Category: IGN

For a limited time, Amazon has brought back one of its best power bank deals from Black Friday. The Anker Zolo 10,000mAh 30W USB Power Bank is back down to only $15.59, a 40% discount from its original $26 price. This is an excellent deal for an Anker-branded 10,000mAh power bank that can fast charge a Nintendo Switch console at its maximum rate. The Zolo is compact, can completely recharge a Switch console more than once, and has a couple of unique nifty features, like a built-in USB cable and a discrete digital display. Plus, it’s decked out in a rare pastel blue, pink, and white color schemes.

Anker Zolo 10,000mAh USB Power Bank for $15.59

Treyarch and Raven Software have published patch notes for their December 10 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone update, revealing a list of changes that will impact the current weapon meta.

The team behind the latest Season 1 update unveiled all of the changes in two blog posts published on the Call of Duty website. The first covers core Black Ops 6 features, mentioning tweaks to weapon motion, aiming idle sway delay, maps, and modes. It’s an update that also comes with general adjustments to stability across the experience, including a handful of Zombies changes, too. However, the real focus of the December 10 Black Ops 6 update revolves around weapon balancing and headhsot damage.

Ubisoft has shared a deep dive into combat in the Feudal Japan-set Assassin’s Creed Shadows, detailing enemies such as wandering ronin and weapons such as katanas and the iconic hidden blade.

A blog post from Ubisoft promised a huge amount of variety in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which was originally due out in November before being delayed to February 14. “The protagonist you’re playing as and the weapon you’re using dramatically alters combat,” the developer said.

Ubisoft has already outlined the two different characters playable in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, including the stealthy assassin Naoe and savage samurai Yasuke. Putting different weapons in their hands will change the playstyle, though Naoe only has three options while Yasuke has five.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Weapons

Naoe’s standard weapon is a katana, a slim sword with a good balance of speed, damage output, and defense. Correctly timed attacks stagger enemies and the katana also allows a nasty takedown through folding doors.

When stealth goes wrong and full combat is required, Naoe may prefer to use the Kusarigama, an extendable ball and chain attached to a scythe which can reach enemies a a distance and push back multiple at once. Once some distance is created, players can use the Rush Assassinate attack to close the distance and take down an enemy up to ten metres away.

Finally, for pure stealth approaches, the Tanto and Hidden Blade combo allows for lightning fast stabs, dubbed “the ideal weapon for that strike-and-retreat, death-by-a-thousand-cuts playstyle.” This option unlocks Double Assassinations, the iconic takedown method finally returning in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Yasuke’s weapons are fully catered to cutting down enemies in open combat, as his basic weapon is a long katana equally efficient in attack and defense. Also capable of fighting multiple enemies at once is the Naginata, a two metre long pole with blade on the end.

Ubisoft deems the Kanabo the deadliest weapon possessed by Yasuke, however, as this long wooden mace of sorts can break through enemies’ defenses with ease, at the cost of speed and mobility, of course. Yasuke also has two ranged weapons, the long range yumi bow and destructive teppo rifle.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Enemies

Players will have plenty of opportunities to use these weapons as Assassin’s Creed Shadows features “numerous and varied” enemies. These include outlaws, ashigaru soldiers, ronin, samurai, samurai daisho, and guardians.

Outlaws and ashigaru soldiers are the meekest among them, the former being regular bandits roaming Japan and the latter being standard foot soldiers who are trained in the basics but no more.

Samurai are a harder chalenge. “Superb warriors, well-trained and fierce in combat, samurai can carry a wide variety of weapons, from their trusty katana to the mighty kanabo; they can also wear an impressive selection of armor sets, including some very high level end game ame sets, and employ a surprising number of attacks and counterattacks in a fight,” Ubisoft said.

These offshoot in three different ways too. Ronin are paradoxically described as “masterless samurai” but “in the employ of Naoe and Yasuke’s enemies,” so will wander the land and attack the player on sight. Samurai daisho go the other way, as these enemies are only found in military castles and usually defend some serious loot.

