Hero shooter Gigantic may have shut down five years ago but Gearbox Software is bringing it back for one weekend only in a limited time throwback event.
A Reddit post from TemptedTemplar shared an email asking players to the event, while the game’s subreddit is also full of others who received the invite. “You’re invited to play Gigantic (again) during our limited time throwback event,” read the email, sent to Reddit user HeirOfRhoads.
The event will take place from October 5 at 12noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 8pm UK to October 6 at 9pm Pacific / 12midnight Eastern, so October 7 at 5am UK. It’s unclear if players other than those who received the email will be able to play.
Players will even get to enjoy “never before seen features” according to the email, including a Rush mode, new loadout system, and “revamped content”. The classic Gigantic gameplay and features will be present too, of course, bringing back the team-based competitive action in teams of five heroes.
The Complete Edition includes the Horizon: Forbidden West base game and Horizon: Forbidden West: Burning Shores DLC, and costs $69.99 / €59.99 / ¥7,980 on PS5. Here’s the complete list of contents for Horizon: Forbidden West: Complete Edition on PS5:
Horizon: Forbidden West for PS5
Burning Shores DLC for PS5
Digital soundtrack
Digital art book
Horizon Zero Dawn Vol. 1: The Sunhawk digital comic book
In-game items:
Extras in Photo Mode (special pose and face paint)
In-game items unlocked via story progression:
Carja Behemoth Elite outfit ·Carja Behemoth Short Bow
Nora Thunder Elite outfit
Nora Thunder Sling
Apex Clawstrider Machine Strike piece
Resources pack
The storage capacity of Ultra HD Blu-ray discs is up to 100GB. Horizon: Forbidden West Complete Edition weighs in at a maximum of 121GB, according to the game box revealed by the Does it play? Twitter account. (People are already having fun with the PS5 two-disc symbol, which looks like it’s already seen too much.)
It’s worth noting the Horizon: Forbidden West Complete Collection discs are used for authentication, so players do not need to switch between the two.
Horizon: Forbidden West Complete Edition, which launches tomorrow, October 6, launches ahead of Square Enix’s upcoming Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, which also comes on two discs and is set for release in February.
While the PS5 version of Horizon: Forbidden West Complete Edition launches this week, PC gamers have to wait. The PC version, developed by Sony-owned PC port specialist Nixxes Software, launches early 2024 via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Guerrilla’s Horizon: Forbidden West launched in February 2022 and was awarded a 9/10 in IGN’s review. “A triumphant combination of enthralling combat, top-tier creature and character design, and a captivating open world, Horizon: Forbidden West is an absolute blast and fantastic showcase for the power of the PS5,” we said.
The Burning Shores expansion launched in April 2023, and met with an 8/10 from IGN’s review. “A couple of poor boss battles aside, Burning Shores is a great new chapter with enough creative new bells and whistles to keep Horizon fans more than happy,” we said.
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.
When Detective Pikachu hit the 3DS in 2016, we’d never seen anything quite like it in the vast collection of Pokemon games. Its casual whodunit story was an easy solve, but it was cute, colorful, and most importantly, different. And yet, now that Detective Pikachu and his tiny herringbone hat have returned, it doesn’t feel as exciting as its predecessor. In fact, there’s a lot about the mystery solving that’s arguably a step backwards. It’s somehow easier than the first one, which makes a lot of the moment-to-moment play feel long-winded and a bit frustrating, especially if you’re more than 10 years old. It’s still a pleasing, colorful, sweet adventure, and the story comes to a mostly satisfying conclusion of the Detective Pikachu saga, but its greatest mystery is what went on behind the scenes that resulted in some of these baffling decisions in the story and mechanics.
Since it’s been a good while, it was wise for this sequel to be written so that you didn’t need to play the first Detective Pikachu (or seen the movie, for that matter) to hop into Returns – Pikachu recaps the first game in the very beginning with his trusty cup of coffee by his side. The world is still feeling the effects of the events from the first game, where Tim Goodman and the titular detective helped stop the spread of R, a drug that caused Pokemon to go berserk. However, things seem to be ramping up again in Ryme City, where Pokemon are once again acting strangely and a mystery is brewing in the background as you solve other cases. Plus, there’s the matter of figuring out what happened to Tim’s father and Pikachu’s partner, Harry.
