Category: IGN

If you’re feeling intimidated by the growing complexity of Call of Duty: Warzone and want somewhere to train, you won’t have to suffer on the battlefield anymore. Instead, Warzone is officially introducing the ability to play against bots via a mode called Bootcamp.

An expansion of the Modern Warfare III Training Course that launched in Season 2, Bootcamp is a Quad-only training mode set on Urzikstan that is designed to give players a “snapshot of the real-deal Call of Duty: Warzone experience.” It features up to 20 players via mode-specific matchmaking, and can be accessed either by partying up or via a fill-squad.

Bots are only available in Bootcamp, so their integration is fairly limited, and the new mode also won’t progress the various Daily/Weekly challenges or other in-game quests. Activision said in its announcement that if bots are introduced in any other mode that it it will “ensure the community is informed ahead of time.”

While never really acknowledged by Activision, Warzone is long believed to have had bots in one form or another, usually to fill out games or smooth out the ranked matchmaking. Bots are also a common sight in other shooters like Fortnite.

Elsewhere, Activision has revealed all of the details on Modern Warfare and Warzone Season 3, including the return of Rebirth Island, Warzone Mobile integration, and Snoop Dogg. Season begins April 3 at 9am PT.

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.

With few major games on the horizon and the Switch 2 seemingly delayed, Nintendo of America’s testing department is undergoing major changes, according to a new report from Kotaku that includes a statement from Nintendo.

In its statement, Nintendo acknowledged that it is restructuring its internal testing, which will “involve some contractor assignments ending, as well as the creation of a significant number of new full-time employee positions.”

“For all assignments that are ending, the contractors’ agencies, with [Nintendo of America’s] support, will offer severance packages and provide assistance during their transition,” Nintendo said in its statement. “For those contractor associates who will be leaving us, we are tremendously grateful for the important contributions they’ve made to our business, and we extend our heartfelt thanks for their hard work and service to Nintendo.”

One of the best trends in games in recent years has been a greater thoughtfulness in how diverse characters and stories are portrayed. While that work takes a number of different forms, one critical way developers are making this happen is through improved technology, specifically around animation and motion capture. One key example is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which saw Insomniac Games take advantage of a group of talented actors, consultants, and lots of fun little motion capture sensors to bring the Deaf character Hailey Cooper and her use of American Sign Language (ASL) to life.

Last week at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), a group of animators on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 gave a talk entitled ‘Thwips and Hugs: The Animation of ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.’ In it, the group discussed the intricacies and challenges of animating elements of the game such as the Sandman fight and various QTEs. But they kicked off with the story of Hailey, whose portrayal may be one of Spider-Man 2’s most impressive accomplishments.

Hailey was introduced as an original character in the first Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, but got an expanded role in the sequel as she and Miles start dating, including a mission all her own. During the talk, associate animation director Lindsay Thompson explained the work that went into ensuring Hailey was an accurate and thoughtful portrayal of a young, Deaf, Black teenager growing up in New York City.

To start with, Hailey was portrayed and fully motion captured by Deaf actor Natasha Ofili, who herself frequently offered guidance and suggestions stemming from her own experiences. Insomniac also hired Deaf consultants from Hyper Nova to answer questions about Deaf culture, consult on scripts, and interpret the scripts into ASL.Thompson says the consultants went over every single scene and shot that had ASL in it to make sure the performances were clear and understandable.

For animators, getting accurate mocap data was critical. Insomniac ensured every hearing cast member had a Deaf body double on the mocap stage, and changed up how the actors would record different scenes depending on the complexity of the ASL being used.

“We had to figure out the best way to shoot our hearing cast’s spoken performances, along with our Deaf body doubles that would work best for Natasha to play against,” Thompson said. “For [one particular scene], we ran them side-by-side so Natasha had signing people to play off of, but could still see Nadji [Jeter, who plays Miles Morales] and Griffin [Puatu, who plays Ganke Lee] doing their speaking performance. Each Deaf cast member had their own interpreter so we could all communicate on set. And we also had the Hyper Novas on stage to help determine the scripts with the cast and plan out signing performance.”

