Category: IGN

Following this month’s surprise addition of Disney/Pixar’s Up for the PlayStation Portable to the PlayStation Plus Classics library comes the likely addition of three more Disney games.

As spotted by Gematsu, the Taiwan ratings board has once again spilled the beans on new games coming to PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. (Taiwan listed Up ahead of its announcement.)

The three games are:

• Disney/Pixar Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (PS1)

• Thrillville: Off the Rails (PSP)

• Thrillville (PSP)

The revival of these Disney/Pixar games comes as some surprise given the low interest in the community and what you would think would be a licensing nightmare. But that didn’t stop Up on PSP from getting a second chance over 14 years after it came out.

This week Sony revealed the full line-up of PlayStation Plus Games Catalog additions for November 2023, which includes Teardown, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, and PaRappa the Rapper 2.

A total of 14 games joined the library: nine in the Games Catalog available to Extra and Premium members and five in the Classic Games Catalog only available to Premium members.

PlayStation Plus Games Catalog Additions for November 2023

• Teardown | PS5
• Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen | PS4
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme vs. Maxi Boost On | PS4
• Dead Island: Riptide Definitive Edition | PS4
• Superliminal | PS4 + PS5
• Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising | PS4 + PS5
• Nobunaga’s Ambition: Taishi | PS4
• Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus The Awakening of Golden Jazz | PS4
• River City Melee Mach!! | PS4

PlayStation Plus Classics Games Catalog Additions for November 2023

• Grandia | PS4 + PS5
• Jet Moto | PS4 + PS5
• Up | PS4 + PS5
• Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series | PS4 + PS5
• PaRappa the Rapper 2 | PS4

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 moon of Pandora is host to a pair of different worlds; the harmonious, nature-loving Na’vi and the industrial, destructive humans of the RDA. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora you play as a native Na’vi, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be restricted to using just their traditional tools and weaponry.

“As a child of two worlds, someone that was brought up and trained by the RDA forcefully, you do have the knowledge of human tools,” explains Magnus Jansen, creative director of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. “Not just weapons but their technology and other things as well.”

But if you have access to rocket launchers, assault rifles, and grenades, why would you ever use the Na’vi’s comparatively primitive weapons? We spoke to the developers at Massive Entertainment, who told us all about the gameplay styles and choices offered by human and Pandoran equipment.

“Human technologies are loud and destructive and kind of dirty in a way,” says game director Ditte Deenfeldt. “Whereas the Na’vi tools are usually more powerful, more stealthy, more precise.”

The Na’vi source almost all of their equipment directly from nature and so their arsenal is predominantly based on archery. Each bow is tooled for a particular approach: the shortbow for fast attacks, a heavy bow for high-damage sniping, and a longbow for general purpose shooting. These are, as you’d expect, silent killers.

“So the Na’vi weapons, they’re all about precision and they’re also stealth tools, so they preserve your stealth loop,” explains associate game director Drew Rechner. “They’re all using that idea of precision and planning and quiet takedowns.”

But how can a wooden arrow destroy an armored mechanical exo-skeleton? It’s simple, really: you aim true. “All of our enemies have weak points,” Rechner reveals. “Sometimes it’s an unprotected pilot that you can just take out with one shot if you’re accurate, but other times it’s the [exhaust] vents in the back. With a well-placed arrow you hit [and] it explodes, and you can take it out really efficiently. And that’s a lot more difficult to do with the human weapons because they’re so imprecise.”

“But if you don’t want that, we also have special ammo,” adds Rechner. “So there’s a special ammo type where you actually duct tape grenades to an arrow and you can shoot that arrow and have it explode. And of course that’s fantastic for that AMP that’s giving you trouble and you can’t seem to flank it because maybe the space isn’t allowing for it.”

Special ammunition can also be crafted for the Staffsling, a sort of lacrosse stick-like weapon used to hurl traps and explosives. Like special ammo arrows, the Staffsling represents the merging point of two cultures; it’s a Na’vi design enhanced by explosive RDA manufacturing. But such a blend of technologies can only be used in certain situations; for some activities you’ll be restricted to certain weapons.

“When it comes to hunting, we really encourage players to be merciful and to get a clean kill as well,” reveals Deenfeldt. As a result, you can’t use any human weapons or tech to hunt Pandora’s wildlife.

