing neutral, reacting, and pre-empting your opponent, all while managing your character’s unique skills (Wang Ye, for instance, has a special attack that can go into three different variations). The right play at the right time, like say, throwing out a special attack when you think they’re going to swing at you, can swing a match.
Nah, He Just Looks Big
The real meat and potatoes, and my favorite part of my time with The Hidden Ones, is going to be the mano a mano fights between your three-person teams against other players, but I also really enjoyed the three boss fights I got to play. The first, which I ran into during the story mode, started off as a one-on-one brawl before the boss in question brought out her skyscraper-sized snake, forcing me to play around its massive fangs before its master would come down and I could get back to the fine art of knocking her out.
Arena fighters are a tricky business, but so far Morefun has nailed the balance of simplicity, depth, and game feel that any good fighter needs.
If that’s not enough for you, though, there’s also Trial mode, where you can face off against a boss with any of the characters you’ve got. There were two available in the demo I played, and both were challenging, especially on the highest of the available difficulties. Both eventually went down, but they forced me to use characters I knew, pick my spots, and learn their patterns. It’s a fun change of pace for a game like this, and I’m eager to see what other fights look like in the future.
When my time with The Hidden Ones ended, I left excited, and wishing I could have played more, especially more multiplayer. But I left with a good idea of what Morefun is trying to accomplish, and I liked how much cool stuff there was and how unique and interesting the characters they’ve created here are. Arena fighters are a tricky business, but so far Morefun has nailed the balance of simplicity, depth, and game feel that any good fighter needs while providing more to do if you’re not looking to throw down online. I’m excited to see where The Hidden Ones goes, and in the meantime, I’ll be thinking about landing that Ultimate Skill at the right moment, and how cool it was that The Hidden Ones gave me the options to play how I wanted in that moment. Like its characters, The Hidden Ones knows even when the chips are down and the outcome is uncertain, there’s always a play to be made, hidden in plain sight.
From iconic names like Indiana Jones and Final Fantasy to indie sensations like Balatro and Animal Well, 2024 has provided gamers with a variety of incredible experiences. IGN is in the process of picking our game of the year, but now you have the chance to have your voice heard too in the IGN People’s Choice Tournament.
With our partners at Truth, we’ve selected 64 of the best titles of the year to be placed in a bracket and randomly sorted into groups. They’ll go head-to-head, with the winner moving on to the next round and the loser being eliminated. As the rounds progress, the competition will get tougher, until there’s only one title left standing as the fan-voted Game of the Year. If you’re familiar with how March Madness brackets work, it’s the same concept.
Tournament Schedule and How to Vote
Voting will take place on IGN’s Instagram starting today, December 18. We’ll post the matchups to our Instagram stories around 3 p.m. ET / 2 p.m. CT / 12 p.m. PT, and you’ll have 24 hours to vote. The 32 winners will move on to the next round, where the process will repeat. Here are the dates when each round will be posted (around the same times listed above), so make sure to check back on our Instagram stories to continue voting for your favorite games:
Round 1: December 18
Round 2: December 20
Round 3: December 23
Quarterfinals: December 27
Semifinals: December 30
Finals: December 31
Which Games Are Grouped Together?
As we mentioned earlier, the bracket placements of the 64 games we selected were randomized. They were split up into four groups, like the regions of March Madness. Group 1 is led by some heavy hitters: Helldivers 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. But they’ll have to go up against breakout indie Animal Well. Plus, three popular sports games: Madden NFL 25, College Football 25, and MLB The Show 24. And you can’t look past the beautiful visuals of Unicorn Overlord and Infinity Nikki.
Group 2 is led by the excellent Silent Hill 2 remake, but it’ll face stiff competition from a trio of RPGs — Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. There’s also heralded remasters and remakes from Nintendo with Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. And we can’t leave out the technical marvel Senua’a Sage: Hellblade II, or another standout indie in Lorelai and the Laser Eyes.
Group 3 ended up stacked with three games that have been cleaning up during awards season: Astro Bot, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Black Myth: Wukong. They’re joined by an eclectic group of competitors. There’s entries from massive franchises in Star Wars Outlaws and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (which will face off against each other in Round 1). There’s games from other long-running series in Tekken 8 and Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble. There’s the latest version of sports franchises in EA Sports FC 25 and NBA 2K25. But also some notable new IPs with Stellar Blade and Slitterhead.
