Category: IGN

Astro Bot has sold 1.5 million copies so far, Sony has announced.

As part of its latest financial results, Sony revealed that the PlayStation 5 exclusive platformer sold 1.5 million as of November 3, just shy of two months after its September 6 release date.

Astro Bot, developed by Sony-owned Team Asobi and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, is the sequel to 2020’s Astro’s Playroom and the third game in the Astro Bot series. It launched to critical acclaim, with IGN’s Astro Bot review returning a 9/10. We said: “A fantastically inventive platformer in its own right, Astro Bot is particularly special for anyone with a place in their heart for PlayStation.”

While Astro Bot’s sales aren’t up there with some of Sony’s big hitters (Helldivers 2 remains the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time with an incredible 12 million sold in 12 weeks), it compares favorably to other recently released family friendly platforms. In Europe, launch sales of Astro Bot were 34% higher than those of 2022’s Sonic Frontiers and 52% bigger than those of 2020’s Crash Bandicoot 4.

To put Astro Bot’s sales success into more recent context, Sega’s Sonic x Shadow Generations hit the one million sold mark on its launch day of October 25, according to Sega. But that game launched across multiple platforms and generations, whereas Astro Bot is a PS5 exclusive. Astro Bot sales will surely continue to grow as we head into the crucial holiday shopping season and gamers look to buy a PS5 or the recently released PS5 Pro.

Team Asobi has continued to support the game since launch with a number of updates that have added speedrun challenge levels and new cameos to rescue. At launch, Astro Bot featured 173 bot cameos from PlayStation games past and present (check out IGN’s feature, Astro Bot: Every PlayStation Character – Easter Eggs, for more).

However, iconic Final Fantasy characters were conspicuous by their absence — an omission fans were quick to pick up on in the context of Final Fantasy’s long-standing association with PlayStation. That means no Cloud from Final Fantasy 7, or any other character from the famous role-playing franchise.

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.

Empire of the Ants is striking to look at. For a moment, you might even believe it’s real macro-lens footage of ants in a nature documentary, and the level of detail on the textures of the forest floor is extremely impressive. It’s not really what it appears to be, though: this may be a real-time strategy game with swarms of insects on screen at once, but you’re never actually commanding more than seven units – and given the somewhat clumsy way its controls make you cycle through them to give orders, that’s a mercy. You may be capturing and building up nests, but there’s literally nothing beneath the surface. So while it appears vast, Empire of the Ants is actually a pretty small-scale strategy game in most other ways, and the lack of unit variety and multiplayer modes make it feel smaller still.

Multiplayer matches have a fair amount of nuance in how you use your small number of units and build out your nests to tech up, and there’s ample room for skilled players to turn a situation to their advantage with smart use of powers to boost their bugs’ damage output and debuff the enemy. It’s not unlike a slimmed-down version of Company of Heroes in the way you capture territory and generate the two resources – food and wood – and that’s a good starting point. Ant units get locked into melee combat and can’t disengage until one or the other loses, so you can learn to hold off a dangerous Warrior unit until reinforcements arrive or prevent a retreat while you finish off an enemy. And while you can quickly rebuild a lost unit if you have the food available, each ant legion has a home nest they’ll respawn from, which can mean there’s a long hike back to the front lines.

Each nest you capture has a set number of upgrade slots that can be filled by a building or spent to support a unit from that nest, so turtling up isn’t really an option – you won’t even have enough slots to tech up to tier 3, which means you’ll inevitably be overrun by ants with better stats. All the building is done from a radial menu that pops up when you interact with a nest and, cleverly, you use your ant as a cursor to select things. Crucially, taking out an enemy’s nest disables all the upgrades that were based there, up to and including turning off their minimap. (Fog of war is a thing on the minimap, but because you’re viewing the world in third person instead of a traditional RTS overhead view, it’s handy that you can spot a moving legion of ants from a long distance even if their icon hasn’t shown up on the map.)

