Free-to-Play Strategy RPG Girls Frontline 2: Exilium Launches on PC and Mobile

The Girls Frontline series is back with the free-to-play strategy RPG Girls Frontline 2: Exilium, which recently launched on PC and mobile. It introduces a new cast of characters and fully 3D maps while building on the groundwork laid by its predecessor.

If you’re not familiar with the franchise, this is a sequel to the 2018 free-to-play mobile game Girls Frontline. It introduced a war-torn future world in which much of humanity has died, and they now rely on androids called Tactical Dolls, also known as T-Dolls or Dolls, to fight their battles for them. Players took on the role of a commander in charge of Doll combat teams, known as echelons. The first title spawned a manga and multiple anime series, and now the sequel follows in their footsteps.

Girls Frontline 2: Exilium picks up 10 years later and features significant gameplay evolution. You still play as the same commander from the first game, but your team has been disbanded and you are now a bounty hunter. You’ll need to recruit new Dolls to form a squad and lead them in turn-based combat as you try to uncover the truth behind a growing conspiracy.

Combat has gotten a big overhaul. The original featured a 2D map that you would move echelons across to engage enemies, at which point you’d enter combat that was based on where characters were placed within a formation. Girls Frontline 2: Exilium is fully 3D with tactical combat, and you take direct control of each character to move them across the map and execute commands.

Dolls are anime-style personifications of a wide variety of real-world weapons and come equipped with those weapons, including handguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, and shotguns. Each weapon has been created in 3D, is viewable from any angle, and can be displayed in your personal weapon gallery. You’ll also be able to apply different skins to your weapons, giving you some customization options for your collection.

Characters are grouped into classes that define their combat role. Bulwarks are your classic tanks, acting as frontline fighters who can provide defensive buffs to your team. Sentinels are your primary offensive characters, focused on dishing out as much damage as possible. Vanguards can help provide damage too, but their biggest advantage is their high mobility, which allows them to set up flanking maneuvers on enemies. And finally, Supports provide healing or buff their teammates.

Each character is weak to one element and one ammo type, so you need to be careful how you build each of your combat teams. You don’t want them all to be weak to the same attacks. Enemies have these weaknesses too, so you’re incentivized to build a team capable of capitalizing on a wide range of weaknesses to turn combat in your favor.

Unlike its predecessor, Girls Frontline 2 allows you to move characters freely around the battlefield during combat and find objects to take cover behind. When a character is behind cover, damage against them will be dramatically reduced. But hitting them with attacks they’re weak against will drain their Stability stat, and once that reaches zero, their defense will be broken and they’ll no longer get the benefits of being behind cover.

That means you need to be strategic about how you use each of your characters. Since enemies are weak to an element and an ammo type, it’s possible for one character with the right combination of attributes to hit both weaknesses with one attack. That drains Stability even faster, which quickly breaks enemies’ defenses and leaves them susceptible to devastating follow-up attacks.

Outside of combat, you can also spend down time with your squad members in the Refitting Room or Dormitory. Both offer full 3D interactivity and show off the game’s non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) anime art style. You’ll need to recruit new characters to expand your squad, and Girls Frontline 2 is celebrating release by providing in-game rewards that can help.

You can get a rundown of all the goodies on offer in the image above, including codes you can redeem and rewards from multiple events. If you want to jump in, you can download Girls Frontline 2: Exilium now on PC, iOS, or Android. To stay up to date on the latest info, you can visit the official website or join the community on Twitter, YouTube, or Discord.

How Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Evolves Its Combat

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 had a weighty task to spar with: following up on one of the most in-depth, skill-based, historically-inspired melee combat systems to ever slice its way into the RPG world. But it’s no secret that it was an uphill battle just to become competent with the first game’s complex directional strikes and precisely-timed blocks. Plenty of players bounced off of those demanding skill requirements. But the technical demands of the combat, and the feeling of getting better as a player, were also a huge part of what made it great.

Warhorse’s goal for the sequel, then, was twofold. They wanted to lower the skill floor required to play competently – without getting your butt handed to you in a cloth sack by any random bandit – but also raise the skill ceiling required to take on the very most unforgiving optional challenges. In terms of the story, this checks out. Henry was a complete nobody in KCD1, but by the time the sequel begins, he’s been an aspiring swordsman for quite a while now. It wouldn’t really make sense for him to still be struggling against poorly-trained opponents.

