Battlefield 6 is giving fans some of the most cinematic FPS action they’ve seen in years, but one of its hard-to-reach Recon skins has the community in stitches.
Die-hard fans of military shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield have spent the last few years arguing about what place — if any — goofy skins have in their favorite video games. Although EA and Battlefield Studios’ latest has largely dodged the conflict with its commitment to a more grounded approach to cosmetics, it’s not managed to emerge from the wreckage completely unscathed.
Discussion about one questionable launch skin kicked off when Reddit user BOSS_Clan_Intl shared an image of what appears to be the Recon class’ Dead Sight skin. It’s one outfit for the sniper-heavy class that could likely require dozens — if not hundreds — of hours of playtime, requiring players to not only complete all three standard Recon Assignment challenges but also several Recon Specialist challenges.
Battlefield 6 players know all too well how demanding some of its many challenges can be, making Dead Sight an especially tough get for anyone looking to collect every infantry skin. The main problem here, though, is that, at least in the image shared here, Dead Sight makes you look at bit like a traffic cone.
On what appears to be one of Battlefield 6’s sunnier maps (of which there are many), the Recon skin practically glows, mixing orange and black colors that look more Black Ops than Battlefield. When nearly every other skin sticks to muted tones and traditional military camouflage, Dead Sight sticks out like a sore thumb. Making matters worse is the fact the skin is designed for Recon players, ditching something more practical, like a ghillie suit, for an outfit that an enemy may be able to point out as easily as a far-off flare.
Looking at Dead Sight in the Battlefield 6 in-game gallery of class skins reveals that the suit is really more of a brown color instead of orange. The exact environment the above image was captured in remains unclear, but on a bright map with these settings, the contrast with the rest of the costumes is hard to ignore.
Of course, one bright Battlefield skin is a far cry from the superhero, celebrity, and sci-fi skins that have divided Call of Duty fans, but that doesn’t mean Battlefield players aren’t taking the opportunity to poke fun at the Dead Sight skin.
“If you’ve mastered the class you’re too good for camo,” one Reddit user joked. “It’s not for sneaking, it’s an open challenge to the lobby,” one person added. “Gotta say, for a mastery skin for the ‘stealth’ class, this is absurd lmao,” another joked.
Under the right circumstances, Dead Sight may be the most colorful skin — but that doesn’t mean it’s the only one that pops. Before Battlefield 6 launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on October 10, players caught wind of the Assault class’ System Override skin, which features bright green patterns and is only available via a special promotion with gaming tech company Razer. There’s also the Get Loud skin, which swaps out green marks for orange ones on the legs and face mask.
Dead Sight’s time in the sun has spawned laughs among the Battlefield 6 community, but not everyone thinks the outfit is something to joke about. Some have commented on the original post, saying the skin looks “horrible,” while others swear off using it even after it’s unlocked. Then, there are those who fear EA and BF Studios will only introduce more goofy skins as post-launch development progresses.
Meanwhile, the developers suggest they have no plans to change course any time soon. During an interview with IGN in September, Ripple Effect technical director Christian Buhl and senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson touched on fears that goofy skins could infiltrate Battlefield 6. At the time, they confirmed the team is “really happy with where we are.”
“We want to be a gritty, realistic shooter,” Buhl said. “Other games can and should be whatever they want to be, right? [laughs] Like we’re not, I don’t know… Fortnite is pretty goofy, and that game is pretty good. So, I think where we end up is we’re pretty happy with where we are. We are a gritty, grounded, realistic shooter. That’s what we intend to be, and that’s what the game is going to look like for a while.”
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
The Nintendo Switch-era has been a frustrating one for Pokemon fans. The evolutionary line from Sword and Shield, to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, to Scarlet and Violet was one of slow but steady progress as Game Freak refined its ideas for how capturing, exploring, and battling should look in a fully 3D world. But this era has also played host to a major downhill slide in terms of overall polish, appearance, and performance across those three games. Pokemon Legends: Z-A, I’m happy to report, puts an end to that slide on basically all counts. It continues to successfully experiment with Pokemon’s gameplay by translating its carefully cultivated turn-based battle system into an action-based one. And it does so while scaling back its ambitions for a massive world to a more manageable size, resulting in a tighter, more polished, and far more fun Pokemon than we’ve seen in several years.
Pokemon Legends: Z-A takes place entirely within the bounds of Lumiose City, a Paris-inspired metropolis that I fondly remember from Pokemon X and Y, the events of which took place five years prior to this new story. A sudden rash of Wild Pokemon invading its city limits has resulted in conflicts between them and the people that live there, and necessitates “Wild Zones” within the city to keep them separate. It’s into this tense environment that you show up via train: a young adult (For real! Not a ten-year-old child! Your peers talk about getting jobs and paying rent! Holy Sharpedo!) with seemingly no agenda or reason to be in Lumiose beyond casual tourism. You’re immediately adopted by a group that refers to itself as Team MZ, which is dedicated to protecting the city by day, and becoming strong enough to do so effectively by climbing the ranks of a local competition every night: the Z-A Royale.
