Category: IGN

The weekend is officially here, and we’ve gathered up some excellent deals for you! Whether you’re searching for a new laptop or a discounted game, we’ve got you covered with the best deals for Saturday, March 16. These deals include the Apple MacBook Air M1, PlayStation 5 Slum Bundle, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, God of War Ragnarok, and more.

MacBook Air M1 for $699

Walmart has discounted the Apple MacBook Air M1 to just $699. This is cheaper than any student discount or similar could get you. Although newer models utilize the M2 chip, the M1 is nothing to look past. It’s capable of running plenty of performance-heavy software, so you can edit videos, photoshop images, and more.

PS5 Slim Spider-Man 2 Bundle for $399.99

Amazon has a fantastic deal ongoing for the PlayStation 5 Slim Digital Edition. The console itself is $50 off, and you get Spider-Man 2 for free. In total, that’s $120 worth of savings. This is perfect if you’ve yet to pick up a PS5, as we most likely won’t see a better deal than this for a while.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for $39.99

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best-selling Nintendo Switch title to date. There’s never been a better time to pick up the game, especially since the DLC recently wrapped up. A total of 96 tracks are available to race through with this title, which will keep you busy for years to come. New racers, including Diddy Kong, Pauline, and Birdo, are even available with the Booster Course Pass!

Save $20 Off An Xbox Wireless Controller

You can always use an extra Xbox controller. Not everything lasts forever, and controllers can wear down easily, especially when used frequently. This weekend, the Microsoft Store is offering $20 off an Xbox Wireless Controller. This deal applies to both the Robot White controller and the Pulse Red controller.

WarioWare: Move It! for $30

WarioWare: Move It! is discounted to just $30 at Walmart this weekend. If you’ve yet to pick up the latest title in the series, you can expect to find dozens of fun microgames and shenanigans. This entry utilizes features of the Joy-Con like motion tracking and HD Rumble, which adds new twists and moments to returning and new microgames.

Save 43% Off God of War Ragnarok

God of War Ragnarok is still one of the best PS5 games you can pick up. This action game acts as the sequel to 2018’s God of War, following Kratos and Atreus as Fimbulwinter looms. If you’ve yet to play this game, this is a great time to pick up Ragnarok at a discount and see why so many players love this series.

Apple AirPods Pro with USB Type-C for $189.99

Amazon has dropped the price of the 2nd gen Apple AirPods Pro truly wireless noise cancelling earbuds with the universal USB Type-C connector by $60, now only $189. With this current gen AirPods Pro, Apple has replaced the proprietary Lightning port with the more universal USB Type-C. These earbuds are perfect if you have an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook, as they seamlessly connect and provide excellent audio quality all around.

I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a certain satisfaction that comes from the Tetris-like puzzle of inventory management in some games – hell, a whole game based around that idea, Save Room, became its own hit. Meanwhile the autobattler genre that has exploded in recent years hits similar notes, providing the joy of seeing your planning and preparation pay off in PvP. The bite-sized indie joint Backpack Battles combines these two ideas, pitting your organizational skills and wits in creating RPG-like character builds against others in fast-paced one-on-one matches. After a dozen hours with its Early Access release, I’ve seen the seeds of something great in that concept, with the potential to grow into something unique and impressive. But as it stands now, Backpack Battles is light on content and variety – it’s very much an Early Access game, with an emphasis on early.

The outset of Backpack Battles is quite straightforward: You select one of the four currently available classes – Berserker, Pyromancer, Reaper, or Ranger – then jump into ranked or unranked matches (the main difference being that ranked contributes to your classes’, well, rank). The goal of each run is to win 10 battles before exhausting your five lives, and you can either take your trophies and leave (the currency you earn from playing) when you do so, or go into a survival phase for an extra set of rounds for the chance to earn even more trophies and boost your class rank further. So far, this is the only mode offered, and while it is a digestible setup to let you focus on the more interesting mechanics of building your character throughout a run, it also means how you play is fairly limited.

