Category: IGN

Elden Ring Nightreign has enjoyed a massive launch on Steam, but the excitement was tarnished by a ‘mixed’ user review rating.

FromSoftware’s co-op spin-off saw an incredible 313,593 peak concurrent users on Steam overnight, enough to make Elden Ring Nightreign one of the most-played games on Valve’s platform.

But it also came with a number of negative reviews (67% of the reviews are positive so far), most of which point out Elden Ring Nightreign’s lack of duos, or two-player co-op, and voice chat.

Elden Ring Nightreign drops players into the shifting lands of Limveld, exploring and fighting for survival either solo or in groups of three. There is no way to play two-player co-op.

As explained in IGN’s Elden Ring Nightreign review: “Let’s get the most important caveat out of the way first: if you are hoping to tackle Nightreign entirely solo, and are anything less than a hardcore Elden Ring player that actively seeks out ways to make that already difficult game even more challenging, Nightreign isn’t for you. Yes, there is technically a single-player option, but it is so poorly balanced that I would be shocked if it isn’t patched and adjusted within the first month of release. And this is coming from someone who lives and breathes these types of games.”

In IGN’s interview with Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki, the Nightreign lead developer discussed the choice to lean on solos and trios as the core experience options. When asked why there’s no option for a pair of players to drop in together without a matchmade third player, Ishizaki said it was overlooked.

“The simple answer is that this is simply something that was overlooked during development as just a two-player option, so we’re very sorry about that,” said Ishizaki. “As we said before, we set out to make this a multiplayer co-op game for three players, balanced for three players, so that was the main focus and it’s at the core of Nightreign.

“Of course, I myself as a player understand that and often want times where I’m just playing myself, so this is something that we considered from the start,” Ishizaki continued.

“And so we did put a lot of effort into creating this experience that was playable for solo players in as much as the rules and new systems allowed. So in putting all our efforts into that aspect, we kind of overlooked and neglected the duos aspect, but this is something that we are looking at and considering for post-launch support as well.”

This means that if you’re playing with just your favorite duos partner, you have to accept a random third into your game. Playing trios is very much what Elden Ring Nightreign is built around.

Clearly, some players are unhappy with the situation. “Elden Ring co-op, but not really,” reads one negative Steam review. “You need three people, two isn’t allowed. And why? Because. How can something like this happen? I’m deeply disappointed and thought about a refund.”

“No duo option, had random people join to just run off and do their own thing,” reads another negative review. “Let me duo with my mate…”

“If you don’t have two other friends to play with in voice chat, don’t waste your time,” another negative review said. “Game is Elden Ring, but 3p, and the solo queue is abysmal (queuing up to play with randoms). Without VC it’s super hard to coordinate where to go, where chests/consumables are, trying to drop items for teammates, etc. Even though I really love Elden Ring and roguelites in general as well as Nightreign’s syle of gameplay, I wouldn’t see myself ever playing this game again without friends in VC, or if 1p experience wasn’t as hard as a ‘level 1 Elden Ring any% speedrun.’

“I think no matter how good you are at the game, it doesn’t matter if you’re bad at teamwork, especially in an environment where communicating is close to nonexistent (pins in a punishing fast-paced PvE game isn’t it lol).”

The voice chat issue keeps cropping up. Here’s another negative review:

“Impossible to make progress without voice chat. If you have three friends you can talk to and play regularly, you will have a great time, the connection is smooth, the map is full of events and the game loop is very interesting.

“However I am a 41-year-old man and I don’t have friends to regularly play this with, let alone two others (you need three people to go in as a team, two won’t work either).

“Even if they bring voice chat in the game (I’m not sure how there isn’t one at the moment) you won’t really enjoy this as much as if you were trying to fight with buddies, as your responsiveness with randoms will affect how you feel about your game a lot.

“Playing it solo queue with randoms is hard, it’s hard to communicate, it’s hard to share items, it’s hard to discuss tactics or decide on the next area to farm, it’s just hard.

“TL;DR, if you don’t have two more friends you can group up with regularly, it’s not fun.”

As Ishizaki suggested in our interview, duos is something FromSoftware may add to Elden Ring Nightreign in the future. Until then, you’re faced with solo or three-player only.

Ahead of the launch of Elden Ring Nightreign, FromSoftware warned PC gamers that they may experience framerate drops if they’re using “the latest graphics cards.”

In a vague note to fans included with Elden Ring Nightreigh’s day-one patch notes, FromSoftware said it was investigating the cause, and suggested those affected drop the graphics settings down from the default “High” to “Medium” or “Low” and lowering the screen resolution, as well as installing the latest drivers for your graphics card.

Check out these crucial Elden Ring Nightreign tips and tricks we put together from the network test — and keep an eye on the IGN Nightreign wiki for plenty more guides when the game launches.

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.

Seemingly born of a drunken night between Animal Crossing and The Legend of Zelda, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is the latest take on blending easygoing life simulation and deep dungeon-delving. With its dangerously bingeable RPG mechanics and seemingly endless supply of charm, this cozy adventure stole plenty of my own time almost without me even noticing. The characters and story are both wonderfully goofy and much more substantial than I’m used to seeing in this genre, the process of leveling up your various individual jobs is really easy to get lost in, and it absolutely nails the balance between slice-of-life cozy activities, village building, and its more action-packed tasks, so I never found myself bored by any of them. After more than 50 hours chopping trees and slaying bosses, this has quickly become one of my favorite games of the year.

