Blizzard has revealed what’s coming to Diablo 3 with Season 29, the last season to add new content to the 11 year-old action role-playing game.
The headline is the addition of a Solo Self Found mode, which fans had called on Blizzard to add to the game for years.
In this mode, players play truly solo in a single-player experience. That means no trading with others, no experience bonuses from being in a party, and no friends to back you up. Even better, this officially supported single-player mode comes with its own dedicated leaderboard. A Hardcore version is also available.
“We decided to bring Solo Self Found to Diablo 3 after years of players requesting an officially supported single player mode,” the Diablo 3 development team said in a post on its website. “This mode will temper you.”
There’s more to Season 29. There are Visions of Enmity (pocket dimensions accessed by stepping through Diabolical Fissures), new monster affixes, an increase in Paragon ceiling to 800 Paragon Points, highly requested quality-of-life updates, sweeping class balance changes, and bug fixes.
These changes are set to become available August 15 to 29 as part of the Diablo 3 Patch 2.7.6 Public Test Realm (PTR). Season 29 is Diablo 3’s final season to include brand new content, with Blizzard revisiting old seasons from Season 30 onwards as the Diablo 3 development team moves on to work on the recently released Diablo 4.
While Diablo 3 fans have been unanimous in their excitement for Season 29, and have praised Blizzard for supporting the game for over a decade, Diablo 4 fans are hoping for a PTR system of their own (to help avoid the release of disastrous patches), a Solo Self Found mode, as well as leaderboards.
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.
Perhaps as an ode to the horror movie genre itself, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre starts out with all the same joy and promise of a group of friends preparing for a weekend at a cabin in the woods before things quickly take a turn for the worse. While I definitely enjoyed plenty of my 20 hours with this novel take on the asymmetrical multiplayer blueprint, where three powerful murderers hunt down a team of four elusive teens, getting started wasn’t as smooth as it is in similar games and there’s less to do than expected once you’re up and running. Between that and some seriously frustrating technical issues, there was definitely a chloroform-doused wet blanket over the whole thing.
If you’ve played any asymmetrical horror game, be that Dead By Daylight or Friday the 13th, Evil Dead or Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed (among others), then you’ve already got a pretty good idea how developer Gun Interactive’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre works, to the point where it feels extremely familiar at first, right down to borrowed ideas like quicktime events and minigames to do things like turn on generators and pick locks, and hiding from baddies who can’t be killed.
But it also includes some important distinctions that help separate it (at least a little bit) from its peers, the biggest of which is that instead of a group of survivors running from one psychopath, there’s a whole team of psychopaths working together to entrap and eliminate their high school-aged quarry. It’s still lopsided at three killers vs four victims, but that adjustment has pretty substantial implications on the asymmetrical horror recipe, since now both sides require communication and teamwork to achieve victory. In other games, it can certainly feel unfair when one side requires a whole group of people to know what they’re doing and work together to pull off a win, while the other can handily lone wolf it and kill everyone without breaking a sweat. I certainly enjoyed preying on uncoordinated groups of survivors in Evil Dead: The Game last year, but I gotta admit – sometimes steamrolling everyone felt a tad mean.
Cooperation is required to pull off a win – and that makes things a lot more interesting.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre makes things a lot more balanced by making the family of killers only marginally more powerful than the teens they’re hunting, as well as being slightly outnumbered by them. The bad guys are still unkillable and will absolutely wail on their targets in open conflict, but without all of that raw power concentrated into one monster, cooperation is required to pull off a win no matter which team you’re playing for – and that makes things a lot more interesting.
Each member of the murder-loving Family has modest but useful abilities, like Johnny’s power to track footprints in a handy detective vision mode, or the Hitchhiker’s ability to place traps that leave survivors frozen in place. I favor Cook, whose slothlike movement and weak attacks are offset by his incredible hearing and ability to padlocks doors to slow the Victims’ progress; basically, I become the ultimate irritating groundskeeper while my friends do most of the killing, which doesn’t sound all that glorious but you can’t argue with my stack of bodies.
Victims, in turn, have some pretty substantial and interesting ways to fight back or speed along their escape, like how Leland can use his jock body and tiny brain to shoulder-charge his pursuers, stunning them for a good while, or how Sonny can mark members of the Family, revealing them through walls for everyone to see, which helps the survivors stay one step ahead. My personal favorite on this side is Connie, whose incredible lockpicking skills allow me to break into areas extremely quickly. That both counters my own tactics while playing as Cook and also lets me lead my team to an escape at an unbelievable pace – sometimes I was able to get out before the bad guys even had a chance to form a plan of their own. The Victims can also do cool things like sneak attack the psychopaths with a makeshift bone knife or burst out of a hiding place to stun them for a time, or even grapple their attackers in a quick-time button-spamming contest to fend them off for a bit.
There are some pretty egregious technical issues, every single match.
Even with those good ideas working in its favor, though a lot of wind is taken out of it by some pretty egregious technical issues that everyone I played with experienced, every single match. The biggest one is that anytime a Victim and a member of the Family get into close proximity, and especially when they engage in combat with one another, the framerate takes a nosedive for everybody in the match. It’s not unplayable, but the most tense moments are frustrating to play, since you might lose track of someone you’re chasing due to massive frame hitching or, even if you do kill someone, you don’t get to enjoy your victory to its fullest because even the kill animation is choppy.
This bug was so common, in fact, that our team actually began to use the framerate dip as a callout – whenever we noticed massive lag and hitching we’d all start shouting, “Uh-oh! Who’s in trouble? Where are you at?” I’ve never seen such a reliable dip in performance before, and the fact that it was so consistent that it had an impact on our strategy is both hilarious and sad.
