Category: IGN

If you’ve been waiting to score some great deals on games to play on your PlayStation 5, now’s the season to do it. Amazon’s Black Friday Week sales have some appealing offers on newer games, including the highly enjoyable Astro Bot. Astro Bot is discounted by $10 in its first sale since release. Bring home this delightful game and explore a world full of video game character cameos (including a Guilty Badguy I’m partial to), visually striking environments, and competitive leaderboards for challenge stages.

Astro Bot (PS5) on Sale for $49.99

• See it at Amazon
• See it at Best Buy
• See it at GameStop
• See it at Walmart

If you’re looking for more game deals, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (which is fantastic) is at its lowest price ever, Elden Ring did too, and the PSVR 2 Horizon: Call of the Mountain bundle is $250 off.

In our 9/10 review from earlier this year, Simon Cardy wrote: “A collection of endlessly inventive levels and fantastically fun abilities, it delivers joy in spades, never once becoming even remotely dull or repetitive. And while you don’t need a long history with Sony systems to enjoy it, it is especially a delight for those with a piece of PlayStation in their heart as a treasure trove full of playable nostalgia awaits. Taking the PS5 marketing mantra that ‘play has no limits’ more seriously than you’d expect, Team Asobi has crafted a mascot platformer that goes near enough toe-to-toe with Nintendo’s best efforts, and that’s about as high a compliment as I can give it.”

For more Black Friday goodies, be sure to check out the Best PS5 Game Deals and our hub of other Amazon deals already available. If you’ve been looking to score a great gaming PC deal, Black Friday is one of the best times to shop for them, and we’ve gathered a ton from AlienWare, HP, and more to help you out.

For a peek at what deals are still to come, check out the Target hub, the Best Buy deals already going, and the best LEGO deals we’ve found so far. For the laundry list of all the best deals from across the web, we have our Black Friday megahub.

When Is Black Friday 2024?

We’re in the home stretch: Black Friday falls on November 29 this year. All month long, retailers have been rolling out sales, ramping up to massive discounts on Black Friday and through the weekend into Cyber Monday. There are already some fantastic deals available on PS5 consoles (including PSVR2) and controllers, video games for all platforms, AirPods Pro, and tons more.

Brian Barnett writes reviews, guides, features, & more for IGN, GameSpot, & Kotaku. You can get more than your fair share of him on Bluesky & Backloggd, & enjoy his absurd video game talk show, The Platformers, on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Anime Vanguards Update 1.5 is now available for Roblox players, bringing new additions like Familiars, new Units, an Occult Event, and more.

The popular Roblox game’s latest update arrived from developer Kitawari today, further fleshing out the anime crossover experience with new ways to play and a batch of new customization options. Patch notes detail additions that mostly feature new toys to play with, but there’s also a solid list of improvements and bug fixes to help smoothen out the gameplay and visuals, too.

A certain kind of friction can go a long way in creating a challenging and punishing game that’s also Not that a lot of post-apocalyptic first-person shooters are, but STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is especially not for the faint of heart. It’s built to generate the kind of friction that goes a long way in creating a challenging and punishing game that’s also captivating. When you’re left to figure things out for yourself amid myriad dangers that can kill you in a moment’s notice, rarely having an easy way out of a mess, it becomes clear that the survival instincts embedded in the STALKER series are very much alive in this long-awaited sequel. But there’s also an equal and opposite force at play: the type of friction that hinders you from engaging with it in earnest, like poor technical performance, bugs that are sometimes hilarious but mostly frustrating, and nonsensical enemy behavior. Yet for all that’s working against it, there’s an underlying greatness in how STALKER 2 immerses you into the mysteries within its massive and brutal wasteland.

