Category: IGN

If there was a Mount Rushmore for fighting games, you can be sure that either Scorpion, Sub-Zero, or Liu Kang’s face would be on that rock. For more than 30 years, Mortal Kombat has been ripping spines and severing heads, and the latest, Mortal Kombat 1, represents perhaps the most dramatic gameplay shift the series has ever seen. The new Kameo system offers an unparalleled level of player expression for the series, allowing you to essentially break the usual rules of the game by giving characters tools that they weren’t designed to have, resulting in a uniquely dynamic fighting system that allows for some truly wild combos and set ups. Everything built around that system apart from the predictably excellent story mode could’ve used some more polish and refinement, but even with those blemishes, Mortal Kombat 1 more than lives up to its gory legacy.

If there’s one thing you can applaud Netherrealm for in recent years, it’s how each new Mortal Kombat game since MK9 has played dramatically different from the last without sacrificing that very distinct Mortal Kombat feel. So it’s not surprising that, even before we get to the crazy Kameo system, Mortal Kombat 1 makes some drastic changes from MK11 that really set it apart. For starters, it returns the meter management to just one meter that governs enhanced special moves, breakers, and now jump cancels out of uppercuts; fatal blows are still around, but are no longer invincible on start up; krushing blows are gone completely; character variations are gone; wake up attacks and wake up rolls are gone; every character is now able to do much more damage without even spending any meter thanks in part to a new air combo system; and thank the Lord, blocked crouching jabs are now punishable with crouching jabs of your own, making them much less spammable than before. These are all good, smart changes that make the action in MK1 feel fresh, yet familiar, while addressing some of the pain points that the fighting game community had developed with MK11.

The biggest new addition, though, is that Kameo system. For the first time in a Mortal Kombat game, you choose a second character that you can call upon as an assist during a fight. Your Kameo is governed by their own meter, and every time you call them in you use up half of it (or in some cases, like Goro’s powerful unblockable stomp assist, the whole thing). And it’s great that every Kameo has at least three assist moves, which adds multiple new tools to the repertoire of any character you choose to play.

So, for example, let’s say I’m playing as Baraka, who notably does not have any overheads or lows in the middle of any of his combo strings. That would make him a character you can pretty safely just block low against. Unless… I add Scorpion as my Kameo character, who has an overhead as one of his moves. So now there’s an additional layer to my offense that I can use to try and open up my opponent in a way I wouldn’t have been able to before. Or I could pick Frost and use her low hitting freeze attack in neutral to try and catch my opponent off guard and start up a damaging combo.

Other Kameos can be used to extend combos that typically would not be extendable, convert respectable damage off of small hits that normally wouldn’t be convertible, and some even have more specialized uses. Maybe you give your character a teleport, or a way to become invulnerable to projectiles, or a way to quickly retreat to fullscreen distance. I’m not one who generally enjoys assists in fighting games, since they’re usually accompanied by tag systems and I’m more of a 1v1 fighting game fan, but their implementation here is extremely well thought out and does nothing but improve upon the already solid foundation that MK1 stands on.

That said, Mortal Kombat has always had a very particular feel to its gameplay – something that can be chalked up to the dial-a-combo system, having to hold a button to block, and some general stiffness in the movement – and the more I play other fighting games, the harder it gets to come back to. It’s stuff that I eventually got used to, but it took some time to gel with MK1’s unique style of 2D fighting. Once I did though, it was clear that Mortal Kombat 1’s actual combat is as strong as it’s ever been.

It Has Begun

The story mode this time around is a true new beginning for the series, and that’s uniquely satisfying. This isn’t just a timeline reset like Mortal Kombat 9 – the entire history of Mortal Kombat has been re-written: familiar characters get brand-new looks, backstories, relationships, and powers. It picks up literal eons after the events of Mortal Kombat 11, in which newly minted Fire God Liu Kang used the Hourglass of Time to reshape the universe as he saw fit. Earthrealm is at peace, Outworld is ruled fairly by Queen Sindel, and while the Mortal Kombat tournament between realms still exists, it’s more of a tournament of pride and honor as opposed to a tool for realm invasion. Eventually that peace is threatened by outside forces that I won’t get into, but suffice to say, after a few very chill and lighthearted opening chapters with the supportive dad Fire God Liu Kang, cheering on his plucky new champions in their first martial arts tournament, things get very real very quick and the stakes get raised in all the usual ways.

Above all, I loved seeing these new takes on classic kombatants, especially those who have historically been relegated to minor roles. Baraka and Reptile, for instance, never really got to be anything more than henchmen in previous games, but in Mortal Kombat 1 they’re major players with their own chapters and defining story moments. Plus, the writing is full of plenty of cheeky in-universe references that felt like nice rewards for being a longtime fan of the series.

