Category: IGN

Note: This review specifically covers the multiplayer of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. For our thoughts on the other modes, see our single-player campaign review and our Zombies mode review in progress.

Alright boys and girls, the word of the day is Omnimovement. That’s where you take a Max Payne-esque leap in any direction, guns blazing, only to land on the ground in the most dramatic way possible to minimize getting shot and maximize your aim after exposing yourself, and it’s a game-changer in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s multiplayer mode. Sure, we can nitpick all day at minor things other games do better, but in the face of such fun, fast, and smooth online competition, those seem insignificant. Black Ops 6 is certainly no reinvention and arguably plays it a bit too safe, but its fundamentals – moving and shooting – are at such a high level as to elevate the experience well above that of years past. I spent a couple of hundred hours grinding through the perfectly fine but not at all remarkable Modern Warfare 3, but after a few days in Black Ops 6, I can’t even imagine going back.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen moves like this in Call of Duty, but it’s the first time the developers have embraced the technique the community invented and used to call Dolphin Diving, and they built on it with dramatic flair. I still find it a little cumbersome to execute properly with my mouse and keyboard control scheme, but I’m happy to say after my nearly 20 hours grinding out matches, I’ve already gotten much better at bursting into a room with a gun-blazing sideways leap.

Where I think Omnimovement works the absolute best, though, is when you’re moving backwards. When you dive back and hit the ground, you have the same overall target footprint as you would in the prone position, but now you have 360 degrees of aim freedom and you can both get up and move around while on the ground much more easily. When I pull any of these moves off I also congratulate myself for giving everybody else a good show, because it looks really cool from an observer’s perspective.

Crucially, though, omnimovement isn’t omnipowerful. Those online acrobatics may make for some sick clipouts, but I’m finding it pretty easy and extremely satisfying to take people out when they get overconfident and execute a flying sideways John Woo leap directly into my gunsights. In fact, if you’re playing against me I encourage you to Omnimove as much as possible.

On my end of things, I find it a little harder to aim true with an Omnimove than I do with just a simple slide or traditional dolphin dive and so I end up using those tried-and-true methods much more often. Part of that is undoubtedly muscle-memory, but for the most part I find Omnimovement to be a ridiculously cool way to get around that doesn’t necessarily help me competitively except in very specific situations. It’s another tool in the toolbox, but not the end-all-be-all.

Maps, Modes, and Gunplay

Call of Duty lives or dies by its gunplay, and Black Ops 6 is absolutely fantastic in that regard. I’ve been grinding the XM4 since launch, one of the first weapons available to you when you boot it up for the first time. It feels phenomenal to use, and since I’ve been using it for at least 80% of my matches, I have it customized to a level that has me afraid to try out any of the other assault rifles. I mean, I’m obviously going to, I gotta get those skins, but with the Gunfighter Wildcard, I now have a total of eight attachments on my XM4 and it’s an absolute beast. I do think the Gunfighter wildcard is a little too generous, but on the other hand, bow to my OP XM4. There’s almost no situation in which it doesn’t just dominate: I’m able to easily take out snipers in larger maps like Protocol while also having no problem at medium range for maps like Subsonic.

Sniper rifles are, as always, cumbersome to use but absolutely lethal in the hands of a skilled player. I am not that player, but there really is something to be said for racking up those satisfying head shots. I’m also a fan of the SMGs, although I’ve only just started on those. I’ve definitely noticed how many times in any match on any map I’ve fallen to an SMG, though. They almost seem a little too powerful at medium-range.

I’m not really too keen on the Marksman rifles this year, but I’m sure that will change as I open up more attachments. I’ve always loved a good Marksman rifle, especially the KAR98K from previous Call of Duty games. It’s the lethality of a sniper rifle with the handling of an assault rifle. I’ve never really liked shotguns or LMGs, but in modes like Gunfight where I don’t have a choice, I’m totally fine with them. Just not a gun category I’m really interested in other than fulfilling higher-level skin unlock requirements.

I also like how the perks work this year. If you equip three from the same category, you’re given a special fourth perk. My favorite is rocking a full Recon build, because it briefly exposes enemy positions when you spawn, giving you an edge on the smaller and even medium sized maps.

Maps like Rewind and SCUD, which I thought were just okay during the beta, are now among my favorites thanks to how well you can move and shoot your way through them. Rewind has a perfect mix of long corridors and close-quarter interiors, and SCUD has some of the best sniper lanes in the current crop of launch maps.