“The Na’vi, they’ll smell it a mile away that it’s got metal and it’s been tainted by the human technology,” explains Jansen. As such, you’ll always need to use bows to kill animals you intend to use for cooking and crafting.

While Na’vi weapons are encouraged for precision and hunting, there will often be times when you need speed and aggression. That’s where your character’s early life with the RDA will come in handy; they know how to use all the human weapons, from assault rifles to rocket launchers.

“They’re perfect for the run and gun,” says Rechner. “My personal preference is to start with stealth. Usually I fail in some spectacular fashion and then I bust out the shotgun and the assault rifle and just blast my way through the last few enemies.”

“[Human weapons are] not what you want to use for stealth because if you’re sneaking, well, a loud boom is going to give you away,” says Jansen. “All of the human weapons are loud. But they are incredibly fun because they’re loud. They are very powerful against machinery, against the AMP suits, against all of the things. So they’re very, very effective when you get into action.”

As powerful as the human weapons are, though, you sadly won’t be able to use the RDA’s coolest machines. “You can’t use an AMP suit or fly in a helicopter simply because you’re too big,” says Deenfeldt. “The AMP suit may be your size on the outside, but inside it can only fit a tiny little human.”

The story of Frontiers of Pandora will focus on your character reclaiming their Na’vi heritage. And so, should you wish to fully roleplay that narrative, you can choose to use only Na’vi equipment. But Massive Entertainment has designed the game to be played with both technologies, pivoting between them as the situation demands.

“I think more so than you doing one thing over the other, I expect most players to play a mix of both and choose the right tool for the right situation,” says Deenfeldt. “That’s really why we have this background story, to give players the opportunity to play with all of the different options that we have to give you. We can add some technology, we can add some weapons, but you can also live the Na’vi dream.”

“I think this is a choice that people like and it’s something they recognize where, yeah, I can go loud, I can go in guns blazing [with] human weapons, but that is going to draw attention and there might be reinforcements, they could send in more people,” says Jansen. “This is a classic pro versus con situation where yes, I could go loud and it’s fast, but in the end it might not be that much faster because I’m going to draw more people in and it’s going to take more time.”

The contrast between humans and Na’vi isn’t restricted to weapons, though. As you explore the world you’ll find very different environments depending on who lives there. Those disparate environments provide very different gameplay opportunities.

“The human locations are much more structured,” says Deenfeldt. “You have a straight line, straight angles. You have an environment that in many cases are much easier to read, so it is easier to make quick decisions on where to move, which means that agility that you have, you can really use it in combat.”

“As beautiful as a natural environment is, it’s also naturally just more chaotic,” she adds. “And so I think that’s one of the big differences. But we also have other environments than the rainforest. We have really big open plains, in the upper plain as an example, where that changes how you approach these things as well.”

By starting with a protagonist who belongs to both Na’vi and human cultures, Massive has been able to build a game with both multiple play styles and environmental texture. We’ll see if that blend works in harmony or if the RDA guns are OP when Frontiers of Pandora launches on December 7.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.

The Amazon Black Friday Sale has officially started, and currently the best deal on a PS5-compatible solid state drive is this Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive for only $94.99. Not only is the Crucial P5 Plus fast enough to exceed the specs of the PS5’s stock internal SSD, it also has a preinstalled heatsink that’s slim enough to fit and does a fine job of keeping things cool.

Crucial P5 Plus 2TB SSD with Heatsink for $94.99

The Crucial P5 Plus meets all the requirements for your PS5 SSD upgrade. It supports transfer speeds of up to 6,660MB/s which is well above the 5,500MB/s minimum threshold. Yes there are faster SSDs out there, but if your intention is to put this in your PS5, then that extra speed is worthless because you’re bottlenecked by the original PS5 SSD. The integrated heatsink is robust and entirely made of aluminum for effective heat dissipation. It’s also slim enough to fit in the PS5 bay with the cover on. If you’re worried about opening up your PS5 case, don’t worry it’s very easy. Crucial has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide.

Looking for more Black Friday deals like this? Check out our guide to PS5 Black Friday deals for 2023.

Early Black Friday deals have officially kicked off in the UK, with Amazon leading the charge with some tremendous discounts. In case you are confused, yes Black Friday is officially on November 24 this year, but everyone thought it would be a good idea to extend these deals out even further. So, in 2023, all the Black Friday sale offers you will be seeing are likely running from November 17-27 (starting today!).