However, Empire of the Ants feels thin relative to most real-time strategy games, in large part because there’s fundamentally only one faction to work with. Everyone always has the same set of workers, big-headed warriors, and “gunner” ants as their primary units, and they all counter each other in a straightforward rock-paper-scissors balance. (You can’t even play as the visually different termites you fight against in the campaign.) The only variety comes from the ability to customize your loadout by choosing four of eight available powers for your main ant to cast, swapping out your support unit between healing aphids, armoring snails, or troop-carrying beetles, as well as one of three “super predator” unit types. Those certainly enable different strategies, but I’m not a fan of the way locking those choices in before a match begins limits your ability to pivot to a different approach if your opponent throws you a curveball. I’d rather be able to switch from the flying wasps to the acid-resistant beetles as my choice of predator if my enemy goes heavy on gunner units, for instance, but that’s not an option.

Another major weakness of multiplayer is that there are only two modes: 1v1 or 1v1v1. That means there’s no option to play cooperatively against the AI (which is very weak even on the highest difficulties and doesn’t seem to know how to use powers, which are crucial) with a friend. It does have 21 maps, at least, and there’s a fair amount of diversity there in terms of how they’re laid out and the creeps that guard their resource caches, like huge spiders and praying mantises that are cool to watch your ants take down.

That’s good, because it soon becomes clear that there’s basically no variety to the bugs’ animations. At first, skittering around at high speeds can be entertaining, even when the controls freak out because you accidentally climb a small branch and start spinning around it like an actual confused ant. Watching a swarm flow over terrain is convincing and, since we’re up so close, dramatic. Warriors will pick up enemies in their big jaws and shake them around, and dead bodies are flung high in the air like mortarboards at a high school graduation ceremony (which I don’t think ants actually do?) and then roll down hills. But when you’ve seen one ant-vs-ant fight, you’ve seen them all. Beetles in particular get repetitive to watch very quickly because of their lunging attacks. Even so, there are good reasons to play the Empire of the Ants’s multiplayer, which cannot be said for the single-player campaign.

Listen closely: do you hear that sound? It’s the cry of hundreds of beleaguered Dino Crisis fans, mourning the revival that could’ve been.

Adi Shankar, the creator of Netflix’s upcoming Devil May Cry show and a filmmaker with a strong reputation for video game anime adaptations (Castlevania, Captain Laserhawk), revealed some interesting information in a recent X/Twitter post. Specifically, when he first started talking to Capcom years ago, his sights weren’t actually set on Devil May Cry.

He began by sharing some quick thoughts on each of the three Dino Crisis games, praising the first two while conceding that the third “lost that magic” as it headed off Earth.

“Why am I telling you this?” he continued. “Because when I first went to Capcom in 2017, my mission was clear: I wanted to bring Dino Crisis back. But in an awesome twist of fate, they sold me Devil May Cry instead! I didn’t think DMC would even be on the table.”

1. Dino Crisis 1 nailed the survival horror vibe, blending the tension of Resident Evil with the sheer terror of being hunted by dinosaurs—perfect.
2.Dino Crisis 2 took it up a notch with fast-paced action & incredible level design.
3.Sadly, Dino Crisis 3 lost that magic—it took… pic.twitter.com/0pOZReOdkf

— Adi Shankar (@adishankarbrand) November 6, 2024

It’s an almost comically tragic twist of fate for Dino Crisis enthusiasts, who have long awaited another installment in the survival series created by Resident Evil’s Shinji Mikami. “Like it’s cool Devil May Cry fans can eat but god damn. Dino Crisis fans stay in sad I guess,” bemoaned one X/Twitter user.

The last mainline Dino Crisis game came out all the way back in 2003, and rumors have swirled for years about a potential fourth game. There are a few reasons not to hold your breath, though: for one, Mikami said earlier this year that the popularity of Monster Hunter doesn’t leave a lot of room for another Dino Crisis entry. Plus, Capcom recently tried its hand at another dinosaur-focused game, Exoprimal, a multiplayer title that stopped adding new content just a year after its launch.