Finally, guardians are an elite group of samurai used as reinforcements when the alarm is raised in any given province. “With their unmistakable white manes and facemasks, Guardians aim to strike fear in their opponents, and offer some of the most difficult combat you’ll find in Assassin’s Creed Shadows,” Ubisoft said.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Combat

Fans of more modern Assassin’s Creed games will be familiar with the Dark Souls-esque combat returning in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Players can once again deploy simple light attacks and heavy attacks alongside what’s called a posture attack: essentially a charged version of either basic move.

“Mixing light, heavy and posture attacks is the best way to build up different types of complex combos,” Ubisoft said, and players should look to put enemies in a vulnerable state. This is a short window where devastating damage can be dealt.

Players can once again dodge to avoid incoming attacks, plus deflect and parry with their own weapons. Blocking is a mechanic unique to Yasuke, allowing him “to turtle up behind his weapon and withstand attacks including incoming arrows or kunai.”

Familiar combat actions including flurry attacks, unstoppable actions, and defensive actions are also making a return, alongside typical skills and ability mechanics.

Ubisoft is changing up a handful of practices behind the scenes of Assassin’s Creed Shadows despite bringing back old mechanics. It’s ditching its main paid content model of releasing a Season Pass with two main, paid expansion drops in the year after launch, for example. The faux “early access” period that sees publishers charge players more to play on the actual release date instead of three days later has also been scrapped.

Releasing myriad pieces of downloadable content for free will perhaps bring some Assassin’s Creed fans back on-side in what’s otherwise been a particularly rough pre-launch campaign for Ubisoft.

Issues began as some fans expressed frustration with inaccuracies in the game’s depiction of Japan, leading the development team to issue an apology and say the game is not intended to be a factual representation of history but instead “a compelling, historical fiction.” This despite art director Thierry Dansereau telling IGN that Ubisoft looked to make Shadows as “authentic as possible to match historical events” just two months prior.

Concern was also raised when the developer used a flag from a Japanese historical re-enactment group in artwork for Assassin’s Creed Shadows without permission. Ubisoft apologized for doing so but refused to remove the artwork from the aforementioned and presumably already printed artbook available in the Collector’s Edition. The historical re-enactment group said this was not good enough, but Ubisoft hasn’t publicly acknowledged it since.

Yet another controversy came as collectible figure maker PureArts removed an Assassin’s Creed Shadows statue from sale over its “insensitive” design.

All this comes as fans are already frustrated by the delay to the game, which puts Assassin’s Creed Shadows in more direct competition with PlayStation’s Ghost of Tsushima sequel, Ghost of Yotei. This is also expected in 2025 and is another open-world action adventure game set in Feudal Japan.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot maintained confidence, however. “There’s a lot of space for very high-quality games, and those two games can sell very well,” he said in the company’s latest earnings call. “The focus is to really make sure that we deliver a fantastic experience with this dual protagonist approach and two different and complimentary gameplays.”

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

Mortal Kombat 1 developer NetherRealm has revealed a first look at Conan the Barbarian gameplay with a teaser video that also confirms the DLC character’s release date.

Conan the Barbarian’s early access release date is set for January 21, 2025, with a general release planned for a week later. In the video, below, we see Conan go up against Mortal Kombat’s villainous warmonger Shao Kahn and deliver the iconic line: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you.” Shao Kahn, clearly recognising the wisdom of the words, replies: “Truly, what is best in life.” The pair are kindred spirits, it seems.

Conan the Barbarian joins the #MortalKombat1 roster Jan 21, 2025!#Conan #ConanTheBarbarian pic.twitter.com/e6OXoggnDx

— Ed Boon (@noobde) December 10, 2024

In the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s titular character is asked: “what is best in life?” He responds: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.” It sounds like NetherRealm left that last bit out.

