Category: IGN

Elden Ring ran extremely well on the Asus ROG Ally X, but with the release of Nightreign, handheld gaming PC nerds (like me) are desperate to know if it continues the trend. After all, Shadow of the Erdtree was more demanding than the original, and that was an expansion built into it. Considering Nightreign is a standalone title, it has the potential to take things up a notch. But I have great news: It runs even better than Elden Ring.

That seems surprising, but it shouldn’t be: Elden Ring Nightreign is limited to a small map called Limveld, meaning there’s far less on the screen at any time. It helps that the environment is based on Limgrave rather than anything from Shadow of the Erdtree, which came out two years later and had more complex visual effects that gave my Ally a run for its money.

Can the Asus ROG Ally X Handle Elden Ring Nightreign?

I tested the game primarily in the castle at the center of Limveld. It’s the largest set piece on the unaltered base map, where giants can throw enormous pots of magic at the player. This is where my framerate consistently dips to its lowest points, so I’m using it as a baseline for performance. I also started a new match between each graphics preset (as recommended by the game).

I set my ROG Ally X’s Operating Mode to Turbo (30W) and plugged it into an outlet, allowing it to output the maximum amount of watts into performance. I also allocated 16GB of RAM to the GPU to get the most of its hardware, which is a unique advantage of the Ally X, as it’s built with 24GB of RAM. Most other handheld gaming PCs feature 16GB of RAM and can only allocate 8GB to the GPU. These settings allow the Asus ROG Ally X to run at its best.

The game runs well on the handheld, but Elden Ring Nightreign can struggle when there are a lot of enemies and visual effects at the same time, especially in more open areas. So, if you’re being ganked by several blood-infused enemies set to self-destruct on your position, all while overlooking Limveld from the top of ruins, the frame rate will take a massive hit. However, in enclosed spaces, like a dense forest, the game fares much better, particularly if you strategically point the camera towards the ground.

My ROG Ally X maintained an average of 30 fps at 1080p on the Maximum preset, with occasional drops down to 27 fps (usually after being bombarded by magic pots). The only other preset that dipped below 30 fps was 1080p on High. It hit an average of 35 fps, but dropped to 28 fps a few times when battling atop the castle. Otherwise, no other graphics preset dipped below 30 fps once. 1080p at Medium settings came in at an average of 39 fps. Low averaged at 43 fps, with a low of 39 fps.

The game runs much better at 720p, even reaching 60 fps occasionally. Maximum at 720p averaged 41 fps, with a 1% low of 38 fps. High came in with an average of 44 fps, with 40 fps at the worst. Medium and low look crunchy, but yield excellent performance.

Elden Ring Nightreign Is Perfect on the Asus ROG Ally X

Nightreign looks great at 1080p with Maximum settings, and plays decently enough. I enjoyed sessions from start to finish on this preset, and while occasional stutters were bothersome, it’s pretty smooth otherwise and often hovered over 30 fps. 30 fps isn’t enough for everyone though, and those willing to take a hit to resolution will likely find a better balance playing at Maximum graphics and 720p, which hovers around 41 fps, hitting a midpoint between smoothness and quality.

Players clamoring for 60 fps on their Asus ROG Ally X will have the best luck at 720p, but you’ll have to reduce the graphics presets to Medium or Low. Even then, the machine cannot maintain an average of 60 fps, and only reaches that high during less demanding encounters, like in enclosed spaces. It doesn’t look great, though, as Limveld appears flat on Low especially. The island loses its complex shadows, and each structure is low-poly.

Claire finds joy in impassioned ramblings about her closeness to video games. She has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism & Media Studies from Brooklyn College and seven years of experience in entertainment journalism. Claire is a stalwart defender of games as an artform and spends most days overwhelmed with excitement for its past, present and future. When she isn’t writing or playing Dark Souls, she can be found eating chicken fettuccine alfredo and gushing about handheld gaming PCs.

Hasbro has revealed its exclusive Marvel Legends set for San Diego Comic-Con 2025, and ’90s X-Men fans will be pleased. The Marvel Legends Series: Gamerverse Marvel Snap Savage Land 3-Pack features brand new figures of iconic heroines Rogue and Shanna the She-Devil, as well as the fearsome mutant villain Sauron.

