Category: IGN

If you’re bummed that Starfield is not more like No Man’s Sky, where you can seamlessly travel from space to planet, there’s now a mod available that does just that.

Spotted by PCGamesN, modder 105gun has introduced a mod that finally adds seamless space travel into Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG. As described on NexusMods, when installed, the mod Slower Than Light allows Starfield players on PC to control the speed gear of their ship using hotkeys. The maximum speed is the equivalent of “hundreds of times the speed of light,” allowing players to travel between planets without fast travel and, more importantly, no load times.

As you can see from our captured footage, the mod allows for much faster traversal through space without having to fiddle in the in-game menus to planet hop, making it a lot quicker to venture to other locations. Unfortunately, the mod does not allow you to land on a planet similar to that like in No Man’s Sky (maybe will get a mod for that in the future).

Following a gameplay reveal at the June 2022 Xbox-Bethesda showcase, Todd Howard told IGN that Starfield won’t allow you to fly seamlessly through space. The most common way to visit planets and other solar systems is to fast travel, which includes a loading screen as you jump to your next location. While it was discovered that you can fly directly to other planets, it’s dissatisfying and requires a hefty dose of time and patience.

In our review of Starfield, which we awarded a 7 out of 10, IGN said: “Starfield has a lot of forces working against it, but eventually, the allure of its expansive roleplaying quests and respectable combat make its gravitational pull difficult to resist.”

Slower Than Light is one of many quality-of-life mods that have been added to Starfield since its release earlier this year. Other noteworthy mods include adding a FOV Slider, an in-game map so you don’t get lost while exploring New Atlantis, and a revamp to the inventory UI. For more on some of the best mods you can install in Starfield, check out our roundup of the best mods.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

EVE Online’s starry realm of New Eden is a vast expanse of more than 7000 star systems, which we have so far experienced almost exclusively from a distance aboard swooping starships or in the colossal interiors of mega-scale space stations. But all the while, I’ve imagined what might be going on down on these lonely planets I’m sailing by at impossible speeds. EVE Vanguard, a new shooter module for EVE Online built in Unreal Engine 5, will let us set foot on them and scavenge their riches in person. Well, sort of.

This isn’t CCP’s first attempt at an FPS set in the EVE universe. From 2013 to 2016 they operated Dust 514, an on-foot experience that was eventually shut down due to low player numbers. Vanguard represents a fresh attempt at introducing a human-scale component to EVE, which the developers hope will eventually combine to create a complete sci-fi experience on the ground and in space. Rather than being sold as a separate game, like Dust, Vanguard is being described as a “module” for EVE, which will use the same launcher and be free to play.

The EVE universe is full of high-concept, high-tech ideas, and Vanguard is no exception, so stay with me here. When you load up Vanguard, you will be taking on the role of an “Infomorph.” This is separate from the capsuleer character who pilots your starships in EVE Online, though they similarly make use of cloning technology to achieve functional immortality. This character will “burst” their mind into specialized war clones called Vanguards, who are the ones that actually do the running and the shooting. If you die, you can just activate a new clone.

Dust Off

The gameplay we’ve seen so far definitely takes a lot of cues from the extraction shooter genre. You’ll deploy your clone planetside, fight NPC enemies and other players to retrieve valuable loot, and when you feel like you’ve gotten enough to make an excursion worth your while, call for an evac. Doing so will send up a beacon and make you a target for nearby players who might want to steal your take right out from under you, though, so knowing when and where to hail a space cab is critical.

While you can play Vanguard solo, it won’t be easy. It’s very much a dog-eat-dog ecosystem in the EVE tradition, and so a coordinated team will have a decisive advantage over the lone wolf. Of course, you can always try to make ad-hoc alliances with other Vanguards you run into along the way, but there’s no guarantee they won’t betray you for a bigger share in the end. Maybe you ought to betray them first. Just in case.

Brave New Worlds

EVE Online has featured several of the biggest PvP battles in gaming history, but it only lets you fly one ship at a time. Set in the same universe but from a very different perspective, EVE Galaxy Conquest is a multiplayer 4X strategy game that puts you in command of your own outpost and an entire fleet.

