Category: IGN

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 developer Saber Interactive has announced Update 4.1, set to hit the game on October 24, and detailed its patch notes.

Update 4.1 follows hot on the heels of last week’s controversial Update 4.0, widely criticized by Space Marine 2’s community for making the game significantly harder, even on easier difficulties. The backlash to Update 4.0 spread to Space Marine 2’s Steam page, where disgruntled players review-bombed the game.

The Update 4.1 patch notes were published alongside a message to fans from game director Dmitriy Grigorenko, who, having digested the criticism of the last week, admitted: “The key takeaway for me, personally, is that I forgot that once the game comes out, it’s no longer a dev’s game. It’s yours first and foremost.”

To that end, Saber will establish Public Test Servers (PTS) that will let players try out major balancing updates and make their voices heard before they are pushed onto public branches. Expect PTS to go live early 2025.

As for the changes made with Update 4.1 there’s plenty to dig through (patch notes below), but overall they should make Space Marine 2’s PvE Operations mode feel easier via a series of buffs to weapons and the Space Marines, nerfs to the enemies, and in some cases the removal of controversial mechanics entirely.

Players of Space Marine 2’s new Lethal difficulty will be delighted to hear the universally hated ‘Tight Formation’ system, exclusive to Operations mode’s hardest difficulty, is not long for this world. Grigorenko revealed that the system was designed as a first step towards the introduction of gameplay modifiers down the line, both negative and positive, “but your feedback showed that the proximity requirements felt too restrictive.”

“Classes like Assault and Vanguard felt especially penalized as playing them effectively requires a certain freedom of movement,” Grigorenko added. 4.1 ditches the Tight Formation system entirely, and Saber will continue to work on modifiers until they’re ready.

There’s a nerf to the Tyranid’s dreaded Zoanthropes, too, with a reduction in their shield’s effectiveness. Indeed, enemy spawns have been nerfed across the board. From 4.1, Extremis enemy spawn rates in Minimal, Average, and Substantial difficulties will revert back to their pre-Patch 4.0 levels and will be significantly reduced in Ruthless difficulty.

Finally, Bolters are finally getting a buff. Ever since Space Marine 2’s explosive launch last month Bolters have underperformed, much to the disappointment of Warhammer 40,000 fans who love the weapons from the Games Workshop tabletop and lore. From 4.1, damage across the Bolter family of weapons is increased.

And if you were wondering whether 4.0 had nerfed the Space Marine roll, Saber confirmed that it had, although this was a bug and not a design decision. 4.1 fixes a bug that caused roll distance to be shorter than before.

These are all welcome changes, and players have already reacted positively, but what caused Saber to go so hard with 4.0 in the first place? Grigorenko said that Patch 3.0 had caused an increase in win rates (Ruthless went from 60% to over 80%, for example), and it had received feedback that Space Marine 2 had become too easy even at its maximum difficulty.

In addressing this, 4.0 went too far in a number of areas, particularly spawn rates even on lower difficulties. “Your feedback made it clear that the game had become more intense and stressful on lower difficulties, and this was never our intention,” Grigorenko said. “As I’ve personally emphasized in interviews, Space Marine 2 is all about the power fantasy, and Patch 4.0 negatively impacted it for many of you.”

IGN has plenty more on Space Marine 2, including a deep-dive on the game’s burgeoning modding scene and accompanying complications. Last month, Saber Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits told IGN how the breakout success of Space Marine 2 had “changed everything” for the company. And eagle-eyed fans have spotted the Space Marine chapter now all-but confirmed to get a cosmetic pack after the Dark Angels, and even an unannounced new Thousand Sons enemy type.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Update 4.1 patch notes:

Gameplay and Balancing Tweaks – Operations mode

AI director and enemy spawns

DG: Here was our reasoning before Patch 4.0: When the game came out in September, the Ruthless difficulty win rate hovered around 60%. Weeks later, and with the changes introduced by Patch 3.0, we saw that the same win rate had jumped to over 80%, and we received a lot of feedback stating that the game had become too easy—even at its maximum difficulty (at the time).

