Category: IGN

Hello Games has released yet another No Man’s Sky update, this time adding space wrecks to explore. The patch notes, courtesy of the No Man’s Sky website, are below.

Just over a month after the Voyagers update released for the long-running space game, and the highest player numbers since launch over nine years ago, the Breach update lets players salvage wrecks, unlocking new ship building parts along the way.

Hello Games has also improved and expanded ship building “in response to watching players spend so much time in the workshop designing their dream ships,” Hello Games chief Sean Murray said.

There’s also a new expedition where players will traverse a desolate and abandoned universe to discover what happened to a mysterious abandoned wreck. “Voyaging to the edge of space will be required if you are to salvage from the wreckage of the ill-fated ship and add unique parts and modules to your ship-building workshop,” Murray teased.

“The Breach expedition also brings players together to explore the strange and rare purple-star solar systems,” he continued. “The planets in these systems are particularly fun to explore with their deeper oceans, incredible terrains and volatile gas giants. It guides players towards the new space wrecks, is a great way to salvage some new rare ship parts, while uncovering a spooky story – suitable for the Halloween season!

“It has been a crazy year for the No Man’s Sky team and we’re so proud and pleased to be able to continue working on this game we all love so much nine years after launch.Seeing so many folks enjoying Voyagers has really inspired us, and we can’t wait for you to see what we have in store in future.”

No Man’s Sky continues to receive free updates even now, years after launch. And it’s clearly keeping players interested. No Man’s Sky launched in August 2016 on PS4 and PC to tens of thousands of negative reviews on Steam, with players complaining about broken promises and a lack of meaningful content, particularly on the multiplayer side. The game quickly settled on the dreaded ‘overwhelmingly negative’ Steam user review rating, a clear sign to anyone who visited its Steam page that something was very wrong.

But Guildford, England-based developer Hello Games has continued to update No Man’s Sky over the years, improving player sentiment to the point where it is now considered superb. It took two years to hit ‘mixed,’ then another three to hit ‘mostly positive.’ At the time, five years after launch, Tim Woodley, Head of Publishing at Hello Games, explained how hard it was to claw back Steam user reviews from such a low base.

As Hello Games continues to work on No Man’s Sky, it’s developing its next game, Light No Fire. It’s about adventure, building, survival and exploration together, set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth.

No Man’s Sky Breach update 6.10 patch notes:

BUG FIXES AND QOL

• Fixed an issue that could cause the player to be ejected into space if on an internal stair in a corvette while the pulse drive was active.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the corvette “current flightpath” autopilot from cancelling when the ship came into proximity of a large object such as a Space Station.
• Fixed an issue that prevented exiting the corvette pilot seat in the Space Station and Space Anomaly when using the Quick Menu in VR.
• Fixed an issue that prevented stairs in corvettes from being traversable using VR teleport movement.
• Fixed an issue that caused weapons to be misaligned with the crosshair when flying a corvette in first person.
• Fixed an issue that caused the corvette teleporter to persist after the corvette had landed on a planetary surface.
• Fixed an issue that could cause water to behave erratically when teleporting from a corvette into water.
• Fixed an issue that caused newly-assembled corvettes to appear at the wrong scale if another owned Corvette was docked nearby.
• Fixed an issue that could cause corvette interior doorways to become blocked.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the corvette Torpedo Launcher module from correctly installing the Rocket Launcher weapon.
• Fixed some corvette structural modules appearing under the exterior decoration category of the build menu.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause corvette assembly data to be replaced with planetary base data.
• Improved the placement of corvette-class ships when teleporting to a Settlement with a corvette as the primary ship.
• Improved the behaviour of floating exotic creatures, especially in response to being offered Creature Pellets.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent biological monstrosities on derelict freighters from reacting aggressively to nearby Travellers.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent some varieties of hazardous flora appearing on planets.
• Fixed a timing-specific issue that could cause the player’s wanted level to get stuck when using the pulse drive to exit planetary atmosphere.
• Fixed an issue that caused the current primary ship’s thrusters to be used for launch fuel calculations when attempting to summon other ships from the Quick Menu.
• Fixed an issue that caused refiners to reset their requested output value to the maximum when refining was started.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Personal Refiner from automatically starting when an input substance was inserted from the Inventory screen.
• Improved the error messaging when attempting to install duplicate technology in the inventory.
• Fixed an issue that caused rain to be audible when standing inside a corvette.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent the Corvette Assembly tutorial from starting in abandoned star systems.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Exosuit upgrade stations to lose their interaction prompt after a single use, especially in Abandoned Mode.
• Fixed an issue that could cause misleading instructional text during missions requiring planets with extreme weather conditions.
• Fixed an issue that caused some markers to persist unnecessarily in excavation and flora extermination missions from the Corvette Mission Radar.
• Fixed a number of minor messaging inconsistencies in missions requiring the player to prepare ingredients in the Nutrient Processor.