The factions and warships should be familiar to EVE fans, but you’ll be able to command large numbers of them without having to yell at a bunch of mercenaries over discord to stick to the freaking plan.

In typical 4X fashion, a foray into a contested star sector will begin with a humble stronghold surrounded by unexplored space which can be captured, exploited for resources, and fought over. Galaxy Conquest is PvP-centric, with the ability to form alliances with and backstab other players to reach the center of the map and take on a difficult final challenge. This will involve exploring, mining resources, building and upgrading fleets, and navigating player-driven politics in a similar vein to the MMO.

Galaxy Conquest has a seasonal structure, with each season representing a fresh start with new mechanics and ships available. Each season will be a few months long. Some progression will be account-wide, but unlike in EVE Online where dominating an area of space might require endless vigilance, jumping in at the beginning of a season will allow you to stake your own claim without decades of entrenched politics to work around. We’ll also be running into some major NPCs from the EVE universe, many of whom have never been given a canonical look before now.

EVE Galaxy Conquest will be soft launching on Android and iOS later this year. CCP Shanghai has not announced any plans for a PC version so far, but they didn’t rule it out as a possibility. Likewise, we didn’t learn anything for sure about the monetization other than it will be similar to other free-to-play mobile strategy games.

Rockstar Games has announced that players subscribed to its $5.99 GTA+ membership on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles will now get access to a “rotating assortment” of classic titles, beginning with Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition.

The reworked trilogy is comprised of GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas, all of which were billed to have benefitted from a slew of graphical and gameplay improvements. The collection released in November 2021 in a pretty rough condition, but Rockstar has since pushed out a series of patches that have alleviated some of the many bugs and graphical issues faced by players at launch.

In IGN’s 5/10 review we noted that the new features “are slight and only partially implemented”, while “visuals are mixed, performance is inconsistent at best, content is missing and bugs and glitches abound”. These technical issues did little to dull consumer enthusiasm, with the collection significantly exceeding Rockstar’s expectations by selling up to 10 million in the months following its release.

Paying out for the subscription service also grants you a monthly bonus of $500,000 of in-game currency, along with discounts and freebies of cosmetic items, properties, cars, and more. Rockstar hasn’t given any indication as to which other ‘classic titles’ will replace the definitive editions of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas when they are rotated out.

GTA+ titles will cease to be playable once they leave the service, though perks like cosmetics and other items accrued as a result of membership will be persistent, even upon membership cancellation.

This month saw Rockstar celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Grand Theft Auto 5’s release, which despite its age still boasts a thriving online community. It’s sold over 185 million copies to date, gracing innumerable PCs and three distinct console generations.

The developer is now actively working on the next entry in the series, which could be targeted for release sometime in the 2025 fiscal year – running from April 1 2024 – March 31 2025 – judging by indicators found in Rockstars latest yearly earnings report. Check out IGN’s roundup for a comprehensive look at everything we’ve gleaned about GTA 6 from official reports, earnings scraping, and the odd leak.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

While HoYoverse is perhaps best-known in the west for Genshin Impact and the recently released Honkai Star Rail, but it has a third, older game it’s been running since 2016: Honkai Impact 3rd.

At Tokyo Game Show 2023, HoYoverse announced Honkai Impact 3rd Part 2, which sounds like a full-blown sequel due out in February 2024. According to HoYoverse, this new chapter upgrades the combat system, adds a new story set on Mars, and lets players assume the role of a team supporter named ‘Dreamseeker’.

The release of Spider-Man 2 is coming up quick (October 20, to be exact!), so there’s no better time than now to go back to the two previous games and brush up on everything that’s happened in the story. If you’ve yet to pick those games up for yourself, though, now’s a great time to do so. At the moment, you can save over $25 on Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition for PS5 (see it at Amazon), dropping the price from $69.99 to $42.57. Get in on the web-slinging action and pick up this game for yourself at the links below.