On Your Left…

The first way this is obvious is that KCD1’s five attack directions have been reduced to four: up, down, left, and right. Swords use all four, but not all weapons do. Polearms, for instance, generally only have three, which is something to consider when choosing a fighting style. KCD1 also had two different attack buttons: slash and stab. In KCD2, all basic attacks are generally slashing. Thrusts still exist as part of multi-hit combos, but only on weapons where they make sense. You won’t be poking people with the tip of a blunt weapon like a mace, for instance.

Warhorse wanted to lower the skill floor required to play competently – without getting your butt handed to you in a cloth sack by any random bandit – but also raise the skill ceiling required to take on the very most unforgiving optional challenges.

Blocking can now defend you from multiple opponents, as long as they’re all in front of you. And finally, the parry system feels a bit more intuitive and forgiving. Aiming your parries correctly still matters, but more so against tougher enemies. And even in that case, you’ll mostly be punished for blocking in the opposite direction of their attack, rather than any direction that wasn’t the correct one. That is, you don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to avoid getting it completely wrong.

This all cuts down on the number of possible decisions you might have to weigh at any given moment in combat. But managing stamina, watching opponents, and making good decisions is still important. This is paired with the fact that a lot of the early-game enemies are now tuned to be Henry’s martial inferiors, so you can cut your teeth on some fights where you’re favored to win before taking on tougher opponents – a big change from getting beaten up by the town drunk in the first hour of KCD1.

Way of the Blade

If you’ve mastered the first game’s combat, though, Warhorse doesn’t want to leave you without new mountains to climb. The very most skilled players will find that the ceiling has been raised as well. One major focus for this change is to the master strike, a late-game ability Henry could learn that had the potential to trivialize most encounters if you got really good with it.

“In KCD1, perfect blocking and master striking was super useful and basically, if you were willing to play very defensively, you could have overcome everything with just this move,” lead designer Prokop Jirsa explained. “It doesn’t work like that in KCD2. There’s still master strike but it’s much harder to implement and there’s defenses even against master strike.”

Basically, the best fighters out there aren’t going to fall for your master strike spam anymore. And you’ll be encouraged to take a more aggressive approach, rather than sitting back and waiting for your opponent to make a mistake. You’ll also need to focus more on varying up your moves and using all of the tools available to you. And that range of tools has been expanded.

Armed to the Teeth

The flashiest new additions are crossbows and guns. It’s 1403, so we’re talking about very primitive guns that take forever to reload and aren’t accurate at all beyond a few paces. But if they’re pointed the right way at close enough range, they’ll do some serious damage. They have a psychological impact, too. Enemies in KCD2 will decide if it’s still worth fighting based on how the fight is going and how tough they think they are. If you take out the captain with a loud boom and a flash of fire, his underlings might just head for the hills. Nobody’s getting paid enough to deal with whatever that thing is.

And while the sword is still the most versatile weapon, the new combo system gives you more reason to use other melee weapons as well. One example Jirsa gave was how maces have some unique combos that can target joints or unarmored areas on a target. If you notice your foe isn’t wearing any leg armor, for instance, you could specifically execute a combo that goes for the legs without having to manually aim down at them.

For those of the sneakier persuasion, stealth kills have also been improved. In KCD1, it was basically a dice roll comparing your stats to the stats of your target to see if an assassination would be successful, which could feel frustratingly random in such a skill-based game. KCD2 has changed things up to be timing-based instead. And you don’t need perfect timing to do away with your opponent, necessarily. But if you’re half a second off the mark, you may not pull off the kill silently, with the target’s dying screams alerting nearby allies.

Murderer’s Row

The other way Warhorse is aiming to keep combat interesting even for seasoned swordmasters is by dialing up the difficulty of the most challenging optional content. Simply following the main story shouldn’t throw anything too wildly unfair your way. But if you’re willing to go off the beaten path in search of trouble, you’ll be able to find it.

“In KCD1, actually, when you got really good, the end game was really easy,” Jirsa said. “This is something we improved in KCD2 as well. There are big challenges in the end game. There are some which even people from this office struggled to overcome.”

So whether you got scared off from the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance the first time you got turned into sashimi by some Cumans, or you’re on your third playthrough and can throw down master strikes with your eyes closed, you should find something for you in the sequel. And when all else fails, you can just bring a gun to the sword fight.

