It’s fitting that in the year of the 30th anniversary of the original PlayStation, two of the console’s biggest franchises — Tekken and Final Fantasy — are collaborating once more. The two names are nearly synonymous with the PlayStation brand, and more than that share a development history not many know about.
“I guess we can talk about [it] now since so much time has passed. Back around Tekken 3, a lot of our staff left the team and actually went to Square,” Tekken executive producer Katsuhiro Harada reveals in a sit down interview with IGN. Given Tekken 3 was in development during 1995 and released a year later, there were likely several ex-Tekken staff lending their 3D development skills to what would likely have been the only Final Fantasy game in production around then: the seminal PlayStation RPG, Final Fantasy 7.
“We’re both titles that were synonymous with PlayStation and also the kind of high-level 3D graphics [both series had] at the time were similar,” Harada continues. “And although we were making different games at that point, [the ex-Tekken developers] were still our friends and people we worked really closely with. So [at the time I thought] it would be interesting if we could work together again sometime in the future. It just turned out that it took a lot more time than I initially thought.”
So here we are, decades later and the Tekken and Final Fantasy brands are going head-to-head on friendlier terms. Clive Rosfield, the protagonist of Final Fantasy 16, will be the latest guest character joining the Tekken roster. He’s only the second Final Fantasy character to ever join Tekken, following after Final Fantasy 15’s Noctis, who made an appearance in Tekken 7.
You might be surprised to hear that this collaboration between Final Fantasy 16 and Tekken 8 began much earlier than expected. So early, in fact, that Final Fantasy 16 was still in the middle of development when Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada reached out to FF16 producer Naoki Yoshida about a potential collaboration. Yoshida invited Harada and Tekken 8 director Kohei Ikeda to Square Enix to play an in-development build of the game and the foundations were laid for the crossover.
Developed by the team responsible for the massively popular Final Fantasy 14 MMORPG, Final Fantasy 16 is a stark departure for the series as far as gameplay goes, eschewing any kind of turn-based combat in favor of real-time action where Clive can wield his sword and chain combos together. Final Fantasy 16’s more action-forward direction meant that Clive could fit seamlessly into Tekken. His combo-heavy attacks and ability to channel the powers of different “Eikons” — powerful familiars like Ifrit, Phoenix, and Titan — ensures a fairly diverse kit for his Tekken 8 appearance..
“We wanted to make sure that all of the Eikons were available in some way while playing [as Clive in Tekken 8],” says Ikeda. Expect to see Clive use various elemental abilities such as wind, lightning, ice, fire, and more.
While fans of Final Fantasy 16 will find Clive has access to a lot of the same abilities in Tekken as he does in his own game, there were some changes made to the character. Namely, his character model.
“The director of the Final Fantasy team told us that he would like us to adjust Clive’s frame a bit because our characters are quite beefy,” Ikeda recalls. “So we did adjust his legs and lower body to make him more in line with our fighters when they’re both on the same screen at the same time.”
So Clive hit the gym for Tekken, but in payment for those new pecs he did have to make some sacrifices elsewhere. “It’s funny that although he’s gotten more muscular, his sword has shrunk in size because in a fighting game, it would give him way too much of an advantage if the sword was as big as it is in the original game,” Harada adds.
So I guess that means no chance of Cloud and his colossal Buster Sword joining Tekken, then? Well, don’t think so fast. According to Harada, the Tekken team is not limited to just one character from Final Fantasy. He says it “might be cool if we had two,” but for now it’s not something in the cards.
It’s been quite the journey to see games like Tekken and Final Fantasy evolve alongside each other, and now to see them crossover like this. While neither franchises are strictly exclusive to PlayStation anymore, their association with the brand means both Tekken and Final Fantasy feature prominently in our Top 100 PlayStation Games of All Time list.
So of course we had to ask the Tekken developers: “What is your favorite Final Fantasy video game?”
“I actually learned Japanese by playing through the Japanese version of Final Fantasy 7. I think my girlfriend at the time hated me for asking me so many questions about stuff,” joked producer Michael Murray. “But if I had to pick one with memories and everything involved, it’s probably [Final Fantasy] 11 because I think it was around Tekken 4 everyone on the team would wake up early and not go to work yet and we’d meet up online in FF11 and play for a bit.”
For Tekken 8 director Ikeda, he says his favorite is Final Fantasy 4 as he enjoyed feeling the series change to be “more narrative-based. It followed the main character Cecil and his transition from the Dark Knight to a paladin.”
For Harada, Final Fantasy 4 is also a favorite but, from a personal perspective, there’s just no comparison to the iconic entry: Final Fantasy 7.
“There’s so many scenes in the game I can still remember to this day,” Harada says. Perhaps his colleagues working on that title helped make that connection feel even stronger, and being able to return the favor with Clive in Final Fantasy XVI is thanks for those memories.
Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.
