Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is out now for the Nintendo Switch, and European fans are picking up their copies, turning them over, and getting a bit of a surprise when they see the PEGI Rating lists “Sex” among the labeled content warnings.
As spotted by NintendoLife, fans noticed a difference between the Wii U and Switch versions of Xenoblade Chronicles X. While the original Wii U version from 2015 is rated PEGI 12 for Violence and Bad Language, the Definitive Edition on the Nintendo Switch retains a PEGI 12 rating but adds Sex to its labels.
Naturally, the addition of that label has spurred confusion. As one fan on X/Twitter put it bluntly: “WHAT DID THEY ADD??”
Granted, there are outfits that can be a little form-fitting, but the outright “Sex” label was a little surprising. As it turns out, the answer might be fairly mundane.
Over on the PEGI website, the ratings board specifically notes the PEGI 12 rating is for “moderate violence, use of bad language and sexual innuendo.” The content-specific issues dive deeper into the details; here’s the passage, with the innuendo portion bolded for emphasis:
This game contains depictions of non-realistic violence towards human characters. Throughout the game the player and their party will be struck and hurt by enemies. Human characters grunt in pain and can be knocked back or down to the ground with no visible blood or injury. This game also features depictions of realistic violence to fantasy characters. One cut-scene in the game depicts a character impaling an alien creature, accompanied by blood effects. This game contains the use of bad language including ‘bastard’, ‘piss’ and ‘asshole’. Players can choose text and voice lines for characters to use in combat. Some of the female options have sexual innuendos, such as: “I’m going in for a quickie”
The Wii U rating notes none of this, though users on Reddit have noted that Xenoblade Chronicles X’s script did contain at least a few mentions of reproduction and suggestive language. Considering the PEGI rating itself has changed, this seems like a reflection of the ever-changing decision-making around ratings boards and labels, rather than some notion of a drastically tone-altering addition in the Definitive Edition’s expanded content.
For our review of Xenoblade Chronicles X, we gave the updated version of Monolith Soft’s sci-fi open-world RPG a 9, saying: “Xenoblade Chronicles X was already one of the Wii U’s best games, and this Definitive Edition does more than enough to justify another trip to planet Mira.”
It’s time for a new booster set in Pokémon TCG Pocket, and it’s introducing quite a bit to the game when it arrives. Shining Revelry, the next themed booster pack for Pokémon TCG Pocket, arrives on March 27, 2025, introducing Shiny Pokémon, ranked matches, and the Paldea region’s trainers and Pokémon.
As part of the new booster, Shining Revelry will introduce Shiny variants of popular Pokémon, including Charizard ex, Lucario ex, and Pachirisu. You can see a preview of what they’ll look like in the latest Pokémon TCG Pocket teaser below:
The Shiny variants not only add some extra sparkle and shine to these Pokémon, but also change their color schemes. For Pokémon TCG Pocket, the Shiny Pokémon cards will sparkle when tilted, adding to the effect. Fans of the Shiny look can also get a Shiny Charizard display board and binder starting on April 1.
Themed booster sets, like Mythical Island or Triumphant Light, are typically smaller sets with fewer cards compared to larger sets like Genetic Apex or Space-Time Smackdown. That doesn’t mean they aren’t making some interesting additions to the sets, though. Shining Revelry will bring the Paldea region from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet to Pokémon TCG Pocket, introducing the likes of Tatsugiri and Sprigatito, as well as the trainer Iono.
Ranked matches are also launching on March 27, letting players battle and earn emblems based on their end-of-season rank to display on their profile. The first season will run from March 27 to April 26.
Recently, the Pokemon TCG Pocket team confirmed it would be changing the trading system, which has earned the ire of players looking to exchange cards and round out their collections. The actual changes will be rolling out gradually though, so we’ll see if the suprisingly robust drop for Shining Revelry mollifies the community or not.
I expected Pokémon TCGrestocks in 2025, but not this soon. While everyone scrambles for Prismatic Evolutions and floods paid Discord servers hunting for Rival Destinies, the smart move is picking up older sets from the Scarlet & Violet and Sword & Shield eras before they disappear—especially now that Amazon just got a massive restock.
You won’t find Prismatic Evolutions or much Surging Sparks stock just yet, but for collectors, this is a gold mine. ETBs, Big Boxes, Booster Bundles, and more are all here—straight from Amazon Global. That means stock has been pulled from the UK and other regions to ensure wider availability.
This is exactly what the community needs: a flood of inventory that makes botting and scalping far less appealing. I’ve dug through everything, and just to make things easier, sorted it all by category alongside a handy TL;DR just below.