Check out the slideshow gallery below for a closer look at this stunning new set:

This set gets the Gamerverse branding because it’s technically based on a series of unlockable cards in the mobile game Marvel Snap. But it also has plenty of nostalgia factor, hearkening back to artist Jim Lee’s run on Uncanny X-Men in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

The Savage Land 3-Pack includes 15 different accessories, such as spears, alternate heads and hands, and even a hypnosis effect for Sauron. All three figures are designed in the usual 6-inch Marvel Legends scale.

The Marvel Legends Series: Gamerverse Marvel Snap Savage Land 3-Pack is priced at $89.99 and will initially be sold only in person at Hasbro’s SDCC booth (#3213). Limited quantities will then be made available on the Hasbro Pulse website after SDCC ends.

Will you be adding this Marvel Legends set to your collection? Let us know in the comments below. And stay tuned for plenty more collectibles coverage as the build-up to Comic-Con continues.

In other Marvel Legends news, Hasbro recently teased a new line of figures inspired by the Marvel vs. Capcom games. You can also check out the many Marvel collectibles available on the IGN Store.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

If gaming has an equivalent to A-list celebrities, then the only person in the frame for that honor would be German designer Reiner Knizia. He made his name in the mid-late ’90s with a slew of brilliant games like Ra and Battle Line, which struck a beautiful balance between luck, strategy and player interaction, so much so that the latter still ranks among our picks for the best 2-player board games today. His games were so well received that they’d make a memorable legacy for any designer but, astonishingly, the hits just keep on coming. Last year saw him produce the brilliant Cascadero and now, age 67, he’s come out with the appropriately titled Rebirth.

What’s in the Box

Rules and How it Plays

Rebirth is actually two related games in one box. There’s a basic version, played on the Scotland side of the board and a more advanced version, played on the Ireland side. The rules for Scotland are incredibly straightforward. On your turn, you pick up a tile in your supply. If it shows a food or energy symbol, you can place it on any hex showing the same icon, and it will score you points equal to the number of continuous adjacent matching tokens. If it shows one or more house symbols you can place it in a town, a delineated area which isn’t scored until it’s full, at which time it scores points for the players with the most house symbols in the group.

Many hexes are also adjacent to castles or cathedrals. If you place in one of these, you can assign one of your delightful RE-wood pieces to the adjacent feature. Castles are worth a handy five points at the end of the game, but there’s a catch. If another player can get more adjacent hexes to a castle you own than you have, then they can remove your castle piece and replace it with theirs. Cathedrals, by contrast, can be shared. Each one you place allows you to draw a mission card, which you can fulfil for extra points.

That’s pretty much the whole deal. Yet in Knizia’s trademark near-magical style, these easy rules blossom into a whole set of madly competing priorities from the very first placement. Castles are worth immediate points, but they have to be defended, and the missions cathedrals grant can be worth more in the long run, so getting them early gives you more control into the endgame. Is it worth more to capture a castle or cathedral over extending a run of tiles and getting bigger points? Are any of these more valuable than blocking an opponent’s run of tiles, or progressing a mission card instead? And let’s not even start on the relative merits of when and if to finish filling out a town.

All these competing priorities make the process of placing a single tile far more engaging and dynamic than it sounds. Most don’t have hard answers, and take experience and educated guesswork to muddle through, ensuring the game doesn’t get bogged down in analysis paralysis. And as things progress and placement options become more limited, the race for control of castles and to finish missions ensures that there’s no let-up in terms of tension as options dwindle. Well-timed and well-placed late tiles can be crucial in determining the overall victor.

At the same time, the fact you pull a random tile each turn gives more longevity than you might anticipate to playing over and over on the same map. Because of the chaotic tile order and the interactions between the players, no two games unfold in the same way. And, although the game does get more interesting – and slightly longer – as you add players, it’s still a lot of fun with two, though three players is a sweet spot. This is, however, where the simplicity of the base design begins to show some weakness. Once you’ve learned the ins and out of the Scotland map, the game does start to feel a little lightweight.