Gears of War voice acting veterans John DiMaggio and Carlos Ferro will officially reprise their roles as Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago for Gears of War: E-Day.

Developer The Coalition announced the news on Thursday, which also happens to be the 18th anniversary of the launch of the original Gears of War. It’s big news for longtime fans of the series, who will remember that DiMaggio and Ferro played the two leads in the franchise’s first three games. An image of the two stars standing together was shared to studio’s official X/Twitter account.

We are so back. 🤜🤛

On today’s 18th anniversary of Gears of War, we’re proud to share that John DiMaggio and @RealCarlosFerro are reprising their roles as the iconic voices of Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago in Gears of War: E-Day. pic.twitter.com/x9uaH9R0sR

— Gears of War (@GearsofWar) November 7, 2024

Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel that takes place awhile before the mainline Gears story got its start. Specifically, it’s set around Emergence Day, which is known as the day the Locust horde made its way to the surface of Sera to launch its attack on humanity. That means that we definitely won’t be seeing protagonists like JD Fenix and Kait Diaz from future Gears games, and more importantly, it means that Marcus and Dom get one more game to see how exactly their bond was strengthened.

It’s not much of a surprise to hear that DiMaggio and Ferro will re-team for E-Day – fans had guessed that the longtime Marcus Fenix voice actor would at least return following the reveal of an emotional announcement trailer earlier this year – but it’s still nice to hear that Dom’s voice will be returning as well. While Marcus lived on to fight in Gears 4 and 5, his partner’s journey ended with a heroic sacrifice in Gears of War 3. Many believe the duo’s relationship and the performances behind them are what helped propel the Gears of War series to success, and now, E-Day is attempting to recapture that gritty, gory magic.

The Coalition told us earlier this year that Gears of War: E-Day gives the team to return to the series’ roots in more ways than one. One element set to return in the prequel is the horror that the original trilogy is known for. Brand Director Nicole Fawcette and Creative Director Matt Searcy spoke to us about their goals in an interview that took place shortly after the game’s reveal.

“For us, it’s like a what-if story,” Searcy said. “What if the ground opened up and monsters came out? Yeah, it’s set on a fictional, other planet, but there are very human reactions and stories we get to tell. To do that, we need to be able to tell a story that feels like a horror story.”

Gears of War: E-Day is currently without a release date but is expected to come to PC and Xbox Series X | S sometime in the future. In the meantime, you can read about why the prequel doesn’t meant the end for the story that left off with Gears 5. You can also check out why we think E-Day needs to rediscover the franchise’s sense of fun.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 1 now only one week away, Treyarch has taken the time to reveal a roadmap featuring the weapons, maps, and modes players can look forward to.

The team behind this year’s first-person shooter hit detailed their plans in a lengthy post on the Call of Duty website. There are a few highlights that we know about – the Warzone revamp and a fresh batch of new maps for Multiplayer and Zombies are the real draws – but there are plenty of other surprises hidden in today’s update that should get players excited. This includes a handful of new Operators, such as one based on the franchise’s long-running The Replacer character, and information about the launch of Ranked Play later this month.

The 15-person team behind Tales of Kenzera: ZAU was recently put on notice, following struggles to find funding for their next project. But Surgent Studios isn’t shutting down, its staff aren’t gone forever, and it’s not asleep at the wheel, according to its founder, Abubakar Salim.

They are, he says, “literally raring” to go the second money comes in, like a “cocked gun.”

“We still have so much more to say and so much more to build on,” Salim tells IGN. “And the audiences that we’ve already started to build as well, and the players and the people who want to champion us, they want to hear more…We are ready. We’re so ready. It is just about taking that leap of faith with us.”

Leap of Faith

So what’s the leap of faith? It’s called Project Uso, and it’s a single-player, isometric, Afro-gothic action RPG. You play as a vampiric android containing the spirit of Eshu, the Yoruba god of chaos. As Salim explains, the idea is to explore the idea of two minds in one body through the mechanics of tabletop RPGs. But rather than rolling against a dungeon master, in Project Uso, the player sometimes must roll against themselves.