Never before has a Pokemon game’s setting been so integral to its story and themes. The way its characters and story focused so tightly on Lumiose as a place and a community reminded me in many ways of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. By not asking you to cross vast distances on a fairly abstract badge-collecting journey all by yourself, Z-A is able to tell the stories of more characters in more detail. You have a crew of pals who hang out at a hotel with you, and who constantly show up in the city to help you out in battle or with whatever else you need. Unlike rivals in past games, they’re given more space to develop as characters and actually have a relationship with you beyond throwaway lines about type alignments.
Z-A is also stuffed with side quests that give you ample opportunity to get to know the inhabitants of Lumiose. Delightfully, most of them aren’t Pokemon trainers. You’ll help a Furfrou groomer teach her Scyther styling techniques, and a perfume maker sample Pokemon odors for her wares. A cafe worker needs you to lure Trubbish away from her cafe, and an electrical worker needs you to chase off Pokemon messing with his elevator (er, “Holovator”). To keep the comparisons to Yakuza going, the vast majority of these side quests are, frankly, pretty silly. They often feature creative or weird scenarios that are resolved by your character, like Kiryu, inexplicably being far and away the toughest person in the room. There are over 100 of these side quests, and they involve all sorts of tasks, such as battles, catching certain Pokemon, teaching Pokemon specific moves, trading, evolving, acquiring certain items, doing parkour, and a lot more. It took me 35 hours to roll credits while mostly staying on top of side quests as they gradually popped up during the campaign, but I still haven’t managed to finish every single one in the post-game.
Never has a Pokemon game’s setting been so integral to its story and themes.
Also like the Yakuza games (this is the last comparison, I swear), Z-A’s plot is civic-minded. Rather than just being about becoming stronger or filling up a monster encyclopedia, your goal is centered around training to protect the city you now call home. As you grow, you encounter a cast of characters with different ideas about what Lumiose City needs to thrive, some of whom clash with one another. Z-A wrestles with some actual, real-world ideas as it questions what it means when multiple groups of people (or, I guess, creatures) inhabit the same space but have very different needs, and who should be prioritized when those needs conflict. Z-A doesn’t come away with easy answers, but it does provide some pretty interesting metaphors for real-world issues both civic and environmental, and above all else, emphasizes compassion for others in trying to solve them.
(Also there’s a literal benevolent Japanese mafia faction in this game. Okay, now I’m done for real, I promise.)
One sour note in all this is the lack of voice acting. I’ll be honest, I’ve played Pokemon games so often and for so long without it that Z-A not having voice acting didn’t really bother me during all the time I spent running around, doing sidequests, and reading main quest text boxes. Where it did become a problem, however, was during the major story cutscenes, where characters dramatically move their mouths and flail their arms around while absolutely no sound comes out. This wacky pantomime was jarring and immersion-breaking. I don’t know what Game Freak was thinking here. It’s long past time Pokemon caught up to every other story-heavy game and hired some dang voice actors, at least for major cutscenes.
Speaking of Game Freak needing to play catch-up, take a deep breath with me, because we gotta talk about performance.
It’s… fine? It’s fine. It’s actually fine.
On the Nintendo Switch 2, Z-A runs at a smooth and consistent 60 FPS. NPCs and objects do still pop in rather suddenly and a bit too close for comfort, but it’s substantially better than the wonky phasing in and out at spitting distance we saw in Scarlet and Violet. I didn’t see any character animations move at agonizingly slow framerates. I didn’t personally run into any game breaking bugs. None of my Pokemon got stuck in the floor or the wall. The loading screens are almost too fast to read the tips shown on them. Taken all together, I was able to play through the entire game barely thinking about performance, which is so much more than I could say for Z-A’s two predecessors.
That doesn’t mean Z-A looks great, though. One major, oft-pointed-out problem with Z-A is that it takes place entirely in a plain, unattractive city. Most of the time, you will be looking at the same five or six building exteriors, all of which are flat, ugly images with no detail or depth: just some windows and balconies painted onto a wall, Looney Tunes-style. There’s some variety in town, like a Wild Zone that gets covered in snow, a graveyard, and a sandy area, but for the most part, Lumiose is made up of a lot of the same parks, the same cafes, and the same paving stones again and again and again. You can’t go inside most buildings.