This, of course, is the ideal time to move to Ireland. The basic rules for castles and placement are the same, although there’s a bigger town and a lot of unmarked hexes where you can place either food or energy tiles as you prefer. Cathedrals have been replaced with towers, adjacency to which wins you a bonus depending on a random tile assigned to the tower such as a score bonus, or an immediate extra turn. The mission cards you earned from cathedrals are replaced with eight public cards which are all a race, giving top points to the first player to complete, and a more modest reward for those who manage it thereafter.

So: you still have all the same competing priorities you had to juggle when you were playing Scotland. But, on top of that, it dumps a whole load of additional stuff to consider from the very first turn: you’ve got an additional eight public missions, and six different tower effects. While it isn’t a big step up in terms of rules weight, it feels like a huge step up in terms of depth, especially for the first few games on the new board, when the sheer number of factors you need to consider when placing one tile can be almost crushing. It’s a very different kind of depth to the slowly snowballing web of actions and resources that characterize more complex strategy board games because it’s front-loaded, but it’s depth nevertheless.

It’s almost too much in terms of adding to the decision-making, especially for more casual players, but it’s inarguable that it’s an effective way to address concerns that the Scotland side of the board is too straightforward. However, it can weirdly reduce the sense of competition for board space that Scotland has. With so many other priorities, the uncertain rewards of blocking other players, or trying to steal their castles, tend to take a backseat. Over time, as you get used to all the competing demands, Ireland shows its own rewards as a slower, more reflective, but still very engaging version of the game.

Where to Buy

• Get it at Amazon
• Get it at Mighty Boards
• Get it at Recess Games
• Get it at eBay

Another day and another boatload of deals for anyone looking for new AirPods, Beats and big brand EarBuds. We’ve also got the latest stock updates and preorders for Pokémon TCG and highly anticipated Magic: The Gathering sets such as Final Fantasy, Spider-Man and Edge of Eternities.

TL;DR: Deals For Today

I’ve also had a look at some of the most sought-after Final Fantasy and Pokémon TCG: Destined Rivals single cards, with the latter mostly on sale under market value right now. It’s certainly a better deal than buying sealed big-box retailer product right now, but it’s nice to have options, right? I’ve even found a cracking deal on 4K Blu Rays, picking out some of the best options for a “Buy one get one for 50%” offer. And yes, it includes the Lord of the Rings trilogy (theatrical and extended). Let’s get into it:

MTG Final Fantasy And Spider-Man Preorders

It’s mad how Final Fantasy and Spider-Man products are still available to preorder after the initial pre-sale flying off digital shelves. My take on these sets is to preorder whilst you can, the pricing on these sets are only going to go above MSRP on release day.

MTG Final Fantasy: Best-Selling Presale Cards

I usually share immensely cool Cloud and Sephiroth cards that belong in a slab in someones collection, but all of these cards are what MTG players are going for right now. Looking to build a deck instead of collect MTG Final Fantasy? Snap these up before other players realise how playable they are.

MTG Spider-Man Single Card Pre-Sale

Whilst it’s early days for MTG MArvel’s Spider-Man coming later this year, snapping up early deals on Spidey and his rogues gallery is going to look sick in anyones MTG binder. I might not get around to playing this, but I just want these scene box cards for my TCG display shelves.

Magic The Gathering Edge of Eternities Preorders

Sci-Fi buffs will find MTG: Edge of Eternities a cracking entry point into one of the hottest trading cards games on the planet. If going to the edges of the MTG multiverse to battle it out in the name of cosmic power in the heart of a dying star doesn’t grab you, I don’t know what will.

Magic: The Gathering Stock Updates

Big box retailers are squeezing us on pricing right now, but there’s still some deals to be had. I’m liking the look of the Lord of the Rings Scene Box bundle, but stretching to the commander decks would make for one hell of a games night.