It feels like the maps were designed around different load-outs, with larger ones like the aforementioned SCUD and the island-based Protocol having excellent sniping spots while also working well with medium and even short-range guns. You have your long, open lanes with plenty of windows and balconies to perch your glinting sniper scope, but there are also tunnels, building interiors, and obstructions that invite you to play with other guns. It’s great because you don’t end up with teams made up primarily of snipers plunking one another from across the maps. Smaller maps, like Payback, lend themselves extremely well to the medium and short-range weapons and Payback in particular is absolute chaotic fun for objective-based modes like Headquarters and Control. The cramped quarters, ample angles, and multiple levels with such a small footprint means tons of chaos and carnage all happening quickly, as you’re constantly running into enemy players at every turn.

Subsonic, a small-ish map set in a stealth aircraft hangar, has one of my favorite features in any of the maps: a hangar bay door that opens and closes during the course of the match. This one little idea completely changes up how you have to approach the onslaught in objective-based modes throughout the match, and I love that it forces you to switch up your strategy on the fly. You really have to use both tactical and strategic-based thinking and it’s awesome.

I’m actually at a loss to name my least-favorite map, because there isn’t a single one out of the 16 total that are here I don’t enjoy loading into. Red Card, a large map outside a soccer stadium, is maybe the only one I have a bone to pick with, but that’s entirely because you can’t actually run out onto the pitch and shoot each other. That just seems like a missed opportunity. But otherwise it has a lot of variety, making it a great map for almost any type of loadout.

I’m a little bummed out that the modes present are really nothing new. It makes me realize that the last really cool new multiplayer mode in a Call of Duty was Champion Hill in Vanguard back in 2021, and weirdly that hasn’t been seen or iterated on since. I would have loved to see something novel and new to discover, but Treyarch plays it safe with a standard set of modes like Team Deathmatch, Control, and Kill Confirmed.

The newest idea is Kill Order, a spin on VIP modes where one member of each team is designated as a High Value Target. It’s pretty fun when you play with friends, but otherwise everyone just runs off and acts like it’s Team Deathmatch, completely ignoring the objective to protect the HVT. That’s not to say I don’t like it, because there’s a reason this style of mode has stuck around so long, but the minor tweaks like giving the HVT more armor and a very Warzone-like chance to revive if they’re killed don’t do enough to set it apart.

My go-to mode to play with a friend is Gunfight, a 2v2 mode on extremely tiny maps. It’s a pretty simple fight to the death where everyone has the same loadout that changes between each round, so you never really know what to expect. It’s also a great mode to jump into when you only have a small window of time to play, because the matches are really fast and over quickly. By and large, though, my friends and I stick with regular modes when playing together, and I switch to hardcore Team Deathmatch and hardcore Free-for-All when I’m playing solo.

For the most part, Treyarch stuck to its promise to revamp the user interface in Call of Duty, and while I do think it’s a big improvement in areas like gunsmithing and picking which of the base game modes you want to play, it still has weird issues that caused me some frustration. The greatly improved interface of Black Ops 6 really falters when it comes to finding Hardcore games to join, though. You need to open up the mode filter menu, and then select Hardcore from there, and then filter your modes. On top of that, BLOPS 6 seems to forget I want to play Hardcore and switches me back to the regular mode – something I usually only notice when I start a match and it suddenly takes more than one bullet to down a foe, usually resulting in a kill for my opponent.

My only major complaint about Black Ops 6 is that it has resurrected weird bugs and glitches that MW3 seemed to have completely squashed. At one point I started up a match and got the XP screen telling me I’d earned negative 170,080 experience points and was now at level 1, which felt pretty harsh. That, thankfully, didn’t stick, but sometimes my friends still see that level 1 indicator over my head. I’ve also had more than one occasion where a match would end and I’d be thrown back to the launch screen for a moment, only to drop back into the lobby but without my teammates. And there was a weird bug where it showed me ‘&&,’ C# for a logical ‘AND’ operator, instead of their level. So far none of these bugs have affected my gameplay or progression, and even that awkward level 1 reset disappeared once I restarted the game (which I did immediately). However, these small bugs are happening noticeably more often than I’m accustomed to.

The Weapons Grind

One of the main reasons I play Call of Duty multiplayer so much each year is to unlock weapon skins. The non-corporeal reward of a shiny gun always spurs some sort of primitive pleasure system inside my brain into action, and I do whatever is necessary to unlock the shiniest. That can be a slog that makes me curse that part of my brain, but this year things are a little different in a way that makes me happy to indulge that compulsive behavior.

