Category: IGN

Battlefield Studios is telling Battlefield 6 players to “keep your ear to the ground” when it comes to a battle royale solo queue option for REDSEC.

We spoke with the Battlefield team to learn more about REDSEC and its battle royale, Gauntlet, and Portal modes earlier this week. During our chat, we asked if solo battle royale fans will ever be able to drop into Fort Lyndon without grouping up with others. Design director Justin Wiebe stopped short of confirming whether additional queue options are on the way, but he does want fans to know the BF Studios team is listening.

“I would say keep your ear to the ground on the future of solos,” Wiebe told us.

Battlefield REDSEC was met with a review-bombing campaign upon its launch late last month as disgruntled Battlefield 6 players gathered to ask for various changes, including a solo battle royale queue. It’s true the Battlefield battle royale offshoot launched without an option for single-player-minded fans, but Wiebe says adding solos into a squad-based shooter isn’t as easy as it seems.

“In my mind, that’s not something you just turn on and just say, ‘OK, solos,’” he said. “There needs to be enough thought put into it because we built a squad-based experience. At its foundation, the game was designed for squads to play together, with each of them having tactical abilities and options, and training paths that unlock new perks. A lot of those perks are very oriented towards helping the squad, not helping the individual.”

Wiebe continued: “If we were just to throw that out and say, ‘Well, now you can just play solos, and you’re unlocking these abilities that don’t even matter to you,’ that feels like a fail.”

Battlefield 6 and REDSEC are designed around four primary classes: Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon. Aside from a few tweaks between some modes, each can bring everything from quick revives to vehicle repairs to a gunfight. Even vehicles themselves are typically in better care with more than one player behind the wheel.

These are the kinds of mechanics BF Studios is considering when holding off on solos for battle royale in REDSEC. Still, it sounds like the option is far from off the table. Should players be allowed to queue up without teammates in battle royale, Wiebe tells fans they would need to launch “with the right abilities and training paths.”

“If we were going to launch something like solos,” he added, “we want to do it in a way that makes sense for players, that actually takes the mechanics and makes them work for making solos play better.”

Battlefield 6 launched October 10 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S. REDSEC followed closely behind with its launch for the same platforms arriving October 28, just weeks later. Despite initial review-bombing efforts bringing the free-to-play branch down to “Mostly Negative” Steam ratings, it has since bounced back slightly, now sitting at “Mixed” across the board.

We gave REDSEC a 7/10. In our review, we said, “Battlefield REDSEC offers an uninspired battle royale mode that dilutes what makes Battlefield 6’s regular multiplayer so much fun, but its Gauntlet option instead concentrates that formula into one of the coolest game modes I’ve seen from a military shooter.”

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).

If playing through Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater this year had you itching to revisit the original, now’s your chance to do so (if you don’t already own it) at a discounted price.

Early Black Friday sales have arrived, and among Best Buy‘s is an excellent deal on the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1 for PS5 and Nintendo Switch that’s dropped it down to just $19.99.

This discount saves you $20 on its usual price of $39.99, so if you’ve had this collection in your sights, now is the time to make your move on it.

Surprise! Arc Raiders is cutting the prices of its store cosmetics, and will refund anyone who snapped them up before the new price goes into effect tomorrow, November 13.

In an update on the official Arc Raiders website, developer Embark Studios said it has “heard [player] feedback,” writing: “We’ve reviewed our prices and made adjustments to lower prices where applicable.” Revised prices go live tomorrow, November 13, at 1.30am PT / 4.30am ET / 9.30am GMT).

“For any Raider who has already made a purchase on the old pricing, we’ll compensate you for the difference. These Raider Tokens will be refunded back into your account automatically in the coming week.”

The team stopped short of revealing the new prices, or how big the discounts will be. Nonetheless, it should be good news for players, some of whom have been unhappy at the costs, complaining that the premium skins cost “half [the] price of the game” itself.

That’s not the only big news we’ve had today, either. Embark also confirmed it has been “silently testing” duo matchmaking and has indeed enabled it earlier this week.