For more, stay tuned all December long as our exclusive IGN First coverage of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 continues. You should especially check out my in-depth hands-on preview for my impressions of this new combat system so far!

Rockstar Could Easily Announce the GTA 6 Trailer 2 Release Date but It’s Staying Quiet ‘On Purpose’ Because ‘It’s a Really Good Marketing Tactic,’ Ex-Dev Says

A former developer at Rockstar has expressed his delight at the many wild conspiracy theories surrounding Grand Theft Auto 6, insisting staff at the studio will be enjoying watching the community go off the deep end.

Rockstar released GTA 6 Trailer 1 to record-breaking viewership in December 2023, but it hasn’t released a single asset in the 12 months since. The year-long wait for more information has fueled increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories about when Rockstar will release GTA 6 Trailer 2.

These have included counting the holes in Lucia’s cell door net, the bullet holes in the car from Trailer 1, and even registration plates as they hunt for GTA 6 clues. But chief among the conspiracy theories is GTA 6’s ongoing moon watch, which was, remarkably, proven to have accurately predicted the date Rockstar announced when it would release GTA 6 Trailer 1 last December, but debunked as a hint at the release date for Trailer 2.

Mike York, who worked as an animator at Rockstar New England for six years helping to build Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 before leaving the company in 2017, is a big fan of all the fuss, taking to his YouTube channel to explain that the developers at Rockstar will be getting a kick out of it too.

“All the developers over there are geeking out about it, trust me,” he said. “When I was over there I would have little conversations with people and be like, ‘Did you hear this person found this mystery?’ And they’d go, ‘Oh yeah!’ “

York also suggested that Rockstar is playing up to the conspiracy theories, deliberately avoiding saying anything about the game or when Trailer 2 will be released in order to fuel even more speculation within the community.

“They’re reaching and pulling and trying to come up with these really cool theories to decipher when the next trailer will be,” he said of fans.

“Specifically Rockstar, they’re very secretive about what they do, and this is a really cool tactic because it creates allure and it creates mystery and it creates people talking about it without them having to do anything. The more they’re silent the better it is, because the more people will be antsy and want to talk about it and have this feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen.”

York went on to say that Rockstar is likely resisting pressure from its army of fans to announce the GTA 6 Trailer 2 release date for this exact reason.

“They could easily release the trailer date and be like, ‘Hey this is when the trailer’s coming out,’ but they don’t do it. And they don’t do it on purpose because it’s a really, really good marketing tactic. If you think about it, it creates these really cool theories.

“This brings the fans together. This is a really cool way to get fans to talk about your game when you’re not releasing anything yet, in-between the times.

“All these theories are great. They only create hype, they create talk, they create mystery behind the games.”

Could Rockstar actually be placing clues to things like trailer release dates in GTA Online images, as the moon theory has suggested? Probably not, York said.

“A lot of these things are like trolls,” he added. “It’s a mystery to nowhere. It’s just to have you dig in there and search for stuff and find it. And even though it won’t lead to something, it’s something that can bring a chase and a journey and an adventure for all these players for years to come.

“As a developer, it was really cool to sit down and look at these comments that people leave and these conspiracy theories that they come up with, because a lot of them are super elaborate, and they take a lot of time to come up with. It really goes to show the passion behind all these fans behind this franchise, because these people are taking hours and hours and hours out of their day to try to go after these theories, and it’s really fun.”

It is remarkable that Rockstar has gone a year without following up GTA 6 Trailer 1 with any new information at all. With GTA 6’s fall 2025 release window on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S still on the cards, according to Take-Two, you’d expect Rockstar to pipe up sooner rather than later.

While you wait to find out, IGN has much more on GTA 6 to check out, including an ex-Rockstar dev who says the studio probably won’t be able to decide whether GTA 6 is delayed until May 2025, the boss of Take-Two’s coy response on whether GTA 6 is coming to PC, and the expert opinion on whether the PS5 Pro will run GTA 6 at 60 frames per second.

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.

Days After Shutting XDefiant and Laying Off Hundreds of Staff, Ubisoft Is Reportedly Considering How to Structure a Tencent Buyout Without the Guillemot Family Losing Control

Ubisoft’s share price skyrocketed today amid intensifying rumors that Chinese megacorp Tencent is engaged in buyout talks.