With Patch 4.0, our aim was to tweak enemy spawns to increase the overall number of enemies rather than reverting to buffing their Health. Unfortunately, this had an impact on the easier difficulty levels as well.

For example, the win rate on the easiest difficulty dropped slightly after Patch 4.0, from 95% to 93%. This may not look like a lot, but numbers aren’t everything. Your feedback made it clear that the game had become more intense and stressful on lower difficulties, and this was never our intention. As I’ve personally emphasised in interviews, Space Marine 2 is all about the power fantasy, and Patch 4.0 negatively impacted it for many of you.

This is why we’re rolling back these changes. Extremis enemies’ spawn rates in Minimal, Average, and Substantial difficulties will revert back to their pre-Patch 4.0 levels and will be significantly reduced in Ruthless difficulty to hopefully strike a balance between how hard the game was at launch and how “easy” it became with Patch 3.0.

Minimal, Average, and Substantial Difficulties:

• Reduced spawn rate of Extremis enemies to match pre-Patch 4.0 levels

Ruthless Difficulty:

• Significantly reduced spawn rate of Extremis enemies

Weapons (only in Operations mode)

DG: We’ve been wanting to address the Bolter family for a while, as they’ve been underperforming across all difficulty levels. This has been a frequent piece of feedback from many of you, and the data confirmed improvements were needed across the board. The percent Damage increase is based on which classes have access to which kind of weapon and how the Bolters compete with the other options available.‎

• Auto Bolt Rifle -> Damage increased by 20%
• Bolt Rifle -> Damage increased by 10%
• Heavy Bolt Rifle -> Damage increased by 15%
• Stalker Bolt Rifle -> Damage increased by 10%
• Marksman Bolt Carbine -> Damage increased by 10%
• Instigator Bolt Carbine -> Damage increased by 10%
• Bolt Sniper Rifle -> Damage increased by 12.5%
• Bolt Carbine -> Damage increased by 15%
• Occulus Bolt Carbine -> Damage increased by 15%
• Heavy Bolter -> Damage increased by 5%

Difficulty

⚙️ Ruthless: Player’s Armour is increased by 10%

DG: We are partially rolling back the change from the previous patch on Ruthless difficulty following your feedback. With Patch 4.1, we’re hoping to find the right compromise between how easy Ruthless difficulty felt after Patch 3.0 and how it felt after last week’s Patch 4.0.

The reason why it was reduced last week was that we noticed a very substantial bump in win rates on Ruthless after Patch 3.0, as Minoris enemies would no longer remove the entire Armour bar with their attacks, ranged AI Damage was nerfed across the board, and the ability to regenerate Armour by parrying normal Minoris attacks was added.

Additional note: Despite the last patch notes listing a decrease in Armour in Substantial difficulty, this change was mistakenly left out of our last update, hence why you won’t see it being reverted as part of this week’s patch.

⚙️ Lethal: “Tight Formation” system is removed

DG: Before anything else, let us clarify our reasoning for the introduction of this mechanic. As we worked on adding a new difficulty tier, we needed to make sure this new challenge was meaningful and interesting. With “Tight Formation”, our objective was to add a new layer of challenge for our most skilled players by adding horizontal progression rather than just vertical progression (i.e., dealing more damage to ever stronger enemies). This game is about the power fantasy, and enemies that take dozens of melee hits break it. Thus the challenge needed to come from other sources.

This system was also designed as a first step towards the introduction of gameplay modifiers down the line, both negative and positive—something World War Z players will be familiar with—but your feedback showed that the proximity requirements felt too restrictive. Classes like Assault and Vanguard felt especially penalised as playing them effectively requires a certain freedom of movement.

As a result, we’re removing the system entirely and will continue to work on modifiers until they’re ready. We will continue to monitor your feedback after the deployment of Patch 4.1 to make sure Lethal difficulty feels as challenging and rewarding as it should.