“We have silently tested and enabled duo prioritized matchmaking, beginning earlier this week,” the team explained. “Duo matchmaking will work like this: first, we prioritize Solos and Squads to play separately. After that, we prioritize Duos to play with other Duos, and for Trios to play with Trios. Please note that this is not a 100% guaranteed system, so you may at times run into differing constellations of players other than your own.”

Finally, while there’s currently one free Raider Deck available for all, in the future players will see both free and premium decks. As the team explained, gameplay Items are only in free Raider Decks, but to “help you along the way as a new Raider, we have included some gameplay Items in the free Raider Deck, which can be unlocked via progression.”

There are also “no pay-to-win items in the premium Raider Decks,” Embark insisted, saying the “focus” for premium Decks is based on “cosmetics and convenience.”

Don’t forget that Arc Raiders’ first major update, North Line, launches tomorrow, November 13. The new update introduces a whole new region north of the Rust Belt called Stella Montis, described as “cold, pristine, and filled with the remnants of humanity’s lost ambitions.” It’ll introduce a whole new region, new community unlock event, two new ARCs — Matriarch and Shredder – as well as new weapons, playstyles, and quests. The next update, Cold Snap, arrives this December.

“Arc Raiders raises the bar for extraction shooters pretty much across the board, with an incredibly gripping progression grind, tense fights against NPCs and other players that make for memorable matches, and loot that feels completely worth all the work and stress it takes to obtain it,” we wrote in IGN’s Arc Raiders review, which returned an ‘Amazing’ 9/10.

We’re not the only ones who are having a good time with it, despite the controversy around its use of AI. Arc Raiders has now sold over 4 million copies worldwide less than two weeks since its release date, cementing its commercial success. Nexon also revealed that the extraction shooter had reached a huge concurrent count of 700,000 players across all platforms.

If this has tempted you into jumping into Arc Raiders, check out our guide to the best settings, find out what skills we recommend unlocking first, and see how to earn loot by delivering field depot crates.

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.

Arc Raiders publisher Nexon has defended the game’s use of generative AI, suggesting players should “assume that every game company is now using AI.”

Arc Raiders, like developer Embark’s 2023 shooter, The Finals, declares it uses AI in development, stating on its Steam store page: “During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.”

Embark expanded on this with PCGamesN recently, saying Arc Raiders “in no way uses generative AI whatsoever” and stressed that it instead used “something called machine learning, or reinforcement learning, and that’s to do with the locomotion for our larger drones with multiple legs, but there’s no generative content whatsoever.”

However, in the same interview, design director Virgil Watkins added that with regards to its controversial text-to-speech system, it “hire[d] and contract[ed] voice actors for it — it’s part of their contract that we use [AI] for this purpose, and that allows us to do things like our ping system, where it’s capable of saying every single item name, every single location name, and compass directions. That’s how we can get that without needing to have someone come in every time we create a new item for the game.”

Now, in a fresh interview with Game*Spark (as translated by Automaton), Junghun Lee, CEO of Arc Raiders’ publisher Nexon, not only championed AI for improving “efficiency in both game production and live service operations,” but also stated: “I think it’s important to assume that every game company is now using AI.”

“First of all, I think it’s important to assume that every game company is now using AI,” Lee said. “But if everyone is working with the same or similar technologies, the real question becomes: how do you survive? I believe it’s important to choose a strategy that increases your competitiveness.”

It certainly feels as though Lee’s comments ring true. EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said AI is “the very core of our business,” and Square Enix recently implemented mass layoffs and reorganized, saying it needed to be “aggressive in applying AI.” Dead Space creator Glen Schofield also recently detailed his plans to “fix” the industry in part via the use of generative AI in game development, and former God of War dev Meghan Morgan Juinio said: “… if we don’t embrace [AI], I think we’re selling ourselves short.”

Conversely, Nintendo has bucked the trend, with Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto previously stressing that the company would rather go in a “different direction” than the rest of the video game industry when it comes to AI.