Fantasy Life i starts out as a pretty straightforward life sim: You’re introduced to the Life system in the first few hours, which has you switching between jobs where you’ll mine for ore, catch fish, and do favors for townsfolk. But just as I started to think “ah, okay, I’ve seen this sort of thing before,” it threw a curveball into that formula in the form of a giant open-world map full of brightly colored monsters to battle and puzzles to solve. Then, just a few hours after that, it sent me to an island to build my own village, lulling me back into a false sense of understanding before once again pulling the rug out from under me by introducing roguelike dungeon-crawling mechanics. This process of familiarity followed by delightful surprise repeats itself again and again, to the point where I was never sure what the next hour would bring. Chopping trees to increase my Woodcutter skill and gather wood seems like a fairly straightforward affair… until you run into a giant, ominous tree boss that doesn’t want to be cut down. Even after the credits have come and gone, Fantasy Life i continues to introduce new things to chase, which is just nuts.

But what’s more shocking is just how well many of these disparate activities work. It’s usually a pretty big red flag when a game tries to cram this much in, as it risks spreading itself too thin and not doing any one of them particularly well – but by the time I found myself delving into procedurally generated dungeons filled with a mix of combat encounters and cozy activities reimagined as boss fights, like a fishing minigame against an extremely elusive mega-fish, I was in disbelief by how well Fantasy Life i pulled everything off. The more classic life sim stuff, like leveling up various career paths (cooking, blacksmithing, mining, etc.), doing errands for villagers in exchange for new furniture and money, and building up your own home to put all your stuff in are all on par with some of the best in the genre. At the same time, the combat, open-world exploration, and RPG pursuit of new gear and skills may be quite simplified and mostly stress-free compared to full-on action-adventure games, but they are still engaging and have been nicely tuned to match the otherwise low stakes sensibilities. Both halves work on their own, and it’s all unified by a universally laid back vibe.

Fantasy Life i also has a surprisingly full story involving time travel, dragons, magic, and the strange mysteries of a fantasy land called Reveria, where devoting yourself to one or more of the 14 jobs, called Lives, that have existed since time immemorial is a core part of the area’s ancient culture. It’s silly, over-the-top, and fairly predictable, but also much better written than I was expecting and had enough interesting moments to keep me invested throughout its fairly short runtime. The know-it-all archaeologist, Edward, is an entertaining companion to have at your side during the plot’s most important moments, and a smarmy-mouthed bird named Trip never wears out his welcome with sassy banter as your sidekick. The third act does drag a bit and ends in just about the most cliche way imaginable, but it’s still more substantial and mostly successful in a genre where story is typically the last priority (if it’s even a focus at all), so it was a nice change to see it leaned into here.

Though you’ll spend some of your time saving the world in the main story, much more of your attention will be paid to the day-to-day business of leveling up your skills and helping out the residents of Reveria. Like any good life sim, once you start the grind it’s quite difficult to put down, as you leap from one profession to the other, unlocking new abilities, materials, and schematics as you go. For example, you might be asked to craft a bow to complete a quest and discover you need to harvest a new type of wood to do so, but you can’t do that until you craft a new ax, which requires some other ingredients altogether. This then leads you on a series of quests where you’re gathering materials and crafting one upgrade after another, leveling up your abilities along the way to make the going easier, until by the time you’ve crafted the bow you originally set out to make, you’ve now got about 20 other things on your checklist to pursue. The actual mechanics of doing all these cozy chores is nothing we haven’t seen in plenty of other life sims – you’ll catch bugs, reel in fish with a rod, and play a crafting minigame when it’s time to put it all together. But it’s all still oddly hypnotizing, like how I can never seem to pull myself away from the mundane day-to-day of The Sims.

That said, the grind in Fantasy Life i is pretty intense, and I did find myself occasionally annoyed by just how many trees I was expected to chop down and vegetables I was asked to farm in order to make what I needed for the next mission or upgrade. It can be especially irksome when it comes time to craft, since every crafting Life has an identical minigame where you spam one button. But Fantasy Life i walks this line pretty deftly, with options like the ability to skip the crafting minigames as you progress in each discipline, or allowing you to purchase raw materials that you’d rather not spend the time harvesting ad nauseum. This ultimately lets you avoid the more monotonous parts of the grind, setting your attention on hunting down the rare materials that can only be acquired from special resource nodes hidden in the world or by killing rare creatures.

You’re also given a small patch of land and asked to fill it with homes for both you and the friends you make along the way, decorating and upgrading the homestead as you go. If you’ve played Animal Crossing, then you’ll feel immediately familiar with this part of the formula as it follows the script written by its peers almost to the letter. You’ll craft furniture to customize your home, give fellow villagers gifts to improve your friendship and get goodies in return, and decorate the town to get a better ranking and unlock new things to add to your little community, like an art museum for residents to peruse. This aspect is a lot more shallow than something like New Horizons – residents don’t have much unique dialogue, there aren’t different weather or seasonal patterns, and there’s far less to do when managing the quite compact area you’re allowed to settle. But it’s definitely still serviceable and a nice way to spend your time in between hard shifts at the smithing forge and adventuring out in the world. Plus, you need a place to store all the loot and ornate furniture it likely took you a dozen or more hours to collect.