⚙️ AI

DG: A recurrent piece of feedback we’ve seen is that the AI allies can feel useless at times. We already improved allies’ behaviour in Patch 3.0, and we hope this additional buff will help solo players complete their Operations.

• Bots deal 30% more damage to bosses.

DG: Fighting Zoanthropes is often reported as a source of frustration. Alongside the changes to the AI Director, we’re taking away some of their shields’ effectiveness to alleviate some of that frustration.

• Zoanthrope: Shield swap cooldown with another paired Zoanthrope is increased by 10%.

General Fixes & Tech

• Fixed a bug that caused roll distance to be shorter than before.

DG: This was probably the most impactful and annoying consequence of Patch 4.0. While i-frames were the same, the distance difference made it much less effective versus ranged attacks. With this bug fixed, you should feel a great improvement in your fights against ranged enemies and bosses.

• Fixed bug with unlocking Lethal difficulty rewards decals.
• Crash fixes and general stability improvements.

Our teams are constantly working on improvements to the game’s stability. This patch is no exception, so you should encounter fewer crashes.

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.

Bloober Team created its incoming Cronos: The New Dawn as a sci-fi survival horror to avoid stepping on the toes of its recently released Silent Hill 2 remake.

Cronos: The New Dawn director and designer Wojciech Piejko told IGN that, after releasing The Medium and beginning work on the project which eventually became Cronos, the team at Bloober chose to veer away from a more grounded setting in order to differentiate the game from Silent Hill 2.

“We of course knew that we were doing the Silent Hill game, so we didn’t want to overlap with, let’s say a more grounded story,” Piejko said. “We said, ‘okay, we will be doing this, so we need to go somewhere else to have a different world, to not repeat ourselves.’ So yeah, that’s how we came up with Cronos.”

Piejko said the studio was eager to return to sci-fi after releasing Observer in 2017 too. Cronos was revealed just a handful of days after the Silent Hill 2 remake was released and is a sci-fi survival horror set in an unforgiving post-apocalyptic future in 1980s Poland.

It’s coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC in 2025, though a more specific release date hasn’t been shared yet.

In our 8/10 review of Bloober’s 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.”

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

Fallout: London has passed the major milestone of one million players, cementing its place as one of the most successful video game mods of all time.

Fallout: London is a total conversion mod developed by Team FOLON for Bethesda’s Fallout 4. It ditches Fallout’s traditional United States setting for a post-apocalyptic London packed with famous British landmarks and references. It even secured the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3’s Neil Newbon for its voice cast, with former UK Speaker of the House John Bercow in the game, too.

IGN’s Fallout: London review returned a 7/10. We said: “Fallout London is a massive mod that makes good use of its untapped setting, with an impressive scope and some great stories – you’ll just have to be prepared for technical issues and occasionally obtuse design choices along the way.”

The mod was originally due to arrive on April 23, 2024 but actual Fallout developer Bethesda announced a surprise update for Fallout 4, which the mod developer feared would impact Fallout: London’s release.

Team FOLON lead project manager Dean Carter later lamented how Bethesda, which had made clear it was aware of Fallout: London, failed to inform Team FOLON of its plans. “That has, for lack of a better term, sort of screwed us over, somewhat,” Carter said at the time.

Fallout: London eventually launched in July in partnership with GOG, which made the announcement today, October 23 – aka Fallout Day (October 23 is the day the bombs first fell in fallout lore).

“Today, we couldn’t be happier to see the success that Fallout: London has become – reaching the entirety of one million owners on our platform, and achieving it on Fallout Day no less,” GOG said. “We’d like to take this moment to wholeheartedly congratulate Team FOLON on their groundbreaking record!”

In a statement posted on the Fallout: London Discord, the mod team added: “You’ve made this journey unforgettable. We’re blown away by your support, and we can’t wait to share what’s next.

“We’ll keep calm and carry on fixing those bugs, and we’ll see you at our next milestone.

“Stay safe, and remember. Mind the gap.”

