Pokémon has been a part of my life for as far back as I can remember. I was just starting first grade when Pokémon Red and Blue came out on the Game Boy, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. My brother and I only had one Game Boy between us, and since he was older, he got to play it far more often than I did. Before we got a copy of Pokémon Blue for Christmas that year, the only Game Boy game we’d actually had the chance to play was Tetris. So needless to say, I was instantly enamored with the concept of catching and battling with all 151 of the original Pokémon.
And of those original Pokémon in that game, I was always particularly interested in Eevee. Not because it’s arguably the most adorable, but because of all of the evolutionary paths you could take once you had one. And you could only have one per playthrough, after all, since you couldn’t actually catch Eevee in that game. As one of the most versatile Pokémon out there and I always find myself choosing a different Eevee-lution each time I play a new game.
Now in 2026, with a new collaboration with LEGO, I had the chance to experience Eevee evolving into something much more exciting: an adorable little LEGO set. LEGO provided IGN with a copy of the set for a test build and I was lucky enough to be the one to put it together. At just 587 pieces, it only took me a few hours to assemble, but I was in love with every part of this build. Each new section of the set has you slowly piecing together a surprisingly lifelike LEGO Eevee, and the end result is nothing short of phenomenal. Once I placed the final touch of the build, I was honestly amazed at just how good it looks despite being made up of tiny plastic bricks.
At $59.99, the LEGO Eevee build is the most affordable of the three Pokémon sets now available to buy. And of those three, I think Eevee is the most realistic looking. Due to its price compared to the other sets, it’s also the one I think most people are probably going to buy. Despite that lower price point, however, the whole build still felt like a premium experience. The set came with a total of six bags, all of which were made of nice recyclable paper. The instruction booklet also included the official Pokédex entry for Eevee, which I thought was a nice touch.
You start off the build with Eevee’s core body. This is the foundation of the whole set, which you can see start to come together with various places for the legs, tail, and head to connect. This is the least exciting part of the whole experience, but I always enjoy these parts of the build due to the insight you get into how LEGO actually designed these sets to work. The connecting slots for legs give you a glimpse of how you’ll be able to articulate those limbs once they’re added, and the giant connector on top gives you an idea of just how massive Eevee’s head is going to be compared to the rest of its body.
I was honestly amazed at just how good it looks despite being made up of tiny plastic bricks.
Once you move on to building the actual legs, the set really starts to come to life. Starting with the front legs, the instructions have you build one limb at a time before attaching it to the main body. Each of these is fairly straightforward to put together and looks fairly blocky until you get to the voluptuous fluff on each shoulder. You use a series of rounded pieces that really smooth out the overall look of each leg. Then the final touch of rounded pieces at the end ensure almost all of the LEGO studs are covered up. The end result is a surprisingly soft looking leg that will contribute to Eevee’s overall fluffy visage.
After you finish building and attaching all of the legs, you can already start playing around with all of the different positions the final product will be able to move into. Each of the legs can articulate forward and backward, allowing you to move the body into various sitting and standing poses. I was even able to move it into a full standing position, which is admittedly much harder to balance once Eevee’s head and tail are added to the equation.
The tail is where I really felt the build starting to add enough complexity to earn its 18+ age rating. Because you’re essentially turning bricks into what will appear as a fluffy tail, you need to ensure that each of the pieces is facing the right outward direction. I ended up making a few mistakes here without realizing and had to backtrack later so I could actually connect all of the rounded pieces on both sides later on. You shouldn’t have any issue here unless you try to rush through things and ignore instructions like I do. Once the whole thing is put together, it attaches neatly to the back of the set and can move from side to side.
“Each of the legs can articulate forward and backward, allowing you to move the body into various sitting and standing positions.”
With the entire body and tail put together, you get to move on to Eevee’s surprisingly massive noggin. I was particularly nervous about this part of the build because I had feared that it would involve some sort of sticker element. I had put together a LEGO Wednesday set last year that had a ton of different stickers and made some horrendous mistakes that made the end result look just weird enough to bother me forever. Thankfully, my fears of having an Eevee with horribly misplaced eyes were quickly banished when I found that the pieces themselves already had the designs printed on them. So once you build the actual head, all you need to do is attach a few pieces to get a perfectly designed face.