But not all of Z-A is aesthetically disagreeable. The building interiors you do get to see are detailed, colorful, cozy-looking, and not repetitive. Character models are more expressive than before, too, and there’s a wider visual variety in NPC designs than ever before thanks to small, long overdue touches like distinct facial features and differently colored outfits within trainer classes. Your own character’s face customization capabilities continue to improve from past games as well. Outfit customization is pretty good, with lots of options to choose from, no gender-locked clothing, and the ability to mix and match colors of jackets, shirts, belts, and other items in certain cases for a wider variety of looks.
Lumiose is visually uninteresting, but that doesn’t mean it’s uninteresting to explore.
While I’ve dinged Lumiose for being visually uninteresting, that’s not synonymous with it being uninteresting to explore. Z-A mostly solves one of the biggest issues I had with both Arceus and Scarlet/Violet: they were both big, empty worlds devoid of real reasons to explore beyond the surface. Those two predecessors tried to capture the vast scale of the Pokemon world, but the actual open areas lacked real detail. Much of their maps consisted of enormous fields full of the same Pokemon and meaningless items sort of scattered randomly around. Their caves were empty tunnels, their mountaintops often barren, and their landmarks rarely offered an interesting reward for visiting. Why even have a giant world if you’re going to make it so boring? Z-A isn’t like that.
By shrinking the world down to a manageable size, Game Freak was able to find the time, or ideas, or whatever it was that was lacking before to fill it with thoughtfully placed rewards. Sometimes those are items such as TMs or collectible Colorful Screws that wait at the end of Z-A’s rather amusingly cumbersome platforming segments. But more often those rewards are rare Pokemon. You see, while most Pokemon are confined to Wild Zones, some monsters do still lurk in the city streets, and they’re genuinely exciting to find. At first, you’ll only see common Pokemon: Pidgeys and Fletchlings pecking around in parks, Kakuna dangling out of trees, maybe a Trubbish munching on some garbage. But explore enough, and you’ll start to find alleyways, courtyards, and rooftops hiding rarer monsters: an Ariados dropping suddenly from a sewer ceiling, Gastly leaping out from a dark corner at night, a single Eevee trotting down a narrow backroad. I squealed once when I saw a single, rare Dratini on a rooftop I’d worked painstakingly hard to reach. It’s moments like these that really flesh out Lumiose and make it such a delight to explore.
In fact, there’s so much to see that I’ve somehow gotten this far into my review without digging into Z-A’s most revelatory change yet: the battle system. Pokemon is an action game now! They threw the last of the turn-based elements out the window! It’s great!
It’s genuinely impressive how well Game Freak managed to translate a familiar system of monsters, moves, status effects, items, and types into a completely different genre. Instead of taking turns, you move your character around the battlefield while the monsters are fighting. Your Pokemon will follow you by default, giving you an indirect and interesting way to control their positioning somewhat and even dodge your opponent’s moves. If you hold down ZL, your Pokemon will instead square up with its opponent and you can select and use moves. If you’re in a battle against a wild Pokemon, you’ll need to do all this while also moving your character out of danger, as they can damage and even knock you out, adding an interesting new layer of strategy to how you position yourself, and thus your monster, for optimal offense and defense.
It’s impressive how well Game Freak managed to translate combat into a completely different genre.
I was concerned, based on early trailers, that all this would amount to just smashing the same offensive moves into opponents with little actual strategy, but that’s far from the case. The indirect movement system, while a little clunky to get used to, introduces an interesting strategic layer of positioning as you play with the flow of dodging and attacking. The moves themselves are delightfully complex in both their variety and the ways Game Freak has changed them to fit the action genre while keeping their spirit alive. Short-range moves, for instance, can be used very quickly, but put you in danger of being hit. Long-range moves take a bit of time to wind up, but you stay at a distance while you do them. Moves like Protect and Detect have been reconfigured to be used almost like a parry. Fire Spin and Sand Trap form areas-of-effect on the ground you can try and lure enemies to stand in, while Spikes throws a bunch of hazards all over the place.
Status effects have been overhauled, too: paralysis slows you down significantly, while confusion sometimes causes your Pokemon to wander off in weird directions. Mega Evolutions also got a revamp that adds even more complex layers including a meter to fill, the ability to Mega Evolve multiple different Pokemon in the same battle, and Plus Moves, which are essentially moves with the power of a Mega Evolved Pokemon but usable by any monster on your team under the right conditions.
One of the best parts of this system is how it still rewards past Pokemon knowledge even in this entirely new framing, with everything working roughly how you’d guess it might. While I hope Pokemon doesn’t fully abandon turn-based battles, I would love it if the Legends spin-off series adopts this action system going forward and continues to refine it – Arceus introduced a revolutionary new system for catching Pokemon, so it feels like a fitting that Z-A has revolutionized the other key half of the series. Besides, I cannot wait to watch the competitive community get its hooks into this and see what meta develops.
