Category: IGN

If I could, I would spend hours in the world of Hyper Light Breaker doing nothing in particular. I’d settle my character on the edge of a bright pastel cliff and gaze into the distance, where crumbling skyscrapers and strange rock formations silhouette against a neon sky. I’d let the soothing electronic soundtrack wash over me and observe the way the day/night cycle changed the Shadow of the Colossus-sized broadsword protruding from the earth in the distance. Maybe I’d see if a friend wanted to chat with this ‘80s sci-fi novel cover as a backdrop, before hopping on a hoverboard and skating off into that whimsical, colorful horizon to see what’s beyond.

But Hyper Light Breaker will not let me roleplay truancy. I’m in the Overgrowth with a purpose: hunting the minions of the Abyss King. For my hands-on preview, developer Heart Machine plunked me into a pre-generated world suitable for a beginner, though in the full game each run will take place in a unique, procedurally generated world. My first foes are little slime creatures easily dispatched with a few sword swings. And I’m delighted to find that each hit feels just as solid and chonky as I hoped back in my original hands-off preview last year. Around a bend are bigger enemies – humanoid creatures with a bit more speed and damage behind them – so I take advantage of a homing melee attack to successfully chain together smooth combos between enemies. A bit further on, I fire a battery-powered gun to dispatch some snipers so I can safely proceed up a steep hill.

I tried three different pre-built loadouts for the demo, though in the final game you’ll be able to customize them however you like. My favorite melee weapon is a pair of knives, fast and snappy but weaker, and I struggle more with an enormous, slow, and hard-hitting broadsword. A shotgun proves useful against packs of wolves, but I like the subtle but helpful snap-aiming feature of the pistol when I spot some weird one-eyed bats flapping around in a nearby forest. As I expected, my favorite special ability drops a giant cube on the heads of everyone in front of me. It’s effective when I’m surrounded and struggling, which I often am, because even in an early demo area Hyper Light Breaker isn’t especially forgiving. I left the demo retaining a vendetta against a giant tree monster that took me out in just a few whacks, and I’m told that guy wasn’t even a boss monster!

Hyper Light Breaker is an extraction roguelike, so while I spent a lot of the demo just putzing around getting a feel for different cool glow swords, it turns out that’s (mostly) a valid strategy early on. The player’s goal is to defeat the Abyss King, who can only be unlocked by besting a series of boss monsters scattered across different biomes in a single run, who in turn are only unlocked by completing a number of other tasks out in the world, most of which also include defeating enemies. The bosses themselves are hard. I met a wolf-themed one that landed on my head and kicked my inexperienced butt in about five seconds flat. Maybe having friends around will help, as Hyper Light Breaker will feature online co-op. But even so, instead of beelining to these guys, early runs at Hyper Light Breaker will largely involve running around, killing smaller stuff, finding upgrades, and taking it to certain points on the map to be extracted and saved for future runs. Then leave before you get killed, and start afresh. Sometimes it’s better to quit while you’re ahead.

With some enemies cleared out I’m able to hop on a hoverboard and scoot around the environment a little, riding over water and neatly gliding down hills. Hyper Light Breaker takes some cues from Solar Ash’s parkour, especially evident in the smooth way you can swoop up on ledges that are juuuuust too high or chain airdashes into other moves. I liked the on-foot movement and the ways in which it gracefully melded into combat, but I’ll just say it: I wish the hoverboard was cooler! It’s a little slow and clunky! I hope they can lean into the Solar Ash of it all and make it feel a little faster and a little more epic.

Missing from the demo was any clue as to Hyper Light Breaker’s story. I did get to run around a little hub town briefly and enjoy its cyberpunk fusions of nature and tech, populated by an adorable cast of NPCs. But none of them spoke to me in this demo. Like Hyper Light Drifter, I’m told Breaker’s story is told in images and not words, and given the pedigree of the studio I’m expecting something lovely. But for now, all I know is I’m a person with a cool sword and a cool gun who keeps going out into the Overgrowth to chase down an Abyss King. I know my ultimate verdict on Breaker is going to hinge heavily on how well it can weave a story through a multiplayer, roguelike structure, but given the excellence of Drifter, I’m willing to let Heart Machine keep its secrets just a little bit longer.