ART AND VISUALS

• Fixed an issue that could cause large waves to abruptly appear and disappear on the surface of water.
• Improved lighting transitions when changing environments – notably when warping between solar systems, when entering or exiting planetary atmosphere, or when moving between interior and exterior locations.
• Fixed a number of minor visual “seams” in lighting.
• Improved the appearance of holographic previews of corvette modules during corvette assembly.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Boundary Herald starship to render incorrectly.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the jetpack from displaying on the Inventory screen when using first-person camera view.
• Fixed an issue that prevented some varieties of aquatic creature from rendering in the Discoveries page.
• Fixed a number of minor visual and collision issues with corvette modules.
• Improved the appearance of corvette modules when viewed from a distance.
• Improved the icons on a number of corvette modules.
• Improved the collision of several planetary curiosities, such as large mushrooms.
• Fixed missing collision that allowed you to walk through the back of some freighter hangars.
• Fixed a number of issues that could prevent decals from being placed on Corvette modules.

INPUT

• Enabled Steam Input on Mac.
• Fixed a Steam-only issue that could cause controller bindings to shuffle or not respond on the first boot after the game was updated.
• Fixed an issue that prevented jetpacking while the Terrain Manipulator was in Create mode.

UI

• Improved the readability of several UI elements.
• Fixed a UI overlap issue on the Corvette trade menu, which could cause the “Make Offer” button to be activated when selecting a part to trade.
• Fixed an issue that caused markers for other players in a multiplayer session to appear at their feet instead of above their head.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the display of additional recipes in the Catalogue.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause an incorrect UI to appear when absorbing a Memory Fragment to expand inventory slots.

STABILITY AND PERFORMANCE

• Fixed a crash that could occur on Corvettes with a large number of attached weapons.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a hang when opening the airlock door of a derelict freighter.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a hang when jumping through the centre of a galaxy in a freighter.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a softlock if opening the corvette parts menu while a dialog box was open.
• Implemented a number of engine optimisations to improve performance, especially when rendering complex objects such as corvettes.
• Implemented a number of lighting optimisations to improve performance.
• Implemented a number of optimisations and performance improvements on Nintendo Switch.

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.

Former Bethesda developer Bruce Nesmith has offered his thoughts on the divisive Starfield, insisting if it has been released by any other studio “it would have been received differently.”

Speaking to FRVR, the former Starfield systems designer admitted that the sci-fi RPG is “not in the same calibre” as Bethesda’s much-loved The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, but insisted it was still “a great game.”

“I think it’s a good game,” Nesmith, who left Bethesda around a year before Starfield came out, said. “I don’t think it’s in the same calibre as the other two, you know, Fallout or Skyrim, or Elder Scrolls rather, but I think it’s a good game. I worked on it, I’m proud of the work I did. I’m proud of the work that the people I knew did on it. I think they made a great game.”

When “the studio that gave you Skyrim and Fallout makes a space game,” Nesmith said, there are certain “expectations,” and these weren’t met. “If the same game had been released by not Bethesda, it would have been received differently,” Nesmith insisted.

Starfield launched in September 2023 as Bethesda’s first brand new IP in 25 years, but it was not as well received as the studio’s previous games in the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, and the Shattered Space expansion, released a year later in September 2024, has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam.

Starfield went on to reach 15 million players, but the question of whether Bethesda might walk away from the game to focus on its other franchises has been a running theme since release. In June 2024, Bethesda insisted it remained committed to supporting Starfield, and confirmed at least one other story expansion would come out following Shattered Space. And in an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard said the developer was aiming to release an annual story expansion for “hopefully a very long time.”

That, obviously, hasn’t happened. In August, it was reported that Starfield’s second expansion and much-anticipated PlayStation 5 port would now arrive in 2026, following the poor reception to Shattered Space.

So, what went wrong? Nesmith pointed to Starfield’s reliance on procedural generation as a problem, as opposed to the lack of real-time space travel, which he described as “inherently boring.”

“But when the planets start to feel very samey and you don’t start to feel the excitement on the planets, that’s to me where it falls apart,” he continued. “I was also disappointed when, pretty much, the only serious enemy you fought were people… there’s lots of cool alien creatures, but they’re like the wolves in Skyrim. They’re just there, they don’t contribute, you don’t have the variety of serious opponents that are story generators.”

Bethesda has confirmed plans to improve Starfield space gameplay “to make the travels there more rewarding” after datamined fragments of code suggested the developer had a more streamlined space travel experience in the works. Based on this datamine, while you may be able to travel between planets within the same system, you won’t be able to fly all the way between systems, nor fly directly from a planet’s surface into orbit, like No Man’s Sky.

In a new video discussing his career, veteran Bethesda developer Tim Lamb confirmed that the studio had been working on Starfield’s space gameplay, and that a new DLC story was still coming at some point.

“I think as it comes to Starfield, I’m really excited for players to see what the teams have been working on,” he said. “We have some cool stuff coming, including free updates and features the players have been asking for, as well as a new DLC story.

“I can’t go into all the details just yet, but I will say part of the team has been focused on space gameplay to make the travels there more rewarding. We’re also adding some new game systems, and a few other smaller delights. There’s also some really interesting stuff coming down the pipe from our verified creators. There’s some fun stuff.

“I just want to say thanks. We really appreciate the support and the enthusiasm. We can’t wait to get it into the hands of our players.”

