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 for Zombies, stand by!

Launch Update – October 25, 2024:

No surprise here, but I’m still having a blast with Black Ops 6 multiplayer now that it’s out properly. What is surprising to me, however, is how much more I’m enjoying it than I anticipated I would. I have around 220 hours into Modern Warfare III multiplayer, but so far BLOPS 6 just feels better in every way – from the maps to the movement to even the gunplay. Have you ever had a really fancy steak? It’s kind of like that. Steak rules, and you think “how could this get any better?” Then you have the fancy one and it’s a revelation. I still have plenty more to play before my final review next week, but I am already excited to eat more steak.

Movement on the battlefield feels excellent. It’s so smooth, and the new Omnimove system adds a dose of dramatic flair to the way you can flop around the map. I will say, I don’t use the Omnimove system much yet, just because I’m having a bit of a time learning a new way to run, slide, and dive across the maps, but it looks like I’m not the only one still trying to figure it out. That being said, there are already clips out there of people who’ve mastered it and are now pulling off sick Max Payne-style moves, which is what it’s really all about anyway.

I was a little bummed to discover my progress from the beta didn’t move over to the final game, because I worked really hard to cap out after a late start when the beta went live (and you can read my initial beta impressions further down). But that’s not too much of a big deal as the multiplayer progression is the hook that keeps me coming back to COD, and I love unlocking weapon camos.

Speaking of which, the requirements for unlocking weapon camo are hugely simplified from last year, and the previous years as well. There was always at least one unlock requirement I dreaded in my usual quest for camos, but this year (so far) it looks like it’s just getting more and more of the same challenge. Get 10 headshots with the XM4, unlock the first camo. Get 20 and unlock the second. You can see where it’s going here. The design of the skins, especially the Special and Mastery level camos, are sick as hell, too. I’m glad I won’t have to kill two opponents in a row 10 times without releasing the trigger or any of those other kind-of-crappy challenges from Modern Warfare 3.

Gunsmithing in the Beta was one of my biggest concerns, as it just felt clunky and unfriendly, but it’s rock-solid in the final game. Overall, that seems to be the theme of every part of BLOPS 6: it just feels awesome and works really well. Optimization is crazy, too, as I cranked the preset to Extreme and I’m using just under 7GB of VRAM.

I’ll have my final thoughts after the weekend, but so far I’m having a freaking awesome time. While none of the multiplayer modes are really jumping out at me yet, Gunfight’s super-small maps and 2v2 play is a blast if you’re playing with a friend, and Hardcore is open right off the rip.

Oh look, I just got a notification the playlist has updated. Time to get back to it.

Original Beta Impressions – September 9, 2024:

Summer is in the rear view, which means it’s once again Call of Duty beta time. This year Treyarch is in the driver’s seat with a follow-up to Black Ops Cold War set in the early 1990s – and friends, I am all-in on the setting. After spending the weekend grinding multiplayer matches to hit the beta’s level cap, I’m cautiously optimistic that this year’s entry could recapture everything I loved about 2020’s Cold War.

First off, some context: I have about 200 hours of multiplayer time in last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and found myself enjoying it quite a bit more than our reviewer (which is fine, reviews are opinions, and opinions differ). However, a lot of that has to do with the social aspect of it. I have a core group of friends, the Beeflords, with whom I’ve been playing every Call of Duty multiplayer annually since Black Ops IIII. Having a dedicated squad makes playing multiplayer way more fun, and with regular content additions and balancing updates, I feel like MW3 is now in a much more solid spot.

Despite my fondness for both MW3 and Cold War, I tried to dive into Black Ops 6 with an open mind, and I’m glad to say I’m liking what I’m seeing so far. As far as a beta goes, this is one of the better ones I can remember. For example, back when I did my first impressions of the Modern Warfare 2 beta, I was actually pretty concerned by what I saw, but almost all of the rough edges had been sanded off by release. With the Black Ops 6 beta, I actually find myself with very few concerns already. After 12+ hours of shooting, diving, sliding, and shooting again, I’m left really excited for the full game, because it feels pretty damn good right now.