Rounding things out, Group 4 is also full of some big names. First, there’s indie darling Balatro, which has also done very well for itself this awards season. But it’ll have to get through two huge RPG sequels in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth and Dragon’s Dogma 2, as well as a popular RPG remake in Persona 3 Reload. And they’ll be up against several family-friendly opponents in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, LEGO Horizon Adventures, Super Mario Party Jamboree, and The Plucky Squire. Not to mention the often overlooked Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and surprise hit Enshrouded.
As you can see, this year is going to be a hotly contested race. So make sure you head over to Instagram to vote for each matchup and help determine which games will move on and which will be sent packing. It’ll all build to a big reveal of the fan voted Game of the Year. Happy voting!
According to tradition, the holiday season actually began over a month ago when Mariah Carey once again emerged from a giant block of ice to sing Christmas anthem “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Fortnite’s is arriving a bit late to the holiday party, but leakers say an upcoming update to the game will replicate this timeless holiday tradition and have Mariah Carey burst forth from a large block of ice in the game, bringing with her holiday character skins and the Winterfest event.
This news comes from prominent Fortnite leaker iFireMonkey, who has previously been a source of credible Fortnite leaks. Per their information, Mariah Carey will be getting a Fortnite skin as part of its upcoming Winterfest 2024 event, alongside Snoop Dogg and Shaquille O’Neal. All of them will, of course, be dressed in holiday finery.
Another leaker, Egyptian_Leaker, suggests that there will be an additional event involving a large block of ice that’s already appeared on the Fortnite map. Per them, the ice block will defrost after three days, and Mariah Carey will appear in-game as an NPC handing out gifts to players.
MINI-LIVE EVENT CONFIRMED: There’s a very small Winterfest event at the start of it ‼️
Mariah Carey will be an Ice block on the map for 3 days. After she defrosts there will be a small sequence with Fireworks. Mariah Carey will then be available as an NPC that gives gifts to… pic.twitter.com/lzoBCUuues
For the time being, she remains tragically frozen:
Alongside Mariah Carey, iFireMonkey has posted a number of other holiday-themed leaks we’re likely to see in the coming days. These include loads of holiday-themed skins and accessories (one of them is a backpack full of bread dogs!), new emotes and dances, and the return of Sgt. Winter as an NPC. We’ve also heard that Skibidi Toilet is coming to Fortnite…tonight. Just in time for the holidays.
Winterfest 2024 launches on December 20 and runs through January 7. In addition to the rumored holiday skins and Mariah Carey’s ice block extravaganza, Epic Games has confirmed we’ll see the return of Jonesy’s Cabin.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Ubisoft’s failed Call of Duty rival XDefiant has received a hefty final update today, December 18, ahead of its shutdown in 2025.
The XDefiant X/Twitter account shared the patch notes, below, while executive producer Mark Rubin thanked fans and the development team in his own post for their dedication to the game since before and after its May 2024 launch.
“I wish everyone who worked on this game directly or indirectly the best for their future endeavors,” Rubin said. “And the same goes for all of the fans who played our game, who streamed it, or who worked to build the XDefiant community.”
XDefiant’s final S3.0+ update includes the previously announced Assassins class, which are modelled after Assassin’s Creed’s titular heroes, alongside myriad additional features that were planned for now cancelled future seasons.
This includes a total of three new factions, 13 new maps, a new experience called Tactical, a means of gaining experience versus bots, new weapons, new progression mechanics for Faction Mastery and Badges, and more.
Hiding in plain sight through the centuries, the Assassins have waged a clandestine war against their ancient enemies, the Templars, to safeguard human freedom. Assassins combine rigorous combat training, unconventional weaponry, and a sixth sense to track and take out their targets. Their signature Hidden Blade is a one-hit melee elimination.
The Assassins receive combat guidance from Rebecca Crane, the technical genius who developed the Animus 2.0, an advanced model of the machine that lets Assassins relive genetic memories. She guided some of the Order’s most well-known Assassins, including Desmond Miles. With Crane’s assistance, the Assassins work in the dark to serve the light, combating oppression with lethal force.