Netherrealm fighting games have always been the best at delivering story modes that are essentially the video game equivalent of absurd popcorn movies, and Mortal Kombat 1 is no exception to that rule. The campaign has no new gameplay innovations to offer, but its six hours are big, bombastic, well-acted, and ridiculous in all of the right ways. If that sounds familiar, it’s because I said virtually the same thing three years ago in my Mortal Kombat 11 review about its single-player story mode. And if I had reviewed Mortal Kombat X, Injustice 2, Injustice 1, Mortal Kombat 9, or Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, I could’ve said the same for those as well. There seems to be an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy at play with Neatherrealm’s designers, so if you liked those as much as I did, you’ll probably enjoy this one too.

While I wouldn’t say anything needs outright fixing, there’s definitely some room for refinement that still hasn’t been capitalized on. Every chapter just throws you into the shoes of a new character without a hint of guidance on what’s special about them – what their combo strings are, their launchers, or their special moves, for instance. I had to learn on the fly by bringing up the move list, trying things out string by string, special move by special move, and by the time I’d finished achieving a base level of competency with a character, the chapter’s over and I’ve moved on to the next. This mode would benefit so greatly from optional, short, developer-led character guides that can get you up to speed on the fundamentals of a character before you have to spend the next 30 minutes playing as them – especially when its tutorials are so good outside of the story mode.

Invaders of the Realms

Beyond the cinematic story mode, the big new single-player mode for Mortal Kombat 1 is Invasions, which combines the themed environments and rewards of The Krypt, some light RPG elements from older Konquest modes, and the quick back-to-back gimmicky battles of the Towers of Time, packaged in the form of a virtual game board. It’s a mishmash of ideas that sound good on paper but, unfortunately, tries to be a few too many things all at once.

Here’s how it works: Almost every invasion “board” is made up of a series of spaces that each have a themed fight assigned to them, like a fight against Reptile on a space called “Look to La Luna,” or a fight against a super powered Kung Lao on a space marked “Kung Wow.” You move around the board conducting an exhausting grind of clearing repetitive battles against enemies that don’t put up much of a fight, collecting a slower-than-usual drip of worthwhile rewards, finding keys to unlock gates, and completing challenges like Test Your Might or survival minigames, until you reach the end. Along the way you might find themed towers where you must fight in a series of battles, with one loss sending you back to the bottom, or you could be ambushed in between spaces and have to fight a challenging opponent with unique modifiers. But even those are often pushovers. For the vast majority of encounters I went into auto pilot mode with Li Mei, doing the same launching combo that would be risky against a smarter opponent, regardless of who I was fighting or what the modifiers were, only occasionally being forced to consider the RPG elements in the chapter-ending boss battles that dramatically power up one of the kombatants in unique ways.

Sure, there’s a lot of extra stuff going on underneath the hood in Invasion mode. Every character and Kameo has a damage type, with a complicated type advantage/disadvantage chart, there are talismans that can be upgraded to provide a variety of different status bonuses, and relics that frequently come with both a positive and a negative bonus to weigh against each other. But that’s all just a lot of complexity that doesn’t really add any value to the actual gameplay. Late game boards up the difficulty and force you to engage more with the RPG mechanics, but that’s not much more fun either, since Mortal Kombat 1 is at its best when there are no gimmicks involved. I’m happy to have the option to play the occasional silly match with wild modifiers and themed challenges, but Invasions strings too many of these fights together and expects you to play through them all in order to unlock many of the best cosmetic options for its characters. That turns it into a chore.

However, one thing that MK1 does get right is that the more you play with a character, the more you unlock for that specific character. And there is a ton to unlock for everybody. There’s new gear, skins, taunts, brutalities, and even fatalities that come with every level up. Granted, you’ll probably be able to find the input command for the locked fatalities before you unlock the in-game instructions if you search online, but nonetheless, you’re rewarded well for maxing out a character’s progression track.

One aspect that Mortal Kombat 1 does better than just about any other fighting game out there right now is its tutorial. It continues to build upon the great work done in Mortal Kombat 11, expertly explaining everything from the most basic controls to intuitive breakdowns of system mechanics, to highly practical tips that outright explain in detail how to approach pressuring your opponent, what to do when they’re knocked down, how to frame trap, how to jail, what all of those things mean, and plenty more. It’s the kind of comprehensive tutorial that all fighting game developers should include, and all fighting game fans should play all the way through. I do wish that same level of commitment was also applied to character specific tutorials, but there are seven combo trials for each character at least, which is nice to have.

On the subject of online, it’s mostly unchanged from Mortal Kombat 11, for better and for worse. The netcode is good, King of the Hill is back, and Kombat League returns with seasonal rewards for achieving high ranks in the form of currencies, skins, gear, profile pictures and more. It remains a great ranking system, one that generally succeeds at matching you with appropriate fighters and rewards your investment with unique prizes that are worthwhile because they mean something more than just a skin you got from a random chest pull.

