Category: IGN

Activision, Treyarch, and Raven Software have detailed a special Return to Verdansk event and free trial period that will coincide with the launch of the original Call of Duty: Warzone map next week.

The team behind the current iteration of the massively popular military shooter battle royale experience shared everything players could ever want to know about Verdansk’s revival today. Included with a breakdown of all new and returning features, locations, modes, and more was a schedule for the Return to Verdansk event, which includes an ammo crate filled with rewards to earn from launch on April 3 to April 15.

Ever since the upcoming DLC for Lies of P, Overture, was announced, fans have been speculating about what mysteries it might contain. And at the Game Developers Conference last week, IGN learned at least one mystery it won’t explain: the base game’s buck-wild twist of a final cutscene.

For those who haven’t yet finished Lies of P, here’s the spoiler-free version: there’s a cutscene that plays at the end of the game that seems to suggest where Neowiz might be taking the Lies of P universe next. It’s a pretty wild twist of a scene, which has left fans speculating how it might be implemented and whether we’ll get an explanation in the DLC. However, Lies of P director Jiwon Choi confirmed that this cutscene isn’t DLC-related. All he’d say beyond that was, “Please stay tuned for additional announcements in the future.”

Looking to dominate the court with Basketball: Zero codes? Well, you’re in luck! We’ve searched for all active working codes for the Roblox experience, so you don’t have to. Redeem these for a range of bonuses that include Lucky Spins and cash, helping you swish your way to victory.

Working Basketball: Zero Codes (March 2025)

Below, you’ll find a list of all the currently active Basketball: Zero codes we’ve found as of this month:

• 1MLIKES – 3x Lucky Style spins, 3x Lucky Zone Spins
• 400KWOW – 1x Lucky Style Spin, 15,000 Money

All Expired Basketball: Zero Codes

Time’s up on these codes, unfortunately. As of this month, the following codes no longer work:

• 100KW
• WCHROLLO

How to Redeem Basketball: Zero Codes

1. First, you’ll need to like and join the Basketball: Zero group on Roblox to be able to use codes
2. Then, load up the Basketball: Zero Roblox experience
3. In the bottom right corner of the screen, you’ll find the codes button. It’s purple with a gift box icon.
4. Copy your code and paste it into the box
5. Press redeem and claim your bonuses!

Why Isn’t My Basketball: Zero Code Working?

Typically, when a code stops working, it’s just because it’s expired. However, plenty of codes for Roblox experiences are also case-sensitive. So, it might be that you’ve typed it incorrectly. Whether a code has been entered incorrectly in Basketball: Zero, or it’s expired, you’ll see a pop-up saying “code doesn’t exist.”

To avoid using an incorrect code, we’d recommend copying them directly from this article and pasting them into the code box. We test them all before we add them to the article, so you can be certain that if it’s on here, it’s a valid code. Just be sure to check you haven’t added a sneaky extra space in there when copying it over.

How to Get More Basketball: Zero Codes

We check for codes on a daily basis, so if there’s a new code, you’ll be able to find it in this article. If you want to search for them yourself, however, you can head over to the Basketball: Zero Discord server.

What is Basketball: Zero in Roblox?

It’s no surprise that in Basketball Zero, you’ll be playing… basketball. The fast-paced 5v5 game will see you dribbling the ball across the court to face opponents and try to score as many points as possible. By unlocking new styles and zones, you’ll earn a range of atheles and bonuses that will give you special advantages. The Flash, for example, has excellent speed and agility, while the Star athelete can leap like no other. Redeeming the codes above will give you chances at Lucky Spins, which unlock the Styles and Zones, while the cash will enable you to unlock emotes and goal effects, to really celebrate the wins.

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

If you didn’t already know it, Honor of Kings is one of the most played games in the world. Taking the number one spot in the Chinese MOBA charts, the TiMi Group is taking its free-to-play characters – and world – in a new direction with Honor of Kings: World. While its scale and monetization screech in dissonance, its flashy combat, diverse roster of playable classes, and multiplayer-flexible modes do carry some promise.

During my half-hour-long hands-on with Honor of Kings: World at Tencent’s GDC booth, I took some time to toy around with a couple of World’s different classes, take on a boss inspired by Chinese folklore, and see a brief glimpse of the story.