New Faction: Wolves
Ex-special forces gone rogue, Wolves employ an arsenal of Skell Tech drones for both offense and defense. The Wolves trait allows the pack to be a sight unseen, undetected by AI abilities and devices. Their Legion drone acts like a homing proximity mine, while the Stolas is effectively a mobile turret. And their ultra, Drone Swarm, is the last word on area denial.
New Faction: Blood Dragon
Super-deadly cyber commandos from a dark future where cyborgs and mutants collide. Use your cyberstrength, throw deadly shuriken, strike with your shock punch, or use the Killstar laser to deal massive damage.
Fixes and Changes:
Cleaners
Fixed a couple of glitches with the Cleaners’ Incinerator Drone when Hijacked by a DedSec player:
The Drone no longer explodes next to the player who Hijacked it.
The Drone now leaves a complete fire trail back to its point of origin.
Echelon
No longer have a 50% reduction in flash grenade duration debuff
Phantoms
AEGIS – Addressed issue with shots not registering at point blank range.
Blitz – Increased movement speed to truly “Blitz” your opponent.
DedSec
Spiderbots 2.0 – We got the message. Spiderbots, DedSec’s infuriatingly face-adjacent electro-minions, are now less in your face and more of an area-of-effect threat. When activated, Spiderbots will now dutifully follow their deploying player for 30 seconds, emitting an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts all enemy equipment within a 10-meter radius. And with that, the era of Spiderbot facehugging comes to a close.
Highwaymen
M79
Fixed an issue that would lock the skill when activating right after a weapon swap
This should now have damage dealt while on different elevations
Improved handling and reload speed
Cooldown reduced to 40s
Buzzsaw Launcher
Increased ammo count
Addressed issue with damage inconsistency
Maps
New S3 Maps
Mykonos (Arena): Experience the island of Mykonos like the ancient Greeks did, except with more rooftop firefights, in this new map for Season 3. Your itinerary includes sprinting by market stalls, seeking roof access for the high ground, and jumping across boat decks in high-risk flanking maneuvers.
El Barrio (Arena)
Jorvik (Linear)
Animus Anomaly (Tactical): Ancient worlds collide in Animus Anomaly, a new corridor-style map for Season 3. Hunker down among Viking castles, flank around the waterways of ancient Greece, or go out with a boom in the new Defuse tactical variant of BOMB!.
New Future Maps – These maps were scheduled for later seasons but were too much fun not to release!
Arena
Carlyle’s Lab
Enchanted Forest
Killstar Temple
Razia’s Realm
Skell City
West End
Linear
Skell Complex
Esperanza
Himalaya
Fixes and Changes:
Adjustments were done to invisible collision and areas where players were able to jump to places that are out of bounds for the map.
Adjustments to some maps where scrap turrets were also being placed where they’re not supposed to be.
DUMBO has decked the halls to be more festive for the holidays
Players can no longer climb and leap their way into what was supposed to be an inaccessible area of some maps, where they were using El Remedio to heal allies and doing other sneaky exploits.
Many maps have undergone improvements to mantling which should now be fixed in several map locations that previously were not.
Map voting improvements
Game Modes
New Modes:
Defuse
This season sees the debut of Defuse, a tactical and slower-paced version of BOMB!. Teams take turns planting and defending bomb sites, yet all players only have one life. Defuse is designed for play on a new “corridor” type map, in this case the Animus Anomaly created exclusively for this category.
Vs Bots
There’s now a Vs Bots option where you can face off against varying levels of computers. You’ll even earn XP by battling bots. Although at a slower pace with human enemies.
Lum Hunt
Catch them if you can, Lums (beings of pure energy possessing of a mindbogglingly sunny disposition) have been placed around the Enchanted Forest map in this variant of Hot Shot. Also available in Private Matches.
Tilt
Now available in our Linear playlists, this mode is a simultaneous battle over who can push around Carlos the most, poor robot.
Turbo XD
Super jump your way to victory in this gravity defying mode.
New Party Modes Playlist
From one shot kill, to headshots only, and even no skills allowed, there’s a little something for everyone in this playlist. With no one here to make names for them, we wish you the very best of luck to figure them out.
Fixes and Changes:
Team balancing overhaul to ensure the fairest matches.
BOMB!
Several quality-of-life improvements to BOMB! spectator cam.
Planting and Defusing behavior improved not to conflict with other game features like looking at the scoreboard.