The PC is arguably the definitive gaming platform, deeper and broader than any of the bespoke boxes you stick under your TV. It has become a catch-all for multiplatform games, an inevitable second home for first-party console exclusives, and a bastion for smaller games that may not be able to develop ports. It’s also a destination of its own for unique, mouse-and-keyboard-driven genres that just aren’t quite as comfy to play while sitting on a couch, while also being the place for portable-friendly games thanks to the likes of the Steam Deck. Unsurprisingly, it meant we had a lot of games to pick from when it came to crowning our 2024 PC favourites.
While plenty of incredible games came to both the PC and other platforms this year, our picks for the best PC games of 2024 stand as a mix of impressive experiences across multiple genres – some of which you simply can’t play with a controller in your hand. There’s the intricate, automated empires of Satisfactory; the exquisite puzzle design of Animal Well; the just-one-more-round compulsion of Balatro; the thrilling detective work of The Rise of the Golden Idol, and more besides.
But only one can be crowned the best PC game of 2024. What did the IGN team judge to be the most worthy? Let’s take a look at the results…
Honorable Mentions
With so many excellent games to choose from this year, the spread of votes for the best PC game was understandably broad. The varied taste of the IGN team meant that several games picked up a strong number of votes, but sadly not enough to secure a podium finish. Of those games, the two that only just missed out were 1000xResist and The Rise of the Golden Idol.
Plenty of games tell a compelling story, but it’s the way 1000xResist tells its story that truly stands out. It is a confident and moving tale that isn’t afraid to get deep, blending surreal concepts with emotionally charged deconstructions of the human condition in a manner reminiscent of games like Nier: Automata. Thanks to its narrative-first design being something of a first cousin to visual novels, 1000xResist’s story is able to double down on delivering ideas and plot in innovative ways that raise the bar for its genre.
A follow-up to 2022’s breakout detective game, The Rise of the Golden Idol continues to impress by empowering you to solve its crimes with hands-on detective work. Set in the 1970s, it presents multiple diorama-like crime scenes in each chapter, demanding you to gather clues via close observation and then piece together exactly what happened. Rarely are the actual events as simple as they seem, and the truth can only be deduced from spotting minor things such as an empty gun chamber or the hidden subtext in an angry note. It’s a “puzzle” game that’s not simply about finding the right button to push, with an artistic presentation uniquely its own.
Runner-Up: Animal Well
2D pixel art platformers can feel like they are a dime a dozen these days, but Animal Well is different. That may sound like a cliche setup, something you’ve heard before about plenty of other games, but it really is true here. Animal Well wears the skin of a puzzle-driven metroidvania while also twisting all the usual trends that come along with that structure.
You aren’t fighting your way through waves of enemies or upping your missile capacity here, in part thanks to Animal Well’s almost complete rejection of violence. Instead you’ll find bubble-blowing wands that can produce floating platforms, frisbees that can tame ferocious dogs, and firecrackers that illuminate the dark to reveal the hidden platforming challenges ahead.
The real joy of Animal Well, though, is realising that there’s far, far more to each item than their obvious use. And then you begin to realise that there’s far, far more to each location than the obvious objectives. And as you begin to peel back the layers, you soon discover that what initially appeared to be a five-hour metroidvania is instead a gargantuan puzzle with enough secrets to discover that they could fill an actual well. It’s an innovative and endlessly enticing take on otherwise well-worn territory.
Runner-Up: Satisfactory
After nearly five years in Early Access, Satisfactory’s 1.0 update arrived this year to cement it as one of the absolute best automation games around. It’s a game all about building assembly lines and laying down endless miles of conveyor belts, which is much more of an immense joy than it may initially seem. The subsequent tech climb that sees your factories become faster, more efficient, and inevitably more complicated always keeps you looking forward to that next big breakthrough.
The sight of spaghetti-like factories that span a thousand acres can seem intimidating at first, but don’t let that put you off: Satisfactory’s well-constructed web of objectives helps you build confidence in your engineering capabilities. Within just a few hours you’ll have graduated from novice conveyor belt enthusiast to an automation veteran, capable of troubleshooting catastrophic malfunctions as if they were minor inconveniences.
But while the factories are your primary concern, Satisfactory is much more than the end result. This is also a Minecraft-style open world in which you must delve into caves, survive deadly gas clouds, and stripmine rock formations in order to gather the materials needed to both fund and fuel your colossal creations. Throw in a few friends working together in co-op to pave over every inch of green on this detailed alien world and you’ve got a recipe for “blink and an hour has passed” captivation that rarely quits.
Runner-Up: UFO 50
UFO 50 is an almost incomprehensible achievement. The concept of an old-school gaming system being miraculously unearthed and made available today is a cute one already, and I wouldn’t blame you if you assumed the catalogue of 50 games that came with it were largely just quant minigames that make for an amusing but fleeting distraction. But that’s simply not the case.