For example, they keep it simple this year, at least at first. For the XM4, get 10 headshots to unlock the first skin, then 20 to unlock the second, and so on up to 100. It’s only once you’ve done all those that you get to the more elaborate, “Kill 10 enemies with your gun shortly after sprinting” type challenges that reward you with Specialized level skins. And you know what? I’m into it. It makes the common skins feel more common and the Specialized and Mastery level skins feel more, well, specialized and masterful. Am I looking forward to having my K/D plunge because I’m chasing the weapon skin dragon instead of taking whatever kills I can get? Not really, but I much prefer having those super cool skins require a little extra work.

In addition to the weapon skins, the usual unlocks are here: new weapon parts and slots that open up as you level each weapon, different reticles for your sights, scorestreaks, wildcards and, of course, new operators and their associated skins.

Of the scorestreaks, one of my favorites is the new Archangel missile launcher that gives you a remote-controlled missile you operate from a first-person view. It’s like the cruise missile from Call of Duties past, but with a ground launch and much more control. If you like, you can just circle around the map for a surprising amount of time, searching for that perfect kill. It’s really fun and really effective.

The Watchdog Helo is another powerful scorestreak that operates similarly to helicopters from previous Call of Duty games, but this time it marks enemy positions on the map even if it can’t take them out with its minigun. At launch, it was a little too powerful and a little too hard to shoot down, but Treyarch has already balanced it out and now I feel like it’s right on the money. It doles out serious damage, but if you’re on the receiving end you can shoot it down without it feeling like a flying bullet sponge.

That said, I’m actually pretty disappointed in the number and variety of operators and operator skins so far. I know Black Ops 6 just came out, and Activision is really good at selling cosmetic upgrades over the course of a year, but one of the best parts of MW3 multiplayer was the sheer variety and absurdity of the skins. No matter how many times I dropped into a match with someone with a Snoop Dogg skin, I still got a huge kick out of hearing “I got your six, homie,” in Snoop’s actual voice.

None of those operator skins carry over into BLOPS 6 multiplayer, and the current crop plays it pretty safe with characters from the BLOPS 6 campaign, and the more ridiculous skins like Brutus and Klaus only being available if you purchased the Vault Edition. I already miss looking around at my team and seeing Nikki Minaj, Cheech Marin, an orangutan, Michael Meyers, and Violator from Spawn ready for action. Please bring us the ridiculousness, Treyarch and Raven. I’m a simple man; That’s all I ask.

One forward thinking PlayStation fan has spent upwards of $2,000 on 24 years worth of PS Plus to avoid increasingly common price hikes.

Reddit user On_Reddit_In_Class said they “decided to stack PS Plus subscriptions until 2048 because of the absurd price increases the past few years.” They plan to be gaming the rest of their lives so decided it would “save a good bit of money.”

A PS Plus Essential subscription cost $79.99 per year, so 24 years worth costs $1,919.76. Then, Sony was kind enough to offer the player an 89% discount to upgrade to a Premium subscription in a bizarre loophole, charging just $199.99 instead of $1,889.75, meaning it came to $2,119.75 altogether,

While the reaction to On_Reddit_In_Class’s post was a mixture of shock and awe, there is at least some logic behind the move, assuming PlayStation Plus remains a thing into the mid 21st century. Subscription service prices are on the rise, with everything from PS Plus to Xbox Game Pass and Netflix going up.

Sony last raised the price of PS Plus in September 2023, from $59.99 to $79.99 for the most basic tier. “This price adjustment will enable us to continue bringing high-quality games and value-added benefits to your PlayStation Plus subscription service,” it said at the time.

Analysts said this was inevitable, so another increase in the future isn’t out of the question. Xbox Game Pass has seen a similar price rise, doubling from $9.99 at its launch in 2017 to $19.99 now. Buying a subscription ahead of time guarantees the price remains the same, however, so On_Reddit_In_Class may be on to something.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that stuck with me in the way that 2015’s Life is Strange has. Its ability to tell a unique coming-of-age story about a rebellious but often shy teen without coming off preachy or overstaying its welcome was refreshing and had me thinking about it long after I discovered everything I could within the confines of Arcadia Bay. While the series has had a few sequels, prequels, and side stories since, none of them seemed to recapture the magic of those first five episodes for me – until now. Life is Strange: Double Exposure not only lives up to the sky-high standard set by the original but also manages to take it in a fresh new direction and improve on nearly every aspect from the previous games.