The final step of the build is Eevee’s long pointy ears. These are relatively easy to put together, and like all of the other parts of the set, can be articulated into various positions. Each ear can be moved up and down, allowing for a symmetrical look or that cute lopsided look that you see on the box. And although you’ve already got a mostly complete Eevee set right up until this point, it isn’t until you add the ears that the whole thing comes alive.
All-in-all, I found the Eevee set to be one of the most enjoyable LEGO builds I’ve ever done. I’m obviously a bit biased due to my deep nostalgic love of Pokémon, but it’s honestly just a really cool build at a surprisingly affordable price point. And now that it’s been fully put together I have a full-on Eevee action figure that I find myself adjusting and displaying in random spots throughout the house. It’s my new favorite display set and it has me excited for what the LEGO Pokémon collab will bring in the future.
Jacob Kienlen is a Senior Audience Development Strategist and Writer for IGN. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, he has considered the Northwest his home for his entire life. With a bachelor’s degree in communication and over 8 years of professional writing experience, his expertise is spread across a variety of different pop culture topics — from TV series to indie games and books.
Within the hallways of the sinister sanatorium where Resident Evil Requiem’s opening hours take place lies some of the most frightening encounters I’ve experienced in the series to date. With my headphones on and the lights off, the ninth mainline adventure in Capcom’s longrunning survival horror saga forced me to endure moments so palpably tense and prolonged I discovered muscles to clench that I didn’t previously know I had. Yet hours later I was no longer holding my breath, but holding my fist in the air instead, as I gleefully mowed down masses of undead meatsacks like it was D-Day in World War Z. In an effort to please both survival horror stalwarts and action-horror advocates, Resident Evil Requiem runs the gore-soaked gamut from anxiety-inducing chills to trigger-happy thrills. The result is yet another supremely hair-raising horror story, despite the fact its most potent scares have all been delivered by the time it arrives at its more gloriously gung-ho second half.
Not unlike 2023’s Alan Wake II, Resident Evil Requiem initially focuses on a young FBI agent, in this case series newcomer Grace Ashcroft (Angela Sant’Albano), a fresh-faced analyst who’s sent to investigate a series of mysterious deaths among the survivors of Raccoon City, several decades after the 1998 outbreak. Grace’s flashlight-lit forensic search through the grimy insides of a shuttered hotel is ultimately short-lived, however, since she’s soon ensnared by Victor Gideon (Antony Byrne), Requiem’s main antagonist whose menacing air, disgustingly disfigured face, and greasy goggles make him seem like some sort of steampunk Emperor Palpatine. Victor traps Grace in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, a Spencer Mansion-style labyrinth of locked doors crawling with all manner of flesh-eating freaks, but thankfully help is on the way in the form of uber stylish series veteran, Leon S. Kennedy (Nick Apostolides).
Survival horror’s preeminent himbo has clearly seen better days – the strange bruising on his skin suggests he’s battling some sort of affliction potentially related to T-Virus exposure, while the shiny new Porsche he’s driving implies he’s also not immune to a midlife crisis. But it’s Grace who is the standout here. Resident Evil characters have historically exhibited an exaggeratedly campy quality that’s injected a large dose of goofiness amidst the gore, but for my money this inexperienced FBI agent is by far the most relatably human heroine the series has ever had. Her evolution from being perpetually on the brink of a panic attack to becoming self-assured enough to fight back made for a journey that I found as captivating as it was consistently creepy.
Saving Grace
Requiem allows us to alternate control between Grace and Leon at specific story junctions over the course of its roughly 10-hour campaign, but it’s the former whose predominately stealth-based sections are undoubtedly the most fear-inducing. Underpowered and under constant threat from twisted stalker ghouls that are liable to descend from the rafters at any moment, Grace’s efforts to escape from the terrors of Victor’s hospital is a wonderfully stressful slab of unrelenting survival horror. There’s precious little ammo to find, a miserly number of inventory slots to manage, and Grace moves at such a slow speed that it makes timing your careful crouch-walk to avoid a prowling pack of zombies an exercise in pinpoint pathmaking, especially if you don’t have a rare breakable bottle to toss in order to create a distraction. All the while you have to puzzle through a stimulating series of body part-based riddles and elaborately locked doors, never really knowing when you’re going to turn a corner and come face to flabby face with a grotesquely girthy golem that’s urgently squeezing its way down the hallway towards you.
