The Best Trick-Taking Games (2024)

Trick-taking, where a hand of cards progresses by one player leading a suit and others following, matching that suit if they can, is so old that its origins are lost. The earliest one we have records for in Europe is called Karnöffel, and it dates from 15th century Germany, but playing cards generally are far older and were developed in the far east. Such is the popularity of this mechanism that it’s still with us, and has blossomed into thousands of different forms, many of which you can enjoy with a standard deck of playing cards.

Needless to say, such a popular method of play has also made its way into any number of more modern, more specialized and more strategically rich games, and it’s those we’ll be focusing on to pick out the best. Designers have been able to adapt it into myriad forms, across competitive and cooperative play, and by marrying it with other mechanics to create longer games. But the real trick of trick-taking is that it’s so familiar that almost anyone can pick up and play these games with ease.

Wizard

Trick-taking is an old concept that dates back to playing card games, so it makes sense to start with this relatively old game that mostly uses a deck of standard playing cards. The magic comes from eight extra cards, four wizards and four jesters. The first wizard played always wins a trick, while jesters are the lowest value and are beaten by all other cards. While that not sound much like sorcery, Wizard also uses another common feature of trick-taking games: before each round you must bid the number of tricks you think you’ll win, and must match that number to score. The wizard and jester combo make this notoriously hard to predict, but also leaves you with the strategic flexibility to play defensively or offensively in attempts to shore up your score, or push for a sudden, thrilling win.

Skull King

Pirate-themed Skull King is the captain of the bidding game ship. There are three normal suits alongside a trump suit and, as usual, the highest card wins a trick. You start each hand looking at your cards and predicting how many tricks you’re going to win, scoring points if you hit the target but losing them otherwise, ensuring each hand comes down to a thrilling climax. But the deck is full of special cards to give the game some serious spice: pirates always win a trick, escape cards always lose and the terrible skull king himself lords it over everything, gaining a bonus if he scoops up any pirates. They’re easy enough concepts to learn, but fill the game with more than enough variety to ensure there’s lots of skill in making your bids.

Sail

Staying with the nautical theme, Sail sees two of you working together to steer a ship across a course of islands while being chased by a ferocious kraken. It’s notoriously hard for trick-taking games to work as two-player games, but Sail’s ingenious ruleset not only manages it, but ensures a white-knuckle ride on every game. Each card has not only a suite and a value but also a symbol, and the pairing of symbols determines what your ship does that round, whether that’s moving, firing on the kraken or taking a smash from one of the thing’s tentacles. The round ends when one player wins five tricks, meaning you’ve got to balance the load while still taking the right action pairings, a task made doubly difficult by a ban on communication. Every attempt is an edge-of-the-seat challenge across six scenarios.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

If you want a cooperative trick-taker for more than two (this one ended up on our list of the best four-player board games as well), then it’s time to venture into the depths of the ocean as you attempt to keep your team alive in The Crew. The game plays through a long sequence of narrative scenarios of increasing difficulty, giving you more and more tasks to complete from a random and imaginatively varied selection. The basic formula is that a given player has to win a trick containing a particular card, but the concept blossoms into all kinds of demanding challenges, for example winning or not winning particular suits or numbers of tricks. This would be easy if you could share what’s in your hand, but that’s not allowed: you can only offer elusive hints. Success is thus a matter of tracking plays and trying to engineer situations where you can complete your assigned tasks. It’s harder than it sounds, highly addictive, and its cooperative nature makes it superb for family play.

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland

Most of the games on this list are fast-playing games, but Brian Boru is a rare instance of a much deeper strategy affair that uses trick-taking. Players are competing to become the next King of medieval Ireland by controlling towns on the map, but control of any given town is decided by playing cards from your hand, which you’ll have picked via drafting at the game start. As usual the highest card value wins, from the suit matching that of the town you’re vying over, but there are some cool wrinkles. First, there’s a wild white suit that matches any color. Second, the lower value the card, the better rewards you get whether you win the trick or lose. This spatial control element married to those cunning inverse rewards give this a unique and engrossing strategic feel, while trick-winning is full of tension.