It was great to revisit Max Caulfield 10 years after the events of Life is Strange. Even though Max is well into her 20s now, she’s still very much the same character she was the last time we saw her: She’ll overanalyze her surroundings, make awkward jokes to herself, and, most importantly, take way too many pictures. But with her transition to adulthood comes a whole new set of issues she needs to deal with. Instead of worrying about fitting in and trying to impress everyone she met in Blackwell Academy, she’s now a grad student and has to act as an authority figure herself.

There are moments where she’s clearly coming to terms with the fact that she’s no longer young, such as when she questions some of the cringeworthy things she said in the original game or reminisces about when she was an undergrad and had to cram in as much studying and caffeine as possible before finals. It was the little moments like this that stuck with me and really helped make this new chapter in Max’s story even more relatable.

Writing on The Walls

As you’d expect in a Life is Strange game, you’ll need to make some tough decisions. Even though there are only a handful of major choices in each of the five chapters and not all of them will dramatically affect the overall outcome, they do all have consequences because characters will remember how you treat them and act accordingly – to a degree that previous games never managed to nail down. This time, conversations felt like I was talking to an actual person instead of playing a game of guessing the correct answer.

For example, in the first chapter, you are able to ask Amanda, the bartender of a local joint called The Snapping Turtle, out on a date if you play your cards right. On my first playthrough, I did everything I would need to in order to kickstart a romantic relationship with her by learning a handful of awful pick-up lines from other bar patrons. But on my second run, I opted not to ask her out and instead just became friends. While this didn’t necessarily change anything major with the story moving forward, I appreciated that there was a stark difference in how Amanda treated Max if they were dating or were just friends. In addition to romancing people, you can be mean, flirty, or even flat-out ignore someone if you want to. Without diving too heavily into spoiler territory, this is one of the few choose-your-own-adventure-style games I’ve played where I didn’t stress about making the “wrong decision” because every outcome felt natural and worth exploring rather than some being a consolation prize.

Double Exposure’s chapters each take around two or three hours to complete, which makes them shorter than those in some of the other Life is Strange games. This is actually a good thing, though, because I never felt like I was wasting my time dealing with a filler act or meandering around a party just to pad out the runtime. While there are a few plot points that don’t really seem to go anywhere unless you dig through Max’s phone, I never felt like I was missing out on anything too important to the overall story just because I neglected to keep up with my backlog of text messages and social media posts. I like a good epic-scale RPG, too, but the fact that Double Exposure respected my time and told a story that’s tight and concise was refreshing.

That story deals with a number of seriously heavy topics. Everything from divorce to anxiety to the different ways we grieve over the loss of a loved one is covered here in a way that’s so expertly written I never felt like any of these subjects were diminished or sensationalized – they just felt real. It would have been easy for Double Exposure to touch on a sensitive topic and then resolve it with a “thing bad” or “thing good” decision at the end, but instead the writing offers nuanced and appropriate approaches to its situations, many of which I’ve had to deal with in my own life. Seeing a video game character struggle to handle something like the anger and frustration one might feel after someone close to them takes their own life was an unexpected and especially well-executed bit of writing.

It works so well in part because every character in Double Exposure has their own backstory and is written to feel like an actual human being, faults and all. For example, Reggie, a student at the school where Max teaches, will overshare at times because he sees Max as an authority figure, while Gwen, another teacher at Caledon Univeristy, keeps private details to herself because, like in real life, not everyone immediately tells everybody they meet everything about themselves.

What really sells Double Exposure’s writing and story is its absolutely incredible performances and character animations. While this has always been a highlight of the series, this game has more moments where characters would tell me everything they needed to say without speaking a word thanks to their subtle facial expressions. Say something mean and a character may look at you with disgust for a moment before responding. Pull somebody away from a group and you’ll see other characters briefly look disappointed that you interrupted them. While this isn’t anything new in games, the way in which Double Exposure emphasizes these little touches made me actually care about my actions and how I treated people. Thanks to this attention to detail and directing, Double Exposure’s character interactions are easily the most believable and well-executed I’ve seen in a Life is Strange game.

Reinventing Your Exit

Without getting too heavy into spoiler territory here, Double Exposure’s mystery is one full of twists and turns that definitely kept me guessing until I reached the finale.