Project Uso is about the concept of identity, with Uso meaning “face” in Swahili. It’s inspired by Salim’s exploration of his own dual nature in the wake of his daughter’s birth. While ZAU was about who he is without a parent, Salim says that Uso is about asking who he is as a parent.

“As a parent, I always used to find myself being like, I love my daughter, cleaning her dirty nappy. I also want to go see my mates to the cinema, go outside with my mates or whatever. You know what I mean? There’s a battle of freedoms here. And there’s that sense of, do I do this or do I do that? Or even when I’m talking to my daughter and I’m making choices, how do I make sure that she listens to me? Am I strict or am I soft? You are having this battle within you.”

Salim is candid that he’s relatively new to game development. Tales of Kenzera: ZAU was the first game he’s made, having come into the industry from acting. He’s best known in gaming spaces as Bayek in Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and has held a number of other gaming roles since then in addition to his numerous film and TV acting credits (including the most recent season of House of the Dragon). But the last four years of working on ZAU have been a learning experience for him, particularly in how games are typically funded.

“What I’ve learned is that mainly when you get funding for a game, that funding is really there to get you to launch and maybe just a bit more after,” he says. “Maybe. And you are supposed to have your next project turned up and done and signed either before you’ve even launched the first game or maybe just afterwards. That gap in between is frightening because you can see that coming like a train.”

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this, he explains. While gaming companies briefly poured funding into new projects, there’s been an industry-wide wake-up call in the last two years resultings in mass layoffs, financial struggles, and funding drying up. As a result, Salim explains that companies have become far more cautious in the bets they’re willing to make on new games. That includes EA, whose EA Originals label published Tales of Kenzera: ZAU but which hasn’t picked up Salim’s next project.

Salim says he understands, but doesn’t agree that it’s the best strategy. On the contrary, he thinks now is the time for companies to take risks.

“Why would I, as a player of Call of Duty or as Fortnite, want to leave that to go to something new when I’ve already established myself in this space?” he says. “I totally understand that. It’s like going to your favorite cafe or going to your favorite restaurant. The way that you entice people to go to somewhere different and somewhere new is by doing something different or something new, by being bold, by being creative.

“I think a great example of this is Animal Well. You look at Animal Well and it’s completely unexpected. You didn’t know what you were getting into. And that was a risk that was taken by a YouTuber. I think we need to see more of that from people in positions of power and in positions of stability.”

Bouncing Back

Surgent Studios and Salim have had a rough time finding funding for Project Uso, but there’s been another layer to their struggles: harassment. Tales of Kenzera: ZAU has found itself the target of ongoing, racist attacks online, largely targeting the game for its Black protagonist and its Bantu inspirations. But none of this has discouraged Salim from pitching Project Uso. On the contrary, he’s of the belief that it’s important to address such attacks directly.

“I think that the anti-diversity, equity, inclusion sort of movement, it’s about not having the right information,” he says. “I think we are seeing a lot of gaps being filled with conspiracy theories, like ticking boxes and all this sort of stuff, which isn’t actually true when you look into it. And that dialogue needs to happen.”

Salim acknowledges that directly speaking with harassers can be dangerous, and isn’t for everyone. Both parties, he says, have to come to the discussion in good faith, and harassers often don’t. But he believes such engagement can change hearts and minds, and is worth doing for those able. And on a higher level, he adds, companies have a responsibility to take even firmer action against harassment.

“There is definitely a fear of having a stance, I feel, when it comes to businesses. They kind of want to be neutral, which again, totally understand. But there is a level where it goes a bit too far…We’re in a time right now where someone can post a YouTube video and say my garb is like a Rafiki outfit and call my studio Spear-Chucker Studios, and I don’t know whether there’s going to be repercussions or not. I have to call them out on it. And it’s like, come on. It should be down to the [company], be it YouTube, or be it Twitch, or be it even Valve, for example, to be like, ‘Yeah, that’s not cool. Get out.’”