That said, its use of AI clearly hasn’t held Arc Raiders back. It’s now sold over 4 million copies worldwide less than two weeks since its release date, cementing its commercial success. Nexon also revealed that the extraction shooter had reached a huge concurrent count of 700,000 players across all platforms.

“ARC Raiders raises the bar for extraction shooters pretty much across the board, with an incredibly gripping progression grind, tense fights against NPCs and other players that make for memorable matches, and loot that feels completely worth all the work and stress it takes to obtain it,” we wrote in IGN’s Arc Raiders review, which returned an ‘Amazing’ 9/10.

“The fact that it manages to also run well and look amazing all the while is just downright impressive, even if a few bugs here and there lead to the rare rage quit. For years I’d been wondering when someone would take the awesome promise of this genre to the next level, and ARC Raiders is without question what I’ve been waiting for.”

If this has tempted you into jumping into Arc Raiders, check out our guide to the best settings, find out what skills we recommend unlocking first, and see how to earn loot by delivering field depot crates.

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.

Elden Ring: Nightreign is getting its first meaty, proper, named DLC next month, including new bosses, new shifting earth, and new playable Nightfarers. The DLC is called The Forsaken Hollows, and it’s out on December 4, 2025.

This comes from a trailer shown during today’s State of Play, which showed off a lot of clips from what’s to come, albeit without a lot of context. There’s a clip showing what seems to be a new Shifting Earth known as The Great Hollow, which opens up a huge hole in the middle of Limveld with temples, towers, and crystals sticking out. We see two new Nightfarers: the first is the Undertaker, which uses strength and faith as her primary stats, and the Scholar, which seems to be an arcane-focused magic-user.

There are also two new bosses that should be familiar to FromSoft veterans. Most notable is a glimpse of Artorias, subject of the original Dark Souls DLC Artorias of the Abyss.

A voiceover that sounds a lot like Duchess also refers to “the aftermath of the Long Night,” perhaps implying that this DLC takes place after the “end” of Nightreign when the Nightfarers have defeated all the Nightlords. There’s also something at the beginning about the “Dreglord”. As usual, Souls fans will probably have to wait for the post-release lore videos to make sense of this one. It’s unclear how much story content this is really going to add, or if it’s just the bosses, the characters, and the shifting earth.

Elden Ring: Nightreign is Bandai Namco’s multiplayer riff on Elden Ring, where 1-3 players can fight their way through three nights of exploration, loot hunting, and bosses as they try to take down powerful Night Lords. The game launched back in May, and we gave it a 7/10, saying “When Elden Ring Nightreign is played exactly as it was designed to be played, it’s one of the finest examples of a three-player co-op game around – but that’s harder to do than it should be, and playing solo is poorly balanced.”

Since its release, FromSoftware has made a number of balance tweaks, added a duos mode, and updated with an ultra-hard difficulty mode called Deep of Night for those who for some reason didn’t think the game was hard enough as-is. However, the last few months have been quiet, and fans have grown agitated at the lack of news or updates, with FromSoftware leaving them to just fight the same bosses over and over. FromSoftware moved to reassure everyone just yesterday in a financial report, and today’s DLC announcement should help matters as well. It looks like the DLC will cost $15.00 if you don’t already own either the Collectors or Deluxe edition of the game.

You can catch up on everything announced at today’s State of Play right here.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Games Workshop has sparked shock and anger among Warhammer 40,000 fans after it killed off two main characters from Space Marine 2 via a brief lore update posted on its website.

Last week, Games Workshop announced that Titus, the main playable character from last year’s blockbuster hit video game Space Marine 2, had been promoted with a cool new trailer that set up the next narrative expansion for the Warhammer 40,000 setting, dubbed 500 Worlds.

Captain Demetrian Titus, Master of the Watch, is now once again Captain of the Ultramarines Second Company, a position he had already held before he was taken into custody on suspicion of heresy by the Inquisition after the events of the first Space Marine game.

In the context of Titus’ promotion, fans had expressed concern over the fate of Sevastus Acheran, the former captain of the Second Company and Master of the Watch who dishes out missions (and can never spare enough men) in Space Marine 2. Now we know what actually happened.