The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone – the site around the tragic, real-world nuclear disaster in 1986 – remains the heart of STALKER, both as a harsh and often stunning open world, and a fascinating setting that’s integral to Ukrainian history. In this fictionalized version, physics-defying anomalies work as deadly hazards scattered around its huge map, while equally dangerous mutated wildlife lurks about and supernatural phenomena amid the nuclear fallout instill a sense of danger around every corner. Various factions of Stalkers – mercenaries who make their risky living in The Zone – are also on the hunt throughout; when it’s hard to tell who’s friend or foe, it’s a harsh place to survive in, much less thrive.

In that respect, STALKER 2 is a masterclass in atmosphere: stunning dynamic weather, pitch-dark nights, and radioactive storms that paint the sky a hellish red or toxic green are as visually striking as they are petrifying. From the vistas of a sprawling wasteland you get on long, on-foot treks between missions to the dark corridors of abandoned facilities, the designers at GSC Game World create a distinct sense of place and in great detail. Even something as small as hearing the patter of rain from inside the hull of a dilapidated ship, or the strum of a guitar while sitting around a campfire, I was easily pulled into the life of a Stalker. All of that should be familiar to anyone who’s played the original STALKER games (Shadow of Chornobyl in 2007, Clear Sky in 2009, and Call of Pripyat in 2010) and as a veteran of those games myself, it’s an odd comfort to be back in The Zone and see how much it’s changed in the years since.

The main story provides a throughline to follow, but it isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to light a fire under you in its early hours. Skif – our character – is set up and betrayed in the opening mission, which leads him down a rabbit hole of finding a guy who knows where to find another guy, leading to a continuous chain of finding more guys in hopes of finally finding the actual guy you’re looking for. But once it starts to rope in the scientific organization SIRCAA and the Zone’s de facto military known as The Ward, STALKER 2 begins to show you what it’s really about. It weaves in the familiar themes seen in the previous games, such as the dangers of chasing the truth about mind-bending psi emissions, the deadly risks with research in the Zone, and the futility of cultish groups clashing with governmental organizations vying for control. While familiarity with the originals is not required to understand this new story, it was enticing to see all the ways the old STALKERs were tied-in and referenced as well.

I’m glad it drew me in because STALKER 2 is a long game – and at times, it can be exhausting since you’re constantly fighting for your life. It took me 45 hours to finish its main story, along with a good chunk of side missions and free-form exploration. Side quests can bring in some much-needed cash or lead to rare loot, or they may not even pay off in a tangible way. However, there is sometimes an intrinsic value in seeing where they take you or learning more about the world and the people. And much like how a majority of Red Dead Redemption 2 was spent horseback riding while soaking in its world, STALKER 2’s long runs across The Zone evoke a similar feeling in that lengthy runtime.

Within the main questline are some critical choices that affect the path you take along the way, mainly moments where I decided to either share or withhold important information at certain turning points, or straight-up pick a side when my back was against the wall. Although they largely lead to the same destination, the way the story context and mission objectives change makes those choices feel impactful, especially because they come up very naturally. Rarely are there explicit telegraphs for what the outcomes or consequences may be, and understanding what each choice implies requires you to really pay attention to what characters say in dialogue. And so, STALKER 2 is a suspenseful thriller with some impressive cutscenes and performances that bring the series to a new height.

Games like this are quite rare to see at such a scale these days, and even 14 years since its last iteration, STALKER 2 retains a lot of the design principles of the series – for better and worse. It leans into mechanics we commonly see in hardcore survival games nowadays, putting you into situations where you must make deliberate decisions on how to engage enemies and which environments to explore. There’s gear wear that can cause malfunctions, high damage in combat so just a few hits can kill you, bleeding wounds if you survive that, hunger to keep at bay, radiation levels to hold down, limited inventory weight to manage, and constant looting in order to survive. Learning how to pack for the missions ahead was one of my favorite aspects, bringing just enough healing items and specific ammo types while still leaving room for loot I may find without getting overencumbered. These systems are inelegant, though at times I mean that as a compliment because I actually admire how very little is streamlined. It doesn’t hold your hand so when you figure out your own approach that works, it’s all the more rewarding. I started to see how its mechanics come together after enough poking and prodding and managed to find the type of friction I enjoy.