Unlike in the first game, where R was introduced early and the mystery involved who was behind it, Detective Pikachu Returns tries something different. It introduces a lot of parts early on without specifically revealing the purpose of the puzzling objects at its center, and then takes its time explaining their meaning. Without getting into too many details, a priceless gem is stolen, but then that stone becomes central to the larger events, but its true purpose remains unknown for most of my estimated 17-hour runtime. Even though there are a lot of other moving parts, it’s not too complicated to figure out their places in the plot, and it’s still satisfying to watch them come together. It’s a bit predictable, though, and you’ll very likely figure it out way before the characters do.
You’ll very likely figure it out way before the characters do.
Detective Pikachu Returns does manage to pull off a few surprises by subverting some obvious mystery tropes around butlers perpetrating crimes, and alliances shift unexpectedly. But it’s still a story where the most obvious suspect in each case is likely the culprit, and the ending you expect is what you typically get.
As I mentioned, this is a family-oriented visual novel, so none of the cases are too complex. In fact, it seems like Nintendo has taken it down a notch from the first one, which was already clearly targeted at younger players. Gone are many of the more complicated puzzles and how the clues and evidence are laid out. Previously, you had to sometimes approach an investigation by picking apart a conversation and highlighting a word, or having to decipher symbols that even Detective Pikachu won’t reveal the answer to. Gathering clues in Detective Pikachu Returns is even more straightforward: you collect them and then Pikachu prompts you to deduce what they mean together in your new case notebook. For example, you’ll wander around Ryme City collecting testimony from witnesses or looking closer at certain crime scenes for anything amiss, but it’s unlikely you’ll interact with any of the evidence beyond that. You also get optional side quests where you can help out people and pokemon, and while they’re not necessary for the plot, they’re usually good for a laugh – the exception being a quiz professor who, all too often, has you backtracking to interact with Pokemon in the area to solve her relatively easy riddles.
Gathering clues in Detective Pikachu Returns is even more straightforward.
I occasionally got tripped up when I wasn’t paying close attention to a conversation that had gone on too long, but for the most part, the clues are presented and then explained almost immediately. Is there a diagram that shows a person lifting a Pokemon up to unlock a door? You’ll probably have to lift up Pikachu to unlock a door. Did a bunch of Pokemon report that they fell asleep after eating breakfast? That’s probably important to remember. And if you don’t get it correct the first time, you aren’t punished for your mistake – you just try again until you get it right. Returns doesn’t really have puzzles, but rather a series of testimonies you have to collect and keep track of. Pikachu, Tim, and the rest of the characters need every piece of evidence to have realizations, so like the last game, you’re forced to break down your entire thought process in the notebook.
It’s not that it’s that difficult to keep everything organized, just inconvenient. Previously, you could view your notes and make deductions on the second of the two 3DS screens even if you were in a conversation; on the Switch’s single screen you have to jump into menus to view them instead. This might not sound like a huge change, but it does mean that you’re unlikely to look at evidence as you go. Granted, you probably won’t need to look at your notes much since most answers to questions are more obvious than Tim or Pikachu realize, but I only hopped into the menu when I had found every clue and Pikachu said it was time to start deducing. It was also just not fun to look at. At least the first game’s notebook featured Tim’s line drawings and looked like a yellow-lined piece of paper. Now, it just looks like a generic video game menu covered in tiny polaroids.
Simplicity is fine if you’re making a game for younger players.
The get-out-of-jail-free card is that all of this simplicity is fine if you’re making a game for younger players. People who are looking for a laidback time also might not mind it. But at the same time, Detective Pikachu Returns is kind of a dark story. The first one didn’t shy away from some mature storytelling moments, and it’s not outside the Pokemon franchise’s purview to feature pokemon getting kidnapped, trafficked, or tortured, but I was taken aback when I realized where Returns was going. Without revealing what happens in the second half, it goes to some places I wasn’t expecting to see in a game that’s ostensibly for children. It doesn’t handle a lot of its themes delicately either, but then again, Pokemon isn’t exactly known for its nuance. It just makes you wonder: who is this for? Why would they make the gameplay simpler and the story darker?
Another one of the biggest disappointments with Detective Pikachu Returns is its art style. Pokemon games aren’t renowned for being gorgeous or intricate, especially over the past couple generations, but Returns looks more like a 3DS game than the original did, and that actually was a 3DS game. It’s especially lacking when it comes to facial animations – each character has maybe two expressions and they’re both neutral, which can be a problem when tragic or dire events are happening. It’s tough to get invested in the actual high stakes of the story when Tim just looks slightly shocked.