Though Surgent Studios is currently in a holding pattern with Project Uso, Salim has faith that the industry will bounce back from its rough patch, and he’ll bounce back with them. He believes that while video games are both art and business, they are art first and foremost, and “the arts always survive.”

“The beauty though, about games, I feel, is that the conversation and dialogue is a lot more open,” he says. “And so I feel that bouncing back can happen sooner and bolder and more brilliant than any other art form. And that’s what gets me, that’s what inspires me. That’s what kind of drives me to continue going on even after everything that’s happened. Because it’s a beautiful space to be in. It really is. And don’t get me wrong, the amount of times I’ve wanted to be like, ‘I should just stay as an actor, man. I’m in a big TV show. I should just be really comfortable here and just doing my thing here.’ But there is something inside me that just says, ‘Nah, man, I wouldn’t be happy. That’s just not enough.’”

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.

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has confirmed what graphical enhancements the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game has received in time for the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro.

Larian said it’s tweaked the game’s Quality and Performance modes “to achieve crisp console visuals without sacrificing smooth performance.”

“Tinker away in the settings to find the perfect array of pixels for you!” the studio added.

On PS5 Pro, Quality mode runs at a native 4K resolution and 30 frames per second, whereas Performance mode upscales from 1440p to 2160p 60fps. Meanwhile, split-screen on the PS5 Pro will now offer either 30fps or 60fps depending on whether you’re using Quality or Performance mode.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is of particular interest when it comes to PS5 Pro given the game’s early performance troubles on the base PS5. Act 3 in particular, with its dense city area filled with NPCs, caused the game’s framerate to struggle. Performance has improved with various updates, but clearly the PS5 Pro will be the platform of choice when it comes to console.

Alongside Baldur’s Gate 3’s PS5 Pro update is a “quick” multiplayer fix, detailed in the patch notes below:

Baldur’s Gate 3 PS5 Pro patch and multiplayer fix:

IMPROVEMENTS

• On PS5 Pro, Quality mode now runs at native 4K (2160p) 30fps.
• On PS5 Pro, Performance mode will upscale from 1440p to 2160p 60fps.
• Split screen on the PS5 Pro will now offer either 30fps or 60fps depending on whether you’re using Quality or Performance mode.

CRASHES AND BLOCKERS

• Fixed an issue on PS5 preventing you from downloading or subscribing to mods when loading into another player’s multiplayer game with mods enabled.

Larian has of course said it’s moving on from Baldur’s Gate and the world of Dungeons & Dragons to develop something entirely new. However, it continues to update Baldur’s Gate 3, and has teased more patches to come.

The $700 PS5 Pro launches today, November 7, and there is a long list of games with enhancements for the mid-gen upgrade. Check out IGN’s PS5 Pro review 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.

It’s a big day for No Man’s Sky thanks to the launch of cross-save support, the release of PS5 Pro footage, and the return of the Normandy from Mass Effect.

Following hot on the heels of the Halloween-themed The Cursed update, Hello Games’ long-running space sim finally has cross-save support on all platforms, a feature the developer said had been years in the making. “This has been a huge undertaking, and is one of most requested features,” Hello Games said.

“Being able to jump seamlessly between platforms is really transformative. Players can play from the comfort of their sofa on console, continue an Expedition on the move with Switch or Steam Deck, build an incredible base on their beefy PC rig, and view it in incredibly immersive Virtual Reality.”

No Man’s Sky now supports cross-play and cross-save between a huge number of platforms including PC, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S, Game Pass, GOG, Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, PlayStation VR 1 and 2, and PCVR.

“Adding the ability to transfer saves between platforms via a server is especially difficult for No Man’s Sky, as the work involved increases with each platform supported and how long folks have already been playing for,” Hello Games continued. “Both those numbers are large for our tiny team.