The decision to give Max different powers was the correct choice because her original time manipulation abilities just wouldn’t have worked within the story being told here. If she could rewind time with the turn of her palm then the entire mystery could have been solved in a few moments, and that’s just no fun. Instead, those powers have been replaced by a set of interdimensional travel abilities that fit this new tale perfectly. As its title suggests, Max is able to view and travel between two separate realities: one that’s vibrant, warm, and full of life, complete with Christmas decorations and a more upbeat soundtrack, and another that’s miserable, cold, and marked by death. These realities exist in tandem with each other and are, in many ways, polar opposites. Everything from flyers on the walls of the school halls to the music and even how people interact with Max can be wildly different between the dead and living worlds.

Puzzles this time around greatly benefit from Max’s abilities, too. I never found myself getting frustrated or lost, and I’m happy to say there were never any sections where I had to dodge a train or perform any sort of frustrating quick time events. Her new abilities instead allow for a slower-pace where I needed to use deductive reasoning and explore both realities in order to find a clue or spy on somebody. Need to find something for someone in the living world? It’s probably nearby in the dead world. Need to sneak around an active murder investigation in the dead world? Just hop over to the living world and walk past where the guards are standing, then hop back. It’s not wildly complex stuff, but the way Double Exposure utilizes Max’s powers not only to help you find clues and explore but also to show how the world around you evolves in two separate paths at the same time makes this one of the more interesting uses of a multiverse in gaming.

Double Exposure’s smart use of reality hopping also helps with the story in ways that no other power in Life is Strange has before. For example, someone could be dealing with some trouble in one world that informs how you interact with them in the other. Meanwhile, The Snapping Turtle in the living world is warm, people are conversing with each other, and the music is upbeat and welcoming, but its dead world version has aggressive music, there are fewer people around, and the lighting is cold and uninviting. Because I was able to explore freely and instantly see the differences between both realities, I found myself learning about the worlds, their characters, and the results of my actions in a more meaningful way rather than just searching for exposition dumps and waiting for text messages.

Caledon University itself is an idealistic-looking Northeastern college campus. The buildings are old and covered in a layer of snow and student art, and the cinematography when you take a moment to reflect on a park bench or overlook shows off how beautiful this location is. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit smaller than the areas from the other Life is Strange Games, and while it would have been nice to explore a larger world outside of the few accessible locations on campus, Max’s house, and The Snapping Turtle, every area in Double Exposure is pretty densely packed with things to interact with and explore.

They are also bolstered by composer Tessa Rose Jackson with some of the best original music I’ve heard in a video game all year. The soundtrack not only perfectly captures the emotions of each scene but also helps to amplify the tone of the world, making it feel even more alive or dead, depending on which reality you’re in. The same can be said about the color grading and cinematography. The series is known for its cinematic look, and Double Exposure is no exception thanks to its rich color palette and smart camera work. Vista shots, snap zooms, and following focus on characters are all artfully executed in a way that would feel at home in a feature film.

As I excitedly slashed, blasted, wooed, looted, and delved my way through the stunning and enthralling world of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I kept having one thought: “Wait, BioWare made this? 2024 BioWare?” With this game coming in the wake of the debacle that was Anthem, itself preceded by Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda, which were both merely alright in hindsight, I wasn’t sure these former masters of the roleplaying game craft could make a game like this anymore. But putting together my team of interesting and endearing companions to save the world felt like getting the old band back together, in more ways than one.

The scope of this adventure is the whole North of Thedas, sending you from the coasts of Rivain to the blighted wilds of the Anderfels as you attempt to prevent the rise of an ancient and menacing evil. It was thrilling as a long-time fan of the series to finally see so many of the places I’d only read about in a journal entry way back in 2009. And the way BioWare has us go about that exploration is very focused and deliberate.

Veilguard’s level design was one of the first things that jumped out at me, reminding me of the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic more than anything. The slick, looping corridors with just enough little nooks to discover are cleverly interconnected in a way that proves how a BioWare-style RPG gains a lot and loses almost nothing by ditching the idea of a fully open world. (The exceptions to that are a couple of the more vertical sections of the city of Minrathous, which can be a pain in the ass to navigate.) Across the board, the environment art is really jaw-dropping, from the desolate peaks of Kal-Sharok to the surreal, floating elven ruins in Arlathan Forest.

I was very pleased with the character designs, too. The armor and outfits are fabulous. I spent more than an hour in the character creator, like I usually do, and came out with a version of our protagonist, Rook, who delighted me every time she was in frame. This might be some of the best-looking hair I’ve ever seen in a video game.

Even with all of that visual splendor I was able to get a stable 60 fps at 4k on my RTX 4070 Super with DLSS set to maximum performance, which usually didn’t affect the visual quality in very noticeable ways. The one exception to this was in the late game, when there could be so many spell effects going off at once that I’d not only lose frames, it’s also difficult to even see what’s actually going on.