Pokémon TCG Stock Updates

Another day of ridiculous pricing on Amazon for Pokémon TCG sealed products, but keeping an eye on it so you all have options is still important. If you can’t find other sealed products for a decent price, I can almost guarantee the market value on TCG Player is cheaper right now.

Destined Rivals: The Most Valuable Cards

On a more positive note, Destined Rivals top chase card prices are stablising, making it a great time to snap some up. Team Rocket’s Mewtwo ex SIR has been going for anything over $450 since release, but is starting to settle on a more respectable $370.

Apple AirPods Sale

The big sell with this AirPods sale is the free AppleCare+, with some decent savings on the hardware itself for good measure. They’re all solid choices, but i’d personally snap up AirPods 4 as they’re currently the same sale price as their third generation variant.

Beats Earbuds and Headphones Sale

No, I didn’t forget about Dre thanks, and neither did Amazon. If you want Apple quality without the basic white branding, Beats are the way forward. They all come with AppleCare+ or AppleCare for headphones too, with the exception of a $25 Amazon Gift card for Beats Fit Pro.

Samsung and Sony Ear Buds

Samsung and Sony are two personal audio brands you can set your smart watch too, and I’m seriously tempted to sink some money into Sony WH-1000XM5 whilst they’re on offer. The noise cancelling is best-in-class, and those cans pack some serious punch.

4K Blu Ray Sale: Buy 2, Save 50% on 1

Amazon is at it again with a cracking promotion on Blu Ray, 4K Blu Ray and DVDs with a Buy 2, save 50% on 1 deal. There’s currently over 1000 qualifying items here, but here’s some of my favorite picks. Seeing the Lord of the Rings trilogy in this is a banging deal, but this offer is also a great way to get your physical media collection off to a healthy start without burning your bank card out.

Woodkid for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach 2LP Vinyl

IGN Live Game Bundle

Officially, it’s called Resident Evil Requiem, but make no mistake: this is the ninth mainline entry into the Resident Evil franchise, and set to star yet another new protagonist: FBI Agent Grace Ashcroft.

While Capcom surprised everyone with a trailer during the Summer Games Fest trailer, we got a chance to get the first hands-on preview with Resident Evil Requiem (aka Resident Evil 9) shortly after the announcement. And fans will be happy to know that Capcom is still keeping the series rooted in its newfound survival horror goodness.

First Person or Third Person?

The first question for everyone is likely to be whether or not Resident Evil Requiem will be in the first-person perspective like past mainline games Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village, or will it be playable in third-person like the Resident Evil remake games? The answer to that is both!

That’s right, from the jump Capcom will let players toggle between first-person and third-person perspectives through the Options menu at any point during the campaign. While it’s not the most seamless way to change perspectives, the fact that Resident Evil Requiem lets you swap perspectives at all without needing to restart feels pretty revolutionary for this series.

And with the perspective swaps comes an interesting dilemma, at least one that I encountered while playing Resident Evil Requiem. But first, let me set the table for you.

Scary Times at the Wrenwood Hotel

The trailer shows agent Grace Ashcroft as she awakes upside down on a scary looking examination table, and this is where the gameplay demo begins. Once free, Grace must navigate what appears to be a medical ward. It’s unclear if this is in the hotel or in a separate location, but like other Resident Evil locations such as Raccoon City Police Department, for example, this medical ward appears to be decorated by someone who loves classical architecture.

Grace is pretty powerless from the get-go, and she’s only able to pick up makeshift weapons like glass bottles to use as projectiles. The narrow hallways are sometimes bathed in blinking red emergency lights, or no lights at all, while some doors only lead to pure darkness. At some point Grace finds a lighter that helps her navigate these previously unlit areas.

Capcom describes Grace as a kind of bookworm – as evinced by the trailer when she’s surrounded by a stack of files. So while she’s had combat training thanks to being in the FBI, she’s not a hardened combat veteran like Leon Kennedy or Jill Valentine. That means she’s more afraid of her nightmarish surroundings, and as you explore the dark hallways, you can hear Grace as she lets out calming breaths to steady her nerves. It does a lot to convey how powerless Grace feels compared to more confident heroes like Leon or Jill, and even helps her stand out against Resident Evil’s last new hero, Ethan Winters, who was stoic to a fault.