Although it boasts many of the same characters as its mobile MOBA predecessor, Honor of Kings: World is no MOBA. Instead, it’s a class-driven action game – for PC as well as mobile, by the way – with the kind of over-the-shoulder, action-driven combat you might expect from something like Genshin Impact. But rather than locking mechanics or gameplay behind randomized drops like in MiHoYo’s game, Honor of Kings offers players different classes to choose from. And while the same overall control scheme unifies each class – a dodge, three standard abilities, and an ultimate of sorts – the roster of different classes struck me as fairly diverse, each with its own abilities and special perks.

Usually, you’ll be able to play with two separate classes, though sometimes you might need to stick with just one for story purposes. It seems like TiMi’s put a lot of effort into the dual-class system, allowing you to switch between the two during combat. The most interesting example they showed during my demo was starting a long, multiple-attack combo and switching characters once the target was launched into the air to extend a combo. It kind of reminded me of a tag system in a fighting game.

With 11 different classes in the demo I played, I’m certain there are tons of different combinations and ways to style on your opponent. But since this was my first time playing, I looked for balance above all else: I stuck with an even-keeled loadout, using a sword-wielding class for my primary role and a ranged gunner for the second. The two nicely filled in gaps left by the other during my attempt at a boss fight: I’d lay down fire using the gunner’s active reload mechanic to improve my damage and rate of fire when the boss was spitting out attacks in a frenzy, making sure to dodge the occasional flaming projectile and then rush him down with my sword, laying on the damage with a vengeance.

This swapping was easily my favorite part of the demo. I enjoyed hammering away at the boss’s stance meter, breaking his stance, and shooting the gunner’s R ability as I closed the distance, swapping to my sword class, and unleashing a devastating ultimate attack of sorts to juice every second from the boss’ temporarily weakened state.

Taking the boss down to a certain point also revealed an interesting story beat that eventually led to me playing as a completely separate character from the pre-built avatar provided for the demo. TiMi didn’t offer much information on how frequently to expect this kind of change, only that it would happen from time to time. The demo took place somewhere closer to halfway through Honor of Kings: World’s runtime, opening up my two classes’ skill trees just enough for me to have some fun with them without overcomplicating its combat.

The boss itself was a giant monkey character with various different masks, with a personality and attacking style for each. According to the developer leading my demo, this mechanic has its roots in a traditional style of Chinese theater called Bian lian. One mask might see him spitting fire in a massive area of effect on the map, while another might see him throw around a few melee attacks. I loved this melding of culture, history, and story with a gameplay mechanic.

Aside from briefly seeing another journalist in my demo in a hub area before the tutorial, I didn’t have a chance to check out any of World’s multiplayer offerings. TiMi showed a few clips of four-person squads crawling dungeons and taking on bosses before our demo, but teased something that sounded more like an MMO. That part is still a work in progress, so they didn’t share much beyond acknowledging that there would be a bigger scale multiplayer mode in the full game, so I’m curious to see what that looks like given my demo’s single-player scope.

Before the demo, one of TiMi’s developers walked me through some of World’s premise and setup, saying that Honor of Kings: World was a gift of sorts to the MOBA’s loyal fanbase that’s propelled it to massive success in the ten years since its launch. True as that may be, I left the demo concerned about monetization.

When another journalist asked about how TiMi plans to make money with Honor of Kings: World, the developer leading our session gave a concerning answer. “The game’s gonna be based around social, so outfits and stuff,” they said.

On its own, funding a free-to-play game with cosmetics isn’t necessarily a problem – especially since the developers made it clear that there wouldn’t be any pay-to-win – but given Honor of Kings: World’s scale, with flashy cutscenes, tons of playable characters, and epic boss fights, I can’t help but feel concerned about whether or not World’s model is financially sustainable, regardless of whether or not it’s based on one of the most successful games of the century.

Honor of Kings: World undoubtedly has a bright future ahead of it, provided TiMi can stick to its promise of giving fans of its MOBA hit a celebration worthy of its success. Even though I’m still a little worried about the amount of microtransactions that Honor of Kings: World could potentially need to fund its high production value, I still had a ton of fun dodging the big primate’s swings.

Wouldn’t we all like to know what our future looks like? Well, I decided to take a sneak peek at mine and walk in the shoes of 50-year-old me for a day via InZoi, the new life sim competitor out of Korea looking to take The Sims on at its own game.

Join me as I get accustomed to a new city, try new foods, attempt to make new friends, and even chart a new career. Fair warning, though, things may get dark quickly. It’s far less interesting for me to describe the video, though, so I think you should just watch is instead. You can do that below!