The scene Thompson showed as she explained this concept initially had all the actors standing side-by-side in a big crowd, allowing the animators to capture the body doubles’ signing performances as well as the main cast’s emotional performance simultaneously. She pointed out that the cast’s mocap gloves had far more sensors on them than is typical. Hands, she said, are normally a challenge for animators to capture very intricate movement. The extra markers allowed them to collect more accurate data.

But having all the actors side-by-side at once wasn’t always the ideal formation. “Sometimes it made sense to have all of our Deaf cast standing and playing against each other. But other times, it was more important to have Natasha face-to-face with Nadji, while his body double would sign next to or in front of him, so Nadji could match his performance.”

Sometimes, the main cast would even perform the signs themselves. For longer conversations, the body doubles would perform the signing to ensure all complex signs and ideas were accurate. But for shorter chats, Insomniac decided it would be more authentic to have the actors themselves sign.

“Seeing as they were playing a more inexperienced signer, it was authentic for them not to be signing as fluently as a Deaf person would,” Thompson explained. “We had to consider each character’s experience and knowledge with ASL. So Ganke, Miles’ best friend, is working very hard to learn. Miles is probably the most comfortable and experienced when speaking with Hailey. Rio, Miles’ mom, is clearly just beginning to learn because Miles has just started dating Hailey. So we made sure her double didn’t sign as fluently and experienced.”

Thompson added that at the very end of the game, a certain character signs “It’s nice to meet you,” in ASL to Hailey. “We approached it as though he had literally watched a YouTube video before coming over and saying something to her. So our interpreter was like, ‘Well, that maybe wasn’t quite it but that looks like somebody who’s just trying to say a nice phrase to somebody.’ So yeah, it was pretty cool.”

Near the end of the talk, during the Q&A, Thompson added one parting thought about the importance of capturing as much data as possible from both Deaf and hearing performers to fully tell the story Insomniac developers wanted to tell.

“We’re a performance forward studio, so we always want the most emotional and authentic performance,” she said. “There’s where it comes into collaboration. Our Deaf actors and our main cast, they were treated equally on the set and we want both of their performances.”

Spider-Man 2’s impressive performances and animation are among the many things we loved about the game, which we gave an 8/10 and called “Insomniac’s best tale yet.” At GDC, it received multiple nominations for the Game Developers Choice Awards, and in a separate talk at the conference we learned that its acclaimed fast travel system was almost cut entirely.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Activision has fully pulled back the curtain on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone Season 3, including first looks at the return of fan-favorite maps, new weapons, and more.

The Call of Duty team showed off all of the new content in detail in a blog post on its website along with a release date of April 3 at 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET across all platforms. Per usual, some drops are being held off for the undated mid-season update, but there will still be plenty to dive into next week. Highlights include six Core 6v6 maps – Emergency, Tanked, 6 Star, Growhouse (previously known as Sphere from Call of Duty: Vanguard), Checkpoint (mid-season), and Grime (mid-season) – the long-awaited return of Rebirth Island, new Modes, and Battle Pass Operators that include a playable Snoop Dogg.

Season 3 also brings the full integration of Warzone Mobile, meaning player unlocks and content additions will be shared across all versions of the experience. Activision boasts that Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone Season 3 is “one of the biggest content drops in Call of Duty history. It’s quite the claim, but it’s pretty easy to see why the team is happy to show off. Just looking at the roadmap image alone reveals a lineup of content that’s tough to rival.

Today, workers at Sega of America union AEGIS-CWA have announced they have ratified their first contract with Sega, less than a year after their recognition as a legal union.

In a press release, AEGIS-CWA revealed that the worker vote to ratify the contract passed, allowing the contract to go into effect. The contract includes a number of worker protections, including raises for all unit members (roughly 150 full-time and temporary employees), Just Cause protections, layoff protections including a recall list and severance, commitment to crediting all workers on games they work on, and a number of other benefits.