That said, it’s still incredibly frustrating that Mortal Kombat 1 does not let you matchmake while in another mode. Mortal Kombat is pretty much the only major modern fighting game franchise now that doesn’t let you do this. Not only that, but there’s no way to create a custom room with multiple slots for multiple matches to go on simultaneously, and when you join in on a match in progress, you have to wait for the match to finish and just stare at a blank screen. This might have been fine back in 2019, but the bar has been raised, and Netherrealm feels like they’re getting left behind by the competition. Crossplay is coming down the line, but it’s also disappointing that it’s not available right out of the gate.

One thing that can’t be overstated is how gorgeous Mortal Kombat 1 looks. The character models already looked incredible in Mortal Kombat 11, but here they’re taken a step even further towards photorealism without ever causing that uncanny valley feeling. The real star though are the stages — the environmental team at Netherrealm has truly outdone itself with some of the most gorgeous vistas and disgusting looking dungeons the genre has ever seen. Not to mention those fatalities, which are extra gruesome this time around.

Well, they did it. The fools finally did it. Nintendo has finally given Princess Peach a sword. Oh, and a game! A whole game!

Okay, I guess she’s technically had one before. Both a sword (in Smash Bros.) and a game (Super Princess Peach). But this one is different. For starters, just look at her. Peach looks amazing in her swordfighting outfit, and her detective garb, and her chef suit, and everything else. She’s not just regular royalty, she’s fashion royalty.

But that’s not why I’m so over the moon for Princess Peach: Showtime! I’m stoked because based on what we’ve seen so far, it looks like Nintendo has finally, finally figured out exactly what was needed to give Princess Peach an adventure all her own. It only took nearly 40 years.

Nintendo has long known it needed to give Peach a spotlight, but has struggled to figure out just what that looks like. And simply pasting Peach as the protagonist in another Mario-like platformer has been out of the question especially in recent years. It’s one thing to make a Super Luigi Bros. U as a bit when Luigi already does almost everything his brother does. But Nintendo has also successfully managed to give Luigi and Wario their own spin-off series that make use of their unique characterizations. Luigi, the brave coward, has shone in the exploration-puzzler Luigi’s Mansion games, while Wario just makes sense as the Taskmaster-esque mascot for Wario Ware. With those two series going strong (both featured in the same Direct), anything less for actual Mushroom Kingdom royalty would have seemed like a pathetic consolation prize for Peach fans.

So what is a Peach game? I’m glad it’s not whatever Super Princess Peach was. The 2005 DS platformer reviewed well at the time, but it wasn’t lost on anyone that Super Princess Peach was basically a Mario game but easier with an emphasis on Peach’s emotional powers. You know, a girl game. A softer, lighter Mario. Not really the 2023 energy we need to see coming from Her Highness, especially after her Bowser-butt-kicking attitude in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. But what? What should they then do with Princess Peach? What genre can Peach make wholly her own without falling into weird stereotyping, while still staying true to her character?

Nintendo’s answer is delightfully Nintendo, which is to say, delightfully unconventional. Peach gets all genres. She’s an action game. A puzzler-mystery. A fighting game. An arcade-style cooking game. And many more. It just makes sense that Peach would get really into acting, right? Being a full-time princess in a kingdom as weird and fraught as the Mushroom Kingdom is almost a performance unto itself. And Peach has proven over the years that she’s capable of adapting to whatever the situation needs. Sometimes she needs to sit in the castle and keep the Toads in order, and sometimes she puts on the golf cleats, and sometimes she pretends to marry Bowser only to demolish him both physically and emotionally at the last minute.

While I can’t speak for the whole game just yet, my hope is that this newfound, all-encompassing power Peach has embraced is as much a feminist triumph as it looks to be on the surface. After all, Princess Peach: Showtime! gives Peach the magic to demonstrate a power she’s had all along: the power to become anything her heart desires, and succeed at it. She’s all things, because she can do all things.

And you know who hasn’t been anywhere near any of these trailers so far? Mario. Good! Keep him out. He’s got his own games, lots of them. The Toads can hang, they’re pals, and maybe Rosalina or Daisy wants to stop by. But I genuinely want to see Nintendo make a game where Peach is defined only by herself, and not by labels like Mario’s love interest, Mario’s damsel, Mario’s princess. I don’t even want her to be Mario’s savior! There’s no need! She can just be Peach! I want to see Peach’s identity when she’s separated from her iconic pink dress, her softness, her royalty, and her plumber. Princess Peach: Showtime! is the perfect opportunity for Peach to be her own, theatrical self, trying on costumes to see what suits her, thriving in all of them, and concluding with a bow on a stage all her own.