Probably the biggest change from the old formula is the “Omnimove” system. It seems like Treyarch looked at all the dolphin diving in Call of Duty and said “let’s just lean into that.” You can now sprint, slide, and dive in all directions, including backwards. Diving backwards puts you in a supine position, where you’re laying on your back, with 360-degrees of movement. This is a feature I never knew I wanted. Diving prone in previous Call of Duty games restricts your aiming and movement pretty severely, but the supine position gives you a new tactical strategy to employ. In fact, if you lay prone and move backwards, you’ll switch to the supine position, so you don’t even really need to do the dramatic sprint-to-backwards-dive motion.

Which, if you’re on PC, is probably a good thing. As cool as the Omnimove system is, it definitely feels like it’s designed with a controller in mind. I don’t play Call of Duty with a controller because I am a man of taste and intellect, but I’m also old and my brain isn’t very elastic. Learning the key combinations in the training missions was a bit like learning to rub my head and pat my belly at the same time. To dive into the supine position, the key combination is S to move backwards plus the Shift key to sprint and then the Ctrl key to dive. It’s the same for any of the sprint-to-dive commands, with their respective keys replaced for S. It took me a few runs through training before I could master it, but the effect is quite awesome. Sliding and diving in every direction is fun, and it makes for an even more fluid and exciting time in multiplayer matches.

From an outside observer’s perspective, it’s pretty dramatic to see someone diving sideways, guns blazing as they dispatch an enemy. It’s awesome, actually, and getting the movement down, especially the slides, feels amazing once you get the hang of it. Again, it does feel specifically designed for use with controllers, but regardless how you play, sliding around and shooting in all directions is just good old fashioned fun.

One thing I do really hope they improve before the final release is the gunsmithing interface, because I don’t like it at all as it stands. Gunsmithing and chasing down weapon skins has always been one of the hooks that keeps me playing Call of Duty, but in the beta it’s kind of a pain (and since it’s a beta, there are no skin challenges to unlock). It resembles the interface when you edit your loadouts in a match in previous games, so you don’t get to see which attachments are still locked until you open up the category in the interface. There’s no “lock” icon on the option to show you the entire category is still unavailable, only locks on the icons for the attachments IN those categories.

I found that pretty frustrating when I was leveling up my weapons. It means I’d have to open up the gunsmithing interface and then open up every attachment category, occasionally having to scroll down the options, to find out “oh, I haven’t unlocked the option to swap out my grip yet.” I ended up backing out of lobbies several times rather than making quick adjustments between matches, because I wasted a lot of that precious time manually checking what categories were open.

As far as the gunplay, well… it’s Call of Duty, so it feels really good – though I don’t want to say “great” quite yet, because the guns don’t feel as weighty as in MW3 either. My general feel for almost all the guns is they take one or two shots too many to finish off an opponent. The notable exceptions to this are the two sniper rifles, which feel way overpowered as a result. Credit where credit is due, sniper rifles feel perfectly balanced in MW3, probably more so than in any other CoD I can remember. But in Black Ops 6 they currently feel too easy to use. The normal trade-off is still there, in that they’re slow to aim down sights with, but just aiming in the general vicinity of an opponent, particularly with the LR 7.62, often results in a one-shot kill. Of course, sniper rifles in multiplayer are baby guns for babies, except when I’m using them, in which case they’re good, actually. On a medium-sized map like Babylon, the SVD sniper rifle is one of the best choices if you want to rack up kills, and both it and the aforementioned LR 7.62 also make great choices for SCUD, the biggest map in the beta.

I also had a lot of fun with the Jackal PWD submachine gun, which is tied with the XMG light machine gun for my favorite option in the beta. I actually don’t have any real complaints with any of the guns, although as I mentioned before, there is a bit of weight missing from them compared with what I’ve grown accustomed to with MW3. The only two categories I didn’t really like too much were the marksman rifles and the shotguns, as I didn’t find a good map where either one of those choices felt appropriate. The marksman rifles didn’t suit me well for the medium and large maps, and the shotgun didn’t feel like a great choice in the small maps, either, so I rarely used them.

The Black Ops 6 beta has six maps split across two different play modes: Core Moshpit and Faceoff. Core has four larger maps with different game modes, while Faceoff takes those same modes and squishes them down into smaller maps. I didn’t love any of the maps, to be honest, especially the smaller ones. My favorites are probably SCUD, a sprawling former SCUD missile site set in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Rewind, another larger map set in a suburban strip mall complete with video rental store.