Through the crackle and sparks, though, Veilguard’s combat is definitely a refinement of what we saw in Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition. I’ve always preferred the more tactical style of Dragon Age: Origins or Baldur’s Gate 3, but that ship sailed so long ago for this studio, not even the Evanuris remember what it looked like. And so, judging this very action-focused combat system for what it is, it’s pretty good! BioWare has committed fully to the fast-paced style and refined it to a point that I enjoy it quite a bit. And the ability to pause to issue party members orders, just like in Mass Effect, still gives some opportunity for more tactical players like myself to look around the battlefield and consider our next move. It definitely feels better on a controller than mouse and keyboard, though.

I was somewhat disappointed that party members are more like extensions of your own character in combat at this point rather than their own entities. They don’t even have health bars, for instance. They can’t be knocked out in combat, whereas you instantly lose an encounter if Rook goes down. They do have equipment slots and skill trees, though less than what Rook gets. But overall, the amount of customization available for the whole squad through piles and piles of interesting, upgradeable loot was more than enough to satisfy my RPG appetites, if not fulfill my wildest fantasies of intricate battle management.

In my 100-hour near-100 percent, almost obsessively completionist playthrough, I styled Rook as a Spellblade – a mid-ranged melee hybrid mage – and really enjoyed the play style once I’d unlocked all of my core tools. Dancing with a dagger through a lightning storm I summoned, darting out of danger and then back in for a lethal blow, is just a really good time that rewards precise timing and wise target prioritization. This isn’t the tactical Dragon Age of my youth, but it is a Dragon Age I can vibe with.

And the highlights of combat are definitely the boss fights, which offer a really satisfying challenge even on the default difficulty. While standard mob fights with Darkspawn or Venatori cultists eventually got a little repetitive after 90-plus hours, going up against a High Dragon never failed to get my blood pumping as I had to carefully study attack patterns and think on my feet.

In the sense that a BioWare RPG is really about your companions, also known as the friends we made along the way, this might be the most BioWare game of all time. Not only is the whole squad made up of complex, memorable, likable, distinct personalities from across Thedas, but they’re all treated as the stars of their own story. Veilguard is light on that classic kind of side quest that’s like, “Help Bingo Bongo find some nug grease,” and I don’t miss those much because they’ve been replaced by full-length heroic arcs for each companion, with twists, turns, a personal nemesis, major character developments, and a moment of triumph fit for a protagonist rather than a sidekick. It’s like the writers took the loyalty missions from Mass Effect 2 and blew them up into seven miniature games of their own. Almost every side mission ties into one of these, which obliterates the sense that you’re doing busywork.

Picking a favorite of the seven Veilguard members to talk about genuinely feels like an impossible task. I really want to say all of them are my favorite. But I had a rewarding romance with the stoic Grey Warden, Davrin, and became the mother to his fledgeling griffon pal, Assan, so he’s got to be my pick for this playthrough. Seriously, if anything ever happens to that little guy, I will wash Thedas away in a tide of fire. The Vincent Price-inspired gentleman necromancer Emmerich is also a delightful twist on the usual edgy goth death mage tropes.

And while we’ve been asked by the devs not to spoil specifically who I’m talking about here, as a non-binary person myself, Veilguard includes some of the most authentic representation of coming to terms with gender stuff – and having to navigate your family’s reaction to it – I’ve seen yet in a game. It doesn’t feel like an after school special or like I’m being pandered to. It’s quite well-handled, and finding out that the writer for this character is non-binary themselves did not surprise me at all.

The larger plot that’s threatening the world in the background as we’re doing all of these more personal quests is nothing particularly outstanding in its overall structure. We need to unite some factions to fight some evil gods who are trying to do bad things with tentacles. The major wrinkle that makes that interesting, however, is Solas – also known as the Dread Wolf, elven god of lies and rebellion – waiting in the wings, keeping me guessing about whether he was a friend or foe.

As a continuation of the Dragon Age series, Veilguard does feel a little disconnected from where we left off a decade ago. If you were expecting decisions from previous games in the series to carry over, I’m sorry to say they’ve never mattered less. You only get to import three choices, one of which only comes up in the context of a single letter you may or may not find and read. You do get to recreate your Inquisitor from Dragon Age: Inquisition, the same way Inquisition let you recreate your Hawke if you played Dragon Age 2. And the Inquisitor ends up being a fairly important character, which was cool.