For now, here’s all the best Black Friday deals we could find online, including some stellar gaming and tech deals, a PS5 for just £379.99, Fire TV Sticks for £24.99, one of the best airfryers for £179, and plenty more to consider as well. Happy shopping, and if you’re looking for more deals, check back in with us here or follow @IGNUKDeals on Twitter/X.

TL;DR – Best Black Friday Deals in the UK

Black Friday: Best PlayStation 5 Deals

PS5 is getting special treatment as Sony is officially going live with all their deals today. So, Xbox and Nintendo fans, don’t feel disheartened if they’re getting a little bit of special treatment right now — the deals are pretty amazing. For starters we’ve got the PS5 for £380, or the PS5 bundles including two free games for £400; unbelievable jeff.

There’s also a PS5 2TB SSD for less than £100 to maximise that storage, and a DualSense controller for just £39.99. PS Plus is also up to 30% off right now for new and current members, but you can save even more with a ShopTo gift card deal. For example, new members can get 12-months of PS Plus for £83.99 (down from £99.99), but the ShopTo £84 gift card costs just £74.85 so you’re securing a total saving of £25.14.

See More PS5 Deals

Black Friday: Best Amazon Device Deals

Amazon device deals are like death and taxes, you can’t avoid them. Every single sale you’re going to see thes beauties get a mega discount, and honestly you’re a fool if you buy them at any other time of year. Fire TV Sticks have secured an amazing new model and the 4K stick now includes Wi-Fi 6 support — it’s down to £34.99 right now and is the perfect streaming device. Echo Dot is also down to £21.99 which is one of its best price ever, so snap these up ASAP.

Black Friday: Meta Quest 2 + £50 Amazon Voucher for Just £249

The Meta Quest 3 makes this deal look a little less spectacular, but let me tell you how popular these were the past two years — that this deal would sell out within the hour. It likely won’t be the same this year, but this is still a marvellous deal and essentially a brilliant VR headset (everything built in) for just £199 if you’re using the £50 voucher to buy other stuff this Black Friday. I love this deal, and I also think this would make a wonderful gift for any budding young gamers out there this Christmas.

Black Friday: Most Popular Airfryer Is Back on Sale (For Now)

Let’s be honest, we all love our airfryers. These beauties have taken the UK by storm, and for good reason. If you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, or if you’re looking for an upgrade or the perfect gift — then I’ve got a sweet deal to show you. Ninja Foodi Dual Zone Air Fryer Max always sells out when it gets a big discount like this during the sales, and right now this is down to just £179.99 at Amazon (was £269.99). That’s some big savings, and one of the best airfryer deals you’ll find between now and Black Friday on November 24.

Black Friday: Best Xbox Deals

While the deals haven’t truely kicked off just yet for Xbox, we’re already seeing some rather lovely deals to consider. There’s some Xbox Series X bundles that you should seriously be considering, or if you’re looking to upgrade your storage, you can also get a WD Black 1TB Expansion Card for just £129.99 right now from Amazon. More Xbox deals are on the way, however, so if you’re looking for more ensure you check back in with us or follow @IGNUKDeals on Twitter for more updates.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

This is our Zombies review for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Check out the single-player review for our thoughts on the campaign or the multiplayer review for our thoughts on PvP.

Like a lot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, this year’s Zombies mode has undergone what might be described as a “Warzone-ification,” forcing its traditional PvE elements into a larger, more open map. But as popular as the Warzone side of Call of Duty (or in this case, the extraction shooter mode, DMZ) might be, mixing it together with Zombies has had the effect of diluting both. This is less a new take on Zombies than it is a DMZ reskin, with disparate elements cherry-picked from both modes mashed against one another and made to kiss. If you can stick with it long enough to reach high-difficulty areas and top-level content, it can take you to some excellent, intense moments. But its huge size, and the slow pace created as a result, often makes it feel at odds with what was fun about Zombies in the past.

Operation Deadbolt, the name for Modern Warfare 3’s Zombies mode, takes place on a version of the upcoming Warzone map of Urzikstan. Gone are the usual wave-based battles through smaller, dedicated maps that you explore and unlock as you go. Instead, the moment-to-moment gist of the mode is almost exactly what you encounter in DMZ. You and two squadmates head into the map, search for cool stuff and complete activities called Contracts to earn money to buy upgrades and items, and call a helicopter to escape with your loot before you’re either overwhelmed by enemies or the 45-minute match timer expires. In the early going, apart from the zombies themselves and a few familiar temporary power-ups and Perk Colas, this Zombies mode doesn’t feel much like Zombies at all.