The Fallout: London announcement comes ahead of an official Fallout Day broadcast from Bethesda, which promises to reveal more of what’s to come with Fallout 76.

It’s a busy time in the world of Fallout, of course, which was boosted by the smash hit Prime Video Fallout TV show. Bethesda continues to update Fallout 76, and plans for Fallout 5 at some point in the future, perhaps when it’s done with The Elder Scrolls 6. In June, Bethesda Softworks head Todd Howard said he wasn’t interested in rushing a new Fallout game out the door, just because Fallout is hot right now. Could Fallout eventually leave the United States for a setting on foreign soil? No chance, Howard has said.

While fans wait they have mod projects such as Fallout: London to get stuck into, and there’s always Fallout 76 and the existing Fallout games available to play.

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.

No Man’s Sky has launched its 16th expedition, The Cursed — an “unexpectedly creepy update” that hits the eternally popular space game just in time for Halloween.

Developer Hello Games said The Cursed is a “weird and unsettling” gameplay event in which players “fight to keep a grip on reality” while haunted by visions and voices from another dimension. It takes place in what’s described as a “sort of twilight universe” in which time can shift unexpectedly, day turning to night “at a vertigo inducing rate.”

The Cursed introduces the new Boundary Starship, No Man’s Sky’s first flying saucer. “It’s a gorgeous Giger-esque coil of tubes, pipeworks and engines,” Hello Games said. Here’s the official blurb:

Players must protect themselves against the weakening of the boundaries of reality. The exosuit’s usual hazard protection has been replaced with a specialized Anomaly Suppressor — maintaining this is the key to surviving while the universe begins to break down around you.

As players struggle to navigate these haunted worlds, they may come face to face with the ghostly beings that drift across the boundaries. Sometimes these spectral anomalies merely observe, and sometimes they can turn much more hostile… These encounters provide players with new challenging enemies and boss battles, at a scale not seen before in No Man’s Sky.

Travellers will not have access to hyperdrive technology, meaning no warping between star systems. Instead, interstellar travel requires careful planning and use of the ancient portal network.

Haunting voices leak through from another dimension, providing guidance, information, strange blueprints… and mystery. Players will have to decide who these voices belong to, where they are coming from, and if they are to be trusted…”

As you’d expect, The Cursed has a set of exclusive spooky rewards, including a Cthulhu-esque Horror Exosuit customisation, bioluminescent pets, and the aforementioned UFO-like Boundary Herald Starship.

The expedition begins today, October 23, and runs for approximately three weeks. Hello Games added that in the coming weeks it will launch an update for No Man’s Sky that takes advantage of the incoming PS5 Pro at launch. The $700 PS5 Pro comes out on November 7.

No Man’s Sky launched in 2016 initially for PC and PlayStation 4 before coming out on Xbox One in 2018, and PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S in 2020. A Nintendo Switch version followed in 2022. Over the years, Hello Games has issued a long list of major updates that have continued to boost player numbers.

Indeed, it’s a busy time for Hello Games, which alongside updates for No Man’s Sky is working on its next game, Light No Fire. It’s about adventure, building, survival and exploration together, set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth.

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.

The Day Before developer Fntastic has cancelled its failing Kickstarter for one game and announced another in the same breath.

Fntastic, who released the utterly disastrous The Day Before in December 2023 before pretending to shut down, resurfaced in September asking for money for a new game: the physics based multiplayer game Escape Factory.

It has now cancelled this project, however, after it reached just 15.73% of its Kickstarter goal with $3,146 raised of a $20,000 goal. “Our campaign on Kickstarter is unlikely to reach our goal,” Fntastic said in a statement published to X/Twitter announcing another game.

“After careful analysis and discussion with the team, we have decided that our Escape Factory project has not generated enough interest,” it said. The Kickstarter reached the 15.73% mark after four weeks. “With this in mind, we have decided to temporarily suspend work on Escape Factory and postpone it until a more appropriate time.”