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editorial Producer who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

Amid question marks about the future of The Last of Us video game series, fans are wondering where the story might go next after the HBO series Season 2 and 3 cover off the second video game. Earlier this month, series creator Neil Druckmann cast doubt on the prospect of The Last of Us 3, saying: “I guess the only thing I would say is don’t bet on there being more of ‘Last of Us.’ This could be it.”

But if there’s no The Last of Us 3, would Naughty Dog and Druckmann keep the TV show going past the games?

That’s the question IGN put to Druckmann himself in a recent interview, and he replies to say that while he has an ending of The Last of Us story in mind, because he’s not sure if he’ll get the chance to make The Last of Us 3, he’s leaving nothing on the line.

“I have to have an ending,” Druckmann said. “When I made The Last of Us 1, I didn’t know if there was going to be a sequel, so that had to be a definitive ending. When I worked on Uncharted 4, I don’t know if we’ll ever get to do it again. I need it to be a definitive ending. Last of Us 2, same way. All these things have to line up.

“I don’t know how long I’ll keep doing this or whether I’ll be given another opportunity. So I leave nothing on the line.

“Right now it’s like, we have an ending in mind. And that ending will be it. That ending will be it for this story.”

One question hanging over Druckmann is if he will even have the time to make The Last of Us 3, were it to be green lit for production. That’s because he has his hands full with The Last of Us TV show, which is set to round-out the events of The Last of Us 2 video game with Season 2 and Season 3, and the recently announced PlayStation game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

“As far as everything else, and you’re asking me about future games, my time so much is, we have to finish this season,” Druckmann continued. “We’re not quite done. We’re almost there. Knock on wood we get to do it again. Season 3, there’s a lot more story we have to cover, as you know with game two.

“And then my hands are pretty full with Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.”

In February 2024, Druckmann teased a “concept” for a potential The Last of Us 3 at the end of Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2, noting that there’s “probably one more chapter to this story.”

“The first game had such a clean concept of like, the unconditional love a parent feels for their child,” he said. “The second one, once we landed on this idea of the pursuit of justice at any cost, justice for the ones you love, we felt like, ‘there’s a clean concept here and there’s a throughline from the first game, about love.’ If we never get to do it again, this is a fine ending point. Last bite of the apple, the story’s done.”

“The great thing about working at Naughty Dog is that we don’t have to,” he added. “It’s always like, ‘we would love another Last of Us, but if you guys feel you’re passionate about something else, we’ll support this other thing.’ Very privileged position to be in, I never take that for granted. I’ve been just thinking about it, ‘is there a concept there?’ And for now years, I haven’t been able to find that concept. But recently, that’s changed, and I don’t have a story, but I do have that concept that to me is as exciting as 1, as exciting as 2, is its own thing, and yet has this throughline for all three. So it does feel like there’s probably one more chapter to this story.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Amazon’s Big Spring Sale is here, running from March 25-31, and it’s shaping up to be one of the biggest shopping events of the season. While it may not have the name recognition of Black Friday or Prime Day, the deals speak for themselves in offering some of the lowest prices of the year so far on big game items like Apple AirPods, Kindles, Fire TV Sticks, and more. If you’ve been waiting for the perfect time to save, this is it.

Amazon has a dedicated Spring Sale hub showcasing all the best discounts, but we’ve done the hard work for you – curating only the absolute best deals worth your time. Every discount featured is either at its lowest-ever price or matches the best price of the year so far. And we’re not stopping there – we’ll be updating this list in real-time, ensuring you never miss out on the biggest savings before the sale wraps up on March 31.

The Best Amazon Spring Sale Deals Today

There are already some incredible doorbuster deals in the Amazon Spring Sale 2025. One of the best is the Anker 10K mAh 30W Power Bank, now just $11.99 with code 0UGJZX8B – a record low price. It’s an absolute must-buy, especially for Nintendo Switch users, but even beyond that, it’s just an outstanding power bank at an unbeatable price. If you grab only one thing from this sale, make it this.

Other tech deals include the standard slate of Apple products, like AirPods and the newest Apple Watch, as well as Amazon devices like Fire TV.

Book Deals

Sunrise on the Reaping, the new Hunger Games novel, should also be on your radar. It’s included in the excellent “3 for 2” deal in the Spring Sale (buy 3 books, get the cheapest free). Other books in the sale include chart-topper Onyx Storm, and its fellow Empyrean series books Iron Flame and Fourth Wing, alongside the Harry Potter Illustrated Books.

