Category: IGN

Magic: The Gathering has seen some big leaps in popularity, but this next one across the New York skyline, courtesy of a crossover with Marvel’s Spider-Man, might just be one of the biggest.

The new set (which will be standard legal, by the way), officially debuts on September 26, but you can play it earlier at a prerelease event if you can find a participating location near you.

Here’s all you need to know about what it is, when you can play, and what to expect.

What Is A Prerelease Event in MTG?

Prerelease events are a way in which players can go hands-on with a new set, usually the week before launch.

They use cards from the upcoming set (in this instance, Spider-Man), and allow you to get a bunch of cards, hopefully find some synergies, and maybe even make new friends.

The nuts and bolts may vary depending on where you’re playing (contact your local game store to see if they’re holding an event), but with Magic The Gathering the basics are as follows:

• Open a prerelease box
• Spend some time building a 40-card deck from the cards in the box
• Play against other players in a 1v1 match where each player has 20 life
• Winning games can earn you a few bonus packs

What’s In a Prerelease Box?

When setting out on my fourth journey of leaping across rooftops while slicing zombies in twain via the Dying Light series, I’d wondered if I’d feel any less joy from this violent survival horror-parkour this time. But after another 40+ hours of tucking and rolling I’m pleasantly surprised to say it’s still loads of fun, despite the basics not having changed much at all since 2022’s Dying Light 2: Stay Human. This trip through undead Eurasian cities and countrysides does up the ante somewhat by having you play as a human infused with a monster’s DNA, giving you the ability to rip people’s heads off with your bare hands. That’s as satisfying as it is unsettling, and it’s still absolutely horrifying to get caught out at night and get swarmed by Volatiles you’ve no hope of defeating. The only major disappointment is that The Beast doesn’t add a whole lot aside from its hulking out mechanics, and after a decade of games with few innovations, that hasn’t left room for a ton of surprises. Still, there’s something to be said for a reliably entertaining series, and I happily dug my fingernails through every side quest and climbing puzzle I could find.

This sequel continues the story of the first game’s protagonist, Kyle Crane, who through a series of quite gruesome events he’s been transformed into a half-man, half-beast monstrosity capable of leaping 50 feet in the air and screaming so loud it makes the undead take psychic damage… so, still very weird. There’s not much more than that to the paper-thin plot, which has you squaring off against the world’s most generic Bond villain and mad scientist on a revenge quest that goes down exactly like you think it does, but it’s at least a good enough excuse to hunt down bosses and engage with the side quests that are usually better written and sometimes downright silly. Plus, even though the story is about as minimum effort as it gets, the characters you meet and befriend along the way are at least memorable enough that I didn’t feel like skipping the lengthy conversations where you get to know them.

As you sprint toward your final confrontation (which took my completionist self about 40 hours, but could pretty easily be done in under 20), you power yourself up by hunting dangerous, genetically modified zombies with super powers called Chimeras and injecting yourself with their blood. This is where the main new mechanics of The Beast comes into play, like the ability to shoulder-charge through a crowd of zombies without breaking a sweat and really silly ones like one where you can change directions in mid air by yanking on your grapple hook with obscene force. Turning yourself into a Hulk-like abomination in the pursuit of revenge makes for a neat twist to an already awesome framework, and being able to throw down your machete and punch 20 zombies to death in the span of 10 seconds is quite satisfying.

That said, even this is a fairly small tweak to the established Dying Light blueprint, as you only get to go full werewolf every so often after you’ve charged up your rage meter from taking and dealing damage. For the rest of the time you’re still swinging lead pipes and running away from Volatiles per usual, so if you’ve played a Dying Light game before the vast majority of your playtime will feel quite familiar. That’s by no means a bad thing since it’s a reminder of some good times, but it does seem like a bit of a run/jump/slide down memory lane.

One other thing that makes The Beast distinct from its predecessors is the boss fights against souped-up infected that unlock your new abilities. The first time you come across each of these encounters it introduces a new type of baddie that then starts showing up in the wild, like a fast-moving skeletal zombie that leaps through the air, dances on top of lesser undead, and tackles you with sharp claws in the blink of an eye; or another where a muscular, brutish ghoul gains the ability to turn invisible, leaving you frantically looking over your shoulder and listening for growls in the dark. They’re cool the first time, but by the end of the campaign it feels a bit like they ran out of steam because they start rolling out variations of the same bosses you fought prior, like a muscular, brutish zombie whose only differentiated by his gas mask and weakness to poison. Still, they’re always at least entertaining highlights along the way – I mean, who doesn’t love a boss fight?

The open-world valley of Castor Woods is the new setting you’ll spend all your time in while seeking your revenge, and it combines time-worn elements we’ve seen in other Dying Light games into a cozy little package. It’s got spacious rural areas reminiscent of the original’s The Following expansion, as well as a city area with plenty of stone structures to scramble up. Castor Woods is fairly small compared to the sprawling maps of Dying Light and its first sequel, and you can definitely see the roots of The Beast being originally conceived as an expansion to Dying Light 2 when you run into the mountains that box you into a circular area that can be crossed by car in a couple minutes, but that’s not such a bad thing since they make good use of the space they’ve got without large expanses of emptiness padding it out.

It also includes what any good Dying Light game needs: When in the major urban area I was reminded of the virtues of sticking to the rooftops and leaping from place to place to avoid the hordes below, and while stepping out into the woods and swamps that make up the majority of the map I tried my best to make use of cars to bash my way to my destination and avoid getting caught out in the open. Like a lot of The Beast, everything about Castor Woods is perfectly acceptable while also not doing a whole lot to stand out, but I still made plenty of new memories while leaving a terrifying path of destruction in my wake.

Finally, I do have to hand it to Techland for making The Beast the most technically sound Dying Light game yet – I was able to get through without major or consistent bugs along the way. I played on my high-end PC, so likely got just about the best experience one could hope for, but it’s notable that aside from one crash and a bit of pop-in here and there, it was a pretty smooth ride throughout – and that’s with me having mostly played before the day-one patch, too. There were a few annoying moments where I got stuck in a vent due to some buggy geometry and couldn’t progress through the area until I’d jiggled my character around for a couple of minutes, and a few times where my character got stuck in the environment at the worst possible time and jeopardized my mission, but these were rare enough situations that they didn’t make me want to hulk out and throw things at the screen.

Over the past decade, video game remakes have become more and more prevalent. Most years see at least one major remake attempt to rekindle the nostalgia of old fans and show new players the achievements of days gone by. And while there’s an argument to be had about games being stuck in the past, we can’t deny what a thrill it is to see our favourites of yesteryear given a modern makeover. Remember when Final Fantasy 7’s Cloud was six purple polygons and a yellow spike? Well, he’s a supermodel these days. (The spikes are still there, thankfully.)

But what are the qualities of a good remake? That’s an increasingly difficult question. Once upon a time it was enough for a remake to simply update something with modern graphics. But as the games industry has evolved, so have tastes and gameplay systems, and thus remakes have changed, too. Now a remake can offer a truly new experience to both long-term and new fans, with fresh new takes on decades-old ideas. The very best remakes are carefully-observed balancing acts that find the sweet spot between faithful recreation and exciting new ideas. In some cases, that’s the game exactly as you thought you remembered it, now unshackled from old hardware limitations. In others, its radical recreations that provide an alternate vision of the original’s core idea.

With all that in mind, let’s explore the very best video game remakes. These are the 15 strongest examples of remakes, judged not by their overall quality as games, but by how each project achieved its new, upgraded ambitions and brought new perspectives to old classics.

15. Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver

Pokemon Gold and Silver, though only the second in the long-running Pokemon series, are the only entries that allowed you to travel across two different regions and collect 16 badges instead of the standard eight. That meant two “end-game” challenges to conquer, two sets of Legendary Pokemon to collect, 16 different gym leaders to defeat, and more. The enhanced Nintendo DS remakes bring that sprawling journey into full color and utilizes the superior hardware to seamlessly bring improved music, better UI, and WiFi capabilities. With the addition of new content like the National Dex, increasing the total Pokemon from 251 to 493, the grueling battle frontier, and everyone’s favorite, the Pokeathlon mini-games, there is so much more to explore.

More importantly, HeartGold and SoulSilver introduced to the Pokewalker, the original Pokemon Go, which allowed you to take your favorite Pokemon outdoors and gain levels by walking around… or cheat by shaking the Pokewalker. Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver added new life to the classic adventure, reimagining the original experience with fun and challenging additions to appeal to both new and returning fans.

14. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

Following the mammoth success of Breath of the Wild, Nintendo did a complete 180 for its next The Legend of Zelda project. Rather than the grand and ambitious open world of Hyrule, it looked back to the compact and twisty overworld of 1993’s Link’s Awakening. The 2019 version of this Game Boy classic is near enough a beat-for-beat remake, just reimagined with a delightfully cute toy town aesthetic. This faithful approach means that the distant memory of one of Link’s earliest adventures is fully restored, now elegantly elevated thanks to its seamless map and more easily-navigated dungeons. A number of quality-of-life improvements are the cherry on top, including the ability to mark important discoveries on the map, and doors that remain open after being unlocked (seriously, you wouldn’t believe how frustrating that one was back in the ‘90s.) This Switch remaster does unsuccessfully try something new with the lacklustre build-your-own Chamber Dungeons system, but everything it recreates it does so with an enchanting touch.

13. Live A Live

Plenty of wonderful games are deserving of remakes, but none perhaps needed one as much as Live A Live, the 1994 Square Enix RPG that preceded Chrono Trigger and laid the groundwork for not only that game, but numerous beloved classics that followed. Live A Live’s unique structure, following seven characters from different eras through distinct vignettes, was groundbreaking both back in the day and once again in the 2022 remake, to say nothing of the ways in which it ultimately threads its themes and overarching narrative through its separate parts.

The 2022 remake gave Live A Live a desperately-needed makeover in gorgeous HD2D and reorchestrated its fantastic soundtrack, all while keeping its wonderful story intact with its first-ever localization outside of Japan. In a final flourish, Live A Live’s remake adds a small but massively impactful piece of new content in its final hours that throws its ending into a hopeful new light, and makes its emotional conclusion all the more powerful.

12. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater

The philosophy behind many remakes is unlocking ambitions that were once hindered by technological limitations. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater makes the interesting decision to embrace those limitations – its sprawling Soviet jungle remains divided by load screens, the scope of its playspaces defined by the limits of the original PlayStation 2 hardware. You’ll see the term “faithful remake” used a lot through this list, but none are as faithful as MGS Delta – this is a PS2 game in PS5 clothing.

But what a PS2 game it is. Arguably the pinnacle of Hideo Kojima’s career, what was once a groundbreaking stealth game is now an enduring classic, thanks to its playful approach to Cold War espionage and its dramatic, cinematic story. Snake Eater has been iterated upon many times across the years, and MGS Delta collects together years of improvements and enhances them all with incredibly glossy modern graphics and an updated control system that finally turns Snake into the nimble operator he was always meant to be. This may not be a revolutionary remake, but it does a solid job of preserving perfection for a brand new generation.

11. Black Mesa

There are a number of remakes on this list that were developed by studios that didn’t create the original game, but there is only one that was developed by fans of the original. Black Mesa is a complete remake of Valve’s Half-Life, created by enthusiasts and officially supported by the original developer. And you can easily see why it won that support: this is a truly phenomenal rebuild of one of the most important first-person shooters of all time. It captures the distinctly creepy atmosphere and excellent combat that made Half-Life such a pioneer, while also augmenting almost every level with something new, be that a reimagined combat encounter or a Half-Life 2-style physics puzzle.

But it’s the final missions that really make Black Mesa a vital part of the Half-Life story. The original game’s final arc, set on the world of Xen, is infamously a bit of an under-developed slog. Black Mesa completely redesigns that final stretch, eliminating the tedium and injecting a sense of creative, alien wonder. And while it’s true that Black Mesa took so long to create that, by the time of its release, it already looked dated, that’s only true if you consider it from a purely technical standpoint. Take one look at Xen, or the eerie abandoned corridors of the titular facility itself, and there’s no denying that Black Mesa is an artistic triumph.

10. Final Fantasy 7 Remake

It may literally be in the title, but Final Fantasy 7 Remake is more than just a remake. It’s also a reimagining of the 1997 JRPG classic, a reinterpretation of its achievements, and – somehow – also a sequel to the game it recreates. Oh, and it also only covers around the first 30% of the original story, which has been transformed from a brief journey through the city of Midgar into a massive, 30+ hour adventure. This approach certainly isn’t for everyone, but you can’t deny the ambition of this lavish project.

This first chapter of the three-part Final Fantasy 7 remake is a stunningly gorgeous RPG that gives new life to some of gaming’s most memorable characters and settings. With all that extra time, it successfully expands upon the story and weaves in new plot threads, such as robust backstories for members of the Avalanche team, more believable relationships between protagonist Cloud and his new buddies, and a better sense of life in the Sector 7 slums. On top of all that, it also completely revamps the combat system, creating a brand new, action-heavy, real-time system that feels both exhilaratingly new and highly evocative of the original game’s turn-based battles. FF7 Remake’s approach is exemplary, and makes many other games on this list feel more like remasters than remakes.

9. Shadow of the Colossus

Shadow of the Colossus was a landmark achievement when it hit the PS2 in 2005. Developer Team ICO built a lonely, desolate, deeply affecting world using hardware that could barely render its vision. While the game itself undeniably stands the test of time, it’s clear to see that technical performance and visual clarity held back the studio’s incredible ambition.

Fast-forward 13 years and Bluepoint Games crafted an incredibly faithful remake, focused on overcoming those technical limitations so that the soul of the project could achieve its true ambitions. With a much steadier framerate, gorgeous graphics, and a commitment to keeping the events, systems, and mechanics of the original intact, Bluepoint absolutely hit it out of the park. It was such an achievement, in fact, that it won the studio the chance to remake Demon’s Souls, as well as laid the groundwork for its acquisition by PlayStation.

8. Demon’s Souls

After reaching the heights of Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, it was hard not to see 2009’s Demon’s Souls as the ageing, hollowed precursor to FromSoftware’s mighty success story. But it was undeniable that a fantastic, paradigm-shifting game remained, and Bluepoint Games’ 2020 remake of Demon’s Souls was a project dedicated to making those qualities shine again. It completely stripped away the technical shortcomings that held the PS3 version back, while adding several subtle quality of life upgrades that succeeded in modernizing the game to the point where if you’d never played the original, you could very likely be fooled into thinking that this was the latest entry in the Souls series as opposed to the very first one.

While Bluepoint managed to stay completely respectful to the original vision in many ways (it is, for the most part, the exact same game just with modern, photo-realistic graphics and refreshed animations,) the alterations made to the art style and design of some locations wasn’t fully embraced by some fans of the original. Nevertheless, Demon’s Souls helped elevate what was already one of the best games of the PS3 era and bring it to a whole new, post-Dark Souls audience.

7. Metroid: Zero Mission

The original Metroid was a groundbreaking NES game back in 1986, but when looked at through a modern lens, it’s hard to argue that it holds up. Fortunately, Metroid: Zero Mission exists. Developed 18 years later, rather than opting for a 100% faithful remake with a couple of modernization tweaks, Metroid: Zero Mission is instead a game rebuilt from the ground up using the original Metroid as a blueprint for its story and level design. By allowing itself to explore beyond the boundaries of the source material, Nintendo was able to draw new inspirations from the more modern 2D Metroids, like Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion.