I didn’t like either of the small maps available in the Faceoff modes. Gala, which is set in what appears to be a Washington D.C. ballroom, is just a little too big for a “small” map, and its multi-level layout makes it feel both crowded and yet somehow still not quite small enough. Modern Warfare 3’s Stash House and Meat, along with the classic Shipment, are good examples of tight layouts that are among my favorites of all time when it comes to Call of Duty’s small map matches. They encourage strategic movement and require you to keep your head on a swivel, whereas Pit in particular has a central hub connecting with tunnels that just doesn’t feel as fluid or fun to move around in. Meanwhile, Gala’s relatively wide-open spaces meant running up the middle to claim an objective in Hardpoint was a death sentence, and a few well-placed snipers on each end of the map dictate the tempo of the entire match.

I would rather have maps with lots of corners to peek around than ones with lots of obstacles to hide behind, which is how the beta maps feel for the most part. SCUD might be one of my favorite maps, but even that has several camping spots for snipers to hole up in and there’s no clear path to flank them without a little bit of luck or a well-placed spawn. However, SCUD otherwise does have a great overall layout that invites the use of pretty much any class of gun. There are tight interiors for shotguns and SMGs, medium-length corridors for LMGs and assault rifles, and of course the map-spanning hidey-holes for snipers to infuriate you with their repeated headshots.

Rewind similarly enjoys a layout well-suited to a variety of weapon types, and if you’re good with any single class of weapon you’ll find your rhythm. One of the new Field Upgrades I absolutely love using is Sleeper Agent, which makes you “switch” teams for its duration. To the enemy, you look like one of their own, and you extend the length of this charade every time you get a kill. During a match on Rewind, I activated this upgrade and repeatedly caught my opponents completely unaware, letting them run past before quickly turning on them with an easy shot to the back. I got a triple kill using Sleeper Agent in the beta, all while cackling maniacally. You still show up on the radar as an enemy, but in the heat of the moment, no one notices and it’s a lot of fun to use.

Oh, and the tactical nuke is back. In the entire time I’ve been playing CoD I only met the conditions to trigger it during a multiplayer match once. That was way back in Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360, and it required 25 unanswered kills. Black Ops 6 asks for a whopping 30 unanswered kills and, needless to say, I have not triggered it (yet). But the good news is no one else did either! So that’s nice.

As far as scorestreaks go, there’s nothing here that is functionally different from what we’ve seen before. There’s a UAV, a counter-UAV, an RC car with explosives strapped to it – it’s all very familiar. The watchdog helo, which you can call in when your score hits 1,100 points, feels a little too accessible, as almost every match I played on an outdoor map had multiple helo calls. On the flipside, though, if you have an LMG with a big enough magazine, you can shoot them down without needing to reload.

I don’t know if they pulled down some of the Black Ops 6 multiplayer modes before I got to them, but in my time grinding to the level 30 beta cap, I played Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hardpoint, Faceoff Kill Order, and Kill Order. There are supposedly two other modes available, Faceoff Kill Confirmed and Gunfight, but I never saw a single match of them, which is fine since neither is new. In fact, of all the available modes, the only one not in last year’s Call of Duty is Kill Order, which is basically team deathmatch with a High Value Target (HVT). The HVT for both teams appears on the map and radar and is randomly assigned to members of the team after the current HVT is downed. When you’re the HVT, you are completely unable to hide, but you do have three armor plates a la Warzone, as well as the ability to be revived by your teammates when downed, so long as they get to you in time.

When I’m playing online without my group, I generally stick to Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, usually in hardcore mode. When my friends log on, we open the pool up to any game mode. That’s mostly because objective-based modes are most fun when everyone is, you know, actually trying to complete the objective. The entire weekend, in every Kill Order match I played, I was never once revived or even protected as the HVT. That sucks, but it’s also just the nature of the beast when you play with random people. Unfortunately none of my friends and I were able to link up our schedules to play together during the beta weekend, but I’m really looking forward to trying Kill Order with a full team. Even one extra person at your side when you’re the HVT would be hugely helpful, because otherwise people treat it (and pretty much all the objective-based modes) as team deathmatch.

I still have a lot more to play once Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 comes out next month, but as far as betas go, it already seems to be in a great place. A few adjustments to weapon balance, some more UI tweaks, and the larger selection of maps at launch would fix most of the complaints I have with it right now. The gunplay is, as always, rock-solid, I never ran into a single bug, and graphically it’s really sharp. I’m feeling really good about this year’s installment… I just hope my operator skins from MW3 transfer over. That llama suit wasn’t free, you know.