Until then, we have the campaign’s own challenges to overcome. Even casual players are likely to breeze through some of it – the Z-A Royale, for instance, has you collecting points by defeating trainers until you get enough to instigate a Promotion Match and move up a rank. These battles are a joke. The Battle Zones you fight through to collect points try to shake things up by allowing you to sneak up on enemy trainers for an advantage attack, or be snuck up on yourself. But it’s trivially easy to sneak up on opponents and knock out their first monster in a single blow, then thrash their second immediately after.
To an extent, that may be intended, as you can increase monetary rewards from Battle Zones by beating as many trainers as possible before daybreak, so you’re encouraged to just Rapidash your way through battles. But the Z-A Royale’s relative ease nonetheless mutes the accomplishment of ranking up, particularly in light of the fact that the story actually forces you to jump a whopping 17 ranks at once at one point. Would the story have been an agonizing 100 hours long instead of a normal 30 hours if Z-A had not done this? Yes. Does it still feel real silly when it happens and make the Royale into a bit of a joke? Also yes.
But it’s not all a walk in the PokePark. You’ll still find challenge in other places, such as Wild Areas, where a powerful Alpha Pokemon can summon a gang of smaller guys to overwhelm you if you’re not careful. Most difficult, and most fun, are the story battles against Rogue Mega Evolved Pokemon. These monsters are big and mean, deliberately going directly after your trainer a lot of the time and forcing you to carefully balance dodging attacks yourself and positioning your Pokemon well to slowly whittle down a big health bar. Some of the Rogue Mega Evolutions have devastating second phase attacks, such as turning the entire arena into a bullet hell, making copies of themselves, or spontaneously popping up behind you for a painful swipe attack. Game Freak really goes out of its way to ensure all its new Mega Evolutions get their moment to shine through these encounters. Just wait until you see Mega Starmie!
An impressive new mod for The Simpsons Hit & Run has rebuilt the game to instead feature Futurama, catching the attention of the cult classic’s original lead designer.
Futurama Hit & Run, as the mod is called, is available now in demo form as a free download — you’ll just need a copy of the original Simpsons game on PC in order to play.
The Simpsons Hit & Run originally launched for PC, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox back in 2003, and was heavily inspired by the Grand Theft Auto games of the era. Gameplay for this Futurama mod also feels familiar, as you run around as Fry and complete missions for characters such as Bender, Professor Farnsworth and Dr. Zoidberg.
ANNONCE 📣 🎮 : La démo de Futurama Hit & Run, sera disponible le 19 octobre ! Une idée juste parfaite ! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/cy8WBhoLYL
There’s driving too, of course — with Fry able to zoom around a section of New New York in a hover car. One particular mission has Fry escorting Bender back to the Planet Express headquarters while avoiding police in hover cop cars. But there’s no sign yet of actual flying — perhaps in future.
Currently, the demo includes four story missions, plus a set of street races, vehicles, costumes and other Easter eggs to find and unlock. The demo also comes with an acknowledgement that it currently uses AI-generated dialogue as a “temporary placeholder.” The mod team states: “Professional voice artists are already engaged, and their recordings will replace the placeholder content in a future update.”
Response to the demo has been positive, not least from Joe McGinn, who worked on the original The Simpsons: Hit & Run over two decades ago. “As the lead designer of the original game, I can only say… this looks awesome!” McGinn wrote in a comment on the mod’s trailer. “I want to play it.”
Here’s your weekly Pokémon TCG pricewatch and stock update, and it’s an absolute banger. Amazon seem to be listening to me and the rest of community calling out their ridiculously high pricing on Pokémon TCG right now, but probably not. Regardless, we’re seeing their exclusive Blaziken ex and Volcanion ex Premium Collection in stock for MSRP. That’s right, no price hikes and no where near it’s market value that’s north of $90. Could this mean something positive for the future of Pokémon TCG at Amazon?
TL;DR: Deals for Today
Unfortunatley that’s where the hope ends for big box retailers. TCGplayer is cheaper on every in-stock Pokémon sealed product on Amazon right now. There’s usually one or two, but it’s looking grim for them. For you it’s great, as you’re getting the proper market value from Prismatic Evolutions Booster Bundles ($59.96) and Surprise Boxes ($43).
Blaziken ex & Volcanion ex Premium Collection
Trainers and collectors will get five Destined Rivals Boosters and five Journey Together Boosters in this bad boy, so that’s about the right kind of ball park for ten booster packs, plus you’re getting the promo Volcanion ex and Blaziken ex promo card and a jumbo version of Blaziken ex.