Where Backpack Battles shines is in the inventory organization mechanics that make up the bulk of what you’ll be doing. Light RPG elements blend with the self-induced puzzle of trying to fit all your best gear into limited spaces of your grid-based bags. Before every round, you have the opportunity to purchase interesting items from a randomized shop and equip them by fitting each into your backpack. That pack is constructed with several interlocking satchels and pouches you can freely reconfigure, which is important because gear comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. You can (and must) purchase backpack expansions while balancing spending on weapons, armor, food, and accessories that all contribute to you actually winning battles. But not only is cramming as much gear into your bags as possible part of the fun, several pieces also react to others based on proximity. That’s how you essentially create “builds” for your character during a run, working out how best to stack item effects relative to each other or make them evolve into much stronger ones you cannot simply buy from the shopkeeper.

For example, as a Pyromancer, you’ll earn flames that you place into your bag to improve your attacks, but placing a lump of coal in an adjacent slot will turn the coal into a flame gem the following round, which you can then attach to weapons or armor to provide buffs in combat. A more significant tactic deeper into a run would be to place flames next to a set of Holy Armor to evolve it into Sun Armor, which then stacks on more effective buffs for the Pyromancer class. Working with the limitations imposed by bag space and investing in certain item types from round to round to make yourself even stronger later on is a tricky puzzle I enjoyed working out.

Then there are a handful of subclasses for each main class that open up later in a run, which offer new ways to further strengthen your character. A favorite of mine is the Firebender subclass that gives you an equippable gear piece (which is a very cute reference to Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle) to amplify the attack speed and power of all fire-based items in its surrounding slots. This way, that Burning Sword and Molten Spear I upgraded in earlier rounds are further strengthened if I can figure out how to get them next to it – and with the compounding effects of other accessories that can either boost my armor rating, inflict debuffs on the enemy, or even give me a second life mid-combat, I could become nearly unstoppable.

With each run, you’ll see a ton of variations on fascinating concepts like this, which ultimately feels like a clever crafting element woven into the inventory organization challenge. This means you’ll be spending most of your time in the shop, racking your brain as you try to weasel your way into fitting a weapon that takes four linear slots alongside a shield that takes up two-by-two, then also finding room for that Y-shaped Phoenix for revives alongside healing food items like an L-shaped banana. Sometimes rotating weirdly shaped gear isn’t enough and you just need to break it all down to completely rearrange your setup. It’s an enjoyable process that tickles the part of your brain that fires off in other games like Unpacking or just neatly fitting a bunch of your stuff into a closet. I saw one Steam review refer to Backpack Battles as the best banana-flipping simulator, and you know what, there’s truth to that.

Since this is an autobattler, the actual combat is out of your hands, with attacks and abilities being fired off on their own based on what you have in your inventory. You simply jump into a matchup and watch it all unfold. How much stamina the weapons in your inventory take up, your stamina recovery rate, the way your character builds armor or heals up, the conditions for which status effects are activated, and so on can all affect who comes out on top. The more you read the item descriptions, the more you realize how deeply their granular mechanics intertwine with each other, making this a thoughtful take on choosing gear and creating builds. That prep is important too, because it’s tough to really grasp what’s going on in combat since fights go by very quickly, lasting roughly 10 to 15 seconds per round (although you can read the battle log to see a detailed breakdown), and the limited, stilted animations don’t really express what is happening.

For all its great ideas and clever execution, Backpack Battles currently comes up short in its incentives to keep going, not letting these interesting systems truly sing. Trophies can be spent on new cosmetics for each class, which is fine, but doesn’t exactly push me to keep playing once I’ve seen what the different builds have to offer. And with only ranked or unranked matches, you start to go through the same motions a little too quickly once you’ve tried out each class. Preparing for opponents isn’t as dynamic as I hoped from run to run, as you basically just build the best character you can based on the items offered to you and hope it’s good enough for whoever you face, regardless of what they are doing. After about three or four hours, I felt I had already hit the plateau of what the Early Access launch offered. That’s not so bad for a fast-paced autobattler where you can get in and out of matches quickly, but I can’t help but feel it’s lacking a larger structure to bring it all together.