Of course, Animal Crossing doesn’t then also have simple combat, a large open-world area, and even a roguelike mode to grind to your heart’s content. Fantasy Life i leans into the action-adventure RPG side of things harder than I’ve seen in other hybrid life sims, with four of the 14 Lives devoted just to combat. There’s the Paladin, a classic sword-and-board class; the Mercenary, which trades the shield for an even bigger sword; the Hunter, a ranged bow class; and the obligatory magic-based class, the Magician – all of which are chock full of compelling abilities to unlock that make your battles easier.

It’s also pretty neat how the adventuring components feed right back into the life sim mechanics, encouraging you to return back to town and craft a new sword or staff to improve your combat efficacy as you slay beasts and complete quests to advance these careers. There’s not a whole lot to fighting beyond dodging, blocking, and spamming the same attacks, plus it’s always extremely easy to the point where I never really felt imperiled, but it’s still nice to take a breather from collecting fruit and watering plants to slap around a giant red dragon for awhile.

The open areas you’re let loose to explore are brimming with resources to collect, enemies to fight, and the rare, extremely light puzzle to solve. They are very effective as a more adventurous outlet after hours of crafting and chatting with townsfolk. You’ll scale mountains to reach a rare mineral you saw glinting in the distance, chase down mimics filled with loot, and find little shrines that unlock companion characters when you complete their minigame, like a game of Simon Says or a winning a timed boss battle. These companions will join your homestead and accompany you on your adventures, and are a really awesome addition to both adventuring and leveling up your life sim skills. You can have up to three tag along with you at a time, too, each of whom specializes in a Life and will aid you in practicing it. For example, a Woodcutting companion will help you chop down trees, and a Tailor companion will help you craft new clothes. There are a ton to discover (I found over thirty in my time playing) and picking favorites that are best-suited to help out with whatever you’re doing is really satisfying. Unfortunately, they also do that thing where they repeat the same one or two voice lines every couple of seconds, so that aid came at the price of me losing my sanity and shouting “please shut up” the longer I played.

There’s also a very dope roguelike mode that cleverly reimagines what a procedurally generated dungeon can be in a game where most of your skills are gardening, fishing, and other disciplines that would seemingly be useless in a fight. But these are no ordinary dungeons, as each node on the map has a different Life-related objective to be completed before you can move on to the next zone. One room might require you to gather each vegetable, while another may challenge you to fish every sea creature out of the waters before you can advance – and the whole map must be cleared within a time limit, so you’ve gotta pick your battles when choosing what to collect and what to pass up on. While these levels are much more linear than the open-world map, they also give you a more predictable way to grind for XP and resources, and are an infinitely repeatable option once you’ve investigated every other nook and cranny.

Like many life sims, Fantasy Life i also has multiplayer that’s unfortunately treated mostly as an afterthought. You can have friends or strangers visit your settlement to show off what you’ve built, but they aren’t able to do a whole lot except look around, which makes the whole thing a bit pointless. They can also accompany you to one of the maps to assist with cozy activities or help you take down bosses in the open world, but for whatever reason these sessions are timed; they force you to end the activity after 30 minutes, regroup, and launch again, which is just really odd. Probably the best use of multiplayer is in the roguelike dungeons, where a group of four can clear out the map pretty quickly, and you are given better rewards based on how many players are with you. It’s really nice to be able to adventure with friends, but in a game that nails most of what it attempts, this aspect definitely feels a bit barebones.

The Epic Games Store is giving away a beloved indie title and the most recent Borderlands game as part of its weekly rollout of free PC games.

It’s an especially notable addition to Epic’s long-running free game promotion, which sees the company dropping a variety of titles for all Epic Games Store users at no additional cost every week. This week, PC users can add Playdead’s breakout video game, Limbo, and Gearbox’s Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Borderlands spinoff, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, to their libraries.

Both titles are available to nab from now to next Thursday, June 5, at 8am PT / 11am ET, at which point they’ll no longer be free to own. Even if you don’t find yourself playing games on PC very often, you might as well sign into an Epic Games Store account and claim both games for the future just in case.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a Borderlands side story that launched for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X and S in early 2022. While previous entries in the series see players team up to loot and shoot across twisted sci-fi settings, this spinoff drops fans into a fantasy setting with a few gameplay shakeups, such as new weapon types and fleshed-out character customization, to keep things interesting. Thanks in part to a surprisingly star-studded cast that includes Andy Samberg, Wanda Sykes, Will Arnett, and more, we felt Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was a fitting addition to the Borderlands universe, giving it an 8/10 in our review.

Limbo, meanwhile, is a much more scaled-down adventure that sees players controlling a small child as they trudge through an unforgiving, colorless world. It’s a short story that HowLongToBeat says takes just over three hours to complete, but it’s been more than enough to leave an impression on gamers for nearly 15 years. We gave it a 9/10 in our original review.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and Limbo follow last week’s free Epic Games Store titles, which included Deliver At All Costs, Gigapocalypse, and Sifu. When this week’s titles are removed, another batch of free games will be announced. For more, you can read up on why Gearbox was happy enough with its 2022 video game to call it the beginning of a whole new franchise. You can also check out where Limbo landed on our list of the top 25 Xbox 360 games of all time.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor 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 final stop for our IGN First trip to FromSoftware was the sound room where Lead Composer Shoi Miyazawa crafts the wonderful soundtracks that fill The Lands Between and Limveld with notes of hope, melancholy, and strife. Here’s our interview touching upon what goes into creating a FromSoft soundtrack, what specifically were the notes from the director given with regards to Nightreign’s music, and Miyazawa’s own personal influences.

IGN: So I just wanted start off by asking you about how you fell into the world of composing music for video games. Are you a big fan?