Beyond that, there’s also mid-game disconnects that’ll ruin your match, and some weird issues when trying to gather a party together. Our friends would get error messages when trying to group up, forcing us to spend whole blocks of time troubleshooting before we could even start a match. I even had one match where my character just became frozen in place indefinitely, forcing me to back out of the session (with no option to rejoin). It’s always hard to say how painful issues like these will be in the days and weeks after launch, but even with the much smaller player pools during the review period where I knew that everybody was playing on good PCs with reliable connections it was almost always an unstable experience, and that doesn’t seem like a good sign.
The Family definitely has the more engaging set of objectives.
The good news is that, even with rocky technical performance putting a damper on things, each match has a compelling back-and-forth where survivors work to avoid notice and find a way out of the death trap they’re stuck in, and maniacs keep the pressure on and lock down the level as much as possible until they can eliminate their captives. The Family definitely has the more engaging set of objectives, since they’re not only hunting the survivors but setting traps and adding additional obstacles to the mix, like turning on generators that activate electrical barriers that then have to be turned off by the Victims. But they also spend their time leveling up their patriarch, Grandpa, who drinks blood you collect from Victims and find in the environment, and as he gains in power it becomes increasingly easier to detect where the remaining survivors are in the process.
Naturally, setting the perfect trap for your prey and then slowly closing in for the kill is an exceeding thrill, especially when my traps forced someone to jump out of a window in desperation, killing themselves on my behalf. Moments like that allowed me to embrace my inner sadist and put a smile on my face.
Victims, on the other hand, mostly rely on stealth to complete their pretty boring objectives, all of which are permutations of the same thing: open a door somewhere so you can leave. Sometimes that’s as easy as finding a few lockpicks and opening a couple doors to leave, especially if your pursuers are doing a bad job of herding you away from it, but there are a few slightly more complicated options like using one exit that opens on a timer when you fix a pressure valve, and another that opens up a tunnel exit when you solve a simple circuitry puzzle at a fuse box. Thankfully, despite the uncreative errands you have to complete to escape, it’s still undoubtedly a good time cooperating with your fellow Victims and narrowly avoiding detection by the bad guys, or better yet: making it out of the final exit by the skin of your teeth with all three murderers hot on your heels.
There are only three maps and a single game mode to choose from.
With such a good baseline, it’s pretty disappointing that there are only three maps and a single game mode to choose from, each with only the most minor of permutations from match to match. The Gas Station, The Family House, and The Slaughterhouse are all varied and well-designed maps in terms of layout, but they bizarrely all have the same set of four exits in the same general places for Victims to escape through and Family to guard. Once you’ve played a level once or twice, all the novelty of emerging from the basement to an unfamiliar area that you then need to escape is lost, and it’s super weird that there isn’t any special way for me to escape The Slaughterhouse versus The Family House. You’re telling me that both of these places have exactly one pressure-released exit and one tunnel exit with a broken fuse box? That just feels like it was copied and pasted.
It’s also pretty odd that there’s no real tutorial or single-player with bots mode to be found, leaving little recourse for those learning the ropes or trying to sharpen their skills. The only way to learn the rules without playing is by watching an extensive library of extremely dry videos, only a couple of which even bother with voiceover explanations, leaving you to read for like 30 minutes and then hope you have a great memory. Since most people probably won’t have the stomach for that and will jump right into playing matches, you’ll likely encounter lots of players who don’t know what they’re doing, which can be an extremely frustrating experience when they’re on your team – and they’re not even that satisfying to kill. Since I’d gone to the trouble of reading everything and played 20 hours worth of matches in just a few days, I had the privilege of guiding my teammates to frequent victories, but every once in a while I’d find someone without a mic who would just ruin my day.
In one match, one of my fellow murderers was a mic-less novice who kept opening locked doors and leaving them wide open for Victims to slip through, which of course they did, costing us the match. I couldn’t tell him that he was screwing us over, so I had to split my time between finding the Victims and closing doors behind my clueless teammate. Those matches were very much not a fun experience, and felt like it could have been easily avoided with a simple tutorial like you see in other similar games. Without that, I predict lots of matches will be ruined, with frustrated veterans losing patience with their newbie teammates and quitting the match early.
Hopefully they’ll be incentivized to stick around because playing matches earns you XP that can be used to level up your characters. It’s typical stuff like improvements to your stats so you do things like take more damage, increase your stamina meter, or collect more blood to feed your creepy grandparent. There’s also a pretty extensive skill tree and loadout system that allow you to customize your characters to alter how their signature abilities work and give some helpful perks, like the ability to detect lockpicks in your vicinity in the opening moments of a match as a Victim. So even when most of the novelty of the single game mode wears thin, at least there’s something to keep people around.
You’ll also unlock cosmetic outfits for each character that add some nice flair and probably make you easier to spot while hiding, but hey, you can’t put a price on swagger. I also have to give credit for how much love for the original 1974 movie has been packed into this thing, from faithfully recreated characters to tons of behind-the-scenes photos that can be unlocked and browsed while in the main menu. They even got Kane Hodder, the stuntman who portrayed Leatherface in one of the movies, to do motion capture for the iconic character in this! Those are all such nice, authentic touches for longtime fans looking to nerd out.
With Baldur’s Gate 3’s second weekend under its belt players are coming up with even more outside-the-box strategies for doing huge damage in combat. This latest effort, dubbed “Owlbear from the top rope”, causes the most damage we’ve seen in the game so far. Perhaps more damage than even developer Larian intended.