Pokémon TCG: Elite Trainer Boxes
All of these ETBs are harder to come by thanks to Pokémania 2025. There’s some amazing cards to be found in these sets, from Greninja Secret Art Rare (214/167) found in Twilight Masquerade to The Loyal Three Secret Art Rare set found in Shrouded Fable.
Pokémon TCG: Booster Bundles and Blisters
Surging Sparks Booster Bundle is the biggest restock here thanks to the infamous Pikachu ex Secret Illustration Rare (238/191) and the sets other amazin cards such as Latias ex Special Illustration Rare (239/191) and Milotic ex Special Illustration Rare (237/191). It’s also a great time to snap up from Brilliant Stars boosters, with chances of pulling Charizard V Alternate Art (154/172) and the stunning trainer gallery sub-set.
Pokémon TCG: Big Box Products
Whilst these are the most awkward thing to display or store for collectors, there’s some cool promo cards and accessories for TCG players. There’s even some discounts knocking around, such as the Paradox Fury Premium collection down 12% at $60.11. This is probably one of the better boxes to buy from this restock as it’s a 2024 Amazon holiday exclusive.
Pokémon TCG: Tins
There’s a collectors scene for just the tins people, and they come in handy for storing bulk, dice, sleeves and whgatever else trainers need to their battles.
A good tip here is to buy anything with a Pokémon V card as their promo card. This means you’ll get Sword and Shield era booster packs inside, which are going to be harder and harder to find as we move into the second half of 2025.
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
The first big update for Monster Hunter Wilds looms on the horizon, and next week, Capcom will host a showcase to spotlight what’s in store for Title Update 1 in Monster Hunter Wilds.
The Monster Hunter Wilds Showcase airs on March 25 at 7am PT / 10am ET on the Monster Hunter Twitch channel. Hosted by producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, the showcase will spotlight what’s arriving alongside returning monster Mizutsune.
Join us March 25 at 7am PT/2pm GMT for the Monster Hunter Wilds Showcase, hosted by producer Ryozo Tsujimoto! We’ll be detailing the first Free Title Update coming in early April, which includes Mizutsune and a host of other new additions.
Currently, there’s no exact date locked in for Title Update 1 outside a general “early April” window. A firm launch date for the first big content drop of Monster Hunter Wilds would be one of the big takeaways players would likely want to see in the spotlight.
As for content, we know Mizutsune — a leviathan monster with dangerous bubbles — will return for Monster Hunter Wilds. We also know Capcom plans to add a new challenge as well as a “new place to meet, communicate, have meals together and more with other hunters,” specifically for those who have completed the main story.
What’s on players’ longer wishlist for Title Update 1? Layered weapons, or changing the appearance of your weapon without altering its stats, is a repeated ask. Additional camera options and other quality-of-life features are also sensical options.
Mostly, hunters seem keen on hunting a new monster, getting some new challenges, and having more to dig into with Monster Hunter Wilds. The latest in Capcom’s long-running monster-fighting series brought in some big numbers with its launch, and with Title Update 1, the company will be setting the cadence for how it moves forward.
Kaiserpunk has an immediately interesting premise: rebuilding society from the ashes of an alternate timeline World War I that raged so much longer and more mercilessly that it left the survivors in a post-apocalyptic struggle for survival. When it leans into being a city builder with a roaring 20s flair, that scenario can really shine. But the diet grand strategy game playing out on its dissonant strategic map, as well as a host of technical issues that I could maybe forgive if this were an Early Access launch instead of the full thing, make me wish I’d perished in 1916.
Each game of Kaiserpunk begins with laying out a few ramshackle houses and modest farms on one of its varied but fairly flat maps based on real-world locations, which range from Seattle, Washington to Sydney, Australia. It’s neat that the lower-tier buildings look like they were made from salvaged materials, often sporting brand names of forgotten, pre-war businesses. Each lot is a quaint and stylish little diorama, and I enjoyed watching my rough-and-tumble laborers go about their days.
This continues up the social ladder as you keep adding more specialized and higher-paid citizens, with the most privileged residences creating almost idyllic early 20th Century neighborhoods that could make me forget the world fell apart for but a moment. This sense of transforming the ruined landscape into a place worth living in again is satisfying, and there’s a deep and decently entertaining web of production chains underneath it all, too.
