Sony is suing Tencent, alleging its upcoming game Light of Motiram is “a slavish clone of SIE’s…Horizon series of video games.”
The complaint, which was filed in a California court last week, alleges that Tencent’s upcoming adventure game Light of Motiram is illegally similar to Horizon: Forbidden West and Horizon: Zero Dawn in everything from creature design to protagonist to marketing materials. The complaint outlines numerous similarities, comparing various marketing screenshots from both games as well as the game descriptions.
Like Horizon, Light of Motiram takes place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by giant robot dinosaurs who roam large, natural environments such as tropical forests, deserts, and snowy mountains. Humans, just like in Horizon, live in tribal groups and must fight the machine animals, who also largely line up with those in Horizon, to survive. Both games even feature red-haired women protagonists that wear very similar outfits and styles, and Motiram even has its lead sporting a device awfully similar to Aloy’s “Focus” earpiece.
The complaint also cites headlines from a number of gaming websites, including Kotaku, TheGamer, and GameRant, as well as various Steam and Reddit comments, that all remark on the similarities between the two games and the likelihood that Sony would probably sue over the issue.
“The commonalities with Horizon disclosed in the Light of Motiram promotional game trailer and other promotional materials included not only identical story and gameplay themes, cultural, and character elements, but also art style, landscapes, architectural and art elements, color palettes, fonts, and symbols. Lighting and points of view are also highly similar,” the complaint reads.
Also per Sony’s complaint, Tencent allegedly knew exactly what it was doing here. Sony says that Tencent began developing Light of Motiram in 2023, and approached Sony at the 2024 Game Developers Conference to ask for a licensing deal to develop its own Horizon game. Sony turned Tencent down. But Tencent kept developing Light of Motiram anyway. Sony also claims it approached Tencent informally to resolve the copyright dispute once it became aware of the game, but when it did so, Sony says Tencent tried once again to license Horizon. Sony once again refused, and Tencent allegedly moved forward with the game’s promotions and playtests.
Sony is suing Tencent for copyright and trademark infringement, as well as false designation of origin. It’s asking the court to permanently enjoing Tencent from infringing its copyright, for costs and damages of up to $150,000 for each separate work in Horizon that’s been infringed, and demands that Tencent deliver all infringing materials to Sony for destruction.
Meanwhile, Light of Motiram has a Steam listing, but no release date just yet.
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.
The most devastating part about Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game is just how short it falls of fulfilling such an insanely promising premise. I mean, which Tolkien nerd among us hasn’t daydreamed about living a relaxing life as a halfling? But instead of the warmth and comfort of the Shire, I spent 25 hours feeling like I was marching through the Dead Marshes in this cozy misadventure. It’s regrettably dull from start to finish, and runs so badly I wasn’t even allowed to be bored out of my mind in peace. The barebones life sim mechanics offer some of the most shallow versions of classic activities like fishing and farming that we’ve seen done much better in dozens of other games, and building social links with the inhabitants of Bywater is monotonous, repetitive, and never worth the effort. There’s at least some humorous writing and fun moments here and there, and the cooking minigame that serves as the main progression activity thankfully has slightly more depth than the other chores you do, but the few bright spots that exist are drowned out by one of the most disappointing cozy games I played since the Second Age. I went into Tales of the Shire thinking I’d be as happy as Denethor seeing Boromir, but I got Faramir instead.
Though it rarely succeeds in the attempt, Tales of the Shire mostly follows the blueprint of games like Animal Crossing and Disney Dreamlight Valley, with stress-free slice of life activities in a quiet village as the main draw. You’ll try your hand at lesser versions of the usual fishing, gardening, and cooking minigames as you improve your relationships with your fellow townsfolk – all wrapped in a Tolkien skin that plays with the characters and locations found in The Lord of the Rings. The minimalistic story puts you in the hairy feet of a hobbit who’s recently moved to Bywater and begins to establish themself in the community, all while fixing up the rundown hobbit hole you’re given. You’ll meet some recognizable characters like Gandalf and Rosie Cotton and run samey errands for your neighbors in an attempt to get Bywater officially recognized as a village. As is often the case with games like this, it’s not much of a story, but has some likeable characters and amusing moments here and there as the goofy cast of hobbits bicker and squabble over trivial things that only a hobbit would bother caring about. Unfortunately, a complete absence of voice acting inhibits this high point; it just never quite felt right for such colorful and well-known characters to be completely silent throughout the story’s roughly 15-hour runtime.
Tales lacks those hidden layers of depth to get completely lost in.