Twitch Streamer Ellohime indulged in a spot of crate-stacking (as Matt Mercer did recently to viral effect when getting to the top of a Baldur’s Gate 3 castle) to get high above his unsuspecting enemies below. From there, Ellohime’s druid shapeshifts into an Owlbear (a druid wildshape form you unlock at level six), already one of the biggest playable bodies in the game, and casts Enlarge to make the Owlbear even bigger.
Here’s the smart bit: the Owlbear’s Crushing Flight attack scales with mass, so the bigger you are, the harder you fall. And Crushing Flight negates fall damage, which leaves you free to pretty much nuke an enemy from orbit. The clip (below) shows a whopping 5005kg Owlbear torpedo over 30 meters to deliver an incredible 821 points of bludgeoning damage.
OWLBEAR FROM THE TOP ROPE 800 DMG!
Some asked so….
Crushing Flight = no fall dmg Stack boxes, climb, shapeshift, enlarge (jump spell if needed)
5005kg from 31.6m = 821 bludg dmg
Just knowing weight/height fall dmg exists has creative implications, have fun with that😈 pic.twitter.com/ZGFaZKVQ8j
The realisation Crushing Flight scales with mass spread within the Baldur’s Gate 3 community since the game came out last week, and players are messing about with the creative implications for combat.
Redditor Fishbleb appears to be the first player to surface the technique with a clip showing an incredible 1,170 points of damage. I’m certainly considering using the ‘Owlbear from the top rope’ tactic for a particular boss I’m struggling to defeat.
While Larian may want to step in to address the damage potential of Crushing Flight, its use here is very Baldur’s Gate 3, which is a sprawling, Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game so freeform even its developers aren’t all sure what’s possible.
You can even play fetch with the dog, something Larian director of publishing, Michael Douse tweeted recently to say he was 99% sure most people at Larian didn’t know about.
Owlbear from the top rope is also very Dungeons & Dragons. Like with Matt Mercer’s crate-stacking trick, the combo is in keeping with the often unpredictable nature of the tabletop game.
One of Baldur’s Gate 3’s greatest strengths is its capacity to make a genuine attempt to answer whatever question the player poses. Can you do this thing you’ve thought of? Baldur’s Gate 3’s various systems combine to create a game that at the very least encourages the player to give pretty much anything a shot, just to see what happens.
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.
Some have suggested the relentless pace of Pokémon game releases has had an adverse effect on quality (not to mention the health of the developers at Game Freak), with several launches in the Nintendo Switch era alone.
2018’s Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go Eevee!, 2019’s Pokémon Sword and Shield, and 2022’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will be joined by unannounced games in the works plus several DLC expansions.
“There’s more and more conversations, as the development environments change, about how we can continue to do this, while making sure that we’re ensuring really quality products are also being introduced.”
Speaking to The Pokémon Company COO Takato Utsunomiya at the Pokémon World Championships, ComicBook.com asked if there was a release schedule The Pokémon Company was “beholden” to keep.
“I think in general, if you look at the past, the path we’ve taken up until now has been this constant release, always regularly releasing products on a fairly fixed kind of a cadence, you might say,” Utsunomiya said. “Always having these products able to be introduced and new experiences for our customers, and that’s how we’ve operated up until now.
“I think we’re still operating in that way, but there’s more and more conversations, as the development environments change, about how we can continue to do this, while making sure that we’re ensuring really quality products are also being introduced.”
While Utsunomiya’s comments do not commit to a more relaxed release schedule, they do hint at an acknowledgement that the current pace may need reconsidered to prevent further launches like Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s.
The poor performance was also a major factor in our 6/10 review, as IGN said: “The open-world gameplay of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is a brilliant direction for the future of the franchise, but this promising shift is sabotaged by the numerous ways in which Scarlet and Violet feel deeply unfinished.”
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.
Post Malone bought a unique Lord of the Rings Magic: The Gathering card for $2 million earlier in August, leaving many wondering how a piece of shiny cardboard could ever be worth so much.
“My estimation on price was very low ball compared to where it ended up,” Magic: The Gathering YouTuber PleasantKenobi told IGN. “The most expensive card I knew about was Post Malone buying [a unique] artist proof Black Lotus for $800,000. I didn’t imagine it would get anywhere near that, and suggested conservatively $50 to $100.
“Once offers started to come in from collectors with money, like Cassius Marsh I started to think it was the real deal.”
Marsh, the owner and CEO of trading card buying and selling company Cash Cards Unlimited, was among the first to put significant money behind the card, placing a bounty of $500,000 on it. This was soon doubled by rival Dave and Adam’s Card World, however, which raised the stakes to $1 million.
Its high price tag comes as a result of the low number available, which similarly affects The One Ring card.
“The value from The One Ring comes from the uniqueness of the item,” said PleasantKenobi. “Not only is it a ‘one of one’ serialised Magic card, it’s the first time Magic has ever done this. Tying it into a collectible product like Lord of the Rings was genius because it brings a load of collectors from outside of the game to the party.
“Beyond that, we have to respect the current climate. We are in the post-lockdown boom era of trading cards, with Pokémon collectability still looming large in popular consciousness. This, and the rise of new social collecting, trading, and selling communities and platforms means that ‘expensive collectibles’ have a lot of visibility right now.”