Give me Peach, with a sword, without Mario, and then give me as many sequels as our pal Luigi gets. Our princess — no, our QUEEN — deserves them all.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

The humanoid shmear, Xûr, is now live in Destiny 2 for the weekend until next week’s reset. If you’re looking to get you some shiny new Exotic armor or weapons for your Guardian, look no further.

Each week, Xûr has a random assortment of Exotic armor, one for each Guardian class, as well as a random Exotic Weapon and an Exotic Engram available for purchase. In addition to his Exotic wares, he’s got a random collection of Legendary weapons and armor to deck out your Guardians.

We’ve rounded up all the info on Xûr for the week including where to find Xûr, which Exotic weapons and armor are available, as well as which Legendary weapons you should pick up, either for PvE or PvP.

Where Is Xûr Located Today?

Xûr’s location can be found at Winding Cove in the EDZ on September 15 through September 19. To reach him, travel to the landing point at Winding Cove. When you arrive, make for the rock cliffs at the far end of the cove and look for a cave winding up to a platform next to some Fallen. There you’ll find the retail monster who inspires us all.

Hey, that Nintendo Direct we had yesterday? Pretty cool, right? But unless you watched the Japanese version of the Direct, you probably missed one of the coolest hidden gems to come out of the show: a little game called Stray Children.

Stray Children appeared exclusively in the Japanese Nintendo Direct. The game follows a young boy who is sucked into a TV into a world made up entirely of children, where he goes on a strange adventure. We don’t know too much about the project just yet, but it seems to be an RPG, and something about the way the boy is interacting with the monsters he encounters looks familiar…

Yup, if you’re watching the trailer and thinking it looks a bit like Undertale, you’re not wrong. You see, developer Onion Games is a Tokyo-based indie run by Yoshiro Kimura, who was a game designer on a 1997 game called Moon: RPG Remix Adventure. Initially, Moon was only ever released in Japan, and was a strange “anti-RPG” that was in many ways ahead of its time. But the unique ways it questioned the formula of traditional RPGs ultimately inspired many of the themes and ideas in Toby Fox’s Undertale nearly two decades later. And the success of Undertale in turn inspired Onion Games and Kimura to return to Moon in 2021 and release the game worldwide for Nintendo Switch.

Just in case it wasn’t crystal clear: yes, #StrayChildren will be localized and released outside Japan!

Our release date is still TBD, but please don’t worry!

We will be announcing all new details first in our newsletter, so don’t forget to subscribe!https://t.co/0oNlL1QhM6 pic.twitter.com/R1ZQBgI2Qd

— Onion Games (@oniongames) September 14, 2023

Now, with Stray Children, Kimura and his studio appear to be exploring something like a spiritual successor to Moon that has learned from a number of other, similar games in the same tradition. Thus far, it doesn’t have a release date either in Japan or in the West, but Onion Games is reassuring that this game won’t be locked to Japan the way Moon was for so long. And an English version of the trailer is expected soon. So while we wait eagerly for Deltarune Chapter 3, keep this little gem of a game in the back of your mind.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

On September 11, most of the over 4,000 employees at Ubisoft Montreal returned to office in Montreal’s Mile End for the first time in three years. But hardly anyone seems happy about it, and many are furious at what they’re calling broken promises from Ubisoft leadership.

Since Ubisoft Montreal announced that employees would be returning to the office beginning September 11, the studio’s intranet has been lighting up with posts ranging from mild concern to outright anger. IGN has viewed a number of comments on the situation across multiple Ubisoft internal postings, including over 270 comments on the announcement post alone – almost all of which were negative.

Many of the comments list numerous issues employees have historically had working from the office before as reasons not to return: noisy calls in an open office, increased expenses, and a lack of sufficient equipment or accommodations. But the anger also runs deeper than the inherent problems with returning to the office. Amid a wider company culture of layoffs, game cancellations, and abuse allegations, this mandated office return seems to be the final straw for a number of employees who feel that Ubisoft management’s indifference to its workers has gone on long enough.

Broken Promises

Ubisoft’s overarching return to office plan across all its studios was first kicked off in the summer of 2021, roughly coinciding with widespread availability of the first vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic. But in Montreal, where Far Cry 6, Roller Champions, For Honor, and multiple Assassin’s Creed games were made, employees tell IGN that the company’s publicly touted plan simply…never happened.

Instead, they say they were reassured repeatedly over two years that they could remain 100% remote long-term, with many employees making major life decisions or even accepting job offers assuming they could work from home for the foreseeable future. IGN has viewed a number of documents circulated on the company intranet over the last few years that seem to back up this belief. In one example, Ubisoft promises a “hybrid, flexible working environment” where “100% remote work will be possible depending on various criteria, such as productivity and impact on the team, as well as the nature of the work being done.”