Last month, Bethesda teased new content for Starfield — at least that’s what fans thought after they spotted a hidden message in a social media video released to celebrate the game’s two-year anniversary.

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.

A post on the official Japanese Twitter / X account for the upcoming game Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy received a reply from none other than veteran developer Akitoshi Kawazu, who surprised users by revealing new information about the inspiration behind a Final Fantasy II character.

Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy is Square Enix’s upcoming free-to-play mobile game, slated for a 2026 release. Featuring cel-shaded graphics, Dissidia Duellum takes beloved Final Fantasy characters from throughout the RPG series’ history and transports them to modern Tokyo, where they take on monsters in 3vs3 battles. Two teams of Final Fantasy characters will race to fight their way through roaming monsters to beat the boss faster than the opposing team. The game will also feature voiced story segments.

Dissidia Duellum will not only let you put protagonists like Cloud, Squall, and Lightning in your party, but a whole host of other characters are also making a return, some in the form of special abilities. The official X account recently revealed that Minwu, a character from 1988’s Final Fantasy II, will be lending power to your party with his teleport ability.

ミン=ウは漢字で表記すると、呉明、となります。モデルは戦国時代の呉起。孫呉の兵法という形で孫氏と並び立つ兵法家という評価です。

— 河津秋敏 (@SaGa30kawazu) October 19, 2025

Veteran dev Akitoshi Kawazu, battle designer for Final Fantasy I and II as well as the key creator of the SaGa series, responded to this post with some insight into Minwu’s original inspiration. In his post, Kawazu revealed that Minwu was modelled on Wu Qi, a real life military general and philosopher from China’s Warring States period. He explained that when Minwu’s name is written in kanji characters, it contains the same character for Wu as Wu Qi (rendered as 呉 in Japanese, and 吳 in traditional Chinese). For the Japanese release of Final Fantasy II, Minwu’s name was written phonetically in katakana (a script used for foreign loan words) just like the rest of the game’s cast of characters, so the reference to Wu Qi was not apparent to players.

In Final Fantasy II, Minwu is a white wizard from Mysidia who temporarily joins your party. He serves the Flynn royal family in exile as an advisor when the Palemecian Empire’s attack forces them to flee. He plays a key role in organizing rebel forces and the quest for the Ultima Tome.

Another reason Minwu’s inspiration is not readily apparent is his physical appearance. With his turban and dark skin, he does not visually resemble Wu Qi. However, his strategic role as an advisor plus his loyalty to the Flynn royal family and Princess Hilda does bear some resemblance to Wu Qi’s appointment as the head of Chu State and his fealty to King Dao. Sadly, both meet tragic ends.

Kawazu’s comment attracted many appreciative responses from other users. “It makes me extremely happy to receive new information about FFII in this day and age. Thank you,” said one commenter. Others were eager for more insight into the 37-year-old game: “I wonder if there are any behind-the-scenes revelations or inspirations for other Final Fantasy II characters?”

Dissidia Duellum is scheduled to launch on iOS and Android in 2026. Those in Canada and the U.S. can sign up for the closed beta in November to get a sneak peak at the game.

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

Luigi’s Mansion is finally coming to the Nintendo Switch Online library. Debuting on October 30, the GameCube classic arrives just in time for Halloween, and means the entire trilogy, along with Luigi’s Mansion 2 and Luigi’s Mansion 3, is now playable on Nintendo Switch 2.

Luigi’s Mansion released way back in 2001 and sees Luigi win a creepy old mansion. It’s all very exciting right up until his brother Mario mysteriously disappears, leaving Luigi to rid the mansion of Boos and ghouls in order to find the missing Mario.

Luigi’s won a mansion! The bad news is that it’s crawling with ghosts… 😱

Discover what frights await in Luigi’s Mansion, coming to Nintendo GameCube – Nintendo Classics on #NintendoSwitch2 for #NintendoSwitchOnline + Expansion Pack members on Oct 30! pic.twitter.com/vG0OfgwEP2

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 22, 2025

As yet there’s no word on how the classic game will make use of Nintendo Switch 2‘s most hyped features, including its new mouse controls, but we do know it’ll be playable for Switch 2 owners who subscribe to the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack.

Nintendo Switch Online is a subscription-based online gaming service for the Nintendo Switch gaming platform. Memberships include online functionality, allowing you to compete or cooperate with friends, as well as a collection of classic Nintendo games spanning four decades, including titles from the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Nintendo 64, and, most recently, the new GameCube library. A free seven-day trial is also available.

The GameCube library currently includes The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, F-Zero GX, and Soulcalibur 2. Further titles thought to be joining the service include Super Mario Sunshine, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, and more. Most recently, Super Mario Strikers, Klonoa Empire of Dreams, Mr. Driller 2, and Mario Paint were added to the library of GameCube classics.

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.

There’s no question that one of the biggest talking points during last week’s Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show came out of Dead Space creator Glen Schofield’s opening keynote address, regarding his plans to “fix” the industry in part via the use of generative AI in games development. In addition to speaking with Schofield, IGN managed to get some time with another industry veteran, Meghan Morgan Juinio, to ask for her thoughts on the controversial practice that has previously been met with anger from Call of Duty fans, but also major support from games industry executives like EA CEO Andrew Wilson.