“One of our most notable items is our grievance process,” said Sega localization editor and AEGIS-CWA member Em Geiger. “There’s extra security knowing we have in place a system for bringing issues to the table, such as arguing Just Cause in a potential layoff. If the company wants to do something that the unit doesn’t like, we can grieve it, bargain over it, have our say before anything is finalized. And concerning Just Cause, we’re now the second unit in this industry in North America to have protections against arbitrary discipline and discharge.”

Sega of America workers first announced their desire to unionize in April of last year, citing desires for better pay, improved benefits, and workload balance. The union received legal recognition the following July following a vote, making it the largest multi-department union of organized industry workers, encompassing Brand Marketing, Games as a Service, Localization, Marketing, Product Development Ops, Sales, Quality Assurance, and other divisions.

There are times when Open Roads hits alarmingly close to home. Early on in this interactive road trip, your 16-year-old protagonist Tess turns around to reach for a bag perched in the back of her mom’s vintage station wagon – without skipping a beat, she’s accosted by her mother, Opal, from behind the wheel. The altercation flooded my brain with memories of family road trips in the early 2000s: “You can’t just turn around. It’s unsafe,” my dad would say from his vehicular throne, despite how frustratingly close I was to grabbing my Game Boy. Parental authority and nostalgia are just a few of the powerful tools Open Roads harnesses to deliver a playful and relatable story about coming of age in the early aughts, however, hastily resolved problems and the lack of an engaging mystery also make this adventure a little too predictable to leave a lasting impression.

Set in the wake of her grandmother’s passing, Tess and her mother are forced to navigate grief and economic uncertainty as they cope with the breakdown of their nuclear family. Tess’s father is distant, in touch via text alone, while her mother maintains a tough exterior for her daughter’s sake. Stuck in the middle, Tess’s optimistic outlook shines through but hides a trove of complex emotions. Open Roads’ exceptional Hollywood leads, Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever, amplify their uncomfortably raw exchanges – Russell’s Opal is believably guarded but capable of arresting warmth, whereas Dever’s Tess balances youthful naivete with spirited angst. Tonal subtext abounds as emotions run high, and I felt connected to these characters as early as the opening back-and-forth.

Open Roads’ art style leaves a lasting first impression as well. Hand-drawn 2D characters are layered on top of meticulously detailed 3D environments, giving this world a unique, dreamlike quality. Imperfections augment scribbled notes, juxtaposing them against the angular digital backdrop – and I couldn’t help but inspect the scratches and flecks of dust on a chunky iMac lookalike I came across at one point. While this trip is mostly isolating by design, the touches of life, like soot particles and trees swaying in the wind, make you feel more at peace in the solitude.

In the process of sorting through her late grandmother’s belongings, Tess uncovers a curious briefcase of relics, complete with a cryptic postcard from an unknown sender beckoning her grandma to join them. Keen to escape the immediate burdens of loss, Tess convinces a reluctant Opal to cross the country and unravel a generational family mystery. Melancholic but strangely engrossing, Open Roads almost entirely consists of rummaging through dioramas lost to time. From derelict summer houses to musty hotel rooms, each new location contains sprinklings of forgotten belongings to interact with alongside precious tidbits of environmental storytelling I relished in examining with a fine-tooth comb. An admittedly repetitive process, standout items like charming childhood drawings that mask coping mechanisms with superheroes and classic rented DVDs managed to keep me on the hook while effectively time-stamping each hazy era they were from.

A light smattering of systems allow you to engage your inner holistic detective to piece together the past – but don’t expect deep puzzles or critical thinking. Across its roughly three-and-a-half-hour run time, Open Roads didn’t get more complicated than finding an odd opening to another room or searching out a partially hidden letter. The more you scour, the more you’ll confront Open Roads’ past-meets-present storytelling that revolves around Opal’s own childhood traumas, which are finding new life in the issues now plaguing her daughter. Like phantom wounds passed down through the generations, their happy-go-lucky veneer masks troubling truths that are, for the most part, intriguing to unfurl.