Each and every entry in this library is essentially the size of an entire retro game of its own, many of which would have surely been standout hits in their era if they actually existed at that time. But this isn’t a collection of games made in the 1980s, and the deeper down the rabbit hole you go the more obvious that becomes. The games of UFO 50 are smart. Like, modern day indie darlingsmart. Each one weaves excellent new ideas into the canvass of a retro classic, resulting in games that feel like toys of yesteryear but play like a 2024 Steam top-seller. Echoes of No Man’s Sky, Hotline Miami, Into The Breach and more can be found between the scan lines, but each game is more than just a de-make of its inspiration. UFO 50 is essentially a playable examination of the past and present of video games.
There’s just so much to dig into here, with an almost alarmingly consistent level of quality. UFO 50 could have been half as big as it is and it still would have been impressive – instead, it’s borderline stunning.
Winner: Balatro
If you’ve already played Balatro, you probably understand why it’s here. In fact, odds are good you might still be playing it right now. And if you haven’t, I’d recommend you do, but the kinder thing might be to tell you to run. Because once you’ve jumped into its smart mix of roguelite deckbuilding and digital poker, you might find your free time slipping away and the sun creeping up during what was supposed to still be night. But then again, it sure is worth it.
There’s something about Balatro that effortlessly hooks you, the “just one more turn” syndrome distilled into its purest form. Everything about its fairly simple presentation is tuned perfectly to be endlessly satisfying, bringing delight or destruction with every card you play. While on the surface it’s a poker game that’s approachable for anyone who can tell their flushes from their full houses, don’t be fooled into thinking you need to know the rules of the classic casino game to play. In fact, this isn’t actually poker.
Balatro is an entirely original idea, and while poker hands may be at the centre of the screen, the real centre of the experience is building wild game-breaking decks that can send your score multiplier skyrocketing. Each round allows you to tweak and improve your collection of cards, switching out suits to more easily achieve better hands, or using celestial powers to assemble literal wildcards. The options are unbelievably deep for those who then want to break the intuitive tropes open with smart modifiers – you may have put together a four-of-a-kind in your day, but play a five-of-a-kind for the first time and you won’t ever want to go back.
This is the truly impressive trick of Balatro, making you think you know what it’s doing at every step of the way, then teasing you in deeper as more game-shifting Jokers are discovered, more decks are unlocked, and the scores you consider impressive start stretching from the thousands into exponents so large you need a degree to decipher them. Wrap that up in a lo-fi presentation as deceptively well designed as the card game it houses, and you’ve got a game we’re undoubtedly going to be playing for years to come.
Cardy, Wes, and Dale are here to talk through all of the biggest reveals and announcements from The 2024 Game Awards. We’ve got Elden Ring Nightreign, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Okami 2, and much more. Plus, plenty of time to talk about spilled cereal and teenage brawls on ferries.
Remember to send us your thoughts about all the new games, TV shows, and films you’re enjoying or looking forward to: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.
Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket players are already having enough trouble with Misty but the incoming Mythical Island expansion could make her even more powerful.
Pokémon TCG Pocket uses mana generation, similar to games such as Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, at its core, with players able to attach one energy per turn to slowly but surely build up to more and more powerful attacks.
A handful of cards break this one per turn rule, however, by allowing for additional mana generation. Of the four best decks in Pokémon TCG Pocket — Mewtwo ex, Pikachu ex, Charizard ex, and Starmie ex — only one (Pikachu) doesn’t rely on these additional mana generation cards. They’re therefore very powerful.
There is a soft limit to how useful this is, as most cards don’t need more than three or four energy to use their most powerful attacks. but that’s all about to change. A handful of cards including Stage 1 Pokémon Vaporeon were revealed in the Mythical Island trailer, and it’s this card that could turn those several successful coin flip turns into practically an instant win.
Vaporeon has an Ability called Wash out, which lets players move around an unlimited number of water type energy between their Pokémon. This means the several energy created by successful Misty turns are no longer trapped on one Pokémon and can instead be spread around evenly.
At its most extreme, players on Turn 3, the opening player’s first chance to attack, could therefore play a Misty and have a board with Starmie ex and two Articuno ex all capable of unleashing their strongest attacks; players would have, say, eight energy at their disposal instead of the two provided to most.
This exact play will be the exception and not the rule, but it will almost certainly make those already annoyed by Misty even more frustrated.
Vaporeon could still be an incredibly strong card outside of these major Misty moves too, as being able to move around energy freely offers myriad new solutions to old problems.
If an Active Pokémon is near a knock out, for example, players could shift all its energy to another Pokémon so the replacement is immediately ready to fight next turn, or transfer energy the opposite way to allow it to retreat and not damage the player.
It therefore could be enough to bump the Starmie ex above the other meta leaders, though with more than 80 new cards coming to the game in Mythical Island, the entire player versus player scene could be due a mix up.
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.
FromSoftware titan Elden Ring has now outsold the entire Dark Souls franchise thanks to a sales boost seemingly spurred by expansion Shadow of the Erdtree, though still ahead of spin-off Elden Ring Nightreign launching next year.
Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco announced the open world role-playing game has now sold 28.6 million units, up 3.6 million from the 25 million revealed in June. And as pointed out by @ZhugeEX on X/Twitter, this means its outsold the Dark Souls series’ 27 million.
FromSoftware launched Elden Ring in February 2022, meaning its reached the impressive 28.6 million sales figure in two years and ten months. Dark Souls, meanwhile, arrived in 2011 with follow-ups Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 arriving in 2014 and 2016 respectively.
Elden Ring enjoyed the lessons learned from the beloved Dark Souls series, of course, and also marked FromSoftware’s first foray into the more accessible open world formula. Players struggling with a challenging boss could step away and spend time on weaker enemies, for example, so Elden Ring gained more mainstream appeal.
The franchise is only growing too, as FromSoftware has just announced co-op spin-off Elden Ring Nightreign, in which up to three players are dropped into a condensed version of Limgrave from the main Elden Ring and simply tasked with surviving. Enemies and structures are procedurally generated to allow for a varied experience, with players encouraged to battle to grow stronger and survive the night, when a boss appears.
In a surprise turn, a follow-up to 2006 PlayStation 2 game Okami was announced at The Game Awards 2024. A year after his split from PlatinumGames, series creator Hideki Kamiya now heads the newly founded studio Clovers and is workiing on Okami 2 as its director. IGN Japan spoke with Kamiya and Clovers President and CEO Kento Koyama to hear all about about how the company came to be and more.
IGN: Tell us about the founding of Clovers.
Kamiya: I left my former company, PlatinumGames, on October 12, 2023. There were all kinds of restrictions placed on me for the following year, which meant that I couldn’t create games [as reported by IGN in a previous interview]. Now that the year has passed, I have finally been appointed as the studio head of Clovers. I’ll be developing games at this new company with Koyama as president and CEO.
Koyama: Kamiya was under a year-long non-compete agreement. We wanted to have a clean slate when making games, even at Clovers, so we waited until this restriction was over and Kamiya had entered the company before officially going active.
Kamiya: I was genuinely unemployed between quitting PlatinumGames and joining Clovers. But once Clovers was formed and before I could announce anything, I decided to quietly add a “?” to the “Unemployed” description on my X account’s display name!
Koyama: I wonder if anyone truly noticed, haha.
Kamiya: It seems like a number of X users actually did. They were speculating that I’d be starting something new. I really was unemployed around the time of Tokyo Game Show 2024, so I wasn’t lying when I added “unemployed” to my username at the time!
IGN: How many people are working at Clovers at the moment?
Koyama: About 20 people.
Kamiya: The company has bases in Tokyo and Osaka. People from those two cities came to Clovers, and so we started locations in both at the same time. We began in small rental offices, but now they’re so full that they can’t even fit everyone. We’re now working on moving to real offices. The move to the Osaka office is scheduled for February 2025, while the Tokyo office move is slated for spring 2025.
Koyama: We’re thinking of adding new employees together with these moves.
Kamiya: We already have people who say they would like to work at Clovers, so we need to put a system in place to hire some of them. We imagine that hiring is going to become even more active now that we’ve officially announced Clovers’ foundation [in fact, a guide to career applications is now available on the official Clovers website]. The vision that Koyama and I have in mind is to aim for the company to grow to around 70 people in the future.
IGN: Please tell us about what kind of work this new studio will undertake, and what you hope to do in the future.
Koyama: We’re currently focusing on developing a contracted title for a publisher (the sequel to Okami). We’ll be focusing on that one for a while, but we’d like to create our own IP at Clovers in the future. That isn’t to say that making IP is a top priority of ours, though. What’s important is bringing players the most interesting and fun titles that we can.
A message from the director of the project, Hideki Kamiya!
Kamiya: Our strength at Clovers is that we’re a group with a unique sense of creativity. I’ve never been too fixated on creating only original properties, even when I was at PlatinumGames. When I was there, the company also developed IP belonging to other companies, like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. [Kamiya was not directly involved in developing this game.] Whether it’s an existing IP or a new one, our mission at Clovers is to create unique games that only we can make.
IGN: Recently there are quite a few Japanese companies that have been funded by overseas publishers, but has Clovers taken on any investments?
Koyama: We haven’t received any outside investment at the moment. That was a decision we’ve made.
Kamiya: We were fortunate enough to receive a number of offers, but right now we’d like to see just how far we can go on our own. We want to maintain the freedom to do whatever we want. It is true that it’s harder to keep the lights on without taking on investors, but we’re doing our best at Clovers to preserve our independence as a studio.
IGN: Mr Koyama, please tell us about your history in the game industry.
Koyama: I got my start in the game industry at a company called Mario Club [a subsidiary of Nintendo that conducts debugging and more]. I worked there as a debugger, but I never gave up on my dream of being a game designer. I then moved to DeNA where I got to fulfill that dream. After that, I became involved in a smartphone title at PlatinumGames.
Kamiya: Koyama was making the predecessor of what would become World of Demons, released on Apple Arcade. It was being developed as a live service game at first, but changed direction mid-development.