“I think if we don’t embrace it, I think we’re selling ourselves short,” said Juinio, who recently vacated her role as director of product development at Santa Monica Studio after 10 years and two hugely successful God of War games. “AI is a tool, and something that will augment us. At least for right now, that’s how I see it. It’s going to evolve whether you’re onboard with it or not, so I want to be at the forefront of helping to guide how that goes and how we use it.”

Juinio went on to compare the use of generative AI to the procedurally-generated content that’s been a part of games development for decades now, pointing to SpeedTree – a tool for generating trees in real time – which was used as early as 2002 for the foliage in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. She also recalled a time when animators were pushing back against motion capture and the use of procedural generation to blend animation frames rather than key them by hand. Both procedurally generated assets and animations have long become standard practices in games development, and Juinio seems just as confident that generative AI will also find its place.

“Personally, I’m super positive,” said Juinio. “Like [Glen Schofield said in his keynote address], this is the next big technological advancement that’s coming. In fact it’s here already, and I think as leaders in the video game industry it is on us to figure out not just can we do it with AI, but should we? And it’s a case-by-case type of decision making process and what’s true for game X might not be true next year for game Y.”

When asked if she thought the increasing adoption of generative AI might help mitigate the swelling costs of AAA-games development, Juinio was clear that the use of AI in games development is unlikely to be the be-all end-all solution to the post-pandemic pattern of regular studio closures and the bursting of the blockbuster game bubble.

“I wouldn’t necessarily put it into an either/or kind of scenario in that way, because to me the size and scale and beauty of the game isn’t the main thing,” said Juinio. “At its heart, the game [needs] to be fun. [Ideally] at its heart the story is fantastic, it’s human, players connect to it, and it’s fun to play.”

“And yes it looks beautiful, and yes the music is immersive. But the music could be really immersive and the gameplay could be not good, or the story [might] not be engaging, and I don’t think it would resonate with players as much. And so at least for right now, I don’t see AI replacing the fun gameplay that is at the heart of a game like God of War.”

Although Juinio seems adament that generative AI in games development is here to stay, she also remains confident that it will never be able to rival the heart and soul that can only come from a human touch, and that the adoptance of AI will only be a positive if there’s an equal amount of investment made into developers to help them get the best results out of it.

“At the end of the day you still need game developers to come up with the ideas,” said Juinio. “The story of God of War is very much a human story that is based on human experiences.”

“At least as of today, I don’t see that going away.”

Earlier this month the makers of Battlefield 6 stated that there was currently no way to implement the use of generative AI into the daily work of its development team, despite regarding the burgeoning technology as “very seducing”.

Indeed the debate over generative AI is bigger than in-game assets. At the start of October, Nintendo issued a statement in response to claims around generative AI, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman calling Sora 2 copyrighted character videos “interactive fan fiction.”

Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN’s Sydney office. He attended Gamescom Asia x Thai Game Show 2025 as a guest of the event organiser.

Hot on the heels of Ninja Gaiden’s own 2D revival with the excellent Ragebound, Double Dragon Revive comes off more like a tribute band for the series rather than a proper reunion tour. It doesn’t play the hits how you remember it, instead putting its own spin on things – from how it looks, to how it sounds, to how it plays. All of those aspects not only fail to live up to my admittedly mild expectations for a new Double Dragon, but after hours of its out of tune meandering, started to cement the idea that maybe we should put a little more distance between attempts to revitalize this series.

Even though I’ve been playing these games for most of my life it’s sort of jarring how straightforward Double Dragon Revive is. Side scrollers of this arcadey, “belt scroll” variety have found a lot of ways to spice up the “punch your way to the right” recipe, and Revive seems interested in keeping as much of that new seasoning away from its plate as possible. It’s a basic protein packed with eight non-branching levels, accompanied by starchy combat that’s filling but has barely any sauce.

Picking up any of the four playable characters is simple and intuitive, with normal attack strings that can be mashed out on one button alongside special attacks and hyper blows that can be used to punctuate these combos, or in some instances extend your offense into wall bouncing juggles. All of these actions are unique to each fighter. Well, Billy and Jimmy Lee have distinctions that don’t translate into mechanical differences, but former damsel-turned-headkicker Marian and ninja frenemy Ranzo have attacks that are a little more flashy and utilitarian. I rarely felt it necessary to use more than basic combo loops on Normal difficulty, though. As long as an enemy didn’t have an annoying shield or hyper armor protecting them as they wound up a big attack (something ubiquitous in the later levels), they were reliably vulnerable to a good old fashioned fist to the face.

There are limited options for those who do want to attempt to style on these street thugs, but they all rely on bouncing enemies off of walls to keep them in the air long enough to string more hits together as they come down. It often felt like enemies kind of just went wherever they wanted after a launch or a throw as opposed to where you directed them to go, making a laborious task out of trying to set up simple combo extensions, jamming enemies into background environmental hazards that take them out of the fight instantly, or taking advantage of the super powerful wall strike and wall crash options.