Interacting with items can prompt Tess’s inner monologue and offer a window into her developing psyche, while plot-forwarding objects trigger eye-opening conversations with her mother. Seeking out as many of these touchy scenes as possible helped ground me in Open Roads story and compelled me to tinker with all the toys I could find in search of more emotive exposition. Unfortunately, such loaded artifacts were few and far between, but the conversations surrounding them felt sincere and created a nervous atmosphere that kept me guessing as the family’s secrets started to surface.

Environmental inspections are spliced between highway drives where Tess and Opal process the latest day while coasting to the next spot. Where static locations focus on Opal’s murky upbringing and faulty memory, the car conversations center around Tess’s present issues with her mom. Initially, the mysterious man’s letters and postcards appear to be the hook, but the persistent interpersonal turmoil is by far Open Roads’ defining asset.

It was disappointing then that as the player-come-passenger in this journey, I began to feel like a ghost in the machine, privy to all the surrounding context but unable to engage with it meaningfully. Even though I could radio surf, flick door locks, and text as the autumnal foliage passed me by, I felt distant from Tess as the story soldiered on. Despite the amount of time I’d spent in her head, Tess’s actions felt unusually measured for a teenager dealing with such traumatic events. I often wished that Open Roads would stop pulling its punches until, surprisingly quickly, the credits rolled. A few breezy puzzles offered fleeting resistance, but the twists and turns of the story didn’t provoke the emotion I expected when they finally arrived. The pieces of this quilt never quite stitched together for me.

This feeling is most frustrating when you’re offered options in dialogue. I was often keen to chase certain plot threads, but my choices always tended to lead to the same place, and the inconsequentiality of what I thought was important subtext became disheartening when I realized this in my second playthrough. The investigative spirit in its early-game explorations was never nurtured during Open Road’s conversations. Heavy discussions about mental health felt like an opportunity to level the playing field between Tess and her mother, but such moments aren’t allowed to breathe in a believable way. A safe and disappointing climax only confirmed my fears, providing an easy answer that felt like a messily applied band-aid over a far more complex wound. I was left longing for more of the ugly, believable humanity we all partake in, but Open Roads decidedly orbits.

As a massive fan of survival games and Dune, I’ll admit to being a bit skeptical about an open-world survival game that takes place on the famously barren planet of Arrakis, but after an hour-long presentation of the upcoming Dune: Awakening, those concerns have disappeared entirely. Based on the hands-off showcasing of what’s to come when this MMO survival game hits early access later this year, it certainly appears that developer Funcom has taken their hard-won learnings from the underrated Conan Exiles and applied it to this ambitious multiplayer world set in one of sci-fi’s most beloved galaxies. Whether it was the impressively detailed character creation options, the intricate RPG systems filled with skill trees and craftables, or the absolute insanity of trying to outrun a Shai-Hulud or escape a massive sandstorm, Dune: Awakening appears to be on track to become the sci-fi survival game I’ve always dreamt of, and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

How do you make a survival game set in an utterly desolate wasteland of sand? Well, according to Funcom, the answer lies in the “hidden spaces” of Arrakis. Described in Frank Herbert’s novels, these hidden pockets of shade and refuge are home to life and micro-biomes that will be altogether unfamiliar to those who have only seen the movies, but Dune: Awakening hopes to lean pretty heavily on their existence to fill the massive desert with things for players to do – whether that be finding a pocket of shelter to build a base in, delving into a cave that’s home to hostile creatures, or taking down remote enemy bases in search of loot and resources. In fact, the wide-open empty spaces filled with hot sand might be more of an asset than a hindrance, as it allows for a heat stroke mechanic where players are punished for spending time in direct sunlight with some pretty devastating debuffs, meaning players will instead need to dart from shelter-to-shelter, battling the elements as they explore the world and its many hidden spaces.

