Category: IGN

When I was 13, my dad let me drive his car for the first time. It wasn’t on city streets – just in a big, empty parking lot – but I will never forget that’s the day I learned that a car creeps forward even when the driver’s not pressing the gas. Sure, I was only going a few miles an hour, but as a terrified, inexperienced driver, my heart was pounding and I felt totally out of control. I hit the brakes like a kick drum, starting, stopping, starting, and stopping, until I finally got a handle on the machine. It was a steep learning curve; before then, the closest experiences I had to real-life driving were go karts and Mario Kart, and I naively thought my hundreds of laps of motion control steering on Coconut Mall would give me some idea of what to expect.

Strangely, I thought about this memory a lot just a few days ago during my first hands-on demo with Kirby Air Riders. There are certainly a number of similarities: your character moves forward automatically without pressing any buttons, I was going completely off the rails and heavily relying on the brakes until I got the hang of things, and – most notably – my Mario Kart skills didn’t transfer whatsoever. But surprisingly, it was my Smash Bros. muscles that I found flexing instead, with Air Riders feeling like a strange pseudo-sequel to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the same way that Donkey Kong Bananza gave the Super Mario Odyssey treatment to another franchise. Let me explain.

Ever since Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders were formally revealed for Switch 2 back in April, lots of us have wondered the same thing: “Why is Nintendo releasing two kart racers in the same year?” It’s a fair question, one that even Air Riders director – and the creator of Kirby himself – Masahiro Sakurai posed in his presentation last month, joking that it “basically is like Mario Kart,” and one that he even brought up when Nintendo asked him to make Air Riders years ago.

On the surface, it’s an obvious comparison. Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders both feature a large roster of characters racing through colorful courses on various karts/machines, as they weaponize a wide lineup of power-ups to try to take first place. It’s easy to see why onlookers (and even Sakurai himself) would question the choice to place both of these games in Switch 2’s first six months on the market. But once I got Air Riders in my hands, I realized that Mario Kart World and Air Riders really don’t play like each other at all, even in their respective racing modes.

I got to try out the same pair of race courses as our previewer Leanne Butkovic did late last month, first speeding through the starter track, Floria Fields, before taking on the more intense Waveflow Waters. I was immediately struck by how fast Air Riders is compared to the GameCube original, where the racing always felt a bit sluggish. It echoes the jump from Smash 64 to Smash Melee: Melee is faster, more competitive, and stacks a ton of new mechanics on top of the original, just as Air Riders does when compared to Air Ride.

The difference is that Melee came out two years after the first one, and Air Riders is arriving more than two decades after its original, and it’s honestly really cool to see Sakurai pick up right where he left off, creating an iterative sequel that builds upon and fixes issues of what came before as if no time has passed at all. When Air Riders was first teased, I didn’t know what to expect from a legacy Sakurai sequel as he returned to a series from so long ago, and the answer being that it’s basically a GameCube game, but better, is a pretty cool direction to take.

Air Riders felt like a roller coaster ride at first, as I swung around tight turns and glided through exciting setpieces like a stretch of road with rumbling waterfalls on either side of it. The strategy for these races is nothing like Mario Kart World, where it’s all about knowing your route on the track, crossing your fingers for the right item at the right time, and executing shortcuts when you get the power-up you’re looking for. Air Riders is more about attacking and reacting to your opponents – Nintendo even opened its behind-closed-doors presentation to the media by calling it a “Vehicle Action Game” rather than a kart racer. To play Air Riders successfully, I needed to focus on combat and my opponent’s positioning while racing around the course, both by attacking enemies to charge up my devastating special and following the leader’s exact path to take advantage of the new Star Slide ability that increases your speed when you collect the trail of stars machines leave behind. Once I wrapped my head around these core mechanics, I started to understand that from a gameplay perspective, Mario Kart World isn’t the immediate comparison point for Kirby Air Riders: it’s Sakurai’s other darling, Super Smash Bros.

Smash is technically classified as a fighting game, but it has really carved out its own niche with its focus on advanced platforming and knocking opponents out of the arena rather than depleting a health bar, and the same concept can be applied to Kirby Air Riders. Both Smash and Air Riders exist on the outskirts of their traditional genres, resulting in games that can be intimidating at first glance due to how they defy expectations, but ones that provide shocking mechanical depth to those who heavily invest in their systems. As I said, I was incredibly overwhelmed during my first Air Riders play session, but determined to understand its intricacies, I returned to the demo three additional times during PAX West, gradually getting better and more confident each time. I was reminded of the first time I played an eight-player match of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. It was overstimulating, chaotic, and hard to follow, and I thought there was no way it was a mode I’d ever get attached to. But Sakurai games have a way of drawing you in, and it wasn’t long before eight-player matches became a staple on game nights with friends.