Of course, it’s always hard to judge a game in Early Access, as hopefully more modes, classes, and other options to shake each run up will arrive in future updates. What’s currently available is a great starting point, it just needs to be ushered in the right direction to reach its full potential. The public roadmap shows promise, and I’ve at least been convinced to keep tabs on Backpack Battles as it gets closer to its final build, but at the moment it’s probably worth waiting until it’s a little further along before really diving in.

Minecraft developer Mojang has warned players not to update the game through the official Xbox app on PC because it may delete their worlds.

The Minecraft support page on Mojang owner Microsoft’s website now opens with a stark warning for PC players. “Do not download the recent update for Minecraft through the Xbox app for PC,” it reads. “If you do, your worlds may be lost.”

Mojang said it is currently investigating the world loss issue and is blocking the update from Windows to prevent the possibility of it affecting more users.

“We recommend that you run the Gaming Services Repair Tool for PC in the Xbox app on PC before installing any Minecraft update,” Mojang added. “Using this tool updates the Gaming Services to version 19.87.13001.0, which will avoid the update error.”

Players can do so by launching the Xbox app on PC, clicking their profile, then support, then on Gaming Services Repair Tool, and finally on Start Troubleshooting.

Mojang also warned players that, for those not on version 1.20.70 or 1.20.71, some online services may be unavailable including cross-platform multiplayer, Realms, and Featured Servers. “We appreciate your patience while we continue to investigate and address this issue,” it added.

This bug, which has the potential to delete tens, hundreds, and thousands of hours of playtime, comes not long after Mojang announced a monthly subscription service just for Minecraft called the Marketplace Pass.

This costs $3.99 a month and grants Bedrock players access to a catalog of more than 150 different content packs from the Minecraft Marketplace, which is refreshed every month. Players won’t need to pay for the Marketplace Pass to continue playing Minecraft as normal.

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

After spending more than a dozen hours with the Early Access version of Tribes 3: Rivals, I could really get used to skiing around at 200 miles per hour while firing a grenade launcher at weaklings with no mind for speed. Channeling all of the silliness and style the series is known for, this lethal game of capture the flag is packed with moments of satisfying exhilaration and devastating defeat, and it largely nails everything I’ve loved about the Tribes games of yore. The trouble is that it only takes a matter of minutes to see all the maps and try out all the classes and weapons currently available, with no alternate game modes or other distractions beyond an extremely long and demanding ranked skill grind for those truly dedicated to their deadly craft. I fear Tribes 3 may be fated to fizzle out as quickly as some of its predecessors due to that lack of longevity, but the potential here is at least clear from moment one, and it feels great to be reunited with the zany, high-octane action I’ve adored for many years.

Tribes 3 pits two teams against one another in a stupidly fun capture the flag to the death, giving you and your friends a pair of skis and a jetpack to help you move across its large maps lightning fast, and an arsenal of futuristic weapons to maim those who get in your way. Maintaining momentum is key to your success, as you’re rewarded for timing your landings at the edge of a slope or boosting up hills to gather speed every bit as much as you are for having good aim. Learning to shred on skis and soar through the air makes all the difference between becoming an unkillable blur and watching someone glide overhead as they take you out with heavy weaponry like the sorry mook that you are – and spending my time somewhere in between those two extremes has been a blast so far.

Capturing the enemy flag while protecting your own requires attackers and defenders of varying expertise, and with six playable classes (three offensive and three defensive), you’re given a solid number of options for how to approach each side of things. I have a natural affinity for throwing myself at the enemy flag and doing everything I can to break the sound barrier, so I tend to select the lightly armored and minimally armed Pathfinder class, which allows for deviously delightful teleportation and faster movement at the cost of being both short on explosive weaponry and very easy to explode. If you’re feeling lethargic, there’s also lots to do while remaining slightly more stationary as the Juggernaut, a heavily armored defender that is armed to the gills and can withstand quite a bit of punishment – they have also pretty much been the bane of my existence, all too happy to turn my squishy face into blood broth as I rush toward the flag. All six classes feel pretty unique, and each has some game-changing options, like the technician class, which can throw down defensive turrets and keep the base well-guarded alongside its pre-built protective structures.