Shoi Miyazawa – Lead Sound Designer on Elden Ring Nightreign:

I was a fan of the Armored Core games. So when Hoshino-san approached me about recruitment at FromSoftware, I was very interested. I’m a big fan of the Armored Core music. Also, I like some other titles from my childhood such as Ganbare Goemon and Secret of Mana. So I’m always putting research and trying to find inspiration from these titles as well. The Castlevania series, as well, was a big musical inspiration.

Along those same lines, do you have any favorite composers that have also maybe inspired your work? Not just video games, just in general.

I’ve always been a fan of King Crimson and Marilyn Manson. I like these kinds of different sorts of vibes within music.

Switching gears to Elden Ring and Nightreign, what’s the process for composing for something like Elden Ring? Are you given concept art for a boss or a location and then use that inspiration for the sound? Or are you given specific notes of the feel or mood that the director is looking for?

There are several approaches we can take such as that you mentioned. Sometimes the director will give a quick description of the mood or the location he wants. Sometimes it’s from the existing concept art of the game. And sometimes it’s a simple text-based order such as a description of a boss’s backstory or the arena that they fight in or something like this.

Has working on the soundtrack for Nightreign been any different from the experience of working on the soundtrack for the main base game?

Of course it is an Elden Ring spin-off, so we wanted it to transfer or carry over certain elements from Elden Ring and the sort vibes it gives off. I had many direct talks with the director himself discussing the aspects of Elden Ring and how we should approach Nightreign. And I think while he wanted this to be quite distinct from the Souls titles, he also wanted it to be catchy in its own way as well. So this sort of catchiness and offering something that was distinct from Elden Ring was quite important in our work.

Can you describe maybe some of the notes that you might have been given from the director with regards to the sound and tone of this soundtrack? Were there any recurring themes that you wanted to hit?

Yeah. So seeing as night was an important theme of Nightreign, we wanted this feeling of being out of place, this feeling of loneliness, this sense that comes with the darkness or the sort of loneliness of nighttime. These were elements that we wanted to incorporate into the music.

Among the many projects that you’ve worked on so far at FromSoftware, which has been your favorite, and which has been the most challenging as well?

Of course I have lots of fond memories of working on titles at From and it’s really hard to lock in on a particular title. But there are a couple that have stuck with me, a couple of pieces in particular. One of them being when we composed Consort Radahn for Elden Ring. What I like to do is I actually like to compose in a sort of dark room, in a dimly lit room. So I had this feeling while I was composing that track of there always being somebody there in the shadows and looking over my shoulder. So this kind of came through in the piece for Consort Radahn.

Another one would be the track Takes Me Anywhere from disc three of the bonus soundtrack from Armored Core VI. I know this is a bit different from the fantasy music that we’ve made with our games, but for me, as I said, Armored Core was a series I was particularly fond of. And as I entered the company, From just happened to kind of put that series on hiatus for a little bit. So I had something, had some ideas going there, but AC IV was a long-awaited game. It was a long time coming. And Takes Me Anywhere was one of the original tracks we produced for that bonus all-encompassing disc set. So it was something that brought back memory of those days and it was a track, it was a piece that I actually had in my mind since coming to From and since I started working a little bit on those titles but didn’t quite get to fully develop into those games. So it reminds me a lot of those days and everything we went through with Armored Core. And so hopefully people will give that a listen as well.

There are several composers that are credited with working on Elden Ring. Can you talk a little bit about how collaborative of an effort it is to compose music on games like Elden Ring and Nightreign? Do you each work completely separately or do you work closely together despite being responsible for different pieces?

Generally when we compose music at From, it’s one composer to one track. That’s the general approach we take. But of course we can get advice and sort of exchange ideas with the other members of the sound team. But ultimately on the credits, you’ll see the person credited to that track is the one who took it through to completion. But Nightreign was a little bit of an exception here. So we have multiple composers working on a single track in some instances.

One of the bosses that we got to check out today as part of our visit was Libra: Creature of Night. And I was wondering if you had any kind of insights or stories as to what went into the creation of that track.

Actually with Libra, it was one of the rare cases where a particular musical direction or ideas was given within the character brief. So that was one that stood out to me. We had these themes of trying to bring something as the appearance and as the boss fight itself suggests, some themes of an exotic nature or these impressions of madness or like a demonic nature to the boss. And again, introducing this duality that you find both before and during the boss fight, considering elements of victory and defeat, that trade-off, that risk and reward. We try to create a harsh contrast with a lot of our bosses, but in particular we wanted to take it to extremes for Libra.

The contrast between day and night during boss fights is very striking, and it’s apparent in the music as well. Could you tell us a little bit about how you approached composing these pieces?

So of course we have this day and night cycle and this three day structure to Nightreign. So as we mentioned earlier, we wanted the player to feel like there’s this imposing sense of danger. Enemies and bosses are getting stronger as the night approaches. We wanted this feeling of being more and more out of place, more and more out of your depth. These are things that we try to, feelings we try to convey through the music of Nightreign.

Is there any particular song or anything that you’re really excited players to experience for the first time when they play that you worked on?

So one thing that compares to the music we did for Elden Ring and the DLC was really focusing on the individuality of each of these boss fights that players are going to be encountering numerous times. So we wanted to really push the limits of the music as well for each of these fights. And sometimes it was a case of can we really push it this far? And I think in the end we did end up really expanding those limits and really pushing the boundaries of the music at From in our fantasy titles. So that’s one area that I hope players look forward to.