Much like the harsh world of Dragon’s Dogma 2, there’s no easy fast travel around The Zone, so if you want to get from place to place quickly you need to find the right NPC and pay up. If you go on foot, you’re in for a long hike full of rogue Stalkers, anomalies, and mutants that can stop you in your tracks. (I’m not going to lie: save scumming will stave off some of that potential frustration, and I’m not afraid of what anyone thinks!) This isn’t an RPG in a gameplay sense either, so there are no progression systems or skills to unlock. You’re on the constant hunt to find good gear, upgrade it at shops, and maintain its condition. Artifacts work as rare armor attachments that can provide perks like better stamina or environmental protection at the expense of potential radiation poisoning, but they’re not necessarily as game-changing as having the right gun to shoot your way out of a sticky situation.

Combat bounces between intense, high-stakes shootouts or unsatisfyingling unfair wars of attrition. The main difference between those two scenarios is in the bizarre behavior of the enemy AI. Regardless of difficulty setting, enemies are often dumb as rocks, reacting in nonsensical patterns while engaged and completely unaware of their surroundings. Yet their immediate, pinpoint weapon accuracy and near-perfect vision (even in pitch darkness) still make things tough, and not in ways that entirely make sense. Erratic mutant movement is more annoying than it is challenging, and you’ll just bang your head against the wall trying to land shots on radiated rats and dogs chaotically lunging at you; it takes off some of the horror-ish edge that they can instill.

There are bright spots within those combat encounters, though. I’ve learned to work within the confines of sporadic enemy AI, always ready to patch up and heal to survive and take precise shots from smart positions. Sometimes fights break out from conversations gone awry and enemies are very quick on the draw, and I just had to concede the fact that I would take massive damage if I survived at all. STALKER 2’s solid gunplay picks up a lot of the slack of its combat faults. Whipping around a decked-out assault rifle with a nice red dot sight to make headshots easy or pumping shells into a mutant from a fully modded shotgun and slowing its charge with their impact had me looking forward to those high-stakes, kill-or-be-killed situations. The flow of those encounters doesn’t change drastically over time, but the tension stays consistent throughout. STALKER 2 also impresses with how it weaves in psychological horror with psi elements that genuinely mess with your perception of its world; there were moments both in and out of the main story where I was as surprised as I was shook by how vulnerable they left me, layering on a new level of danger.

Within those highs, however, is the frequent reminder that STALKER 2 isn’t in great technical shape – and this is after the day-one patch. Even on a PC with an RTX 3080, a 13th-gen Core i7 CPU, 32GB of RAM, and an NVMe SSD, it chugs on modest settings. Playing with everything on low graphics options and balanced DLSS gives me similar frame drops and large-scale hiccups as it would on medium-high settings and higher quality DLSS, even if the baseline frame rate is marginally better (but still well below a consistent 60fps). The patch definitely helped make performance somewhat more consistent compared to the pre-release version I began playing on, but my framerate still tanked to just barely playable levels in particularly dense and detailed areas with several NPCs around.

Poor technical performance isn’t the only respect in which STALKER 2 still needs work. The game-breaking bugs that halted my progress pre-patch are now gone, and I have not run into any more uncompletable quest objectives since then. However, several problems still persist that include (but are not limited to) NPCs walking through walls, glitched UI elements, textures artifacting, sound effects and dialogue happening out of place, and environmental details or objects clipping through each other. Inoffensive, non-critical bugs can be whimsical in some sense – like when an enemy’s body cartwheels into the sky after being shot – and simply accounted for as unexplained phenomena as you focus on the tasks at hand, but the frequency of these issues chipped away at my enthusiasm for STALKER 2.