Zero Mission is now over 20 years old, and so the idea that it’s a “modern” version of Metroid is something of a bygone era. However, it remains an expertly crafted reinterpretation of one of Nintendo’s best ever games, and is both young and strong enough that it still holds up to this day – not only as one of the best Metroid games, but also one of the best remakes.

6. Resident Evil 4

Capcom has become somewhat synonymous with the idea of remakes, having now rebuilt no less than four of its Resident Evil games. Among them is the legendary Resident Evil 4 – Leon S. Kennedy’s action-packed descent into the Las Plagas-infected Spanish countryside. Of all the games Capcom has reinvented, Resi 4 was the one least in need of a refresh, but despite that, the RE4 remake is an astonishing feat that helps elevate an all-time classic.

Purist fans may have been annoyed by the erasure of the original’s more eccentric ideas, but they have been replaced by an altogether darker, more horrifying tone that syncs Resident Evil 4 with Capcom’s other recent remakes. It also benefits from snappier, more energetic combat, complete with an excellent knife parry that makes fighting both the Armadura enemies and the Krauser boss battle much more intense. Perhaps most importantly, it vastly improves Ashley, both in terms of her depiction and the mechanics around protecting her, eliminating any sense that Resident Evil 4 is an annoying, multi-hour escort quest. Combine all that with an incredibly handsome graphical makeover and you’ve made a masterpiece feel even more essential.

5. Persona 3 Reload

Fans of the Persona series are no strangers to new versions of the beloved Atlus RPGs arriving soon after their initial release – Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal both added significant social link, story, and dungeon additions, for example. But in terms of a full-on remake, Persona 3 Reload is the first to have undergone a complete overhaul. Reload took the game’s foundational bullets and rechambered them into a much more stylish weapon — one that borrowed the best-in-class UI and menu systems of Persona 5 and rebuilt its colorful high-school surroundings and spooky shadow realm from the ground up.

Perhaps its most exciting addition is the way Reload tweaks Persona 3’s battle system. Informed by the series entries that came after it, combat is a much more enticing prospect, thanks to the introduction of new skills, the ability to directly control each party member and shift between them baton pass-style, and the brand-new Theurgy system that allows for Personas to perform devastating Ultimate attacks. All of these changes, among others, breathed new, exciting life into an already treasured RPG, meaning Reload is now the definitive way to Persona 3.

4. Silent Hill 2

Team Silent’s original Silent Hill 2 is rightfully considered one of the most affecting survival horror games of all time, and Bloober Team’s 2024 remake does nothing to diminish that. While the PS2 original has an incomparable, unsettling atmosphere thanks to its technological limitations, the remake uses modern graphical and sound techniques to generate a complimentary oppressive tone. As you explore the strange, abandoned town of Silent Hill, you can’t help but let the dread creep in.

Bloober’s creation is incredibly faithful to the original game, following the same plot beats and exploring the same environments, but its new over-the-shoulder camera both pulls you deeper into its terrifying world and makes combatting the town’s grotesque inhabitants more intuitive. Those combat enhancements can really be felt in the boss battles, which are now reinvented as terrifying engagements rather than repeating the attritional slogs they once were. But really it’s the modern presentation of this bleak story that really makes Silent Hill 2 a vital remake: actor Luke Roberts breathes fresh new life into protagonist James Sunderland, providing a deeply troubled, nuanced performance that anchors this tale in inescapable grief and guilt.

3. Resident Evil

When it comes to faithful remakes that largely stick to the core design established in the original and focus instead on bringing everything else up to modern standards, there aren’t many games better than the original Resident Evil remake. The “REmake” adheres to everything that was intrinsic to the original, from the pre-rendered backgrounds, to the tank controls, to the limited inventory that forces you to make tough decisions on what to keep and what to toss. All these may be incredibly familiar for those who were there back in 1996, but they’re polished up to beautiful new standards. It may have old ideas, but it plays fantastically… which is impressive, considering this remake is already much older than the original game was when it was made.

But Resident Evil isn’t just a shinier version of its source material. It also adds several entirely new features that change up the experience and give it its own identity. Whether it’s the terrifying addition of dead enemies resurrecting as powerful Crimson Heads (unless you have the foresight and resources to burn the corpses) or the brand-new plot thread involving the horrifying Lisa Trevor, Resident Evil’s remake shines because not only is it a faithful remake that brings a PSOne classic into a modern light, but also because of the ways that it separates itself from that classic to become something even better.

2. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

After having successfully pulled off a radical re-imagining with the first game in the trilogy, Square Enix faced a more daunting challenge with the second chapter of its Final Fantasy 7 remake project. It needed to recreate the most expansive section of the original game, redesign a huge variety of locations (including a whole theme park), add a number of new characters, and re-stage one of the most important emotional beats in RPG history. As with its predecessor, not all of these ambitions are met equally, but Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is nonetheless an incredible, transformative achievement.

The most immediately impressive factor of Rebirth is its scope. While it doesn’t totally leave Remake’s linear structure behind, much of Rebirth takes place in sizable open hub worlds. While there is a touch of the Ubisoft box-ticking about them, they’re elevated by a smart approach to exploration that introduces a brand new gimmick with every zone, from buggies to planes to Chocobos that can climb walls and glide across chasms. It’s a smart reinvention of the original game’s freely-explored-but-ultimately-empty overworld. But it’s the continuation of Remake’s story and emotional core that makes Rebirth so strong – these modern interpretations of the core trio of Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith are among Square’s strongest-ever characters, and their journey here – which feels more authentic to the original than Remake’s more expansive efforts – is unforgettable. Oh, and that overhauled combat system? It’s even better here – perhaps the best Final Fantasy has ever had.

1. Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 2‘s remake took what the original did so well – its labyrinthian level design, its disgusting enemies, its omnipresent sense of dread – and molded it into a horror game designed for modern audiences. The Raccoon City police station is cleverly reworked and expanded upon, enemies are faster, deadlier, and more unpredictable, and gorgeous lighting casts shadows over nasties waiting to grab you unawares. And, of course, the static camera angles and tank controls are traded in for third-person, over-the-shoulder shooting, which truly transports the PS1 classic into the modern era.

Perhaps Resident Evil 2’s biggest achievement, though, is the way Capcom has played with the original’s most iconic encounters. When you think you’ve got a terrifying moment figured out, Capcom twists it ever so slightly, removing any certainty as you slowly make your way through its carefully curated collection of memories. This is a remake designed to both terrify you in today’s horror landscape and scratch that nostalgic itch, and miraculously achieves both right until its breathless end. And even though multiple other Resident Evil remakes have arrived since, this remains the ultimate gold standard for video game remakes.

And that’s our pick of the 15 best video game remakes. Did your favourite make our list? Did we rank your best pick a little too low? Let us know in the comments.

The ship was on fire. My crewmates were off-ship capturing the nearby defense cannons to aid our fleet, and I was fighting half a dozen Legion vessels. I wasn’t sure how long I could last solo, but if they didn’t get me, the fire would. I pointed the bow of our C-3 Catamaran away from the fighting, locked in the ship’s cruise control, and got up from the pilot’s seat, and turned to find most of the top level covered in flames. The lower decks weren’t much better.

I grabbed the closest extinguisher and sprinted across the ship, putting out the inferno as fast as I could. Fortunately, the Legion ships gave me a few moments to breathe. When the fire was smothered, I turned us around. The cruise control had taken the Catamaran much farther away from the action than I anticipated, and the rest of my crew needed help. Our core integrity still wasn’t great; a few good hits, and we’d be just one more of the floating hulks we’d passed to get to this sector. But I didn’t have the materials for repairs. Not a great hand, but you play the cards you’re dealt. I angled the Catamaran’s nose toward the cannons – and the Legion ships surrounding them – kicked on the boosters, and prayed.