I spent so much time trying to steer clear of the numerous considerable threats, that on the occasions Grace was forced into a confrontation the results really rattled me. When played in the default, claustrophobic first-person perspective, her guns feel genuinely startling to fire and the impact of every precious pistol shot is immense. Bullets tear the festering flesh off zombie faces leaving eyeballs to dangle from their stems, and blood spatter paints the walls and persists even when you backtrack through the area later on.
The gallons of gore that covers the floor isn’t just there for spectacle, mind you, since Grace is equipped with a handy blood collector that allows her to syringe up the infected plasma pooling around zombie corpses, and combine it with other pieces of scrap to craft invaluable items like medkits and single-use hemolytic injectors. The latter can be jammed into the spine of an undead monster caught unaware, causing their entire body to swell up and explode in the most gloriously blood-soaked manner of stealth-kill possible, but you can also use it to effectively dispose of a body you’ve downed previously. I found that to be a smart move in areas that I knew I’d be revisiting, since Requiem’s zombies also have a terrifying tendency to reanimate and mutate when you least expect them to. (Seriously, these guys reform and come back more often than The Eagles.)
On the occasions Grace was forced into a confrontation the results really rattled me.
Grace’s quest only grows more intense as it takes her through the suffocating shadows of the hospital’s basement and beyond, but moving through Requiem’s danger-filled surroundings at a snail’s pace didn’t just keep my nerves on edge, it allowed me to observe and appreciate the efforts that Capcom has put into enhancing the eerie behaviour of its undead army. These are no longer the groaning, foot-dragging mouth-breathers encountered during the original Raccoon City outbreak, instead they retain traces of humanity that somehow makes them seem far more unsettling than the more animalistic werewolves in Resident Evil Village. Like the ones that idly flick light switches on and off like bored toddlers, or the others that wander around muttering and laughing to themselves before suddenly collapsing to their knees to hungrily feast on the corpse of one of their former friends.
Leon: The Professional
While Grace’s plight is a desperate and deliberate crawl that had me second-guessing every shadow, the ominous sounds of silence are shattered by the roar of ferocious ultraviolence when you switch control to Leon for what are initially brief, tension-breaking bursts, as everyone’s favourite ex-RCPD recruit attempts a not-so-subtle rescue mission. These levels default to a third-person view to really show off the slaughter, and within minutes of his arrival I’d slipped comfortably back into Resident Evil 4 mode, nailing headshots and ending the undead with effortless execution moves. To my surprise, however, Requiem quickly pushed the insanity meter beyond Resident Evil 4 into Dead Rising levels of delirium by allowing Leon to actually wield a chainsaw to carve through the zombie crowds. Leon’s sections are up-tempo and gruesome to a degree that left me giddy, and almost every major zombie Leon dispatches is met with a delightfully deadpanned dad joke.
Where Grace must use the scarce amounts of scrap in her surroundings to make her own rapidly destructible knives, Leon is toting a powerful hatchet that can be easily maintained with an everlasting flint. While Grace has to carefully count each round in her small handful of handguns, Leon enjoys an extensive bevy of teeth-rattling boomsticks from beefy shotguns to head-splitting sniper rifles. Plus, if Leon gets bored of his own weapons he can use someone else’s – after killing a zombie who drops a fire axe or lead pipe, he has the option to smoothly scoop it up and launch it at another enemy nearby, which is every bit as slick and satisfying as the similar sword-flinging feature of last year’s Ghost of Yotei. That’s not to mention that instead of having to painstakingly harvest blood samples to craft with, Leon is rewarded with a special currency for every kill that can be conveniently cashed in at a de facto ATM for artillery to buy useful weapon upgrades, extra ammo, and even body armour.