Fntastic is now allegedly working on Items, an action horror prop hunt game. “Your wishes are very important to us,” it said. “This is exactly what many of you have been waiting for.”

No Kickstarter was announced but Fntastic said it may return to the crowdfunding route “or explore other options” once a demo for the game is made. Development will “require significant resources” so Fntastic has “decided to release mobile games” to support the process.

“All funds generated from these apps will go directly into development,” it said. “We believe this will help us create the game of your dreams.”

The term “dream” was often used in Fntastic’s marketing for The Day Before. “We hope that after the game’s success, we’ll give people faith that in this life, if you persevere toward a dream, it will come true, despite all the obstacles and doubts,” Fntastic told IGN in January 2023.

The Day Before launched to an almost impossibly rare 1/10 in IGN’s review and its shutdown was announced just four days after it launched in Early Access. It was one of the most controversial and catastrophic game launches in recent memory (now joined by PlayStation 5’s Concord) as what was touted as the “next generation of post-apocalyptic MMO open-world survival games” was released as a barebones and broken extraction shooter.

Once Steam’s most wishlisted game, suspicion mounted around The Day Before and Fntastic as time went on. It announced delay after delay amid revelations the studio used unpaid workers to develop its games, then a trademark dispute caused more issues.

Allegations the entire game was a scam then emerged from the disgruntled fanbase, made worse by the myriad copycat accusations against Fntastic. Shots in its trailers and screenshots lined up almost perfectly with other games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Cyberpunk 2077, and Grand Theft Auto 5.

For example, a trailer for The Day Before used the phrase: “Welcome to the next generation of post-apocalyptic MMO open-world survival games like never before. Immerse yourself in The Day Before.” Alongside not making grammatical English sense, Cyberpunk 2077’s Official Gameplay Trailer, published years earlier in 2020, used the very similar phrasing: “Welcome to the next-generation of open-world adventure. Immerse yourself in Cyberpunk 2077.”

Red Dead Redemption 2’s Official Gameplay Video, published even further back, used the phrases “…to make combat deep and engaging at all times. Each weapon has unique characteristics, with realistic reload and recoil.” A trailer for The Day Before used: “…to ensure that combat remains deep and engaging at all times. Each weapon boasts unique characteristics, as well as realistic reload and recoil mechanics.”

These are just two examples of myriad accusations with similar weight, but Fntastic denied any wrongdoing, leaned on the “fake news” defence, and implied the accusations were just an attempt at attention seeking. “We all live in a time of disinformation and lack of fact-checking,” it said following the second wave of accusations. “Anyone can say anything for views, and everyone will believe it,” it said. “Disinformation needs to be dealt with.”

Fntastic has put out plenty of disinformation and blatant lies of its own, however, like saying the aforementioned trademark dispute caused a delay when one was planned all along, and saying the studio was shutting down before announcing another game just months later. “S**t happens,” it told fans who were frustrated with the misleading information and failure of The Day Before.

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

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a decent bit longer than previous Yakuza spin-off Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has said.

In an interview with Famitsu translated by Game Rant, series producer and RGG Studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama said the incoming pirate adventure’s story is roughly 1.3 times to 1.5 times longer than Like a Dragon Gaiden.

This last game, which arrived just a few weeks ahead of the colossal mainline entry Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, could be completed in around 12 hours if players ploughed through the main story, though completing everything took upwards of 32 hours, according to How Long to Beat.

Based on this, Masayoshi estimates the story of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will take around 15 to 18 hours to complete. This appears to be reflected in the price, as Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will be available for $59.99 compared to Like a Dragon Gaiden’s $49.99 and the standard video game price point of $69.99.

Perhaps the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series’ wackiest spin-off yet (besides the zombie apocalypse one), Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii stars Goro Majima as he wakes up on a beach with amnesia and becomes a pirate, obviously.

It’s a spin-off to Infinite Wealth in particular, taking place roughly six months after its story concluded but not starring too many of the same characters. Only Majima’s sworn brother Taiga Saejima is confirmed to return so far, as the game largely focuses on a new cast of pirates including a Tiger played by main game protagonist Ichiban Kasuga’s voice actor.