Cat in the Box

Bidding games don’t come much more bizarre than this beauty, inspired by Schrödinger’s famous feline thought experiment. On the face of it, it’s a normal trick-taking game where you follow a color suit, one color is a trump, and the highest-value card wins. The twist is that the cards are not colored: you decide what color a card is as you play it. That pairing is then crossed off a grid because, after all, you can’t have two cards of the same color and value, right? You can even decide, at any point, that your hand is completely out of a particular color, allowing you to sneak in a trump, but you’ll never be able to play that color again! This can lead to paradoxes where you’re left with unplayable cards, and you lose points. But win or lose, the sheer, head-spinning innovation of this game will take your breath away.

Ghosts of Christmas

Another cleverly peculiar bidding game, this time inspired by Dickens’ famous Yuletide yarn “A Christmas Carol,” Ghosts of Christmas lets you hedge your bets and bid numbers for tricks you think you might win, for a points penalty. But that isn’t its secret sauce. Rather, this is a game where you play hands at once, represented by the multiple time periods of the titular ghosts: past, present and future. Once a given time has a card lead in it, it’s fixed to that for the rest of the hand, so everyone gets a chance to lead, and the unfolding play sees you juggling strategy across several hands from the same pool of cards. Even Scrooge himself might have trouble doing that kind of accounting, although the result is no humbug but a top class, challenging title.

Jekyll vs Hyde

Another trick-taker for two, even if you are representing personalities in the same body as per the classic tale of gothic horror, Jekyll vs. Hyde manages to bring some thematic class to the genre. Each suit represents a negative character trait and, unusually, they’re ranked in the order of which they get played each round and, if a player can’t follow suit, a higher-ranked card will beat a lower-ranked one, a deliciously devious strategic flair. You can also dump out potion cards, which have unexpected effects depending on the suit it’s paired with, resetting the ranks, swapping cards or even stealing a trick from your opponent. But winning isn’t always the point: at the end of a hand, you work out the difference between the two tricks and Hyde advance that many spaces toward his transformation, and victory. If he can’t manage it within three hands, good wins and Jekyll keeps his self-control, but you’ll have a fun time either way.

Inside Job

Imagine a cooperative trick-taking game like The Crew, but with slightly simpler missions and a time limit. Might not sound terribly appealing, but there’s a big surprise waiting in each game of Inside Job: one of the players is a traitor, trying to sabotage the group’s spy missions. Each trick won earns the winner an intel token, and if the traitor gets enough of these, they win instantly. The rest of the agents win if they clear a threshold of successful missions in time. Should neither happen, it comes down to a vote, with the agents winning if they can successfully identify the insider, or losing if not. Blending the best of trick-taking and hidden role games in an easy to learn package, this is genre blending at its most fun.

The Fox in the Forest

Our final specialist two-player pick, The Fox in the Forest is a standard, simple trick-taker with one glorious twist that makes it stand out: you get points for winning either very few or slightly above average tricks, rather than sweeping the board. This necessitates a complete rethink of how you approach the game, as you’re no longer leading to win every time. Instead, you’ve got to consider what your opponent might be holding and mix things up so that you can win the requisite number of tricks to net the big points. To further mix things up, all the odd-numbered cards have special powers like changing the trump suit or the win conditions for a given hand, ensuring this is a game where you always have to think on your feet as you field the constant curveballs that it throws you.

Seas of Strife

As you’ve probably noticed, many trick-taking games take the basic formula and succeed by making a small twist – that’s how addictive the basic recipe is. Seas of Strife, which unusually has different numbers across all its suits, has two. Firstly, you win by losing: that is, collecting as few tricks as possible. Second, if you can’t follow suit and have to dump a card, that card’s suit not only becomes valid but can win the trick if it’s the most common suit played. This makes the obvious tactic of dumping high cards extremely dangerous, and ensures that every hand has the unexpected in store right until the final card is played. At the same time it’s super-easy to pick up, and great fun for all ages.

Matt Thrower is a contributing freelance board game and video game writer for IGN. (Board, video, all sorts of games!)

PlayStation Plus Game Catalog Additions for May 2024 Revealed

Sony has revealed the full line-up of PlayStation Plus Games Catalog additions for May 2024, which includes Red Dead Redemption 2, Cat Quest, Watch Dogs, and more.