I could see the same thing happening with Air Riders’ City Trial mode, which I’ve now had the chance to play eight times. This returning fan-favorite from the GameCube original drops you into an open city alongside up to 15 other players, giving you five minutes to find a better machine to ride and upgrade, with stats and powerups that spawn throughout the map. At the end of five minutes, you compete in one of a lineup of competitions with the machine you developed which range from seeing who can glide the furthest to the straight-up speed test of a drag race.

Despite Sakurai warning against it in his presentation, I spent my first few City Trial runs gobbling up every power-up I could find, and it resulted in a machine that was way too fast for the minigames that followed. I was completely off the rails, and I initially felt punished for being too greedy during the exploration segment of City Trial. But for subsequent runs, I started being more selective about which power-ups I grabbed and which I left behind, trying to make a machine well-suited for any of the possible minigames that could show up.

Sakurai’s fingerprints are truly all over Air Riders. From the slick menu and UI design – which is traditionally designed by his wife, Michiko Sakurai – to the dramatic, slow-motion, red and black finish zoom that punctuates destroying an opponent’s machine just like the final knockout in a match of Ultimate. Even the main menu’s basic black title set on a white background is the same style as Ultimate, and Air Riders’ Japanese website could easily be confused with Sakurai’s other series at a quick glance, complete with character renders and alternate costume designs that scream Smash Bros. Each character’s unique special move instantly reminded me of a Final Smash, and the sheer level of polish and attention to detail across every facet of my demo was unmistakably Sakurai.

Fish It! will have you clicking away for hours as you try to catch all the variations available in the game. As of the time of writing this, Fish It! claims to have over 1,000,000 variations for you to collect. With new updates planned for the Roblox experience’s future, it looks like that number will only continue to increase. So with that in mind, why not use a few codes to help you along the way?

Working Fish It! Codes

Before you can use codes, you’ll need to reach level 10, so make sure you spend some time hooking as many fish as possible before trying them out.

• 100M – 1x Luck II Potion
• MUTATE – x1 Mutation Potion

Expired Fish It! Codes

These codes can no longer be redeemed, but they’re listed here so you can still try if you like!

• SHARKSSS
• ARMOR
• SORRYSPINS
• FREEBIES

How to Redeem Fish It! Codes

1. Jump into Fish It! and complete the tutorial
2. Continue to fish and complete quests to reach Level 10
3. Look for the Store Icon at the top of the screen. It’s the red basket.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the Exclusive Store.
5. Enter the code under Redeem Codes.
6. Hit Redeem and enjoy your goodies!

Lauren Harper is an Associate Guides Editor. She loves a variety of games but is especially fond of puzzles, horrors, and point-and-click adventures.

The developers of Hellraiser: Revival intend to push its M Rating as far as it can with the upcoming video game adaptation.

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is a story-driven, single-player survival horror action game set in the Hellraiser universe. It’s developed by Boss Team Games, creator of the recently delisted Evil Dead: The Game, and is due out on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC via Steam.

Hellraiser, for the uninitiated, is a cult classic horror franchise made up of 11 films and various comic books, all based on The Hellbound Heart novella by English author Clive Barker. The star of the show is Pinhead, a ‘Cenobite’ who harvests human souls to torture in sadistic experiments. And you can see that in action in the trailer, which — content warning! — contains as much sex as it does body horror.

Hellraiser: Revival is not for the faint of heart. If you’re wondering just how extreme the game gets, be sure to check out IGN’s hands-on Hellraiser: Revival preview for all the gory details. But in short, expect body horror, sex, no holds barred nudity, nightmarish scenes, and a healthy dose of hell.

It’s ‘Resident Evil For Sickos,’ we said coming out of our time with Hellraiser, but just how extreme can the developers at Saber Interactive take it? In an interview with IGN, Saber development chief Tim Willits said the studio plans to push Hellraiser as far as the people who make the rules around an M Rating will let them.

“We are going to go as far as we possibly can, as far as the people that make rules will let us go,” Willits insisted. “And I hope that we can make one version, but we are willing to go as far as we possibly can go.”

Of course, what we’ve seen of Hellraiser: Revival so far is in keeping with Clive Barker’s cult classic Hellraiser movies, so tonally, there’s no real difference. But there’s something unique about seeing and doing all this horrific stuff from a first-person perspective that’s a bit more in your face than watching a film in a theater or at home.