Original Silent Hill art director and Pyramid Head creator Masahiro Ito has said he was too busy making Silent Hill games to get a girlfriend.

PC Gamer spotted a handful of X/Twitter posts from Ito who made clear that his time as a game developer wasn’t all sunshine and daisies — and not just because he was working on the terrifying survival horror franchise.

For a four-year period between 1999 and 2003, Konami released Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, and Silent Hill 3, and Ito was heavily involved in their creation.

“All the time I was attending my art university or was developing Silent Hill 1, 2, 3, and a cancelled title, I never had any girlfriends cause I had no time for it,” Ito said. “I never thought I was a genius, but I was terribly competitive. The only way to beat geniuses is to give yourself up entirely to what you wanna accomplish.”

Sonic x Shadow Generations has already sold one million units, Sega has announced, despite only coming out today, October 25.

Being a souped up remake of 2011’s Sonic Generations didn’t slow down the Blue Blur on the sales front, with the figure covering worldwide sales on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Alongside the remake portion comes Shadow Generations, a brand new chunk of gameplay similar to how Super Mario 3D World was enhanced by Bowser’s Fury in the Nintendo Switch remake.

“Sonic x Shadow Generations is a title that combines two games: Sonic Generations, where players can enjoy speedrunning various stages with Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic, enhanced with new elements, and Shadow Generations, a completely new game featuring the dark hero Shadow racing through dynamic environments,” the official synopsis reads.

“The story begins as a mysterious creature called the Time Eater creates distortions in time and space, setting off separate adventures for Sonic and Shadow. Players can look forward to a high-speed action-adventure with distinct gameplay experiences and narratives.”

The game has reviewed well critically too. “Sonic x Shadow Generations takes an already excellent game and spring jumps it to new heights with a creative Shadow campaign and an appreciable graphical upgrade,” IGN said in our 9/10 review.

Sonic x Shadow Generations is the latest hit for Sega; the Atlus-developed RPG Metaphor: ReFantazio also sold one million copies on launch day.

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

The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, is getting a pay raise. A $30 million one.

According to a proxy filing published earlier this week and spotted by NBC, Nadella’s compensation for the fiscal year 2024 totaled $79,106,183. $2.5 million of this was his base salary, $71.24 million was stock awards, $5.2 million was non-equity incentive plan compensation, and the rest was a mixture of other types of compensation.

This is significantly higher than last year, when Nadella’s compensation totaled $48.5 million. While Nadella’s base salary remained flat between years, he saw a massive jump in the past fiscal year in stock awards, going from $39.24 million last year to $71.24 million this year.

Bloober Team has released a patch for the Silent Hill 2 remake which brings the game to Version 1.05 and fixes a progress breaking bug.

The patch notes were released on Steam and focus predominantly on the issue introduced in Version 1.04, which stopped some players progressing past the Labyrinth section of the survival horror game.

“We are happy to announce a new update for Silent Hill 2 that addresses a critical issue in the Labyrinth level, after Patch 1.04 for both Steam and PlayStation 5 players, and introduces Steam Cloud save functionality for PC players on Steam,” Bloober Team said. The full patch notes are available below.

Bloober Team said it was aware of the issue on October 22 when the bug was discovered. Several Silent Hill 2 players shared their frustration online as the Labyrinth section began living up to its name a little too well, trapping players inside its walls forever.

This section is a giant puzzle, as players must manipulate a cube to shift the walls around and open new pathways to progress. But after Patch 1.04 was released, some pathways wouldn’t open at all. This has now been fixed, however.

Bloober Team and publisher Konami released the Silent Hill 2 remake on October 8 to glowing critical reception and strong sales, leaving many fans of the previously dormant horror franchise eager for more.

Bloober has said it’s open to making other Silent Hill games, though at the moment is focused on its sci-fi survival horror game Cronos: The New Dawn.

In our 8/10 review of the Silent Hill 2 remake, IGN said: “Silent Hill 2 is a great way to visit – or revisit – one of the most dread-inducing destinations in the history of survival horror.”