Koyama: I left PlatinumGames once World of Demons was no longer going to be a live service game. After that, I was in charge of the games division at the Kyoto office of a company called Donuts, but after a while there, someone I knew from PlatinumGames contacted me. When we met, they said, “You once mentioned that you wanted to work together with Hideki Kamiya, right?”
Kamiya: I never had the chance to work with Koyama during his first time at PlatinumGames. But the mere sight of how he worked and the quality of his work did impress me. I kept on thinking what a pity it was that he left the company, so when the time came when I wanted to ask for Koyama’s help, I had a mutual acquaintance reach out to him.
Koyama: Through that connection, I returned to PlatinumGames and ended up working under Kamiya for the next three years.
IGN: What did you think when you heard that Mr Kamiya would be leaving PlatinumGames?
Koyama: I felt that his leaving was a loss for the game industry. Had his games not been fun, perhaps I wouldn’t have thought about it. We can look back on it and laugh now, but at the time, Kamiya looked unusually serious.
Kamiya: It’s not as if I was feeling sad about my own future. I felt bad for the company’s staff I would be leaving behind by exiting the company and my team, and by leaving my positions as game director and vice president. This may sound conceited, but I was in a position where I shouldered quite a lot at PlatinumGames. From my perspective, I left the company based on my own convictions as a creator, but I’m sure that others also saw it as a selfish act. I felt very sorry about that.
Koyama: Kamiya didn’t have any plans at all following his departure from PlatinumGames. He was saying things like, “Maybe I’ll go back to my family’s home and wipe down the floors there.” So I said, “If you ever want to make another game, please contact me. I come from a farming family, so let’s make games in your free time outside of planting and harvesting rice. I might not be able to pay you a salary, but I can at least send you some rice!”
Kamiya: I was happy when Koyama told me he’d send me rice. I mean, I was thinking, “How could there possibly be a company that’d take in an industry troublemaker who’s constantly spewing venom on X like me?” But maybe this unemployable guy would still be able to make ends meet if Koyama sent me rice. Of course, it wasn’t rice he ended up making for me, but rather a company!
How could there possibly be a company that’d take in an industry troublemaker who’s constantly spewing venom on X like me?
IGN: Mr Koyama, will you mainly be working as a manager as the CEO of Clovers, or will you still be involved in game development?
Koyama: Yes, I will be working as the company’s president, but I’ll continue to be a game designer as well. While I am new to being a company president, I feel like I’ve been able to do a good job thanks to the help of the other members of the company around me.
Kamiya: I don’t know what I’d do without Koyama’s ability to handle that kind of work. I’m clueless when it comes to the management side, so my primary job will be creating games. I’m able to let him handle the parts of running a business that I’m not capable of doing myself. I’ve never once felt concerned. I’m very grateful to have someone like him with talents that even stretch outside of game development. I’d like to rely on him as the company’s president, and I also highly value his abilities as a creator, so I have high hopes for his future as a game designer.
IGN: Your studio’s name, Clovers, brings to mind Clover Studio, which was responsible for the original Okami and other titles and where Kmaiya used to work. Can you tell us how you decided on this name?
Koyama: As I mentioned earlier, I come from a family of farmers, so I first thought about a company name that had to do with agriculture. It seemed that Kamiya had some concerns about my ability to come up with a good name, though.
Kamiya: His sense for names is rather unique, you see… That’s when I proposed that we name the company Clovers.
Koyama: We ended up going with his very first suggestion as-is. At first, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Clover Studio, which Kamiya was previously a part of. We were going out of our way to create a new company, so I was reluctant to have a company name that looked back to the past.
Kamiya: I may have some fond feelings for Clover Studio because of titles like Okami, but Koyama doesn’t have that history.
Koyama: I was able to empathize with Kamiya’s explanation for the name, though. If you break down the name Clovers you get “C” and “lovers.” The C in Clovers stands in part for “creativity,” something that all of us love. Also, when thinking about the company’s philosophy, in reference to a four-leaf clover, we began to talk about being a group with four guiding Cs, as in “C-lovers.” Our company’s logo is four interconnected Cs in the shape of a clover, as I think you can tell by looking at it.
Kamiya: We decided on three of the four Cs right away: Challenge, Creativity and Craftsmanship.
Kamiya: While things went smoothly up to here, we had trouble figuring out the fourth and last C. Too many positive words that begin with the letter C, so we didn’t know which to pick. That’s when Koyama had the idea, “How about we don’t decide on the fourth C, and leave it up to each of our new members to decide what the final C means to them personally?”
Koyama: That’s why we share three of the Cs as a company, while the fourth is thought up by each of our employees when they join the company, and we have them write down their reasons. Clovers now has a system where new hires choose their own fourth C the day they join the company. [The fourth C is also discussed in this way on Clovers’ website.]
IGN: What words did the two of you choose for that fourth C?
Kamiya: I’ve made my fourth C “Curiosity.” It’s always been what has driven me forward in my game design.