“We want to be a responsible publisher / developer, but we are going to push it as far as we possibly can in the context of the game and the movie.”

Clive Barker is working with Saber on Hellraiser: Revival to ensure it fits with his vision for the universe. This back and forth should result in a game fans of the movies will get a real kick out of, Willits added.

“He’s come back and said, ‘Yeah, Pinhead wouldn’t do that,’” Willits explained. “And he’s come back and said, ‘Yeah, you got to tweak this a little bit.’ Because this is his world and he knows stuff that we don’t even think about.

“And he’s been really fast too. Sometimes when you work with famous people you throw something over and then six months later they come back and they complain about something. No, he’s that on it.”

Doug Bradley, the original actor behind the Cenobite leader Pinhead, has reprised his role for the game, adding to the authenticity of the project.

Here’s the official blurb:

Discover the tale of Aidan, who must unlock the dark powers of the Genesis Configuration, a mysterious puzzle box, to help his girlfriend from a hellish abyss. As Aidan, you’ll harness the box’s infernal abilities to survive your pact with the sinister Pinhead and battle against the twisted cult that worships him and the Cenobites. Fail, and your suffering will be legendary, even in Hell.

Hellraiser was thrust back into the public consciousness in 2022 with a franchise reboot film. IGN’s Hellraiser review returned an 8/10. We said: “Hellraiser is a reinvigorated reboot that gets the blood pumping, starting with Jamie Clayton’s worthy Pinhead performance that sets a fresh tone with immense reverence paid to Clive Barker’s works.”

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.

Ubisoft employees have raised concerns around the company’s partnership with Saudi Arabia to create new Assassin’s Creed Mirage DLC, a fresh report has revealed.

The upcoming content was first reported on back in January by a French financial newspaper, Les Echoes, which stated that the DLC had received funding from Saudi Arabia’s controversial Public Investment Fund (PIF). Ubisoft did not respond to me when asked for comment on that report at the time.

Months later, Ubisoft quietly announced the DLC itself in late August, in a social media post sent out early one Saturday morning. The brief reveal confirmed that the add-on would see Mirage hero Basim visiting AlUla, an ancient site that’s now one of Saudi Arabia’s cultural highlights.

In an internal Q&A shared with Ubisoft staff and published by GameFile, an employee asked if management believed partnering with Saudi Arabia, specifically following the killing and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, would tarnish the company’s image.

Management responded by addressing the fact that Guillemot had recently visited Saudi Arabia as part of a delegation alongside French president Emmanual Macron, but dismissed this as a “classic diplomatic tool for expanding France’s influence and reach around the world” that would help disseminate the country’s values.

As for the origins of the DLC, the management response to the query simply stated Ubisoft did “not comment on rumors.”

Assassin’s Creed Mirage players, we have a surprise coming your way later this year!

📖 New story chapter & missions set in 9th century AlUla
🎮 Gameplay improvements for the base game and the new location
🎁 All for free

Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/8CjB3MRvfR

— Assassin’s Creed (@assassinscreed) August 23, 2025

Ubisoft management also attempted to draw a distinction between the country’s leader and chairman of the PIF, Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and the PIF itself. “The latter’s money is not MBS’s, and talking with partners who do not share our democratic values ​​does not mean abandoning them,” the company’s response reads.

GameFile reports that Guillemot visited Saudi Arabia again last month to speak at the New Global Sport Conference and announce Mirage’s AlUla DLC at the event (something which also explains the unusual timing of the news being made public at the same time, albeit with no mention of Guillemot’s speech).

“We are working with AlUla, which is a UNESCO site, which is not known yet very much,” Guillemote said, announcing the DLC at the Saudi event. “But we are creating content that will be given for free to players that play Mirage, and they will be able to go in that site.

“As you can see, they will be able to play there, to have a story in this environment. I am sure they will love this region, just also because it has been done with specialists [of] archaeology, really people that know what happened then and why it was so important.”

IGN recently asked Ubisoft for more detail on the matter and was told that, as with every Assassin’s Creed game, it had creative control on the proposed content. This title update to Assassin’s Creed Mirage was “made possible thanks to the support of local and international organisations,” Ubisoft added, “through access to experts, historians and resources to ensure the creation of an authentic and accurate setting.”

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Embark Studios just launched Season 8 of free-to-download shooter The Finals, introducing new, revamped destruction and improvements to competitive play. But it also added a standard competitive multiplayer feature that — at least at launch — won’t be available on Xbox Series S.