The magic of Tribes 3 is in moments where you hit a slope just right, take out an enemy right before scooping up the enemy flag, then go flying across the map to score a point for your team. I can’t claim to be anything more than middling in this incredibly demanding twitch shooter, and even I found myself overcome with feelings of godlike might – screaming into my monitor, absolutely shocked by what I was able to pull off. There were also plenty of times where I was brought low and reminded of my mortal limitations, like when a real expert blasted me to pieces and tore through my base like a lightning bolt, making off with my treasured flag. But those humbling encounters have only pushed me to hone my skill, and are easily drowned out by the satisfaction of victory. There just aren’t many better feelings than those moments of pure PvP triumph, which are made uniquely epic by Tribes’ blazingly fast, ridiculously over-the-top style.

Aside from the usual tug-of-war involved in a game of capture the flag, there are also some interesting strategies to consider, like how you can fight over smaller bases located strategically throughout levels, which give a minor edge to the controlling team by turning turrets in those areas into your allies. Each team also has a generator located in their base that, if damaged, can shut down every defensive asset on that side of the map, leaving you extremely vulnerable to getting steamrolled by the enemy’s offensive players, which gives you another thing to defend or attack if the flag proves too well-guarded. You can even destroy a radar dish located on your opponent’s side of the map, which completely disables their ability to keep track of the flow of battle on their trusty HUD.

Unfortunately, none of these optional targets have seemed to matter all that much in the larger fight, since bum-rushing the enemy flag almost always proves the best path to victory. Even sabotaging the radar dish, which you’d expect to be a major game changer, didn’t do a whole lot since opponents are pretty easy to spot on their own – especially since their names hover over them even across long distances. It takes a lot of energy to effectively attack these extra structures, and you could just as easily have stolen and scored the enemy flag a couple times to win the match instead of spending time to secure a minor edge.

The main issue with Tribes 3 is that, despite providing a very entertaining opening hours, there isn’t much to it at this time. As an Early Access game, that’s hardly surprising, and developer Prophecy Games has already announced an ambitious roadmap that aims to inject some much-needed variety into the maps and single game mode currently available – but in its current form at least, I foresee all but the most dedicated jetpackers running out of things to do in short order, as I have already). It would certainly help if some more stuff from previous Tribes games made a return, be that beloved game modes like Rabbit or Bounty, or my cherished vehicles like the Beowulf or the HAVOC. Hopefully some of this will be fleshed out in the coming months of Early Access, but for now the package is fairly thin.

Beyond the main 16v16 casual mode, there’s a ranked playlist that hosts smaller teams of 7v7, but this changes little else beyond drawing in a significantly sweatier playerbase. Still, halving the number of players does actually feel significantly different, since the reduced chaos means you can really dial in a strategy and your individual performance is more impactful while executing it . It also makes some of the less useful tactics in the casual playlist, like taking down the enemy’s base defenses, slightly more meaningful. On top of ranked, there’s a goofy time trial minigame to test your skiing and boosting ability where you move through a course of rings and try to set a high score, as well as custom matches where you’re given complete control over the inner workings and balance of the meta. That could mean decreasing the amount of damage players can take to almost nothing or increasing jetpack energy so players can fly without care – mostly stupid stuff, but can definitely make for a good time.

There are also some perplexing design decisions and a small amount of bugs that hounded my time with Tribes 3. For example, it’s very odd that I’m limited to hosting only three others in my party when the team sizes are either seven or 16. This became awkward a few times when we had more than four people online together and couldn’t join the same games, and I can’t think of a good reason for this cap. Especially in the ranked playlist, you think they’d want to encourage communication with the whole team – not just the four allowed in your party, which just seems like an odd limitation. The exception to these rules are custom matches, but then you’re left a bit shorthanded unless you’ve got a whole lot of friends or are willing to subject yourself to the ups and downs of an LFG. There’s also some irritating bugs, like one my group got hit with quite a bit where our party would randomly be split up into different matches or find ourselves otherwise separated from one another, and we’d all have to reboot to get things back in shape. I’m sure initial bumps in the road like these will be ironed out, but for now they can be a bit of an annoyance.

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

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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.