There’s no air combos to be had either, so chasing a launched bad guy skyward only allows you a single, disappointing smash down to earth so you can wait for them to stand up and let you hit them again. Everyone can get a free hit on downed enemies, if you can finagle the finicky button prompt to do so that is unresponsive and unreliable. If there’s the right kind of wall around – the right kind being the one they decide is right based on no reliable context clues – you can do a super sized air dropping attack, but even getting the wall kick off that’s required to get the requisite height is a dice roll.

Everyone has powerful, screen clearing finishing blow attacks that are charged up by all the fisticuffs, with boosts given when you make a timely dodge, counter an enemy’s big attack, or grow your combo meter. But no playable character, not even with Ranzo’s cool explosive kunai or Marian’s charging knee, can make Revive’s combat feel special, or even interesting, across long stretches of time. It took me around three hours to finish my first playthrough, and I lost interest well before then, with three more playthroughs after that, one for each playable character.

That said, enemy variety is at least diverse and effective at making you use the small menu of options you have. As levels progress, old bad guys show up to mingle with the newer ones to form a sort of street thug gumbo that can get a little spicy towards the end of your run. It’s largely a numbers game, with you often getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of incoming blows from all angles. I liked the little brain puzzle of having to identify the most dangerous threat to take out first, or needing to figure out the most efficient way to wrangle as many folks as possible into a big attack, but it wasn’t beguiling enough for me to forget that the process of breaking these dudes down was still rather dull. Even the array of limited use weapons, though strong tools usually worth the effort to grab if things get hairy, are your standard fare knives, two-by-fours, sledgehammers, etc.

As the challenge escalates, some of Revive’s jank becomes an enemy of its own. Small things, like the direction of your character sometimes defaulting to the opposite direction inexplicably, stops being a quirk to work around and starts being the reason you drop a combo or get punished.

Bosses break the monotony up a little bit, introducing slightly more engaging stage hazards and pattern mechanics, like Linda, who you need to shake off of the pillars she’s hiding on top off before you can attack her directly. These get pretty brutal towards the end, though, specifically the chapter seven boss, which has to be the most aggravating fight I’ve maybe ever played in one of these games – truly a test of endurance against a ceaseless onslaught of the most cheating cheaters the game has to offer.

There’s not a lot of flash visually, either. Most character models look good, but the fire, wind, and dragon effects that come from their limbs when channeling their chi looks a step behind in quality. Camera work and sound design come together adequately to make big hits feel good and all that jazz. The sound track is decent, with a handful original riffy rockouts and remixes of old series jams that sound good in the moment but sort of leave your head immediately after they end. Overall, Double Dragon Revive lacks the visual identity that the 16-bit Double Dragon Gaiden and even pastel-punk Double Dragon Neon have, let alone its peers like Shinobi: Art of Vengeance and Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound from this year.

The stages you bash your way through run a much broader gamut. A colorful Japanese pagoda-style tower with a fun little perspective shift mid-way through is simple but much more stirring than a non-descript highway level, even if there is a wrestling ring at the end of it. Some of these zones require some platforming that I was never happy to see but in mercifully short bursts. It’s a bit of an eye-roll that most of these stages are just takes on series staple locations without much novel flair added this time around, but it’s truly disappointing how many of these locations are just bland and lifeless.

And not to be one of those “the story in this beat ’em up sucks” sort of freaks, but I mean, it does. It’s less that the plot is nonsense, the characters are bland, and the writing is lousy and more that Revive lacks the confident and chaotic energy that is necessary to sell this sort of thing to begin with. The post-apocalyptic villain of Neon was a gang-leading demon knight straight out of a heavy metal album cover named Skullmaggedon. The gang struggles in Gaiden made that version of New York City feel like Gotham City, complete with goons color-coded and themed after their outlandish bosses. By comparison, Revive is just a completely tame and underwhelming take on returning villains Willy and Raymond, who used black magic and the military industrial complex to experiment on people and make the Sousetsuken kid’s lives worse.

Gearbox has said the hotly anticipated Borderlands 4 patch that will finally dull crit knife builds is delayed again and will now launch alongside the Horrors of Kairos mini-event.

Borderlands 4’s ‘Day 30 Update’ was set to launch last week but was delayed to early this week. Fans had wondered when it would turn up after another no-show today, prompting developer Gearbox to say it’s now due out alongside Horrors of Kairos, which runs from October 23 to November 6.

“Glad you’re excited for the update!” Gearbox is posting on social media in response to questions about the patch. “We have a few things we’re tidying up right now, and it’ll be rolling out with the Horrors of Kairos mini-event. We can’t wait for you to see what we’ve been brewing.”

The question now is when exactly the patch will be released. Horrors of Kairos is down to start on October 23, but it may end up releasing at some point between then and November 6.

Last week, Gearbox developers addressed disgruntled Borderlands 4 players who questioned the need to nerf overpowered builds in the mostly single-player looter shooter, saying it was necessary to preserve the challenge and encourage build “diversity.”