Season 8 introduces quality of life features to “enhance player experience and help strengthen their competitive skills,” including the beta version of the Instant Replay feature — aka a kill cam.

Here’s the official blurb:

A major addition aimed at boosting competitive clarity and supporting skill development. Players can now replay intense gameplay moments linked directly to their opponent’s point of view, making it easier to identify the exact source of eliminations. Instant Replay has been a significant but fulfilling development challenge and is currently in BETA with ongoing improvements.

It’s interesting to note the disclaimer Embark Studios added to the announcement: “this feature will not be compatible with Xbox Series S, PlayStation 4 and certain PC builds at launch.)”

Killcam is a pretty standard FPS feature at this point, indeed it has been a part of, for example, Call of Duty for years. And usually it is available across all platforms the game is on. Again, with Call of Duty, the killcam exists on Xbox Series S, PS4, and all PC builds the game itself can run on.

So it’s surprising to see it miss out for The Finals on these platforms. Clearly, there is a performance issue the developer is still working on, and it mentions this is a problem “at launch,” so hopefully some point soon killcam will be added to all platforms.

In a blog post, Embark Studios explained the challenge it faces adding the Instant Replay feature, calling it “mind-bending tech.”

To be honest, at first and second glance, this was an impossible task. But at Embark we take a challenge seriously. Prototypes for this feature date back to the early days of the project, before The Finals even had a name, trying to prove it possible. What you will see in Season 8 is the result of all that hard work. We had to calculate everything that matters: player movement, environmental destruction, object interactions in a level of data fidelity that’s hard to pull off in a Dynamism Shooter. Then take all that info and quickly reconstruct the moment.

It’s not enabled for everyone by default (especially on systems under 16 GB RAM), but you can toggle it on manually. If you’ve got the horsepower, turn it on, try it, and tell us what you think. We’ll be gathering feedback, polishing performance, and expanding integration throughout the season.

Activision has outlined the steps it’s taking to combat Call of Duty cheating on PC, while stressing that there’s no easy solution to the problem.

Call of Duty has a reputation for cheating (it comes with the territory of being such a hugely popular shooter and having a free-to-download battle royale). Cheating is more prevalent on PC (Activision recently confirmed as much, to the point where it said if you believe you’ve died unfairly to a console player, it’s much more likely that they’ve used ‘intel advantage’ than cheats). So, some console players head straight into Call of Duty’s settings to turn off crossplay across the board, just to take the potential for PC cheaters ruining their day out of the equation. Earlier this year, Activision added new console-only crossplay options for regular multiplayer, although PC players who do not cheat said they were being unfairly punished.

Activision, as IGN has reported, has spent millions of dollars in the battle against Call of Duty cheat makers, cheat sellers, and cheat users, with a number of recent high-profile successes. In March, Phantom Overlay announced it was shutting down, with fans reacting in disbelief that such a prominent Call of Duty cheat provider could fall by the wayside. Also in March, IGN reported on four cheat providers that were shut down ahead of the hotly anticipated return of Verdansk to Warzone.

In the run up to Black Ops 7’s November launch, Activision is, like EA for Battlefield 6, employing extra steps to help stop cheating on PC. When Black Ops 7 launches on November 14, PC players will be required to enable both Secure Boot and TPM 2.0. “These hardware-based features will give us a stronger, more trusted foundation for detecting and blocking certain cheats before they can take root,” Activision said in a new blog post.

Other security features will be tested during the Black Ops 7 beta to see how they perform. “These tools are designed to identify and remove cheaters faster, and we’ll be closely monitoring how they respond in real matches,” Activision said. “The full force of our protections will be reserved for launch, when all systems come online together.”

But Activision, as so many other video game companies have done, qualified this work by saying the war on cheaters is a never-ending one.

“We also want to be clear: there’s no one-and-done solution to solving the challenge of cheating. Every major game faces this issue, and cheaters are constantly looking for new ways to exploit systems.

“What matters, and where we’ve seen real improvement, is how quickly we adapt. In Black Ops 6, detections are faster, mitigations are stronger, and enforcement is cutting deeper into the networks that try to harm fair play. With Black Ops 7, hardware protections like Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 will add another layer of defense.”

Elsewhere, Call of Duty will now tell players directly in-game if they’re placed into shadow ban status for Warzone and Multiplayer.

“More than 75% of the LMM [Limited Matchmaking] pool is made up of users who have been brought into the system through parties, so this notification is important to clarify account status,” Activision explained.