Simply put, there’s no off position on Leon’s arse-kicking switch – his gunplay is John Wick-slick and bloodier than ever before – and in addition to his surging slaughter of zombie hordes it’s also within Leon’s levels that the bulk of Requiem’s appropriately epic boss encounters take place. There are plenty of colossal clashes to be found here, from brand new behemoths to brilliantly reimagined threats from previous Resident Evil stories, and there isn’t a single Del Lago-sized dud among them. I particularly loved how the hulking nasty faced inside a cramped chapel midway through the story subverted my expectations of how a Resident Evil boss fight should play out. Sure, being tasked with blasting the glowing weak points that cover a marauding monster’s torso is nothing new. That is, until you realise that while piercing each swollen blister does inflict damage to the beast, it also spews streams of infection onto the zombie underlings around him, instantly mutating them into brawnier forms of backup for you to contend with. Leon may be armed to the teeth, but that doesn’t mean Requiem doesn’t still find creative ways to ramp up the challenge.
Shorn of the Dread
As much as I love Leon, though, I do wonder if perhaps his sections become a bit too dominant once Requiem settles into a more action-oriented groove in its second half, as the story moves beyond the grounds of Rhodes Hill and deep into what remains of Raccoon City. Let me be clear, Resident Evil 4 is my personal favourite instalment in the series, so it certainly gave me a great deal of pleasure to once again wield a military grade arsenal and pull-off skull-shattering finishing moves as the series’ hunkiest mutant murderer. There’s also plenty of variety in the violence, from a full-throttle highway chase sequence to heavy artillery strikes that seem straight out of a Call of Duty campaign. But after playing almost exclusively as Leon through a roughly five-hour stretch towards Requiem’s conclusion, I did find myself yearning for a few more tastes of Grace’s superbly nerve-shredding stealth sections as a more regular change-up from Leon’s comparatively scare-free carnage.
There’s no off position on Leon’s arse-kicking switch.
That desire was eventually gratified to some extent by a terrifyingly taut late-game tip-toe through a facility crawling with some truly menacing monsters returning from the series’ past, but given that the story ended soon afterwards my overriding impression of Requiem was that it was very much a game of two halves. The former predominately a slow and steady scare-a-thon, and the latter largely a run-and-gun splatterfest. I very much enjoyed both flavours in their own right; I just wish for the sake of its pacing that they’d been blended together a touch more over the full course of the journey. Instead, Requiem is a bit like ordering a whiskey and Coke and having it served in two separate glasses instead of being mixed into one.
To be fair, Grace’s absence from a significant stretch of Requiem is justified within the context of its story, and overall it’s a tale that gripped me harder than a zombie nurse gnawing on my neck. There are a number of blindsiding twists that cast new light on the origins of the Umbrella Corporation and the ambitions of its founder, along with an excellent mix of zombie-riddled locations both fresh and familiar to puzzle and pummel your way through, and plenty of vital notes to collect along the way. Some of these memos are crucial to understanding the intriguing mystery behind Grace’s abduction and the truth about her past, while others are just genuinely funny gags to help ease the tension. After encountering a specific zombie type in one medical wing that was obnoxiously singing at the top of her lungs, I got a good laugh out of uncovering a doctor’s report that had diagnosed her with ‘Main Character Syndrome’, for example.
There’s also one particularly iconic location that Leon explores that I’m reluctant to spoil here (although it has been teased in pre-release trailers), which is jam-packed with fun Easter Eggs that made it a real treat to revisit as someone who’s been enjoying Resident Evil adventures ever since the T-Virus made its first outbreak on a black-bottomed CD for the original PlayStation.
Following various delays, Bungie is now ready to open Marathon‘s doors courtesy of a ‘Server Slam’ event from tomorrow, February 26, which will run until March 2.
Marathon is a PvP-focused extraction shooter set on the mysterious planet of Tau Ceti IV. Players inhabit the bodies of Runners, cybernetic mercenaries who have been designed to survive the planet’s harsh environments, exploring the lost colony that once inhabited Tau Ceti’s surface.
Marathon’s full launch is scheduled for March 5 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S, so this is an opportunity to try before you buy. Furthermore, Bungie’s also using the Server Slam to test its anti-cheat systems, and is calling on players to report cheaters if they encounter them.