Players have been bracing themselves for the end of builds that rely on what the community has dubbed ‘the crit knife,’ an “unintended interaction” Gearbox has said will be nerfed with this upcoming patch.

Borderlands 4 is rife with overpowered builds that cause massive damage, even to the game’s toughest bosses on the hardest difficulties. The most infamous of these is the crit knife, which Gearbox has said it’s aware of. But there are many others.

The nerf sweep set to hit Borderlands 4 has sparked a debate within the game’s community about the rights and wrongs of balance changes such as these in single-player games. With no PvP component, Borderlands 4 is mostly about solo players — and occasional groups of co-op players — farming bosses for loot that makes their build ever so slightly better each time.

(IGN recently interviewed a Borderlands 4 player who spent 150 hours on over 3,000 boss kills to find out the game’s true drop rate.)

Builds based on the crit knife, for example, can essentially delete bosses even on Borderlands 4’s toughest difficulty, making farming for loot a trivial endeavor. Some believe there’s nothing wrong with such overpowered play because players aren’t competing with others in any way. Others argue it’s bad for the game.

Borderlands 4 creative director Graeme Timmins has responded to the complaints, pointing to the game’s upcoming Invincible boss, which the developers want to present a challenge.

“We have future content like the upcoming Invincible that we want players to find challenge/accomplishment in,” Timmins explained. “If we balanced that content around bad gear, it would remove build diversity, forcing players into specific builds using said gear.”

Specifically on the crit knife, associate creative director Grant Kao said this particular, hugely popular build “diminishes playstyle variety,” and confirmed changes are planned.

“We will be adjusting it,” Kao said. “The crit knife’s potential output diminishes playstyle variety. The gun builds that use the crit knife have other options and will have more options coming soon.”

Timmins then chimed in on the crit knife, saying: “Our intent is always to expand the number of builds, so any adjustment we make is in service of that goal.”

All eyes are now on Gearbox to see what changes it has in store for not just Borderlands 4’s crit knife build, but any build it believes relies on an “unintended interaction.”

Earlier this month, Gearbox revealed Borderlands 4 Bounty Pack 1: How Rush Saved Mercenary Day, the first seasonal mini-event for the game, the aforementioned Invincible boss, and more. Last month, Gearbox revealed Borderlands 4’s first of two new Vault Hunters coming to the game as part of the paid Story Pack DLCs. C4SH, due out during the first quarter of 2026, is a playable character whose luck-based powers can make him either the best or worst character in the game.

We’ve got plenty more on Borderlands 4. Last month, a Borderlands 4 dataminer unearthed evidence to suggest that one of the most hated characters from Borderlands 3 was cut and replaced relatively late in development. 2K Games and Gearbox declined to comment when contacted by IGN.

And we recently reported on comments from Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford, who said if more developers better understood why gamers love making decisions about loot, “We’d have good competitors.”

If you are delving into Borderlands 4, don’t go without updated hourly SHiFT codes list. We’ve also got a huge interactive map ready to go and a badass Borderlands 4 planner tool courtesy of our buds at Maxroll. Plus check out our expert players’ choices for which character to choose (no one agreed).

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.

There’s plenty going on in Crimson Desert’s open world. From puzzles to castle sieges to blowing up enemies with a battle robot, there’s a wide range of activities to get stuck into. But from what we’ve seen so far, the real show stoppers are the boss battles. As part of this month’s IGN First, we’ve already shown you two new ones: the Golden Star mechanical dragon, and Fortain, The Cursed Knight. But there’s still more to see. Today, we’re showcasing three brand new bosses: Muskan, Walter Lanford, and Kearush the Slayer. You can see protagonist Kliff duke it out with all three in the video above.

The trio demonstrates a chunk of Crimson Desert’s enemy scale – Walter Lanford and Muskan are both human, but the former is pretty regular in size, while the latter is an eight-foot powerhouse. And then there’s Kearush, a massive, gorilla-like beast who’s actually one of Crimson Desert’s smaller monsters.

Those “weight categories” help distinguish each boss, but each is defined by their ability set. Muskan is a fierce pugilist, only providing you a few seconds of reprieve while he charges up his powerful punches and dive kicks. He’s not afraid to fight a little dirty, with sweeping kicks knocking your legs from under you, and choke slams sending you sputtering to the floor. When his fury meter maxes out, he’s able to unleash a chain of blows that repeatedly launch you into the air, so learning how to avoid his lighting-fast fists is the name of the game.

Walter Landford may be no bigger than you are, but he’s arguably the most sophisticated of the three bosses we’re showing today. Armed with a shotgun, he’s able to fight effectively at range. Dodging the wide-spread projectiles is key, but get your timing right and you can actually deflect his blasts back at him. Should your reflexes not be quite that sharp, you can spin up a magic barrier that collects incoming bullets and fires them back where they came from. Walter’s weak to grapples, so getting in close is vital – thankfully you can use the “deflect light” skill, typically used to find hidden items, to temporarily blind him and close the distance. You’ll need to act fast, though, as Walter’s armed with smoke grenades that can help conceal his rapid getaways.