Pokemon are why you play, and there are so many to discover here.
But you’re likely not playing a Pokemon game for dazzling sights, and at the very least, this is still an improvement over the first one. The lines are cleaner, the colors are brighter, and the character movement is smoother. The animations are even detailed when they need to be.. Pikachu, for example, has an adorable little run where his head leans back and his whole body juts forward, which made me giggle every time he hustled around the screen. There are moments where he rides around on the backs of other pokemon to solve puzzles and get through previously cut-off areas, and the way the artists chose to integrate him with each is unique to that pokemon’s features. At the very least, Detective Pikachu Returns has moments where it’s visually charming, and a couple where it can even elicit laughs.
Like with the first one, the pokemon are why you play, and there are so many to discover here including return favorites like Mewtwo and others from across the spectrum of rarity and types. Some you just get to talk to, but others are a big help, and most manage to stand out despite little screentime. And because the Pokemon series has always been about how pokemon are special in their own unique ways, each one has their own abilities to lend. Growlithe, which is one of the first you get to hang out with, has a keen sense of smell that lets her find objects or other pokemon, while Darmanitan can break down rocks and other barriers while you ride around in the fluff on his head. Pikachu is the most special of all, of course. That hasn’t changed. The story is about him, after all, so it only makes sense that he gets the best scenes and dialogue. It’s a joy whenever he gets one of his “bolts of brilliance” and has to strike a pose or when he gets snarky.
Even with just a couple short conversations, Detective Pikachu Returns manages to flesh out its world at least a little bit by imbuing random pokemon with personality and a desire for connection or happiness. The human characters, sadly, don’t get the same treatment. Tim is as dull as ever, just following around Pikachu and commenting on events with a straight face. We meet new characters like Rachel, who tags along on many of your investigations, but she too mostly just follows you around and doesn’t contribute much else at all.
Detective Pikachu Returns is overall, though, a Pokemon game, so maybe it’s fine that the humans are no more animated than a block of wood. And it nails the tenets of the series. It’s about friendship, community, generosity, and making the world better for pokemon as well as humans. It might sound trite, but sometimes that’s nice to see.
The Noble Collection releases collectibles and jewelry based on some of the biggest franchises in the world, including The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Trek and DC. Now they’re adding a massive gaming franchise to that lineup – Minecraft.
IGN can exclusively reveal a new collection dubbed Minecraft x The Noble Collection. This new line features a variety of life-size prop replicas and other collectibles inspired by the game and its distinctively blocky aesthetic. Head to the slideshow gallery below for a closer look at all of the debut pieces in this collection:
The Minecraft x The Noble Collection line consists of six items so far, five life-size prop replicas and one chess set featuring characters and creatures from the game. The life-size props feature light-up LED effects and are designed to mimic the textures of the game. The full lineup includes:
Diamond Sword Collector Replica (MSRP: $69.99)
Chess Set (MSRP: $59.99)
Torch Collector Replica (MSRP: $39.99)
Redstone Ore (MSRP: $34.99)
Diamond Ore (MSRP: $34.99)
Illuminating Potion Bottle (MSRP: $39.99)
“We have extensive experience developing Collectibles and Toyllectibles based on characters, creatures and on-screen props that don’t truly exist in the real world,” The Noble Collection’s SVP Julian Montoya tells IGN. “We pride ourselves for taking the time to understand the properties and intricacies that audiences value to create finely crafted treasures, which offer fans the real-life experiences they crave from the properties they love. It is important to us that our products do justice to those characters, creatures, props and iconic scenes.”
Montoya continues, “The connection to fans and their passion for a franchise is what drives us, which makes our new foray into the Minecraft IP an exciting one for The Noble Collection. We want fans to enjoy the in-game experience by bringing their favorite events of the game into their life. And we hope we achieved that by mixing an array of textures and finishes to create the stylized ‘real-world’ materials they’d expect, while merging the pixelated Minecraft aesthetic they love.”
As for the challenge of recreating the trademark blocky look of Minecraft in a real-world setting, Montoya says that The Noble Collection worked closely with the artists at Mojang to faithfully translate the game into three dimensional reality.