Jump Space excels in the moments when you and your crew are surviving by the skin of your teeth, putting out fires, repairing damaged thrusters, making ammo as fast as your weapons can fire it, and fighting attackers that have just jumped in to ruin your day. The successes are exhilarating; the failures, usually at least memorable. But like a run that ends early and leaves you wondering what might have been, the limits of the early access version become apparent on just about every mission. There’s no doubt that the potential for an epic game is here; it’s just a matter of whether or not it will be reached, and how long it’ll be until then. For now, though, Jump Space is definitely worth at least a short trip through the stars.

There are technically characters in Jump Space, but aside from your ship’s AI Iris and Buddy (an adorable robot that accompanies you on missions if your crew is shorthanded), I couldn’t tell you their names without looking them up. They’re there to give you quests and rewards and provide some flavor about the backstory of a robot uprising that drove humanity into exile between missions, but once you select a mission from the galaxy map and head out, they quickly disappear from memory.

Each mission consists of a roguelike-style run of several jumps, each chosen from a few paths on your route from your base to where you need to go. Each choice closes some options and opens others, and each individual jump offers different rewards including components for your ship, fragments of maps that open up new parts of the galaxy, or artifacts that provide upgrades for that run, such as restoring health when your crew is close together or dealing damage absorbed by your ships’ shields back to attackers. Choosing the right route is crucial to maximize the stuff you’ll need for that run, but also what you’re looking to bring back to the hanger as a permanent get, so it’s usually a decision you’ll want to take a moment to think about.

Every jump also brings its own trials, whether you’re navigating the wrecks of other ships and avoiding a solar flare from a nearby star, fighting off a fleet of Legion ships patrolling the sector, or simply exploring an uninhabited sector and scavenging the floating hulks around you for supplies before moving on. The joy here is in the act of playing, of launching out of your ship into the unknown, flying through space under your suit’s power, using your grapple to pull yourself to a nearby buoy or boarding a ship after you disable it. Mastery allows you to flow from on-foot combat to zero-G flight to piloting your ship or manning its guns smoothly, but there’s also something relaxing about scouring a floating wreck blessedly free of evil robots, too, or simply sharing a pizza you made in the ship’s food processor with your crew. In many ways, Jump Space is an interactive chat room, an excuse to hang out with friends while enjoying a fun little space-themed co-op game.

That is, until the Legion shows up. Most Legion ships, aside from the missile-barragging Corvettes or “What just hit me?” Snipers, are easy to deal with individually, but the challenge comes from (as their name suggests) their numbers. On foot, things are harder, whether you’re dodging the small spider-bots that scurry up to you before unleashing their flamethrowers or the floating bots that pepper you from range, and everything from bipedal walkers to spider-tanks. Despite how much more difficult the on-foot missions can be, though, they’re not necessarily more engaging. Movement options aside (which aren’t always available because you need either a point to grapple to or a place where you can engage your suit’s jet drive boosters) Jump Space is a pretty standard shooter with pretty standard weapons like shotguns, rifles, and machine guns. If it were just these on-foot fights, it wouldn’t be a notable game at all.

But of course, that’s just one aspect of many, and the best moments combine everything: battling other ships, repelling boarders or leaving half your crew to activate an objective while the others defend your ship from assault, coordinating repairs and who is manning what, spending your limited resources to craft the right thing at the right time, and deciding whether to save scrap for permanent resources when you get back to your hanger or to disassemble it to build what you need right now.

It leads to some fun improvization. In the mission I described in the opening, things got so hectic that I wasn’t even landing the ship to pick up my crewmates when they needed to move between the cannons we were trying to capture and hold; I was just getting close enough that they could grapple to the ship, and then I’d get them close enough to launch themselves to the objective. We didn’t have time for anything else.

The biggest issue that will hopefully be resolved in future content updates, whether it’s on-foot or aboard ship, is repetition. Moving a bunch of batteries, or finding and installing nuclear fuses to power a door is fun the first time, but it gets less fun when you’ve played just a few hours and you can already enter an area and know exactly what the objective will be because it’s what always takes place in that space. The big, run-ending finales which can involve defending a capital ship, activating those cannons, grabbing and ferrying cargo from a downed ship before Legion forces jump into the system, or doing something as simple as playing King of the Hill to establish communications hold their novelty longer because you know what you’re going to get from the mission select screen, and you can avoid one if you’re tired of it. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case for the stuff you’ll have to do on the en-route jumps because your choices can lock you into certain objectives.

And then there’s the early access of it all. Some of it is cute, like placeholder text that says “Not Made :(“ when an asset isn’t there. Others are less charming, like when Legion ships and bots defy the bounds of Euclidian space and travel unencumbered through walls or asteroids. Now, maybe I missed something in the lore that allows them to do that, but my first thought was, “Man, I wish I could do that!” right up until one of my buddies actually did but got stuck in the ceiling during an on-foot segment, which isn’t as funny as it sounds. Combine that with frequent disconnects and crashes, which often cost my friends progress, and it’s hard to say that Jump Space’s airlocks are fully sealed.

It’s also a little short on features you might expect from a game like this, like being able to buy artifacts for your runs before that run starts (those are teased but not available yet) and the limited number of pilotable ships and customization options. I love being able to slap another railgun on the Catamaran, too, but in about 15 hours it was the only other thing we found that seemed useful. And yeah, more reactors are neat (and playing Tetris with your components to find the right way to power everything is fun), but I still haven’t found one that matches the Split Reactor you start with.

Even the second ship you get, the smaller, faster DT-4 Dart, feels lesser than the Catamaran. I understand the appeal for teams of two or solo players, but as far as we could tell it was lacking basic things like an ammo-refill station, and walking around the outside of the ship was so difficult it was essentially impossible, which is a problem when you need to go outside and fix something. My crewmates hated it so much that we got halfway through a run before abandoning ship and swapping back to our beloved C-3.

But there are plenty of smart decisions, too. The missions scale to player count nicely, and you seem significantly less likely to have major ship malfunctions with a crew of two than a crew of three, when it’s easier to deal with. I also love Buddy, who will not only help out on the ship when there’s just two humans playing, but will actually leave the ship when you’re flying solo to help you out in an on-foot fight. And when he revives you and then gives you a little fistbump, or you hear him trash-talking the Legion bots after he takes them down with his tiny pistol? Perfection. That’s my boy right there. Ride or die. I thought playing solo would be a slog but it was anything but, and that’s all due to Buddy. You can even play soccer in the hangar between missions, complete with dialogue for when you score – or accidentally punt the ball into the nearby canyon.

It’s also just a funny game, even when you’re downed because you held an irradiated fuse too long and are begging your friends to save you, or are unable to get off of an exploding ship in time and floating in space, waiting to be revived. And being able to survive a jump, which requires you to be seated, while sitting on the toilet? Talk about boldly going.

If I have one major complaint beyond the technical stuff and the early access growing pains, it’s how long some missions are. While there are 20-minute missions, many of them start at 40 minutes and you’ll regularly see ones that are an hour plus. That’s a long commitment, especially if you fail and lose most of what you would have gained. I mean, I’m not saying the starting pistol is bad, per se, but when you lose all the other, fancier weapons you had and have to either craft or find them again, you notice. The same is true of a quest you might have to do again. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be friction and failure; I’d just like to see more bite-sized missions when I’m not ready to devote my whole evening to a single run.

Live and Learn is more than just one of the best songs in Sonic history; it also feels like a philosophy SEGA has taken to heart with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. I’ve spent over 35 hours drifting, boosting, and gathering rings across an excellent set of tracks that span Sonic’s 34-year history. Minutes effortlessly turned into hours, perfecting my drifting technique, customizing my vehicles, finding the optimal race lines in time trials, and frantically competing with friends to be the Grand Prix champion. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds could have been just another pit stop among a Grand Prix of 2025 kart racers, but instead it put the pedal to the metal and refused to let me take my hands off the wheel.

