Category: IGN

CD Projekt has explained why it has taken a “console-first” development approach for the hotly anticipated The Witcher 4, having gone with a PC-first approach for its previous games.

Earlier this month, CD Projekt revealed a stunning The Witcher 4 tech demo, built using Unreal Engine 5, that gave fans a clear sense of what to expect from the game.

The tech demo, captured on a PlayStation 5 and running at 60 frames per second, follows Ciri as she explores the never-before-seen region of Kovir in the midst of a monster contract.

There is an incredible amount of detail in the tech demo, with fluid animations on a level we have yet to see on the current generation of consoles. Ciri and her horse Kelpie have particularly impressive movement and interactions with each other, NPCs, and the game world as they make their way through the mountains of Kovir to the bustling port town of Valdrest. At one point in the demo, CD Projekt upped the NPC count in the market scene to 300 individually animated characters. The showcase ended with a first look at Lan Exeter, the winter capital and a major port city in Kovir.

Speaking to the tech experts at Digital Foundry following the demo reveal, CDPR’s VP of technology, Charles Tremblay, explained why the studio showed off The Witcher 4 tech demo running on PS5 first and before PC, saying it’s going for a “console-first” development approach for the game.

“We always do PC and we push and then we try to scale down,” he said. “But then we had so many problems in the past that we tried to say, this time around we really want to be more console-first development.”

That mention of having problems in the past is a nod to the disastrous launch of 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077, which ran so poorly on consoles on release that Sony ended up pulling it from the PlayStation Store and offered refunds. Amid the furore, CD Projekt apologized to customers for not showing the game on base last-gen consoles ahead of launch, admitting “we should have paid more attention to making it play better on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.”

CD Projekt spent years recovering from the game’s technical issues, but has done so successfully, to the point now where Cyberpunk 2077 is a massive hit and was even successfully released on the Nintendo Switch 2 as a launch title.

Now, with The Witcher 4 in development but not due out until 2027 at the earliest, CD Projekt is clearly keen to avoid making the same mistake. Later in the same interview, Jakub Knapik, VP, Global Art Director, CDPR, talked in vague terms about the benefits of going with console first then “scaling up” to platforms such as PC.

“We wanted to solve certain foundations,” he said. “It’s pretty logical when you think about it, because it’s easier to scale up than down.

“We knew that once we set up certain foundations both visually and technically, there’s room to scale up. Now what that means is another question. We’re CDPR, we always like to push PCs to the limit. It’s just a creative process how to really use it.”

Tremblay then stepped in to insist PC gamers will get their money’s worth from The Witcher 4 when it eventually comes out, despite the “console-first” approach.

“In the past, something that’s super important for the group is that if people pay good money for their hardware, then we want them to have what the game can provide for that, not like a simplified experience,” he said.

“So this is something we will definitely explore. The company started as a PC company, and we’ll definitely want to have the best experience for the PC gamer for sure. But it’s too early to say what this will mean for The Witcher 4.”

It’s worth remembering that by releasing The Witcher 4 on Xbox Series X, it must also release it on the less powerful Xbox Series S. All the talk so far has been about how CD Projekt has committed to 60 frames per second for The Witcher 4 across console, but in the DF interview Tremblay admitted that scaling down to Series S while maintaining 60fps will be “extremely challenging.”

“I wish we did a lot of work already on that but we did not,” he said. “So this is something that is next on our radar for sure. I will say that 60fps will definitely be extremely challenging on the Xbox Series S. Let’s just say this is something we need to figure out.”

There is still a long way to go for The Witcher 4, and as IGN has reported, the tech demo is not representative of The Witcher 4 gameplay. But it does show CD Projekt’s “ambition” for the title.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Father’s Day is almost here, and now is the time to score some last-minute gifts, as well as catch some popular item restocks. We’ve rounded up the best deals for Saturday, June 14, below, so don’t miss out on these limited-time offers.

Our latest exclusive on Dying Light: The Beast during our all-June-long IGN First “cover story” coverage is a video from Dying Light franchise director Tymon Smektala explaining what the Chimeras – aka the twisted, skinless, gigantic boss creatures you’ll encounter – are all about.

If you missed our other two exclusives so far this month, we had an exclusive hands-on preview (that included a fight with one of the Chimeras), and we kicked off June with a whopping 30 minutes of gameplay. Take a look at that video below.