It’s hard to say whether or not these things will be patched in due time, although developer GSC Game World has stated their commitment to continually working on them with future updates. The current technical performance and roster of bugs hold STALKER 2 back from fully coming together, as it still feels as though it’s held together by duct tape. Given the story of GSC Game World’s tumultuous development time, which has partially taken place amid an actual war zone in its home country of Ukraine, it’s not hard to understand why. It’s a miracle that STALKER 2 even exists, especially considering how ambitious its world is and how it executes its vision on a conceptual level. STALKER 2 is often bleak and oppressive from both gameplay and storytelling perspectives, and making it all work cohesively for a game on this scale is already an accomplishment.

Warcraft III: Reforged 2.0 was a pleasant surprise when it released as part of Blizzard’s celebration of Warcraft’s 30th anniversary. But a week after the patch’s launch, fan sentiment around the update continues to be mixed.

Touted as an ambitious patch that would fix many of the lingering issues from the original release, Reforged 2.0 endured a bug-ridden launch that required multiple hot fixes. Blizzard moved quickly to address problems with graphical glitches, game results failing to register, and the MacOS client breaking entirely, but the issues have tempered enthusiasm for the patch, which Blizzard promoted as a fresh start for one of the most troubled releases in its history.

Among the major complaints have been claims of discrepancies between the gameplay stills used in the marketing and the actual release. Grubby, a former pro player who remains active in Reforged, was among those who criticized the marketing stills, saying “none of this is real” in a video released earlier this week.

“I hope at best this was an oversight and an overreaching by the marketing department that was not signed off by the Warcraft III RTS team. That’s the best case scenario,” he said.

As of publication, the stills remain online on Blizzard’s press site, and Blizzard has declined to comment on the discrepancies. In the meantime, Grubby says he’s less likely to play with Classic HD settings due to what he perceives to be mouse lag impacting his performance, even as he praised its greater implementation of custom skins.

New art style draws mixed reactions from fans

Apart from bugs and other issues, AI upscaling has been a hot topic among Warcraft fans. Following the surprise release of remastered versions of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness alongside the Reforged 2.0 updates, fans took to Reddit and other channels with claims that they were hastily upscaled. Blizzard, for its part, has said that the remasters feature “brand new hand-drawn graphics,” though it did utilize machine learning to upscale Reforged 2.0’s textures and icons in Classic HD mode before refining them by hand.

In a year already chock-full of excellent remakes like Persona 3 Reload and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, it’s impressive that I can still call Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake one of the best I’ve ever played. That’s not because it sets out to redefine the 1988 NES original like Square Enix did with Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth, but because of how it strikes a nearly perfect balance between faithfully sticking to the bones of Dragon Quest III while adding modern quality-of-life improvements and a beautiful new coat of paint that make it more fun than ever to explore and battle across its surprisingly dense overworld. Dragon Quest III is a true godfather of the RPG genre, and this immensely satisfying retelling so clearly spells out why it’s one of gaming’s essential works.

HD-2D Remake is fundamentally the same adventure Dragon Quest III has always been, and it’s hard not to marvel at how well its original blueprint still holds up in 2024. This is as classic as JRPGs get – the genre boiled down to its absolute essentials of rock-solid turn-based combat, atmospheric caves and dungeons filled with monsters and treasure, and a straightforward story about good versus evil that asks you to fill in a lot of the gaps with your imagination. It evokes nostalgia for a bygone era of video games in the best ways while proving it still has the stuff to hang with the fancy, modern RPGs.

Despite the unabashedly old-school design, it does manage to feel new thanks to its overhauled graphics, and Dragon Quest and the HD-2D style pioneered by Octopath Traveler are an absolute perfect combination. The enemy design is amazing, with highly-detailed sprites and animations that are a joy to look at. The late Akira Toriyama’s signature style is wonderfully realized here, and battles feel more dynamic with each enemy’s lively animations for attacking and defending. Towns are delightful to explore, with stunning castles, houses, and shops that are breathtaking to look at from the outside and adorable to poke around on the inside thanks to sharp attention to detail. The dungeons all look great, too, especially with the moody lighting emitting from your hero’s lantern. Finally, the overworld feels grand to march across, and it’s all backed up with an orchestral soundtrack that fits Dragon Quest’s lighthearted, adventurous mood to a tee.