Announced on the PlayStation Blog, a total of 13 games are joining the library: 10 in the Games Catalog available to Extra and Premium members and three in the Classic Games Catalog only available to Premium members.

While perhaps a thinner line-up compared to recent months, the addition of Red Dead Redemption 2 will carry May’s line-up a long way. It’s worth noting this is actually a return to the service for Rockstar’s open-world cowboy adventure, however, as it was one of the first games announced for the Games Catalog two years prior. All games hit the service on May 21.

PlayStation Plus Games Catalog Additions for April 2024

PlayStation Plus Classics Games Catalog Additions for April 2024

Red Dead Redemption 2 is Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games’ take on the wild west as players take on the role of Arthur Morgan as he looks tries to survive in America’s unforgiving heartland. IGN deemed it a masterpiece in our review. “Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game of rare quality; a meticulously polished open world ode to the outlaw era,” we said.

Deceive Inc. deploys you into the world of high stakes subterfuge, working for a private corporation with complete monopoly over the international espionage market. Rival spies are after the same objective as the player, however, and each one of them is as equally skilled, cunning, and well-equipped.

The Sims 4: City Living is an expansion for the beloved simulation game, and while the base version of Sims 4 is required to play, this is also permanently free. City Living lets players take their Sims to the city and explore everything it has to offer, from bustling action right outside the front door to unique situations that come only with apartment living.

Crime Boss: Rockay City is a stealth action first person shooter where players look to become the leaders of a criminal underworld in 1990s Florida. IGN didn’t rate it very highly, however, giving it a 4/10 in our review. “Crime Boss: Rockay City’s hokey charm is nowhere near strong enough to offset its bugs and repetitive design, and it totally squanders its kitsch cast,” we said.

The latest instalment in the long running strategy game series, The Settlers: New Allies lets players discover new worlds and build sprawling cities as they take control of a band of settlers who have fled cataclysmic events in their homeland to seek new lands to settle, explore, and conquer.

On a somewhat similar note, albeit with a sprinkle of sci-fi, Stranded: Alien Dawn is a planet survival sim placing the fate of a small marooned group in the player’s hands. Promising compelling and immersive strategic gameplay, players must make vital decisions to protect their survivors.

Cat Quest and its sequel, the aptly titled Cat Quest 2, will both be available through the PlayStation Plus Games Catalog. Both 2D, open world role-playing games set in a world full of cats, players must embark on a quest to save their catnapped sister in the first game while the second sees them fight to save the world of cats from advancing dog armies.

Classic LEGO goodness arrives through The LEGO Movie 2 Video Game, which lets players bash and build their way through the events of the film. Alien monster invaders have left Bricksburg in ruins and taken Emmet’s friends, and it’s now up to him and his team of heroic characters to go beyond their world and save their friends from the strange inhabitants of the Systar System.

Watch Dogs is the first open-world action game set in the fan-favorite franchise, kicking things off with solemn protagonist Aiden Pearce hacking (with, like, a smartphone) his way through Chicago. “Watch Dogs is an excellent open world action game with some unique hacking magic that makes it a memorable experience,” IGN said in our 8/10 review.

On the classic games front, 2Xtreme was promised to be a high flying sports game where players could snowboard in Japan, in-line skate in Last Vegas, mountain bike in Africa, skateboard in Los Angeles, and more. Unfortunately, however, it couldn’t stick the landing, as when the PlayStation classic was re-released for the PlayStation Portable, IGN gave it a rare 2/10 in our review.

Another PlayStation classic, and one that received a better rating from IGN, comes in G-Police. This 1997 title saw Jeff Slater join a voluntary police force after an unspeakable corporate cover-up caused his sister’s death. As a helicopter pilot, players must fly through 35 grueling levels to take their revenge. “With a flair for the dramatic and an attention to detail that should impress even the toughest of critics, G-Police is a rock-solid example of great gameplay,” we said in our 8/10 review.

Finally, Worms Pinball rounds out May 2024’s PlayStation Plus Classic Games Catalog additions, and does exactly what it says on the tin. This 2000 title is a mix of pinball and the wacky Worms characters, offering a table sporting 3D LED displayed sub-games and parallel objectives, transparent ramps, user-controllable moving gadgets, bounce and flip passes, bang backs, death saves, and more.