Private Match
Fixed an issue where the lobby menu would become blank after another player accepts a private match party invite.
Now allows you to select the server you wish to play on.
Ranked
Ranked BOMB!
With Ability Restrictions still in place, we took it 1 step further and you will only be allowed to use your ability once per life.
Round timer changed in Ranked BOMB! from 2 mins to 1min 30s, plant and defuse times adjusted, and Round 11 will go to highest scoring team.
Top 500 Leaderboard
Season 3 sees the debut of the Top 500 leaderboard, which showcases the top 500 players globally each season as they progress through the ranks until the season’s end. These top players are displayed in descending order of total Rank Points earned in the current season. Highlighting a player on the Leaderboard displays the following stats:
Current rank insignia and RP total.
Win/Loss: Player’s ratio of wins to losses.
Kill/Death: Player’s ratio of kills to deaths.
Average Score/Minute: Player’s average score per minute.
MVPs: Number of times the player earned MVP.
Ranked Emblem in HUD
Proudly display your ranked tier right on your heads-up display for all to see.
New Ranked Rewards
New S3 specific Ranked Rewards are available (to everyone).
Fixes and Changes:
Matchmaking ranges have been disabled and join in progress has been enabled so that matches are easier to find.
Reduced the forfeit timer duration from 20s to 5s.
Players are no longer pulled out of active Ranked game sessions after accepting the Party invite for a Private Match.
Added a new menu experience, now players will be able to search for games and jump back to the Ranked menu tab to view rewards, info, and the top 500 leaderboard.
Removed Domination and CTF from Ranked playlists.
Weapons
Assault Rifle
FAMAS – The FAMAS is a burst-fire rifle like the M16A4 but with faster ADS time, movement, and rate of fire. It is slower to reload, however, and inflicts less hurt per shot.
G36K
Sub-Machine Gun
M1928
Light Machine Gun
MG5 – Despite its shorter range and lower ammo capacity than other belt-fed LMGs, the MG5 with its higher rate of fire makes it a powerful and versatile option for those who can master its challenging recoil.
Marksman
M1A – An agile warhorse built for medium-range battles, the M1A offers a speedy rate of fire but deals less per-shot damage compared to other marksman rifles.
Sniper Rifle
SRS
Pistol
Diceros
Fixes and Changes:Sawed-off Shotgun Balance Adjustment
The range and damage potential of the Sawed-Off Shotgun have been adjusted to better focus it on its intended role as a short-range kill-finisher and prevent it from killing full-health opponents with a single shot.
Short Range reduced from 8m -> 6m
Medium Range reduced from 12m -> 10m
Short Range Damage reduced from 12 -> 11
Bullets Per Round reduced from 12 -> 9
Tweaked smoke grenade effects so that some components of cosmetic skins will no longer be visible through the smoke, while also improving the size, shape, and transparency of the smoke particles and radius of effect.
Adjusted the camera shake so that now it is based on distance to explosion. Removed friendly explosion camera shake.
Attachments
Tapered Barrel
Introduced the Tapered Barrel, an attachment for most weapons that increases handling speed but reduces damage. Here are the pluses and minuses:
Pros:
25 percent boost to sprint-out time
15 percent ADS speed increase
5 percent movement speed increase
Cons:
20 percent short-range damage decrease
20 percent medium-range damage decrease
10 percent ADS walking speed decrease
In other words, this barrel will help you scoot around the map at a zippier pace, but you’ll likely need to land more shots than normal to get kills.
New Reticle Customization
New for Season 3: Customized reticules. Players can unlock new reticule shapes and adjust their colors (a helpful feature for players with colorblindness). Custom reticules will be tied to individual loadouts.
Fixes and Changes:
Fixed a graphical glitch that let players see parts of their weapon barrel through the Reflex and Holographic sights.
Fixed a lagging magazine when player reloads weapons.
Fixed floating when using left-handed skills and reloads.
Fixed a scope crosshair missing when player ADS in spectating mode.
Several skins have had their sights adjusted to match the base weapon being used.
Various visual improvements
Progression
Prestige System!