I think these promo’s would work great together in a fire-themed deck. Use Blazikens Seething Spirit to grab fire energy from your discard pile to build up Volcanion. In the meantime Volcanion can burn opposing Pokémon then use Scorching Cyclone for 160 damage then transfer all it’s energy to a benched Pokémon. So many possibilities here.
Poké Price Check: Mega Evolution In Stock
Mega Evolution seems to be a well-printed start to the next era of Pokémon TCG. I’m seeing boosters in convienience stores and some products on physical shelves, not to mention the Booster Bundle ($52.89), Gardevoir ETB ($88.81) and Three Booster Blister ($28.90) available on Amazon. Like the rest of the products in this carousel though, the cheapest is TCGplayer right now.
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
The third instalment of Frontier Developments’ moreish dinosaur park sim, Jurassic World Evolution 3, is almost here. You’ll get to manage your very own park full of dinosaurs in this much-anticipated park management simulator sequel that yes, really does feature the Megalodon this time. Gulp.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 will be open its doors again for players on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S on October 21. As a global release, it’ll unlock simultaneously for all players regardless of where they are in the world — here’s when that will be in your timezone (and unfortunately, no, there’s no way to unlock the game in early access ahead of its street date).
“Just about everything I’ve seen so far of Jurassic World Evolution 3 has me excited to thrill my guests and make my lawyers nervous,” we wrote in IGN’s Jurassic World Evolution 3’s final preview. “From dino breeding to dramatic and different new park locations to extremely robust customization tools, it feels like it truly deserves its spot at the table with Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster now, rather than relying on the, you know, freakin’ dinosaurs to make up for some of what it was missing.”
Jurassic World Evolution 3 Launch Times
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
PDT (San Francisco):
7am
EDT (New York):
10am
BST (London):
3pm
CEST (Paris, Rome, Berlin):
4pm
EEST (Turkey):
5pm
HKT (Hong Kong):
8pm
CST (Beijing):
8pm
JST (Tokyo):
11pm
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
AEST (Sydney):
12am midnight
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Escape from Duckov is an unlikely hit on Steam after half a million sales and big concurrents over the weekend.
The parody of extraction shooter Escape from Tarkov is riding high with 173,394 peak concurrent players on Valve’s platform. That’s enough to make it the sixth most-played game on Steam right now. Only Delta force, Battlefield 6, PUBG, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike 2 are more popular right now.
Escape from Duckov is a PVE top-down looter-shooter game in which you scavenge for resources, build your hideout, and upgrade your gear. “Start from nothing and rise to the top,” reads the official blurb. “Outwit hostile ducks, survive, or make it out alive.”
Following its launch on October 16, Team Soda’s game sold an additional 500,000 copies over the weekend. Its Steam user review rating is sitting pretty at ‘Overwhelmingly Positive.’ “At this moment, the entire dev team is quacking with joy and flapping our wings in excitement!” reads a statement.
Escape from Tarkov, meanwhile, hits Steam on November 15. It will be interesting to see if it beats Escape from Duckov’s concurrent player peak on the platform. A console version is in the works.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
The first draft of the script for the movie adaptation of Sleeping Dogs is “done.”
That’s according to Marvel star Simu Liu, who revealed over the weekend that the script for the film was complete, albeit carefully redacting some details from the screenshot. He marked the news by sharing a photo of his own sleeping dog.
in honour of our sleeping dogs script draft being done, here’s my sleepy dog 👍 pic.twitter.com/l1KsFNDj5V
When a commenter responded to the good news and asked if the actor and producer had “worked things out” with the game’s publisher and IP-holder Square Enix, Liu said: “They’re absolutely great, it’s the studios that don’t seem to understand how important this IP is BUT we will get them there.”
If you were hoping for more, I’m afraid Liu shared little else, but it should be good news nonetheless given the adaptation has been languishing in development hell for at least eight years.
As IGN has reported, Story Kitchen is leading the Sleeping Dogs live action feature film project, with Simu Liu, who plays Shang-Chi in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, producing and set to play the lead role of Wei Shen. Story Kitchen has form when it comes to video game adaptations, having worked on everything from the Sonic the Hedgehog films to Netflix’s animated Tomb Raider series.
Sleeping Dogs was first released in 2012 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC and tells the story of detective Wei Shen as he infiltrates one of Hong Kong’s notorious Triad crime syndicates. While it failed to meet publisher Square Enix’s lofty sales expectations, it is much-loved by fans and sequel hopes have followed it ever since. We thought Sleeping Dogs was great, writing in IGN’s Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition review: “Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition doesn’t mess much with what made the original game so great. And that’s a good thing.” It returned an 8.5.