I’ve played my fair share of kart racers over the past few decades starring Sonic, Mario, Crash, and plenty of other popular characters. While most are amusing enough, only a few reach that upper pantheon of party games that dominate every get together. With 39 tracks, 24 characters, a nice suite of multiplayer options, tons of challenges to complete, and such a long list of unlockable cosmetics that I still can’t see its finish line, CrossWorlds doesn’t just want to be part of the rotation: it has set its sights on taking the top spot for me and my friends.

CrossWorlds’ racing is quick to pick up thanks to its intuitive and straightforward controls, essentially boiling down to four main actions: accelerate, drift, brake, and use an item. Racing feels great whether you’re zipping into shortcuts, landing massive trick combos for a big boost, or nailing a complicated drift that asks you to rapidly change direction on a curvy path. I love how the vehicles feel, as every action fluidly transitions from one into the next, allowing me to chain drifts into jumps into tricks into boosts before launching into another drift to repeat the process again… provided my opponents didn’t send any items my way.

Getting hit with items, messing up a turn, or colliding with a wall definitely cost me a few races, but more often than not they felt more like small speed bumps thanks to the generous placement of boost panels and item capsules on most courses. Those hits do reduce your ring count, which in turn lowers your top speed, but it rarely took me more than a few seconds to get back on track – and you can reduce that lag time even further depending on how you tune your vehicle. The type of ride you pick will help you eke out extra advantages: Power vehicles are great at shoving other racers around, Handling vehicles make it easier to nail even the trickiest of sharp turns, and the long-awaited return of Sonic Riders’ hover boards enabled me to boost like no other when hitting dash panels or using the boosting Wisp items.

The headlining feature is the fantastic CrossWorlds mechanic that not only keeps every race interesting but also adds a good amount of depth. Outside of Grand Prix Mode, the second lap of each race almost seamlessly transports everyone to a different course, similar to the dimension jumping done in 2021’s Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Warping from the naval scenery of Metal Harbor to the prehistoric Dinosaur Jungle or the incredibly curvy Dragon’s Road kept me on my toes every race. This was already my favorite part of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’ public test demos before my review, but I began to see the true brilliance of it as I put more time into the full game.

Different vehicle types excel on different tracks, so making the second lap random adds depth when customizing your ride since you need to consider variables beyond just the course you’ve chosen. My speed-focused vehicle would sing on tracks with many straightaways or boost panels, but would often give up a few positions to racers who tuned for acceleration or handling on tracks filled with constant curves and sharp turns. Since some tracks have portions where you transform into a boat or plane, I found myself making one loadout that could adapt to whatever course ended up as the second lap while still maximizing my potential for the first and final lap on the main track.

Transforming into Flight and Water Forms is as simple as passing through a gate with the matching plane or boat icons. Some transformations are required, such as the Water Form swap at the start of Kraken Bay, while others are optional, like the short Flight Form path on Coral Town if you take a specific branching path, but I was never unhappy to seize the opportunity to change things up – in fact, I would have loved a few more CrossWorlds that gave me extended periods of time in the sky. Flight Form in always handled like a dream, letting you drift vertically to reach items, rings, and boost gates at different elevations. However, a few of the Water Form sections can feel clunky until you figure out the correct rhythm and timing to accelerate, drift, and trick on each course. Vehicles with better handling seem to perform the best during these transformations, so whenever I was having a hard time with a specific section , I would practice in one of those vehicles before returning to my preferred Speed type options.

No lap during CrossWorlds feels like another, and though the last lap returns to your original track, there are significant changes during it. Paths that were inaccessible open up, improved item boxes appear with better drop rates for stronger options, and more hazards show up on the course. There are even significant structural changes, like a rocket in Metal Harbor finally launching, which removes two paths and forces everyone into a newly formed spine (or two quarter pipes placed back to back, for those who don’t skate).

Even without the CrossWorlds mechanic, the courses available at launch are all excellent. There are 15 tracks that can only arrive during that second lap, and then 24 main courses for them to show up in, with Coral Town possibly being my favorite. Its looping paths create so many routes that I’m still wrapping my head around which one is the most ideal in time trials – I always found myself changing the route I took depending on my position, character, vehicle, and lap number. Other standouts are classic stages like Market Street, which originated as Rooftop Run in Sonic Unleashed, and Radical Highway from Sonic Adventure 2, the latter of which had me riding the main cables to the top using boost pads to leave my competitors behind.

Every course feels perfectly tuned with risks and rewards; different routes have different advantages, with some having more rings to help you reach your maximum top speed, while others have more boost panels to provide some speed in the short run in the hopes you will either get far enough ahead not to need the extra rings or at least have enough breathing room to pick them up later. One course that proved to be my Achilles heel: Pumpkin Mansion. The final third of the track is full of giant pumpkins that vanish as you approach, but until the first person reaches them, they hide a section full of sharper turns. They always affected the timing of my drifts until I took the time to memorize their positions through time trials and figured out which paths I should take.

Finally, a kart racer would just be a basic racing game without items to inject a little chaos into them. CrossWorlds has 24 different items that can be pulled from boxes placed all over each course, most of which had me shouting with equal amounts of either excitement or bitterness depending on if I was on the giving or receiving end of each. The iconic Wisps from Sonic Colors are here and offer items in the form of a boost, laser, and drill, which are all helpful to either catch up or extend your lead. These were always welcome as they enabled me to cut across off-road sections and dodge certain attacks, like the punishing Slime and Weight items, if used with proper timing. There are plenty of other cool options as well, like a bomb that grows in size the longer you hold it, eventually becoming a giant wrecking ball that flattens enemies it collides with until its detonation.

The Tornado quickly became my favorite item because of its ability to negate most incoming attacks while also dealing damage to as many opponents that I could bump into. There is also the Monster Truck, which is sure to be a standout for many, as it transforms your vehicle into a massive machine that flattens opponents, renders you immune to all other items, and allows you to drive off-road without any penalties. By default, you can hold two items at a time, but you can also add the option for a third item or swap between your two items by installing specific upgrades in your customizable Gadget Panel if you really want to lean into the chaos, though I typically leaned toward Gadgets that made me faster, not fiercer.

Gadgets offer a wide range of extremely impactful bonuses, with more than 30 different options to place on your Gadget Panel before a race. Now, they won’t suddenly craft you a win out of thin air, as your racing skills still remain the most important factor – but when utilized to their maximum potential, Gadgets can be the difference between getting first and fourth place. There are Gadgets to alter your vehicle’s stats, improve drift performance, increase the rings you can carry, and grant unique starting items that can’t normally be found in races, like a Warp Ring that teleports you on top of the racer just ahead of you, causing you to squish them. The tricky part is figuring out what combination to use; each Gadget Panel has six slots in a two-by-three pattern, and each Gadget requires between one and three slots. Building my Panel became a tiny puzzle with no wrong answers, and it scratched the min-maxing itch I love in games.

You can prebuild five Gadget Panels and then swap between them before each race, which helps you adjust to specific situations, modifying the base stats of your character and vehicle selection as needed. The roster has nearly all the major characters you’d hope to see from each generation of Sonic: in addition to the usual Team Light and Dark, you’ve got characters from the Sonic Heroes, Riders, Advance, Rush, Colors, and even recent newcomers like Sage from Frontiers. It didn’t take long for me to find my favorite in Shadow using a modified Speed-type vehicle, so much so that I used him to clear all eight cups on the Sonic Speed and Super Sonic Speed difficulty (the equivalents of 150cc and 200cc in Mario Kart), only needing minor tweaks outside of regularly adjusting my Gadget Panel. While it was rare for most CPU opponents to give me trouble, a few of the Grands Prix still had the ideal amount of challenge thanks to CrossWorlds’ modular rival system.