Combined with the forever game of “the floor is lava” that is dodging sandworms on Arrakis, players will need to remain on the move constantly, and develop strategies for managing their water reserves, protecting against the heat, and, of course, engaging in the never-ending struggle for all-important spice. In one leg of the demo, players worked together to claim a massive deposit of spice while keeping an eye out for the ever-looming threat of the Shai-Hulud, drawn to their activity in the desert…only to be unexpectedly overwhelmed by a sandstorm instead, which swallowed them and their precious cargo along with them. In another section, a group of players worked together to infiltrate a high-level facility filled with rare materials and dangerous enemies, making sure to harvest the blood of fallen baddies to replenish their rapidly depleting water reserves. Before the demo, I had a lot of questions about how a Dune survival game would even work without becoming extremely monotonous in short order, but by the end I found myself wondering why in the heck someone hadn’t made one sooner – seeing all the clever ways Dune: Awakening plans to make brilliant use of Dune’s unique lore made me a believer.

Beyond the major things Dune: Awakening aims to get right, the demo also included all these little details that took my hype to the next level, like how they showed off an incredibly detailed character creation engine that included things like choosing your home planet and origin to decide some of your starting traits and aspects of your appearance, or how the in-depth skill trees and crafting system allowed you to drastically augment your playstyle from a telekinetic mentalist with a bag of supernatural tricks to run-and-gun soldiers with a bag of high explosives. As someone who has spent a good deal of time with the Dune tabletop RPG, dreaming up the characters I’d like to portray in that universe, this looks like it’ll scratch an itch I’ve had for decades, and I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on it when it hits early access later this year.

No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games has unveiled its 27th major update, dubbed Orbital.

Hot on the heels of the release of the Omega expedition, the Orbital update brings a complete overhaul to Space Stations. Until now these have been perhaps the only part of No Man’s Sky that wasn’t procedurally generated, Hello Games said. “Engine improvements have allowed us to create vast interior spaces and exterior spaces, with improved reflection and metallic surfaces.”

Outside, Space Station exteriors are said to be “at a scale never seen before, and are hugely varied.” Inside, Stations have been “transformed, and are now vast, procedurally generated, and incredibly diverse.” They feature new shops, gameplay, and activities, and are now customized based on system, race and locale.

Stations also contain a ship editor, which lets players customize their ships and create new starship types. Hello Games said a ship editor was “perhaps our most requested feature of all time.”

“We haven’t introduced customisation previously, because so many players love exploring to find the perfect ship already out there to purchase,” Hello Games explained. “In keeping with exploration, to customize their ship, travelers gather and trade parts for their ships as they explore, salvaging the best components from wrecks and ruins.”

Elsewhere, Orbital adds a new Guild system, making joining Guilds and increasing reputation a much larger part of the game. You can own a freighter and even build up a fleet of frigates in No Man’s Sky. “Now you can send that frigate fleet on away missions where if they get into trouble, as frigate captain, you can perform daring rescues,” Hello Games teased. “Players can scramble your squadron of fighters, and warp to battles and engage your attackers.”

And finally, there are engine improvements, a user interface refresh, and more. “It’s a huge update with several major features that have been on player’s wishlists for a long time,” Hello Games said. “We have a lot more planned this year as our journey continues.”

It’s a busy time for Hello Games, which is working on its next game, Light No Fire. It’s a game 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.

If stylishly wielding a sword as an anime-style female warrior traversing a post-apocalyptic world left behind by its inhabitants sounds anything like NieR: Automata, well, that’s because Stellar Blade director Kim Hyung Tae was directly inspired by Square Enix’s 2017 hit.

I’m probably not the only one who imagined Stellar Blade would play similarly to NieR: Automata, too: a stylish but casual action game that allows you to beat the crap out of your enemies without too much stress. However, from the moment I got the hold of the controller, I realized that I was going to have a much more nerve-wracking experience than I expected, in the best possible way.