Save on Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition at Amazon and Best Buy

• Also at Walmart – $42.57
• Also at Best Buy – $43.99

This edition of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales also comes bundled with Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered – which comes complete with all three DLC chapters from Marvel’s Spider-Man: The City That Never Sleeps as well – so you can get the full experience before swinging into the new story of Spider-Man 2. Upon release, we gave both of these games a 9/10 in their reviews, stating that Spider-Man Remastered is “one of the best superhero games ever made” and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales “earns its spot as a fantastic follow-up”.

If you’ve been looking to preorder Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 ahead of its release, we’ve got you covered there as well. In our Spider-Man 2 preorder guide, you can find details on where to preorder the Standard Edition, Digital Deluxe Edition, and Collector’s Edition. Preordering the game, regardless of the edition chosen, will also score you some in-game bonuses: the Arachknight Suit for Peter Parker “with 3 additional color variants”, the Shadow Spider Suit for Miles Morales “with 3 additional color variants”, the Web Grabber gadget, and 3 skill points.

Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.

Maybe the first rule of Fight Crab was that you don’t talk about Fight Crab, because I somehow completely missed the 2019 original. Up until I got my hands on its sequel at Tokyo Game Show this week the only battles with crabs I’ve ever known were written about in multiple chapters of the Motley Crue biography. But after going pincers-on with Fight Crab 2 I now consider myself an instant fan. It seems brilliant and utterly bonkers in the best way possible.

If you’re a newcomer like me, you’ve probably got a lot of questions – particularly if you just watched the nine minutes of gameplay above. Questions like: why are there giant crabs bashing each other with everything from swords to overgrown carrots and corn cobs? Why is there an armoured knight clinging to the back of their shells? Why is that crab riding a tricycle? The truth is that I don’t really have a good answer to any of these questions, but if you’re wondering if Fight Crab 2 is fun then the answer is a confident yes.

The control system is simple, at least if you want it to be. While I’m told there’s a more advanced control setup for crab-fighting connoisseurs, I opted for the ‘Modern’ control setup during my short demo. In this setup you steer your crab around with the left stick, use the left and right triggers to attack with whatever weapon you have equipped in each claw, and hold the two shoulder buttons to block. There’s slightly more to it than that such as the ability to pinch and hold enemies or throw weapons as projectiles, but the bottom line is you need to use your considerable heft and consistent attacks to tip your opponent over and keep them on their back until they’re down for a short three-count.

This time around there’s a single-player career mode that’s more fleshed out than a freshly boiled Tasmanian King Crab. You pick your combatant from a crab select screen, customise its weapon loadout, give it a fun name like David Pincher, and thrust it into a seafood scrap.

While there are straightforward one-on-one arena fights to overcome, there appears to be a nice variety of different challenges to tackle. In one I had to defend a group of dancers on a stage from several waves of crustacean marauders, in another I had to liberate humans suspended in cages by bashing against the bars while trying to avoid other crabs out to spoil my rescue attempts. It would seem that it’s not just crabs that you’ll have to contend with, either – in one volcanic arena I battled what seemed to be one of the Stone Talus’ straight out of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, whose considerable heft took an enormous amount of my crab-jabs to knock off its stoney haunches.

After each victory, you get to choose one of three seemingly random rewards – either weapons like chained anchors or pistols to take with you into the next battle, or permanent buffs to your stats. Oh sure, you may assume that a fighting game about battling crabs would likely be shallow, but Fight Crab 2’s career could well be as deep as the ocean. Did I mention you also get the opportunity to train your crab in between bouts by lifting weights to build up your crab-dominal muscles? Apparently all the progress and growth your chosen crab experiences in the single-player career mode will then transfer into multiplayer battles should you choose to take the fight online.

I’ve had just a tiny taste of Fight Crab 2 and I’m keen to try more. The good news is that Fight Crab 2 is set to enter Steam Early Access this North American winter, so there’s not too long until these silly shellfish shenanigans can entertain us all.

Tristan Ogilvie is a Senior Video Editor at IGN AU. He doesn’t condone crab-on-crab violence outside sanctioned competitions.

Spawn isn’t the only horror-themed crossover for Call of Duty’s upcoming Halloween event. Diablo 4’s warring bosses are heading to the game, too.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0’s The Haunting event, set to arrive as part of Season 6, adds Diablo-themed bundles that include the Queen of the Succubi Lilith and the fallen archangel Inarius as Operators.