Finally, Kearush the Slayer is a monster with no less than three health bars – a fight-extending trick that multiple foes across Crimson Desert’s campaign can pull. There’s a Hulk-like intensity to this fight, with Kearush being able to climb the walls and unleash clumsy-but-destructive leaps in his attempt to turn every bone in your body to dust. As a larger creature, you’re able to clamber onto his back and stab away, Dragon’s Dogma-style, but be careful – he’s more than happy to fall back-first from a great height, so let go of those shoulders before you’re forced to cushion his landing.

All three of these fights only reinforce my feeling that the bosses are going to be the real stars of the show in Crimson Desert. Every one I’ve faced so far across multiple hands-on opportunities has had a unique twist, a clever mechanic, or simply an exciting moveset that kept me on my toes. I’ve fought a powerful knight who I crushed with fallen masonry columns. I’ve faced off against an antlered snow beast who could cause avalanches that froze me in my tracks. And I’ve clambered up the side of a giant walking mountain, Shadow of the Colossus-style, seeking out its weak points in a battle of endurance. And I hope these are only just the start. I can’t wait to see what Crimson Desert’s most ambitious showdowns are made of.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Jurassic Park movies, it’s that running a dinosaur theme park isn’t easy. It’s a constant balancing act of keeping your employees satisfied, making your park profitable, and meeting your guests’ needs, whether that means having enough bathrooms or just not getting eaten by a velociraptor. Jurassic World Evolution 3 once again puts you in the role of park manager, giving you a chance to do what the John Hammonds and Simon Masranis of the world could not: run a thriving, lucrative theme park with attention-grabbing dinosaur attractions and minimal violent deaths. With a complex set of management and customization tools, Evolution 3 gives you more control over your park than ever before. The result is an incredibly engaging management sim that’s a high point in an already satisfying series.

Like the first two, Jurassic World Evolution 3 shares a lot of DNA with other theme park sims. You’re responsible for laying down paths and electrical infrastructure, building amenities that appeal to your clientele, and creating experiences that get more guests through your gates. Rather than roller coasters and haunted houses, though, the attractions are all about the dinosaurs. Just about any species will garner business, but having a variety is the key to long-term success — and thankfully, you’ll have a wealth of different dino types to choose from. There’s always a bit of a thrill in seeing these legendary creatures come to life, especially when you unlock the more recognizable species from the films.

Of course, when you go to Disneyland, there’s almost no chance that Mickey and the princesses will escape their enclosures and maul the park-goers. That adds an extra layer of danger to Evolution 3, and park managers will have to maintain a high safety rating to continue to pull in money. Think of it as a chill, cozy management sim punctuated by moments of panic and terror. You’ll have to keep your dinosaurs happy by meeting their food, environmental, and cohabitation needs. Some need room to roam or prefer to live in packs, while others can thrive in small areas with only a bit of pasture to nibble on. Carnivores require either fresh meat or live prey, while herbivores need greenery, fruit, and nuts. Flying and swimming dinosaurs need special enclosures, since fencing in a pteranodon is about as useful as hiding from a T-Rex in a bathroom stall. It’s really satisfying to get into a loop of researching dig sites, sending expeditions to those sites, extracting DNA, and finally, finding the perfect spot to incubate your newly discovered species.

If that seems like a lot to manage, it is — but the campaign does a great job of walking you through the increasingly complex mechanics. Head of PR Cabot Finch, who you might remember from the previous Jurassic World Evolution games, returns as your guide as you visit existing parks in progress around the world and restore them to greatness. In a nod to the original Jurassic Park, the campaign begins in the Montana badlands and eventually takes you to Las Vegas, Hawaii, and throughout Europe and Asia, adding a lot of variety to the local scenery. Finch is accompanied by a team of scientists and dinosaur experts, but the real star is Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm pops up from time to time to remind everyone that trying to control nature inevitably leads to disaster.

Even if you’re already familiar with the series, the campaign mode is an effective way of familiarizing yourself with Evolution 3’s new features. The biggest addition is the introduction of in-park breeding. Previously, you could only synthesize dinosaurs based on how much of their DNA you extracted from fossils found on expeditions. Now, once you’ve synthesized compatible males and females of the same species, you can set up a cozy nesting area and wait for them to get busy.

This mechanic adds a few interesting new wrinkles to the tried-and-true Jurassic World Evolution formula. You can work with your scientists to create a breeding plan, or preferably just wait and see if nature takes its course. Who knew it would be so fun to play matchmaker to a bunch of prehistoric creatures? Once the next generation hatches, juveniles might have different needs than their parents. For example, while grown carnivores prefer to hunt their own prey, baby raptors and T-rexes will need stores of prepared meat in their pens. The tallest dinosaurs can reach the foliage on treetops, but their offspring will need nourishment closer to the ground. If you let breeding go on unchecked, pens can get overcrowded, which leads to breakouts and general panic among your guests.

While you’re managing these dinosaur family units, you’ll also have to curry favor with the entertainment, security, and conservation factions, another new feature. You can gain reputation by completing certain contracts, which are basically well-paid side missions, and improving the quality of your parks. Gaining a positive reputation with all three factions becomes very important in the last few chapters of the story, but they don’t necessarily want the same things. Pleasing them becomes yet another balancing act that adds more depth to the gameplay.