HD-2D Remake doesn’t just look gorgeous, as it has great battle and class systems to match. Apart from the Hero, whose class and spot in your party is locked in from the start, the composition of the other three spots is completely up to you, including their classes, names, and appearances. I outfitted my party with a Thief, a Priest, and my personal favorite: the all-new Monster Wrangler, who became stronger as I found and recruited friendly monsters across the world, which further incentivized exploration. It’s a ton of fun constructing your band of heroes, and I’m honestly considering a full replay where I try something entirely different given how many classes I didn’t take advantage of. There are also opportunities to reclass later in the story while retaining all the abilities your characters have learned thus far, adding even more important decisions to consider.

It’s just a shame that the personalities of your party members are all silent, blank slates as a result of that mechanical flexibility. That’s the same as it was in the original, but it makes for an RPG journey that’s much more about character builds, combat, and exploration rather than relationships, camaraderie, and story. It’s completely understandable that Square Enix would stick with the old style in this instance, as it did with almost everything else, but it’s hard not to miss the wonderful personalities of my party in Dragon Quest XI or the Party Chat feature seen in most modern entries of the series by comparison. But as someone who vastly prefers a barebones story compared to an overbearing one, I still thoroughly enjoyed Dragon Quest III’s focus on engaging directly with its RPG systems.

To that end, the battles themselves are fast-paced, fun, and occasionally quite difficult. Make no mistake – this is still very much a hardcore NES-era RPG, and you need to use a balanced mix of strong attacks, healing spells, and buffing/debuffing abilities to beat some of Dragon Quest III’s toughest bosses. There are some real nail-biting moments, especially later on in the campaign, and I loved using unorthodox strategies to barely squeak by fights I probably wasn’t ready for yet. Random encounters in both the overworld and dungeons are a constant factor, but they’re always enjoyable and drop essential experience points and gold, which you’ll need as much of as you can get to reach the end credits.

But if nervewracking turn-based battles aren’t your thing, there’s no need to worry. I’m incredibly impressed by how flexible HD-2D Remake is as a whole. Apart from three difficulty options you can switch between at any time (Including the Dracky Quest option, where your characters essentially can’t die), there are a ton of ways to tailor the adventure to your specific playstyle. In combat, you can speed up battle animations to get through encounters faster or watch them at normal speed to really enjoy the detailed enemy animations. You’re also given complete control over how your party behaves: In classic Dragon Quest fashion, you can give individual orders to all four party members, or choose strategies for them to execute on their own, like focusing on healing, conserving magic, or going all-out against a tough foe. It’s honestly relaxing to set the whole party to autobattle when grinding for experience points before taking control back for yourself ahead of an important boss fight. Options like these ensure the great combat remains fresh across the roughly 30-hour adventure, even with multiple sessions of grinding.

That’s partially because the Dragon Quest series is pretty good at making grinding for experience points entertaining, and this remake is no exception. If you’re a fan of the series, you know that Metal Slimes are the key to leveling up fast: Enemies with low spawn rates that drop way more experience points than the average bad guy. Discovering areas of the map where Metal Slimes are more likely to appear is exciting, and the rush of adrenaline that kicks in when you see one show up in a random encounter never gets old – like pulling a rare card from a Pokémon booster pack.

Plus, apart from the occasional level grind session, Dragon Quest III’s pacing is impeccable. You’re always being ushered from one new location to the next, constantly exploring new towns and dungeons while encountering fresh foes from the huge set of over 150 enemy types. It rarely retraces any of its steps – except for one specific recurring boss I won’t spoil that admittedly rears its ugly head a few too many times.