Pokemon TCG Deals

It’d be silly not to mention the latest round of Pokémon TCG stock at Amazon during the sale, with elusive Elite Trainer Boxes like Twilight Masquerade available again, alongside a slew of other hot booster sets.

LEGO Deals

LEGO sets are getting more expensive, but they always seem to get solid discounts during these types of sales. Some highlights from the current sale include discounts on the LEGO Wednesday collaboration as well as some very cozy LEGO Animal Crossing sets.

More Deals Worth Keeping an Eye On

It’s always the right time to get accessories you actually need, but it’s even better to get them on sale. That said, Amazon has discounts on various PS Portal accessory deals. My other favorites that are worth considering include Audible Premium Plus for $0.99, Apple AirPods Pro 2 for $169.99, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth for $32.99, and 65″ LG C4 4K OLED Smart TV for $1,397.

Should You Shop the Amazon Big Spring Sale or Wait?

The Amazon Spring Sale (March 25-31) couldn’t come at a better time. With no major shopping holidays between now and Memorial Day, this is one of the best opportunities to score great deals before summer. While Prime Day and Black Friday might bring even steeper discounts, those are months away – if you’re looking to save right now, this sale is your best bet.

That said, strategic shopping always wins. If you’re eyeing a big-ticket item like a TV or Kindle but don’t need it immediately, waiting for a larger sale could be worth it. Want to make sure you’re getting the best possible price? Tools like CamelCamelCamel let you track pricing history, helping you spot real deals from the ones that just look good. It’s a trick we swear by to make sure every recommendation is truly worth your money.

If you’re looking for more Spring Sale savings, there is currently a Walmart Super Savings Week sale happening now that has many deals that Amazon doesn’t, so it could be worth checking out as well. There’s also the Secretlab Spring Sale with plenty of top discounts on gaming chairs.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

Even 14 years after its launch, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is still one of the finest RPGs to date, with tons of deep lore to enjoy. That’s The Skyrim Library, a three-volume collection of texts detailing its massive world and history, a must-buy for any avid fan.

Now that you can buy this collection for just $49.99 in Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, your bookshelves can become even more spectacular at a bargain. Just clip the coupon on the product listing for that additional savings.

Break out your neck braces because Wreckfest 2 – the hard-ramming, door-slamming second coming of the hit 2018 demolition racer from smash ’em up specialists Bugbear – has officially T-boned Steam early access. With some stunning track design, a rich array of sound refinements, and even better handling than the original, the early signs are extremely promising. Early, however, is the operative word here, and my experience of Wreckfest 2 so far has been a little uneven. While I absolutely adore the driving feel, the throaty roar of overworked engines, and the metal-mashing mayhem, what’s currently being sold is very slim in terms of toys to smash together and I have suffered a number of crashes – but not the kind I crave in a destruction derby game.

On Steam, “early access” can mean many things, but most commonly it’s either a very rough draft version of a game that will evolve in major ways over the course of a long development (a la Assetto Corsa Evo), or a rather polished vertical slice that holds back the remainder of the content for its 1.0 launch (such as the surprisingly hefty early access version of Tokyo Xtreme Racer). Like the original Wreckfest’s own early access launch before it, Wreckfest 2 arrives as the former. It’s just a demo, really; the kind of thing that used to have a video game magazine glued to the back of it. Here we get four cars, three environments with a couple of tracks each, and a virtual map full of enormous jumps and stunt props. Long-time fans of Bugbear’s games may recognise some of those from the very first “technology sneak peek” demo for Wreckfest way back in 2013, when it was still under the working title ‘Next Car Game’ and fighting its way back to life after a failed Kickstarter. It’s a cute nod to the origins of the Wreckfest story and good fun to tool around in for a bit, even if the enormous ramps, basketball rings, car crushers, and cannons don’t have quite the same novelty in 2025 as they did just over a decade ago.