As for the gameplay, Conan plays as you’d expect, with what looks like a fairly straightforward use of his Atlantean Sword. We see a number of flashy moves fans of the film will find familiar, including Conan’s sword swirl. Conan can deflect projectiles, too.

One open question is who voices Conan in Mortal Kombat 1? It seems likely that Chris Cox, who voiced the Terminator in Mortal Kombat 11, plays Conan here, given publisher Warner Bros. would probably have trumpeted getting Arnie in if it had managed it.

Conan the Barbarian is the fifth DLC character to be released for Mortal Kombat 1’s Kombat Pack 2, and follows Noob Saibot, Cyrax, Sektor, and last month’s addition of Ghostface from the Scream films. The sixth and final DLC character is T-1000 Terminator. Warner Bros. is yet to announce a third Kombat Pack or a new set of DLC characters.

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.

Amazon has just launched a brand new sale of some of the most popular board games available at the moment, including discounts on Azul, Catan, Ticket to Ride, and more.

Azul is undoubtedly the highlight of the sale, especially for those who might have missed the Black Friday discounts last month. It’s down to $15.99 when you clip the list voucher on Amazon, over 50% off its original list price of $39.99. It’s a brilliant board game, and quite rightly earned a spot on IGN’s list of the best family board games, and received a highly recommended 8/10 in our review.

But Azul isn’t the only board game in the sale, no matter how popular it is. Other top discounts include games like Pandemic, where players must work together playing to their characters’ strengths as they plan their strategy of eradicating the diseases before they overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks. It’s down to $18.39 when clipping the list voucher.

Then there are also absolute classics like Ticket to Ride or Catan, both also down to just $20.39 when clipping the voucher. While Azul is a couple of dollars more than the Black Friday sales, both Ticket to Ride and Catan are actually less, as each was listed for $25 over the past few weeks.

That makes this an excellent opportunity to stock on up on more board games ready for the holiday play sessions. For more board game roundups, check out the best roll-and-write games, and the best deck-building games.

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

Sony has added a handful of beloved PS2 games to its PlayStation Plus Classic Games Catalog such as those from the Sly Cooper and Jak and Daxter franchises today, December 10.

The three games previously announced by Sony are available to players with the most expensive PS Plus Premium subscription. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves can all be downloaded now.

Sony will announce the full collection of December’s games coming to not just the Classic Games Catalog but the regular Games Catalog tomorrow, December 13.

All three games were well-received when IGN reviewed them upon release in the 2000s. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy earned a 9/10, when IGN called it “really something special” and said “it has that magical feeling that not all games can possess and it’s just flat out a joy to play.”

Sly 2: Band of Thieves also received a 9/10. “The amount of creativity that is packed into the different quests and the various characters is nothing short of amazing and it all combines to form a mega fun adventure,” we said.

Finally, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves is a touch lower but still well praised at 8/10. “It’s still a fun ride and many of the new additions work out well, especially the pirate sections, but there are enough rocky spots to make the game feel kind of awkward and hold it back from being truly great,” we said.

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

Changes are coming to action role-playing game Path of Exile 2 thick and fast following its huge Early Access launch, with a new hotfix out now.

In a post on the Path of Exile forum, developer Grinding Gear Games published a list of issues it felt needed to be “urgently addressed,” with other less urgent issues to be tackled later on. Chief among them is the feeling that Path of Exile 2 isn’t rewarding enough, something GGG acknowledged is a problem.

“One of the major problems that players have been experiencing is feeling that the game is not rewarding enough,” it said. “This is an area that we have to be very careful when adjusting because it’s very hard to reduce drops if we increase them by too much.”

Specifically, GGG felt that rare monsters were not rewarding enough, especially in the endgame where unique monsters are less common. GGG also saw that the reward players received for the increased difficulty of rares wasn’t lining up.

So, it’s doubling the rarity bonus per rare mod, increasing the quantity bonus per rare mod by 10%, and increasing the chance of rare monsters inherently having more modifiers as players progress through endgame.