Introducing Prestige, an optional new progression system that rewards long-haul dedication with flashy cosmetics and extravagant emblems that showcase your experience to other players. Available to anyone who has completed their Base Challenges, Prestige resets player progress in exchange for an eye-catching Prestige Emblem. All starter and owned weaponry are locked – except the M4, M9, and frag grenade – but can be earned as players earn XP and Prestige Tokens to access their original gear plus new weapons until they complete the current Prestige Tier and acquire the next eye-catching emblem. Players can opt out of Prestige at any time and recover their weapons, or they can commit to unlocking the final Prestige Emblem, the ultimate display of dedication.
Badges!
Badges are part of a mysterious new challenge-based progression system where players earn Badges for performing impressive feats and engaging with the game in creative ways. All Badge challenges have hidden requirements, encouraging players to go online and engage with the XDefiant community. Badges can also evolve, requiring players to complete the challenge a second or third time but with more challenging requirements for success.
Faction Mastery!
Allows players to level up characters, earn prestigious rewards, and track their progression within the game
Pristine Weapon Mastery Skin
A new Pristine Weapon Mastery skin is unlocked at weapon level 50 as an early reward to encourage players to pursue Weapon Mastery. These new Pristine skins are like unmarred, fresh-from-the-factory versions of these weapons. Pristine skins are retroactively applied to any weapons that have already reached level 50.
Daily Rewards and Credits
Players can now earn various rewards just for logging into the game. Bigger rewards are granted every 5th and 10th login. The days do not have to be consecutive.
Credits are a brand new in-game currency. Use Credits to buy cosmetics from previous seasons, giving you the opportunity to get any skins you may have missed back then, but you have everything now, so that’s nice
Fixes and Changes:
Some Challenges, particularly those related to faction characters, weren’t progressing on the main menu, but now they are.
Audio
Battle announcer lines have been tweaked for their frequency of play:
Lines announcing death streaks (or dying multiple times without killing an enemy) will trigger less often (now players need to die five times rather than three, and the death streaks will only trigger during the second half of a match).
Lines related to suffering from fire damage (from the Purifier, (Firebomb, Incendiary Drone–really anything involving the Cleaners) will trigger less frequently.
Phantoms – Blitz – Now has sounds for blocking a melee attack and for attacking others with a Blitz Shield.
GSK – Hardhat – Audio improved for impact confirm headshot
Highwaymen – M79 – Now has sounds for hit confirm and impact confirm with the M79.
Other various audio improvements.
Miscellaneous
New Assassin’s video on the main menu
New Career Stats page
New Store Layout
New Weapon Inspect
Input-based matchmaking is now disabled by default for faster matchmaking times.
Fixed various crashes and errors
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is reviving classic Sega arcade game The Ocean Hunter in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, marking its first release on console.
As reported by Automaton, RGG Studio revealed on X/Twitter the wealth of minigames coming to the incoming Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii including The Ocean Hunter as an arcade game.
Bringing over The Ocean Hunter, a 1998 on-rails shooter about killing giant sea beasties like great white sharks, was a “very difficult task that required the cooperation of many people,” however, according to an X/Twitter post from RGG Studio technical director Yutaka Ito.
As mentioned, The Ocean Hunter has never been ported to console, so RGG Studio had to do everything from the ground up. This included visiting actual arcades to understand exactly how it worked, since the game doesn’t exist in any other, more accessible, capacity.
Ito said the development team had been talking about bringing The Ocean Hunter over for a year ahead of actually beginning work, because it’s lack of license-related complications made it an ideal choice and it also very much fits the theme of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.
It’s not a stretch to say we’re currently experiencing the best run of horror video games since the PS2 era. The past few years have seen the genre revitalised, in part thanks to nostalgia for a time when survival horror was at its peak. The result has been cutting-edge remakes, retro throwbacks, and new experiences that find fresh ways to send shivers down our spines.
Things in the horror space are so good that last year, for the first time, IGN introduced the Best Horror Game category for its annual awards. And it was pretty easy to bring it back for a second year, so good has the selection of spooks been in 2024. We were treated to the uneasy, claustrophobic terror of Still Wakes the Deep and its infected oil rig; the grisly Saw-ish challenges of The Outlast Trials; Bloober Team’s impressive recreation of Silent Hill 2, and the horrifying twists and turns of Mouthwashing, among others.