This remake also goes to great lengths to ensure you’ll never get lost or stuck. The Zoom spell lets you escape a tough situation to rest at an inn pretty much whenever you want, while objective markers clearly label what you need to do next to progress through the occasionally unclear and outdated main quests. However, if you want the classic Dragon Quest III experience, you can turn these quest markers off and discover everything for yourself by exploring and talking to townsfolk. It’s a great system that makes this aged RPG more approachable and playable than ever, while also preserving that original style for those who want it. It’s an ideal way to revisit a beloved adventure, and I love the pace at which this vast world slowly reveals its secrets to you piece by piece.

While I was generally a big fan of Dragon Quest III’s old-school nature mixed with the HD-2D Remake’s modern improvements, there are a couple of places it could have gone a few extra steps. Inventory management is clunky, as each of your four party members only has access to their individual item bags in combat, meaning I spent a ton of time in menus transferring items from the party’s overall inventory to their individual pockets. Managing equipment comes with similar annoyances, where it’s just a bit harder than it should be to see how equipping something will impact each character’s stats. I eventually got into a rhythm of how to fiddle with these outdated menus, but it’s one place I wish had gotten more updating. (There are also just a few enemy designs that haven’t aged especially well, and probably would have been better left in the past.)

Many Black Friday deals are already live at retailers, and we’ve rounded up the best deals you can find today. These include PlayStation 5 Consoles, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Metaphor: ReFantazio, SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless, Elden Ring, Astro Bot, iPad (10th Generation), and more.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched on October 31, and we’ve already got a tiny window into how well it’s selling. It debuted at No.6 on Circana’s report of the top selling games in the US for the full month, just after Metaphor: ReFantazio. But its placement on a single chart doesn’t quite tell the full story.

We reached out to analyst Mat Piscatella at Circana following the report to get a little more info on just how well Veilguard was doing, and he offered some context. Though it might look like Dragon Age is being soundly beaten by a number of other debut titles for the month of October, he notes that Dragon Age launched on October 31, and the chart tracks through November 2. So Dragon Age only had three days of sales reflected in the chart, while most other games on it had significantly more.

Additionally, Piscatella pointed out that EA does not provide Steam data for the best-selling titles charts, so while other games (including Metaphor) had Steam digital sales reflected, Dragon Age’s numbers are only for PlayStation and Xbox.

“Were Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s PC volume included it would have placed higher on the best-selling titles chart — perhaps as high as 3rd overall,” he says. “Unfortunately, however, digital sales are included in these specific charts only at the discretion of the publisher.”

For more info, we asked Piscatella if there was any way to compare The Veilguard’s launch sales to its Dragon Age predecessors, but Circana’s weekly data only goes back to 2018, so no dice there. However, Piscatella did have some analysis to add about how things were going:

“Just looking at the first days of sales and initial engagement levels via Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker, it’s been a good – but not great – launch,” he said. “Dragon Age: The Veilguard did not reach the launch week sales levels of either Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth or Dragon’s Dogma II, and it will be a bit of an uphill battle to reach Inquisition’s lifetime sales. But again, it’s very early and a lot of the story is left to be told. November will give us a much better read.”

Though we don’t have sales numbers for Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Square Enix has said they did not meet their internal expectations. Meanwhile, Capcom reported that Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a success for them, having passed 2.5 million copies sold as of this past April. We do have a bit more comparison context through sales numbers in the UK, courtesy of GamesIndustry.biz. Dragon Age: The Veilguard debuted at No.7 on UK sales charts, but its first week sales were over 18% lower than those of Dragon’s Dogma 2 and nearly 21% below those of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth.

We gave The Veilguard a 9/10 in our review, writing that it “refreshes and reinvigorates this storied series with enjoyable action combat, a fantastic cast of companions, and moving character writing.” Opinions on it have varied, though, including among our own staff. You can form your own opinion if you haven’t yet, as Veilguard is already getting a price drop for Black Friday.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

On October 28, Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel announced a new Shadow Duelist has emerged. Previously, Duelists competed for the right to claim the mask of Shadow Duelist Nocturne. Now, they’re competing to unmask Axle with an added twist. The winner of the new Shadow Duelist Tournament will also get to face Axle in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. The match between Axle and the tournament winner will be broadcast on November 23, along with Axle’s unmasking.