I know online there’s been some theorizing about who the true main character of Resident Evil Requiem is. And while Capcom has done bait-and-switches before for Resident Evil protagonists, Grace Ashcroft makes a compelling new hero, whose vulnerability in particular already helps her stand out. I’m curious to learn more about Grace, particularly her connection to the forgotten Resident Evil Outbreak games.

Eventually, Grace will encounter a horrifying new monster that kind of reminds me of the creature from the 2022 horror film Barbarian (Fun fact: Barbarian director Zach Cregger is set to direct the next Resident Evil live-action movie). This monster will stalk Grace through the dark corridors much in the same way as Mr. X or Lady Dimitrescu. Combined with Grace’s palpable fear, running away from this mysterious new monster feels even more terrifying and reminds me almost like the first time I played Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

However, this fear I describe is mostly present if you play the game in first-person perspective. And as Capcom revealed during the preview, you can switch perspectives at any time. When I played the demo I did extensive testing in third-person mode, including while running away from Requiem’s new monster. In third-person I found that the tension of hiding and running to still be there, but the fear factor was replaced somewhat with a more action-like feel. In third-person, running away from the monster felt a little more tactical than survival-horror, though given Grace’s limited arsenal it was no less stressful.

Like I said, with only bottles to throw at the monster, Grace is better off running away, and in third-person Grace will stumble over her own feet while getting away, highlighting her inexperience and adding more stress to the encounter.

Resident Evil Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi says that the game will stay true to the survival horror core, but highlight a kind of thrill to the action – and I feel like these two elements are highlighted whenever you swap perspectives. For exploration and dread, first-person is the way to go, but for monster encounters, third-person feels livelier.

Visually, Capcom maintains the high standards set by all previous Resident Evil games since switching to the RE Engine with particular emphasis added to the contrast between light and dark. There are moments where Grace will turn on a hallway light only for it to cast the smallest light possible, while casting menacing shadows.

With Resident Evil Requiem, you no longer have to make the choice between first-person and third-person perspective, something Capcom flirted with when it released a third-person option as DLC for Resident Evil Village. While the balance between horror and action naturally shifts depending on the perspective, my main takeaway is that Resident Evil Requiem was exciting to play in either mode, and looks to continue Capcom’s strong string of game releases.

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

A report has shed new light on Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s tumultuous development, and raised concerns about the future of BioWare.

In January, publisher EA said Dragon Age: The Veilguard had “underperformed” versus its expectations by around 50%, just days after the game’s director Corrine Busche confirmed she was leaving the company. Meanwhile, other BioWare staff who worked on the game were laid off. In the same month, BioWare signalled it had released its final update for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, with no further content announced or expected.

IGN has reported on The Veilguard’s development before, detailing how it was rebooted from a single-player game into a live-service multiplayer game and back again. Now, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has revealed new insights into the goings on at BioWare during the making of The Veilguard, revealing exactly why it ended up disappointing some fans with a lack of meaningful choice and consequence — key qualities BioWare’s best games are best-known for.

Schreier revealed that many of The Veilguard’s issues were a hangover from the pivot from multiplayer back to single-player RPG, including its tone, dialogue, and lack of tough choices for the player. One tidbit stands out: BioWare was spooked by the failure of Square Enix’s Forspoken, worrying The Veilguard’s now out of fashion snarky tone would fuel a similar fate. So a “belated rewrite” of the game’s dialogue was ordered to “make it sound more serious.” This, in turn, resulted in tonal inconsistencies.

There were also internal concerns about how The Veilguard was being marketed (“an initial trailer made the next Dragon Age seem more like Fortnite than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn’t know how to market the game”).

EA declined to comment to Bloomberg on the piece.

The upshot of The Veilguard’s failure is that a small team is working on Mass Effect 5, but there are concerns about BioWare’s future. Dragon Age appears dead following the failure of The Veilguard, which when counting Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem is BioWare’s third flop in a row. Could EA close it down?