The campaign in Jurassic World Evolution 2 felt more like an extended tutorial, but this time around, you have more breathing room to find your own management style. Its objectives serve as a backbone to the overall story in which an activist group called Extinction Now! regularly hacks into your communications and sabotages your parks. As you make your way around the globe, you’ll also need to put a stop to Extinction Now!’s histrionics. The first few parks are heavily guided, but once the map opens up and you go international, you have a lot of welcome freedom to meet your objectives in whatever way you see fit.

Part of the fun of the management sim genre is being able to create something entirely from scratch, which you can do in sandbox mode. This mode has been a staple of the Jurassic World Evolution games, and Evolution 3 offers even more customization options. To start, you can choose any of the locations from the campaign, generate an island with its own unique topography, or use the square maps for a perfectly flat, obstacle-free mass of land.

You have control over almost every aspect in the sandbox, including your starting funds, certain dinosaur behaviors, and beyond. You can make it more challenging for yourself with a shoestring budget or choose unlimited funding to remove all cost barriers to creating the dinosaur theme park of your dreams depending on what you are in the mood for. You can take on contracts to make extra money, but for the most part, sandbox mode is an unguided experience. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re making sure your paths are perfectly aligned or setting up an unforgettable park tour with maximum dinosaur visibility. And unlike in the campaign, where Cabot, Malcolm, and the rest of the cast are frequently chattering at you, the sandbox is quiet and zen. Well, at least until the indoraptors get loose.

The third gameplay mode, scenarios, was my least favorite of the three. These timed challenges, which can take anywhere from 12 minutes to a couple of hours, have specific objectives and restrictions. In one, you’ll have to take manual control of one of your ranger teams and take photos of wild dinosaurs; in another, you might be barred from editing the existing dinosaur pens regardless of the well-being of those inside. I couldn’t get on board with this time-trial approach to park management; for me, it was antithetical to the zen-like experience I’m looking for in a sim, and the objectives weren’t interesting enough to make them worth the effort. I found myself missing Jurassic World Evolution 2’s Chaos Theory mode, which sadly appears to be extinct.

But even though I didn’t personally vibe with the Scenarios, it’s impressive that Evolution 3 offers options for just about every kind of management sim fan. If you need a story to guide you through the gameplay, the campaign has you covered. If you want to build something that’s entirely your own, you can do so in the sandbox. And if you actually like high-pressure time trials, you’ll probably find Scenario mode more satisfying than I did.

I’m even more impressed with the quality-of-life updates Evolution 3 brings to the series. With the right infrastructure, you can automate maintenance and medical care, saving you from having to manually track down those units every time there’s a crisis. Aspects that were convoluted or confusing in the previous games, like creating park tours, are far more straightforward. There are more tours to choose from beyond the standard Jeep rides and gyroscopes from the movies; you can set up a hot air balloon tour or build a Cretaceous Cruise that allows guests to canoe through rivers and lakes. Boosting your transportation score by setting up monorail stations and tracks throughout the park feels much more intuitive this time around. As you expand, you can easily edit the existing tracks to expand their reach — or just set up an underground hyperloop to make traversing the park even simpler. A lot of rough edges have been smoothed out.

I ran into a few technical issues while playing, though most of them have already been addressed by a patch. Most notably, the “continue” and “load” options were missing from the menu every time I started it up, so I had to begin a new game and load manually from there every time I wanted to get back into my ongoing campaign. This meant more long load screens and hearing the opening voiceover over a dozen times, which isn’t ideal. Again, that thankfully appears to have been fixed, but I also experienced a few crashes when trying to revisit my Indonesia park, which meant going through that same loop of starting a new game and loading all over again.

Another drawback of playing Evolution 3 before release is that I didn’t get to check out the community creations. Because it has so many more customization options than its predecessors, it makes sense that players would want to share their creations with the world. It’s a fun idea on paper, though I can’t say for certain whether it works in execution since there was an extremely limited player pool before launch.

Nintendo has announced the second Kirby Air Riders Direct with director Masahiro Sakurai. It’s set for October 23 at 6am PT / 9am ET / 2pm UK time.

This one’s even longer than the 45-minute Kirby Air Riders Direct we saw in August. Expect roughly 60 minutes of information on the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, Nintendo said.

August’s showcase divulged a release date for Sakurai’s new game, offered a first look at gameplay, and saw the legendary developer compare Kirby Air Riders to Mario Kart in what was a Smash Bros.-style Direct.

“You might be asking yourself if it’s basically Mario Kart,” Sakurai said. “You race and battle with familiar characters around courses with different features, or so they say. Ok, so it basically is like Mario Kart. I even mentioned this when I received the request to make the game. I asked them if they still wanted to do it. But as fans of the original know…the appeal of the game is not actually the races!”

Kirby Air Riders is out on November 20, 2025 for the Nintendo Switch 2 and features a wide roster of Kirby characters including Waddle Dee, King Dedede, Gooey, Chef Kawasaki, Metaknight, and more. Catch up on everything announced at the first Kirby Air Riders Nintendo Direct right here.

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.