Before starting each Grand Prix, a random character appears as your rival, and they then act as a supercharged CPU to race against with a challenge level from one to 10, similar to raising the heat level in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate campaign. Your rival isn’t just a CPU racer with better stats, they interject with snarky comments of frustration and glee throughout the races, adding a bit of character to what could have just been a slightly more competent CPU racer. While I haven’t tested every combination of racer and rival, the 20 or so I’ve seen so far all had unique voice lines, which really helped breathe even more life into them. Rivals also behave more intelligently, holding onto defensive items until they need them, taking better racing lines as they drift around corners, and even moving to ensure they take items they expect those behind them to go for. I had to use a not-insignificant amount of retries when racing rivals that were level eight or higher, which is just the right amount of pushback.

Thankfully, CrossWorlds does something I wish every other racing game would do with its in-game currency, Donpa tickets. I would usually net anywhere between 10 and 40 tickets per race, depending on my performance and if I achieved certain feats. That includes things like using the most items, choosing which course is selected for lap two by being in first when reaching the travel ring at the end of lap one, or picking up the series’ iconic red rings. Tickets have a variety of uses, including unlocking various car parts or customization options, increasing your friendship with a character for rewards unique to them, and – my favorite use – retrying a race for better placement.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: retrying a race is hardly new, but CrossWorlds differs in that you can spend a measly 20 tickets to retry in the middle of a Grand Prix without entirely starting over. So if you get hit with three items on the final turn of the final lap of the final race only to watch your rival and six other racers pass you in the homestretch, you can rewind and try again as many times as you can afford, which cuts down on pointless repetition a lot. Grands Prix also get an exciting and welcome shakeup: instead of racing on a fourth course to end things, the final race is a combination of one lap from the previous three, which tests how well you can adapt to each. That said, I do miss the mission-based Story Mode from Team Sonic Racing, which gave you interesting bonus challenges to accomplish during each stage.

I also have to dig into the friendship system more, as it will take thousands of races to complete if your goal is to maximize your ranking with each character. Instead of funneling tickets into car parts, you can give them to your favorite characters to receive cosmetics like titles, decals, and alternate costumes in return. These specific unlockables get really expensive really fast: it took me 3000 tickets to earn the first four rewards for Shadow, including one alternate costume, and there is still more for me to unlock. It’s clear that SEGA is hoping this will be a system that keeps you drawn in, as with 24 characters, that’s a ludicrous number of tickets to unlock everything. I have mixed feelings on this because it gives the most dedicated fans something to chase, but the rate for earning tickets currently feels a bit too stingy when compared to the cost of unlocking some cosmetics.

That sticker shock gets even worse when you consider the fact that new characters are already on the horizon, including Hatsune Miku, Joker from Persona 5, and Ichiban from the Like a Dragon franchise, all of which have been announced as upcoming free additions. There will also be characters and tracks for SpongeBob, TMNT, and Avatar: The Last Airbender coming as part of the paid season pass. While I don’t necessarily need them since I already have more favorites on the Sonic roster than I do fingers, it is exciting to think of what other characters and tracks could be joining even later down the road. In fact, during my interview with Takashi Iizuka of SEGA at Gamescom, they said they plan to support CrossWorlds with new content like this each month for at least the first year after launch, which is an impressive pace given there’s already plenty of unlockables and alternate modes to keep those who blaze through the cups busy at launch.

One of those distractions is the Race Park, which consists of six different rule sets, but also allows you to create custom matches to fit whatever you and up to three others want to play locally. These are all available online as well by joining the Friend Match option, though they are limited to one player per console, but it at least allows you to race with groups of up to 12 friends. Currently, every mode boils down to a race for points, but the modified rules change how they play out. In addition to the regular 12-player free-for-all race style, there are also special team modes with rules that grant bonuses for grabbing the most rings, colliding with teammates, using the most dash panels, or landing the most item hits on opponents. These modes were a blast with friends, as they didn’t fully rely on who knew the courses the best. It’s also something worth playing for a bit, as there are eight different rival CPU teams to take down that unlock special vehicles you can then customize with other parts. The custom rule set is a standout feature here for local multiplayer, too, giving you control over how many races you do back to back, which courses can appear as the Crossworld second lap, what items appear in item boxes, and the speed and difficulty level while racing.

The Race Park’s one drawback is that, while not necessary, the Gadget Panels can be overly influential to the outcome of races, so it was a let-down that there were no pre-built ones for newcomers. They did have access to everything I had unlocked, but that meant spending time for them to decipher what each one did and figuring out which ones they wanted to set into their Panels. I hope Sega alleviates this with a patch that adds some default Gadget Panels optimized for different vehicle types and playstyles.

In addition to the Race Park, there is also a Time Trial mode that challenges you to race for the best time on both the Sonic and Super Sonic Speed settings. I initially went into Time Trial mode expecting to run through a few tracks just to see what it offered, but it ended up being where I spent more time than anywhere else. After clearing some courses with an A rank (the minimum rank necessary to earn progress towards rewards), I was suddenly hungry for more. Each race, I found myself tinkering with the various car parts and Gadgets, and rewatching my own ghost to see what I could change or where I could improve. What if I save my boost for this turn vs that turn, or what if I sacrifice a bit of my speed to improve my handling stat to nail that hairpin? Before CrossWorlds, I was never a huge Time Trial person, but these hooked me by putting the most enticing thing they could behind them as a reward: my favorite Sonic music to listen to while racing.

A Sonic game would be incomplete without a banger of a soundtrack, and CrossWorlds rarely fails to impress with its nearly 100 unique tracks. The primary songs are excellent, with popular tracks like Radical Highway, Market Street, Ocean View, and plenty of others all getting the CrossWorlds treatment. And for you Sonic Adventure 2 fans, don’t worry, because Escape From the City is here, but you will need to clear all 79 time trials with at least an A ranking to unlock it. All the great artists that have created music for Sonic games here are: Tee Lopes, Tomoya Ohtani, Takahiro Kai, and plenty more. Similar to Sonic x Shadow Generations from last year, unlocking this music does more than just let you listen to them in a jukebox; you can also gather your favorites and slot that playlist (or any of the other six premade albums) as the music for each of the three laps of every race. Possibly the most impressive part of that is how seamlessly they all transition into each other, with each song starting at a different point depending on what lap it plays on. I only wish I could create multiple favorites playlists to have even more control.

The last and potentially one of the most critical elements that could decide whether CrossWorlds takes the podium is how online play functions. Ahead of launch, we had a few days to test it and see what it offered. To my enjoyment, it worked as well as I’d hoped, with the caveat that my not-quite-full lobbies were regularly supplemented with CPUs to fill out all 12 spots. Online does have a drawback compared to this year’s Mario Kart World since it’s limited to just one player per console, but the inclusion of crossplay is a decent trade off, and I saw virtually no lag with my wired connection.

Online functionality is simple but effective – you can see other players on your specific console’s friend list, your CrossWorlds in-game friend list, a history of others you’ve raced against, and your fair play points, which is a 100-point gauge that decreases anytime you abandon an online race. This appears to be CrossWorlds’ method for ensuring players who are behind don’t just up and leave the race entirely, which is an appreciated inclusion even if I can’t yet say how effective it will be. Another incentive is that I unlocked even more Gadget options to alter my driving style as I rose through the ranks from E- to an eventual C- during the short prelaunch review window. And while it’s too soon to tell how the difference in ranks will affect queue times, I usually found a match in less than a minute during the review period, which has a much smaller pool of players than will be there on launch.

Also, it’s great that my custom soundtracks and everything I had earned in offline mode carried over, making me all the more prepared for facing real opponents. The good news is that even fans that want to join online races on day one will still be able to earn all the Gadgets I got offline simply by racing, meaning that each online race will not only move you closer to the Gadgets from higher ranks but also the ones that unlock based on total number of races. However, those players will be at a disadvantage compared to others like myself who spent time earning them before going online, which could also be mitigated with preset Gadget Plates.