One of the great things about the life sim genre is that, although they can appear fairly superficial at first, the longer you play, the more you discover hidden layers of depth to get completely lost in. Unfortunately, Tales lacks this essential component. At the point where I’d usually expect to enter an impossible-to-put-down chain of easygoing activities as I build out a quiet, virtual life for myself, it instead had me scratching my head as to what the point of all the monotonous busywork they’d saddled me with even was. That’s mainly because, despite featuring lots of cooking, Tales has very little meat on the bones for the vast majority of its mechanics, like how the best way to make money is to slowly walk back and forth across the very small map, picking up the same very small handful of foragable goods, then selling them so you can buy a single cut of bacon to use in cooking. The only time anything changes is when the seasons shift every dozen or so in-game days and you get a few new ingredients to find and crops to plant, but there’s a whole heck of a lot of tiresome grinding in between those shifts, which ultimately only alter the ingredients you’re collecting and the look of the village anyway.
Nearly every activity you’re expected to grind, from fishing to gardening, suffers from this same infuriating lack of depth. For example, you can only fish in a few spots around the map, and doing so yields the same very small handful of fish with little to augment or evolve your angling over time. When I unlocked my first fishing rod upgrade after completing numerous fishing-based quests, I was hopeful this would expand the number of fishing holes accessible to me or let me catch a whole new roster of sea creatures, but only moments later those hopes were dashed as I returned to the same places and caught the exact same fish I’d been reeling in for hours. And since you’re given tons of humdrum quests that require quite a lot of fishing to complete, you’re subjected to a whole lot of tedious repetition with very little in the way of payoff.
Really the only exception is the cooking minigame, which serves as the main activity that all the others seem built to support and is much more substantial as a result. Fishing, foraging, gardening, taking care of chickens, and buying ingredients are all just a means to an end for your ever-hungry hobbit, and all of the components you gather are brought back to your home to combine into a dish you’ll then use to curry favor with other hobbits. You’re able to invite a few of your neighbors to share a meal with you once per in-game day, and after learning their preferences and cravings, you’ll have to mix together the right combination of flavors to maximize how much your cooking causes them to like you. Doing so levels up your social links, which awards ingredients and new recipes that open up new possibilities, and even occasionally result in a short conversation between you and whichever hobbit you’ve charmed – a decent payoff to your investment in a game that doesn’t respect your time in most other areas.
You’re subjected to a lot of tedious repetition with very little payoff.
To be clear, Tales still doesn’t really nail this minigame either, as the actual game part isn’t very good and is overly simplistic, especially in the first dozen or so hours before you unlock additional cooking tools that add a tad more nuance to the process. For example, unlocking the sauce pan allows you to stir different seasonings into your dishes that augment the flavor profile. Plus, you’re required to take on a ton of very boring chores just to get the ingredients you need, and then there’s a good chance you’ll just be waiting around for the next day to come before you can invite new people, since there are so few things to do aside from the time-gated meals. But cooking and the social elements it triggers are at least a relative highlight in a life sim that is so consistently underwhelming, and it does evolve over time in a way that the other activities don’t.
Beyond the grind of gathering ingredients, cooking meals, and feeding them to the residents of Bywater, you’ll also improve and decorate your little slice of the Shire. The home you’re given is pretty rundown at the outset, but is expanded and fixed up as you complete activities, the most important of which is the ability to raise chickens that generate eggs and gain access to more farm space. Unfortunately, although it’s nice to have more room and other small improvements like an actual working front door that takes way too long to unlock, there’s not a lot of interesting things to do with the additional space you’re given indoors. You gradually unlock decorations by completing quests, but there isn’t a ton of variety to them, zero functionality to adding things like new shelves and whatnot, and the entire layout of your home is static, so you have to just work around an existing floorplan that doesn’t offer much room for expression. This means that yet another component that’s usually a major draw in life sim games feels like only the minimum amount of effort was put into it. The good news is that the home you’re given definitely nails the Shire aesthetic when it’s fully upgraded, and even if there’s not many exciting options for personalization, it at least gets the job done when it comes to fulfilling part of the hobbit fantasy.
Even if Tales of the Shire were a more interesting game than it is, it would still be pretty hard to play purely by how unacceptably bad it runs. With constant framerate hitches, pop-in, aliasing, hard crashes, and other wonky stuff that suddenly broke, I never went more than a few minutes without something going terribly wrong. The worst of it was the consistent and repeated crashes throughout my play time that forced me back to my desktop, resulting in half an hour of lost progress as I had to start the entire day over. This often happened right after I completed sharing a meal with my halfling homeys, which requires quite a bit of prep work and planning, making it just about the worst time for a crash to happen. At one point I repeated a single day five times (totaling several hours of game time), with a crash happening at the end of the day each time, to the point where I wondered if I’d permanently broken something and wouldn’t be able to progress any further.