IGN will carry the stream across our channels, and this watch guide will tell you everything you need to know to watch the match between Shadow Duelist Axle and their opponent, including when it starts, a list of places to watch it, and what you can expect to see.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel’s New Shadow Duelist Event Start Time

The Shadow Duelist broadcast will start on November 23 at 3pm PST / 6pm EST / 11 pm GMT. The stream will kick off with the final player match of the Shadow Duelist Tournament followed by the reveal of Axle’s secret identity and their match against the tournament winner.

Where to Watch the Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel’s New Shadow Duelist Event

If you’re curious to see the mysterious rocker’s unmasking and match in the spotlight, we’ll be hosting the show here and across our many channels on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Here’s the full list of IGN channels you can watch it on:

• IGN.com (homepage)
• IGN’s Facebook
• IGN’s Twitter
• IGN’s Twitch Channel
• IGN’s YouTube Channel

What to Expect from Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel’s New Shadow Duelist Event

Axle has been appearing on Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel social channels, talking about training for their Duel and teasing their challengers. Hundreds of players signed up for the honor of claiming Axle’s mask, but only one will get to claim the mask and face Axle. Who is behind the rockstar persona’s mask? Find out Axle’s secret celebrity identity and learn more about them when the new Shadow Duelist event airs on November 23.

Rockstar was supposed to make a GTA 6 Trailer 2 announcement today, November 22, according to a moon theory that had sent the Grand Theft Auto community into overdrive.

A year on from Rockstar’s internet-breaking GTA 6 Trailer 1 release, information-starved fans have taken to looking at images of the moon as they hunt desperately for clues on Trailer 2.

Why are they doing this? Because the moon theory was proved true for Trailer 1. Two months before Trailer 1 came out, Rockstar released a GTA Online image that included the moon in a phase (Waning Gibbous) that ended up corresponding with the day Rockstar announced the release date of Trailer 1.

Fast forward to the start of November 2024, and Rockstar’s release of another GTA Online image, below, that – you guessed it – includes the moon in the Waning Gibbous phase. The real-life moon ends its current Waning Gibbous phase today, November 22, and from tomorrow moves on to the Last Quarter phase. And so, fans thought today would be the last possible day for either Trailer 2 itself or an announcement on when it would drop.

GTA Online Community Update

First details on an exciting new GTA Online update coming in December — featuring clandestine operations launched from the Darnell Bros. Garment Factory.

Plus new community challenges, experience improvements, and more: https://t.co/i1vnYzVtK6 pic.twitter.com/QRn4Bn71Wb

— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) November 1, 2024

Unfortunately for its supporters, the moon theory turned out to be false this time. 9am Eastern, when Rockstar’s New York-based parent company Take-Two tends to make its announcements, has been and gone without a peep.

The GTA community is struggling to cope with this, taking to social media, Discords, and subreddits to question their world view.

It is remarkable that Rockstar has gone nearly 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. But will the moon show fans the way? Or is Rockstar just messing with its fanbase, as it’s done many times in the past?

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.

Cardy is joined by Jesse this week to talk about his adventures in The Zone of Stalker 2, as well as his new job in the skies over Peterborough in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. There’s also time for some nonsense about Mission: Impossible, the films of Brian de Palma, pea and pie gravy, gaming in prisons, and much more thanks to your feedback.

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 775: Pouring Pea Gravy Over Peterborough Cathedral

• IGN UK Podcast 774: Ranking the 10 Best Netflix Original Series
• IGN UK Podcast 773: Don’t Eat Play-Doh
• IGN UK Podcast 772: Breaking the Balls Meter
• IGN UK Podcast 771: Call of Duty: Tunnock’s Teacakes 6
• IGN UK Podcast 770: The Horror, the Horror