🚨$1 MILLION BOUNTY 🚨
We are officially announcing our $1 million bounty on the 1/1 The One Ring Card 💰💰
This increased public awareness of the potential value of trading cards all added to the value of The One Ring, PleasantKenobi explained. “Auction houses that usually dealt in high-end goods but never with trading cards before wanted in,” he said. “It’s a wild time to be a card collector considering the amount of mainstream buzz in the air when it comes to expensive cardboard.”
Post Malone explained his purchase on the Call Her Daddy podcast, though maintained he had no regrets. “I like Lord of the Rings and Magic: The Gathering”, Post Malone said when asked why he spent $2 million on “a f**king card”.
A lot could have gone wrong on the way to The One Ring being sold too, which only added to its value. Unlike, for example, the Pikachu Illustrator card, which was handed safely and securely to competition winners, The One Ring was essentially shuffled into a random pack of Magic: The Gathering cards and shipped across the world, to any potential location.
It may never have been opened at all, sitting sealed in a warehouse somewhere if the Lord of the Rings set didn’t prove popular for one local seller. Perhaps even worse, it could have been opened by a random child who likes The Lord of the Rings but has no concept of what Magic is. The One Ring could have been opened with Cheeto-laden fingers, put unprotected into a backpack, and thrown around the playground.
Being found by someone who was aware of the value was therefore somewhat of a miracle in itself, but even then the $2 million wasn’t guaranteed. “There was always a chance that companies didn’t go through with their offers,” said PleasantKenobi, noting that some stores also offered the $2 million but ultimately didn’t have the cash to pay for it.
The One Ring was found by someone who understood its value though, in the form of Toronto retail worker Brook Trafton. As reported by the BBC, Trafton opened the card and immediately called a game store to ask how to get it appraised officially, only to be hung up on because the staff thought it was a prank.
Trafton called a bank to store the card and retained a lawyer the next day. “I find it was even crazier than the lottery,” he said. “I wanted to tell everyone, but I couldn’t. I had to keep it a secret. I didn’t even tell my dad.”
Post Malone eventually got in touch and asked to meet Trafton, and though it was initially meant to be just a meet and greet, the rapper took one look at the card and asked to buy it. “As soon as he saw [the card] he said yes. I said ‘pardon, like, what do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘yes, I will take this card.'”
Whether or not The One Ring is ever be sold again remains to be seen, but its value will only go up over time.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Ah, Warzone. It’s all fun and games until you’re absolutely tanking and there’s nothing you can do about it. Have you ever felt like you were being put up against players way better than you? Have you ever had that niggling doubt that the skill-based matchmaking system was out to get you?
That might be one of those gaming conspiracies, but why not try and find out the truth? SBMM is notoriously hard to get around, but we’ve found a very easy way for you to potentially skirt this aspect of online gaming for good. No Smurf accounts, no intentionally throwing off your K/D, just a few simple steps and then away you go.
What is Skill-Based Matchmaking?
If you’re new to online gaming, you might be a touch confused about what the hell SBMM is in the first place. Put simply, it’s a system by which players are pitted against players of similar skill levels in matches. The goal of SBMM is to create a balanced and competitive gameplay experience by ensuring that players are competing against opponents of roughly equal skill.
You can see this feature in almost all games that have an online element in which players compete with each other. The exact details and metrics of Warzone’s SBMM algorithm are not publicly disclosed by Infinity Ward, but there are some general things that determine SBMM in Warzone based on available information and player observations:
Skill Metrics: Warzone likely considers a combination of player performance metrics, such as kill/death ratio (KD), win/loss ratio, score per minute (SPM), accuracy, and more. These metrics help assess a player’s skill level and performance in the game.
Recent Performance: Recent performance is often given more weight than older matches. This ensures that the matchmaking system reflects a player’s current skill level and adapts to their evolving abilities.
Latency and Ping: Players who are geographically closer to each other and the game’s servers tend to have lower latency and better ping times.
Time Zones: Matching players from similar time zones can help ensure that players are online and available to play during similar hours.
Team Balance: SBMM aims to create balanced teams by ensuring that the average skill level of players on both sides is relatively similar. This can help prevent one-sided matches and contributes to a more competitive experience.
Can You Get Around SBMM?
There has been a raging debate for a while now about various different ways to try and get around SBMM. Some techniques tried in the past. The fact is, none of the more inventive methods are particularly effective.
People have been known to use things called Smurf accounts, for example. This is where you run through a cycle of continually creating new accounts to lower your percieved skill level and gain an advantage when the SBMM algorithm does it’s thing. This used to be effective, but since developers have cottoned on to it, it doesn’t work so well anymore.
Some players have even gone as far as completely tanking it in-game to try and skew their stats and throw off the SBMM algorithm. This on has had mixed success, but honestly, who wants to spend a good percentage of their gaming time intentionally playing badly?
So, is there a way to bypass SBMM that actually works? No method is 100% effective, but we’ve got a better, and much easier, solution than any of the others you may have heard of.
Using a VPN to Bypass SBMM
There is one very simple way to try and get round SBMM on Warzone, and that’s using a VPN.
If you’re not familiar with what VPNs are, they are essentially programs that allows you to create a secure and encrypted connection to the internet. It routes your internet traffic through a server located in a different geographic location, masking your actual IP address and providing you with a new one from that server’s location.
Appearing as if you are in a different region will essentially alter some of the metrics used to assess SBMM, potentially leading to more favorable matchups when you’re playing.
If you’re playing on a PC, then it is a super straightforward process. Here’s how to do it.
1. Select a VPN Service
Choose a VPN service provider, like ExpressVPN, that suits your needs and supports gaming. Look for a VPN that offers good speed, server locations, and compatibility with gaming.