Dying Light: The Beast will be released on August 22 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Stay tuned to IGN all June long for more exclusive coverage.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Once BioShock Infinite’s protagonist Booker DeWitt arrives in the floating city of Columbia, the local police set about getting a description of the False Prophet they’ve anticipated for so long. Only trouble is, they’ve spent years whipping the populace into a frenzy of xenophobic fear. And when they speak to eyewitnesses, bigoted terror is all they’re getting back.

We hear on the radio that Booker is either a mixed-race dwarf, or a French man with a missing left eye – no more than four foot and nine inches. And when DeWitt stumbles across a sketch artist putting together a facial composite, the overheard conversation is farcical.

“He was taller than that… slimmer. His eyes were further apart. Bigger than that. Squinty. His hair was… hmm, red and curly? He looked Irish to me. Yes, like that. Oh, he was certainly an anarchist. You can spot them anywhere, you know.”

It’s silly, but it’s one of BioShock Infinite’s subtlest touches – a way for developer Irrational Games to demonstrate how a backward society is undone by its own narrow belief system. And it sprung to mind during this summer’s Xbox Showcase, where Clockwork Revolution finally got an extensive reveal.

My Nintendo Store UK has finally dropped its preorders for Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and it’s by far the biggest selection of preorder bonuses we’ve seen for the upcoming Switch 1 & Switch 2 RPG so far.

Any version of the game you buy also comes with a Pokémon Legends: Z-A Partner Figurine, with Tepig, Chikorita, and Totodile in one collective pose, as a bonus item.

Other retailers had already put their preorders up with their own incentives. Amazon UK’s at £52.95 is still among the cheapest for the Switch 2 version, and the Pokémon Center UK is bundling starter Pokémon plushies with copies of the game. The UK Nintendo store, however, is offering three separate bundles, each offering various new Pokémon merchandise, ranging from £56.99 to £78.99.

Our favourite but far is the very good-looking Pokémon Legends: Z-A Mega Evolution Bundle. Each variation contains both a Z-A starter Pokémon pin set, enclosed in a snazzy case, and a figurine each of Mega Charizard X (8 x 10 m) and Mega Charizard Y ( 8 x 8cm).

The physical version on Switch 2 is selling for £58.99, but you can buy it digitally for £57.99 through the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrade pack. If you buy the Switch 1 version physically, you can also buy the Switch 2 upgrade pack for higher frame rates and resolutions, for £7.99.

That’s along with the standard editions of the game. For instance, the Switch 1 version of Pokémon Legends Z-A is selling for £49.99 both physically and digitally.

As far as the promo images go by, they seem like decent figurines considering the added price and included pins. On the other hand, if Pokémon swag is more your thing, then the Legends: Z-A Trainer Bundle is more for you.

For an extra £13/14 from the standard editions, £62.99 for the Switch 1 version & £71.99 for the Switch 2 version, you’ll also get a Mega Evolution-themed umbrella, cap, and mug featuring Tepig, Chikorita, and Totodile.

The huge Champion’s Choice Bundle, for an added £20, though, gives you the entire lot from the Mega Evolution and Trainer Bundles. With the bonus figurine included as well, the Champion’s Choice Bundle by far gives you the best value.

If you’re as excited for Pokemon Legends: Z-A as Nintendo could hope following the boosted performance of Scarlet & Violet on the Switch 2, the biggest set wil grant you the largest bang for your buck.

Ben Williams – IGN freelance contributor with over 10 years of experience covering gaming, tech, film, TV, and anime. Follow him on Twitter/X @BenLevelTen.

Father’s Day is almost here, and now is the time to score some last-minute gifts, as well as catch some popular item restocks. We’ve rounded up the best deals for Saturday, June 14, below, so don’t miss out on these limited-time offers.

If you could hire any director to make an Elden Ring movie, who would you pick?

You might settle for fantasy heavyweights like Peter Jackson or Guillermo del Toro, or maybe you’d tap Miguel Sapochnik, the man who brought you many of Game of Thrones’ biggest battles, including Hardhome and Battle of the Bastards. If you’re looking for something a little more avant-garde, you could even pick Robert Eggers (Nosferatu), Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), or Bong Joon Ho (Mickey 17) – filmmakers who, like Elden Ring developer FromSoftware, relish in the surreal, cryptic, and uncanny.