Koyama: I made my fourth C “Cleanness,” to show my desire to always be sincere in my work and towards business partners. Within the company, you have everything from people who make their fourth C “Century,” striving to create titles that will last for a hundred years, to stylish types who made theirs “Coffee Break.”
Kamiya: By having everyone choose their own fourth C, it makes them even more aware of themselves as creators. I think Clovers is a good name for the company we want to become, as it stands for our desire to be a group that loves that fourth C.
IGN: Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami often talks about wanting to focus on helping young talent to bloom. Mr Kamiya, as someone who came up under Mikami, how do you feel about that idea?
Kamiya: I was able to work as a director for the first time on Resident Evil 2 thanks to Mr Mikami’s guidance. The offer shocked me because it was only my second year after joining Capcom, but within a fraction of a second I told him I’d do it. There’s no question that I’ve also inherited what you might call this kind of “Mikami-ism,” and at PlatinumGames I’d actively give direction work to promising young employees even if they didn’t have experience as a director. That’s why I’d like to continue to give opportunities to young talent at Clovers.
IGN: Your new website mentions that you are recruiting, but what kind of staff are you looking for?
Koyama: We believe that people who can relate to our three Cs – Challenge, Creativity and Craftsmanship – will be a good fit for Clovers.
Kamiya: I think that things like taking on a challenge, being creative or having a craftsmanlike mentality are not things you only do because you’re told to do them. I feel that people who naturally have that kind of mindset and passion for creativity are the ones who fit in with us. In fact, the members who have joined Clovers so far are exactly like that. I hope to maintain that concentration and expand it even further.
I can’t do anything alone. We have team members who draw artwork, others who turn it into 3D models, or who add movement, or who add sound and music, and people who program and finalize the output. Thanks to this combination of people, a game can grow into a wonderful work that exceeds my imagination; miracles are born, and players can enjoy the end result. Just like with game development, as we start a company from scratch this time, I really feel the importance of people’s support. The current staff also came to Clovers without knowing what would happen, and I am so grateful to them for that. I wanted to leave that feeling of gratitude in a tangible form, so we took a group photo of all the Clovers staff. It was a sobering feeling once again. I’m sure they are not without anxiety, but they seem to be enjoying the process of building something from scratch, and that makes me feel really confident. I would be happy to create something with people who can enjoy taking on this challenge together.
This interview was conducted by Daniel Robson, Chief Editor of IGN Japan, and the article was written by Ryuchi Kataoka, a freelance writer for IGN Japan. It was translated by Ko Ransom.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
The weekend is officially here, and we’ve rounded up the best deals you can find! Discover the best deals for Sunday, December 15, below:
LEGO Horizon Adventures for $39.99
Lego Horizon Adventures is the latest game in the Horizon series, and it marks the first time a Horizon game has been playable on Nintendo Switch. In our review, we wrote, “Lego Horizon Adventures reimagines Horizon Zero Dawn with a playful Lego twist, simplifying the story while keeping the heart of its key moments and characters.”
Cowboy Bebop – The Complete Series for $17.99
Cowboy Bebop is one of the best anime series ever. Following the adventures of Spike, Jet, Faye, Ed, and Ein, this series is one any anime fan needs to see at least once. We have the series ranked as the #2 best anime of all time, writing “Cowboy Bebop has had an indelible impact that reaches far beyond anime; everyone from Orson Scott Card to Rian Johnson to Robin Williams have praised the series and cited its influence on their work.”
Alan Wake II for $59.99
Alan Wake II never received a physical release at launch last year, but Remedy has fixed that as of last month with the Alan Wake II Deluxe Edition. This release bundles in Alan Wake II and its two expansions, Night Springs and The Lake House. If you’re a fan of survival horror, this is one of the best games available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Astro Bot for $49.97
Selected as Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024, Astro Bot is on sale this weekend, and there has never been a better time to pick up one of the PlayStation 5’s best games. Building off Astro’s Playroom, Astro Bot features many new abilities and bosses to fight, with over 300 bots to rescue across the galaxy. You’ll find planets modeled after beloved PlayStation games like Ape Escape and Uncharted, and even surprise third-party bots like Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil 2.
Super Mario RPG for $29.99
This weekend, you can save $30 off Super Mario RPG, the Nintendo Switch remake of the SNES title. The beloved game returns with a fresh coat of paint and the combat we all love, with even Yoko Shimomura returning to compose a remade soundtrack! Super Mario RPG is incredibly beginner-friendly, so you don’t need to have any RPG experience to dive right in and enjoy this classic.
Save on ROG Ally at Best Buy
This weekend at Best Buy, you can save on the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme model, where it’s priced at $499.99. This handheld device is perfect for exploring your Steam library on the go, with PC Game Pass support also easily accessible. If you’re planning to travel anytime soon, the ROG Ally will be your best friend.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven for $39.99
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is arguably the best entry point into the SaGa series at this time. Acting as a full 3D remake of the 1993 release, this game features English and Japanese voiceovers, rearranged music, retooled gameplay, and more. If you’re still unsure about Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, you can check out the free demo across all platforms!