But now that’s changing. Beginning September 11, 2023, Montreal employees are expected to work a minimum of two days a week out of the office. The requirement is mandatory for all employees, with exemptions only made for employees with explicit needs “once all other solutions have been explored.”

The announcement immediately sparked anger within the studio, with posts on the company’s intranet listing numerous issues employees have historically had working from the office before as reasons not to return: noisy calls in an open office, transit costs, and a lack of sufficient equipment or accommodations for specific accessibility needs and working styles. A handful of employees brought up the quality of the Montreal office specifically, mentioning past issues such as leaks, rats, bugs, and dearth of typical office perks such as free coffee. Several raised health concerns, citing ongoing fears about the spread of COVID-19. And many developers accused Ubisoft of breaking its promises around 100% work-from-home, with multiple employees saying they had either accepted a job at Ubisoft or made a major life change (such as buying a house outside of Montreal) believing it was a permanent policy.

One key theme in many comments is a broader lack of trust in the company to provide good working conditions and keep its promises over time. It’s been three years since the company was rocked with allegations of a toxic work environment, but some employees have publicly claimed these allegations have yet to be sufficiently addressed. On top of that, the company has now done multiple rounds of layoffs just this year amid much wider financial cuts, cancelled a number of both announced and unannounced games, and seen multiple others release and underperform. With that much chaos so readily apparent externally, it’s unsurprising that a Montreal return-to-office renege is serving as the final straw for many.

Several employees have gone as far as to speculate that the change was effectively a soft layoff on the part of Ubisoft in an effort to assuage said recent financial woes. By introducing an unpopular policy, they suggested, Ubisoft could push employees to quit and reduce headcount without having to pay severance or deal with other potential financial drawbacks of a mass layoff.

Multiple commenters pointed out that Ubisoft Montreal has long had agreements with the Quebec and Montreal governments to bring jobs and foot traffic to Montreal, in return for significant tax credits that have driven wider industry growth in the province. But the program has historically been a controversial one, and its merits may well be under scrutiny again amid Montreal’s wider struggles to rejuvenate its downtown post-pandemic and a broader trend in worker disinterest in return to office.

“The blog post cited things like ‘Ubisoft culture’ and ‘collaboration’ as the reasons we needed to return to the office, but never once explained what problems a lack of these things had caused, or what steps had been taken to alleviate them before turning to RTO as the solution, or what kind of changes management expects to see as a result of RTO and how we are to measure the success of this plan,” one employee told IGN. “The lack of substance about why we are doing this and how can we know if it’s working has led a lot of people to believe the reasons we are being given are lies and the management are afraid to say the real reasons out loud.”’

An Imminent Exodus?

While employees are being encouraged to speak with individual managers for accommodations, Ubisoft’s internal documentation has implied that exemptions “will only be considered once all other solutions have been explored.” Meanwhile, multiple employees IGN spoke to have attested that Ubisoft’s system for finding these solutions isn’t working well thus far. One said that employees who have been using standing desks or other specific equipment from home are unable to get what they need in-office without “a fight and 20 doctor’s notes”.

What’s more, the accommodations system seems to be bottlenecking quickly due to a flood of requests, and not enough people to fulfill them. Another person noted that Ubisoft leaders appear to be delegating responsibility managing employee frustration to middle managers, who seem largely powerless to address the anger.

IGN reached out to Ubisoft for comment on this story, and received the following statement in response:

Like many companies in entertainment and tech, we are asking our colleagues to come back to the office for key moments identified by each team. We are convinced that the synergy, in-person discussions, rapid iterations, and a sense of belonging that happens more in person will help us be more effective and agile together, and achieve our business goals.

First announced early in June, the hybrid mode goes into place on Monday, September 11, and we are accompanying our colleagues through these changes, giving them additional flexibility over the next eight weeks or more to adapt. Open and ongoing conversations in addition to extensive individual accommodation and arrangements are currently underway to ease this transition and the impact on everyone’s well-being, which remains our priority to continue to deliver great games.

While it remains to be seen how the unpopular return to Ubisoft Montreal’s office will impact the studio long-term, one possible model can be found over at Blizzard. Like Ubisoft, Blizzard has similarly been embroiled in a series of very public upheavals over its work culture, seen a wave of employee collective action, and laid off hundreds over the last few years. And then, like Ubisoft, Blizzard instituted its own similarly unpopular forced return-to-office earlier this year. So what happened to Blizzard? Well, according to Blizzard developers on social media, the RTO policy resulted in a mass exodus of talent so impactful that at one point that the company was creating “crisis maps” of what it could and could not ship with the people it had left.