2. Sign Up and Install VPN Software
Sign up for the chosen VPN service and download their software for Windows.
Install the VPN software on your PC by following the provided instructions
3. Launch VPN and Connect
Launch the VPN software on your PC.
Log in to your VPN account.
Choose a server location. If your goal is to affect matchmaking, you might consider connecting to a server in a different region.
4. Launch the Game
Launch Call of Duty: Warzone and enjoy!
How to Use a VPN on Console
Chances are that if you’re playing Warzone, you’re most likely doing it on a console. While using a VPN to avoid SBMM on PC is a doddle, it is a bit more convoluted when playing on your console.
It is still entirely possible, there are just some extra steps that you need to take. This is probably going to be the most high-effort part of the whole process. Just have some patience, it will pay off.
The process is different depending on the console you’re using, so we’ll give you a step-by-step for each platorm that Warzone is on.
Using a VPN on Xbox
1. Select a VPN Service
Choose a VPN service provider that suits your needs and supports router installation.
2. Router Setup:
Log in to your router’s web interface using a computer.
Follow the instructions provided by your VPN provider to set up the VPN on your router. This usually involves entering the VPN server details and configuring the connection settings.
Save the settings and restart your router.
3. Xbox Network Settings:
On your Xbox console, go to “Settings” > “Network” > “Network settings.”
Choose your connected network and select “Advanced settings.”
Set DNS settings to “Automatic” to ensure the VPN’s DNS is used.
4. Connect and Test:
Test your Xbox’s internet connection to ensure it’s using the VPN. You can do this by checking your IP address on the Xbox browser or using an online IP checker.
5. Get Gaming
If you’ve cheked your console and that’s all worked, then you can boot up Warzone and get stuck in.
Using a VPN on PlayStation
Getting your VPN to work on your Playstation is going to be a little bit trickier. It is still perfectly doable though.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Select a VPN Service
Choose a VPN service provider that supports router installation or device sharing.
2. Router Setup
Log in to your router’s web interface using a computer.
Follow the instructions provided by your VPN provider to set up the VPN on your router. This usually involves entering the VPN server details and configuring the connection settings.
Save the settings and restart your router.
3. Computer Setup (Alternative for PlayStation)
If your router doesn’t support VPN installation, you can set up the VPN on your computer and share the connection.
Connect your PlayStation to your computer using an Ethernet cable or by creating a wireless hotspot.
Configure the VPN on your computer and enable internet sharing to share the VPN connection with your PlayStation.
4. PlayStation Network Settings
On your PlayStation console, go to “Settings” > “Network” > “Set Up Internet Connection.”
Choose “Use a LAN Cable” or “Use Wi-Fi” depending on your setup.
Choose “Custom” for the connection method.
Select “Automatic” for IP Address Settings and DHCP Host Name.
Set DNS Settings to “Manual” and enter the DNS server addresses provided by your VPN provider.
5. Connect and Test:
Test your PlayStation’s internet connection to ensure it’s using the VPN. You can do this by checking your IP address on the PlayStation browser or using an online IP checker.
6. Get Gaming
As long as your VPN is set up and good to go, then you can boot up Warzone and get playing.
Please bear in mind that these steps are generalized here. Each router or VPN service provider will have slightly different steps for how to do this exacntly. That said, 99% of the time you can follow the steps above and you’ll have aboslutely no problems at all.
What’s the Best VPN to Do This With?
Premium VPNs aren’t cheap, but they could be worth the investment if you haven’t already secured yourself one this year. You might take one look at their price tag for a year’s subscription and think it’s too much, but consider how much you get from them.
You can use them for so much more than just getting around SBMM. You can also use them to circumvent geo-restrictions. That’s a lot of fancy schmancy tech words, but it essentially means you can unlock media catalogs from anywhere in the world. Want to watch Japanese Netflix? No problem. Want to catch the conclusion of the Women’s World Cup for free? Easyily done.
One of the very best VPN deals going right now is for ExpressVPN. They’ve currently got a great deal on. Sign up today and you’ll get yourself 49% off their 1-year deal. You’ll also be getting an additional 3-months free. So at the equivalent of $6.67 per month, you’re getting 15-months of coverage under one of the best VPNs available at the moment.
Turn 10 has confirmed that the upcoming Forza Motorsport won’t have certain features at launch, including split-screen functionality.
In the most recent Forza Monthly broadcast, creative director Chris Esaki explained that the game won’t support split-screen, spectator mode, or being able to race against AI in certain multiplayer modes.
“Having players come into a featured multiplayer event and taking player slots, and then spectating? It’s not really the racing we had intended,” Esaki explained. “Similarly, racing with AI in featured multiplayer with all its potential impacts on your safety rating also didn’t make a whole lot of sense to have and is not going to be available for us at launch.”
(FYI) Unfortunately, #ForzaMotorsport has three legacy features that won’t be ready for launch
Esaki touched upon the reasoning for excluding split-screen, saying that pushing the graphics required a complete overhaul of the game’s rendering engine. As a result, split-screen was difficult to add in and won’t be availale at launch.
The game is set to launch on October 10 for PC and Xbox Series X|S and will also be included on Xbox Game Pass the day it releases.
This move is a similar one to 343 Industries’ decision to not release campaign co-op or Forge at the launch of Halo Infinite. The being said, we should all support these developers and understand we will get these features when they are ready and in the best condition, and that’s the way it should be!