“It’s very common for players to rack up thousands of hours of saves exploring across space, building elaborate bases and cataloging their discoveries, with incredibly detailed saves. Adding cross-save for us is a little bit like moving house, the longer people have lived there the more complicated it is to move them! We also have players who played once at launch, eight years ago, suddenly loading up that save on a platform that didn’t even exist back then!

“For these reasons we have secretly been introducing the technology for this update for over six months. We are now ready to start rolling cross-save out to a small number of players.”

From today, No Man’s Sky all players can link their different accounts together at https://cloud.nomanssky.com/cross-save. A subset of players will be enabled to then select their saves from multiple devices on the in-game save screen. In the coming weeks all players will be invited to do so, Hello Games added.

Moving on to today’s launch of PS5 Pro and No Man’s Sky’s support for the $700 mid-gen upgrade, Hello Games said users can expect PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) to provide 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. No Man’s Sky is also an early supporter of 8K resolution, running at 30 frames per second.

Check out No Man’s Sky running on PS5 Pro in the video below:

“As well as a much sharper resolution at higher framerates, the increased power of the PS5 Pro has enabled us to ramp up the graphical quality across the board,” Hello Games explained.

“Players on PS5 Pro will see improved lighting, with ultra quality reflections and higher quality ambient occlusion in all modes. Explore the most beautiful and detailed alien worlds No Man’s Sky has to offer, for the first time on console.” All these improvements are also coming to PSVR2, Hello Games added.

And finally, the Normandy from Mass Effect returns to No Man’s Sky as part of BioWare’s N7 Day celebrations.

“It was back in 2021 that the Normandy made its first appearance in one of the first expeditions we ever ran,” Hello Games said. “The limited-time expedition starts today, runs for two weeks and culminates in players being able to claim the Normandy for their fleet.

“In the intervening years since that event, we have welcomed a huge number of Travellers, not least a whole new cohort of Switch players and an increasingly large number of Chinese fans. Many of these new players have envied those who proudly displayed their Normandy in their frigate collection.

“Mass Effect fans know that this legendary freighter only appears when it is most needed! Today, and for the next two weeks, as a love-letter from one science fiction game to another, we are giving everyone another chance to encounter the Normandy in an overhauled version of the original mission and add it to their collection.

“Huge thanks to our friends at EA and Bioware for helping make this happen.”

No Man’s Sky launched in 2016 initially for PC and PS4 before coming out on Xbox One in 2018, and PS5 and Xbox Series X and S in 2020. A Nintendo Switch version followed in 2022. Over the years, Hello Games has issued a long list of major updates that have continued to boost player numbers.

Indeed, it’s a busy time for Hello Games, which alongside updates for No Man’s Sky is working on its next game, Light No Fire. It’s about adventure, building, survival and exploration together, set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth.

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 November 7, which means it’s once again Mass Effect Day for all who celebrate. That also means Dark Horse is back with another jaw-droppingly cool collectible, this time spotlighting the main hero of the original Mass Effect trilogy.

IGN can exclusively reveal a first look at the Mass Effect: Commander John Shepard 1:6 Scale Statue. Get a closer look at this piece in the slideshow gallery below:

This Commander John Shepard statue is a follow-up to last year’s Commander Jane Shepard statue, obviously spotlighting the character in his male incarnation this time. The statue depicts Shepard ready to leap into action while holding an M-8 Avenger assault rifle and Omni-Blade. It also includes interchangeable helmeted and unhelmeted heads.

The Mass Effect: Commander John Shepard 1:6 Scale Statue measures 14.5 inches tall and is made of polystone. The piece was sculpted by Substance Model Works, with prototyping and paint by Substance Model Works and J.W. Productions.

This statue will be sold exclusively through the Dark Horse Direct website. It’s priced at $199.99 and is limited to 1000 units worldwide. Orders placed between now and November 13 will receive a $20 discount.

You can also check out the Mass Effect collectibles available on the IGN Store. That includes past Dark Horse releases like the Tali’Zorah figure and the Liara figure.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.