The series Kaiserpunk is most comparable to is Anno, in that the goal is to work your way up from vegetable gardens to eventually manufacturing your own televisions and radios, supporting a growing middle and upper class with increasingly lavish and specific desires that must be maintained. Especially at smaller scales, I found a good amount of enjoyment in this urban planning. And it’s pretty cool that when I shape my society through the different settlement tiers by selecting policies, my main government building changes to reflect my values.
Kaiserpunk seems to have no idea what scale it wants to tell stories on.
But while there are dozens of resources and all kinds of unlockable buildings – from schools to clinics – to better the lives of my people, those same systems fall flat in other ways that make the world less believable. Nobody minds living next to a steel mill, for example – not even the wealthiest citizens. Everyone has a desire for health and education, but this is simply dealt with by plopping public service buildings. The smog from factories never causes health to decline, from what I could tell. This encourages building hodgepodge settlements that don’t really look like or develop in the way real cities do.
The whole thing comes apart even more when you get out onto the strategic map. For one thing, Kaiserpunk seems to have no idea what scale it wants to tell stories on. In my city, I’m concerned with whether my 200 machinists have enough gramophones to fulfill their luxury needs. But then on the strategic map, “Central Europe” is a single, indivisible political region. It’s very similar to the map from the board game Risk. This really does not mesh at all.
If they wanted to have a strategic layer, they should have gone for something much more modest. A lot of the theming is already very British, so why not zoom in and spend just as much time on a post-apocalyptic UK? Why would these devastated city-states rising from the ashes be out trying to conquer the world like it’s Hearts of Iron?
And the strategic systems don’t do much for me either. For one thing, the turn-based battle animations are comical, almost slapstick, and I don’t feel like that was intentional. The mechanics are complex but cumbersome, and don’t provide a lot of information after the fact on why you won or lost. Things like terrain type and your ability to supply your armies can eventually change the course of a war, but it’s all kind of half-baked and impenetrable.
The big picture comes across like there was a strong idea for an interwar city builder that then had a second, half-finished game nailed onto it. You could lose this whole world map layer and I honestly think it would be a better experience. Maybe you could abstract the defense industry, which eventually has you building your own tanks and artillery, as something you have to do to secure your borders rather than worrying about conquest. There are diplomatic and scientific victory paths if you don’t want to focus on guns and bombs, but you can’t really ignore the world map if you want to be successful at either of them.
For what’s supposed to be a finished product, the polish simply isn’t here.
The AI on the default Normal difficulty setting is fairly ruthless, too. As a new player, I felt like they were always way ahead of me by the time I ran into them, which is discouraging. When I’m playing a city builder, I don’t want my life to be completely without struggle. But since I’m getting plenty of that trying to provide for my people anyway, the idea that I can be vastly outpaced by the AI if I don’t develop my industries as quickly and efficiently as possible seems excessive. It’s not tuned well, especially when you’re first learning the ropes.
And that’s all before we even get to the technical issues. Like I said, if this were an Early Access game, I might cut it a little more slack. But for what’s supposed to be a finished product, the polish simply isn’t here. There’s a lot of little technical things that come across as sloppy, like the fact that the resource counters on the strategic map don’t update in real time when the clock is going. You have to close the map and open it again.
You can’t click on different columns to sort the resource screen, which is very frustrating given how many of them there are. The tooltip for population needs fulfillment doesn’t provide enough information, so I frequently found myself having to tediously go around clicking on individual houses to figure out what people wanted more of like I was doing a door-to-door survey.
The economy balance can be quite odd at the higher levels too, where simply building a single high-rise full of specialists will print money even if they’re unhappy, but then trying to provide for their needs ends up being more expensive overall. It’s supposed to be the other way around, where happier citizens pay more taxes. But the balance doesn’t always swing that way.
Most of all, though, it’s pretty buggy. All the way up until the day before this review, I was running into multiple issues with saves suddenly deciding not to load after I’d played a given city for a long time. I’m glad this seems to have gotten a last minute fix, but that’s the ultimate vibe killer when you’ve put more than 25 hours into a run. At one point, when I hadn’t met any other factions yet, I got a notification that “the enemy” had launched a firebombing campaign on my city that resulted in more than a dozen buildings randomly bursting into flames. Who did this, exactly? Some raiders hiding out in a canyon down the road?
The latest in Ubisoft’s long line of stealth-action open worlds, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, is finally here. But where does it rank in the series? We’re asking you to make that decision. There have been over 30 games released under the Assassin’s Creed banner, but we’re just including the “mainline games” here, so no mobile, side-scrolling, VR entries, or spin-offs like Bloodlines or Liberation here, I’m afraid.