Here’s everything you need to know about what content’s available, the rewards you’ll get for participating, and when the free server test goes live where you live.
Marathon Server Slam start times
Depending on where you are in the world, Marathon’s Server Slam is set to go live on:
Thursday, February 26 — Monday March 2, 2026:
PST (San Francisco):
10am
CST (Austin, Mexico City):
12pm
EST (New York):
1pm
GMT (London):
6pm
CET (Paris):
7pm
Friday, February 27 — Tuesday March 3, 2026:
JST (Tokyo):
3am
CST (Beijing):
3am
AEST (Sydney):
5am
NZST (Wellington):
7am
Marathon Server Slam Missions and Activities
Infil into two zones:
Perimeter, an edge-site expansion on the colony’s outskirts
Dire Marsh, the colony’s agricultural research hub
Take on the early contracts for five factions: CyberAcme, NuCaloric, Traxus, MIDA, and Arachne
Progress though the early faction levels and progression trees for each faction
Try out five of the six Runner shells that will be available at launch, plus our scavenger experience Rook
Play as a crew, solo Runner, form uneasy alliances with proximity chat, and more
Marathon Server Slam Rewards
Time spent during the Slam will “bank loot rewards you’ll receive at launch, based on how far you progress”:
Complete your first mission: Unlock the Standard Arrival Cache
Standard implants (6x)
Standard Runner shell cores (4x)
Standard weapon chip mods (6x)
Weapons: Overrun and Hardline
Reach Runner Level 10: Unlock the Enhanced Arrival Cache (Green)
Enhanced implants (6x)
Enhanced Runner shell cores (2x for each shell, 12x total)
Enhanced weapon chip mods (4x)
Weapons: Enhanced Magnum and Enhanced Hardline
Reach Runner Level 30: Unlock the Deluxe Arrival Cache (Blue)
Deluxe and Enhanced implants (3x each, 6x total)
Deluxe and Enhanced Runner shell cores (1x each for each shell, 12x total)
Deluxe and Enhanced weapon chip mods (2x each, 4x total)
Weapons: Deluxe Magnum and Enhanced Volley Rifle
Backpack: Enhanced Base Backpack
PlayStation Plus subscribers will also be able to nab bonus weapon charms themed around Ghost of Yōtei, Death Stranding 2, and Helldivers 2 at launch. Marathon players on Steam automatically receive the exclusive Crowbar Weapon Charm (don’t say Half-Life 3 confirmed!) when Marathon releases on March 5. Marathon players on Xbox Series X and S, meanwhile, get the exclusive Emerald Clutch Weapon Charm and Emerald Catch Weapon Charm.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Final Fantasy 7 — and by that, I mean the original, not the three-part remake — is clocking up negative reviews after developer Square Enix re-released the game on Steam with quality of life improvements that seem to have had the opposite intended effect.
Announced last month and released just yesterday (February 24), this updated version of Final Fantasy 7 comes with a handful of new features, including a 3x speed mode — more on that in a bit — the ability to turn off random encounters, a “battle enhancement mode” that will max out the Limit gauge and let players recover HP/MP during battles, and a handy autosave feature.
Shortly after launch, though, it was clear there were significant issues with the new edition, not least the speedier combat that doesn’t match the speed of the animations or menus, plus blurry textures, including in its important cinematic sequences.
Square Enix was on the case within hours and released a small update just a short while later, claiming it had “fixed the speed of certain scenes, including battles,” and addressed other, unspecified “minor bug fixes.” What it didn’t address, however, is the forced 4:3 resolution, and while there will undoubtedly be players happy to jump in and experience the game in its native resolution, the 2013 edition that this new version replaces did let you select other resolutions, leaving some wondering why on earth this was changed.
The problem is compounded even further given this new version of the game replaces the 2013 Steam edition on the Steam storefront entirely, so players looking to buy Final Fantasy 7 for the first time will only have this option available — only those who already owned the 2013 edition are able to switch between the two.