My demo of Hyper Light Breaker largely confirmed everything I’d hoped and expected when I first saw the game a year ago. It’s mysterious and colorful, movement feels good and combat satisfying, enemies are challenging, customization holds promise, and the music belongs on vinyl. Above all, the sheer vibes are impeccable. I feel like I’m walking around an episode of .hack//sign, or that I’ve somehow fallen 5000 years into the future on another planet. I can’t wait to step beyond baby’s first biome and figure out what it all means.

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

Two decades on from its original launch, Star Wars Battlefront is suffering a disaster of a re-release. Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, a compilation featuring the first two games in the series, is a messier than a Jawa that swallowed a thermal detonator thanks to server problems, bugs, and more. What was at first a highly-anticipated re-release has become the target of overwhelmingly negative reviews on Steam.

20 years ago, it was a different story entirely. Released on PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox in September 2004, the same day the classic Star Wars trilogy hit DVD, Battlefront signaled a new era for LucasArts. Under a new president, marketing vet Jim Ward, the publisher had bet big on the idea of a third-person arcade shooter with potential for massive online multiplayer battles. By packaging a playable Xbox demo with the new box set of movies, and using remastered footage from the DVDs in the game’s single-player campaigns, LucasArts aimed for mass appeal on a whole new scale. The publisher’s old guard had found critical success with niche titles from studios like BioWare or Totally Games. But for years Star Wars — one of the most beloved and recognizable brands on the big screen — had struggled financially in the realm of video games.

Star Wars: Battlefront was met with fairly favorable reviews, but the real story was in sales. Within three years, Battlefront moved more than 4 million units. BioWare’s hit RPG Knights of the Old Republic sold 3 million copies by the end of its third year, but Battlefront had taken half as long to develop — and on a limited budget.

The shooter offered a large-scale combat experience on planets fans knew and loved, yet there was also the novelty of playing as a humble foot soldier. You got to play as the bad guys, sure, but TIE Fighter had pulled off that same trick a decade earlier. Battlefront felt special in large part because you were not Dash Rendar or Darth Revan or Kyle Katarn. You were nobody. As I wrapped up the Galactic Civil War campaign back in 2004, on Cloud City and then Endor, I understood even then that this was the appeal of Battlefront’s fantasy — you were just some guy in Star Wars, a few feet out of frame when Emperor Palpatine met his end.

I’m not immune to the charms of flying an ARC-170, or dashing into battle as Aayla Secura with a pair of laser swords, but I do think the Battlefront series lost something when the sequel arrived. Released five months after George Lucas’s 2005 feature, Revenge of the Sith, Battlefront II took the vision for the first game and maxed it out in every direction, adding space combat, playable Jedi and Sith, and of course more locations from the films. A proposed third entry in the series, developed by Free Radical Design, pushed the tech even further with seamless ground-to-air combat before its eventual cancellation in 2008.

In May of 2013, six months after Disney acquired Lucasfilm, Electronic Arts signed an exclusive publishing deal with the Star Wars camp. And so the Battlefront series was reborn at EA DICE, the studio behind Battlefield and the Frostbite engine. A decade after the release of Battlefront II (2005), a new generation of gamers would live out their grandest Empire Strikes Back fantasies in Star Wars Battlefront (2015). It was a good game at launch and a great one by the end of its brief life cycle, incorporating some of the all-time great Star Wars game modes in the form of its Rogue One and Death Star DLC packs. Its asymmetrical “Walker Assault” game type proved antithetical to competitive play, but it felt a lot like the 2004 Battlefront. Once again, you could simply be a grunt in the snow at the Battle of Hoth, lumbering durasteel giants drawing closer and closer to the rebel base till one side claimed victory.

The inevitable fourth installment, Star Wars Battlefront II (2017), came with a more polished multiplayer component, but the immediate selling point was its single-player story campaign — something the 2015 game had lacked entirely. One-third of the planned story, set around the time of The Force Awakens, shipped as a free download shortly after launch, but even the base campaign had a satisfying story to tell, with loads of connections to the novels and comics that had come out around 2015. Players take on the role of Imperial commando Iden Versio (who eventually defects to the Rebel Alliance), and some familiar faces show up along the way. I certainly didn’t expect to play as Luke Skywalker or Lando Calrissian going into the campaign, but this was seven years out from 2010’s The Force Unleashed II. Getting to wield a lightsaber for a bit was a welcome surprise.