“These changes will cause rare monster rewards to naturally scale up as you get to higher levels because the number of mods a monster can have increases throughout the campaign and into endgame,” GGG explained.

“In addition, many other forms of map juicing will indirectly cause rare monsters to have more mods as well, increasing the rewards of these other mechanics too.”

Meanwhile, GGG is changing the game to make sure each map has a minimum number of rares, which will also increase the average number of rare mods and thus increase drops further.

Another major issue GGG has identified is outlier “unlucky” drops. “A single unique boss dropping badly, especially early on can significantly affect your character,” GGG admitted. Changes here include no more than 50% of a unique monster’s drops can be gold, and act bosses and map bosses will now always drop at least one rare.

Elsewhere, GGG is making dodge roll changes after players complained about being trapped in by monsters. “While it is intended that monsters are able to trap and kill you, we felt that the frequency of this was a little too high,” GGG explained.

GGG has posted the first set of patch notes for these changes, with more to come as they’re rolled out. Check out the patch notes for 0.1.0c below (you will need to restart your client to receive the client changes in this patch).

GGG is already nerfing a number of Path of Exile 2 skills it’s deemed to have “unacceptable balance.” And in a fresh tweet, the developer said it plans to nerf Raging Spirits so it can only summon five Raging Spirits per cast at all levels. They will also no longer be able to be spawned from triggered Fire Skills. Players are already calling on GGG to give all a full character respec opportunity as a result.

In an upcoming hotfix, we’ll be making it so that Raging Spirits can only summon 5 Raging Spirits per cast at all levels. They will also no longer be able to be spawned from triggered Fire Skills.

After this hotfix, we will be making adjustments to other Trigger Meta-Gems. In…

— Path of Exile (@pathofexile) December 10, 2024

Here’s which class to pick in PoE 2 Early Access, plus an early Mercenary build guide and Sorceress build guide to help you get started. Beyond that, if you’re wondering how to get more Spirit, how to trade, and how to ascend, we’ve got you covered.

Path of Exile 2 update 0.1.0c Patch Notes

• Campaign bosses killed after the first kill will now drop less currency items, replacing them with other items.
• Increased the drop rate of Regal Orbs.
• Significantly increased the drop rate of Gemcutter’s Prisms.
• A single Gemcutter’s Prism also improves the Quality of a Skill Gem by +5% (previously +1%).
• Lowered the drop rate of Chaos Orbs and distributed it amongst the other more valued Currency Items (Like Regal Orbs, Exalted Orbs).
• Lowered the drop rate of Artificer’s Orbs and distributed it to Lesser Jeweller’s Orbs.
• Disenchanting Rare Items with 6 Modifiers now provides 2 Regal Shards (previously 1). The value displayed will still show as 1 until a later patch.
• Increased the values of all Prefix Modifiers that can roll on Waystones. We’ve also adjusted the chances of getting the more commonly powerful Modifiers such as increases to Rarity and Pack Size.
• Monster Modifiers now grant higher amounts of Item Rarity and Item Quantity. This is most common on Magic and Rare enemies, but also affects Unique Enemies if applied through various Endgame Mechanics like the Deadly Evolution Keystone.
• Increased the chance for Rare Monsters in Maps to have 3 or 4 modifiers.
• Rare Monsters in Map areas are now revealed on the minimap when there are 200 Monsters remaining (previously 50).
• Fixed a bug where some Persistent Buff Skills, such as Raging Spirits and Mana Remnants, were not working for the Infernalist when in Demon Form.
• Fixed a bug where you could sometimes be unable to interact with the Map Device in The Ziggurat Refuge.
• Fixed a bug where Monsters Shattered in a Blood Circle Ultimatum Encounter were not contributing blood.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the instance to permanently stop time (freeze) when trying to revive a Chronomancer.
• Fixed a bug where Rare Monsters could not be found within the Chimeral Wetlands.
• Fixed a bug where “Move only” was name-locking.
• Fixed three instance crashes.
• Fixed a client crash.

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.