“The collaboration with the team at Mojang was phenomenal,” Montoya says. “Once we dialed in on the creative vision for the range – ‘Minecraft in the Real World’ – we got to work. It was important that Minecraft fans looked at the product and thought ‘Yes, this is what my Diamond Sword would look like if I could bring it out of the game!’ Our design team and the Mojang creative team established a great rapport, consistently challenging ourselves to develop something new and never-before-seen for the brand. Mojang was also extremely generous in sharing their detailed knowledge of Minecraft, which helped fuel our creative energy.”
The Minecraft x The Noble Collection line will make its official debut at New York Comic-Con. These items will be sold exclusively in-person at NYCC (Booth #1061) on Thursday, October 12 and Friday, October 13 (note that the Diamond Sword will be available as a preorder only). From there, sales will open wide on Saturday, October 14 on the Noble Collection website and select retailers.
Red Dead Redemption now has an option to play at 60 frames per second after the surprise drop of an update.
Patch 1.03, which weighs in at just a few hundred MB, adds a 60fps toggle to Red Dead Redemption on PlayStation 5. The port launched on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in August, and is available to play on PS5 via backwards compatibility. At launch, Red Dead Redemption ran at 30fps only across PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch, disappointing many fans of the 2010 epic.
Fans are now welcoming this new update following the backlash the Red Dead Redemption port received upon launch. Fans complained about the barebones improvements to the game’s performance as well as its $50 price point, especially considering the port does not include multiplayer or a PC release. Plus, Red Dead Redemption is already playable on the Xbox Series X in 4K and, thanks to Xbox Series X and S backwards compatibility, has been accessible on Microsoft platforms for years.
In an August interview with IGN, Strauss Zelnick, boss of parent company Take-Two, defended the high price of Red Dead Redemption: “That’s just what we believe is the commercially accurate price for it,” Zelnick said.
Take-Two’s EVP of Finance, Hannah Sage, also pointed out the port isn’t just the Red Dead base game but also Undead Nightmare. When asked if Undead Nightmare was the reason for its $50 price, Zelnick said the add-on “was a great standalone game in its own right when it was originally released, so we feel like it’s a great bundle for the first time, and certainly a great value for consumers”.
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.
It’s well documented that Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a considerably smaller adventure compared to the previous 3 entries in the series, but just how long is it? Here we’ll let you know exactly how many hours it took different members of the IGN team to finish the story, and what they prioritised doing with their time.
How long is Assassin’s Creed Mirage?
Our fastest player finished it in 10 hours.
Our “slowest” player played for almost 17 hours before credits rolled.
Everyone plays games differently, so read on for more details about how everyone played, how long it took to reach the credits, and how much extra time players spent exploring the world. Once you’ve finished the game yourself, be sure to submit your times on How Long To Beat and see how your time compares!
Dale Driver – Executive Producer of Video
I feel like I took my time with the main story of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, clocking in 15 hours and 49 minutes before the credits rolled. Although I left a large amount of the side content to explore, I did make sure to try out enough of it so I felt like I got the full experience of everything the game had to offer.
As expected, upon story completion the game kicks you back into Baghdad to continue to exploring, and with most regions only 50% complete, I decided to do just that. I mopped up every outstanding contract I could fine, collected all the shards, artifacts and historical sites and ended up pinging the very easy and obtainable platinum trophy in a breezy 23 hours and 27 minutes. Considering the same feat in Valhalla took me over 100 hours, Ubisoft definitely weren’t lying when they said this was a much shorter Assassin’s Creed!
Matt Purslow – News and Features Editor
After sinking over 120 hours into Valhalla just a couple of years ago, I wasn’t up for 100 percenting another Assassin’s Creed game just yet. So for Mirage, I focused mostly on the main questline, which is made up of five core investigations. The credits rolled after 16 hours and 47 minutes, and I was left reasonably happy with this quick-hit of old-school stealth.
Across those almost 17 hours, I played the main missions at a steady pace, being as sneaky as possible. You could definitely speed through the campaign if you were less interested in stealth than I am, but that would likely mean you’d have to contend with Mirage’s dreadful sword combat, which I don’t recommend. Beyond the main missions I also did a little resource gathering to earn some bonuses, such as all the mysterious shards that unlock a trio of special Isu items. I also did four or five contracts, but these side missions are pretty basic and didn’t hold my interest. Overall, then, this was a pretty straightforward playthrough that I had done and dusted over a long weekend.