“The battle animation speeds are WAY too high, even without the 3x speed, so the game just plays wrong and feels wrong right now. Hopefully, they fix this,” wrote one player. “In addition, you appear to be locked into a 4:3 display, which makes sense as the original format, and many people will prefer to have it that way, but even the 2013 PC version has the ability to stretch it to full screen (which is how I prefer). This should be an option.
“It’s very hard to recommend. May I suggest that companies make sure their re-releases at least function on a basic level before delisting their old versions? That'[d] be great,” added another.
“I’d just play the 2013 version without glasses on if I wanted the game to look like this,” quipped someone else.
All in all, the issues have brought the game’s overall Steam user rating down to ‘Mostly Negative,’ with just 36% of players leaving positive feedback.
“Both the Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox versions have been incredibly well received and generated a lot of buzz online,” Hamaguchi said. “That attention has also made me realize how many people are worried about this issue. However, our decision to go multiplatform with the FF7 Remake series will not in any way lower the quality of the third installment.”
We also recently learned that the “core game experience is almost complete,” and while Hamaguchi “really want[s] everyone to play it as soon as possible,” the team has now moved on to “refining and polishing.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
AA publisher and developer Nacon has filed for insolvency, raising questions over the future of games such as GreedFall 2, Hell is Us, RoboCop, and Test Drive Unlimited.
Nacon, which is home to 16 development studios as well as a publishing arm, said it was forced into the decision after its majority shareholder, Bigben Interactive, failed to make a loan repayment. It has now asked a French court for permission to restructure its debt.
“The aim of this procedure is to assess all possible solutions to ensure the sustainability of the Company’s activity under the best possible conditions, protect employees, and preserve jobs, while renegotiating with its creditors in a calm and constructive framework,” Nacon said. This procedure will enable the Company to continue its business, renegotiate its debts, and develop a credible and effective continuation plan.” The Court is expected to make its decision at a hearing in early March.
Nacon has a number of AA games under its belt, including GreedFall 2: The Dying World, which will release in its full 1.0 version on March 12. Nacon this week alerted press to its annual showcase event, dubbed Nacon Connect, which was set for March 4. It is expected to show off the likes of Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, The Mound, Edge of Memories, and Endurance Motorsport Series. And just this morning Nacon launched the third major update for Dragonkin: The Banished, which is still in Early Access.
The publisher just released Styx: Blades of Greed last week. RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business came out last year, as did Rogue Factor’s Hell is Us. IGN has asked Nacon for comment on its ability to continue to release its games and maintain and support those it has out already.
BBI, which currently holds 56.72% of the share capital and 65.79%% of the voting rights of Nacon, announced last week that it was unable to make a partial repayment of €43 million “due to the unexpected refusal of its banking pool to respond to the drawdown notice.” At the time, Nacon issued a warning to the financial markets, and suspended trading in the company’s shares.
Nacon’s hope now is that it gets approval from the court to restructure its debt. If it is successful, its existing liabilities will be frozen for a period that could last up to 18 months. During this time, the debtor will present a continuation plan for its activities by restructuring its debt, hopefully ensuring its recovery.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Arc Raiders players heading topside for the new Shrouded Sky update have their tin foil hats on after video of a mysterious UFO started circulating online.
Just as soon as clips of the new Firefly and Comet Arc threats began making the rounds on social media, so too has footage of a mysterious being not detailed in the patch notes. Originally posted by Reddit user Bewarden with the caption, “What in tarnation is that?” the 20-second video shows their character walking through a Hurricane at the edge of the Spaceport launch tower before a collection of bright blue lights can be seen moving overhead.
Mysterious UFOs have been spotted in ARC Raiders during the Hurricane map condition.
It’s unnerving at best and terrifying at worst, but things get spookier upon closer inspection. The low visibility brought about by the Hurricane makes it hard to get a good look at the lights, making it seem as though the Raider is watching two groups of drones moving quicker than normal. Watch again, and you’ll see those lights are attached to an enormous ship, gliding through the storm.
The AI entity known as the Arc is capable of many things. Drones, death orbs, giant spider-like robots, and more are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to enemy types, but players haven’t seen anything quite like the UFO shown in the clip. Studying it hasn’t been easier either, as only a fewothers have managed to capture and share their sightings online while developer Embark Studios remains silent.