10 years ago, Metroid Prime series producer Kensuke Tanabe sat down with me at E3 2015 and said he’d like to make a new game in the franchise with a time travel mechanic.

This was, obviously, a long time ago — so long ago that the Nintendo Switch was still only known by its codename NX — but the chat remains one of Tanabe’s most forthcoming interviews on the Metroid Prime series’ future, discussing the stories of Dark Samus and Phazon, bounty hunter Sylux, and an idea for a new Metroid Prime game that focused on a single planet across multiple points in its timeline.

“Instead of broadening it to more planets I would have one and would focus on the timeline, and being able to change that,” Tanabe said to me, at Eurogamer at the time. “That’s one interesting idea I have in mind… but I understand many people thought that [Echoes] was too difficult.”

By evoking Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Tanabe is referring to its dual-world gameplay that saw players shift between light and dark versions of the same space — a concept that prompted a mix of reactions from players. Still, the idea of time travel appears to have stuck with Tanabe, who has once again returned as the producer of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — a game which contains other similarities to the concept he discussed back then.

Take the bounty hunter Sylux, for example, a character that even fans of the Metroid Prime trilogy might struggle to remember. A rival of Samus, Sylux was introduced in the Nintendo DS spin-off game Metroid Prime Hunters (for which Tanabe was also a producer). As part of the same interview a decade ago, Tanabe confirmed the spaceship seen during the cliffhanger tease at the end of Metroid Prime 3 belonged to Sylux, potentially setting up a rivalry in a future game.

“It was Sylux, another hunter from Metroid Prime Hunters at the end of Metroid Prime 3,” Tanabe said to me at the time. “Personally I’d like to create a story centring around Sylux and Samus.”

Well, roll forward a decade and Sylux is indeed a major presence in Metroid Prime 4 — and last week the character was even announced as getting an amiibo figurine, too.

As for the idea of a game featuring time travel, fans have long held onto Tanabe’s suggestion — and even pointed to the black hole shape seen in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s logo in the hope that it might mean Samus can create some kind of time-dilating space hole to travel into the past or future.

Now, supposedly leaked box art for the game posted on reddit appears to mention Samus as being stuck on the game’s planet of Viewros after being transported across space and time — prompting more chatter that time travel, just like Sylux, has remained part of Tanabe’s plans.

“I’m assuming it’ll work exactly like how Dark Aether works in Prime 2,” wrote Metroid fan Spinjitsuninja on reddit, before the supposed box art leaked. “We see several portals in the recent trailer anyways, so unless those are awkward warp points, I think it shows similar world design. They could always have the game take you to different eras, with more than two ‘worlds’ to go between? But that might be ambitious.”

“Calling it now: you have to hit a certain speed on the bike to time travel, back to the future style,” added another fan, Gleethor on ResetEra. “Could even see it near instantly changing the landscape around you when you time travel, which could certainly explain why it’s relatively sparse.”

Last week’s Metroid Prime 4: Beyond trailer finally revealed the game’s release date and also showcased a new open-world motorbike for Samus, though the video felt something of a low-key showing within the wider Nintendo Direct. Here’s hoping we get to see more of the game before its December 7, 2025 release date — if only we could time travel to that.

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

With the build-up to the next big Amazon Prime exclusive sale (Prime Big Deal Days, or October Prime Day, as it’s better known) well underway, we’re already starting to see some notable early discounts that you should absolutely consider snapping up ASAP.

That now includes a handful of new Nintendo Switch 2 games down to record low prices at Amazon, including Donkey Kong Bananza, down to $53.54 (previously $69.99). Other discounted games include Cyberpunk 2077, Mario Kart World, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Breath of the Wild, with the additional discount automatically applied during checkout.

So what’s the catch? These are technically sold under Amazon Resale. Now hold your eye rolls, as we’ve seen deals like this before, and these discounts are some of the IGN Deals team’s most anticipated offers going into the biggest sale period of the year.

Most of what I’m recommending in the sale is classified as “Used – Like New,” essentially what Amazon deems almost brand new, never used, with small damage to the packaging, but not to the contents themselves. So you’re not losing anything, or buying a game that looks like it’s been recently run over repeatedly.

We’ve also already noted some PlayStation deals at Amazon Resale, with the PS Portal dropping to around $140 (but now sold out), and the DualSense Edge controller, also down to around $140 right now (also likely to sell out soon). In case you hadn’t already realised, the main with kind of deals is stock tends to be extremely limited, so be fast to the trigger if you don’t want the disappointment of missing out.

This is one of the best ways to buy into some of the most expensive new games available, and find rare discounts where you normally wouldn’t (I’m looking at you, Nintendo).

Plus, you still get the 30-day Amazon return policy, so it’s still a much safer option than just buying a used game off some random on Facebook Marketplace.

Plus, if you’re looking for more Switch 2 game deals, we also recently covered discounts on other games sold by Amazon this week (not resale either), including Split Fiction, Sonic x Shadow Generations, Madden NFL 26, and more.

Robert Anderson is Senior Commerce Editor and IGN’s resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter/X or Bluesky.

The Witcher 3 is one of the best-selling and most acclaimed video games of all time, yet for all the countless play-hours that have been poured into its narratives and subsystems, there’s one in particular that stands out: Gwent. This is a mini-game within the game which sees the player collecting cards from diverse sources, building a deck and seeking out opponents, sometimes for money, often just for fun. Players loved it, swapped tips on where to get the best cards, how to beat the hardest foes, spent entire sessions just playing Gwent instead of furthering the game’s main plot and innumerable side-quests. Perhaps inevitably, it has now arrived in a stand-alone, physical version.

I’ve put over 100 hours into Donkey Kong Bananza since July. I reached 100% completion on my first playthrough, did a zero-banana run on my second, and I’ve been using a third to practice crazy speedrun techniques and push DK’s incredible movement in more extreme ways. Two months after giving Bananza a 10 in my original review, I remain in awe of how DK’s frenetic, destructive abilities work masterfully in tandem with the underground’s meticulously-designed breakable environments. Nintendo nailed the relationship between Bananza’s world and its main character, and the new DK Island and Emerald Rush DLC is a really fun excuse to keep experimenting in this playground in a remixed, more frantic way, even if a slight lack of content and a few minor issues keep it from reaching the same inspired heights as the base game.

Before we get too far into things, a quick note. Bananza’s DLC is only accessible after clearing the main story, and it acts as somewhat of an extended postgame. I’m not going to outright spoil Bananza here, but if you’re still drilling your way to the planet core and don’t want to know anything about it, you may want to come back to this review once you’ve reached the end credits. That said, you should also do so before you dive too far past them, because the DLC makes some helpful changes to the original endgame grind that you may want to know about. There are two intertwined halves of the DLC to discuss: DK Island is a new level to explore, while Emerald Rush is a roguelite take on Bananza that makes up the majority of the content found in this combined package.

DK Island is a wonderful love letter to Rare’s Donkey Kong Country trilogy and Donkey Kong 64. It’s a nostalgic return to where DK platformers really began, comparable to exploring Super Mario 64’s Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey’s postgame. It’s overflowing with great references, from obvious ones like DK’s treehouse and King K. Rool’s Gangplank Galleon from Donkey Kong Country, to deeper cuts like DKC 2’s goal target tucked away in the corner on the ship’s main deck. As a huge fan of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat – the last DK platformer Nintendo developed internally prior to Bananza – my favorite part of DK Island has to be the bongos out at sea. There are so many more references to DK history I don’t want to give away, but if you have any love for this series, you’ll probably get a kick out of discovering all its easter eggs too.