Chances are, you wouldn’t pick Alex Garland. The British writer and director is known for the grounded, slow-burning science fiction dramas Ex Machina and Annihilation, as well as the inventively named war films Civil War and Warfare – none of which resemble FromSoftware’s work in any notable way. However, Garland is precisely who film studio A24 has selected to adapt Hidetaka Miyazaki’s magnum opus for the big screen. Considering Garland – who, in addition to directing, is also set to write the screenplay – isn’t one to take his multi-digit checks and phone it in, you have to wonder how he’ll try to make this work.

There’s something about Sonic games where I kind of let my guard down and just enjoy them for what they are. And I’m happy to say that I’ve genuinely enjoyed my time with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, which I played an hour of during Summer Game Fest. It’s a kart racer that, in my short time with, nails the core tenets of a good kart racer – fast and intense races, powerups that turn the tide and leave you salty, and a good vibe that celebrates the characters from its source material. I can’t really ask for much more than that, yet there’s still more to chew on that we haven’t seen in previous Sonic racing games.

Let’s start with the CrossWorld mechanic, which varies up each race – the first lap starts on the selected track, then whoever’s in first place in the moment chooses where the entire race warps to for the second lap. This can range from an icy world with aurora borealis in the skybox, to a storming sea among a ship’s wreckage, or a volcanic zone with laser grids as obstacles. And then the third lap returns to the normal track. It’s a novelty that you may get used to over time, but it does provide some level of dynamism from race to race and adds a bit of unpredictability to keep things fresh.

In those crossing worlds, you’ll be flying, hovering, and surfing depending on where you warp to, and so there’s a great sense of variety to your vehicles since you’re not just on the ground drifting with your karts. I quite like the flying sections since your aircraft controls well and brings a certain verticality that’s surprising for a kart racer. If anything, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is blasting your eyeballs with chaos happening on screen, and maybe overdoing it. Not that it’s a major complaint I hold against it, but this is a very visually busy game to the point where it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s really going on – and I think these moments are more in service of the spectacle rather than being a serious competitive racer.

However, it does have that competitive edge with how you outfit your kart. You can customize parts like the body, tires, and boosters to tweak stats such as top speed, acceleration, and handling. What’s more is that you can attach perks to your kart as if it’s a loadout. You get six slots for attachments, and some attachments take up more than one slot – for example, I used a three-slot acceleration booster and a two-slot perk that improved my recovery time after getting hit by an item. And these things actually affected my performance in a meaningful way. I got hit with a rocket in lap three alongside another racer, but was able to pull ahead of them significantly after getting hit because of both of those perks I equipped. So, if you’re really serious about kart racing, I think there’s room for being a real sicko about it.

I only had access to the Grand Prix modes, which pits you in a series of four races, awarding points for your position and determining a winner by the end of the series. It’s pretty standard stuff with a few quirks along the way. I’m not sure if this is embedded in Sonic lore, but one racer will be declared a rival mid-Grand Prix and will act more aggressive toward you and stay more competitive throughout the series. The fourth and final race will also reward more points for first place, so you can turn the tide at the last minute if you’re a few points behind. However, I’m curious about how the other game modes in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will play out, because as fun and dynamic as normal races are, longevity will rely on Sonic Team being able to capitalize on its potential in other creative ways.

Perhaps some of that will come from its crossover characters – not only is this about Sonic as a whole, it’s a celebration of Sega’s recent history as well. During Summer Game Fest, Sega revealed that characters like my precious boy Kasuga Ichiban from Yakuza / Like A Dragon, Joker from Persona 5, and my vocaloid queen Hatsune Miku will all be part of the roster. Seeing Ichiban relive his days of Dragon Kart from the 2020 RPG is adorable and a welcome extension of his character, while seeing Miku on a hovering board racing through Sonic worlds is enough to get me bought in (and we should have Miku in more games, to be honest, shout out to Fortnite). It’s not like crossover characters are a new thing for a Sonic racing game – I mean, look at the wild lineup for Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing. But Sega’s catalog has grown a lot since then, so perhaps this new era of characters can spice things up in a way that makes more sense.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds doesn’t have to revolutionize the kart racing genre, and I think it’s staking its claim on being a fun and carefree racer that celebrates Sonic and the larger Sega pantheon. It’s a vibe, and one that I’ve enjoyed and will look forward to drifting through when it launches on September 25 of this year on the last two PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles, as well as PC.