The rest of the issues, like how inconsistent the framerate is and how objects pop up right in front of your face, are more confusing than anything else – I mean, this does not seem like a particularly demanding game and I played on a high-end PC. It’s such a bummer, specifically because the painterly art style and iconic setting of the Shire has so much potential, and almost none of that comes through when you’re seeing shrubbery pop up right in front of you as you walk around town. Then there’s the one-off bugs, like one time where my fishing line stayed in the water when I was done fishing, and it wouldn’t let me put away my rod, so I walked around Bywater with a hilariously long fishing line stretching across the entire map.
I also tried out a little bit of the Switch version and, well, let’s just say that I’d have to write a whole separate review to talk about how especially awful of an experience that was. It’s worth mentioning that near the tailend of my time with Tales of the Shire, there was an update that did improve some of the framerate issues slightly, so there’s at least hope that it will run better in the future after some patching up. But even after the most recent update, it still doesn’t run great.
Donkey Kong Bananza‘s barely been out for a week but already one very determined player has completed the game without touching a single banana.
Sharing the accomplishment on X/Twitter, AKfamilyhome wrote: “Just beat Donkey Kong Bananza with 0 bananas. Honestly a fun challenge. I recommended doing as a NG+ run after 100%.”
Perhaps most interestingly of all, unlike other achievement hunters and speedrunners, AKfamilyhome completed the challenge without any cheeky glitches or clips. Instead, they simply avoided picking up bananas — meaning they weren’t able to unlock any extra permanent health slots or improvements to DK’s base abilities via skill points.
“I skipped Zebra Bananza and didn’t have the ostrich glide, but there are still certain parts that can be bypassed with the right movement,” they added. “It’s pretty much smooth sailing at the start, figuring out some neat ways to bypass certain sections during the mid-game, and then suddenly the endgame forces you to lock in because you die in 1-2 hits,” they added.
“I don’t think there’s any unique dialogue if you beat it without any bananas, but there IS if you beat it without ever obtaining one of the Bananzas,” they teased.
Just beat Donkey Kong Bananza with 0 bananas Honestly a fun challenge I recommended doing as a NG+ run after 100% pic.twitter.com/ZM1S82gkb4
“Donkey Kong Bananza is a truly groundbreaking 3D platformer, with satisfying movement, powerful abilities, impressive destructible environments, and clever challenges that all come together in complete harmony to create Nintendo’s first Switch 2 masterpiece,” we wrote in IGN’s Donkey Kong Bananza review, awarding it an impressive 10/10.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Developer Ludogram has announced a new first-person four-player co-op horror game called Invokyr, in which you and up to three friends enter an abandoned house and dare to play a cursed board game from the 1970s. Every dice roll will result in a new trap, dark twist of the environment, wicked creature, or worse. It’s in development for PC (via Steam).
Ludogram CEO Edouard Gaudel said, “Invokyr is a love letter to the thrill of board games and the fear of the unknown. It’s about camaraderie under pressure, betrayal at the worst possible time, and the creeping dread of a house that’s watching your every move.” Watch the announcement trailer above and check out the first screenshots in the gallery below.
You’ll discover single-use dice scattered throughout the house, and rolling it results in a unique effect that can either help or hurt your chances of survival as you face off against the Gamemaster (voiced by Baldur’s Gate 3’s Amelia Tyler). You can (and probably should) work together, but you can also abandon your friends as well if the going gets tough. Meanwhile, Ludogram promises reasons for replayability in that “every run reveals new secrets, unlockable rewards, and deeper layers of the mystery that binds players to the game.”
You can wishlist Invokyr on Steam if you’re interested.
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.
Long-awaited indie sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong will be publicly playable at Gamescom on Microsoft’s Xbox booth, before its highly-anticipated launch, due sometime before the end of 2025.
Silksong sounds like it will be one of the booth’s biggest draws, alongside a first public outing for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X — the third-party portable Xbox consoles also out later this year.
The Outer Worlds 2, Xbox’s biggest first-party game for the rest of this year that’s not Call of Duty, meanwhile gets a “theater experience”, which sounds like it’ll be hands-off demo.