Going back to your own personal tastes, do you have a favorite musical instrument or something that you like to incorporate into your compositions?

It’s not an instrument, but actually when I first started dabbling in music, it was with a personal computer and it was with DTM software. So that was my first real contact with making music and especially professionally. So as a creator, software like this allows me to really concentrate on the finer elements and really fine tune these pieces down to every last note and pitch. So I think this is something that I’d like the player to understand or hopefully notice when they listen to these pieces. Because I really do get way too into it, probably too much that is healthy for work.

One of the things that I’ve been asking everyone that I’ve been talking to at FromSoftware has been what your favorite game is. We know we talked a little bit about video games from the music side, but do you have any games that really stand out as just your favorite game of all time?

One of the games I remember fondly is Myst. Adventure games like this, they usually have this quite, maybe only some readers or viewers will remember, but these kind of pre-rendered scenes that kind of transition one from the other. But you’re going through the world and you’re solving the puzzles on this adventure. This really stuck with me as a player. So yes, I think Myst would be a good example.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit

Today’s deals roundup is stacked with Pokémon TCG bundles, MTG Final Fantasy preorders, Marvel’s Spider-Man singles, and some great gaming hardware offers. Journey Together Elite Trainer Box just dropped at a record high rip-off price on Amazon, but TCG Player has it for less. Need to snag Destined Rivals singles for your collection or fancy a great deal on the Slashing Legends Tin at Walmart? There’s a little bit of everything for collectors and players. Plus, there’s a fresh DOOM The Dark Ages limited-edition art print and medallion from the IGN Store for hardcore fans of the franchise.

TL;DR: Deals For Today

For gamers, the Badass Brawlers Bundle on Humble packs a punch with seven brawler games for just $16, while Amazon’s offering the Apple iPad 11-inch with A16 chip at a solid discount. Meanwhile, SteelSeries has some killer deals on gaming headsets, keyboards, and micei ncluding the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless and the New Apex 9 TKL.

Journey Together ETB Cheapest At TCG Player

Big box retailers such as Amazon are nickel and diming TCG fans at the minute, and the secondary market is showing them up. Let’s be clear, even market values are usually above MSRP, but it’s the price people are willing to pay for a product you can’t otherwise find in stores. Case in point, Amazon just restocked the Journey Together Elite Trainer Box at a massive $22 over market value at $93.67. Never assume prices are correct; do your homework (or let me do it for you).

Slashing Legends Tin In Stock At Walmart

Destined Rivals Single Cards Are Available Right Now

If you’d like to pay for sealed product in this climate to rip open boosters and find your chase card, go mad and have a blast. But if you’d like to save some money long term and guarantee that chase card, TCG Player has Destined Rivals single cards available in their presale before they set officially releases on Friday. Looking for the best market values on Destined Rivals sealed products? Here you go:

Pokémon TCG Stock Update

Long story short; things are looking bleak at retail for Pokémon TCG right now. Almost everything is way above MSRP and seems to becoming the new normal for big box retailers. I could write a whole article and why this is and what should be done to stop this practice, but here we are. If you have your heart set on opening booster packs, have at it, but you might want to check out the sections below to save money.

TCG Player Has The Same Products For Less

TCG Player and the Pokémon TCG secondary collectors market is significantly cheaper than big box retailers at the time of writing. This will likely be the case unless you can secure preorders on new sets such as Destined Rivals, Black Bolt and White Flare. Make no mistake products are still over MSRP, but If small businesses can undercut large retailers on TCG Player, there’s something fundamentally broken in the supplier-distributor-retail chain.

This Weeks Pokémon TCG Crashers and Climbers

The Single Pokémon TCG market on the other hand is going through a grand reset right now, which is down to a few factors. The crypto bro mentally to reselling products is dying down a little and more product is becoming available thanks to reprints. We’re not out of the woods yet by any means, but this weeks Crashers and Climbers show recent cards going down in price and cards from the X and Y era shooting up in value. We’re 100% moving in the right direction.

MTG Marvel’s Spider-Man Preorders

Whilst there’s only the Play Booster Box and Scene Bundle for MTG: Marvel’s Spider-Man live on Amazon right now, TCG Player has every sealed product that will hit the market on launch day. I’ve even found some pricing on cases of sealed product for those looking to rip open a tonne of boosters, so get on it before the market value on these products shoot up.

MTG Spider-Man Single Cards

Unfortunatley there’s no listings for Spider-Man single cards right now considering we’re a few months out from release, but I’ve managed to round up the listings for cards currently sitting on TCG Player waiting for presale allocations, so keep your eyes peeled.

MTG Final Fantasy Bundle Walmart Preorder

SteelSeries Sale

Amazon has a solid sale going on right now for a bunch of SteelSeries gear, and if you’ve been waiting for a good excuse to upgrade your gaming setup, this is it. You can grab essentials like the SteelSeries New Apex 9 TKL, which is down to $109.99, or go all-in with the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Multi-System Gaming Headset, which is $269.99 right now (23% off). For Xbox and PC gamers, the Arctis Nova 5X is also a solid pick at $122.99. And if you’re looking to upgrade your audio setup, the SteelSeries Alias USB Mic for PC is a steal at $107.27. Whether you’re after a sleek new keyboard, a high-end headset, or a pro-level mic, these deals are worth a look before they’re gone.