Jesse Gomez – UK Video Producer
Even at the best of times, I wasn’t finding Mirage entirely enjoyable, but because I was curious to see how the story played out I sought to complete the latest Assassin’s Creed in the quickest time possible and achieved a time of 10 hours and 52 minutes. I focused entirely on the main story, ignoring all contracts, extra upgrades, and spending little to no time when it came to gathering resources. I likely could’ve sped things even further up by synchronizing a few more viewpoints and opening up some more fast travel opportunities, but even that didn’t feel necessary with the map being so small.
With all that said, Mirage was an incredibly easy 10 hours to play through, and despite the game encouraging me to take the stealth route, most of the time it was just easier to blast in, headfirst with sword in hand and cut everything down. In hindsight I wouldn’t recommend playing the game at this speed, especially if you’re enjoying everything Mirage has to offer, but if you’re just focused on the story you can quite easily finish it in under 11 hours.
If you want to see how Assassin’s Creed Mirage stacks up in length to the previous games in the series, check out our complete Playlist of Assassin’s Creed games. You can sort it by HLTB playtime, rating, and release date. And you can of course make your own lists and rankings, too. And if you need a little help with anything in Mirage, be sure to check out our Assassin’s Creed Mirage guides.
Sitting on the grid in my 2017 Holden V8 Supercar, surrounded by Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Audi R8s, I have to concede I’m feeling a little underqualified. Forza Motorsport’s online multiplayer spec racing should technically place all these cars on a level field, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve brought a cricket bat to a swordfight here. Several mediocre laps later and neither myself or my Vegemite-eating VF Commodore have troubled the timesheets much, finishing mid-pack one spot below where I started – but I’m sweating, and I’m smiling. The 2023 version of Forza Motorsport is brimming with new features across the board, from its muscular new multiplayer to its much-improved handling. All except for its upgrades, that is. They’ve been downgraded. Confused? Me too.
Forza Motorsport is, by a significant margin, the best feeling game in the Motorsport franchise to date. It isn’t necessarily a total reinvention of the Forza formula, and it still has that familiar level of forgiveness baked into it when you’re at and justbeyond the limits of control. This is a series that has always been about letting us have the confidence to grab a car by the scruff of its neck and step the rear end out with a boot-full of throttle without constantly over-rotating, and that’s absolutely still the case here. The improvements before we break traction, however, are marked.
If the previous game, Forza Motorsport 7, has any noticeable handling blemishes, it’d be that there’s often a lack of bite to the feeling of grip. Six years later, that’s totally gone here in this follow-up. The feeling of grip in Forza Motorsport is far more pronounced and authentic, and cars feel more realistically rooted to the road than they ever have previously. Push beyond the capacity of your tyres and grip will now taper away instead of falling off a cliff, meaning cars squirm more and skate less – which is a great improvement.
Push beyond the capacity of your tyres and grip will now taper away instead of falling off a cliff.
The pleasing side-effect of these terrific tyre modelling improvements goes beyond making racing feel more accurate; it also actually makes it feel easier to drive fast. ‘Easy’ is too often used as a pejorative in a gaming context but, with respect to those who can’t feel feelings until they’re being flayed alive by a FromSoft game, in racing terms I can assure you it’s not a contemptuous concept. Lapping as fast as the pros, millimetre perfect and at maximum attack? No, that’s not simple – if it was, we’d all have yachts in Monaco by now. But hustling around a track quick and hard, confident the car beneath you is going to behave as it should? That’s well within the means of a competent driver. The old sim racing mentality that “if it’s not difficult, it’s not realistic” is something that most good driving simulators have been moving away from for some time, and Forza Motorsport is no exception. It’s easier because it’s more authentic.
Gamepad handling is extremely well-refined. While it’s hardly a surprise considering good gamepad handling has always been a staple of this long-running series, I’m happy to report it remains top-notch and has survived the physics updates beneath the surface. As usual, the team at Turn 10 has struck a terrific balance between softening things like rapid weight transfer and certain steering inputs to keep the handling tameable on a tiny analogue stick, but still demanding an indisputable deftness to drive consistently fast.
On a wheel, my experience is limited to the Thrustmaster TS-XW Racer – but it definitely errs extremely heavy out of the box.
On a wheel, my experience is limited to the Thrustmaster TS-XW Racer – but it definitely errs extremely heavy out of the box. Surprisingly so, in fact. The last time my actual car felt this heavy to pilot it was because my alternator failed and killed my power steering. It is, however, extremely tuneable – so I was able to eventually dial that aggressive heaviness out and enjoy what I otherwise consider the best Forza Motorsport wheel feel I’ve ever experienced. There might be a slight numbness to severe kerbs, but the responsiveness and stability is excellent.