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

Sunny Soulslike Enotria: The Last Song Gets New Release Date, Playable 8-Hour-Long Demo for PC and PS5

Enotria: The Last Song, a sun-kissed soulslike that we previewed last Fall, has been pushed back a month, from August 21 to September 19. That’s the bad news. The good news is that an eight-hour-long playable demo will be released for PS5 and PC very soon, on May 22. The full version of Enotria will be released for Xbox Series X|S as well as PS5 and PC.

We’ve got a new, exclusive 15-minute developer-narrated gameplay showcase you can watch above, along with the latest batch of screenshots in the gallery below.

According to developer Jyamma Games, “the demo will have 4 distinct weapon classes, each with a variety of unique weapons and 6 unique masks to discover that bring with them devastating new playstyles and distinctive passive abilities. Augment different playstyles by choosing from over 20 spells and 30 perks to make your Mask of Change build your own.” The gameplay showcase video at the top of this page also gives an overview on required and recommended PC specs as well.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Ubisoft’s Call of Duty Rival XDefiant Ditches SBMM, Says It’s No Fun at All

Ubisoft has said its Call of Duty rival XDefiant does not feature skill-based matchmaking in its casual playlist.

For years, skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) has been the hottest of topics within the Call of Duty community, with some proclaiming it ruins the experience, others saying quite the opposite. High-skilled Call of Duty players often bemoan SBMM for chucking them into what they call “sweaty” lobbies full of similarly high-skilled players. Activision has defended its use, insisting skill in matchmaking means all players (regardless of skill level) are more likely to experience wins and losses more proportionately. “We use player performance to ensure that the disparity between the most skilled player in the lobby and the least skilled player in the lobby isn’t so vast that players feel their match is a waste of time,” Activision said earlier this year.

“Our data shows that when lower skill players are consistently on the losing end, they are likely to quit matches in progress or stop playing altogether,” Activision continued. “This has an effect on the player pool. A smaller player pool means wait times for matches increase and connections may not be as strong as they should be. This can compound over time to create a spiral effect. Eventually, when only high-skilled players remain because lower skilled players have quit out of frustration, the result is an ecosystem that is worse overall for everyone.

“Game data indicates that having some limitations on the disparity of skill across the players in a match makes for a healthier ecosystem. We also understand that many high skill players want more variety of experience, but often feel like they only get the ‘sweatiest’ of lobbies. We have heard this feedback clearly and will continue to test and actively explore ways to mitigate this concern.”

“Frankly, skill-based matchmaking means every casual game is repetitive.

Ubisoft, though, clearly has a very different philosophy for its free-to-play first-person shooter, which it outlined in a blog post.

“The most important thing to know is — there is no skill-based matchmaking in our casual playlist,” Ubisoft confirmed. “We believe that no SBMM is paramount to a fun and varied game experience in the long-term. Frankly, skill-based matchmaking means every casual game is repetitive — constantly repeating matches that are just as stressful and matched as ranked. We believe casual playlist should be fun and no SBMM is the way to do that. If you want that competitive every second counts go all out playstyle — you’ll find our ranked mode to your liking.”

Ubisoft’s stance on SBMM makes for a clear distinction between XDefiant and Call of Duty multiplayer, and is sure to go down well with a subset of hardcore competitive FPS fans. Ubisoft has been keen to attract disgruntled Call of Duty fans with a number of crowd-pleasing design decisions as it works to wrestle players away from Activision’s behemoth. Indeed, XDefiant developer Ubisoft San Francisco is helmed by Mark Rubin, a former Call of Duty executive producer at Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward.

After a number of delays, XDefiant’s pre-season launches May 21 on PC via Ubisoft Connect, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S. The game is not set to launch on Steam or the Epic Games Store.

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.

Nier Series Director, Producer, and Composer Start New Project: ‘It Might be Nier, It Might Not Be Nier’

The director, producer, and composer of Square Enix’s beloved Nier series have teamed up for a new project, but are refusing to say whether it’s a Nier game or not.

Speaking to Famitsu and translated by Gematsu, Square Enix executive officer and Nier series producer Yosuke Saito teased the upcoming project but still didn’t give fans a concrete answer on whether they should expect Nier 3.