Despite all the fun to be had, both of DICE’s Battlefront games suffered under EA’s controversial monetization practices at the time. The first game split most of its best maps and modes across a series of small paid expansions, so if you wanted to play everything your friends were enjoying, you needed to pony up for the season pass. It’s almost unthinkable now, but I paid $107.99 for the complete Ultimate Edition on Xbox nine years ago. The sequel’s progression system, however, was a quagmire of randomized loot boxes, pay-to-win advantages, and a level of grind users refused to accept. The worst of these were quickly removed from the game, but the studio continued to support the title with new locations, characters, and modes through the release of 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. A story of failure became one of undeniable triumph, and to this day the game remains one of the best casual online shooters around.

It’s taken a long time for EA to earn back the faith of the Star Wars audience, but stellar games like Motive’s Squadrons and Respawn’s Jedi: Survivor seem to have done the trick. The Battlefront II (2017) debacle feels like ancient history, given all that’s happened in the industry at large in the intervening years. Will we ever see another Star Wars game on the scale of DICE’s Battlefront releases? This came up in a recent conversation I was having with a friend, over a few rounds of Helldivers II, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

On the one hand, it’s only a matter of time before we get something like a Battlefront equivalent. The disappointment over Aspyr’s so-so ports of the first two games, packaged as the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, underscores the affection people still have for these two-decade-old gems. Meanwhile, the second elephant in the room is that EA just laid off 23 people at Respawn and canceled a first-person shooter inspired by The Mandalorian. Disney’s play amid all the recent mass layoffs and studio closures has been to announce that it’s investing $1.5 billion in Epic Games, the mega-publisher behind Fortnite.

The recent success of Helldivers II shows that live-service games can still thrive alongside the industry’s biggest “hobby games” but it’s expensive to ship a multiplayer Star Wars title with a blockbuster campaign mode attached to it. If we see another Battlefront pitch make it to market in the foreseeable future, it may be a very budget-conscious one. I’m reminded of the original Titanfall, which cleverly built its story campaign around an online-multiplayer framework; voice-over’s cheaper than a bunch of cinematic footage with voice-over on top of it. We’ve come to expect a lot of cutting-edge performance capture from Star Wars, but maybe that makes more sense in games like the Jedi series or Bethesda’s Indiana Jones.

So how could it work? Again, I go back to that image of the nameless freedom fighter with a blaster — one soul against an AT-AT or the blade of Kylo Ren. The response to Andor, and Rogue One before it, proves that a band of ordinary warriors can be every bit as inspiring as a Jedi Master. Playing as the bad guys, as we’ve established, has been done; the classic Battlefront II centered on the famed 501st Legion under Vader, and the most recent entry followed the Empire’s Inferno Squad. It seems to me it’s time to make the rebels cool again — a few flawed, believable characters trying to survive in a galaxy besieged by tyrants.

Variety’s part of what makes Battlefront so great, but consider Battlefield 1’s ingenious “War Stories” format: an anthology separate stories told through different viewpoints, different battlefields. Imagine playing as a prospector or treasure hunter who gets drawn into the conflict between the Jedi and the Nihil on Elphrona, a world we’ve only read about in books. Picture yourself as a clone trooper, or a farmer with a family, taking on a legion of droids on Dantooine at the height of the Clone Wars. Then on to Aldhani during the reign of the Empire, Chandrila under the New Republic, and Batuu as the First Order hunts the Resistance to the brink.

Rebellion can happen anywhere, at any time, as long as good people are willing to fight for what matters. A casual co-op shooter you can play with friends — perhaps a kind of anti-Helldivers, given the message of compassion at the heart of Lucas’s universe — sounds like another Battlefront worth playing.

Alex James Kane is the author of the Boss Fight Books entry on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. He has written for various publications, including Fangoria magazine, IGN, Polygon, RogerEbert.com, and Variety. He lives in west-central Illinois.

Cardy, Dale, and Matt have all been playing a bit of Rise of the Ronin. Do they like it? Listen to find out. After that, it’s time to delve into a right ol’ mix of new and old films including Ricky Stanicky, American Fiction, Poor Things, The Godfather Part 3, and Nope. Plus, the return of the Endless Search.

What’s your favourite memory of 2014? Get in touch at ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast 740: Rise of Ricky Stanicky

• IGN UK Podcast 739: We Draft Our Favourite 2014 Games, Films, TV Shows, and Memes
• IGN UK Podcast 738: Shoguns, Unicorn Overlords and Kingmakers
• IGN UK Podcast 737: Buster Swordin’ Makes Me Feel Good
• IGN UK Podcast 736: Who Remembers the 1990s?
• IGN UK Podcast 735: Helldiving into Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

The boss of Palworld developer Pocketpair has said the company can’t handle the massive profits the game has generated.