The feeling of car weight is also great – especially on undulating and technical track sections like cresting over the rise at Laguna Seca before slamming down through the corkscrew. There are some small, welcome touches for wheel users, too. Those who play in cabin-view with the wheel visible may be happy to see the steering animation is no longer locked to just 90 degrees in either direction. The on-screen wheel now rotates up to 360 degrees, which is far more realistic. There are also car-specific force feedback and steering lock settings in the tuning menus, making it easier to keep cars feeling right without constantly re-adjusting the global settings.
Level: May Cry
There’s more good news on tuning, including a new layer of suspension settings as well as the ability to add ballast. Adding ballast obviously increases car weight and lowers its performance index overall, but it is automatically distributed throughout the car to bring it closer to a perfect 50/50 weight distribution. It’s impossible to instantly gauge the impact the addition of ballast will have on competitive car builds, but it will be interesting to watch and experiment to see whether pushing a car over the limit before handicapping it with extra weight is a viable strategy on certain tracks.
Unfortunately, that’s currently where the positive news on tuning – or perhaps more specifically, customisation – largely stops. That’s because upgrades are no longer all immediately available for any car by default, like they are in Forza Motorsport 7 or Forza Horizon 5. Instead, they’re frugally rationed out for each car as you spend seat time in them and earn experience for that specific vehicle. They’re also no longer purchased with credits, either; rather, each car will have a set amount of ‘Car Points’ that applying upgrades eats away at. The amount of Car Points you have per car will be determined by each car’s individual level, which tops out at 50. Upgrades are always made available in the same order, but it takes several hours of driving to unlock things like engine swaps (40), body kits (45), and drivetrain swaps (50).
It takes several hours of driving to unlock things like engine swaps, body kits, and drivetrain swaps.
By design, this overtly RPG-style approach is meant to encourage us to form more profound connections with a narrower assortment of cars that mean something to us personally instead of bouncing around. In practice, however, it’s just a bit bothersome. Sure, it never feels as trivial as, say, the luck-based upgrade systems under the hood of arcade racers like The Crew series or Need for Speed Payback; we’re still in control of the parts we choose to “purchase” and fit. And sure, at car level 50 with the full range of parts available, the upgrade system in Forza Motorsport is essentially the same as it’s been for generations. The problem is getting there is now an unexpected treadmill, for every individual car (including duplicates of the same car).
I do appreciate Forza Motorsport’s “built, not bought” philosophy, but the new layer of gamification here isn’t really for me. It’s not so much the Car Point system itself – I actually think there’s a decent amount of merit in some kind of system that’s perhaps roughly analogous to time sunk. Anyone who’s ever spent time wrenching on a car will know that you can’t do everything at once, and Car Points do mean you have to slowly add and swap parts over time – just like in real-life. What I don’t really get is the concept of gating away upgrades in a strict order – especially the super straightforward ones. Why do we really need a certain car level before we can yank out the spare wheel to shave some kilos? It definitely dilutes the previous freedom we had to focus on the upgrades we predict would make the most meaningful difference to a car’s performance from the outset, and it’s all bit silly that I’m measuring fuel loads by the millilitre to slice bonus thousandths of a second off my lap times when I’m still lugging around a spare tyre in the boot.
Fortunately, you will earn car levels anywhere you use them… so you’re never spinning your wheels on progression as long as you’re driving.
Fortunately, you will earn car levels anywhere you use them, whether that’s career mode, free play, or multiplayer, so you’re never spinning your wheels on progression as long as you’re driving. The career mode is made up of several tiers of themed racing events that are otherwise fairly typically categorised by car class for this type of racing sim. With compulsory practice sessions ahead of each race it takes quite a while to move through each tour, so I’ve been busy for a while and will continue to be for some time. The ability to select your specific place on the grid before each event may seem like a peculiar replacement for qualifying, but it does mean that you can have the exact racing experience you want each race.
That is, if you want the old-school, Gran Turismo-style experience that’s more like an overtaking challenge than a race – where you’ll need to thread your car all the way to the front from the back of the pack in just a few laps – go for it. If you’re interested in faster AI and dogfighting all race for a single spot, that’s also possible. It’s a smart touch, and it’s a more robust single-player racing experience than the likes of GT7 as a result.