“I’ve been talking about wanting to do something with [series director Yoko Taro] and [series composer Keiichi Okabe] for some time now,” Saito said. “I’ll have something a bit more put together to say in the not too distant future, so please stay tuned.” He than laughed: “It might be Nier, it might not be Nier. That’s about all I can say for now.”

“It might be Nier, it might not be Nier. That’s about all I can say for now.

Nier: Automata arrived in February 2017 and, while fans’ appetites were somewhat satiated with the Nier Replicant remake of the original game in 2021, Square Enix has said nothing concrete about a full sequel.

Hope has gone back and forward too. Saito said in November 2023 that Square Enix will definitely make another Nier at some point in Yoko’s lifetime but it won’t be soon as the pair are working on a separate project. But a few months later in March 2024, Taro seemingly teased a third game through a subtle concert message.

Saito told Famitsu in this latest interview he’s working on “various things”, however, so perhaps there’s a chance the new project is just one of those and Nier 3 is another.

“I’m doing various things with the idea of creating something that does not yet exist,” he said. “I can’t devote my time to that fully, so most of it has been left to the staff, but it’s turning into something quite interesting. I’m looking forward to the day we can announce it.”

Nier: Automata was a standout success for Square Enix thanks to strong critical reception and sales to match. In our 8/10 review, IGN said: “Nier: Automata is a great action role-playing game filled with beautiful locations and zany, fun-filled combat.”

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

Helldivers 2 Dev to Revert Patrol and Spawn Rate Changes, Admits PSN Controversy Diverted Studio’s Attention

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has announced plans to roll back changes made to patrols and spawn rates following a recent patch after admitting the PlayStation Network controversy was the focus of its attention in recent weeks.

Arrowhead butted heads with Sony over the Helldivers 2 IP owner and publisher’s decision to force PC players to link their accounts to PlayStation Network in order to continue playing. Sony eventually backed down, although not before a Steam review bombing campaign that looks set to become the inspiration for a new in-game cape.

Clearly, events of the past few weeks have taken their toll on Arrowhead staff, who have had to contend with a player revolt while also trying to work with Sony on a change of policy. Community manager Twinbeard had said the PSN controversy was a huge tax on resources: “… when sth like the PSN-gate (TM) happens, a lot of things come to a halt. Many of us at AH more or less ‘lost’ a week due to this, and only now are slowly getting back to what we were doing before all of this (and that’s even with it not being entirely resolved as well).”

Now, in a new statement issued to the Helldivers Discord, Twinbeard announced the studio’s intention to address patrols and spawn rate following what has been a “hectic” past couple of weeks.

“As many of you have noticed, something has been off with patrols and spawn rate for some time now,” Twinbeard said.

“This primarily leads to more enemies rearing their ugly heads than they’re supposed to, indirectly to players feeling overrun, kiting, and subsequently less fun gameplay. This has been the case for all players, but predominantly for smaller teams and solo playing. We’ve been aware, but frankly, the past couple of weeks have been so hectic that we haven’t been able to give this the TLC that it required. We now have, and we’ve concluded that it’s not working as intended and we’re changing it.

“There might be some minor tweaks, but overall we’re reverting back to how patrols and spawn rate worked before the patch that changed them a few weeks ago. We believe that this is more or less how you currently want them to be.

“We also know you want us to do things and changes properly instead of rushing them, and we do as well. Therefore, implementing this will take some time. We want to give it proper testing and review it… ah heck, simply see that it works this time. Even if this means we’re faced with more bugs and bots than even the bravest of citizens would deem realistic for a while longer, we hope you’re happy with us fixing the problem.

“Onwards and upwards!”

“… frankly, the past couple of weeks have been so hectic that we haven’t been able to give this the TLC that it required.

Twinbeard’s statement touches on a call from the Helldivers 2 community for Arrowhead to take more time with its balance patches, and even slow down the release of new weapons and gear via what have so far been monthly Premium Warbonds. The feeling at the moment is Arrowhead is feeding the Helldivers 2 live service beast too often and to the detriment of other parts of the game, such as weapon balance and gameplay, and that new content added to the game fails to make an impact.