More impressive is the new Scrapyard environment, which is incredibly eye-catching thanks to the sheer amount of interesting salvage strewn all over the place, and it’s overflowing with destructible objects. Scrapyard is currently home to two circuits that snake their way through huge mountains of loose tyres and stacked car wrecks. These aren’t just cubes with the texture of a crushed car slapped on it; they’re all individual, stripped-down car shells looming like Jenga towers all over the place. What’s impressive is that there are dozens of them, on top of the two dozen running cars that are already screaming around the course trying to put you into a pole at the first opportunity. Some racing games operate under a strict look-don’t-touch philosophy, with invisible walls protecting the carefully crafted trackside props, and pinballing cars away from having any meaningful interaction with anything located off the main racing strip. That was never Wreckfest – and it wasn’t Bugbear’s original FlatOut games before it – but Wreckfest 2 dials the destruction up several notches. It’s a total spectacle, and it’s quite remarkable how smoothly it runs on my setup (RTX 4080, Intel Core Ultra 9 185H) looking as good as it does. It’s a fabulous looking racer, and how Bugbear maintains this massive level of destructibility without major fidelity sacrifices remains a mystery.

The cars aren’t exactly in concours condition, but they’re still bursting with detail and character. The sophisticated, location-based damage modelling that puts dents exactly where they should be as a result of your reckless driving is obviously still front-and-centre – and it remains what sets Wreckfest 2 apart from its peers. This time around, however, it’s even more nuanced. HUD warnings will let you know if you’ve thrown a tyre off a rim, and they’ll slowly chart the death of your engine after you cop damage to your radiator. That is, once your coolant’s gone you can expect your pistons and bearings to go too, along with your head gasket. On track, this appears to translate to your car belching black smoke. I can’t detect a major car performance hit when that happens, though, and I haven’t hit a point yet where my engine packs it in entirely. Broadly, I’m wondering whether engine rebuilds after this sort of damage might be a feature in career mode in the final game, but right now it’s too early to tell, in part because no car or engine tinkering or tuning is currently possible in this initial build. The original Wreckfest features a great upgrade system so it’s unlikely this will remain absent from Wreckfest 2, but the only thing we can do for now is apply paint.

There is impressive and distinct audio for an aching engine as opposed to a healthy one, and it’s part of an noticeably improved tapestry of sound overall. I particularly love the crackle of Wreckfest 2’s new (and currently unnamed) riff on a third-generation Chevrolet Cavalier (for clarity, it was initially dubbed the ‘Striker’, but following some fixes it’s now just called the ‘American 1’). I did initially have some early sessions where layers of sound would gradually drop out – first the engines, then impacts – until I was racing in silence, but I haven’t been able to reproduce it lately.

The actual racing, fortunately, is great. The AI is suitably belligerent, quick when they extract themselves from the pack, and prone to unpredictability and mistakes. Traditional racing and destruction derby are the only modes currently available, though. That does wear thin fairly quickly, but I can’t wait to see what other modes Bugbear has in tow for the final release. Caravans, please – as long as we’re speaking about towing.

The new off-brand Cavalier is actually my favourite of the four available cars to drive, as its front-wheel drive layout makes it quite stable. It’s also easier to recover from being turned around by aggressive competitors. By contrast, the pair of muscle cars here are a hoot to drift, but they generally just want to rotate the moment the AI starts harassing you. Of course, that is part of the deal of a high-contact racer like Wreckfest 2. You’re not going to get much sympathy for being crashed into.

Unfortunately, the crashing I do have had a minor problem with was Wreckfest 2 itself crashing to my desktop. I haven’t really been able to pin down what’s triggering it, and it’s been unpredictable. One afternoon I had a whole string of crashes, straight from the middle of races. The next day, not one. Obviously, as an early access project, Bugbear has plenty of scope to iron out such problems – but it’s still a caveat worth considering for those interested in buying Wreckfest 2 immediately in its current (and very much still gestating) form.

Like any soulslike fan, I’m quite accustomed to the process of dying over and over again until I’ve mastered a tough section, but playing through AI Limit was the first time I felt that sense of learned repetition before I’d even died at all. That’s because, aside from its anime-inspired art style and a few minor abilities you unlock throughout the story, this by-the-numbers adventure is without question the most milquetoast and unimaginative game I’ve played in the genre. It pit me against boring and meager enemies, laughably wimpy bosses I was largely able to stomp dead without issue, and a story with almost as little to say as its dull protagonist. In fairness, there’s not much especially awful about what AI Limit is doing (apart from its regular crashes and bugs that send you falling through the floor mid boss fight), but there’s almost nothing worthy of praise across this forgettable journey, either.