But things like who you chose to make head of the Chantry at the end of Inquisition never come up. There’s no sign of the Warden from Origins, even though you visit the stronghold of their order. Hawke gets only a passing mention. There are some other cameos from both Origins and Dragon Age 2, but those characters conspicuously don’t reference any important choices you may have made in their presence. This story feels like both a send-off and a soft reboot, in a way, which was paradoxically a bit refreshing and disappointing at the same time.

The pacing early on is kind of weird, too, and I felt like I could practically smell the rewrites. For example, it’s hilarious that no one ever says the word “Veilguard” out loud across the 100 hours I played of this dialogue-packed campaign, exposing a last-minute marketing pivot for what it was. But it doesn’t take too long for things to get on a good track, story-wise, and when they do, they stay on it.

Aside from one huge choice you’ll make early on, the most interesting bits of narrative design don’t come until the very end of Veilguard’s story. And again, it’s hard to dig into this too much without spoiling something, but the finale is also very much in the spirit of Mass Effect 2, which has an ending that, up until now, may have been the best series of complex consequential choices ever featured in an RPG. The sacrifices I had to make in the closing hours hurt. The wise decisions I made paid off. And I even got the chance to dramatically flick an ace out of my sleeve at the last moment, specifically because I took a very thorough and careful approach to everything leading up to it. That felt like the ultimate reward.

Throughout all of that, the cinematic flair is off the charts, proving that BioWare is unmatched in the RPG world in that discipline. So much of the best stuff I can’t even tell you about, but parts of it felt like watching a big-budget fantasy movie in the best ways. A triumphant and effective – if not quite iconic – score elevates these moments further.

It’s the final week before the U.S. 2024 presidential election, and in the waning hours of her campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is making a bid to a group that’s not often targeted in such races: gamers.

Today, Harris’ campaign is launching its own Fortnite map: Freedom Town, USA. It’s a custom creative map themed around some of Harris’ campaign pledges, including tax breaks for small businesses and a focus on affordable housing. The map can be found in Fortnite Creative starting today using code 733155366547.

Freedom Town, USA is joined by political takeovers of at least eight other Fortnite Creative maps by Fortnite creators Jordan “Huskerss” Thomas, Morgan “MODELMORG” Pope, Lyah “Himalyahs” Barberan, and Khairi “Kdot” Harris. These maps (Drive City, Troll Bed Wars, Meme Boxfights, Super Box PVP, Football Boxfights, Bullseye 2v2, Bullseye 1v1, and Bullseye 3v3) will include political in-game signage, custom models, and themed audio cues. One of these cues, played when collecting a cat, plays a quote from Harris’ rival former President Donald Trump: “they’re eating the dogs, eating the cats.”

This move comes as part of a recent, much broader appeal made by the Harris campaign to reach young, male voters through video games. Other recent efforts include a Geeks & Nerds for Harris fundraiser, a weekend Twitch stream where Vice Presidential candidate Governor Tim Walz played Madden NFL and Crazy Taxi with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a number of advertising efforts across mobile games, sports betting platforms, and YouTube channels. (The Harris campaign has also advertised on IGN. You can view our policy on the separation of editorial and advertising interests here.)

While the Trump campaign has not made a similar targeted push to gamer audiences, the former President has commented on video games before. During his tenure in the White House, President Trump blamed violent video games for a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, saying that such games were “shaping young people’s thoughts” and publishing a reel of “violent video games” that included clips from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Wolfenstein, Dead by Daylight, Sniper Elite, and Fallout 4. We’ve reached out to former President Trump’s campaign for comment.

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.

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Video game remakes are everywhere these days. We’ve just had a new version of Silent Hill 2, the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy is in full swing, and a recreation of Metal Gear Solid 3 is on the horizon. But few people know remakes quite as well as Shinji Mikami. The co-creator of Resident Evil has watched teams craft highly-successful recreations of his own games, and back in 2001 even helmed the remake of the first project he ever headed up – making him the director of both Resident Evil and Resident Evil.

So, if there’s anyone who knows what makes a good remake, it’s Shinji Mikami. “I think the comprehensive and fundamental understanding of what it was that made the original work in the first place is probably the most important point of a good remake,” he tells me.

“Everything from the ground up, basically,” he explains. “There’s a few examples of that with certain series that Capcom has put out.” He is, of course, talking about the recent run of Resident Evil remakes, the most recent of which is the almost universally-celebrated Resident Evil 4. Mikami has played it and offers glowing praise for the team at Capcom.