Earlier this month, Arrowhead boss Johan Pilestedt acknowledged that weapon nerfs had gone “too far in some areas” while responding to complaints the studio had patched the fun out of the explosive PC and PlayStation 5 shooter. “It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed,” Pilestedt admitted.

Despite these issues, Helldivers 2 is an astonishing success story for both Arrowhead and Sony. This week, Sony announced Helldivers 2 had sold an incredible 12 million copies in just 12 weeks, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation game of all time.

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.

Nintendo Switch Online Gets 3 Game Boy Launch Titles, Including Super Mario Land

Nintendo has added three new Game Boy games to the Nintendo Switch Online library of titles, each a launch title for the handheld.

The headline addition is Super Mario Land, the classic mini-Mario platformer that launched on Nintendo’s handheld console back in 1989.

Next is Alleyway, another classic 1989 Game Boy game developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems as a launch title for the handheld. This Breakout clone was one of the first four games released for the Game Boy.

And finally, Baseball rounds out the list of additions. Nintendo’s sports game first launched for the Famicom in Japan in 1983 before hitting it out the park on the NES in 1985. The Game Boy version launched alongside the console in 1989.

Game Boy games added to Nintendo Switch Online on May 15, 2024:

Here’s the official blurb from Nintendo:

To properly celebrate 35 years of the Game Boy system, we have to take it back to year one! Game Boy launched in 1989, and with it arrived classic titles such as Baseball, Alleyway and the first Super Mario game available on the system, Super Mario Land. Today, Nintendo Switch Online members can play all three of these original launch titles as the latest additions to the Game Boy – Nintendo Switch Online library. All just in time for the system’s 35th anniversary!

Interestingly, Nintendo Switch Online Japan gets an extra game: The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls. This Nintendo and Intelligent Systems-developed action role-playing game was released for the Game Boy exclusively in Japan in 1992.

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.

Exclusive: Gundam Breaker 4’s Devs on Learning From Past Mistakes, Switch Performance, and More

It’s best not to put too much stock in Gundam Breaker 4’s name. Despite its title, it’s not the fourth game in the series. That honor goes to New Gundam Breaker, which Bandai Namco prefers to overlook due to its middling reviews and overall poor reputation with the fanbase. Instead, Gundam Breaker 4 will be the fifth console release in the now decade-old series, and what Bandai Namco hopes will be a fresh start for the franchise overall.

In an exclusive interview with IGN, Masanori Tanaka says that the team collected “a lot” of feedback from New Gundam Breaker before heading into Gundam Breaker 4. The main takeaway? Fans were confused about the number. But more importantly, they wanted the series to get back to what it did best: letting players smash up AI-controlled mobile suits to build up new and bizarre designs of their own.

“New Gundam Breaker was [player-versus-player] focused,” Tanaka explains. “Now we’re actually focusing on PvE for Gundam Breaker 4. So that’s a change that was made from the feedback…now we can focus on supporting the quality and letting the game evolve. So for example, the diorama mode [a new mode that lets you pose your models in various scenes] is one of those things. And just refining the action compared to the previous game.”

Gundam Breaker gets back to basics

First released on Playstation 3 and Vita back in 2013, Gundam Breaker earned a following by leaning into the franchise’s pervasive model culture, colloquially known as “Gunpla.” The series takes a traditional hack-and-slash approach to its gameplay, but what makes it stand out is the ability to mix-and-match parts from real-life model kits to create your own ridiculous designs. The unintentional hilarity of these digital kitbash creations taps into an enduring part of the Gundam subculture.

Now we can focus on supporting the quality and letting the game evolve

The series continued through three entries before getting a reboot of sorts with New Gundam Breaker. New Gundam Breaker was criticized for being unpolished and for stripping down the customization and story, hence the return to numbered entries. With Gundam Breaker 4, Bandai Namco is eager to emphasize that it has heard fan feedback and that it is returning to what worked by pivoting back to a more single-player focused experience and optional co-op.

Among other things, the customization has been beefed up, including adding the ability to dual wield one-handed weapons and equip different arms. To emphasize the enhancements to the customization, Kentaro Matano shows off his own creation – a monstrous pink Ball with a bear head, Neo-Zeong legs, and claws.