The openness of DMZ lets you choose your battles, and it’s that approach that defines Operation Deadbolt – but it lacks one fundamental piece of what makes DMZ fun: a player-vs-player element. There are always around 24 other players in an Operation Deadbolt match, but you can only interact with them cooperatively – you have to appreciate that trolls will be denied the thrill of the hunt, but it also removes an element of danger from mindless enemies. You’ll pick your way across the map to take on strongholds full of computer-controlled mercenary soldiers, or complete small, objective-based contracts that can earn you money to spend on perks or weapon upgrades. You generally decide which encounters to take on and when, and only venture further inland to areas designated with a higher difficulty once you’re fully prepared. Without the PvP aspect, the lower-difficulty area and activities of Operation Deadbolt end up being pretty easy, and pretty dull as a result.

The slower and more thoughtful gameplay of DMZ contrasts with the usual setup of Zombies, which is all about the mounting tension of finding better weapons, setting up defenses, and exploring the map while constantly fighting off ever-tougher waves of enemies. The lack of a pressing threat in Operation Deadbolt means you can spend a whole session on low-difficulty, relatively boring activities, just to prepare for something more interesting.

But the two different gameplay approaches start to gel much better as you get deeper in and venture into tougher areas. The more difficult locations (it gets harder the closer you get to the map’s center) increase the intensity of battles, the ambient dread that any encounter could go sideways, unexpected complications, and the risk of losing all your great gear — all the things that make both DMZ and past Zombies modes exciting. The Urzikstan map is divided into three areas, or “threat levels,” and the differences in the zones is stark — Threat Level 2 has zombies that you can barely deal with using weapons you haven’t upgraded with a Pack-a-Punch machine, for example, and it’s rife with bigger creatures and special zombies that show up at random much more often. Things are, as you’d expect, even tougher in Threat Level 3, where giant boss monsters maraud freely and even low-level zombies are decked out in strong armor. You’re still able to choose which activities to engage with as you move up in difficulty, but they’re all more challenging, and just crossing the map in these areas requires you to pay much more attention to keeping yourself and your team alive.

And once the challenge starts to ramp up, the traditional Zombies gameplay elements are much more important. Having the right Perk Colas and seeking out Pack-a-Punch machines becomes the difference between a successful session and a painful defeat, and the extraction mechanics of DMZ add exactly the right kind of dread as you fight to protect your exfiltration helicopter from huge zombie throngs of anywhere from tens to what feels like a hundred or more. Planning your forays across the map becomes essential, but all the different enemies, weapons, upgrades, equipment, and random short-lived Zombies power-ups you can find along the way combine to make sessions exciting and unpredictable. Add the panic that comes with the fear of losing everything you’ve earned in a run, and Operation Deadbolt can get even an undead heart pumping.

So while the DMZ and Zombies elements sometimes work against each other, when they do come together Operation Deadbolt can be a lot of fun. Running around looting buildings, only to discover too late that one houses a powerful special monster – like the tentacled Mimic – is exciting and harrowing. Sweeping a mercenary stronghold room by room makes for some thrilling firefights, especially with the knowledge that zombies are likely creeping up behind you as you do. Zombies-focused spins on Contracts, where you complete small events like defending a location against the hordes or fighting through mercenaries to defuse missiles before they launch, can be fun as the difficulty ramps up, so long as you make the effort to vary your choices frequently to avoid too much repetition.

The inclusion of other friendly players in a match can also add an unexpected, fun dimension to Operation Deadbolt. Finding other players and teaming up with them on the fly to make a double-sized squad, or getting revived and saved from losing your stuff by a passer-by, adds a life to Zombies that’s new to the experience. Co-op with other random players isn’t a big focus of the mode, but it still gives you another opportunity to shake things up that doesn’t detract from your PvE experience with PvP griefing.

The trouble is that Operation Deadbolt is so uneven, requiring you to build up to the fun by choosing the right activities and holding back from anything too difficult until you have the gear to handle it. A lot of time is spent on preparation, looting, and earning money by repeating easy contracts to power yourself up so you can risk venturing into the areas that are actually entertaining. And while the risk of death adds necessary tension to more dangerous expeditions, scouring the map for equipment to get yourself back to where you were after a loss is a big, boring time-suck.