Stellar Blade for $49.99
You can grab Stellar Blade for just $50 this weekend. This action game from Shift Up has been one of the most popular games of the year. Just a few weeks ago, new Nier: Automata DLC was released, which included new outfits inspired by A2, 2B, and Emil. In our 7/10 review, we stated “Stellar Blade stands out as a gorgeous and well-crafted action game with very impressive strengths and very clear weaknesses.”
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection for $29.99
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection brought both Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit in one package, with Prosecutor’s Gambit releasing in English for the very first time. This release features updated visuals, new animations, gallery mode, conversation history, and more. You can even switch between the old and new sprites!
Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics for $39.99
Finally, you can score Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics for only $39.99 this weekend at Amazon. This collection packs in seven different titles, including the beloved Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes. At last, you can play these classic titles on modern platforms.
The weekend is officially here, and we’ve rounded up the best deals you can find! Discover the best deals for Saturday, December 14, below:
Cowboy Bebop – The Complete Series for $17.99
Cowboy Bebop is one of the best anime series ever. Following the adventures of Spike, Jet, Faye, Ed, and Ein, this series is one any anime fan needs to see at least once. We have the series ranked as the #2 best anime of all time, writing “Cowboy Bebop has had an indelible impact that reaches far beyond anime; everyone from Orson Scott Card to Rian Johnson to Robin Williams have praised the series and cited its influence on their work.”
Save on Roblox Gift Cards
Roblox is one of the most popular games in the world right now, and you can never have enough Robux. Right now, Amazon has a Lightning Deal on a $50 physical Roblox Gift Card for just $40. That’s 20% in savings! If you’re still searching for a gift this holiday season for the gamer in your life, this Roblox deal is one you shouldn’t pass up.
Final Fantasy XVI for $24.99
If you’re excited for Clive to join Tekken 8, now is the time to pick up his game! Final Fantasy XVI follows Clive Rosfield on his journey to avenge his brother. For the first time in the Final Fantasy series, you can become a summon, known as Eikons in this world. With spectacular boss battles and an engaging story, Final Fantasy XVI is an excellent time, especially for $24.99.
Astro Bot for $49.97
Selected as Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024, Astro Bot is on sale this weekend, and there has never been a better time to pick up one of the PlayStation 5’s best games. Building off Astro’s Playroom, Astro Bot features many new abilities and bosses to fight, with over 300 bots to rescue across the galaxy. You’ll find planets modeled after beloved PlayStation games like Ape Escape and Uncharted, and even surprise third-party bots like Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil 2.
Super Mario RPG for $29.99
This weekend, you can save $30 off Super Mario RPG, the Nintendo Switch remake of the SNES title. The beloved game returns with a fresh coat of paint and the combat we all love, with even Yoko Shimomura returning to compose a remade soundtrack! Super Mario RPG is incredibly beginner-friendly, so you don’t need to have any RPG experience to dive right in and enjoy this classic.
Save on ROG Ally at Best Buy
This weekend at Best Buy, you can save on the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme model, where it’s priced at $499.99. This handheld device is perfect for exploring your Steam library on the go, with PC Game Pass support also easily accessible. If you’re planning to travel anytime soon, the ROG Ally will be your best friend.
Stellar Blade for $49.99
You can grab Stellar Blade for just $50 this weekend. This action game from Shift Up has been one of the most popular games of the year. Just a few weeks ago, new Nier: Automata DLC was released, which included new outfits inspired by A2, 2B, and Emil. In our 7/10 review, we stated “Stellar Blade stands out as a gorgeous and well-crafted action game with very impressive strengths and very clear weaknesses.”
My wife and I are expecting our first child soon, so I’ve spent the better part of a year reflecting on big concepts like leadership, responsibility, accountability, and trust. I’m considering who I am and how exactly I’m supposed to raise another human and not pass on all of my worst traits. It was in this emotionally raw state that Mouthwashing came along and punched me in the face.While mechanically simple – there’s not much to do besides talk to other characters, pick things up, and search the spaceship you are confined to – it tells its story in a way that couldn’t be done without the burden of interactivity, taking full advantage of what sets games apart from the likes of movies or TV. And I don’t use the word burden lightly, as that’s precisely how it felt to keep playing at times (in a good way). “Please don’t make me do this,” was often my prevailing thought, but uncovering the mysteries of how things got quite so bad on this ship always compelled me to continue.
The premise is straightforward: A group of people in a long-haul space freighter, the Tulpar, contend with the aftermath of a disaster, with your perspective bouncing around between several different times over the span of about a year. To go into more specifics about the story would spoil more about Mouthwashing than I am willing, as the surprise of picking apart what happened here and why is a driving force. But suffice to say, it wrings out as much dread, character exploration, and body horror as one conceivably could over the two-to-three-hour runtime.