“So as you saw, you could change the background, highly customizable, different colors. You can also add weathering which we weren’t even able to show you,” Matano says, referencing a popular technique used by model-builders to add realism to their designs. “So there’s just really vast amounts of combinations that users can just let their creativity just run wild. So those are really the focus.”

Players will have plenty of parts to choose from. With Witch From Mercury proving popular with fans on both sides of the Pacific, Gundam Breaker 4 will feature the Gundam Aerial and Daribalde in what will be the largest roster of models to date, as well as a full English dub.

Technical trade-offs on Switch

Notably, Gundam Breaker 4 will mark the franchise’s debut on the Nintendo Switch after mostly sticking with PlayStation (it’s also releasing on PS4, PS5, and Steam). Asked if there are any technical compromises fans can expect, Tanaka says it will mostly feature a lower framerate, subsequently clarifying that it will be 60fps on PS5 and 30fps on Nintendo Switch..

“I believe the only major technical thing you might see on the Switch is just a different framerate compared to the other platforms,” Tanaka explains. “It might be a slightly different experience compared to a different platform so that our fans can be able to play with the understanding of what they will get on the different platforms. But overall, just the actual gameplay itself, it won’t be a huge difference.”

One way or another, it will be a fresh start for Gundam Breaker 4 as it seeks to reestablish itself with old fans and new fans alike. “We want our fans to really take in Gundam Breaker 4,” says Matano, “because we read everything, we read all the feedback…to create the next generation, the next game with everyone’s feedback.”

Gundam Breaker 4 will release August 29 on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, and PC. Check out all the rest of the biggest games of 2024 right here.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Guilty Gear Strive: The Board Game Review

Heaven or Hell, controllers or cardboard – let’s rock. Guilty Gear Strive: The Board Game from Level 99 Games offers players a new way to experience many of those same pulse-pounding moments and swings in gameplay that fans of the video game expect. Plus, it has a surprisingly fast turn-around between matches and 20 characters to choose from. If you’re in the market for a new brawling game for you and a buddy to add to your game rotation, Strive may be it.

Guilty Gear Strive isn’t so much a brand new game as it is the next entry in a long-running series — think a new season of fighters for the video game. Strive is built around Level 99 Game’s Exceed system, first released in 2016, and has seen sets featuring other prevalent video game characters like Street Fighter and Shovel Knight. Strive (along with all the previous Exceed releases) pits two players against one another on a 9-spaced board, similar to the stage of a 2D fighter. Players advance and retreat around the stage by using their decks of special moves, basic attacks, and super specials, spacing themselves properly to take advantage of their specials to whittle their opponent down to zero life.

At first, it may be hard to imagine that a card game could capture the moment-to-moment action of a fighting video game. Level 99 has had a long time to refine this system. When I’m not playing board games and RPGs, I also love a good fighting game, with Guilty Gear being one of my favorites. So, I’m saying this from a position of familiarity with both the genre and series when I say that this game really nails that feeling.

This game is just as much about accurately reading what your opponent is going to do and responding to it as it is about trying to strategize and best use the moves in your character’s toolkit to poke holes in their game — just like in a video game. I appreciate the juggling of spacing, trying to keep yourself out of harm’s way while just close enough so that you can hit them or hitting them with a weak but fast attack, preventing them from hitting me. It actually does feel like a fighting game — just played with cards instead of a controller or fightstick.

Much like a match in a video game, it doesn’t take long to play out, making this a solid quick-playing board games. Most games take less than a half hour, and once my friends and I had a grasp on what was going on, it was even shorter. Even when jumping from one character to another, the different styles and mechanics lent themselves more to applying and learning new strategies as opposed to having to start fresh and learn how to play.

On the topic of the characters, I have to applaud the team at Level 99 for doing a good job capturing the feel of each of 20 included characters’ play styles from the source material. For instance, Axl’s expertise in battlefield positioning, lets you advantage of his long-range to push and pull his opponents into spots that are best for him. Or, Zato-1 can bring out his tethered demon pal, Eddie, onto the field to attack from. Little touches like that make jumping into this card-based version of Heaven and Hell all that more exciting and approachable.

Most games take less than a half hour.