Badass Brawlers Bundle

Apple iPad 11-inch: A16 chip

DOOM: The Dark Ages Saw Shield Medallion and Art Card

DOOM The Dark Ages Limited Edition A3 Art Print

Team 17 Chains of Command Bundle

Lossless Scaling

UGREEN USB C to USB Adapter 4 Pack

Fallout Pip-Boy

Cable Zip Ties 400 Pack

INIU 45W Power Bank

Javascript, Scripting And Web Development Book Bundle

Peacock TV

Expedition 33 Merch

Ahead of the launch of Elden Ring Nightreign, developer FromSoftware has warned PC gamers that they may experience framerate drops if they’re using “the latest graphics cards.”

In a vague note to fans included with Elden Ring Nightreigh’s day-one patch notes, FromSoftware said it was investigating the cause, and suggested those affected drop the graphics settings down from the default “High” to “Medium” or “Low” and lowering the screen resolution, as well as installing the latest drivers for your graphics card.

Here’s the statement:

We have confirmed that some PC configurations using the latest graphics cards may experience framerate drops. We are currently investigating the cause. In the meantime, If you experience significant framerate drops, you may be able to resolve it by setting the graphics settings from the default “High” to “Medium” or “Low” and lowering the screen resolution, as well as installing the latest drivers for your graphics card.

FromSoftware also issued troubleshooting advice for the PC version, suggesting those who run into issues verify the integrity of the game files:

Troubleshooting for the PC version of Elden Ring Nightreign:

– If issues such as being unable to start the game occur on the PC version, they can sometimes be resolved by performing the following steps in Steam:

Go to “Library” > right-click on “ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN” > select “Properties” > select “Installed Files” > and execute “Verify Integrity of Game Files.”

The multiplayer spin-off is set to go live on May 29 or May 30, depending on your timezone. Check out the Elden Ring Nightreign global release times for more.

In IGN’s recent interview with Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki, the development lead discussed the choice to lean on solos and trios as the core experience options. When asked why there’s no option for a pair of players to drop in together without a matchmade third player, Ishizaki said it was overlooked.

“The simple answer is that this is simply something that was overlooked during development as just a two-player option, so we’re very sorry about that,” said Ishizaki. “As we said before, we set out to make this a multiplayer co-op game for three players, balanced for three players, so that was the main focus and it’s at the core of Nightreign.

“Of course, I myself as a player understand that and often want times where I’m just playing myself, so this is something that we considered from the start,” Ishizaki continued. “And so we did put a lot of effort into creating this experience that was playable for solo players in as much as the rules and new systems allowed. So in putting all our efforts into that aspect, we kind of overlooked and neglected the duos aspect, but this is something that we are looking at and considering for post-launch support as well.”

So if you’re playing with just your favorite duos partner, be ready to accept a random third into your lives. Who knows? You might match up with someone pretty good at the game.

Check out these crucial Elden Ring Nightreign tips and tricks we put together from the network test — and keep an eye on the IGN Nightreign wiki for plenty more guides when the game launches.

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.

As I’m sure you’re aware, the Nintendo Switch 2 is upon us. So, with a brand new console on the horizon, what better time to look back at some of the legendary publisher’s greatest games?

For decades, Nintendo has given us some of the most famous and best-selling game series ever made, but here, I’ve picked out 18 of the most well-known ones to sort through. Yes, this list could stretch into the 100s, but we don’t want to be here all day, do we? From Super Mario to Zelda, we all have our favourites, and some (sorry Kirby) that we’ve just never quite clicked with. I’ve had a go at ranking them via one of our IGN Tier Lists, purely taking into account my personal enjoyment of each series over the years. Take a look at my tier list here:

Elden Ring Nightreign’s release is just hours away, and publisher Bandai Namco has detailed its day-one patch, which makes some important changes to the game.

Patch 1.01 is out now, Bandai Namco said, with the multiplayer spin-off set to go live on May 29 or May 30, depending on your timezone. Check out the Elden Ring Nightreign global release times for more.

The patch, Bandai Namco said, improves “handling” of playable characters, makes balance adjustments, tweaks text, adds character scenarios, and adds to the soundtrack. There are bug fixes in there, too.

“This update brings gameplay and stability improvements to ensure an optimal experience for your first steps in Limveld,” Bandai Namco said. You’ll know you have the latest version of the game on launch day if you see ‘Ver. 1.01’ displayed on the bottom right of the title screen.

In IGN’s recent interview with Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki, the development lead discussed the choice to lean on solos and trios as the core experience options. When asked why there’s no option for a pair of players to drop in together without a matchmade third player, Ishizaki said it was overlooked.

“The simple answer is that this is simply something that was overlooked during development as just a two-player option, so we’re very sorry about that,” said Ishizaki. “As we said before, we set out to make this a multiplayer co-op game for three players, balanced for three players, so that was the main focus and it’s at the core of Nightreign.

“Of course, I myself as a player understand that and often want times where I’m just playing myself, so this is something that we considered from the start,” Ishizaki continued. “And so we did put a lot of effort into creating this experience that was playable for solo players in as much as the rules and new systems allowed. So in putting all our efforts into that aspect, we kind of overlooked and neglected the duos aspect, but this is something that we are looking at and considering for post-launch support as well.”

So if you’re playing with just your favorite duos partner, be ready to accept a random third into your lives. Who knows? You might match up with someone pretty good at the game.

Check out these crucial Elden Ring Nightreign tips and tricks we put together from the network test — and keep an eye on the IGN Nightreign wiki for plenty more guides when the game launches.