Bloomberg quoted TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz as saying that while EA needs more than sports to be successful, “if they shuttered the doors [of BioWare] tomorrow I wouldn’t be totally surprised. It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.”

Check out Bloomberg’s piece for the full story.

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.

Wondering just how powerful the Nintendo Switch 2 is in terms of raw computing power? One developer has said it’s closer to the Xbox Series S than the PlayStation 4.

In an interview with wccftech, Takuto Edagawa, producer of Koei Tecmo’s Wild Hearts S, said that while it’s difficult to generalize about the power of the Switch 2, the Series S is a decent comparison.

There are a lot of characteristics when it comes to raw computing power so it’s difficult to generalize, but I think it can be thought as closer to the Series S.

Switch 2’s tech specs include a custom Nvidia GPU with dedicated RT Cores and Tensor Cores. Ahead of the console’s launch, Nvidia said the GPU enables 10x the graphics performance of the Nintendo Switch, with AI upscaling via DLSS and ray tracing.

The Xbox Series S is the less powerful alternative to the Xbox Series X. It launched alongside that console in 2020, in direct competition with the PlayStation 5, and this November turns five years old.

If the Switch 2 is similar in power to the Xbox Series S, that suggests it will run most third-party games. Microsoft mandates that any game that launches on the Xbox Series X also launches on the S, so any developer working on a game for the current-gen Xbox must ensure the S is capable of running it.

It’s also worth noting that Microsoft and Activision are still working on bringing Call of Duty to Switch. The recently announced Black Ops 7 isn’t confirmed for Switch 2 yet, but we do know it’s planned for release on the last generation of consoles (PS4 and Xbox One). That should mean it’ll run fine on Switch 2, based on Edagawa’s comments.

Indeed, Switch 2 released with a number of third-party games to flesh out its launch lineup, including CD Projekt’s demanding Cyberpunk 2077. Where the Switch lacked many third-party multiplatform games, perhaps the Switch 2 will thrive.

Switch 2 is off to a great start, selling 3.5 million units in just four days. That’s enough to make it the fastest-selling Nintendo hardware ever.

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.

Stardew Valley creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has confirmed his upcoming game, Haunted Chocolatier, is “larger” than the already sizeable Stardew Valley.

How much bigger, or in which way it’s bigger? Sorry — Barone didn’t elaborate. “The world of Haunted Chocolatier is larger than Stardew Valley” is the full extent of his message. If he’s referring to the length of the game, however, How Long to Beat? has the average Stardew Valley playtime listed as over 50 hours for just the main story, and around 168 hours for a completionist run.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, these 10 words sent a ripple of excitement through his fan communities, with one exclaiming: “[Concerned Ape] STOP TEASING. I MEAN- DONT STOP TEASING. I MEAN- IDK IM SO EXCITED BUT I DONT WANT U TO RUSH TAKE UR SWEET ASS TIME WE LOVE U.”

Last month, Barone admitted that he “didn’t want to just be the Stardew Valley guy,” explaining that was why he’s currently working on Haunted Chocolatier. We shouldn’t expect a release date anytime soon, though — there’s “still a lot to be done,” Barone recently admitted, particularly as he feels it’s “got to be better” than Stardew Valley.

However, he also suggested that he may “eventually make a Stardew Valley 2.” Before you get too excited, however, the developer also said it’s “so much easier to just add more stuff to Stardew Valley than to make a whole new game from scratch.”

“It’s all the systems — all the major systems — are already all done. That’s the stuff that’s not fun to do. When I make an update [for Stardew Valley now], it’s like, you know, oh, throw in this, throw in that. Let’s add green rain — like, these random, whimsical ideas.”

Barone announced Haunted Chocolatier back in 2021. Much like Stardew Valley, it will be a top-down pixel-based sim, and it looks to have much the same flavor as ConcernedApe’s previous work.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Lars Wingefors, founder of Swedish gaming company Embracer, is stepping down from his CEO role. Current deputy CEO Phil Rogers will assume the position from August 2025.