But only one can be crowned the best horror game of 2024. What did the IGN team judge to be the most worthy? Let’s take a look at the results…
Honorable Mentions
Thanks to the expansive array of experiences offered up by the current horror game renaissance period, the IGN team’s votes went to a wide range of 2024 releases. While not getting enough votes to secure runner-up status, we’d like to give honourable mentions to two extra games.
Still Wakes the Deep from developer The Chinese Room is a gorgeous narrative horror set on an oil rig that’s been infected with a The Thing-like creature. It’s enjoyably Scottish in tone, painted in the depressing shades of 1970s Britain and powered by the unknowable fear of Eldritch literature. It’s much more engaging than its walking sim fundamentals would suggest, too, with exciting chase set-pieces and creepy stealth encounters.
We also have to tip our hat in the direction of Slitterhead. While our reviewer ultimately struggled to fall in love with it, several IGN team members enjoyed its idiosyncratic approach to an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers-style scenario. The latest game from original Silent Hill director Keiichiro Toyama certainly has its fair share of quirks and unusual presentation, but there’s something fundamentally fascinating about its core concept. Hijacking bodies and using different people to further your investigation into Lovecraftian monsters that wear humans like skin suits is unlike anything we’ve ever done in a horror game before. In an industry that plays it increasingly safe, Slitterhead is unafraid to embrace the bizarre.
Runner-up: A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
The strength of the original A Quiet Place movie is in its simple concept: a world where you have to stay silent to survive. A snapping twig or a rustling snack could be your downfall. On paper that’s not just a good elevator pitch for a story, but the driving mechanic of a great video game. And so, somewhat unsurprisingly, we’ve landed a pretty good movie companion game in A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead.
As you’d expect, this is a tense survival game rooted in stealth systems. Stalked by the same alien creatures seen in the movies, you must carefully navigate through levels filled to bursting with noisy objects. Every opened drawer and door is a risky move, lest the squeak of a hinge alert the beast. Adding even more stress to the situation is the fact that your protagonist is asthmatic, meaning strenuous tasks like climbing over obstacles can push you closer and closer to a noisy respiratory attack that will summon your hunter.
Developer Stormind Games clearly had a limited budget for this project and so The Road Ahead is often a bit rough around the edges. Its cat-and-mouse gameplay isn’t quite the Alien: Isolation successor you’d hope for (see last year’s Amnesia: The Bunker for a better alternative). But despite that, this is a great proof of concept as to how well suited A Quiet Place is to the video game medium.
Runner-up: Crow Country
Much of the horror genre’s recent success can be attributed to developers looking back to earlier generations and finding ways to recreate those original scares. That’s exactly what’s going on in Crow Country, an indie spookfest that pays homage to 1990s PlayStation classics Resident Evil and Silent Hill. The low-polygon visuals, limited inventory space, overhead camera, and foot-anchored shooting all capture the timeless essence of early survival horror.
But it’s the new ideas injected by developer SFB Games that enhance Crow Country above and beyond a simple exercise in nostalgia. Being able to rotate the camera a full 360 degrees brings modern edge to a traditionally fixed-view formula, and the ability to freely aim weapons similarly uplifts the otherwise old-school shooting system. These in turn allow Crow Country’s puzzles and battles to feel freshly invigorated, be that through spinning the camera to find new clues and items, or lining up a headshot to quickly neutralise an approaching monster.
While it does channel some of the unsettling atmosphere of its retro inspirations, Crow County isn’t afraid to have more than a little fun. Set in an abandoned theme park, there’s a level of whimsy that penetrates the darkness, while protagonist Mara always has a comedic line up her sleeve to bring a bit of levity. The result isn’t exactly cosy, but there is a certain comfort to be found in Crow Country – a sort of gross nostalgic hug.
Runner-up: Mouthwashing
Mouthwashing is the word-of-mouth horror hit of 2024. It’s one of those games that comes coupled with “read nothing, just play” advice, so if a twisted narrative adventure that exposes the depravity of human nature is the kind of thing you go for, then you’ll want to stop reading, open Steam in a new tab, and hit the buy button right now.
But we have to provide details to justify Mouthwashing’s position as the IGN team’s second-favourite horror game of the year, so here we go. On the surface, developer Wrong Organ has made a simple walking simulator in which you jog to-and-fro between the different rooms of a crashed space ship completing basic errands. There’s little in the form of classic horror game mechanics – you won’t find any zombies to shoot, enemies to hide from, or resource management here. But as the story pushes forward, you find yourself falling down an increasingly distressing rabbit hole. What happens when a stranded freighter crew faces little hope of survival? Sanity becomes a precious, dwindling resource.