Cuphead did something in 2017 that we’d arguably never seen before in a video game, or at least nowhere near the degree Cuphead went to: it built an entire game around completely hand-drawn art and animation a la a 1930’s cartoon. We haven’t seen it since probably since doing all of that painstaking visual work by hand is incredibly difficult, time-intensive, and laborious. But now, a new hand-drawn and hand-animated project is getting ready to grace our PCs and consoles. It’s called Mouse: P.I. for Hire, and fully handcrafted art is about the only thing it’s got in common with Cuphead. Mouse is its own, equally gorgeous game, and after getting a look at a hands-off demo, I’m just as interested in it as I was when I first saw Cuphead. Which is to say, I’m very interested.

As you can obviously see, Mouse is in black and white. It’s reminiscent of the Steamboat Willy era of early animation, complete with guns that are always wobbling even when they aren’t in use, as if they’re made of rubber. (More on the guns in a bit.) As you can also plainly see, Mouse is a first-person shooter. In it, you play as Jack Pepper, who in-demand video game voice actor Troy Baker plays with a stereotypical-on-purpose New York accent. He’s an early-20th-century gumshoe, after all, see? He’s got to sound like one.

What I really liked about the demo I saw of Mouse was that it wasn’t just a mindless run-and-gun first-person shooter (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Instead, the mission I saw part of was set at an opera house, where Pepper had to find and question the stage designer. We started at the back door, where we spoke to a waiter and asked about Roland, the aforementioned stage designer. He hasn’t seen him, so in we go to investigate for ourselves.

Inside, the kitchen gives you a better look at the visual aesthetic at play here. Notice how the characters are 2D within the 3D space, not unlike the monsters in the original Doom. A peek through the porthole window of the kitchen door shows off one of Mouse’s detective-y features: reconnaissance, as Jack takes a photo and sees some members of the Big Mouse Party – aka not guys we want anything to do with.

Moving to the back of the kitchen, we meet up with a slick waiter who’s happy to help sneak us upstairs to where we need to go quietly – for $30. We decline the bribe and instead find a vent we can sneak through. A bonus stash of cash hiding in the vent is appreciated, but the bottom falling out of the vent, crash-landing us back outside where we started, is very much not appreciated.

Attempt number two takes us back through the kitchen and into the same vent, carefully crawling around the newly made hole in the floor and taking us to the dressing room, where a Thompson machine gun and some ammo await. You’re not supposed to be in here, of course, and the Big Mouse Party members don’t take kindly to your presence. It’s here that we get our first look at the first-person shooter combat, including one of the gorgeous reload animations.

We hear a muffled voice that might be Roland, but first a safe gives us a chance to see the lockpicking minigame in action, along with what the safe was hiding: a cup of coffee? Then things get really loud, as the wall in front of us blows up and we have to snuff out the bad guy that emerges from the smoke before using TNT ourselves to make a hole in the floor so we can make our way down into the bowels of the opera house.

Finally, we’ve found Roland. He’s been beaten up by the extras, who Jack deduces aren’t extras at all, and learns the Big Mouse Party’s real plan: to assassinate mayoral candidate Stilton, who’s sitting in the balcony for that evening’s show, during intermission, using the cannon on stage that is both full of live ammo and pointed directly at him.

Fast-forward to more combat, including the shotgun, which looks like it packs a nice wallop – and also has a pretty awesome reload animation of its own. Plus a look at explosive barrels that leave the bad guys burning in the most cartoonish way possible. There’s even an ice barrel – liquid nitrogen, perhaps? – that freezes nearby foes when detonated, allowing you to kick them so they shatter into a thousand pieces, Terminator 2-style. Moments later we also got a look at the third weapon featured in the demo: the turpentine gun, which melts these cartoon characters who are literally made of paint, not unlike the Dip from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

After a bit of platforming and fighting a new helicopter-tailed enemy type, we found our way back upstairs…only to have a trap door below our feet open up, dumping us back into the basement. It’s here we meet the Old Rat Stuntman, who teaches Jack the double-jump maneuver. After testing it out and discovering a secret – a baseball trading card of “Brie” Ruth (get it, because they’re mice and love cheese?) – we find our way back on stage to sabotage the cannon and save Stilton, which triggers a boss battle with a raging opera performer. The turpentine gun finishes him off, and we get a look at its reload animation, which if you ask me is even cooler than the others we’ve already seen.

The fire from the stage has spread to the rest of the opera house, and we’ve gotta get out of here. But we’re going to have to shoot our way out using every weapon at our disposal. No problem for Jack Pepper. Let’s watch some combat now, uninterrupted.