Lilith is the antagonist of the recently released Diablo 4, which also sees Inarius play a key role in the story. Perhaps the only surprise here is that it’s taken this long for Call of Duty and Diablo to cross paths. Both games are owned by parent company Activision Blizzard, and Call of Duty left military realism behind years ago as battle royale Warzone became a playground for licensed crossovers.

The Nintendo Switch Online’s Game Boy Advance library swells next week with the addition of Kirby & the Amazing Mirror.

Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, developed by HAL Laboratory and released in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance, is set in the Mirror World, a place where Kirby is split into four and must battle against Dark Meta Knight.

It stood out at the time for its Metroidvania-style gameplay and, in a first for the series, co-op multiplayer. The Switch Online version supports four-player co-op locally on one Switch console or online.

Kirby & the Amazing Mirror launches on Nintendo Switch via the $49.99 / £34.99 / €39.99 Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription on September 29.

The addition of Kirby & the Amazing Mirror to Nintendo Switch Online means its Game Boy Advance library now has 12 games. Here’s the list:

• Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3
• WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania
• Kuru Kuru Kururin
• Mario Kart: Super Circuit
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
• Metroid Fusion
• Super Mario Advance
• Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2
• Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3
• Fire Emblem
• Kirby & The Amazing Mirror

Golden Sun and F-Zero Maximum Velocity are coming at some point, Nintendo has 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.

As players continue to dig up all of Baldur’s Gate 3’s secrets, someone has found a hidden Karlach interaction where she looks at and talks to the player directly. It’s pretty cool – and only a little bit unsettling.

As found by YouTuber Chubblot (h/t GameRant), the interaction involves fan-favorite Karlach, who’s become so popular that Larian Studios included an ending with “better closure” for her romance in Patch 2. In the recently discovered clip, everyone’s favorite Tiefling Barbarian asks the player a series of questions before having what appears to be a bit of an existential crisis as she realizes she’s locked in a video game, only to repeat the same hundred or so hours over and over again.

Just Karlach randomly becoming aware of her status as a video game character nbd. pic.twitter.com/9Vzq2n8AfW

— Chubblot (@chubblot) September 16, 2023

At first, things start off pretty tame, with Karlach asking the player character if she can try a magic trick she learned in Avernus that involves discerning whether or not the person she’s talking to is telling the truth. And, instead of facing the player character, she faces the screen and stares right at it. First she asks you what your name is, then about her name.

Things take a bit of a turn after this, as she starts to become seemingly self-aware and asks the player, “What’s happening here?” Then she goes deeper still, asking questions about grand design, destiny, and the bounds of her reality. She even asks if they’ve played the game before. Finally, her spiral ends with asking the player if they’re having fun. Chubblot says yes, and she’s clearly relieved. Then things just snap back to normal, ending on, thankfully, something of a pleasant note.

If you’re deep in your Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough and wondering why you haven’t encountered this existential interaction yet, well, it’s kind of difficult to trigger. Chubblot apparently used a back-end tool to dig it up, originally assuming it was cut content. But Karlach’s voice actress herself, Samantha Beart, confirmed on X/Twitter that that’s actually not the case.

“Perhaps I’ll talk about it when someone triggers this organically,” Beart wrote, setting the record straight that the interaction is possible to trigger organically, if just very difficult. Chubblot added that he’s on his fourth playthrough and has never seen it trigger organically.

SPOILERS in the video – Karlach easter egg – you’ve been warned!

Congrats on finding this, perhaps I’ll talk about it when someone triggers this organically (rather than yanking the file and then getting confused about context)… https://t.co/0tpXsSpDFu

— Samantha Béart is Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3 ❤️‍🔥 (@SamanthaBeart) September 16, 2023

As far as we know, no player has found out how to trigger this scene, but we’d like to see the context for when someone does. But if you want to discover the scenes that we have found, our Karlach romance guide should be of help.

If you’re still trying to figure out all the Baldur’s Gate 3 has to offer, check out all of IGN’s guides, essential tips and tricks for getting started, and our full romance walkthroughs.