A sequel was canceled in late 2013 just before it entered production, and its original developer, United Front Games, shut down three years later.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Lana Del Rey looks to have gotten a second chance at recording a James Bond theme, this time for the upcoming video game 007 First Light.
Eagle-eyed fans on reddit have spotted a fresh song titled “First Light” that has been registered by Del Rey, real name Elizabeth Grant, to the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers).
While not a full confirmation, Del Rey performing the game’s theme would be a neat fit, after the singer’s 2005 track “24” was snubbed for Daniel Craig outing Spectre, the franchise’s 24th movie. IGN has contacted IO Interactive for more.
Last year, Del Rey revealed she had written that track as a Bond theme, only for Sam Smith’s “Writing’s On the Wall” to ultimately get picked instead.
“I wrote that for them,” Del Rey told BBC News previously. “Sam, you did a wonderful job. One day, maybe… But I’m going to continue to do my little Nancy Sinatra thing every now and then and just pretend it’s the title track.”
The Bond franchise typically commissions several potential theme songs for each movie release, with numerous “lost” Bond tracks recorded by famous artists over the years. Johnny Cash recorded a theme for Thunderball, for example, while Pulp had a take on Tomorrow Never Dies.
And, like Del Ray, Radiohead also recorded a theme for Spectre (just titled “Spectre”) which they also previously released.
As for the promising-looking 007 First Light, developer IO Interactive seems more than happy teasing details out over time — such as the long-awaited confirmation that, yes, Dexter: Original Sin’s Patrick Gibson is indeed playing its fresh-faced Bond. More recently, we also learned that Marvel star Gemma Chan will also portray a character in the game.
007 First Light has set a release date of March 27, 2026, for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.
An Amazon Web Services outage appears to have knocked out a number of key websites, social media networks, work platforms, and video games.
Amazon told users there are “significant error rates” for requests made to its data storage service DynamoDB in the “US-EAST-1 Region.” This region relates to services hosted in northern Virginia.
But the problem is also affecting its other services in that region as well. According to Downdetector, video games including Roblox and Fortnite are affected, Snapchat appears to be struggling, Slack is slow for many users, and even online banking is having issues. Wordle fans are also reporting struggling to log-in.
A statement from Epic confirmed the issues on Fortnite: “An outage affecting several services on the internet is also impacting Fortnite log-ins,” Epic said. “We’re investigating this now, and will update you when we have more details.”
Amazon Web Services’ latest update reveals a potential root cause for the error rates has been identified. “Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1,” aws SAID. “We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also be experiencing issues. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. We recommend customers continue to retry any failed requests. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:45 AM.”
Developing…
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Ever since Resident Evil exploded onto the scene in 1996 and made inventory reshuffling in the face of a zombie outbreak popular, players have been regularly fighting down to their very last bullet. 30 years later, survival horror is the dominant format for those seeking video game scares, as popular now as it’s ever been. And with a fresh batch of nightmares to consider, there’s never been a better time to rank the best games of the genre.
But what qualifies a game to be considered as “survival horror”? Many games are often labelled survival horror, but lean much too heavily into action to be truly considered a genuine example of the genre. For our money, survival horror can be boiled down to four key factors, all of which are vital components of the classics that make up our list.
There has to be a power dynamic weighted in the enemy’s favour.
You need to explore maze-like environments while solving puzzles.
There’s often jeopardous resource management.
Relentless pressure inflicted by either a pursuer or an oppressive space.
So with the rules established and out of the way, here are our picks for the 10 best survival horror games of all time.
10. Clock Tower
While 1989’s Sweet Home is often considered the progenitor of survival horror, it’s Clock Tower, the 1995, 16-bit survival horror classic that was only ever released in Japan, that perhaps left a bigger mark on the genre. Its fingerprints can be easily found throughout the entirety of this list.
You play as Jennifer, a teenage orphan stranded in a Resident Evil-like manor, point-and-clicking your way through a series of impressively detailed, oppressive rooms. But Clock Tower’s defining mechanic, and why it rightfully deserves its place on this list, is its pioneering stalker gameplay. Four years before Resident Evil’s Nemesis spent an entire game shouting “STARS”, Clock Tower had us avoiding the dreaded “Scissorman”, who, much like Mr X, Pyramid Head, and Alien: Isolation’s Xenomorph, is a near-unstoppable force that’s always lurking nearby. Fast forward to today, and the stalker enemy type has become a staple of the survival horror genre. We have Scissorman to thank for all those enduring nightmares.
9. Silent Hill
While Capcom was storming the charts in the late ‘90s with Resident Evil’s campy, zombie-focused take on survival horror, Konami’s first stab at the genre saw the studio try something very different. What it created was dread. Pure, unrelenting dread.