Beyond that, though, there’s actually not that much to do on DK Island. There are no Banandium Gems or fossils to hunt down and no challenge rooms to conquer. Instead, the gold bonus stages found in Bananza’s main layers are all collected here, making DK Island a convenient place to grind for cash. Bananza’s original postgame sees Grumpy Kong demanding tens of thousands of gold pieces to unlock some of the final collectibles and reach 100% completion, and those who have access to DK Island will have a much easier time grinding than I did before the DLC was out. Elsewhere, DK’s old parrot companion Squawks is here, and he will hunt down one of DK Island’s dozens of collectible statues in exchange for Banandium Chips. Shiny replicas of Bananza’s allies, enemies, and Kongs live in galleries across DK Island, adding to its value as a nostalgic DK history museum. In classic Bananza fashion, you can pick them up, turf surf on them, and use them to carve through the island’s central mountain. You’ll need to grind thousands of Banandium Chips to buy them all, but thankfully, those are the main reward of the Emerald Rush mode.

Besides DK Island’s role as a rush of 90s nostalgia and a place to store cool trinkets, there’s not much to it, and I wouldn’t recommend buying the DLC if you’re only interested in this component. It’s a little odd that DK Island wasn’t included as a postgame reward in the base game since it’s so comparable to Odyssey’s Mushroom Kingdom, and gating it behind paid DLC feels kind of like a money-hungry move from Nintendo. This is the company that just charged $10 for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised at this somewhat eyeroll-worthy choice.

Fortunately, Bananza’s DLC does a much better job justifying its $20 price tag in its Emerald Rush mode. Void Kong has found his way to DK Island, and he’s moved on from his obsession with Banandium Gold to set his sights on a new prize: emerald ore… which is the exact same, but green. Void hires DK and Pauline to collect as much emerald ore as possible, and this introduction includes some cute followups and resolutions for Bananza’s main story and characters.

I’ve seen some online chatter calling Emerald Rush a simple minigame that should have been free, but it’s much more than that: it’s a fully-featured side mode that turns Bananza’s destruction-based platforming into a fun, replayable roguelite. Each run takes place across a series of rounds – ranging from six to 15 depending on the difficulty level selected – where you have 100 seconds to reach a quota of emerald ore to pay Void. If you don’t reach the goal, your run comes to an end right there. If you do, you can keep working on your build for the rest of the timer to stock up for the next round, where the quota progressively multiples.

Emerald Rush feels like a combination of Splatoon’s Salmon Run and Side Order modes. Personality-wise, it clearly takes inspiration from Salmon Run: both feature a hilariously mean boss screaming at you to meet your quota through a walkie talkie over increasingly difficult rounds. This is also Nintendo’s first take on a roguelite since last year’s excellent Side Order DLC for Splatoon 3 which, notably, also came bundled with a nostalgic hub to explore. It feels like Donkey Kong is following the exact same playbook, as Emerald Rush features dozens of perks that impact your score multiplier in a very similar fashion.

Each run of Emerald Rush begins by stripping DK of all his skills – including his five Bananza transformations at higher difficulties – and it’s up to you to power him back up while also gathering piles of emerald ore. This is done by frantically exploring layers, fast traveling around with a limited number of barrel cannons, collecting emerald bananas and fossils that restore DK’s skills and give you the choice of one of three perks, and completing goals Void Kong assigns you at specific locations across the map. I love starting from nothing, giving me a place to put all of DK’s high-level base techniques to use, and I found I was able to reach a lot of areas in really cool, satisfying ways – for example, using a chunk to essentially quadruple jump to a platform I traditionally would have used Ostrich Bananza to reach. Emerald Rush challenges advanced players to go for the highest score possible, and there’s always room to grow by deepening your understanding of how DK moves.

But even if you’re not interested in crazy parkour tricks, the most important part of Emerald Rush are the perks that alter how much emerald ore appears. There are generic power-ups like generating more when defeating a certain type of enemy, but the most exciting ways to score are the Groove subset of perks, which revolve around multipliers that increase the more you perform a specific action. For instance, my favorite is Turf Groove, where more emerald ore appears based on the total distance traveled by Turf Surfing. The second this perk shows up, my whole playstyle changes. Suddenly, I’m trying to get everywhere by Turf Surfing, which is a big challenge on denser layers. Emerald Rush leads to scenarios you’d never see in the base game, and with such an incredible foundation to build a roguelite on, it’s always fun seeing how you can push the mechanics.

Stacking multiple perks like this on top of each other can lead to completely busted results, and I scored well over one million points on a few runs where my target goal was less than half that. If you thought the base game had a lot happening on-screen at once, Emerald Rush achieves a new level of unregulated chaos, like one run where I got tons of bonus emerald ore for defeating enemies as Zebra Bananza, leading to 30 minutes of sprinting around nonstop, destroying everything in sight to flood the screen with an overwhelming, borderline unbelievable amount of emerald ore.

It’s not always a breeze, though. Like most roguelites, a lot of your success depends on what skills randomly show up, and I lost multiple runs by banking on a certain Bananza to spawn by building my perks around it, and ultimately failing when it never arrived. Speaking of Bananzas, Emerald Rush really rewards mastery over these five powered-up forms, as knowing the best way to take advantage of their unique strengths and swapping between them on the fly results in a high skill ceiling fitting of an endgame mode.

I do wish Emerald Rush went a little bit further with its abilities, though. Seeing big numbers get bigger is always enjoyable, and the way Emerald Rush overlays your multiplier onto every individual explosion is a nice touch – but with a few rare exceptions, there are no brand new abilities to find, and the perks simply make DK’s already-existing moves worth more points. It changes the scoring and the way you play, but beyond reclaiming powers I’m already very used to using in the base game, it never meaningfully expands the options available to you. The best roguelites make you feel more powerful throughout a run by giving you fresh moves as you go, and adding more exciting techniques to DK’s toolkit could have elevated this from a good roguelite mode to a great one.

Completing runs earns you piles of Banandium Chips and rating points that unlock cute bonus costumes, more powerful perks in the rotation, and new layers to tackle. Emerald Rush doesn’t take place in new areas besides DK Island. Instead, DK and Pauline return to familiar locations from Bananza’s campaign, and one of the coolest parts of this mode is how it rewards you for being intimately familiar with these layers. Emerald versions of Banandium Gems and fossils are found in the same locations as their counterparts in the main campaign, and knowing exactly where to find a vein of three fossils or a bunch of bananas makes Emerald Rush feel like a cool B-side to the main story. And, the Getaways you’ve built during the main story become essential fast travel points during a run, further incentivizing you to explore each layer to the fullest.

In that same vein, Void Kong’s objective will sometimes vaguely order you to do something like give Cranky Kong a high five, or take a swim in a layer that doesn’t have much water in it. Unlike the usual orders, these objectives don’t place a marker on your map, leaving it up to you to find them on your own. Thanks to my 100+ hours and multiple playthroughs, it didn’t take long for me to pinpoint Cranky hanging out on a big tree branch in the Forest Layer, or to find a quick pond to dive into in the Hilltop Layer. I initially thought reusing areas from the base game would be a weakness of Emerald Rush, but the way it leverages your knowledge of familiar locations is a really smart, novel way to effectively reuse old content.

Still, this is another place I wish Emerald Rush had added a little bit extra to keep things fresh. There are no new enemy types, and it never introduces boss encounters that could’ve nicely broken up the pace of runs that last up to 45 minutes. I reached the end credits after about six hours, and while the DLC’s postgame opens up several more layers to play Emerald Rush in, I’m starting to feel a little burnt out on the formula. I’ll probably only stick around to reach 100% completion out of obligation to the base game I’ve so thoroughly completed. And when I do return, I’ll almost certainly throw on my own music or a podcast – the pair of main themes is undeniably catchy with flourishes from Pauline that change depending on your active transformation, but I could definitely go without hearing either for a while after 10 hours in the DLC.