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 a has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s second expansion, The Indigo Disk, received a new trailer that revealed it will be bringing back all previous starter Pokemon alongside a new Tera Type that looks to use all others as one super one.
Given the ever-growing nostalgic power of Pokemon, it does appear the second part of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC will be worth a look for those who have a fondness for the many generations of adorable and powerful grass, fire, and water-type starters. The trailer also notes they will show up “in spades,” so it shouldn’t be too tough to catch your favorites or even all of them.
In the trailer, we are treated to a new look at Torchic, Cyndaquil, Piplup, Oshawatt, Snivy, Rowlet, Froakie, Litten, Turtwig, Tepig, Chikorita, Fennekin, Charmander, Squirtle, Treecko, Popplio, Grookey, Chimchar, Scorbunny, Mudkip, Totodile, Sobble, Chespin, and Bulbasaur.
It isn’t made clear if we will be able to catch Scarlet and Violet’s Sprigatito, Fuecoco, or Quaxly as they aren’t in this section, and it also appears that Pikachu and Eevee aren’t included even though they have starred in games like Pokemon Yellow and Pokemon Let’s Go!.
We then get a glimpse of some new moves like Psychic Noise (deals damage and prevents target from healing) and Upper Hand (strikes before a target’s priority move).
We also get another look at Raging Bolt, the Electric/Dragon Paradox version of Raikou, who is using a move that strikes before a target’s attack and is called Thunderclap. Iron Crown, The Steel/Psychic Paradox version of Cobalion, also shows up and uses a move called Tachyon Cutter that is guaranteed to hit twice in a row.
Lastly, a new Tera Type is revealed that looks to combine all other types. We don’t learn too much about it, but it definitely looks to be something super powerful and special.
Square Enix and Disney announced Kingdom Hearts 4 at the Kingdom Hearts 20th Anniversary event last year, giving us a fresh new look at Sora and what he’s been up to after he left his friends for a solo adventure at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3. To no one’s surprise, there haven’t been any updates for the new sequel ever since it was announced to be in development. They also announced the mobile game Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link, but there haven’t been any updates for that one either.
While we wait for more updates and a potential release date for Kingdom Hearts 4, we’re giving you a list of Kingdom Hearts games to play in chronological order. As convoluted as the series’ plot may be to a lot of people, it should give you a clear perspective on the history of the Kingdom Hearts world, how Sora was set up to be the Keyblade’s chosen one, and how Master Xehanort keeps trying to plunge the world into darkness, hence the name of the series’ first arc: the Dark Seeker Saga.
The Kingdom Hearts series consists of a total of 13 games across multiple platforms including the PSP and Game Boy Advance. There will also be a new game in the mainline series, which was officially announced all the way back in April 2022.
How to Play Kingdom Hearts Games in Chronological Order
1. Kingdom Hearts χ / Unchained χ / Union χ
Apologies for grouping all the titles in one section, but Kingdom Hearts χ [chi], initially a Japan-exclusive title for PC, has been subsequently rebranded into Unchained χ and Union χ [Cross] for mobile users worldwide in the eight years it was running online. The χ refers to the χ-blade, a coveted weapon designed by two Keyblades in an “X” shape capable of unlocking Kingdom Hearts.
Kingdom Hearts Union χ is set hundreds of years before the series’ events, in an era leading up to the Keyblade War. You control a newly minted Keyblade wielder in the 2D world of Daybreak Town who joins one of five factions and works to ensure that faction’s supremacy over the other four as they fight over the finite light available to the world. Union χ occurs shortly after Unchained χ, but in an alternate data world where the player relives the past to forget the Keyblade War. The game shut down in May 2021, but you can still watch cutscenes of it online. If gacha games are not your style, you can watch HD cutscenes of the events in the cinematic Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover, which is included in Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue.
2. Kingdom Hearts Dark Road
As the title suggests, Kingdom Hearts Dark Road is the villain origin story of Master Xehanort set 70 years before the events of Birth by Sleep. As a young man, Xehanort is taken from Destiny Islands to Scala ad Caelum to train alongside Master Eraqus to become a Keyblade wielder and is tasked by Master Odin to search for the Lost Masters, triggering a chain of events that leads to him becoming the Seeker of Darkness.
Dark Road employed the same 2D gacha-style graphics present in Kingdom Hearts χ and its subsequent rebranded titles, which aren’t very impressive, but the game still contained details integral to the entire series. You may not be able to play the game, but you can still watch cutscenes online to get the full scope.
3. Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep
Set 10 years before the events of Kingdom Hearts, Birth by Sleep is told from the vantage points of Ventus, Terra, and Aqua — all Keyblade Apprentices of Master Eraqus living in the Land of Departure. Shortly after Aqua and Terra finish their Mark of Mastery exam, with the former passing and obtaining the title of Keyblade Master and the latter failing for not keeping his darkness in check, the trio go on separate journeys to find Master Xehanort, who disappeared without a trace, and defeat the Unversed, creatures created by Xehanort’s apprentice Vanitas to attack other worlds.
Birth by Sleep dives into the origin of Sora and Master Xehanort, as Ventus had part of his heart patched up by a piece of Sora’s heart. Xehanort, meanwhile, created Vanitas from the darkness he purged from Ventus’ heart, which Xehanort deemed too frail for him to use as a vessel to forge the χ-blade, forcing him to go after Terra instead. It also explores how Sora and Riku could wield the Keyblade in the first place, as Terra bestowed the power of the Keyblade to Riku, while Aqua sensed strong ties with Sora and Riku to Ventus and Terra, respectively.
4. Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep — A Fragmentary Passage
Although it’s safe to place A Fragmentary Passage (included in Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue) before the first Kingdom Hearts game, it acts as an epilogue to Birth by Sleep and a prologue to Kingdom Hearts 3. However, the story for this game begins shortly after the events of Dream Drop Distance because King Mickey tells the story of how he came across Aqua in the Realm of Darkness to Riku, Kairi, and Master Yen Sid.
After sacrificing herself to save Terra from the Realm of Darkness at the end of Birth by Sleep, Aqua has been wandering in darkness for 10 years, trying to find a way back to the Realm of Light. She visits the dark versions of Castle of Dreams, Dwarf Woodlands, and Enchanted Dominion to battle hordes of Heartless that form into Demon Towers, fight apparitions of Ventus and Terra, and save Terra’s heart. Meanwhile, Mickey went to the Realm of Darkness to save Riku. When he meets Aqua after using her lost Wayfinder to find her, he tells her 10 years have passed since they last met and proceed to Destiny Islands after fighting another Demon Tower. There, the door to Kingdom Hearts is spotted, and Mickey goes over there to help Sora and Riku seal it shut, leaving Aqua to dwell in the Realm of Darkness once more.
5. Kingdom Hearts
In the very first entry of the series, Sora sets out on a journey with Donald and Goofy to reunite with Riku and Kairi after the Heartless destroy Destiny Islands and plunge the world into darkness. Along the way, he travels to different worlds aboard the Gummi Ship, meet various Disney and Final Fantasy characters, and help defend their world from the Heartless by sealing Keyholes to prevent the hearts of those worlds from being consumed by darkness. Meanwhile, Maleficent leads a group of her fellow Disney villains to seek out the seven Princesses of Heart to unlock the last keyhole leading to Kingdom Hearts, and employs Riku.
By the time Sora reaches Hollow Bastion, Kairi’s body is found with her heart missing as it was transferred to Sora’s body during the apocalypse at Destiny Islands, Riku becomes possessed by Ansem, who was manipulating Maleficent to open Kingdom Hearts, and Kairi is revealed to be the Princess of Heart, hence the heart transfer from her to Sora, who then frees Kairi’s heart after impaling himself with Ansem’s Keyblade, turning into a Heartless in the process. Kairi manages to turn Sora back to human form by recognizing his Heartless and embracing him, and from there Sora defeats Ansem and seals the door to Kingdom Hearts with help from Riku and Mickey from the other side.
While searching for Riku and Mickey after sealing the door to Kingdom Hearts, Sora, Donald and Goofy visit Castle Oblivion, causing them to lose their memories upon entry. They’re told by Marluxia, the lord of the castle who is revealed to be a member of Organization XIII, that the deeper they go into the castle, the more memories they’ll lose, but will uncover new ones in the process. The group is given a deck of cards called “world cards” based on Sora’s memories, and they meet memory versions of the characters they met in the previous game and fight a few members of the Organization aside from Marluxia — Axel, Larxene, and Vexen — as they progress through each floor of the castle. Meanwhile, Riku is going through the basement levels of the castle, wrestling with the darkness inside him and Ansem’s attempts to control him while fighting two other members of Organization XIII: Lexaeus and Zexion.
Aside from the cards being decried as an ineffective battle system, Chain of Memories introduced new characters that become essential players in the Kingdom Hearts series, such as Naminé, whom Sora gradually remembered as being an old friend of hers only to find out later she was manipulating Sora’s memories of Kairi by replacing them with fake ones of herself under Marluxia’s orders, and DiZ. After Sora fights Marluxia for his life and Naminé’s freedom, Naminé places him and his companions to sleep in pod-like machines to help them regain the memories they lost.
358/2 Days is set during the events of Chain of Memories, as it explores the birth of Roxas as Sora’s Nobody when Sora turned into a Heartless during Kingdom Hearts, his daily life as the 13th member of Organization XIII, and his friendship with Axel and Xion, who mysteriously arrived as the 14th member.
As time progresses and their bond deepens, it is revealed that Xion is an artificial replica created after Sora’s memories of Kairi as a fail-safe if Sora and Roxas are proven to be useless for the Organization to achieve their goal of summoning Kingdom Hearts and becoming whole, all the while delaying Sora’s memory restoration process by absorbing them. This discovery causes Roxas to defect from Organization XIII and find himself, and later find Xion, who fights to merge with him to become whole, stopping Sora from waking up. Ultimately, Roxas defeats Xion, who disintegrates into light with all the memories she absorbed returning to Sora.
Fun fact, but not precisely fun: 358/2 was dedicated to the memory of Wayne Allwine, the voice actor for Mickey Mouse, who died of complications from diabetes 12 days before the game’s release in Japan in May 2009.
The game begins in Twilight Town, where Roxas enjoys his summer vacation with Hayner, Pence, and Olette, having no memories of his time with Organization XIII nor Axel, who remembers him during their encounters, while waking up with dreams of Sora, who had been asleep for a year at that point. Once Sora wakes up along with Donald and Goofy after Roxas merges with him, they set out to once again protect the worlds from the Heartless, while visiting new ones, to stop Organization XIII from creating another Kingdom Hearts that would give the Nobodies their hearts back.