The surreal tone all that takes is heightened by Mouthwashing’s PS1-esque visual style. Characters are recognizably human, but also just off enough to be dismissed as something else entirely. It’s a funhouse mirror, a twisted depiction used to express how we see people as tools in real life, and how easy it is to deny the humanity in someone staring straight at you. It’s a great choice, as hyper-realistic or more stylized graphics would have robbed it of the uncanny valley feeling it’s going for. The similarly distorted sound and limited, muffled voice acting make it feel like you have cotton in your ears, doubling down on the impression that you’re driving through fog, trying to see what may be happening just out of sight.
The same goes for the structure. Leaping back and forth between times both before and after the disaster is disorienting, but I never lost the story’s thread. Dreamlike sequences are similarly spliced in, giving you simple tasks like opening doors or mixing drinks that always carry an undercurrent of menace, making the mundane unsettling. You’re always waiting for evil around the corner, but it often appears in realistic and boring ways that seem totally normal out of context: small interactions, slightly off-color questions, and statements that tickle the part of your brain responsible for recognizing danger. And that’s how real-life evil often presents itself, through a mask of seeming sincerity until you recognize it for what it is, hopefully before it’s too late.
Sometimes, the evil is more explicit, especially as Mouthwashing reaches its conclusion and more hands-on mechanics are used to drive home the detestable actions and worldviews of the Tulpar’s crew members. Still avoiding spoilers, one character in particular was so loathsome I had to step back and consider why I was having such a visceral reaction to them – I could only concede that people like this really exist, and in my worst moments, I can almost understand where they’re coming from, even as they are painted in extremes here. It’s a deeply uncomfortable feeling, resonating with characters you hate so much, and seeing the damage someone can cause when they refuse to look at themselves in a meaningful way (or simply through inaction).
And while these characters might be extreme in their behavior, they’re not over-written. Plenty is left to be inferred, and the crew speaks plainly. There are moments when screen flashes, loud noises, or accompanying messages can tend toward the excessive, but they also never feel like jump scares, just ways to accentuate story beats. One in particular came with a realization that both gave me context for the name “Mouthwashing” and set up just how dark this story was about to get.
That said, when it does venture outside of its compelling conversations and into a couple of slightly more action-focused sections, it isn’t always the smoothest transition. Brief forays into survival horror or even first-person shooting, while initially novel, grew a bit frustrating as the imprecise controls require more patience than the rest of the story. These sections seem to be frustrating by design, but they were still frustrating. Thankfully, they’re also short lived, so they didn’t hamper my enjoyment much.
And while it might go without saying at this point, if you’re squeamish or easily disturbed (especially when it comes to a loss of bodily autonomy), Mouthwashing will not be easy to play, nor was it intended to be. It’s an uncomfortably close look at deeply flawed people, and it’s not stingy about holding up a magnifying glass – or, in this case, a literal ultrasound – to gaze even deeper.
So as I await the birth of my daughter, an occasion that fills me with incredible excitement, that anxious part of my brain is still yelling at me, and Mouthwashing has given words to those worries: “Who are you in your worst moments? Is that person good enough to be trusted with a child?” Few games have hit me as hard at such a specific time in my life, but that’s what good art does – it holds up a mirror. And hopefully you like what’s looking back.
Today, Lenovo is matching the lowest price I saw for an Xbox Series X|S wireless controller on Black Friday. Right now you can get one in either Carbon Black or Robot White for only $34.99 when you apply coupon code “SHOPXMAS“. These controllers are compatible with Xbox Series X and S and PC.
Xbox Controllers for $34.99
Aesthetics aside, these Xbox wireless controllers are identical to the one that’s bundled with the Xbox Series X and S console. Standard features include textured grips, hybrid D-pad, button mapping with the Xbox app, a 3.5mm audio jack that works with any wired headset, and a Share button to upload screenshots and video.
The controller supports both Xbox wireless and Bluetooth connectivity. That means you can use it for your PC or mobile device. In fact, we think this is the the best PC controller you can get. If your PC doesn’t have Bluetooth, you can still use it in wired mode with a USB Type-C cable or go out and buy a Bluetooth or Xbox wireless adapter.
3 Months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $28.99
On a related note, Woot! currently has an excellent deal on Xbox Game Pass: Get three months of Game Pass Ultimate, which usually costs $19.99 monthly, for only $28.99 after you apply coupon code “GAMEPASS“. This sale ends on December 13. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gives you access to a library of hundreds of Xbox games, including day one releases. If you don’t own a console and don’t want to pay for one, there’s even a legitimate way to play Game Pass games without an Xbox. Although you do lose access to the library once your membership is over, all your past achievements and progress will be saved. New release games are not cheap, and being able to play them at launch without paying retail price for them will save you a lot of money. This perk alone will easily recoup the cost of the membership.
Other benefits include access to Xbox Game Pass for PC, exclusive membership discounts, Xbox Cloud Gaming, a bonus EA Play subscription, extra in-game content and rewards, and more.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