Silent Hill stars Harry Mason, an everyman who enters a fog-filled nightmare while trying to find his missing adopted daughter in the town of Silent Hill. What follows is an oppressive tale riddled with unseemly horrors, the likes we’d never witnessed in a video game before.
Unlike its peers, Silent Hill provided a true 3D environment to explore, rather than the static, pre-rendered backdrops of Resident Evil. Due to the hardware restraints of the time, which struggled to render long draw distances, the fictional town was caked in a constant thick layer of fog that disguised the tech’s limitations. Serendipitously, this not only became the series’ signature look, but also demonstrated perhaps the greatest marriage of tech and tone we’ve ever witnessed in a video game.
Silent Hill pioneered its own psychological corner of the survival horror genre, spawning many sequels and remakes that would go on to be considered some of the most haunting video games ever made.
8. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
It seems like a distant memory now, but there was a painful period where the Resident Evil series lost touch with its survival horror roots. While Resident Evil 4 is rightly celebrated, it significantly ramped up the action, which laid the groundwork for both Resident Evil 5 and 6 to practically abandon the genre altogether.
2017 finally saw Capcom return to that classic survival horror feeling with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, but it did so from an entirely new first-person perspective and through the use of a grimier, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-like cast of characters. Our new protagonist, Ethan Winters, is forced to take on the Louisiana swamp-dwelling Baker family, who force him to endure a gauntlet of grisly challenges. Gone were roundhouse kicks, quicktime events, and off-the-charts bombast, and back was delicate resource management, a reestablished power balance in the antagonist’s favour, and the long overdue return of a stalker enemy.
It’s impossible not to think of Resident Evil when talking about survival horror, but it’s only thanks to Resident Evil 7’s genre renaissance that they’re still considered synonymous with each other, rather than survival horror being just a footnote in the history of the series.
7. Outlast
Often the best survival horror tropes are reflections of the movies that inspired them, and there’s no better illustration of this than 2013’s Outlast, a first-person descent into a remote psychiatric hospital that took the found footage movie genre and expertly turned it into a five-hour interactive nightmare.
Outlast is relentless, and in traditional survival horror fashion, gives you very little to defend yourself with. It does, however, effectively turn vision into a resource; with the majority of the gloomy hospital only visible through the green, grainy lens of your camera’s night vision, it’s vital you build a stockpile of batteries to keep it powered up. AAs are as important in Outlast as bullets are in Resident Evil, and without them, you’re completely blind to horrors that lurk in the dark.
When you can see what’s chasing you, Outlast is as scary as any game on this list. When the lights go out, it stands nearly in a league of its own.
6. Alan Wake 2
Much like Outlast, Alan Wake 2 also commodifies light, although unlike its more action-led predecessor, it strikes a perfect balance of tense survival horror gameplay and a cinematic, surreal nightmare.
Developer Remedy’s unsettling story follows the intertwined journeys of titular writer Alan Wake and FBI agent Saga Anderson. As Alan, you’ll blast ghostly figures and solve Resident Evil-esque puzzles in a nightmare version of New York City. But the further you venture, the stranger things get; you’ll write new pathways through reality, witness a bizarre Finnish horror movie, endure an anxiety-inducing chat show, and take part in the best rock opera you’ve ever gunned your way through.
Saga’s chapters, meanwhile, see the story transform into a blend of Hannibal and Zodiac, with Silent Hill-like exploration and combat sitting neatly next to police procedural work. As you investigate a chilling chain of ritual murders, you’ll need to arrange clues on your evidence board and drill deeper into the minds of your many suspects.
Alan Wake 2 finds a unique way to combine familiar survival horror gameplay with Lynchian cinematic flair, resulting in a deeply ambitious, frequently disturbing experience that both feels true to the genre and something completely fresh.
5. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Thanks to its gameplay innovations that helped course-correct and spur a rebirth of a genre that had drifted too far into action-game territory, almost all modern survival horror games are indebted to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, at least to some degree.
In Frictional Games’ landmark 2010 first-person horror, you play as Daniel, who wakes up alone in the dark castle of Brennenburg with no memory of how he got there. As you explore, you learn of a shadow that’s stalking you, and encounter other creatures that will give chase if they spot you. Armed with nothing but a lantern, your only form of defence is to run and hide, often in the dark. This cat-and-mouse experience is a common survival horror trait today, but back in 2010, it was a stark contrast against more action-oriented horror games like Resident Evil 5, which was released just one year earlier.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent isn’t just a game of hide and seek, though: it has an extra wrinkle, one that forces you to always be on the move. Stay in the dark too long and you’ll gradually lose your mind. This forces you into maintaining a delicate balancing act, avoiding the darkness that’s driving you insane but frequently using it to hide from your pursuer.