Embracer, which oversees IPs like The Lord of the Ring, Dead Island, Metro, and Tomb Raider, is no stranger to change, of course. After making high-profile acquisitions like the purchase of Middle-earth Enterprises and Borderlands-maker Gearbox in 2022 and 2021, respectively, Embracer found itself in turmoil after a $2 billion deal with Savvy Games Group fell through. In the time since, the company has shut down Saints Row developer Volition Games, sold Gearbox, split from Space Marine 2 developer Saber Interactive, and overseen thousands of layoffs. Wingefors called the criticism and backlash to its missteps “painful.”

The developer of MindsEye has said it’s working to improve the game’s performance after a number of players took to Steam user reviews to complain.

Build A Rocket Boy’s debut title launched on June 10 and has settled on a ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam, where it also hit a peak concurrent player count of 3,302. Many of the negative reviews focus on MindsEye’s performance problems, which appear to be hitting PC gamers hard. There are also reports on various bugs, glitches, and NPC behavior oddities.

My second combat encounter in #MindsEye… The AI has become self-aware and is now committing suicide: pic.twitter.com/391R23S0Oa

— Jesse Gomez @ IGN (@ItsJesseGomez) June 10, 2025

In response, Build A Rocket Boy issued a statement on the MindsEye subreddit, saying its engineering team is “working around the clock” to improve performance. Patch 3 will be revealed soon, it added.

Here’s the statement in full:

Thank you kindly to all of you who joined us as pioneers on day one! We understand that the current minimum spec requirements are very high, but our engineering team are working around the clock to improve performance on mainstream hardware as well as consoles by integrating the performance improvements in Unreal Engine V5.6. We will provide patch 3 update timing, including these improvements, within the next 24 hours. In addition to the main campaign, we would also value your thoughts on Build.Mindseye.

MindsEye, led by former Rockstar North chief Leslie Benzies, has endured a tumultuous run-up to release. Last week, Build A Rocket Boy said fans should wait for MindsEye’s official launch rather than play it before its street date, after early copies made their way into the hands of players.

“We want everyone to experience the story the same way at the same time on day one, without bias,” Build A Rocket Boy said in a statement issued in response to early copies being played. “This means waiting until the official release date to play through the game firsthand.”

Mention of bias in the studio’s statement sparked speculation that the company was referring back to comments made by its co-CEO Mark Gerhard, who suggested there had been a “concerted effort” to “trash the game and the studio” with negative social media posts from paid accounts or bots.

IGN subsequently put this claim to Hakan Abrak, boss of Hitman developer IO Interactive, the company which is publishing MindsEye. His response: “I don’t know. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. I just think the game should speak for itself on June the 10th.”

Physical copies of MindsEye also needed a “major” update for “key improvements to ensure MindsEye plays as we intended and to meet all the characters at their best.”

And just days before MindsEye’s launch, Build a Rocket Boy’s Chief Legal Officer and Chief Financial Officer confirmed they had left the company, sparking concern from the studio’s fledgling community.

Steam concurrents do not tell the whole story, of course. MindsEye launched on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S as well as PC, so its true concurrent player count will be higher than that reported on Valve’s platform.

MindsEye carries a $59.99 price tag. At launch, there is a “tightly crafted linear story campaign,” and what’s called “single-player free roam,” but there are also a number of missions: a horde mode mission called “Destruction Site Shootout,” and two combat missions (“Honor Amongst Thieves” and “Friendly Fire”). Also at launch are six races, six checkpoint races, and three drone races. If you get the premium pass, you get an extra horde mode mission and an exotic cosmetics pack.

Following launch, Build A Rocket Boy said it will deliver a “constant stream” of fresh premium content monthly, “ensuring MindsEye is a living, ever-expanding player experience.” This includes new missions, challenges, and game assets. “The continuous stream of studio-developed content, combined with the very best of the community’s own beautiful creations, means that MindsEye will continue to surprise and delight its players for decades to come,” Build A Rocket Boy added.

Build A Rocket Boy also confirmed its 2025 roadmap of content. In the summer there will be community updates, new missions, in the fall new single-player modes, multiplayer, and new missions, and in the winter free roam updates and new missions. Premium pass owners get extra missions and new packs throughout.

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.