In terms of other playable stuff, well, Obsidian’s garden sequel Grounded 2 will be there, if you don’t want to just play the Game Preview version at home. More excitingly, Ninja Gaiden 4 gets a first public hands-on appearance, while Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is there with an “exciting city update”.
Keen to play the new Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLC? Us too, though on the Gamescom show floor Microsoft is simply showing the base game. (It’s very good but, uh, we played it last year.)
From non-Xbox studios, meanwhile, Microsoft has a long list of playable demos — including the likes of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater and Borderlands 4, plus the Xbox versions of Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade.
If you’re visiting Gamescom, the world’s biggest video games show in terms of its public attendance, Xbox will reside in its usual home within Hall 7 of the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany from August 21 to 24. Alternatively, keep an eye on IGN for all of our coverage direct from the show floor.
Glen Schofield, who co-created Dead Space, co-founded Sledgehammer Games, and most recently directed The Callisto Protocol, said “it’s tough out there” in the games industry, and admitted he had potentially “directed my last game” after failing to secure financial support for his latest prototype.
In a candid post on LinkedIn, Schofield said he’d been working with his “great artist” daughter, Nicole, who went to him with an idea for a new horror game — maybe even a new horror sub-genre, although he didn’t specify what — and had been working on the idea for the last eight months.
Alongside a “small, talented crew” of six U.S. devs and a “full crew” in the UK, Schofield said he started talking to people, most of whom “loved the concept.” Initially surmising he’d need around $17 million, the director was advised to lower the budget to “get it to $10 million,” before being told to further streamline the project to come in at around “$2-5 million.”
“So last month, we decided to walk away. Some ideas are better left untouched than done cheap,” Schofield wrote. “We had a team of six here in the States and a full crew in the UK. Now, everyone’s looking for work. They’re all talented folks — if you’re hiring, let me know.
“As for me — I’ve worked on games of every size. From two of us to over 300 devs. Spent the last 15–20 years making big AAA titles with great teams. That’s what I do. That’s what I love. But with the industry on pause, AAA feels like it’s a long ways away.”
Schofield says he’s “back to [his] art,” but admits he misses AAA development.
“I miss it all; the team, the chaos, the joy of building something for fans. I’m still around, making art, writing stories and ideas, and still cheering the industry on. But maybe I’ve directed my last game. Who knows? If so, thank you [for] playing my games.”
Striking Distance was founded over six years ago by Schofield. The studio is a subsidiary of Krafton, the parent company that owns the rights to the widely popular battle royale game PUBG. The studio was initially formed to create a narrative-driven game set in the PUBG universe, but ultimately released The Callisto Protocol, a third-person survival horror separate from PUBG that released in December 2022.
We thought The Callisto Protocol was ‘Good,’ awarding it a 7/10 in our review, writing: “The Callisto Protocol is a satisfyingly gory spiritual successor to the Dead Space series, but it’s ultimately more of a striking modern mimic than a scary new mutation.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection will release on September 30 — at least, that’s what the Xbox App was telling prospective players over the weekend.
Look now, and you may get the placeholder date of 31 December, 2025, showing on the Xbox app’s Legacy Kollection storefront (or at least I did when I checked first thing this morning), but for a brief time yesterday, players were getting a different date: either September 29 or September 30, depending upon where they were in the world.
As posters on Reddit suggest, this will more than likely get confirmed at the next Evo weekend, the annual celebration of all things fighting games, the next of which is set to take place in Las Vegas on August 1. It’s possible the release date went live a few days ahead of schedule before being quietly switched back to the placeholder date.
Players can also expect the bundle to guide them through Mortal Kombat history with behind-the-scenes materials and interviews.
“Digital Eclipse’s interactive documentary format explores how Mortal Kombat changed the way society perceived video games,” an official description from the studio says. “By using digitized humans as player sprites in an over-the-top, martial-arts fighter, the game thrilled players, shocked critics, and laid the foundation for a franchise that has thrived for more than 30 years. Hear firsthand from the original dev team of Ed Boon, John Tobias, John Vogel, and Dan Forden, along with other exclusive interviews, rare concept art, vintage marketing materials, and archival video footage.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
We’ve rounded up the best deals for Sunday, July 27, below, so don’t miss out on these limited-time offers.
M4 MacBook Air for $799
This weekend at Amazon, you can save $200 off an M4 MacBook Air. This 13-inch model includes 16GB of Unified Memory and 256GB of SSD storage, making it ideal for multitasking and running intense applications. All 2025 models support Apple Intelligence features as well.