Palworld launched in January and overnight became one of the biggest games in the world, setting records not only on Steam but on Xbox Game Pass, where it is the biggest third-party game launch ever. So far, the $30 ‘Pokémon with guns’ crafting and survival game has seen an incredible 25 million players, with 15 million copies sold on Steam and 10 million players on Xbox.

Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe confirmed Palworld cost less than ¥1 billion ($6.7 million) to make, and has made tens of billions of yen in profit. For context, ¥10 billion is around $67.2 million.

It’s an amount that is “too big for a studio with our size to handle,” said Mizobe, who later clarified he has no intention of expanding or offering shares in the company. Rather, he wants Pocketpair to remain small (it’s currently 55 people). Mizobe said he is open to a partnership or acquisition, but insisted he has not started buyout talks with Microsoft. Perhaps more pressing, Pocketpair is in talks to bring Palworld to more platforms, suggesting a potential PlayStation 5 and Nintendo console release in the future.

While Palworld is one of the biggest game launches ever, it’s also one of the most controversial. Pocketpair has said its staff has received death threats amid Pokémon “rip-off” claims, which it has denied. Soon after launch, Nintendo moved quickly to remove an eye-catching Pokémon mod, then The Pokemon Company issued a statement, saying: “We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to Pokémon.” IGN asked lawyers whether Nintendo could successfully sue.

If you’re playing, be sure to check out IGN’s interactive Palworld map.

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.

There’s a purely primal pleasure in stacking things up and then watching them fall down: witness how it’s one of the earliest activities children learn to play by themselves. And however much we might grow up and think of ourselves as mature, sober citizens, you can still get a frisson of that pleasure by organizing a closet, or watching a tower block demolished. So why not go the whole hog and indulge that secret pleasure with one of the very best dexterity games on the market?

Junk Art

Why pick one best dexterity game when you can have them all in a single box? That’s essentially what Junk Art is. The box contains four colored sets of oddly-shaped pieces and a deck of matching cards, alongside another set of cards to determine what mini-games you’re going to play with them. They range from traditional stacking affairs, to co-operative piling, to passing the most awkward pieces to your neighbor and even playing a trick-taking game to get the best pieces. There are additional blank cards to make your own, and an internet full of suggestions. With no two games ever likely to be the same and a range of dexterity and strategic challenges, this could be the only activity game you ever need.

Klask

Klask is one of those absurdly simple ideas that makes you wonder why no-one thought of it before. Each player controls a piece on the board using a magnet underneath, which they push around to hit a tiny plastic ball careening around the tray-like playing surface. There’s an indent in each end which counts as a goal, and the – ahem – goal is to push that ball into the opponent’s indent while defending your own. There’s a lot of speed and skill to this pursuit, far more than it may initially seem, and that would be enough to win it a space on this list. But the kicker is that the field is also littered with magnetic obstacles that will stick to your paddle if you get too close, upping both the skills and thrills in one fell swoop.

Tinderblox

The joy of Tinderblox is its tiny mint-tin scale. Within is a simple yet devious stacking game where you manoeuvre mini-blocks onto a stack of firewood and coloured flame cubes using a pair of supplied tweezers. When it’s your turn, the items you need to add to the pile are dictated by a card draw. Sometimes it’ll be a little stack of its own, a stick and a fire cube, that you must keep balanced as you manoeuvre it into position. Sometimes the card will also tell you to swap hands for added challenge. It’s the stacking game reduced to its absolute bare essentials, put in a super-portable package that you can take anywhere on the off-chance of players, and with bright colors that make it look great on the table even in miniature. Its ongoing appeal is a testament to the basal satisfaction of trying to put things in a nice, even pile.

Jenga

This is a game that pretty much everyone is familiar with, but there are a few fascinating facts about Jenga that might make a more interesting pick than you realize. First, despite its ubiquity, this isn’t any kind of ancient classic – it was invented in 1983 by Leslie Scott. Second, her particular innovation, which is common to all branded versions of this venerable stacking game, is that all the blocks are made to be slightly different from each other, creating imperfections that make the behavior of the stack far harder to predict. Factoids that are not only great for dinner parties, but also for getting an edge in the after-dinner games when the stacking blocks come out.