Silent Hill 2 Remake Version 1.05 Patch Notes

Fixes

• Labyrinth Progression Blocker: Fixed an issue where players who saved their game in the Labyrinth, after Toluca Prison, on the previous version encountered a progression blocker if the save data was loaded after updating to Patch 1.04. We have implemented a fix by adding a safeguard that forces proper activation of the necessary triggers, ensuring smooth progression moving forward.
  Features
• Steam Cloud Saves: We have enabled Steam Cloud support for PC players on Steam. Please note that the game will automatically sync with the latest cloud save data. If the cloud save is more recent than the local save, it will overwrite the local data without a warning pop-up. We recommend players back up their local saves if you wish to keep multiple versions.

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

Valve has finally fixed a problem with Team Fortress 2 that’s been in the game since it launched 17 years ago.

Ever since the influential hero shooter came out on October 10, 2007, the Scout’s pants on the blue side were the wrong color. Now, among patch notes for a recently released Team Fortress 2 update, Valve buried the big news: Scout’s pants are now fixed.

Here’s the rather innocuous line from the patch notes:

• Fixed BLU Scout using the incorrect team color pants

In typical Valve fashion, it made the change without explanation or fanfare. No explanation for why it’s taken 17 years to change the color of Scout’s pants, and no reason for why it’s done so only now. Ever mysterious, Valve is.

It’s fair to say the reaction from the Team Fortress 2 community has been a mix of shock and excitement. “They changed a character design 17 years later! What!” X/Twitter user @heavyfortres asked.

THEY MADE BLU SCOUT’S PANTS BLUE

THEY CHANGED A CHARACTER DESIGN 17 YEARS LATER WHAT pic.twitter.com/WFPdYvwYzx

— heavy team fortres 2 (@heavyfortres) October 24, 2024

“Honestly I can’t believe they did it,” redditor KyleTheWalrus added. “BLU Scout had gray pants and blue belt loops for 17 years, and he has several cosmetics that require the gray pants color to work correctly.

“If they fixed anything, I was sure they would just make the belt loops gray because it’s easier. But those crazy bastards took the hard route.

“Now we wait another 17 years for the rest of Scout’s pants cosmetics to become the correct shade of blue. Hooray!”

Valve’s relationship with the Team Fortress 2 community has certainly had its ups and downs over the years. The game’s had an awful bot problem for some time, and exacerbated players often call for Valve to do more to clamp down. They’ve also asked for more support and content for Team Fortress 2 from Valve, which, some say, is more focused on its other, more popular games. Team Fortress 2 remains incredibly popular, though, and is among one of Steam’s most played games ahead of the likes of Warframe, Overwatch 2, and Destiny 2.

Last month, Team Fortress 2 players got creative in the fight against the shooter’s rampant bot problem by turning a 340,000 signature strong petition into an actual book and delivering it to Valve headquarters.

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.

Black Ops 6 comes out today, October 25, and it does something no other Call of duty game has done before: launch straight into Game Pass.

Following Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard, the pressure is now on its gaming business to deliver. With that in mind, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has decided to take the plunge and release Black Ops 6 as a day one Game Pass game, albeit restricted to the Ultimate and PC Game Pass tiers.

This is a momentous moment not just for Call of Duty but for Game Pass, which has struggled for growth in recent years. Latest official figures put Game Pass subscriber numbers at 34 million. That’s 34 million paying subscribers across console, PC, and cloud. Indeed Microsoft removed its $1 introductory Game Pass trial just weeks before Black Ops 6’s launch, as it did with last year’s Starfield — further evidence, after recent price hikes and tier changes, that the pressure is now on for Game Pass to make the absolute most of the power of Call of Duty.

Will it pay off for Microsoft? In interviews with GamesIndustry.biz, analysts predicted Black Ops 6 could boost Game Pass subscriber numbers by between 2.5 million and 4 million. However, analysts also predicted a significant impact on sales of Black Ops 6. Call of Duty is usually the best-selling game of the year, but there is now a big question mark over whether it will achieve that record once again with Black Ops 6 given it’s available as part of Game Pass.

Wedbush boss Michael Pachter told GI that putting Black Ops 6 into Game Pass could result in up to six million lost sales, based on the idea that 25% of Game Pass subscribers might have bought the game anyway. Countering this, Pachter said Game Pass could swell by between three to four million subscribers.

This is a perhaps expected shift, but is it overall better for Microsoft and Activision? The theory is that getting more players through the door than ever before, even at the cost of sales of the game, will eventually pay out because of Call of Duty’s lucrative live service, which is fueled by premium battle passes and costly cosmetic packs. Microsoft may be playing the long game here, even though it risks negative headlines about Call of Duty sales being down compared to previous years.