Whether or not Ubisoft will follow suit remains to be seen, though a number of employee comments implied or even outright stated that the policy change had sparked them to look for work elsewhere. Recent history, too, indicates that employees are fed up to the point of departure. With Ubisoft as a company grasping for a return to form after multiple sales disappointments, delays, and cancellations, one wonders how much longer it can afford to enrage and upset its largest and most prolific development studio.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Big daddy Dale is back and is joined by Cardy and Mat to talk about some of the biggest trailers from this week’s PlayStation State of Play. We’ve got your Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Your Spider-Man 2. A bit of Baby Steps. All the good stuff. Plus chat about random films old and new and, finally, ABBA get the respect they deserve.

What do think of ABBA? Get in touch at ign_ukfeedback@ign.com

IGN UK Podcast 714: Daddy’s Back

• IGN UK Podcast 713: Starfield – Bethesda Strikes Back
• IGN UK Podcast 712: Starfield – The Good, The Bad, and The Inventory
• IGN UK Podcast 711: The Best of gamescom 2023
• IGN UK Podcast 710: Goodbye Xbox 360
• IGN UK Podcast 709: More Baldur’s Gate 3 Because Why Not

Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Intergrade have collectively sold over seven million copies, Square Enix announced.

Confirmation comes from a post on X. “Thank you all for taking the journey with us,” Square Enix said.

Seven’s the magic number.

Thank you all for taking the journey with us. #FF7R pic.twitter.com/9p4NcAZpX8

— FINAL FANTASY VII (@finalfantasyvii) September 14, 2023

Final Fantasy 7 Remake launched in April 2020 on PlayStation 4, before the enhanced Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade launched on PS5 in June 2021, and on PC in December 2021. It has yet to release on Xbox.

IGN’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake review returned an 8/10: “Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s dull filler and convoluted additions can cause it to stumble, but it still breathes exciting new life into a classic while standing as a great RPG all its own.”

It’s worth comparing Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s sales figure to other recently released games in the long-running series. PS5 exclusive Final Fantasy 16 sold three million copies during launch week in June. Square Enix has yet to issue an updated figure for that game.

Final Fantasy 15, which launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2016, sold 5 million units in its first day. It remains the fastest-selling game in the history of the series. As of May 2022, six years after release, Final Fantasy 15 had sold 10 million units worldwide, making it one of the best-selling Final Fantasy games of all time.

10 million copies of Final Fantasy XV have been sold or shipped to date worldwide!

You guys… are the best. pic.twitter.com/lPr3ZkgKdO

— FINAL FANTASY (@FinalFantasy) May 18, 2022

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is the first game in a planned trilogy of remakes, and is set to be followed by Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, due out February 29, 2024. Square Enix released a significant amount of information about Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth during Sony’s State of Play broadcast, including that it features 100 hours of content and where in the original story this remake ends. In case you missed it, here’s everything announced during State of Play September 2023.

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.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is exclusive to PlayStation 5 for at least three months, Square Enix and Sony have confirmed.

At the end of the Final Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth trailer unveiled during Sony’s State of Play September 2023 showcase is a note confirming the PS5 exclusive is “not available on other formats at least until May 29, 2024”.

Whether it’s the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, or even your phone, it’s never been easier to carry an entire library of games while on the go. With Apple’s recent announcement that the iPhone 15 Pro will be able to natively play games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Death Stranding, it’s safe to say the mobile gaming space is about to receive a major upgrade.

The choices can be overwhelming and, a lot of the time, quite pricey – if you’re already going to buy an iPhone 15 Pro, great! Enjoy Resident Evil 4 Remake. But no one would pay a grand to do it otherwise. The Super Pocket is at the other end of the scale. It’s a no-fuss retro handheld that’s stylish and, more importantly, the basic edition costs less than a newly-released game.

It comes in two versions: the Capcom Edition, which contains 12 games like Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, 1994: The Loop Master, and Mega Man; and a TAITO variation, featuring 18 retro classics, from light gun shooter Operation Wolf, to one of the greatest puzzle games of all time, Puzzle Bobble, and plenty more.

Despite the Super Pocket’s very small form factor – smaller and lighter than a Game Boy Classic – it really stands out. Each has its own unique Capcom or TAITO colour scheme that really pops. There’s also the Super Pocket Limited Edition Bundle, including both the Capcom and TAITO Super Pocket, which has a smart, translucent shell that reminds me of the clear white Game Boy Advance.

After a couple hours hands-on with each model at WASD in London, it’s clear this little device punches above its weight. For the low price, the build quality is great. The colourful plastic shell is tough and sturdy, and the D-pad – which reminded me of the one on the Game Boy, in a good way – is responsive. Thankfully there’s no noticeable wobble either, unlike the Evercade EXP, and the standard A, B, X and Y face buttons feel nice and clicky. The same can also be said for the shoulder buttons located neatly at the back of the unit too.