AI Limit is set in a vague sci-fi universe where society has collapsed due to mysterious circumstances and is now overrun with a bizarre black mud that is both toxic to all life and a delicious meal you eat to regain your health. As an android called a Blader, you were created for the sole purpose of restoring the world back to balance, which you do by killing almost everything you see. You’ll unquestioningly run around the ruins of a civilization that apparently used a book of genre tropes as a blueprint, complete with a sewer that serves as the tutorial and a poison swamp level that’s mandatorily included per the Miyazaki Accords of 2011 – an actual, legally binding statute that’s so evidently real you don’t even need to bother Googling it. The robotic nature of your Blader also provides a convenient excuse for them to never exhibit even mild character traits as they speak in a monotone voice throughout the 30-hour adventure. Having a hazy setting and a forgettable protagonist isn’t exactly unique to this type of game, but if the non-fantasy setting had you hoping this might be one of the ways in which AI Limit breaks that mold: Nah.

The actual action is largely an impression of better soulslikes. You’ll split your time between exploring dark and dangerous places, fending off smaller enemies as you work your way to the next bonfire-like checkpoint (in this case, branches sprouting out of the ground), and confronting big, menacing bosses with long health bars and deadly attacks. But that familiar structure underwhelms almost immediately here thanks to a lack of enemy variety, samey and empty levels, and combat that’s overly simplistic and unchallenging. You’ll swing melee weapons several times larger than your body, loose spells that shoot fire, lightning, and more at your opponents, and, of course, dodge roll and parry to keep yourself alive. But while there’s not much unique to be found in AI Limit’s combat, the few new things it tries are mostly good ideas that make me wish it took more risks.

The biggest of these mechanics is the Sync Rate bar, which fills up as you do damage and is drained when you use spells or get hurt. The higher your Sync Rate, the more damage you’ll do – but if you take too many hits or use too many spells, you’ll find yourself in a weakened state, unable to use many of your abilities until you land some blows. That rewards cautious play and allows you to cut through boss fights more quickly if you manage to avoid damage while you press the attack. It’s also nice to determine how often you can use your spells by how well you play instead of being limited by a mana meter or something like that. AI Limit even ditches the stamina bar entirely (a genre staple I largely find annoying), letting you attack without fear of running out of steam so long as you are paying attention to your Sync Rate.

There’s also a pretty neat system where you unlock four special powers that you can freely swap between in the middle of combat, like turning one of your arms into a shield or switching on an ability that lets you make short, quick dashes from place to place. Unfortunately, the first of these abilities that you get allows you to parry enemy attacks, and there’s almost no reason to switch to any of the other powers once you have it since almost everything can be pretty reliably parried, utterly devastating the enemy. So while toggling between these to do some interesting stuff in the middle of combat is a great concept, fights rarely play out that way.

You’ll mostly encounter the same handful of aliens that look like leftover costumes from the monsters in Stranger Things and generic robots with identical attack patterns, all of which are easily avoided or parried with little trouble; plus they almost always come at you one at a time. Boss fights are largely straightforward, too, with extremely telegraphed moves that can (once again) be easily parried, stopping those big bads in their tracks as they forget what they were doing for several seconds while you slash away half their health. Bosses also only very rarely have interesting designs, like one that’s just a flying version of the same Stranger Things monsters you’ve already been fighting, and then many are disappointingly recycled, either by almost immediately being reintroduced as common foot soldiers or when they are just straight up reused in another boss fight later on.

It’s unfortunate, because there are times where AI Limit clearly shows promise, like later in the story when the generic, slow-moving bosses very occasionally make way for engaging battles against fellow Bladers. Their movesets are more interesting and challenging, and they have their own Sync Rate bars that must be depleted through attacks and parries in order to reduce the amount of damage they do and open them up to devastating finishing moves. There’s also one or two encounters where AI Limit tries new stuff, like a fight against a giant robot that sits at the end of the room trying to blast you with deadly lasers, and the only way to defeat it is by destroying the electrical equipment powering it as you cut through its minions. But these fights are few and far between, leaving you to slap around the much less interesting, big, ugly, slow moving enemies that make up the bulk of the boss fights most of the time.

Another thing that holds AI Limit back pretty significantly is how buggy it is. I had at least a dozen crashes, got stuck in the environment in ways that caused me to twitch bizarrely, fell right through the floor during boss fights, and once even continuously respawned over and over again at a save point that threw me through the map until I went to the PlayStation dashboard and closed the app. Some of these crashes happened when I was quite deep into exploring an area and far away from a checkpoint, forcing me to start over again through no fault of my own and lose materials in the process. In fact, nearly all of my most frustrating deaths came from straight up glitches, rather than fighting bad guys. That’s not exactly the kind of difficulty I was hoping for.