Of course, now Microsoft has taken the plunge with Call of Duty little is off the table when it comes to Game Pass. The expectation now is that each year’s premium Call of Duty game will launch day one on Game Pass, and fans are still waiting for the back catalog to be added.

We’ve got plenty more on Black Ops 6 ahead of launch, including its strange arachnophobia mode, built-in support for better audio tech that costs $20, Activision’s new ambitious plans to beat cheaters, and confirmation it doesn’t include the dreaded Riot Shield.

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.

In 1991, I went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. The Turtles were barely using their weapons now, Casey Jones was gone, and April O’Neil wasn’t Judith Hoag anymore – which was like coming back after holidays to find the classmate you had a crush on had changed schools. Put simply, it wasn’t what I’d expected, and I find myself in a similar position with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed. What I expected was a basic 3D beat ’em up that would be over in a few hours. What we got is actually a 14-hour light RPG, with a basic 3D beat ’em up tying together long sections of exposition and relationship building. Unfortunately, like with The Secret of the Ooze, moving in an unexpected direction doesn’t automatically make the end result good. Despite a clear effort on the part of developer aheartfulofgames to make Mutants Unleashed a juicy and authentic follow-up story to 2023’s Mutant Mayhem film, it quickly becomes tedious thanks to a significant lack of enemy variety and small selection of constantly reused levels. It’s not ninja crap, but the T.U.R.T.L.E. power is limited.

As far as I’m concerned, the original 1990 TMNT movie is untouchable, but I do feel Mutant Mayhem is the best TMNT movie since the first. Its deliberately imperfect, hand-drawn appearance is remarkable, its soundtrack is impeccable, and – as the father of a 16-year-old – it contains easily the most believably teenage Turtles ever.

Mutants Unleashed comes impressively close to recreating two of those pillars itself. While the graphics don’t reach par with the exquisite, painterly appearance of the movie, they ably ape the hastily sketched, asymmetrical look of Mutant Mayhem – from its crude, 2D scribbles for smoke and light sources, to Bebop’s distractingly droopy pierced nipples. The four main Turtles themselves are also in sync with their movie counterparts, largely thanks to the fact the voice stars of the movie have returned here. If the budget could’ve stretched to include some of the film’s licensed music, they could’ve had the trifecta. It sadly didn’t but, unfortunately, Mutants Unleashed has several more pressing problems than a lack of iconic ’90s hip hop up in here (up in here).

Can I Kick It?

While a 14-hour TMNT RPG may sound like slam dunk value on paper, Mutants Unleashed is actually stretched to a breaking point over that surprisingly lengthy duration. The main story missions quickly become dreary once you notice it’s constantly rehashing the same stages.

Mutants Unleashed tries hard to obfuscate how many levels it actually has by having us run backwards through ones we’ve previously completed, or switching up the fixed camera to a different angle, but it’s very transparent. There’s also far too much loading required as we complete sections, which just feels like a cheat to shuffle the order of environments used for each mission without blending them together. Either way, clambering across the same construction site, running through the same pipe, riding up and down the same elevator, and scurrying over the same cargo ships gets old, quick.

Worse, very little exploration is possible. Yes, there are hidden objects – and pieces of street art to find for Mondo Gecko – but Mutants Unleashed generally only punishes us for trying to veer off the path. I lost track of the number of times I tried to jump to a spot that appeared fine to land on, only to plummet to the street off camera – or be met with an invisible wall. On one stage I completely trapped myself somewhere I clearly wasn’t meant to be. I’ve only ever found hidden art by accidentally going the way I thought I was supposed to go anyway.

Combat itself is totally serviceable, although enemies aren’t very smart, and they’re not always great at tracking you through the environments. The Turtles all have distinct fighting styles that can be upgraded with new moves as you progress specific relationships for each. There’s little need to get into the weeds with it, though, and it’s totally a button masher. This makes it accessible, but fairly mindless. I’d try out new moves, but mostly to get the tutorial boxes to leave the screen, where they sometimes cover up your Turtles thanks to the fixed camera.

That camera didn’t really bother me for the most part; I get that it’s ultimately a bit of a halfway house between an entirely third-person brawler and the 2D beat ’em ups of yesteryear, and Mutants Unleashed creatively replaces your character with a scratched silhouette when they’re hidden by pieces of the environment. However, I did have instances where the angle was a real burden. There’s not a ton of technical platforming in Mutants Unleashed, but lining up jumps and rail grinds from a 45-degree angle is like leaving your TV and trying to keep playing Tony Hawk from the toilet with the bathroom door ajar.