Elden Ring Nightreign update 1.01 patch notes:

• Improved handling of playable characters
• Soundtrack addition and adjustments
• Text adjustments
• Balance adjustments
• Added character scenarios
• Bug fixes

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.

Funcom asked us to “let them cook,” and going on last night’s Dune: Awakening showcase, the developers did. With just a few days to go before early access players get their “head start,” Funcom put on a livestream showing off Dune: Awakening’s mid-to-endgame, and a wide tour of the Hagga Basin “to emphasize the size and variety players can expect,” including the “lush O’odham, the forbidding Hagga Rift, the tall spires and imposing rock formations of Jabal Eifrit, to name just a few.”

Inspired by Denis Villeneuve and Legendary Entertainment’s blockbuster films, Dune: Awakening lets players explore Arrakis in an open-world game for the first time ever. Up until now, even beta players have only seen around 25% of Hagga Basin, so the stream showcased “these huge and diverse landscapes” in all their glory.

“Before even considering the vast dunes and dangers of the Deep Desert, players will experience a full-scale survival game,” Funcom teased.

“They will rise through the ranks of the Atreides or Harkonnen; build powerful strongholds; brave Imperial Testing Stations; craft advanced schematics; explore and harvest in a variety of vehicles, and much, much more.” Furthermore, the “Landsraad feature allows anyone to contribute in the effort to impact their entire faction, whether they prefer PvE or PvP.”

Dune: Awakening is an open-world survival MMO set on the most dangerous planet in the universe. You’ll learn to survive the desert by learning the ways of the Fremen, and expand your potential through combat, spice, building, and trade. It’s set to release on June 10, 2025, on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S after a three-week delay to fix issues identified during its beta testing. Players with an “early start,” however, get to play five days early from June 5.

“As a longtime fan of Dune, it also just feels so good to explore and learn more about a world that I’m quite fond of, and Funcom has clearly put a ton of effort into worldbuilding and lore, even despite taking quite a bit of creative liberty by placing Awakening within a parallel reality and canon than the books/movies,” we wrote in IGN’s Dune: Awakening closed beta impressions preview.

“There are little details that have a massive impact on gameplay. I won’t go into spoilers, but this kind of attention to detail touches just about every aspect of the world, including the factions and characters you meet along the way, which should be a treat for any fan of the setting.”

For more, check out details on the MMO’s business model and post-launch plans.

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.

FromSoftware games have always had a very distinct visual style, So much so, that it’s usually pretty easy to predict when that iconic “FromSoftware” logo is about to pop up after a sudden fade to black, even in an announced game trailer for an upcoming FromSoft game. This is thanks to the many talented artists at the studio, and during my time at their office, I got a chance to sit down with one of them, Concept and Environmental Artist Saori Mizuno, to talk about her inspirations, the art direction she was given for Elden Ring Nightreign, and how it differed from her work on previous FromSoft games.

IGN: So generally, what was different about working on Nightreign versus the base Elden Ring game, or and anything prior that you have worked on with FromSoftware?

Saori Mizuno – Concept Artist on Elden Ring: Nightreign: In general, for Nightreign, we would receive an order for a design and then if it was myself in charge of that particular concept, then I would iterate on that image that I had, that interpretation of the design and then I would align and collaborate with the other designers and eventually produce the final design. I think one aspect that changed a lot on Nightreign’s design process is that we had a lot of back and forth, a lot of brainstorming in person, actually speaking about these designs rather than just getting text-based feedback.

Interviewer:

Can you talk a little bit about the setting of Nightreign and how you approach making it feel distinct from the base Elden Ring game, despite it being a spinoff that uses a lot of the same assets?

We didn’t want to make it feel too different from Elden Ring, as it used that as a base for the design and the setting. But one specific direction we did get early on was to create something that first feels and looks familiar and gradually transforms into the unfamiliar and into the unknown. So that was a nice sort of policy or a direction that we had to approach with the design.

Elden Ring had this sort of very gorgeous painterly feel to a lot of the environments, but we wanted Nightreign to feel like at a glance beautiful, but if you look a little bit deeper, there’s something sinister and there’s something darker there. Elden Ring, maybe there’s a lot of bright colors in the scenery and in the sky box and such, but we wanted there also, the player to feel a sense of darkness there as well. So that was another aspect of the design that differed slightly from Elden Ring.

One of the locations that really stuck out to me was the Roundtable Hold, which is such a familiar location in the base Elden Ring, and it has such an interesting twist in Nightreign. Can you talk a little bit about what went into the new design for the Roundtable Hold and what were some of the inspirations behind some of those changes?

With Nightreign’s new kind of speedier, high-tempo gameplay, we wanted the Roundtable this time in particular to feel like somewhere you could relax and take your time and sort of cool off after that intense three day/night cycle. So we wanted it to feel, from a design perspective, more cozy and more welcoming, more at home. One inspiration was the Fire Link Shrine from Dark Souls 1, where you feel sort of more embraced by the atmosphere. You feel like you are coming home after these hardships, after a hard fought battle, and safe more importantly than anything.

So from a design perspective, we used techniques such as gentle lighting, a feeling of the surrounding environs as well as the Roundtable Hold itself. And also while a lot of the place is in ruins, we didn’t want it to feel completely destroyed and desolate. We wanted it to feel like it was a safe place to come home to and that the player could relax and take their time there.

Another impetus for the design of the Roundtable Hold in Nightreign was this feeling of early morning, so a sort of daybreak, dawn, the player setting off on a new adventure. So that came into some of the lighting and architecture choices that changed in Nightreign, and we wanted the player to be aware of this. We wanted them to be conscious of this when setting out on this new adventure.