That doesn’t mean Stellar Blade doesn’t feel stylish or exhilarating. As soon as you start mixing up heavy and light attacks with the square and triangle button, it feels good to play.

But Stellar Blade puts a much bigger emphasis on defensive skills than I was expecting. Reading the timing of enemy attacks for well-timed parries and dodges is almost as important as it was in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Parrying multiple attacks to disrupt your enemy’s balance allows you to perform a special attack called Retribution. With so many recent games inspired by Sekiro’s gameplay structure, this alone doesn’t come off as anything particularly original anymore, but Stellar Blade takes things one step further.

Besides your regular dodge mechanic, Stellar Blade introduces Blink and Repulse. Both are dodging skills that counter the enemy’s attack, but they can only be used against specific attacks. Blink is utilized by pressing the Circle button and moving the analog stick forward simultaneously, while Repulse requires you to press Circle and move backwards. At first, it can be challenging to instantly know and react to an enemy attack that can be countered by Blink or Repulse, but once you get the hang of it, parrying and dodging a series of attacks only to deliver a devastating counterattack at the end feels incredible. It makes you realize just how much Stellar Blade rewards the time you take to learn attack patterns.

In games that put a high emphasis on parrying and dodging, I often find myself playing a bit too defensively. Thanks to a great set of offensive tools, I didn’t have the same problem with Stellar Blade. Beta Skills – which can be utilized once your gauge is full – can cancel an enemy’s attack if the timing is right. There is also an attack that allows you to quickly get close to the enemy after dodging from a distance. Delivering a series of attacks with the Square and Triangle buttons, canceling your enemy’s attack with a well-timed Beta Skill only to finish them off with yet another combo can feel just as great as the parrying and dodging. Stellar Blade provides the player with both great defensive and offensive skills, which makes it feel balanced and deep. Being able to take different strategies depending on the enemy type is great in itself, but it feels like Stellar Blade has enough depth and variety for players to find their own unique style to tackle the challenging combat.

Stellar Blade’s wide array of gear can complement that playstyle. You can find and equip gear that decreases the damage you take in melee combat, gear that speeds up your attacks, gear that increases the damage of combo attacks, and much more. Luckily, the gear you equip for these stat boosts is not related to the appearance of Eve, Stellar Blade’s protagonist. Players will be able to unlock and wear a multitude of costumes which do not affect your character build.

At a certain point in the game, Eve will become able to use a long-range gun-type weapon as well. Shooting projectiles from an over-the-shoulder camera perspective makes it feel like a typical third-person shooter. While melee combat remains the main focus, some instances require the use of your gun in order to advance, and apparently some stages are designed for this weapon, but I didn’t get to play any of those stages.

I did get to use the gun in a fight against Stalker, one of Stellar Blade’s creepy bosses. By successfully countering a specific attack with Repulse, a weak spot is unveiled next to Stalker’s head. Heavy damage can be dealt if you are quick enough to fire at this weak spot. I also found myself relying on the gun whenever I was out of potions, as attacking from a distance wasn’t nearly as risky as attacking with my blade. At the very least, the gun should function as yet another option in Stellar Blade’s already robust combat.

The bosses I got to fight all had a wide array of attack patterns that fundamentally changed once they headed into a different phase. While overwhelming at first, after a few tries I realized how their attacks were designed for me to utilize the parrying, dodging and other skills that Stellar Blade had taught me at that point.

Stellar Blade has two difficulty settings: Normal Mode and Story Mode. While calling it a Soulslike would make it sound more difficult than it actually is, in Normal Mode regular enemies can kill you if you let your guard down. On my first few attempts, bosses felt quite challenging as well.

From a game design perspective, Stellar Blade does draw a lot of inspiration from the Soulsborne genre. Camps feel just like Bonfire checkpoints, you can unlock shortcuts that lead you back to those checkpoints, and be prepared for surprise attacks from enemies placed just around a corner

When playing in Story Mode, the game feels a lot more forgiving, and you can turn on an accessibility option called Action Assist that tells you the right timing for parrying and dodging in QTE fashion.