“I thought that it was really well-made,” he says. He’s particularly impressed by how the remake handles the more nuanced details of combat, such as the timing between aiming and shooting, which in the original was finely balanced to ensure mounting pressure and tension. “I thought that they showed a really good understanding of that element,” he tells me.

“Another thing I thought was really well done was the way they took the half-assed scenario that I just wrote up in two weeks and really built up on that and really fleshed it out,” he adds. “They showed that they really understood the characters and their interactions. They showed a good understanding of the backbone of each character. And they took not just the scenario itself, but even the dialogue, and they improved all that stuff so that was really great.”

My conversation with Mikami was part of his promotional work for Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, a spruced-up version of the cult classic he produced back in 2011 (amusingly, Mikami notes that “I personally don’t really have any interest in remasters” during the chat, so a passion project to revive Shadows this isn’t). We were also joined by Goichi Suda (AKA Suda51), Shadows of the Damned’s writer and CEO of developer Grasshopper Manufacture. Suda has more interest in remasters than Mikami; alongside this new version of Shadows, Grasshopper has also remastered Lollipop Chainsaw this year, and had previously restored No More Heroes and Killer7 for modern platforms. But Suda varies his approach when returning to his old games. Sometimes a remake is needed.

“One thing that really stands out about remaking The 25th Ward was, at the time when we did the remake, it was completely unplayable,” Suda explains. “It was originally only available on Japanese flip phones. And, on top of that, it never actually ended. The original version didn’t have a proper conclusion or ending to it.” These factors ensured that, instead of a remaster, The 25th Ward was totally remade in 2018 to both suit the PlayStation 4 console and to finally provide players with a conclusion to the story.

For Shadows of the Damned, Mikami and Suda have chosen to remaster rather than remake. Instead of expanding and reinventing aspects of their 2011 game, which sold poorly but garnered a cult following, the duo have stuck closely to the original version. The approach allows modern audiences to experience the game as it was released back on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Nevertheless, there are some new elements to ensure long-term fans are rewarded.

“I wanted to keep the game as close to the original as possible, but there were definitely things that I wanted to add on and emphasize or accentuate this time around,” says Suda. “For example, there’s some new costumes for the main character, there’s the new game plus mode. There’s a few things that we wanted to use to boost the experience a bit. But yeah, we certainly wanted to keep it as close to the original as possible.”

But, as noted earlier, Mikami isn’t all that interested in remasters. That’s not to say he’s not interested in revisiting the past, though. “Personally, I’m more interested in remaking Killer7 than I was in remastering Shadows of the Damned,” he tells me. “If I got to choose, I’d rather do a sequel to Killer7 or something.”

Released in 2005, Killer7 was an incredibly stylish action thriller. Its complex story, following the exploits of an assassin with multiple personalities, was co-written by Mikami and Suda. It’s another project from the duo with a cult following, and one that has largely been lost to time: aside from a 2018 PC remaster, Killer7 was only ever made for the GameCube and PS2, with no modern console re-releases available. As such, the game’s small but loyal following has long cried out for a sequel or remake.

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For the majority of its runtime, Cyberpunk 2077 is an action-packed RPG. Even if you hone your protagonist, V, into a stealth ninja assassin, the neon-soaked Night City is still frequently the stage for tense combat encounters. That is, however, until Somewhat Damaged, one of the Phantom Liberty expansion’s final quests. Inside a bunker buried deep beneath the city, Cyberpunk 2077 leaves its RPG structure behind and morphs into a survival horror. A relentless robotic hunter stalks you through chambers and corridors, and there’s nothing your weapons can do to stop it.

To find out how this level and its terrifying mechanical monster were created, we spoke to staff from developer CD Projekt Red. With their insight, we examine how Somewhat Damaged makes use of logical environment design, increasingly stressful objectives, and resourceful AI scripting to manifest Phantom Liberty’s terrifying crescendo.

Phantom Liberty tells the story of Song So Mi, better known as Songbird, and Reed, two NUSA agents and former partners. Throughout the campaign it’s revealed that Songbird is on a personal mission to escape the toxic grip of her employer. If you help her, she will save you from your terminal brain virus (AKA Johnny Silverhand) using a Neural Matrix she plans to steal. As the campaign reaches its climax, you’re given a choice: work with Songbird, or betray her and let Reed take her into NUSA custody. Choosing that second option triggers Somewhat Damaged, a terrifying final quest that’s unique to this branch of the story.