A narrative triumph, Mouthwashing drops horrifying new reveals at just the right moments of its ever-building tension curve. And as the layers are peeled back, you begin to look at not just your crew mates in a very different light, but also your own protagonist. This is a horror story where force-feeding painkillers to your mutilated captain is just the appetiser to the grotesque late-game main course. It’s as disturbingly delicious as it sounds.
Winner: Silent Hill 2
It’s safe to say that there were no guarantees for Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2. Team Silent’s timeless survival horror classic was, to some, considered impossible to remake. Others were wary of Bloober’s capabilities after The Medium (itself an underwhelming homage to Silent Hill) and a very up-and-down back catalogue. But when we finally had Silent Hill 2 installed on our consoles – a game that’s simultaneously glossy and rusty – it was instantaneously clear: Bloober didn’t just get Silent Hill 2, it spoke it fluently.
Silent Hill 2 follows in the footsteps of last year’s Dead Space in being a remake that stays almost completely faithful to the original game while adding modern enhancements in a tasteful manner. It features all the dread-inducing, tense exploration of the original – this is a game largely about exploring horrible buildings room-by-room and digesting the terrible secrets within – just this time around you can do all this with a 3D camera and modern over-the-shoulder combat. The result is an experience that feels like a throwback to the peak of survival horror in its design, but is thoroughly modern in its execution. For many people, including much of the IGN team, this is the exact sweet spot a remake should aim for.
Bloober sticking so close to the original formula means Silent Hill 2 isn’t quite as transformative a work as, for example, Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, which re-thought the entire game from the ground-up. As such, we know this could be considered something of a controversial choice. Should a faithful remake be considered for an end-of-year award when so much of the creative work was done by different people in a different decade? While that’s a worthy question, it’s undeniable that Bloober’s efforts on this project is a valuable addition to the horror canon, making a true titan of the genre accessible to modern audiences. Its heavy, bleak story remains as timeless today as it did back in 2001, and that fear-inducing exploration loop is a reminder of the eternal qualities of good game design. As such, Silent Hill 2 was the best horror game we played in 2024, and this modern vehicle for such triumphs deserves to be recognised regardless of its roots.
The Nintendo Switch has officially passed the PlayStation 2 to become the second best-selling gaming hardware in the United States, now trailing only the Nintendo DS.
This comes from Circana’s November video game sales report, which states that lifetime unit sales of the Nintendo Switch are now at 46.6 million (we’ve asked for updated totals on the Nintendo DS).
But Switch sales are still slowing down. Per analysis from Circana’s Mat Piscatella, it was only the second best-selling console for November, following the PS5 in both unit and dollar sales, with Xbox Series consoles in third. Overall hardware spending was flat, with 15% year-over-year growth for PlayStation hardware off-setting a 29% drop in Xbox Series sales and 3% drop on Switch.
PS5 sales were driven in part by the release of the PS5 Pro, which accounted for 19% of all PS5 unit sales last month and 28% of all dollar sales. Notably, launch month dollar sales of the PS5 Pro were over 50% higher than launch month sales of the PS4 Pro, but unit sales were 12% lower. This isn’t surprising, and is roughly in line with analyst expectations, given that the PS4 Pro launched at $399 and the PS5 Pro launched at $699.
Spending on games overall was down 7% year-over-year to $5.8 billion, and overall software spending was down 9% year-over-year to $4.5 billion. Both of these drops were in large part simply due to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s launch timing compared to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 last year. Black Ops 6 launched in October this year, elevating sales that month, while Modern Warfare 3’s November launch last year pumped that month’s numbers and made for a tougher comparable this year as Black Ops 6 sales settle down a bit.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was still the best-selling game this month, however, and is the second best-selling game of the year thus far. It trails only EA Sports College Football 25, which is now the best-selling sports game in U.S. history by dollar sales, and ranks among the 50 best-selling games of all time by the same metric.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership debuted at No.7 for the month, right behind Super Mario Party Jamboree at No.6. Both games’ position on the chart only reflects physical sales, however, so it’s possible the inclusion of digital sales could have pushed either higher.