In a lore update post on Warhammer Community, Games Workshop revealed what Acheran got up to following the events of Space Marine 2. And yes, as fans feared, he’s dead.

Confirmation comes from a four paragraph lore explanation in the article itself, which reveals Acheran went out in a blaze of glory fighting a Genestealer Cult on the hive world of Trygg. That’s that. Acheran is dead. But it gets worse.

NetEase Games has published an X-Men animated series-inspired trailer for Marvel Rivals Season 5: Love is a Battlefield, revealing Rogue and Gambit as its newest playable characters.

The trailer for the latest season of NetEase’s popular hero shooter features a romance theme that puts everyone’s favorite X-Men couple center stage. In typical Marvel Rivals fashion, there’s no gameplay for the mutant heroes here yet, but it does feature a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tease featuring none other than Scott Summers a.k.a. Cyclops. It also sounds like original X-Men ‘97 voice actors A.J. LoCascio (Gambit) and Lenore Zann (Rogue) will be heard voicing the two lovebirds when Season 5 launches November 14, 2025.

“This season centers on Mr. and Mrs. X, Gambit and Rogue, after the Timestream Entanglement interrupted their dream wedding,” Marvel Rivals creative director Guangyun Chen a.k.a. Guangguang said in its Season 5 Dev Stream. “To make up for the disruption, Gambit has planned a honeymoon full of surprises for Rogue. But when their journey leads to a world built by the Elders of the Universe, can their love survive the ultimate cosmic test?”

Gambit leads Marvel Rivals Season 5 as its first playable hero and its next Strategist. The card-throwing, staff-wielding X-Men is said to blend his kinetic abilities and combat skills to offer a unique playstyle for players. Expect to see his powers healing allies, cleansing negative effects, and even applying anti-heal to enemies. Gambit kicks things off later this week, but we’ll have to wait to learn more about Rogue. Expect to see her and her power-absorbing abilities debut at the Marvel Rivals Season 5 mid-season update in around one month.

Alongside its new X-Men heroes, Marvel Rivals Season 5 is set to introduce a new 18 vs. 18 Conquest (Annihilation) mode in the new Grand Garden map come November 27. A new non-combat map, Times Square, is also on the way for Season 5, allowing up to 100 players to gather, dance, and mingle in between tense matches.

NetEase will also soon celebrate one year of Marvel Rivals with a special anniversary update. Those who join the festivities when they begin November 27 will be gifted 2500 Units, as well as a free, school-themed Legendary Jeff the Land Shark costume. More gameplay adjustments, accessories, anniversary costumes, and other updates will arrive as Marvel Rivals Season 5 rolls on.

Marvel Rivals Season 4 previously introduced Daredevil as a Duelist and Angela as a Vanguard. For more on the NetEase hero shooter, you can read about the Marvel Zombies-inspired PvE mode introduced last month. You can also check out our original 8/10 Marvel Rivals review.

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).

As a lover of puzzle games, what can elevate my puzzle-solving experience more than having horrifying monsters breathing down my neck and ready to snap said neck if I fail to solve their puzzle in time? I love these types of games that keep me on edge for hours on end, so Routine is exactly the type of aesthetically pleasing and brutally tense kinds of horror experience I’m always on the lookout for. And with a deeply cool 80’s-tech lunar setting and the beginnings of a story that has me interested in seeing more, I’m willing to overlook some of the things I was less impressed by during the roughly 90-minute demo, like the fact that the monsters searching for me were about as bright as the desks I hid behind and underneath. It remains to be seen if the story will pay off as much as its promising setting and compelling vibe might imply, but I’ll definitely be diving deeper in the future to see how it shakes out.