So when the player hits day three, they’re transported to this brand new location that is really unlike any other in Elden Ring. One that is predominantly white, mixed in with a very colorful sky box full of orange, blue and purple kind of all mixing together. What’s the story behind this environment and what were some of the inspirations that went into that work? If you need a visual representation, I have this one.

So one of the first requests we got from the director regarding this environment was that it should feel like a sense of finality and we should get this feeling of buildup before a storm. And that we should also feel like the impression you got from the sky box is that the sky is falling, this calamity is coming to an end. So it’s the boss at the end of the third day, so we wanted the player to feel this tightness in their chest like they’re getting ready to embark on something greater than themselves and hopefully this culminates and comes through in the design.

To add to that, looking again at the colors and the composition of the sky, we wanted it to feel like something was about to be born from that chaos, from that chaotic scene. Again, the boss culminates at the end of that third-day struggle. We wanted the player to feel this from the use of color and the use of these design elements. And some of the inspirations we took from that were from real-life cosmic events. So something we can’t quite understand, something that’s very distant and abstracted from regular human perception and we wanted it to feel just as abstract and just as grandiose even within the world of Nightreign.

Just speaking personally, what’s something that you yourself are very proud of that you’ve worked on in Nightreign?

Personally, one of my favorite areas is actually the area we just talked about, the environment that you enter just before facing that boss at the end of the third day. One of the keywords we found while exploring the design for this environment was this concept of shedding skin. And so this was something that really resonated with me and stuck with me. This idea of personifying the surroundings and the building into something that was once living and has now since been petrified or gone through these ages of time and gone through this whole process. And we wanted players to feel this sense of age, this old fantasy feel from this particular set piece.

One of the things that surprised us about Nightreign was the environmental variety, despite it being a much smaller and more condensed kind of world. Was it difficult to achieve this kind of variety in such a small, confined space?

So generally with these kind of emergent map changes and these kind of terrain effects and events, we wanted it to feel like something immediately fresh and exciting, just at a glance. So the player will know there’s been an impactful change to the map and to the scenery and they’ll have an immediate idea of what they need to do to progress. So for instance, the volcano, the crater that appears, you’d need to sort of dig deeper into it. Or for the snowfield terrain change, you’d need to sort of climb right up to the top of it, this sort of thing. We wanted this to be immediately effective and change the way the players approach and behave in the map just by changing that sense of space.

And then personally as a designer, who are some of your favorite artists, either classic or contemporary, and are there any people that you can point to as being particularly influential on your work?

One of my personal favorite traditional artists, or classical artists is Zdzisław Beksiński. I took a lot of inspiration from his various expressions when designing my work. Also with the concept of Nightreign and battling the Night Lords after these repeated plays, I felt like this is inherent to the game design. And so I wanted this feeling to come through in the designs I created as well. And one sense I got from that was from watching the film Spirited Away from Hayao Miyazaki. This feeling of being unable to go home, unable to escape from a dream. This sort of feeling I wanted to kind of harness while designing these worlds and tried to get that through to the player as they play through the game.

Even when designing Limveld, that initial map, that initial environment on the first day, I wanted it to feel beautiful. Like from an outward glance, it looks beautiful and inviting, but pretty quickly you feel like something’s off or something’s not quite right. So I think that is a part of the inspiration that we definitely got across in the design of Nightreign.

So switching to video games really quick, can you just talk about what are some of your favorite video games that may have inspired your work as well?

I enjoy Diablo II and other such multiplayer games. I enjoy open world survival games where you have to sort of start from scratch and build your own house and things like that world. I like a variety of indies and I’ve also had a fondness for a Legend of Zelda since childhood, games like Majora’s Mask, which kind of are obviously really fun to play, but they sort of have this… again, this sense of repeat play and this kind of sense of darkness to them as well. I think that’s stuck with me since childhood. So yeah.

And then a final question. A lot of designers and artists like to make their own personal imprints on a game. Are there any secrets or Easter eggs that you managed to sneak in yourself into the game? Or is there maybe anything that you hope players will see and enjoy as they play?

Yes. I don’t think you’d call this a sort of a signature as an artist, but one important thing that I paid attention to while designing Nightreign was this sort of all encompassing theme of the night and how we go about expressing that. We obviously tried various things and various methods and Limveld is ultimately a place that you keep coming back to as a player. So we thought one way we could express that was these changes throughout the three-day structure and what players can notice as their journey progresses. What keeps them coming back and what keeps them interested.

And so to talk a bit more about that theme of night, we had to explore what night meant to us as designers, like as a base concept. So of course, night brings with it some negative connotations, like the dark and fear and the unknown, things like this. So we wanted at first when the player jumps into this world to feel those kind of negative feelings conveyed quite directly and have that sense of anxiety and that sense of fear of the unknown.

So we conveyed this straight up with things like the imposed time limit and the encroaching circle of rain, things like this. But we found that night is, we didn’t want it to be fully negative. Again, once the players get used to that cycle and they get used to what they’re seeing, we wanted it to be more than that. We wanted players to kind of begin to almost yearn for the night and sort of look forward to this encroaching darkness and maybe even feel a sense of comfort from it, from getting used to this rhythm and these aspects. So as the game progresses and the player is kind of getting used to these things, that’s definitely an aspect of the design that we wanted to incorporate and be a part of that player experience.