A few other big new games this month aren’t reflected on the best-seller charts for various reasons. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl launched on Game Pass, which means a lot of people played it for “free.” But it debuted at No.6 on Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker Xbox Monthly Active Users chart, and it ranked No.9 for Steam MAUs, indicating it’s doing all right for itself. In a similar situation, free-to-play Genshin Impact launched on Xbox in November, and debuted at No.10 for Xbox MAUs.
And over on mobile, Pokemon TCG Pocket was the second best-selling mobile game by revenue worldwide in November, beating out the incredibly popular Monopoly GO. It was the sixth best-selling mobile game in the States for the month.
The top 20 best-selling games in the U.S. for the month of October, based on dollar sales:
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Madden NFL 25
EA Sports FC 25
EA Sports College Football 25
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero
Super Mario Party Jamboree*
Mario & Luigi: Brothership*
Sonic X Shadow Generations
NBA 2K25*
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Hogwarts Legacy
Dragon Quest 3
Astro Bot
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Silent Hill 2 (2024)
Undisputed
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Minecraft*
My Sims: Cozy Bundle
Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics
* Indicates that some or all digital sales are not included in Circana’s data. Some publishers, including Nintendo and Take-Two, do not share certain digital data for this report.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket received its first expansion yesterday in Mythical Island and the collection of new cards has shaken up the meta, seemingly pushing newcomer Celebi ex to the top.
Celebi ex is one of five ex Pokémon added in Mythical Island, a Themed Booster which brought 68 unique new cards to the digital trading card game. It’s a basic Grass type with 130 Hit Points and a Weakness to Fire and a one Energy Retreat Cost.
Its single attack is called Power Bloom and costs one Grass Energy and one Colorless Energy, with the following effect: “Flip a coin for each Energy attached to this Pokémon. This attack does 50 damage for each heads.”
This is okay by itself; it’s on par with one meta leader Mewtwo ex’s smaller attack, essentially averaging 50 damage for two Energy, but increasing it to, say four Energy, means it averages 100 damage. There is potential there for some devastating attacks, with four coin flips potentially presenting 200 (or zero) damage, but it’s another Mythical Island card that boosts Celebi to the top.
Serperior is a Stage 2 Grass type with 110 HP, a weakness to Fire, and two Energy retreat cost. It has a single attack called Solar Beam which deals 70 damage for one Grass Energy and three Colorless Energy, which is well below the standard rate of damage.
But it also comes with an Ability, Jungle Totem: “Each Grass Energy attached to your Grass Pokémon procides two Grass Energy. This effect doesn’t stack.” This “stack” clause simply means that if two Serperior are on the board at the same time then only one of these effects will activate, but it otherwise doubles the value of every energy attached to other Grass Pokémon, including Celebi ex.
Having Serperior on the bench, which will take a while given its a Stage 2 Pokémon and needs to be evolved twice, therefore essentially makes Celebi’s Power Bloom card half the cost. One Grass Energy attached to it will result in two coin flips, for between zero and 100 damage, two Grass Energy will mean four coin flips for between zero and 200 damage, and so on.
Exactly what cards are best around these two core pieces will be figured out by players in the coming days and weeks, but Lilligant from original set Genetix Apex may be a valuable inclusion. It’s a Stage 1 Pokémon evolving from Petilil that has a two Grass Energy, 50 damage attack that also grants a Bench Pokémon a free Grass Energy.
Putting it in play with a Celebi ex on the Bench, and building up to a Serperior at the same time, would let players pile Energy onto Celebi ex and then switch it in with the threat of doing serious damage, enough to take down the likes of Mewtwo ex and Charizard ex in one turn.
This is the first deck from Mythical Island to emerge as a meta leader, capable of stacking up to these other dominant decks, but there are other changes already in place, including some that push down Pikachu ex.
Mythical Island arrived December 17 and as a Themed Booster is a smaller set compared to the debut Genetic Apex, containing a total of 86 cards. Creatures Inc. has still added myriad new missions and solo battles for players to interact with though, which somewhat recreates that opening day feeling of the digital trading card game.
This huge amount of money comes as Pokémon TCG Pocket follows the standard mobile and free to play game model, flooding players with rewards in the first few days before soon drying up, with spending real world money the only real way to re-experience that early thrill outside of the occasional set drop like this.