“As a reminder, being placed in Limited Matchmaking doesn’t signal that an account is a confirmed cheater. It means an alarm was raised that requires examination.”

Last month, Battlefield 6 developers lamented the need for security measures such as Secure Boot. Speaking to Eurogamer, Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl said: “The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot.”

He continued: “It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people’s PCs can’t handle it and they can’t play; that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things.”

Still, Buhl sounds pleased with the effectiveness of the likes of Secure Boot, which are “some of the strongest tools in our toolbox to stop cheating.”

“We were pretty happy with how the anti-cheat performed. Obviously I’ll say we can never be perfect, anti-cheat is always a cat-and-mouse game where we’re constantly going back and forth and keeping on top of what the cheaters are doing. But from the beginning this was something we put a high priority on, so when we launch this game we have a really strong anti-cheat program in place.”

Buhl continued: “Again, nothing makes cheating impossible, but enabling Secure Boot and having kernel-level access makes it so much harder to cheat and so much easier for us to find and stop cheating.”

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.

After ghosting fans in 2024 by cancelling FM25, Football Manager is finally back in the game. FM26 has a confirmed release date of November 4, 2025, and yes, you can already preorder it.

If obsessing over player stats on your commute sounds like heaven, FM26 Touch also lands on Switch December 4, while FM26 Mobile arrives on Netflix, meaning you can now play Football Manager on the same app you binge Squid Game (yay?).

Where to Preorder Football Manager 26

While some had suggested Nintendo might abandon amiibo with Nintendo Switch 2, that’s not been the case.

In fact, there are some fresh ones in 2025 from Donkey Kong Bananza and Street Fighter 6, but there are also fresh figurines from The Legend of Zelda.

Better yet, not only does Amazon have Sidon, Riju, and Tulin in stock, but they’re all discounted for a limited time right now.

Amazon Amiibo Sale: Save $10 for a Limited Time

Each of these amiibo figures would set you back $29.99 when they first released, but Amazon has discounted three of the figures to $19.99. That’s a saving of 33% each, and $10 off per amiibo.

After a month-long showdown packed with nostalgia, fan debates, and surprise upsets, IGN’s fan-voted tournament to decide the Greatest Racing Game of All Time has reached the finish line.

The Road to Victory:

Starting with 32 legendary titles across four regions: Arcade Racing, Simulation, Street Racing, and Wild Card, the bracket pitted generations of racers against each other in a battle of genre, style, and pure fun. Each round was decided by fans voting across IGN’s website & social platforms throughout August.

Arcade Racing Region

This region saw Burnout 3: Takedown dominate with its high-octane crashes and signature chaos. It knocked out nostalgic favorites like OutRun, DriveClub, and Hot Wheels Unleashed on its way to the Final Four.

Wild Card Racing Region

The unpredictability was real, but Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was an unstoppable force. The Switch-era racer powered through Diddy Kong Racing, Wreckfest, and Crash Team Racing to secure its spot among the elite.

Simulation Region

Representing the most realistic and technical side of racing, Gran Turismo 7 stood tall. It beat out heavyweights like Forza Motorsport, iRacing, and F1 2020, proving that sim racing still has a loyal fanbase.

Street Racing Region

In a battle of urban horsepower, Forza Horizon 5, with its stunning Mexico backdrop and open-world freedom, outraced Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition to reach the Final Four.

Final Four Showdowns

The penultimate rounds delivered some dramatic clashes.

• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sent Burnout 3 spinning off the track with a decisive win.
• Forza Horizon 5 edged past Gran Turismo 7 in a tight race between street style and simulation mastery.

The Grand Finale: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe vs. Forza Horizon 5

It all came down to a battle between two modern icons: Arcade Racing vs. Street Racing, Mario vs. Mexico. In the end, fan nostalgia, polish, and sheer fun factor helped Mario Kart 8 Deluxe take the crown as IGN’s Greatest Racing Game of All Time.

Did You See It Coming?

Did your favorite make it to the top? Were there any upsets that still sting? Let us know in the comments!

Presented by Toyota Gazoo Racing.

One of my favorite board games, and one that I always recommend as an excellent choice for board game beginners, is Z-Man Games’ Pandemic. A tense and strategic cooperative game that pits players in various specialized roles with the goal of stopping and eradicating deadly viruses. Now, Matt Leacock, the designer of Pandemic, has done it again, replacing viruses with Urakai, and first responders with Legolas and Gimli. The game is called The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship. I love Pandemic, but after diving into this, it’s going to be hard to go back.