Crokinole

If you want a genuinely old dexterity game that still has teeth, look no further than Crokinole. It dates back to at least the mid-1800’s in Canada and is quite possibly older as a folk game. Most boards nowadays are mass-produced, but it’s still possible to buy handmade ones, which will set you back a pretty penny. It’s a flicking game where you’re trying to score by getting your discs as far into the board as possible, particularly the central region which is ringed by pegs. But in order to be valid, your shot must cause at least one opposing disc to move, otherwise it’s removed. This gives the game a strategic edge on top of the considerable flicking chops that it demands, as you’re always trying to clog up your opponent’s opportunities to hit your discs while freeing up your own.

Dungeon Fighter

There’s a surprising amount of dexterity games that weave in a fantasy or a sci-fi themes, and Dungeon Fighter is the current king of the pile. It’s a cooperative game where players each have a character in an adventuring party seeking to loot a dangerous dungeon. Whenever you encounter one of the game’s frequent monsters you fight it by throwing dice, as you might expect, but the twist is that you’re rolling onto a target board which will do damage depending on where the dice stops. If it rolls off, or falls into one of the gaps on the board, it’s a duff blow. With plenty of variety in character, dungeon and monster cards and a high skill ceiling, increased by the various bizarre throwing methods mandated by certain monsters, such as flicking dice off the back of your hand, it’s a delightful mix of challenge, narrative and tomfoolery.

Jungle Speed

If you’ve ever felt that the beloved children’s classic card game snap was missing a vicious and sometimes bloody edge, then do we have a game for you. The core of the game is just like snap: players turn over cards one at a time and look for matches. But sat in the middle of the table is the sinister, brooding totem, and players with matching cards are instantly catapulted into a race to grab it first. The looser has to take all the played cards so far and, quite probably, nurse any number of bruises, scratches and sprains gained in the struggle for supremacy. Add in a few special-effect cards, including one that has all players grabbing for the totem, and you’ve got a modern classic. Just make sure all the players trim their fingernails first.

Kabuto Sumo

There’s a general tendency for dexterity games to revolve around stacking things, or grabbing things or throwing things. But Kabuto Sumo has a whole new take on the genre, inspired by penny waterfall arcade machines. The player’s beetle pieces square off on a platform, surrounded by wooden discs. Then you take turns pushing oddly-shaped objects onto the platform, trying to nudge your opponents off the edge and collecting any non-player shapes that fall. It’s simple yet skilful and wholly engrossing as you try and work out all the angles and impacts required for maximum movement. A slew of different wrestlers with their own push-on shapes and special powers further increases the game’s staying power.

Drop It

There’s a very obvious bridge between video games and dexterity board games, but it’s rarely been so direct as it is in Drop It. Players take turns selecting from a variety of colored shapes and dropping them into the playfield, which is two upright transparent sheets with a thin space between them to hold the shapes in place. The higher your shape is atop the stack of existing pieces when it lands, the more you will score. But be careful: if you touch any other pieces of the same shape or color, you get nothing. This gives piece selection a frisson of strategy, dropping them a frisson of skill and the sheer unpredictable way all those shapes shift and roll off each other give it a whole lot of fun and excitement.

Hamster Roll

Hamster Roll – often known by its original German name Hamsterrolle – is a balancing game with a unique twist. Rather than trying to balance your blocks atop each other in a tower, everyone is placing their pieces into slots on a giant wheel, trying to keep it as balanced as possible. If your placement causes the wheel to shift and pieces fall off, then you have to collect them and add them to your stash. First player to get rid of all their pieces wins. The sheer unfamiliarity of this is a big draw and, once you’re in, you’ll discover there’s a surprising amount of strategy to it as well, as you try to anticipate where following players might try and slot their pieces and torpedo those moves by blocking slots or throwing the balance off-whack. But watch out: get too tricksy, and it’ll end up being you picking up the pieces instead.

Looping Louie

While this was very obviously designed and marketed as a children’s game, it’s found a surprising fan base among older players as well. Thanks to an electronic gizmo, Louie pilots his little aeroplane in a circle above each player’s chicken coop, trying to knock their chicken discs off their perches. Loose them all and you’re out of the game. But you have a secret weapon: in front of your coop, there’s a paddle you can use to try and lift Louie above and save a chicken. It’s about as simple and fast as it’s possible for a game to be, but it also happens to be hilarious to play as Louie spins and dives about at unpredictable angles. And for the truly accomplished, there’s the perfect shot to practice and aim for, lifting Louie just the right height to clear an opponent’s paddle and dive straight into their coop.