The company behind Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six Siege has suffered a torrid year, with multiple studio closures, mass layoffs, and game shutdowns. The company’s next big game, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, was delayed into 2025, and Star Wars Outlaws failed to meet sales expectations.

According to Reuters, Ubisoft shareholders are “considering” how to structure a possible buyout of the French company without reducing the founding Guillemot family’s control. The Guillemot family is the largest shareholder in Ubisoft and is reportedly in talks with Tencent and “other investors” as it seeks funding a management buyout. Tencent is the second-largest shareholder in Ubisoft with 10% and, according to Reuters, has yet to decide whether to fund the buyout.

Reuters said Tencent’s indecision is “partly because it has asked for a greater say on future board decisions including cash flow distribution in return for financing the deal.” Apparently the Guillemot family has yet to agree to those terms, but Tencent is willing to wait for them to come around.

Tencent declined to comment when contacted by Reuters, with a Guillemot family rep failing to respond. But a Ubisoft spokesperson did comment, saying: “We remain committed to making decisions in the best interests of all of our stakeholders. In this context, as we have already indicated, the Company is also reviewing all its strategic options.”

Ubisoft’s shares fell to their lowest level in the last decade in September after it made a series of dramatic announcements around the performance of its games. As well as delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft announced a return to Steam after a period of PC launch exclusivity on the Epic Games Store, with Star Wars Outlaws recently releasing on Valve’s platform.

This latest news comes hot on the heels of Ubisoft’s announcement that it plans to shut down Call of Duty competitor XDefiant and its production studios in San Francisco and Osaka while ramping down its site in Sydney, with up to 277 employees losing their jobs. Roughly half of the XDefiant team will be assigned roles elsewhere.

Shares in Ubisoft are up 12.52% today, December 6, following the Tencent buyout reports.

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.

IGN UK Podcast 777: Indiana Jones and the Great Game

Cardy, Matt, and Jesse have all been playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Could it make a late game of the year surge? Listen to find out. Also out this week is Marvel Rivals, a new hero shooter that certainly doesn’t lack heroes. Is it good? Again, listen to find out. Then there’s Secret Level, the animated video game Prime series. Want to know if it’s worth watching? I’d listen to find out. And as for Clint Eastwood’s courtroom thriller Juror #2? Just listen, innit.

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.

IGN UK Podcast 777: Indiana Jones and the Great Game

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Patch 5 Release Date Confirmed, New Screenshot Shows a Blood Raven Holding (Stealing?) Something Players Haven’t Seen in the Game So Far

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 publisher Focus Entertainment has confirmed a December 10 release date for the hotly anticipated Patch 5 and Dark Angels Chapter Pack, and released a new screenshot showing something players haven’t seen in the game yet.

Focus has said Patch 5 makes the recently released Neo-Volkite Pistol (the one players were using to recreate Ghostbusters) available in PvP, adds a new PvE Operation called Obelisk, the new Tzaangor Enlightened Majoris enemy, and the aforementioned Dark Angels Chapter Pack, which includes a unique armor set and banner for the Bulwark Class.

In a tweet, Focus released four new screenshots (below) showing off the new content, but there’s one image in particular that’s set tongues wagging within the community.

This image, below, shows a Blood Raven (the chapter created for Relic Entertainment’s Dawn of War series) holding what looks like a chalice in one hand and a pistol in the other, while staring down at a potential enemy. Whatever it is, the object is not currently in the game, at least not in a form that can be held by the player.

What could this chalice represent? Current theories include a raid-style mechanic for the new Operation (perhaps it needs to be held by a player for a certain amount of time). This would make sense in the context of what we know about the Operation from Focus itself. As a reminder, here’s what the publisher has said:

Called Obelisk, you’ll be sent to Demerium and your mission is to rotate a replica of the obelisk to disrupt the flow of energy protecting the Aurora device. This operation takes place in parallel to the final events of the campaign.

To reach the console control of the obelisk, you’ll have to make it through a tomb plunged into darkness. To make your progression even tougher, the Chaos forces see a new addition to their roster: the Tzaangor Enlightened, a new Majoris enemy! They will now appear in every PvE Operation with Chaos.

Perhaps the chalice the Blood Raven is holding in the image is used to light the way to the console, but this is purely speculation on my part. Either way, it looks like we’re seeing the Space Marine from the perspective of a downed enemy, which suggests it’s been obtained during a firefight or perhaps even stolen from something.