Trailers and gameplay shown so far shows more of the flashy and fast-paced action the series was known for before switching to a turn based role-playing game with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Plenty of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag vibes are present too, as the game features ship combat, pirate hideouts, and plenty of brutal action.

It was revealed in September with a February 28 release date but, after Monster Hunter Wilds announced the same launch date just five days later, RGG Studio shifted its own up a week. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii therefore now launches on February 21, 2024.

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

I know what you’re wondering: does the VR Batman game make me feel like Batman? Well, the answer is no. Never once in Batman: Arkham Shadow’s long playtime did I feel like I had a billion dollars, and without that the simulation will never be complete. That said, it did do a remarkably good job of making me feel like I was playing an actual Arkham game by including all of the signature elements of Rocksteady’s legendary series: literally punchy combat, intricate metroidvania-style level design that unlocks more and more as you gain new abilities, and some genuinely tricky optional puzzles. It’s a little clumsy and buggy at times, but enough of it translates well to VR that it’s more like a real game than a gimmick – and the mystery story pays off well without retreading too many of the Arkham series’ plots. And sure, while grabbing at your sides and raising your arms to glide around on your cape may look absolutely absurd to anyone who happens to be in the room with you as you play, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t pretty fun.

This sequel to a prequel is wedged into the space between Arkham Origins (and Arkham Origins: Blackgate) and Arkham Asylum – a time period where a younger Batman is bluntly but capably voiced by Roger Craig Smith rather than the late, great Kevin Conroy. After a brief intro sequence in Gotham’s sewers and rubbing elbows with Jim Gordon and a young, one-faced Harvey Dent, we go undercover into Blackgate Prison, where Batman first encounters the likes of Doctors Harlene Quinzel and Jonathan Crane, Arnold Wesker (The Ventriloquist), Barbra Gordon, and a few more. Naturally the developers at Camouflaj can’t help retread things we’ve seen done to death: It wouldn’t really be an Arkham game without a Scarecrow hallucination sequence, for instance – and, of course, we’re treated to yet another reenactment of Crime Alley. However, the new mystery villain known as The Rat King and his populist cult, paired with the over-the-top sadist prison warden Bolton, give Arkham Shadow enough of its own material to work with that it doesn’t feel too derivative.

Another novel approach is to have Bruce Wayne visit his makeshift Batcave under Blackgate (like the one under Arkham Asylum) to swap between two costumes. He wears his full Batman regalia by night, but when the Batsuit’s back on the rack he slaps on a Mission: Impossible mask of a two-bit thug named Matches Malone, who’s been thrown in with Gotham’s worst for petty arson. There’s some gadget-less prison yard brawling to be done as Malone, but these sections are much more about ingratiating yourself to incarcerated mob boss Carmine Falcone and the other prisoners, and getting the lay of the maze-like prison yard as the days tick down to The Rat King’s grand plan. I won’t say I wasn’t eager to put the cape and cowl back on by the end of each session as Matches, but the change of pace and perspective isn’t unwelcome considering that there’s only so much variety one can find within the walls and absurdly high-tech doors of a prison, and the dark caverns below.

On that note, despite this running on a tiny machine that’s strapped to your face, Arkham Shadow is easily on par with Arkham Asylum as it looked on the Xbox 360 in terms of its character models and textures (and obviously running at a much higher resolution and frame rate), if not quite up to that level of art direction or the scale of its open areas. Of course, that’s an extremely high bar, to be fair. It’s certainly the best-looking Quest-exclusive game I’ve played, likely because it’s exclusive to the Quest 3/3S and doesn’t have to compromise for compatibility with older models. Glimpsing my bat-eared shadow as I walked down a hall or glided around with a light behind me was always a treat. Those heavy doors do often take a while to open, though, since they’re masking a lot of loading of the new area you’re traveling to. And be ready to recharge your Quest 3 four or five times to get through Arkham Shadow’s story, which can run 10 hours if you’re not stopping to smell the many Rat puzzles along the way. (It’s probably good to come up for air after a couple of hours in VR, anyway.)