Routine is one of those horror games where you’re forced to run around solving little puzzles while absolutely horrifying monsters stalk the halls, ready to kill you on sight if you fail to avoid their notice – you know, in the same vein as something like Alien: Isolation or My Friendly Neighborhood. That comes with all the same pros and cons as its genre peers, where you have these really tense moments as you manage to solve a puzzle and rush through a door just before the bad guy you can’t possibly hope to kill catches up with you. But you then also have plenty of instances where you’re stuck in a room waiting for the dumb bad guy to turn around and walk away, leading to lots of moments where the tension sours into a monotonous waiting game. I tend to really enjoy these kinds of protracted hide and seek sequences, even if they do occasionally involve a bit of waiting, so this was right up my alley.

In this particular case, I found myself on a moon base that had been taken over by killer humanoid robots, whose lidless, unblinking eyes searched for me as I repaired various broken electrical systems and tried to get through each area unnoticed. The ambience of this dilapidated lunar base with an ‘80’s tech aesthetic really worked for me, clearly drawing inspiration from fellow retro-tech science fiction worlds like Alien. But Routine also brings with it a unique sense of humor, with silly arcade games to play in between sweat-inducing horror sequences and cheeky, non-murderous robot helpers to find along the way.

This is one of the biggest ways in which Routine sets itself apart, as its immaculately creepy vibes, unique retro aesthetic, and tongue-in-cheek jokes in between bouts of utter terror, all coalesce in a way I haven’t seen before. I didn’t get a very strong sense of whether or not the story will deliver something worth all the stress and jump scares along the way, but hopefully all this neat worldbuilding will translate into something as awesome as the setting. With some solid environmental storytelling and hints at some kind of mysterious viral disease at work, it has certainly piqued my curiosity.

The areas I explored ranged from= fairly unremarkable metallic hallways filled with busted droids and signs of something catastrophic having happened recently to really neat areas like an abandoned arcade with janky retro games to play and a shopping mall littered with debris. And, of course, since the whole thing takes place on a base on the moon, they take every opportunity to give you a nice view of the beautiful majesty of good ol’ Selene. Gotta love that. I’m a tad skeptical that they can manage to keep things interesting when you’re stranded on a fairly generic space station on a barren rock in outer space, but hey, so far so good.

Although much of the demo I played featured some fairly by-the-numbers puzzles, like finding codes around the world to enter into a keypad to unlock a door, it also had some neat mechanics built around the C.A.T device you’re given early in the story. This tool is basically just a handheld camcorder that can also do things like fire an electrical bolt at targets in your path. What’s cool, though, is that it evolved as I progressed, like when I unlocked an ultraviolet mode called the Ultraview Module that allowed me to see trace substances like bloodstains that helped me solve some of the space station’s more unintuitive riddles. I only unlocked two modes in my time with it, but it’s clear that upgrading this bad boy is going to be the primary way in which you power up, and so far I like that idea quite a bit. It’ll be interesting to see what clever new uses they find for it.

While you upgrade your C.A.T., read snippets of lore around the space station, and solve puzzles, you’ll find yourself almost constantly hunted by extremely violent robots that chase after you on sight with intent to kill. Naturally, that makes even the most simple brain teasers that much more stressful, as you spend every other second double-checking over your shoulder, or wincing when you hear a robotic sound come from somewhere nearby. It’s not exactly an original premise, but it’s certainly the classic type of horror gameplay I’ve come to know and love over the years – and something we could definitely use more of.

One thing that was a bit disappointing, at least during my extremely early time with the story, is just how easy it was to outsmart the fairly dim robots hunting for me, to the point where I never actually was killed during my time playing. They make a ton of noise as they march around electronically, give up the chase as soon as you start running away since they can’t hope to compete with your speed, and don’t do a very thorough job searching for you if you’re hidden in an obvious corner they haven’t bothered exploring yet. What’s more, one of the abilities you unlock for your C.A.T. early on, is a mode where you can tase the robots chasing you, shorting them out for a second or two to buy valuable time you need to get away, as if it weren’t already easy enough as-is. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still as intimidating as hell – the robotic shrieks they make every once in a while made my skin crawl, and the few times where they were able to get close without me noticing sent me screaming in the opposite direction. They may not actually be very deadly killers (at least early on), but they’re still pretty damn stressful to be around nonetheless.