It feels reminiscent of the time game developer Arrowhead Studios launched an update for Helldivers 2 that quietly added flying bug enemies without notifying players in its patch notes. As players spun a web of theories, that team denied that such creatures could possibly exist. Now, Embark seems to be following a similar strategy, leaving players to try and piece together what a building-sized UFO could mean for the future of Arc Raiders. Some even believe these sightings could be tied to the new large Arc teased to arrive with the Riven Tides update this April.
“Is that the f***ing mothership???” one player guessed.
“No explaining the thing will be murdering people probably in April,” one player theorized. “Who knows it could be the new ‘large arc threat’ they roadmapped. That would be cool af. A flying gigantic arc matriarch/queen type battle.”
We played through multiple raids since Shrouded Sky launched and were successful in seeing the ship just once. Although Bewarden was able to catch a glimpse of the UFO on Spaceport, our sighting occurred on Buried City. While we were also able to hear the ship fly overhead during a Blue Gate raid, it sped off before we could get a good look at it.
If you’re interested in hunting down the latest Arc Raiders mystery, we recommend playing during the Hurricane map condition and keeping your eyes on the sky around the time the raid has reached the halfway mark (about 15 minutes). Based on our testing and what others are sharing online, don’t expect to catch one of these on your first run.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
Now Xbox has a new boss, what happens next? In a new interview, Asha Sharma, a Microsoft executive who previously oversaw some of the firm’s AI initiatives, kept things frustratingly vague, but did indicate that nothing is off the table when it comes to big decisions about recent controversial policies.
One of the big questions fans have for Sharma is whether Microsoft will reverse some of its recent policies, many of which have alienated the core Xbox fanbase. Fans have criticized Microsoft for leaving Xbox game exclusivity behind in favor of a multiplatform approach that has seen the company’s biggest brands — including Halo — make the jump to PlayStation. Why buy an Xbox now, when all Xbox games come out on everything?
In a new interview with Windows Central, Sharma avoided specifics when asked about the future and recent strategic decisions, only offering the cryptic “the plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan.”
Here’s the quote in full:
“Right now, I need to learn, candidly. About the ‘why’ of these decisions, what we were optimizing for, and what the data says about the Xbox strategy today. That’s the honest answer. I’m looking at lifetime value, not just what happened in a previous moment, or in short term efficiencies and things like that. The plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan.”
What does that mean? It’s hard to tell. It feels like a holding statement, the kind of thing you might say when you don’t want to commit to anything either way. But it’s hard to see Microsoft all of a sudden pulling out of multiplatform game releases, especially when its studios have put so much effort into making Microsoft’s policy a reality, and in some cases seen great success on the likes of PlayStation. Halo is coming to PlayStation this year, and that’s unlikely to change.
Will things change further down the line? Could Microsoft start releasing exclusives again, particularly in the context of the upcoming next Xbox? All eyes are now on Asha Sharma to find out. A 2027 launch for the next Xbox was recently described as the best case scenario. There isn’t a great deal of time to sort everything out before the next crucial juncture in Xbox history.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
The Arc Raiders Shrouded Sky update is here, but instead of Hurricanes and new cosmetics, all players can talk about are how it nerfs one of the best grenades for PvE.
Fans expected to see details about all of the new content when developer Embark Studios published lengthy patch notes for update version 1.17.0 earlier today. Information about playable pianos and beard cosmetics was all there, but what they also found was that the studio behind the massively popular multiplayer game had upped the crafting requirements for one of its most iconic tools: the Wolfpack.
As outlined in Shrouded Sky’s accompanying patch notes, the Wolfpack, a throwable equipment that showers Arc enemies with homing explosives, now requires one Rocketeer Driver to craft. Now, players will need the component, as well as two Arc motion cores and an explosive compound, to make just one Wolfpack.
The changes fall in line with a series of new adjustments to resource requirements, which see Arc components also added to the recipes for the Deadline mine, Trailblazer, Showstopper, and Vita Spray. It’s the Wolfpack tweak that has Raiders up in arms, though, mostly because Rocketeer Drivers are infamously rare and hard to collect. The most consistent way to find one of these epic items is to kill a Rocketeer – a task that currently takes two Wolfpacks to accomplish.