Brawling works surprisingly well and, after things ramped up a bit to introduce enemies with armor, stun batons, shields, knives, and guns, most requiring different takedown moves, I was working up a sweat throwing physical punches that do more damage if you swing like you mean it. Here it’s less about timing punches and more about pausing for a split second after the first smack – which can send you lunging about 10 feet toward a target – to see which sequence randomly opens up: sometimes you’ll do a right, a left, or a gut-punch, others you’ll have three spots to jab at, or sometimes you’ll grab a leg and be prompted to snap it like a twig. It occasionally interprets a swing from the side as a straight-on punch or vice versa, but otherwise it’s pretty satisfying. That’s enough to keep it from being mindless flailing, but the fact that you’re usually being circled by several other thugs means you have to work fast to put an enemy down before you see an incoming attack icon in your peripheral vision and have to detour to block it with a Michael Keaton-esque no-look punch to the side, which pulls you to a different target, so the pressure is on.

Certain enemies need to be staggered before you can beat on them, so you’ll have to use abilities like confusing them with a cape swing, or flipping over them with a forward flick of the right stick and punching them from behind. It’s easy enough to do this in the most straightforward way possible, but the opportunity to run up the score with unbroken combos and mixing in multiple gadgets like batarangs and explosive charges brings in a very stylish element of challenge beyond simply staying alive. You also have to dodge unblockable attacks with the thumbsticks and physically duck under knife attacks. There’s certainly plenty going on – with more regularly opening up as you unlock new gadgets by progressing the story – to keep these fights and the optional standalone challenges interesting (and repeatable!).

The stealthy Predator battles, on the other hand, work almost identically to the way they do in traditional Arkham games in that you’re staying hidden as you take down gun-toting enemies who can quickly kill you if they spot you, but they’re a little more frustrating because the controls lack the precision needed to consistently avoid detection. The number of times I snuck up behind an enemy, and reached out to grab and silently choke him out, but accidentally punched him in the head and alerted his friends instead was, to be frank, too high by a lot. I eventually learned to do this extremely carefully – with emergency escape smoke bombs at the ready – to avoid taking a lead shower, but that felt like working around a problem rather than learning a system. Even so, it’s never anything less than gleeful to drop down from a gargoyle perch, grab a thug, and leave him helplessly dangling like a pinata for his friends to find.

We also get a handful of boss fights – mostly against the obvious opponents – and although these are a nice change of pace while they last, only one late-game one is all that memorable and none of them are especially interesting on a mechanical level.

Without the Riddler around to stash question marks everywhere, the Rat cultists have picked up puzzle duty in Blackgate, and their work ranges from trivially easy to respectably tricky and rewarding to solve. Reaching smashable rat statues and radios spreading the King’s propaganda is often a matter of turning left where the obvious path goes right, but frequently involves unlocking doors, crawling through vents, climbing pipes, and more to get the right angle – or deciphering patterns to work out codes to door locks by switching in and out of Detective mode by tapping your temple. Most of Detective mode is pretty straightforward, though – there’s none of the more ambitious crime scene reconstruction stuff from Arkham Knight. Most of it, especially the crime-scene investigation sequences, is basically just doling out plot information one piece at a time.

Exploration is, of course, a big part of any Arkham game, and there are plenty of Easter eggs to find around Blackgate. Much of it comes in the form of phone numbers that can be dialed at the prison pay phone to hear recorded messages from various characters. References to Batman lore in chatter from other prisoners and scattered around the environment didn’t appear quite as thick as they are in Rocksteady’s games – which is honestly another off-the-charts standard to hold any game to, especially when the best material has already been thoroughly mined – but it’s not in short supply.