Most disappointingly, Mutants Unleashed seems built primarily as a single-player game. The Turtles you haven’t selected will simply dip out at the beginning of every level, so you never feel like you’re part of a fighting foursome – which is what TMNT is all about. Sure, it has two-player co-op, but it’s not four-player, so that still doesn’t feel right. You don’t even get AI Turtles raising shell in the background. The special assist moves make it seem like a second Turtle is going to get involved, but activating them doesn’t actually bring one of your brothers physically into the space. It’s just… implied that they dropped in and bugged out, perhaps while you were blinking.

It also doesn’t help that enemies are just the same handful of mutants for the entire game. Trash crabs. Zebra squids. Hippo luchadores. A couple more. But it’s over a dozen hours of these same few baddies. Yes, I understand a licensed tie-in game isn’t going to be able to introduce important opponents from the TMNT universe – like the Foot Clan or such – before the film’s inevitable sequel. Hell, I wouldn’t let it either. That’s how you get Emperor Palpatine returning to Star Wars in… Fortnite. At 6am Australian Eastern Daylight Time on a random Sunday morning. But Mutants Unleashed really needed more enemy variety.

There are a host of side missions, but unfortunately these only contribute to the repetition. Civilian missions involve beating up a bunch of the same mutants across a couple of levels you’ve almost certainly been to before. Contagion missions involve running through a level you’ve almost certainly been to before, beating up the same mutants again, although this time some of them will be highlighted as key targets. Pizza deliveries are just speed runs through the same levels once more, although the enemies have been removed, and the map is now full of giant inflatable bounce pads and boom gates for no discernible reason. And no one’s carrying a pizza.

Mutants Unleashed features a time progression system, where each mission or conversation encounter takes either a day or a night, and then the day moves on. This puts a limit on the amount of side activities you can tackle before needing to do a main mission, but there’s more than enough time to complete everything in a single playthrough. There’s about two months of tasks, but I had weeks up my sleeve before needing to do the final couple of story missions and I was already out of side missions, so the time component doesn’t really add a great deal.

No Diggity

The RPG-style conversational component of Mutants Unleashed does add a lot of unexpected exposition, although I think the story of a new wave of mutants descending on New York and finding themselves at odds with the existing human population is an effective and totally logical follow-up to the movie. It continues the themes that hatred and prejudice are repugnant from any side they’re projected and, while “do unto others” is admittedly a message that’s been embedded in kids’ cartoons for decades, that doesn’t make it any less authentic in this new TMNT world where mutants and humans have suddenly been thrown together.

Yes, not every conversation is particularly riveting, and not all of them are actually voiced, either. These sections are also entirely passive, so there are definitely times when they’re simply filler. Even moments that seem custom made for a minigame – like Donatello visiting an arcade to play a dancing game – ultimately aren’t interactive. An indirect dig at how rubbish Raph is in the original TMNT game is cute, but otherwise there’s a bit of a weird clash of approaches at times. I raised my eyebrow as the script worked quite hard to concoct an entire fantasy catalogue of parody John Hughes films to not mention him by name – but then, on other occasions, overtly references the likes of Clint Eastwood and Chuck Norris.

The biggest problem, however, is the pacing of the dialogue. Cutscenes are totally hamstrung by the glacial cadence of conversations, which waits line-by-line for huge dialogue boxes and canned reaction animations to pop up. This creates highly-unnatural pauses between sentences and very much kills the momentum of conversations.

These scenes can mostly be skipped, or slightly sped up by hammering a button, but they’re nonetheless necessary if you want to progress the Turtles’ relationships with their friends around the city and unlock new upgrades.

After the success of Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th kicked off the 80’s by taking the slasher genre to gorey new heights. Jason Voorhees first appeared (sort of) to terrify teens at a Crystal Lake summer camp, and its safe to say the original Friday the 13th is essential viewing for any horror fan. 12 movies and 11 directors later, the hockey-mask wearing horror villain has become a zombie, gone to space, and battled a fellow slasher icon.

For those looking to watch or rewatch the films ahead of Halloween or the next Friday the 13th in December, here’s where you can stream all of the Friday the 13th movies right now.

Where to Watch the Friday the 13th Movies Online