AC started all the way back in 2007 when Desmond Miles stepped into the Animus to fill the shoes of his ancestor Altaïr, and now finds itself in 16th-century Japan 18 years later as players take control of Naoe and Yasuke. This latest adventure is the 14th in the core series, and I’ve had a go at ranking them via one of our IGN Tier Lists, based purely on my personal enjoyment of each game. Take a look at my tier list here:
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is still the entry I hold closest to my heart. The mix of island exploration, ship combat, and colourful cast provides the best all-around AC experience in my mind. It’s joined by Assassin’s Creed 2 in the S-tier, the game that really catapulted the series into the limelight. I also have Valhalla in the A-tier, which may surprise some, but I really loved the Viking-influenced combat, and am a sucker for the Orlog minigame. Alongside it is Unity, a game whose recreation of French Revolution-era Paris still looks stunning a decade later.
Don’t agree with me? Think that Valhalla is far too bloated for its own good? Think that Assassin’s Creed 2 is actually overrated? Well, why not have a go at ranking all of the mainline AC games yourself in a tier list below where you can compare your own S, A, B, C, and D tiers with the whole of the IGN community.
Enjoying Assassin’s Creed Shadows? Where in the world would you like the series to go next? Let us know in the comments, as well as why you’ve ranked the consoles in the order you’ve chosen.
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.
The game released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on March 20, and just before 4pm in Canada, Ubisoft took to social media to say it had crossed the 1 million player mark.
“It’s not even 4pm here in Canada and Assassin’s Creed Shadows has already passed 1 million players!” Ubisoft said.
“Thank YOU from the bottom of our hearts for joining this adventure in Feudal Japan. We are beyond excited to start this journey with you!”
While 1 million players on launch day is an impressive achievement, it’s difficult to gauge success when Ubisoft itself hasn’t offered a sales figure or indeed a sales target.
What we do know is that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the top-selling video game globally on Steam right now. Valve’s chart sorts products by revenue, so we can say Ubisoft’s game is currently bringing in more money than any other on the platform.
We also have early days Steam concurrent figures. According to official stats from Valve’s platform, Assassin’s Creed Shadows hit a peak player concurrent figure of 41,412 on Steam on launch day. Assassin’s Creed Shadows released on a Thursday, so it is expected that that figure will grow as we head into the game’s first weekend on sale. We’ll have a better picture of its performance on Steam next week and in the weeks ahead. Neither Sony nor Microsoft make player numbers public.
For some context, BioWare’s single-player RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched on Steam on Thursday, October 31, 2024, and saw a peak of 70,414 players on Valve’s platform.
There is enormous pressure on Assassin’s Creed Shadows to do well for Ubisoft globally after a number of delays and the sales failure of last year’s Star Wars Outlaws. Indeed, Ubisoft has suffered a number of high-profile flops, layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations in the run up to Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ release.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has also endured a number of controversies, not least in Japan. Yesterday, IGN confirmed that Ubisoft had quietly released a day-one patch for Assassin’s Creed Shadows that made a number of important changes seemingly in response to concern from some Japanese politicians about in-game temples and shrines.
In a remarkable exchange this week, Japanese politician and member of the House of Councillors of Japan, Hiroyuki Kada, raised the issue of Assassin’s Creed Shadows in an official government meeting, and Shigeru Ishiba, the Prime Minister of Japan, responded.
On Steam at least, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is going down very well with players. It has a ‘very positive’ user review rating, with 82% of the near 4,000 user reviews marked as positive. IGN’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows review returned an 8/10. We said: “By sharpening the edges of its existing systems, Assassin’s Creed Shadows creates one of the best versions of the open-world style it’s been honing for the last decade.”
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.
Split Fiction is getting a film adaptation, according to Variety, which reports a package is being put together in response to offers for the movie rights coming in from “multiple top Hollywood studios.”
Variety’s sources stated that Story Kitchen, a media company that specialises in film and TV adaptations of games and other non-traditional properties, is currently assembling the project’s writers, director, and cast into a package deal. The upcoming film adaptation of Hazelight Studios’ previous game, It Takes Two, was handled by the same team. Other Story Kitchen projects (formerly known as dj2 Entertainment) include the Sonic the Hedgehog films and Netflix’s Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft.
I don’t envy the work it takes to keep an annual series like MLB The Show going. There’s so much to do and perilously little time to do it in, whether that’s adding new features, fixing the things people didn’t like, or writing and producing an entire new season of The Negro Leagues. It’s especially hard when all that time and effort often gets distilled down to a single question: is it worth upgrading from last year? Thanks in large part to fundamental changes to the way the Road To The Show and Diamond Dynasty modes work, MLB The Show 25 answers that question with a resounding yes.