That said, I have found the event intros are a little overblown; there’s a hushed reverence to them that car manufacturers probably love, but they’re pretty stiff and starchy compared with the more casual automotive culture shows I stream or watch on YouTube these days. There are also a few car categories that don’t seem to really get much of a run in the career mode, but I would expect the career mode to grow as this Forza Motorsport platform evolves. In the meantime, free play is still here – where you can do quick races in any of the 500 available cars – but again I’d really love some simple options to better curate what the AI drives against me. There are so many specific fields to edit to narrow down your opponent’s cars, but it’s all but impossible to get the 23 specific rival cars you want. Often it just ignores my custom settings entirely. Just let us place the AI in cars we choose, like Forza Motorsport 4 did.
Dude, Where’s My Car?
Forza Motorsport’s 500-car roster is slimmer than Forza Motorsport 7 and Forza Horizon 5 – both of which feature over 700 apiece – and, yes, there are probably conversations to be had. For instance, there’s been pruning when it comes to offroaders, and hot pick-ups like the GMC Syclone and the HSV Maloo appear to have been collateral damage. Lancia is MIA despite making a welcome return to Horizon 5 just last month. You could pick at the seams for some time. However, to be quite fair, Forza Motorsport does achieve this 500-car figure without the cheeky level of double, triple, and sometimes quadruple dipping some of its rivals do when it comes to counting certain models multiple times due to different paint jobs. It really still is an enviable roster of rides, all of which bark and crackle brilliantly thanks to some serious strides with the sound. Better still,there’s no shortcut to buy them with obscene amounts of real-world money: pay attention, Gran Turismo 7.
Forza Motorsport does achieve this 500-car figure without the cheeky level of double, triple, and sometimes quadruple dipping some of its rivals do when it comes to counting certain models multiple times due to different paint jobs.
They also look sharp and marvellous in motion. I played largely in Performance RT mode on Xbox Series X, which adds ray-traced reflections of other cars and nearby objects to the glossy surfaces of your vehicle at the cost of resolution (but not frame-rate, which never budged from 60fps). That said, I’ve probably missed out on a good portion of the visual feast here since I don’t typically play the Motorsport games in chase cam. If you favour 4K above all else, Performance mode drops ray-tracing during racing (and still runs at a resolute 60fps). A third mode packs in additional ray-tracing on other environmental objects but runs at 30fps. But hey, don’t scoff: so does Driveclub, and look how well the aesthetics of that have stood the test of time, even a decade later! It ultimately may come down to personal preference, and I don’t know whether overall Forza Motorsport quite has the measure of GT7, but damned if it doesn’t look particularly spectacular at midnight under heavy rain.
Each of Forza Motorsport’s 20 track locations features support for dynamic time-of-day and variable weather, and they definitely have been dressed with more detail than ever before, with 3D crowds and more trackside objects and fixtures. It is a slimmer selection than the 30+ locations we had in Forza Motorsport 7, although it has been confirmed further tracks will be injected in the future for free. Yas Marina is coming back next month, another unannounced track will follow in December, and the famous Nurburgring Nordschleife will reportedly be ready by spring in the northern hemisphere, 2024. Still, no Bathurst right now? That Bath-hurts.
No Bathurst right now? That Bath-hurts.
Equally painful is the lack of two-player splitscreen, which is a mode my kids and I have traditionally had a massive soft spot for. They particularly love zany handicap races, like giving away massive head starts to ancient hatchbacks and then chasing them down in hypercars – which is precisely the kind of experimentation that sandbox racers with garages as exhaustively broad as Forza Motorsport is usually brilliant for. I presume splitscreen is simply a niche mode in 2023 and it probably comes at too high a performance cost on the Series S, but it really is a little gloomy whenever gaming seems to go backwards. Hell, Gran Turismo had splitscreen in 1997!
The trade-off here is a massively improved online multiplayer component, with scheduled racing events packaged up as full race weekends, with a practice session, a three-lap qualifying blast, and a race. There’s spec racing, where all the cars are automatically tuned identically by Turn 10 for an even playing field, and open racing where you take your own builds. I’ve been playing the Touring Car and GT spec racing series over the past week and it’s been extremely robust and reliable, especially considering the pools of players I’ve been racing have largely been developers and other press located on the other side of Earth’s largest ocean. It’s a little hard to predict just how civilised it’ll remain after launch, but the safety rating should hopefully keep dirty racers away from clean ones. I also don’t think I’ve been on the receiving end of enough bad collisions to gauge just how effective the improved penalties are in actually disciplining the right players effectively, but I’ve had mostly great, clean races so far.