As Sora and the gang explore the concept of the heart even further, they learn that the Ansem they fought was Xehanort’s Heartless; Xemnas, the leader of Organization XIII, is Xehanort’s Nobody; and that Xehanort was an apprentice of the real Ansem, named Ansem the Wise, the sage-king of Radiant Garden (renamed Hollow Bastion and then Radiant Garden again) who studied the heart alongside Braig, Dilan, Even, Aeleus, Ienzo (human versions of Xigbar, Xaldin, Vexen, Lexaeus, and Zexion, respectively) to protect his people from darkness before he was exiled to the Realm of Darkness for corrupting them with the same darkness and taking on the new identity DiZ (Darkness in Zero). Even more shocking, they learn Roxas and Naminé are the Nobodies and Sora and Kairi, respectively.
Initially released as an episodic mobile game called “Coded” in Japan, Re:coded centers on King Mickey and a digital version of Sora as they work to repair Jiminy Cricket’s journal, which chronicles the real Sora’s adventures fighting the Heartless and Organization XIII, after it got corrupted as it was being digitized to analyze a secret message Jiminy did not write: “Their hurting will be mended when you return to end it” (originally written as “We must return to free them from their torment” in Coded). In the dataspace, Data Sora and Mickey fight the bugs, who take the form of red-and-black blocks and Heartless, and work to decipher the message’s meaning.
Square Enix originally released eight parts of Coded and a preview to Japanese mobile users from June 2009 to January 2010, making it run almost like a full season of a television series. To make the game accessible to fans worldwide, the entire game was repackaged into Re:coded for the Nintendo DS.
To prepare for Master Xehanort’s return, Master Yen Sid proctors the Mark of Mastery exam to Sora and Riku in the most unconventional way possible: sending them back in time to unlock the keyholes of seven worlds that were left in a sleeping state after being destroyed by the Heartless, including the worlds of Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pinocchio, Tron: Legacy, and Fantasia, to name a few. Though they go through a different chain of events in the same worlds, they work to defeat the “Nightmare” Dream Eaters with the help of their “Spirit” Dream Eaters and the power of Flowmotion.
Throughout the Mark of Mastery exam, they run into the younger version of Xehanort, who reveals that he, Ansem and Xehanort, who were supposed to have been defeated, lured Sora into a trap at The World That Never Was and put him into a deep sleep (where he was protected by Ventus’ armor), and Riku has been through Sora’s dreams as a Dream Eater the whole time. To save Sora from the darkness, Riku fights the young Xehanort, and the revived, older Master Xehanort arrives with the intent to turn Sora into his 13th vessel for the new Organization XIII, comprised of mostly his past selves from across time, and create the χ-blade by pitting the 13 seekers of darkness and the seven guardians of light against each other. Thankfully, Xehanort’s plans are foiled by King Mickey, Lea (the human version of Axel), and Riku, who ultimately passes the Mark of Mastery exam, with Sora failing for losing the power of waking, which is the ability to restore hearts.
In the final chapter of the Dark Seeker Saga, Sora sets out to reclaim the power of waking and gather the seven guardians of light to prepare for the final showdown with Organization XIII and Master Xehanort, who is hellbent on not only creating the χ-blade, but also keeping darkness and light in proper balance. Meanwhile, Kairi trains to become a Keyblade wielder with Lea, and Riku goes with King Mickey to search for the missing Keyblade wielders.
Kingdom Hearts 3 took 13 years to make, with a few trailers released between 2013 and 2018 before finally being released in 2019. To this day, it remains the best-selling Kingdom Hearts game in the series.
Melody of Memory is a theatrhythm where Sora and the other Keyblade wielders defeat the Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed, and Dream Eaters to the beat of every song in the series. It’s set against the backdrop of Kairi being in the lab at Radiant Garden, as she gives a summary of the series’ events as the narrator.
Kingdom Hearts Games in Release Order
Kingdom Hearts – September 17, 2002 (PS2)
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories – December 7, 2004 (Game Boy Advance)
Kingdom Hearts 2 – March 28, 2006 (PS2)
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days – September 29, 2009 (Nintendo DS)
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep – September 7, 2010 (PSP)
Kingdom Hearts: Re:coded – January 11, 2011 (Nintendo DS)
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance – July 31, 2012 (Nintendo 3DS)
Kingdom Hearts Union χ [Cross] – April 7, 2016 (Android, iOS)
Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix – March 28, 2017 (PS4)
Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue – January 24, 2017 (PS4)
Kingdom Hearts 3 – January 29, 2019 (PS4, XBO, PC)
Kingdom Hearts Dark Road – June 22, 2020 (Android, iOS)
Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory – November 13, 2020 (PS4, XBO, Nintendo Switch, PC)
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl may have been given a December 1, 2023, according to distributor Plaion’s website.
First spotted by Wccftech, the official German Plaion store is the one that has a listing for STALKER 2: Chornobyl on PC with a December 1 release date, and it describes the game as a unique mix of first-person shooter, horror, and immersive sim. It also mentions it has survival mechanics for hunger, sleep, and bleeding, as well as a dynamic day and night cycle with realistic weather effects.
While this date could obviously be a placeholder, December 1 does land on a Friday (when a lot of games are released!) and other games on the store without firm dates are given a December 31 date. This particular store also has a history of leaking dates this way as Darksiders 2’s Switch version had a similar thing happen.
Developer and publisher GSC World has not yet confirmed a release date, but it did confirm STALKER 2 will be playable at the Gamescom 2023, so it’s possible the game is close to being ready.
The game was seemingly delayed to the first half of 2023 during the Xbox and Bethesda’s 2022 showcase, and GSC then confirmed that the game wouldn’t be shown in the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase. However, the studio said it would share more information in the upcoming months.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is set to launch for PC and Xbox Series X|S.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