The actual Baseball hasn’t changed a lot this year, which I don’t mind, but there are some nice tweaks throughout. For starters, recent changes like two-way players, adjustments to shift rules, and the pitch clock are all fully incorporated at this point. There are some new quick time events that can happen when you are locked into controlling a single player, rather than the whole team, the most notable of which is the new swim move to avoid tags. I was a little nervous that it would make stealing bases too easy, but the prompt only seems to come up occasionally, and is rare enough to feel more like a treat than a clutch. Infielders now have a few different initial reactions that can have a big impact on how quickly they get to a ball, too. This mostly means that poor defenders play more like it now, so the net effect is worse defense, but I think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff that makes great defenders more valuable, particularly in Franchise mode.
There’s also a new ambush hitting feature where you can “cheat” towards inside or outside pitches, making it easier to hit on the side you choose and harder on the side you don’t. I like it in theory, though I’ve ultimately had more success staying neutral, and so I only rarely use it. Hitting overall still feels great, though something seems off about perfect contact. You still get the same satisfying crack of the bat, but it feels like the vast, vast majority of the time it results in a hard hit out or just a single, which is way too little payoff for what should be the best possible hits. Hopefully that gets adjusted over time.
Franchise, where you get to take control of your favorite team and right the wrongs of ownership (like adding a badly needed impact bat to my beloved Mariners), is pretty similar to last year. The custom game entry, which lets you auto-simulate games until high-leverage situations come up and you opt into taking control, remains one of my favorite features. The way you offer free agent contracts has been overhauled this year: You now prioritize a small selection of targets, and you accumulate interest from them as days pass. It does a great job simplifying the free agent process, and I like the strategy around deciding between joining the pursuit of marquee free agents vs rounding out my roster.
The core of The Show 25 remains as solid as ever.
All that is to say the core of The Show 25 remains as solid as ever, focusing on some small but appreciated updates over sweeping overhauls. And while they may not have fundamentally changed, Franchise and March to October both take advantage of new production elements, like player vs player comparisons. The new G.O.A.T. difficulty is as hard as it sounds, too, with fast pitches, aggressive breaks on balls, and a very small Plate Coverage Indicator. I will freely admit it’s much too hard for me, though I expect people who crave punishing challenges will enjoy this one.
Road to the Show
Road To The Show, where you take control of your own custom ballplayer as they lead up to and then eventually enter the Major League, is where you’ll find some of the larger changes year-over-year – and they do a fantastic job of reinvigorating the mode. Unlike previous years, where you participate in the combine before being drafted into the league, now you begin as an amateur all the way back in high school. It’s brief, but playing out the end of senior year and trying to impress scouts and recruiters while you chase a championship is a fun twist. Pinky Rogers, my two-way pitcher and first baseman, dominated the competition and found himself firmly in the crosshairs of two dozen big league clubs and, in another new addition to The Show, college scouts.
This led to a legitimately interesting choice: do I jump straight into pro ball and start working my way up, or do I go to college, time-skip to the end of senior year, and try to become a highly polished, highly drafted blue chip prospect? I opted for the student-athlete route, and accepted the offer to play for TCU, one of the eight real college teams to choose from. The authenticity was impressive, from recreations of each team’s home and away jerseys as I played through the college baseball playoffs to the distinct TINK as metal bats made contact with the ball. Choosing that route meant I arrived at the Minor Leagues with higher stats and could make the jump from AA to AAA much, much faster than in previous years, which is a big improvement from what has historically been a bit of a slog.
The other big change is to how players are upgraded. Previous iterations of The Show had a “use it to improve it” model, sort of like in an Elder Scrolls RPG, where success with specific actions, like hitting against left handed pitchers or throwing strikes with specific pitches, slowly raised those particular attributes. That’s now replaced by a token system, where you get points to allocate. It might sound like a subtle difference, but it massively changes how you develop as a player. Every good at bat, pitch, play in the field, or training session accumulates progress, which makes the pull of playing “just one more game” very difficult to resist. It’s a little tough to justify doing some of the longer or tougher training minigames, like the Inter-Squad game, when you can just as easily make progress doing simple ladder drills, but it’s a worthwhile tradeoff that has made Road To The Show hard for me to put down.