Despite its size, the Super Pocket packs a bright 2.8” IPS screen. While that sounds small – it’s slightly bigger than the screen as the Zelda Game and Watch released a couple of years ago – I had no issues enjoying the games I played, because its images are sharp and vibrant, and a game like Final Fight is a small but pixel-perfect experience. There’s also the option to tailor the visual experience: the pixel perfect aspect ratio means you get as close to the arcade experience as possible, or you can stretch the image out to fullscreen mode to take full advantage of the display. There’s also the option of subtle or strong scanline effects, if you really want to relive the full arcade experience.

Elsewhere, the single, forward-facing speaker does a good job given its size, allowing you to nicely appreciate the 16-bit tunes of Street Fighter II. It can get surprisingly loud too, but I always prefer plugging in a set of headphones anyway. Disappointingly, Bluetooth connectivity – which was also missing in the Evercade EXP – is still not supported for those who prefer a wireless audio solution.

Unlike the EXP, the Super Pocket is missing built-in Wi-Fi (although potential firmware updates are still possible via USB-C), as well as Mini-HDMI out, so you can’t experience these arcade classics on your TV. Apparently these features were scrapped to keep costs low. Thankfully, it still has the same four-hour long battery life, which is more than enough for short bursts of Street Fighter and Strider action, and recharging via USB-C only takes a few of a few hours.

Like the Evercade EXP before it, the Pocket also features a cartridge slot at the back, completing its Game Boy-like metamorphosis. This enables access to over 500+ games across 45 Evercade cartridges that pop in the back. These include the Delphine Software Collection, featuring Amiga classics like Another World and Flashback, to the upcoming Duke Nukem Collection 1 & 2, which includes 32-bit heavyweight Duke Nukem 3D: Total Meltdown, as well as Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes, which was only ever released on the PlayStation One.

Despite having a smaller screen than the EXP, I enjoyed my time with the likes of Codemasters F-16 Renegade and Super Skidmarks, both of which fit nicely onto the small handheld and are reproduced faithfully.

Switching from built-in games to an Evercade cartridge is a breeze, and the menus are simplified compared to the EXP, allowing for faster access to your game library. But one of my favourite features the Pocket has is an ‘Easy mode’, which can be used across all of the in-built arcade games. Unsurprisingly it changes the difficulty of the games, making enemy AI easier, increasing the number of lives and so on. While purists will no doubt scoff at this feature, for someone like myself – who didn’t grow up playing coin-ops of the 80s and 90s, it enabled me to enjoy the game in a less punishing environment. And of course, if you want the difficulty as it was way back when, you just have to re-enable it.

When I think about what’s cool in the Dune universe – what really sets it apart from other epic sci-fi – I think of a lot of the same things Shiro Games has chosen to focus on in Dune: Spice Wars. There’s the complex galactic politics, the smooth blend of the futuristic and the ancient, and the deadly, sweeping splendor of Arrakis. When I first reviewed it in Early Access, Spice Wars already felt like a reasonably complete RTS. And after a year and a half of additions and refinements, it gleams even brighter.

The core of each hour-ish-long fight for dominion over Dune is a well-paced real-time battle system that pulls off the difficult tightrope walk of being complex but not complicated. You can jump right into it and have a good time, but it really rewards understanding unit synergies, like the teamwork bonuses of the Atreides legions or the lone wolf, hit-and-run tactics of the Fremen. It’s just the right amount of micro for me, too, where a little bit of repositioning will go a long way, but you don’t need esports reflexes to get the most out of your army.

One shakeup to this formula since the Early Access launch is the addition of airships, which are expensive, late-game units that can really turn the tide if used correctly. Or… they can be a giant waste of money if the AI keeps dancing them in and out of my missile turret range. Tactically, I really have not been impressed with the AI so far. This can even apply to your own units if you get a big enough group of them, as they tend to wiggle around nonsensically if clustered too closely together. As an RTS veteran, I had to turn the difficulty up to Hard to feel decently challenged in combat. But don’t let its clumsiness on the battlefield make you complacent: the AI can be cunning and effective on the strategic level even on Normal, and will use the various diplomatic and espionage options to pull victory out from under you.

Feeding these flashy clashes is a clever, hands-on resource system in which you’re always having to decide when to sell and when to stockpile the ever-important spice based on changing exchange rates and a periodic Imperial tax that can levy punishing penalties on you if you don’t pay. Whether it’s manpower, political influence, or life-giving water, I never fell into a rut in this glimmering desert where I felt like I had enough of everything. Spice Wars always keeps you thirsty, which can lead to conflict even with a long-time ally if they just happen to beat you to that juicy spice field that’s critical to your plans.