One thing that’s a little too easy to find at this point, though, are bugs. I’m told there’s a patch in the works to address at least some of this, but even after launch this review was delayed by about a day because I wasn’t able to complete the story thanks to a repeated crash while trying to disarm a bomb, due to the fact I’d done things in an order other than what was precisely intended. That was after multiple crashes before that point, and I also had to reload saves because I fell through the world multiple times and got stuck on level geometry. I had plenty of audio stuttering, saw long load times when returning from the map screen, lost the ability to use my batarang during a boss fight that required it, and had a couple of puzzles made much more difficult than they should’ve been because key items didn’t highlight in Detective mode.

It wasn’t as smooth a ride as I’d have liked, but I did see the ending and was pleased with it. I won’t say much about how it turned out other than that, while I did see one big reveal coming a mile away, there was more to it that caught me off guard in a way that made me smile. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that the Rat King does not turn out to be The Joker, and in fact Camouflaj is admirably restrained in its use of Batman’s nemesis. After the big, eye-rolling reveal of Arkham Origins, and the enormous posthumous role he played in Arkham Knight, leaning on that crutch once again would’ve annoyed me to no end; I breathed a sigh of relief when other characters got some time in the spotlight.

On the whole it’s a very well done Batman story, and the dialogue is generally strong except for a few very on-the-nose lines where Batman bluntly declares “I will find the Rat King; I will stop his night of wrath!” or when Barbara Gordon acts like an annoying tween fangirl. There’s also a very conspicuous loose end left dangling at the end of the story that concerned me until I was told it’s intentional, so we’ll just have to see where that goes.

If you’re tired of swapping out AA batteries from your Xbox wireless controller, here’s a super inexpensive alternative. Amazon is offering Amazon Prime members a two-pack of aftermarket rechargeable batteries for your Xbox controller for a mere $12.79 after you apply a $7.20 off coupon code “30ZYF6UF“. That’s only $6.40 per battery pack. As a comparison, the official Play & Charge Kit will run you $25, and that is for a single battery pack.

Two Xbox Controller Battery Packs for $12.79

The team behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has been disbanded, according to a report from French media outlet Origami.

In a video posted today in French (for which IGN has independently verified a translation posted on ResetEra), Origami reports that the team behind The Lost Crown was disbanded despite seemingly positive reports from developers on their experiences working on the game.

Per a tweet by Gauthier Andres: “I’ve heard and read ‘It was the best game production in my entire life’ three or four times in a single weekend while getting information on the game’s development. One after the other I was told it was seen as a beacon of hope to create a safe space for people that were burnt out by Beyond Good & Evil 2. The team has been disbanded by Ubisoft.”

J’ai entendu ou lu “la meilleure prod’ de ma vie” trois ou quatre fois en un week-end à propos du développement de PoP The Lost Crown. Tour à tour espoir d’une autre manière de créer et zone de réhabilitation pour gens crâmés par BGE2, l’équipe a été dissoute par Ubisoft. https://t.co/FFz9cfm4xj

— Gautoz (@gautoz) October 22, 2024

The video also states that the game’s fate was effectively decided just a few weeks after its release. The core game development team reportedly fought to get a sequel or at least more expansions beyond the single “Mask of Darkness” expansion, but Ubisoft allegedly needed more help on other projects that had better sales potential. Per the report, The Lost Crown did not meet Ubisoft’s sales expectations, and executives expressed concerns that a sequel would cannibalize long-term sales of the first game.

It is unclear from the report exactly what the status of the members of the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown team is at this time. The game was developed at Ubisoft Montpellier, which employs hundreds of individuals and was last known to be working on the infinitely-in-limbo Beyond Good and Evil 2. It’s likely that team members were, as was suggested by the report, moved onto other projects such as that, but IGN has reached out to Ubisoft for further clarity.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s reported fate, if true, is a tragic one given how excellent the game is. We gave it an 8/10 in our review, saying it “captures not only what made games such as The Sands of Time so good, but it irons out a lot of the little issues that plagued the 3D games in this series by opting for a 2D perspective – and owning it.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.