Strive is an Exceed-based game, making it compatible and able to be played alongside previously released Exceed character sets. If you find yourself smitten with the system after playing Guilty Gear Strive, you can have Sol exchange blows with Ryu from Street Fighter or have Faust take on the knight of shovelery himself, Shovel Knight. All you need to do is pick up their respective decks, and off you go.

After eight years of releases, Level 99 has had a lot of time to figure out and refine the instructions and the best methods of teaching their Exceed system, with Strive benefiting from these refinements. Strive comes with a 27-page instruction book — ditching the paper foldout of older seasons — with straightforward explanations and visual examples of some situations you may encounter during a play session. As an extra handy bonus, each player deck also comes with its own set of reference cards showing rules, actions, and all the attacks that the character has access to. Where most games may give you a few, Strive gives you 20 sets.

Playing and teaching with a few friends, even the first time I was learning myself, things always seemed to click by the end of the first game, if not partway through. By the time I was teaching my third and fourth friend the game, where I didn’t need to confirm or double-check my information in the instructions, I could teach the basics in about 10-15 with little issue.

Regarding the components packed into Strive’s box, you can expect some solid-feeling cards with a semi-gloss finish. The cards are sturdy and feel good to shuffle, the tuck boxes for each character’s deck easily fit sleeved decks, and the included neoprene play mat is sturdy and well-constructed. However, I encountered a strange coloring issue around some of the cards that came in my copy of the game. Each character’s specific deck features an associated color scheme on its backside, and there were a few cards in my game where the odd card had a slightly off color to it. Were this color oddity on the front side of the card, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal, but considering this is a game where knowing what you have coming can adjust your strategy, this difference can provide you with an advantage. Hopefully, this issue isn’t widespread.

You can have Sol exchange blows with Ryu from Street Fighter.

As opposed to the previous releases of sets in the Exceed line, Level 99 has opted to include all the characters in a single release as opposed to bundling a few together and selling multiple smaller boxes. This means Strive comes in a large box, with a shocking amount of wasted space inside, too. The box itself comes in at 39.5cm x 41.5cm, a dimension that from a distance appears to be a square, even when up close appears to be a square, but when it comes to putting the top on the box means that there is a specific way you have to put it on. Does this impact the quality of the gameplay in any way? Not in the slightest. Does it make my eye twitch with minor annoyance when I get it wrong? No comment. But, on a more serious note, unfortunately, the box’s dimensions mean it is too large to fit on an Ikea Kallax shelf, a common go-to game storage solution for board gaming hobbyists, and is something to be aware of.

Guilty Gear Strive: The Board Game is a game where you have to be cutthroat, and players will get the most enjoyment when they play someone of an equal skill level. On the flip side, it also means the differences in experience can vastly skew the game in favor of one player over the other. The fact that Guilty Gear Strive is strictly a two-player board game doesn’t help alleviate or balance out that imbalance either.

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Madden NFL 25’s Release Date Leaked Ahead of Reveal Later This Week

Madden NFL 25 is apparently set to release on August 16, according to a new report.

Reliable video game leaker and data miner billbil-kun has published a new report detailing what fans can expect from this year’s Madden. According to billbil-kun, Madden NFL 25 will be released on August 16, but those who own the Deluxe Edition or subscribe to EA Play will get access as early as August 12.

Although billbil-kun has not revealed any details as to who the cover athlete(s) for Madden 25 will be, the report does confirm that EA Orlando (formerly EA Tiburon) will once again develop the next Madden game. Madden NFL 25 will have two editions: Standard and Deluxe; the former will retail for $69.99, while the latter will cost $99.99.

A proper reveal for Madden NFL is supposedly happening on May 16 — the same day the publisher is set to reveal the official covers for College Football 25, its first entry in the college football video game series since 2013.

The report also claims that Madden NFL 25 will improve the FieldSense technology. This feature originally debuted in Madden NFL 23, with the physics engine being reworked for the newest entry to provide more “realistic animations with fluid gameplay.”

The news comes the same day Prime Video announced new content for its streaming service, including a four-part docuseries focusing on the history of the Madden video game franchise.

In our review of Madden NFL 24, IGN wrote: “New animations and improved AI make Madden NFL 24’s on-field action the best it’s ever been, but everything that happens off the field is a slog of dated modes and laggy menus that brings everything around it down.”

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.