Finally escaping the building, we meet up with the stage designer, who coughs up what he knows about the performer who’s vanished. Something about a secret lab underneath his mansion? No, that doesn’t sound suspicious at all… And with that, we exit the level and the demo ends.

And so, though I haven’t yet played it myself, from what I’ve seen of Mouse – and you just saw most of what I saw – I’m really eager to give it a try. It seems like it’s got the right lighthearted, somewhat comedic tone while also being self-aware but offering a solid first-person shooter at the core of it. After all, as gorgeous and admirable as its hand-drawn art and animation are, if the gameplay can’t back it up and also maintain my interest in it over the course of its campaign, then it won’t really matter how pretty it is. But at this point, I’m extremely optimistic.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

I remember the first time a boy made me a mixtape (okay, mix CD, same diff). It wasn’t even a romantic gesture – he made them for all our friends. Mine had a now-embarassing mix of Morrowind music, Naruto OPs, Queen and Kansas (inexplicably), and uh, this song. It was a wild mix of nerd stuff and absolute bangers that made no sense together at all.

So I can appreciate a really, really good mixtape, one that makes you feel big feelings and think big thoughts. Sure, I make my own Spotify playlists now for myself, but there’s something tangibly retro about someone handing you a physical item of songs, perfectly selected and ordered, that they curated for a person, a moment, a space and time.

So what if that, in video game form? That’s the entire premise of the aptly named game Mixtape that I previewed at Play Days last week. Mixtape follows three teens: Rockford, Slater, and Cassandra, though it’s told from the perspective of Rockford and their final mixtape of the summer: a collection of musical hits to encapsulate their last night together with their best friends. See, Rockford has big dreams, and is headed to New York in the morning to take a huge, ridiculous swing on a future career that’s incredibly, appropriately teenager of them and unlikely to pay off (though Rockford’s plenty confident). So Rockford has assembled a pretentious lineup of perfect songs, each backing a different vignette from the crew’s final night of mischief (and, occasionally interrupted by a flashback or a song they didn’t necessarily intend to include).

Look, even if Rockford’s whole schtick is being a music elitist, they’re right about one thing: they do compile an excellent mixtape. The whole game opens on “That’s Good” by Devo, and the segment I played proceeds through Jesus and Mary Chain, Alice Coltrain…I don’t want to spoil it too much, because the songs themselves are such a fundamental part of each moment and do a lot of heavy lifting to play into Mixtape’s overall aura of nostalgia.

In fact, I think one thing I appreciate most about Mixtape is that aside from the music, this isn’t a game jam-packed with specific pop culture references like so many other nostalgia plays love to do. The songs have got it covered. I’m not stopping every few seconds, pointing at an artifact or a joke and going, “I recognize that!” And yet, Mixtape manages to effectively capture a very specific flavor of reminisence for one’s youth, and that feeling is injected into everything from Rockford’s room decor to how the characters speak to the gentle, golden, almost-autumnal light permeating everything in the opening.

Here’s another thing that struck me: the three main characters are, frankly, pretty annoying! And I love it! They’re such teens. Older teens, sure, on the cusp of adulthood, but teens! I’m 34! I can’t take them remotely seriously, and I’m not supposed to. The trio, while distinct in their personalities, all carry a slightly exaggerated self-obsession, that feeling I remember well from being 17, 18, 19, and thinking my concerns were at the center of the universe. Obnoxious quirks and all, I’ll be happy to spend a full evening with all three in the full game.

The actual meanest thing I can say about Mixtape is that at least in the snippet I played, you’re not doing very much. There’s some skateboarding, and a sequence where you careen through the town on a shopping cart, and in both situations you steer, but I’m not sure there’s really any consequences for doing either activity well or poorly, or any reason to try very hard. You can headbang to music played loud in a car. Mostly, from what I saw, you walk around a room and look at things while talking to your friends. The most interesting gameplay was an extended section where you simulate two awkward teenage tongues making out in a simultaneously hilarious and disgusting interchange. I get the sense that the wider game will likely play out more as a series of minigame vignettes that one specific flavor of video game, but as it stands I’m hard-pressed to explain to you what it is you’re going to be doing, mostly, throughout the rest of Mixtape.

The thing is, whether the rest of the game turns out to be action-packed or not, I’m not really sure it matters for what Mixtape is going for. This is a vibes game through-and-through, and Mixtape’s vibes are impeccable. I’m happy to let Rockford take me along on whatever journey they and their friends are about to head out on, one song at a time.

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.