I liked that camps don’t just function as a place that restores your health and refills your potions, but provides some actual relaxation for Eve and the player. Watching Eve kick back on her chair while playing your choice of song on the record player is a good way to take a break. At these camps, Eve occasionally has conversations with her friends, and the game can reward you with flashbacks and other events. Some events only occur at specific camps, so finding all the camps functions as a nice extra for completionists or those who want to dig deeper into Stellar Blade’s world and characters.

You can buy items and learn new skills at camps as well. Newly obtained skills can be tried out in the game’s training room, but even if you don’t, Stellar Blade will remind you of that skill during the first combat session in the main game. Stellar Blade has many small details like this that made me feel like I was being taken great care of. For example, whenever the Beta Skill gauge is full, the game’s UI will notify you of this. While it may sound like an afterthought, for someone who often gets caught up in the action and forgets to look at the gauge like me, it goes a long way.

While Stellar Blade is combat focused, I experienced some simple puzzles and platforming as well. Entering a code in order to open a door was so straightforward that I didn’t even feel bad to refer to the hint feature.

While not particularly spectacular, platforming sessions like moving wooden boards on a water surface by swimming to then climb on them and jump to a nearby ladder were decent enough to provide some welcome variety. Speaking of swimming, Eve can swim underwater as well, which I found somewhat rare for a combat-focused action game like Stellar Blade. In typical videogame fashion, swimming to the bottom of the water rewarded me with a treasure chest. What else would you expect?

While mostly linear, the stage I got to play was wide enough for a few detours with other hidden treasure chests and optional enemies. I got the impression that Stellar Blade takes exploration seriously as well, at least for an action game. In the main game, players can explore a city called Xion as well as some less linear areas. While the depth of its exploration remains to be seen, Stellar Blade’s action alone was more than enough to get me excited for its April 26 release on PlayStation 5.

Esra Krabbe is a stellar editor at IGN Japan.

Stellar Blade preorders for PS5 are currently discounted using code CHICK15 (see here), with over £10 off the RRP and bringing the game down to just £59.46 for a limited time in the Spring sales. We’ll leave a handy link to the Stellar Blade preorder discount just below, but it’s also worth checking out all the other deals available right now as well.

This is part of a sitewide sale for retailers via eBay, including brands or retailers like Adidas, The Game Collection, Nike, ShopTo, Dell, Lenovo, and more. CHICK15 promo code will last until the end of the day on March 29, with 15% off almost everything from trusted sellers. This includes over 2100 stores, with a low minimum spend of £9.99, alongside a max discount of £75, and a total of three redemptions of the promo code.

Other big deals in the sale include a discount on critically acclaimed PS5 exclusive Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, alongside brand new offers on DualSense Controllers, and even a nice little bonus deal on Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League just before the launch of Season One.

And, while we’re here, we also thought we’d let you know about the amazing offer ongoing at VoucherCodes. Spending £30 or more at eBay during the sale? You can get a £10 grocery voucher for free, or £20 if you spend £60 or more (see here for more details). This is well worth taking advantage of if you’re making any purchases in the easter sale and beyond, so keep it in mind. For more amazing UK discounts, ensure you’re following @IGNUKDeals on Twitter/X.

If you want the games but find yourself lacking in a PlayStation 5, then now is the time to cash in on another great deal. The new(ish) PS5 Slim has dropped down to just £390 for Amazon Prime members in the Spring Sale, or you can score the PS5 Slim Digital Edition for less than £372 instead. Stocks of PS Portals have also finally started to show up at various online retailers. We always keep a keen eye out for PS Portal drops so make sure to follow us on X/Twitter @IGNUKDeals to get up-to-date stock updates.

Earlier in the month, Stellar Blade Korean developer Shift Up published – and then unpublished – a demo for its upcoming sleek action game, Stellar Blade, ahead of its launch on PlayStation 5 next month. It has now been confirmed that a demo for the game will officially go live on March 29.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.