“Let me just kill a rocketeer to get 1 wolfpack that can half kill another rocketeer,” one Reddit user teased.
“I don’t even want the blueprint anymore,” another player replied.
“First time I’ve said this but if they keep going in this direction people will stop playing,” a X/Twitter user added. “It’s hard enough to gather some of these resources.”
The grenade can’t lock on to other players but can tear through hordes of small Arc, making it one of the best PvE tools Raiders have at their disposal. It can also quickly dismantle the armor featured on large Arc, such as the Matriarch, Queen, Leaper, and Bastion, but it’s the math asking players for two Wolfpacks to kill one Rocketeer that has fans questioning Embark’s judgement. While showing concern about how update 1.17.0 asks players to work harder for crafting materials, some have started chiming in with their own recommendations for how to fix the issue.
“If rocketeers start consistently dropping more than 1x driver, we can talk,” one player suggested.
“They need to up the drop odds on drivers,” another added. “Right now you’re lucky if you get two. Make two the base with higher odds of 3+. Otherwise wolfpacks will basically just be used when looted on the map.”
Some players are asking for more rewarding Rocketeer loot and reduced requirements for the Wolfpack, but others are still exploring all Shrouded Sky has to offer. The February update launched today, focusing on map changes for Dam Battlegrounds and the new Firefly and Comet Arc threats as its latest additions.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
The original Final Fantasy VII is getting a makeover on Steam. No, not the remake. I mean the actual, original game.
Announced last month and released today, this updated version of Final Fantasy VII comes with a handful of new features as seen on the storefront. According to an official post, this new version of the old game will include a 3x speed mode, the ability to turn off random encounters, a “battle enhancement” mode that will max out Limit gauge and let players recover HP/MP during battles, and an autosave feature.
The new version of the game will replace the 2013 edition on the Steam store, and the 2013 edition will no longer be available to buy. However, those who already own the 2013 version will receive the new version free of charge, and will still have access to the 2013 version in their libraries simultaneously with this new version. Critically, though, save files are not compatible between the two versions, so you will have to start a new game to enjoy the re-release.
This update effectively brings the game up to parity with the other modern console ports of Final Fantasy 7. For years, the 2013 edition on Steam had been behind the times, effectively just an old (and often buggy) PC port.
It’s still worth checking out the original Final Fantasy VII if you missed it back in the day, or even if you just want a walk down memory lane ahead of the conclusion to the Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy. It’s been teased that we’re getting “more updates than ever before” on the trilogy this year, leading fans to hope that the announcement of Part 3 is imminent. Meanwhile, Part 2, Rebirth, is coming to Switch 2 and Xbox later this year. FF7 for everyone!
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Sony Film CEO Tom Rothman has confirmed the company has plans to reboot Sony’s broader Spider-Man Universe after a series of high-profile flops in films like Kraven, Madame Web, and Morbius.
This comes from a conversation with Matt Belloni on The Town, in which Rothman answered a series of questions with fairly short, yes or no responses. When asked, “is the larger Spider-verse dead?” he said “No.” He then confirmed Sony would go back to those films “at some point.” And also affirmed it would be a “fresh reboot” with “new people.” Rothman did not provide any further details.
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) has struggled ever since it first kicked off in 2018 with Venom. Though Venom and its follow-ups, Let There Be Carnage (2021) and The Last Dance (2024) did quite well at the box office, all three were critically panned and generally received poorly by wider audiences as well. Even worse was Morbius (2022), which was regarded as such a poor movie it became a meme, and which was followed by similar box office disasters in Madame Web (2024) and Kraven the Hunter (2024). At the time, outgoing Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra described Kraven the Hunter as “probably the worst launch we had in the seven-and-a-half years” since he first stepped into his role. He also blamed all the SSU failures on the press, for criticizing them.
As for what this reboot will entail, Rothman is keeping that under his mask for now, though whatever it is will likely take some time to spin up. At least we still have regular ol’ Spider-Man, who will be in theaters July 31 for Brand New Day.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