Perhaps my favourite new touch from the multiplayer, though? The ability to skip to the end of a lap in the pre-race sessions (or when attacking times in the asynchronous Rivals mode). Messed up a corner? The Skip Lap option will respawn you on a flyer, just a few corners from the start line. It’s such a clever time saver.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the 13th major installment in Ubisoft’s franchise, is nearly upon us.
Mirage will debut on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC on Oct. 5, a full week earlier than originally planned. But these days, it can be tough to figure out what that means exactly in terms of when you’ll be able to start playing. Luckily, Ubisoft has detailed the global release times for both PC and console, which vary by an hour or so in most regions.
For the most part, you’ll be able to start playing in the wee hours of Friday, Oct. 5, with a few regions getting a jumpstart on PC late on Thursday. Mirage is already available for pre-loading.
You can see the various release times in their graphic, and we’ve also broken it down below.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is also getting a release on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Max Pro sometime in the first half of 2024, although we’re still waiting for an exact release date on that.
In the meantime, Ubisoft is asking fans to not release spoilers as that release date quickly approaches. Mirage follows Basim Ibn Ishaq, a character introduced in 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and has been hailed as a return to the series’ roots, with a focus on stealth and linear storytelling.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Boomerang X developer Dang! has announced that the studio is closing its doors due to being unable to secure funding for its next game.
“Dang is closing up shop. Unfortunately, we were not able to find funding for our next game and we are out of money,” the studio said in a statement written on the desktop Notepad app. “We’re not writing off the possibility of working on some small stuff together in the future but for now we’re all going our separate ways. Thanks to all the love you’ve shown to us over the years and thanks for playing Boomerang X.”
While the studio joked that it was rather unserious about its closure announcement by not making a professional-looking one with a logo, it assured that the news wasn’t a joke. The studio also mentioned that it considered crowdfunding, but said that the approach didn’t make sense for the situation. Furthermore, Boomerang X will not be taken off any storefronts and will still be available for sale.
Many studios have shut down this year, such as Saints Row developer Volition, due to restructuring. However, Dang’s situation wasn’t the result of mass layoffs. Studios like Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew developer Mimimi Games have voluntarily closed due to a variety of factors, like wanting to prioritize developer well-being.
Boomerang X was released on July 8, 2021 for PC and Nintendo Switch. In IGN’s Boomerang X review, we said, “Exciting combat, fantastic art direction, and interesting environments only make me wish Boomerang X were twice as long.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
Square Enix has officially revealed how to correctly pronounce the name of a Final Fantasy VII character. After years of debate on the internet, we finally have confirmation of how to say Cait Sith.
Cait Sith is, of course, a feline character that rides a large stuffed toy in Final Fantasy VII. Square Enix confirmed in a post on X/Twitter today that, at least in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Cait Sith is pronounced like “Kate Sihth.” Basically, the name is pronounced how it’s read on paper. Square Enix said, “We saw many of you were asking so we hope this helps!”
The debate on how to correctly pronounce Cait Sith’s name has been going on for a while now – if you want to be exact, basically dating back to 1997 when Final Fantasy VII was first released.
Back in 2008, a few users on GameFaqs noted that the name comes from the Gaelic language, theorizing the name would be pronounced closer to its Celtic origins, something like “Ket Shee.” However, it seems like Square Enix has taken a different approach to the name and is pronouncing it closer to how it’s actually spelled in the English language.
While Cait Sith has had English voice actors in past media, such as Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus, it seems like the name “Cait Sith” was never actually said by any character. We’ve reached out to Square Enix to confirm that this is indeed the first official confirmation, although by all accounts, it is.
Cait Sith will also be a playable party member in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth when it launches on Feb. 29, 2024 for PlayStation 5.
In IGN’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth preview, we said, “Story-wise, Rebirth again feels very familiar, and yet also different. This is due in part to the tremendous difference in scale and presentation – here, like with Remake, areas that were previously sparse or bare are expanded out into lush zones to explore. But there are also little changes that are mostly inconsequential, but they still play out in different ways than fans of the original FF7 are used to.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