The changes to how water works since Early Access launch have added a new strategic dimension, too. The supply system depletes the provisions of any ground unit crossing neutral or unfriendly territory, and they’ll start taking health damage if they run out. Particularly dangerous are the deep deserts, which divide up the map with deadly expanses that drain supplies three times as fast. Running a surplus of water, though, increases both the maximum supplies your units can carry and their recharge speed at friendly settlements, so keeping your industrial operations minimal translates into freer movement across the planet. In a very tangible way, living in harmony with Arrakis rather than trying to reshape it is rewarded.

The Fremen are the masters of the desert, being able to cross it more quickly and safely than other factions, as well as being able to gather spice without noisy harvesters that attract attention of the sandworm variety. Everyone else has to choose between setting up their harvesters to automatically evacuate at the first sign of a sandworm, which gives an ongoing debuff to their production, or be prepared to do so manually and swiftly when the interface warns you danger is coming. Sending ornithopters as escorts costs you a valuable scout but gives you an earlier warning to get the hell out, creating even more interesting trade-offs in the economic gameplay.

Of course, you can never actually remove the threat of the worms, so you have to learn to live with them. I really like how this reminds you that no matter how powerful you get, you still have to bow to Arrakis’ unforgiving rules. In this way, the planet comes alive and becomes a character of its own, supported by gleaming stretches of dunes in the daytime and an eerily quiet, almost meditative sea of twinkling blue at night. The look of the units and buildings is a bit cartoonishly stylized, but putting everything together, it’s gorgeous. The music and ambient sounds of wind and sand add to this skillfully.

Above the dusty surface, high-level strategy simmers as each faction jockeys for position in the cutthroat space senate, the Landsraad. The Houses Atreides, Harkonnen, Corino, and Ecaz are voting members with official representation, but all factions – including the unrecognized Fremen and Smugglers – can spend an Influence resource representing bribes and backroom deals to get what they’re after. It sounds complex, but the way it works is very easy to follow, with resolutions like increasing the upkeep on certain goods or giving a faction the ability to raise special Imperial armies coming to a vote periodically. It’s impressive how Spice Wars was able to bolt a fairly deep political system onto an already complex RTS without it feeling bloated, confusing, or unbalanced.

There’s even an assassination action that brings a great deal of tension to the espionage system. Collecting enough intel on a faction lets you launch an assassination attempt against their leader, the progress of which can be slowed down by the target devoting spies to counterespionage. If you’re targeted, you have to spend money on localized scans to find the assassin, who could be hiding anywhere on the map. If you can’t find them in time and send some units to arrest them, it’s game over. I lost to this a couple times, but I wasn’t frustrated by it. Win or lose, the race against the clock and having to divert my resources into a big detective game was exhilarating. And the costs to even attempt it mean foiling an assassination will put your would-be killer at a sudden disadvantage, so it feels balanced by risk.

It’s all handled by a UI that makes it relatively easy to keep up with. Since agents are one of the main ways you generate resources, a player who doesn’t focus on espionage will naturally unlock operations that support their playstyle even if they’re not actively engaging with it much. There’s even an operation that immediately stops rebellions at the cost of intel, which may as well have been directly targeted to solve two of my biggest, specific complaints from that earlier review. Spy traits, like settlement traits on the map, can be ignored without crippling yourself, but add a little extra layer of optimization for min-maxers that will pay dividends if you’re just a bit more meticulous.

Outside of the standard skirmish, there are two extra modes; Kanly Duel is a fast-paced 1v1 showdown on a much smaller map with many elements like technology sped up. It seems purpose-made for competitive play, or just getting in a quick grudge match with a buddy. The other, much more sweeping mode is Conquest, an in-depth campaign that takes around eight or nine missions – roughly 12 hours – to complete. You unlock perks and passive resource income by conquering sectors on the turn-based campaign map, with bonus rewards for taking on challenging, optional objectives like deliberately refusing to pay the Imperial spice tax.

Going into a mid-campaign mission with the off-map spice fields I conquered earlier created a meaningful sense of progression, as well as tactical escalation as factions with stronger starting income can build up bigger armies much faster. There’s also a Pressure mechanic that pushes back against inevitable snowballing when you get too powerful. Controlling a lot of territory makes it more likely that the rival houses will attack or even try to assassinate you.

Conquest does have its downsides, though. There are some maps, like the Volcanic Mountain Range, that don’t contain spice or sandworms – for valid lore reasons, to be fair. So you have to sell other resources, like fuel cells, to drive your economy. It’s kind of an interesting change of pace the first couple times, having to optimize settlements completely differently from how I was used to. But ultimately, Spice Wars just doesn’t work as well without the, you know, spice. Or the worms. Dune without sandworms? What are we even doing here? You also can’t play as the Smugglers or Fremen in Conquest, and as those are two of my favorite factions, that’s a bit disappointing.