Rhino Hero

Another children’s game that turns out to have a lot of appeal for adults, Rhino Hero, and its big buddy Super Rhino Hero, bring a load of super-powered character to the pleasure of stacking things high. In this original version of the game, players get a random stack of roof cards which they must add to the growing tower, supported by two right-angled wall cards. Stack carefully: although this is a fairly stable construct, you’ll be out of the game if you cause it to fall. The real fun is in the hidden powers of the roof cards that are revealed when you play them, which range from weirdly-angled walls to placing and moving the titular hero up the tower with great care, lest his pachyderm might cause the cards to fall!

For more, be sure to check out our picks for the best board games of all time, as well as the best party games for when you have people over, and the best solo board games for when you don’t.

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

Dell is currently offering nearly 10% off the PlayStation 5 DualSense Edge controller by following the instructions below. It normally retails for $200, but you can get it for $182.05. That’s the best deal we’ve seen this year for this premium controller (it’s very rarely discounted).

Save 10% Off the PS5 DualSense Edge Controller

So how do you get this discount? Well right now Dell is offering this promotion: buy any 2 PC accessories, and get an automatic 10% off applied to your order. For whatever reason, the DaulSense Edge is considered a “PC accessory”. We simply add the controller and the least expensive PC accessory we can find (in this case, $2.29). Here are step by step instructions:

1. Add the DualSense Edge to cart
2. Add this $2.29 PC accessory to cart
3. Price in cart should show as $502.28 minus $95.23 in savings
4. Taxes and fees still apply, of course

The DualSense Edge is Sony’s high-end controller for the PS5 console. Like the Xbox Elite Series 2 controller, it offers pro-level features like grips, adjustable analog sticks, mappable rear buttons, profiles, and more. You can swap out the standard analog stick tops with convex replacements that come in two different heights. You have two different options for the back buttons: levers like in the Xbox Elite Series 2 or smaller nubs. One of the most important features of any pro controller are the triggers, and they’ve gotten attention in the DualSense Edge as well. Next to each trigger is a stop slider that lets you adjust how far you have to press the trigger down to make it register. You can choose standard, medium, or short travel distances, the better to get off quick shots in competitive shooters.

All this tech is housed in a hardshell case for easy storage and transport. The case even has a flap that lets you charge the controller while it’s in the case. A 9-foot USB-C charging cable is also included. Plus, if your analog sticks crap out, you can buy replacements for $19.99. We liked it so much, we gave it a 9/10 review.

Don’t own a PS5? The price is at an all-time low right now.

Walmart (and other retailers) has the new PlayStation 5 Slim Spider-Man 2 bundles on sale right now. You can get the Disc Edition for $449 ($100 discount) and the Digital Edition for $399 ($50 discount).

Check out more of the best PlayStation deals today.

After teasing that Diablo 4 would get ray tracing support during its CES 2024 digital event, Nvidia has finally provided a firm release date, revealing the graphics tech arrives in Blizzard’s popular action RPG dungeon crawler later this month.

In a blog post published today, Nvidia revealed that the Diablo 4 ray tracing update arrives on March 26. Another interesting thing to note is that the ray tracing update for Diablo 4 comes two days before the game is set to be released on Xbox’s subscription service.

Ray tracing is a common feature found in most modern-day games. It’s a rendering technique that can create lifelike lighting, reflections, and shadows for PC games that support the feature. In the case of Diablo 4, things like armor and water will have ray traced reflections to produce more realistic visuals while playing, making what is otherwise an already beautiful game prettier if you have an Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card in your rig.

Diablo 4 has other incentives besides ray tracing support, including DLSS 3, the third generation of Nvidia’s supersampling technology. As previously noted, DLSS is exclusive to GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards. Though Nvidia did not go into much detail about the performance RTX users can get with ray tracing enabled, as it displayed in the trailer shown above during CES in January, when ray tracing is on, the frames per second average 53-54FPS, but the frame-rate drastically increases when RTX 40 series GPUs also have DLSS 3 enabled. However, mileage varies depending on what Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series GPU you are using.

Diablo 4 released in June and became a mega-hit for Blizzard, despite some controversy regarding how the developer handled updates and microtransactions. As the one-year anniversary creeps up, Blizzard announced that the game’s first post-launch expansion, Vessel of Hatred, will be released in late 2024.

“Diablo 4 is a stunning sequel with a near-perfect endgame and progression design that makes it excruciating to put down,” we wrote in our 9 out of 10 review.

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