December 10, by the way, is also the release date of Amazon’s Secret Level anthology series, which includes a Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 animation that acts as a sequel to the events of the game. Check out IGN’s Secret Level review for more.

In September, Saber Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits told IGN how the breakout success of Space Marine 2 had “changed everything” for the company. Eagle-eyed fans have spotted the Space Marine chapter now all-but confirmed to get a cosmetic pack after the Dark Angels, too.

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.

Sony Signed an Exclusivity Deal for GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas Because It Was ‘Worried’ About Xbox, Former Exec Reveals

Sony’s original PlayStation exclusivity deal for Grand Theft Auto 3 and the following two games in the series was in part a reaction to concern about Microsoft’s launch of the Xbox, a former executive has revealed.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, former PlayStation Europe boss Chris Deering (who was recently criticized for saying laid off developers should “drive an Uber” or “go to the beach for a year”) admitted Sony was concerned about the November 2001 launch of the original Xbox, and sought exclusivity deals with third-party publishers to bolster the appeal of the PlayStation 2.

“We were worried when we saw Xbox coming,” Deering said. “We knew exclusivity was the name of the game in a lot of fields, like Sky TV with sports. Just as Christmas was approaching when Xbox would launch, a few of us went out to our favourite third-party publishers and developers, and we asked them, ‘How would you like a special deal if you keep your next-generation game on PlayStation exclusive for a two-year period?’ And one of the deals we made was with Take-Two for the next three Grand Theft Auto games. At the time, it wasn’t clear that Grand Theft Auto 3 was going to be as huge as it was, because it used to be a top-down game.

“It was very lucky for us. And actually lucky for them, because they got a discount on the royalty they paid. Those deals aren’t uncommon in industries with platforms. Including today with things like social media.”

As a result of this deal, Grand Theft Auto 3 released in October 2001 as a PS2 exclusive, a month before the original Xbox came out. The game released in May 2002 on PC, and then, two years after the PlayStation launch and after this exclusivity deal ended, in November 2003 for the Xbox.

As Deering mentioned, Sony’s Grand Theft Auto exclusivity deal was for three games, so included Vice City, which came out in October 2002 for the PS2 first, and San Andreas, which released in October 2004 for the PS2 first. Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City hit Xbox together as a pack late 2003, with San Andreas launching in June 2005.

The deal worked out perfectly for both Sony and Rockstar parent company Take-Two, as Deering suggests. Indeed, San Andreas ended up the best-selling PS2 game of all time, Vice City the third best, and Grand Theft Auto 3 the fifth best. Only Gran Turismo came close the the sales the Grand Theft Auto games posted on PS2.

The exclusivity deal also helped cement Grand Theft Auto as a PlayStation-first series, and while Grand Theft Auto 4 and Grand Theft Auto 5 launched on PlayStation and Xbox at the same time, Rockstar’s open-world crime epic is still strongly associated with Sony’s consoles, even now. In fact, a number of Grand Theft Auto games made IGN’s Top 100 Best PlayStation Games of All Time list.

But what about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6? It’s due out on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S at the same time in the fall of 2025, but marketing deals with either Sony or Microsoft have yet to be announced, if they exist at all.

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.

‘We Never Expected Things to Go This Big During Early Access’ — Path of Exile 2 Dev Braces Itself for Over 1 Million Concurrent Players

The developer of Path of Exile 2 has warned players to brace themselves for server queues this weekend, with over one million concurrent players expected to hit the Early Access launch.

In a video message, Grinding Gear Games co-founder Jonathan Rogers spoke about anticipation for the action role-playing sequel surpassing the studio’s expectations, and expressed concern that its backend services could buckle under the weight of the Early Access release.

Path of Exile 2’s global release times set the launch for 11am PT today, December 6, and it’s at this point that the floodgates will open. Path of Exile 2 is already the top-selling game on Steam by revenue, suggesting Rogers’ concern is well-placed. Whether the game is up to the task of coping with what’s coming, however, remains to be seen, with sales still increasing, Rogers said.

“We’ve just reached one million Early Access redemptions,” Rogers revealed in the video message. “The support you have all shown for Path of Exile 2 Early Access is far beyond anything we could have ever predicted. However we want to be upfront with you all and let you know there may very well be queues over the weekend.