Slow pacing infests all of Operation Deadbolt, but it does the most damage to the story. There’s a linear tale to uncover here, but unlike past Zombies campaigns, it’s not hidden away in puzzles and Easter eggs you need to discover on the map. Instead, it’s all deployed through uninspired, MMO-like mini-objectives, like using a Pack-a-Punch to power up a gun and then killing 50 zombies with it. Complete enough of them and you’ll get to play dedicated story missions, but there’s a huge amount of tedious stuff to get through before you can even see what Operation Deadbolt’s plot is about — it took about two dozen hours for me to grind through enough to access the first one, which I still haven’t played due to a bug.

There are some fun objectives, like the ones that push you to engage with different content, such as mercenary strongholds or zombie nests, but the majority carry dull requirements to get specific weapons and kill specific enemies with them. One required me to freeze a bunch of zombies and fiery hellhound enemies, so I had to first track down Cryo ammo (a random drop in Contract rewards and certain kinds of loot stashes) then find the right enemies to shoot with it. Hellhounds are pretty weak, though, and often die before they freeze. They’re also rarer than zombies out in the world, which meant I had to kill a whole lot of zombies in order to find enough hellhounds just to clear the requirement of freezing 10 — and if I didn’t complete the objective before we had to exfiltrate from the mission, I needed to go find another Cryo ammo upgrade to wrap it up. To put it delicately, that was not a highpoint of my playtime with Modern Warfare 3’s Zombies mode.

Progress on these story quests is a slog to earn, often requiring you to find very specific ammo upgrades or power-ups and use them against specific enemies. These are the sort of objectives you should be knocking out as you do other, more fun things, but Operation Deadbolt locks you into only working on one objective at a time, which you choose before you drop. If you manage to clear an objective, you get access to a new one automatically mid-session, but you can’t change them on the fly or work on several at once, which means there’s no way to make progress if you don’t have the correct equipment. This approach repeatedly grinds your ability to progress and experience the story to a complete, irritating halt.

Seeking out the items you need, like ammo upgrades or perks, slows things down even more, since those items are mostly handed out randomly from completing activities. Many objectives require specific equipment, and some of those objectives are tough to complete in a single session, so you’ll need more than one drop to get them done. And that means spending session after session clearing the same two or three activities, hoping to get the right ammo reward. Again, it all amounts to a lot of time spent doing things you don’t want to do, just so you can get to the things you do.

I finally unlocked the first of three story missions after about 25 hours. That’s when Treyarch released an update for Zombies, which came with a game-breaking bug blocking access to the story missions. So that’s where I have to tap out. And honestly, after all that tedium and frustration, whatever interest I had in the story mission evaporated a long time ago. It’s also why I’m writing this review without having seen the complete Operation Deadbolt story — I’ve spent dozens of hours with it, and a couple of dedicated story missions aren’t going to redeem all the time lost trying to unlock them.

I have one final note: The sloggy progression is made even the worse by the sessions where something goes wrong. There was the game-breaking bug mentioned above (that not only blocked story advancement, it totally broke the ability to exfiltrate from the map at all, costing me all my gear) but it was far from the only time technical issues resulted in big losses. My experience – on PC – has seen five or six crashes to desktop and a number of losses of connectivity to Call of Duty’s servers. Each of those are treated as losses in Zombies, which means that through no fault of your own you lose your gear to technical snafus. Along with some smaller issues like lag and stuttering, or zombies clipping through walls you thought would keep you safe, it’s enough to kill otherwise fun runs and sap the desire to keep going back.

MapleStory, the 2D fantasy MMORPG that’s been miraculously chugging along successfully since 2003, is getting a huge new update today. And while the game still has a massive audience that you’d think would be celebrating a surge of new content, instead a major chunk of its community is furious.

From the outside looking in, the New Age update seems fairly innocuous. Its most notable change is adding a sixth job advancement to MapleStory, which if you’re not familiar with the game, effectively allows players to grow their respective classes and skills further than ever before. The update also includes a new area to explore, Identisk, and the return of “Burning” events that offer much-needed, major EXP boosts to players. There’s a lot to be excited about here, but the baggage that comes with it has players up in arms, demanding a boycott and claiming that the so-called “New Age” update should really be dubbed the “Sewage” update.