Amnesia’s multiple sequels all build upon The Dark Descent’s mechanics in smart ways, but perhaps more important to its legacy is how other developers took notice, with Resident Evil 7’s decision to switch to a first-person perspective owing a lot to Amnesia’s success.
The Dark Descent still holds up today, and its influence runs deep, paving the way for the first-person playstyle to receive equal attention next to the genre’s traditional third-person camera.
4. Resident Evil
It’s hard to imagine what horror in video games would look like without the arrival of Resident Evil. The first in the long-running (and extremely successful) series arrived in 1996, inviting players to explore the zombie-infested, puzzle-riddled Spencer Mansion, and it’s fair to say the survival horror genre hasn’t looked back since.
Although primitive by today’s standards, Resident Evil set the mold for everything that followed. The isolation, the limited resources, the relentless sense of dread, and the jump scares. Resident Evil pioneered the way for the genre, and without it, modern survival horror simply wouldn’t exist. Yes, Sweet Home outlined the blueprint, but Resident Evil masterfully executed the ideas and propelled survival horror to the masses.
Of course, the formula has since been regularly improved upon, and many of those games are featured in this list, but every entry in Capcom’s enduring series owes a debt to the first. Resident Evil is arguably weaker than most of its sequels, its own remake included, but none of them would have existed without the progenitor, and its importance to the genre (and this list) is unquestionable.
3. Alien: Isolation
1979’s Alien is a masterclass in fear, building uneasy tension and suspense with the threat of its single, deadly Xenomorph. On paper, the film’s concept is not easily translated into video game form, and there certainly were many failed attempts until Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation arrived in 2014.
Alien: Isolation abandons pulse rifles, gung-ho Colonial Marines, and gallons of acid blood in favour of survival horror trappings, asking you to outwit an indestructible stalker that hunts you around the sprawling Sevastopol space station.
Powered by sophisticated artificial intelligence, the Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation lives up to its silver screen relative, accurately creating a terrifying gameplay experience based on everything we saw in Ridley Scott’s classic. The beast quite literally has a mind of its own, capable of learning your tactics and finding new ways to hunt you. In a list full of games with stalker enemies, it’s still hard to look past the perfect organism as the greatest hunter of them all.
With only stealth, guts, and a few select tools to help you survive, Alien: Isolation is a terrifying horror simulator that not only instantly became the best Alien video game of all time, but also one of the very best examples of the survival horror genre.
2. Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2 is an increasingly disturbing, psychological journey into the repressed thoughts of its unassuming protagonist and the tortured souls he meets along the way. Emotional tragedy, guilt, anger, abuse, and the horrible ways the resulting trauma manifests are handled with grace and maturity rarely seen in the genre.
Silent Hill 2 is everything a good survival horror game should be, perfectly balancing a relentless sense of hopelessness with just enough to keep you in the fight. James is a tortured soul, but one driven by the desire to continue his path, despite how unlikely success seems, and although this isn’t the first Silent Hill on this list, it is unquestionably the best.
The original Silent Hill 2, developed by Konami’s Team Silent back at the dawn of the millennium, is perhaps the bleakest, most sombre game ever made. 23 years later, Bloober Team successfully recreated its miserable magic, crafting a remake that is a deeply effective descent into genuinely uncomfortable terror. With this 2024 remake, Team Silent’s nightmarish vision is preserved. It’s a modern reminder not just of an era when Konami was a master of survival horror, but also of the significant power of Silent Hill 2’s timeless misery.
1. Resident Evil 2
When you think of survival horror, you think of Resident Evil, and although there are many contenders for best entry in the series, our vote, emphatically, goes to the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2.
The original Resident Evil 2 took everything successful about the survival horror formula established by the first game and refined it. The locations were creepier, the enemies more menacing – this was the introduction of the infamous Licker and Mr. X, the stalker enemy that set the bar for the genre – and the scares were bigger and badder. The adventures of Leon and Claire in Raccoon City not only became a benchmark for Resident Evil but for the genre as a whole.
Every way 1998’s Resident Evil 2 improved on its predecessor, the 2019 remake replicated in kind, becoming not only a prime example of how to take an older game and reanimate it for a new generation of players, but also how the original rules of survival horror still stand strong to this day.
Resident Evil 2 is everything you want survival horror to be: a game of carefully balancing your resources while always feeling like you don’t quite have enough, enduring relentless pursuits through maze-like environments, obtuse puzzles to solve, and a constant state of unease that makes it feel like you won’t quite survive through the whole ordeal.
Resident Evil 2 influenced not one, but two generations of survival horror, and despite being often imitated, it’s rarely equalled. In our eyes, Resident Evil 2 is not only the very best of survival horror’s most famous series, but it also sits atop the genre itself.