“There are probably going to be some queues during the launch weekend. Before our announcement, when we were ordering capacity, we really didn’t expect to have more than a million people online at the same time.

“We’ve already ordered way more cloud capacity, and those servers will be coming online very soon, but I do have some concerns about issues with the backend. We quite frankly don’t know what our backend services are going to be able to handle as we go above a million users.

“We’ve added more database shards, scaling everything we have up as far as it will go. But we’re really not sure what kind of limits we might hit. We never expected things to go this big during EA [Early Access].

“So I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you guys so much for believing in this project. If we do run into server issues at launch, just know that we’re going to be working as hard as we can to solve them.”

Path of Exile 2 is GGG’s hotly anticipated free-to-play action role-playing sequel set years after the original game. Players return to the world of Wraeclast and seek to end a spreading corruption, with six character classes, each with two Ascendancy Classes, available to play at the launch of Early Access later this week. There’s co-op for up to six players, but you can play solo. Check out IGN’s Path of Exile 2 preview, where we gave the Mercenary class a whirl and got a first look at the endgame, for more.

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.

Marvel Rivals Launches to Huge Steam Concurrents

Marvel Rivals enjoyed an immediate huge launch, with over 440,000 concurrent players on Steam alone.

NetEase’s free-to-play Marvel-themed hero shooter saw a peak concurrent player count of 444,286 on Valve’s platform. But the true concurrent figure will be much higher given Marvel Rivals launched on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S also (Sony and Microsoft do not make player numbers public).

It seems to be going down well on Steam, too, with a ‘mostly positive’ user review rating from over 5,700 reviews (76% of the reviews are positive). Check out IGN’s Marvel Rivals Review in Progress to find out what we think.

For NetEase, it will be hoping not only to keep Marvel Rivals’ player count as high as possible for as long as possible (something that’s proved particularly tricky for live service games of late), but to make enough money from players to meet the company’s internal revenue projections. To that end, Marvel Rivals sells a battle pass and premium skins. But is it paying off? The game is currently third in Steam’s top-sellers list, which is sorted by revenue, behind only the pricey Steam Deck and Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile 2. This suggests Marvel Rivals is already convincing players to open their wallets.

Marvel Rivals launched alongside Season 0, dubbed Dooms’ Rise. This month-long kick-off season starts with a total of 33 heroes, all available to play for free, eight maps for Quick Match and Competitive modes, a Conquest map, and a Practice Range. Dooms’ Rise serves as the opening chapter “for the chaos caused by each of Doctor Dooms’ time experiments colliding and unleashing the Timestream Entanglement,” NetEase said.

There’s a Twitch Drops event for Season 0, as you’d expect from a live service game of this type, an ‘Entangled Moments’ seasonal event to unlock spray rewards, gallery card rewards, and stories for completing tasks, and a global launch gift: a special code for a free Iron Man costume.

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.

League of Legends Developer Riot Games Announces Project K, a Physical TCG Based in the League IP

Riot Games has announced Project K, the developer’s take on the physical TCG genre and a competitor to Magic: The Gathering. It’s based in the League of Legends IP and revolves around playing with friends in-person.

Riot said Project K is made by a “small” development team within the company led by game director Dave Guskin and executive producer Chengran Chai. It’s not publishing the game itself; rather, it’s found a publishing partner in China for an initial launch there in early 2025. A global launch is planned, however, and Riot is on the hunt for a publishing partner for the U.S. and other countries.

Riot said Project K is not a physical version of its existing digital collectible card game Legends of Luneterra, but “it does inherit some of the rich champion design philosophies of lore,” and also benefits from art drawn from other League IP games. Riot added that it wants to create “a thriving community with a competitive ecosystem,” and hopes for national and even global tournaments.

Project K appears to be Rune Battlegrounds, which was teased earlier this year by Riot’s team in China. A trailer showed off popular League characters such as Darius, Ahri, and Miss Fortune. At the time, Riot said it had no plans for a global release, but those plans have now changed.

It’s a busy time for League, which has just wrapped up Netflix animated show Arcane with the release of Season 2. As well as continued work on the hugely popular MOBA, League of Legends, it’s working on a League fighting game called 2XKO, and has a digital card game called Legends of Runeterra. There’s a League MMO in the works, too, although Riot has indicated it will be some time before it’s ready to show it off.

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.