Mario Kart World for $71.99
Mario Kart World was the big Nintendo Switch 2 launch game, and today marks the first time we’ve seen the game on sale. Nintendo opted to release the game at a price point of $79.99, but you can pick it up for $71.99 at Woot. Mario Kart World features a brand-new open world design that interconnects each of the 30 tracks. A battle royale-like mode called Knockout Tour is hugely popular among players, as it offers a racing experience unlike anything we’ve seen in Mario Kart before.
Nintendo Switch 2 Available at Walmart & Target
While Nintendo Switch 2 has been quite challenging to find if you didn’t secure one at launch, both Target and Walmart have the highly popular console in stock. This is the Mario Kart World bundle, too, which packs in a digital copy of Mario Kart World for $50. The Nintendo Switch 2 is an upgrade to Nintendo Switch in almost every way possible, featuring a 1080p display with a 120Hz refresh rate, improved Joy-Con, and much more.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for $34.99
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was my favorite game of 2024, and it’s available for just $34.99 at Woot this weekend. This is the lowest I’ve seen the PS5 copies so far, and I cannot recommend picking it up enough. Cloud and the rest of the party leave Midgar to step into the open world of Gaia for the very first time, and there is well over 100 hours of content available for you to complete.
Pre-Orders are Live for the LEGO Game Boy
This week, Nintendo and LEGO unveiled the new LEGO Game Boy set. You can assemble your very own Game Boy in LEGO form, and there’s even images of games included for the screen. Plus, this set includes buildable cartridges of some of the system’s most popular games, including Super Mario Land and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake for $34.99
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was one of the most enjoyable RPGs of 2024, featuring a gorgeous remade HD-2D world and voice acting. If you haven’t had the chance to check this one out yet, Amazon has copies available for only $34.99. This is by far the definitive way to experience this classic, and now is the perfect time to catch up before Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake this Fall.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land for $44.99
Kirby and the Forgotten Land was a brilliant release on Nintendo Switch, and an expanded Nintendo Switch 2 release is set to be released next month. While the standalone Switch 2 release is priced at $80, you can pick up a Switch copy for $44.99 right now at Woot, so you will only need to purchase the $20 upgrade pack to play Star-Crossed World.
Save on Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom for Switch 2
Woot also has both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo Switch 2 on sale. These editions pack in both the original game on Nintendo Switch in addition to the Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade. Both games are some of the best experiences on Nintendo Switch, and they are even better on Switch 2 with support for higher resolutions and frame rates.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection for $26.99
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection brought both Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit in one package, with Prosecutor’s Gambit releasing in English for the very first time. This release features updated visuals, new animations, gallery mode, conversation history, and more. You can even switch between the old and new sprites! Both of these games are quite excellent, and I absolutely recommend picking this up, especially for only $26.99.
Persona 3 Reload for $20
Persona 3 Reload is available at Amazon for just $20. This was one of the most anticipated RPGs of 2024, and for the most part, it delivered. The mystery of the Dark Hour is compelling, and Persona 3’s cast of characters shine bright in a story that has quite a few twists and turns. The Episode Aigis DLC features epilogue content that was originally depicted in The Answer, so you can experience everything Persona 3 has to offer with Reload.
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition for $47.99
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition launched earlier this year, and it’s still one of the biggest RPGs you can jump into on any platform. The remaster introduced numerous quality-of-life updates that were much needed, in addition to a brand-new epilogue chapter. We gave the game a 9/10 in our review, stating, “Xenoblade Chronicles X was already one of the Wii U’s best games, and this Definitive Edition does more than enough to justify another trip to planet Mira.”
Tarkir: Dragonstorm was Magic: The Gathering’s third set of 2025, and its focus on big ol’ dragons and Tarkir’s clans was a winning combo that stands as the best in-universe set for a while.
Not only was it the perfect tonic to the silliness of Aetherdrift, it also offered plenty of valuable cards from dragons, to behemoths, to much, much more.
Using data from the fine folks at TCGPlayer, we’ve put together a list of the most valuable cards in the set, judging by their market price at the time of writing. Have you packed any of these? They might be worth more than you think!
Almost every entry on this list has the slick Halo Foil treatment, and kicking us off is Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant.
‘Mr Dragon’ himself is a low-cost card that builds up when you’re bringing in dragon-type creatures.
Elspeth, Storm Slayer (Showcase) – $66.97
Spoiler alert, we’ll be seeing Elspeth, Storm Slayer again on this list, but this showcase version of the Planeswalker is around $70 right now.
Elspeth lets you create tokens and buff creature tokens, while also being able to destroy a big threat on the board.
Ugin, Eye of the Storms (Showcase) – $76.69
I own a non-Showcase version of Ugin, Eye of the Storms, and it’s a ridiculously fun Planeswalker for colorless decks owing to its ability to add three colorless mana at no cost.
Add to that some nice lifegain and the option to cheat out nonland permanents and you’ve got a fun card to build around. We’ll see Ugin again soon…
All-Out Assault (Showcase – Halo Foil) – $88.73
The kind of card that, as the name suggests, could cause a huge swing towards victory, All-Out Assault gives counters and deathtouch, and can give you a second combat phase.
The Halo Foil version can reach $90 and above in good condition, so keep an eye out if you’re still opening packs.
Allowing you to refresh your hand at the end of your turn if you’ve cast plenty of spells, Narset, Jeskai Waymaster is ideal for any deck packed with low-mana cards.
This Halo Foil version has a market value of $90, but we’ve seen near-mint versions listed for $100.
A card that stops your opponent from using activated abilities, attached to a 3/3 flying body that costs just three mana? Yeah, we like Clarion Conqueror.
This Halo Foil can reach as high as $140, but the market price is around $120.
Dracogenesis (Showcase – Halo Foil) – $150.74
The kind of enchantment that can spell doom for opponents, Dracogenesis lets you play Dragon spells without paying a mana cost.
This Halo Foil is up to $150, but there are listings pushing it for closer to $320.
We told you she’d be back! Elspeth, Storm Slayer’s Halo Foil variant is going for a whopping $400 right now, but that’s actually slightly below market value.
Snap it up if you’re keen!
Ugin, Eye of the Storms (Showcase – Halo Foil) – $443.99
Finally, this Ugin, Eye of the Storms looks incredible with its Halo Foil treatment, and turns an already powerful card into a thing of beauty.
It won’t come cheap, though. While market value is just shy of $450, you can expect to pay close to $500.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
We’ve rounded up the best deals for Saturday, July 26, below, so don’t miss out on these limited-time offers.
Mario Kart World for $71.99
Mario Kart World was the big Nintendo Switch 2 launch game, and today marks the first time we’ve seen the game on sale. Nintendo opted to release the game at a price point of $79.99, but you can pick it up for $71.99 at Woot. Mario Kart World features a brand-new open world design that interconnects each of the 30 tracks. A battle royale-like mode called Knockout Tour is hugely popular among players, as it offers a racing experience unlike anything we’ve seen in Mario Kart before.
Nintendo Switch 2 Available at Walmart & Target
While Nintendo Switch 2 has been quite challenging to find if you didn’t secure one at launch, both Target and Walmart have the highly popular console in stock. This is the Mario Kart World bundle, too, which packs in a digital copy of Mario Kart World for $50. The Nintendo Switch 2 is an upgrade to Nintendo Switch in almost every way possible, featuring a 1080p display with a 120Hz refresh rate, improved Joy-Con, and much more.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for $34.99
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was my favorite game of 2024, and it’s available for just $34.99 at Woot this weekend. This is the lowest I’ve seen the PS5 copies so far, and I cannot recommend picking it up enough. Cloud and the rest of the party leave Midgar to step into the open world of Gaia for the very first time, and there is well over 100 hours of content available for you to complete.
Pre-Orders are Live for the LEGO Game Boy
This week, Nintendo and LEGO unveiled the new LEGO Game Boy set. You can assemble your very own Game Boy in LEGO form, and there’s even images of games included for the screen. Plus, this set includes buildable cartridges of some of the system’s most popular games, including Super Mario Land and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake for $34.99
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was one of the most enjoyable RPGs of 2024, featuring a gorgeous remade HD-2D world and voice acting. If you haven’t had the chance to check this one out yet, Amazon has copies available for only $34.99. This is by far the definitive way to experience this classic, and now is the perfect time to catch up before Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake this Fall.
Save on Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom for Switch 2
Woot also has both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo Switch 2 on sale. These editions pack in both the original game on Nintendo Switch in addition to the Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade. Both games are some of the best experiences on Nintendo Switch, and they are even better on Switch 2 with support for higher resolutions and frame rates.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection for $26.99
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection brought both Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit in one package, with Prosecutor’s Gambit releasing in English for the very first time. This release features updated visuals, new animations, gallery mode, conversation history, and more. You can even switch between the old and new sprites! Both of these games are quite excellent, and I absolutely recommend picking this up, especially for only $26.99.