Storyline
One of the marquee features of The Show is the Negro League storyline, which returns for its third season. It remains one of the most impressive modes in any sports game, combining a mini documentary featurette about Negro League stars like “Cool Papa” Bell or Caleb “Turkey” Stearns with playable moments from their careers. It’s once again anchored with stories from Bob Kendrick, the magnetic president of the Negro League museum, and continues to stand out as an excellent overlap of history and gameplay.
That said, new stories aside, this mode is functionality identical to the previous two iterations, which puts it in a bit of an odd place. I praised the debut of the Negro League in my MLB The Show 23 review, but the lack of advancement over the last few years is disappointing. It’s still a mix of excellent vignettes and basic gameplay challenges (separated by long loading times), but the challenges themselves are often just to get some hits or strike a few people out, which is the same as the gameplay moments from Diamond Dynasty. I know they can do more unique and interesting things, like when your entire defense sat around you when you pitched as Satchel Paige in The Negro League season 1, and the fact that they don’t do that a lot more feels like a missed opportunity to make the gameplay side of this mode stand out.
The other piece that sticks out is the notable absence of an expansive storyline focused on an individual player like we had with Derek Jeter in The Show 24. That extensive look into The Captain wasn’t perfect, but the branching paths and rewards seemed like the next evolution of the Storylines model. It felt like we were just scratching the surface of what Storylines could be, especially when there is no shortage of incredible stories from the last century of baseball history, so The Show 25 not running with that momentum is a tough pill to swallow.
Diamond Dynasty
Diamond Dynasty, the live service corner of The Show where you gather players via card collecting to form your baseball team, is back with a few excellent changes of its own. First, Sets and Seasons, where cards were only usable during a specific timeframe before being retired in most modes, is officially over, and I am so glad for that. Some great cards are rewarded for grinding through multi-faceted programs, and it never seemed worth putting in the work for players that were going to be forced to the bench eventually. Now if you go through the effort to get the top tier Roger Clemens card from his program, for example, you get to keep it, earn XP to upgrade it, and let your favorites be cornerstones of your team. It’s a very, very good change.
The other big update is the inclusion of a new single-player mode called Diamond Quest, which is sort of like a roguelite-inspired board game. It sounds strange, but it’s honestly a pretty fun way to play. You roll a die each turn, and every space you cross can hide a gameplay challenge, a reward of some kind, or nothing at all. The objective is to get to the Stadium (or Stadiums), and win a three-inning game there with your squad. If you win, you get to keep the rewards you accumulated and get a chance at a high level card dropping. It’s fun, very replayable since the contents of the tiles are randomized, and pretty generous with its rewards. I particularly appreciate that you get to choose your difficulty for the Stadium games. Sometimes it’s nice to just take the easy win, while other times it’s worth the risk of losing what you picked up by aiming for a harder challenge, since that increases your odds of getting the best drops at the end.
Control was IGN’s Game of the Year in 2019 – and I was one of the many editors that voted for it – but even I was skeptical when Remedy, a studio known for telling great single-player stories in third-person games, announced it was doing a Control multiplayer game. That project turned out to be FBC: Firebreak, a three-player PvE first-person multiplayer shooter set six years after the events of Control. And in the hands-off demo I saw, it very quickly became clear that my skepticism was completely unwarranted. Firebreak is refreshingly original in an oversaturated space, delightfully weird amidst a sea of same-y military and/or sci-fi online shooters, and perhaps best of all, it doesn’t require a massive commitment like so many of its contemporaries. As game director Mike Kayatta put it, “We’re not about daily check-ins. We’re not interested in monthly grinds. We don’t want to give anybody a second job.” Say it again, Mike, for the people in the back.
FBC: Firebreak is a three-player co-op FPS with, if what Remedy is promising comes to pass, no nonsense. You can play for 20 minutes or a few hours if you want to, with Perk unlocks and new combinations amongst characters keeping things fresh for repeat runs. But what the heck are you doing here, back in The Oldest House, with a bevy of bizarre weaponry in your hands? Essentially, you are volunteer first responders in The Oldest House when things go seriously sideways. Your characters are secretaries, rangers, and other “normal” occupations who heed the call of service. The Federal Bureau of Control wouldn’t say you’re expendable, but…you’re expendable.
When you log in to play, you choose a Job (aka a mission) and a Crisis Kit (essentially, your loadout) before setting the Threat Level (difficulty) and Clearance Level, which determines how many zones you’ll be playing through in a run. The zones are separated by containment doors, which will take you to the next stage of the Job. And the Job I saw is called Paper Chase, and it’s set in a fairly mundane office section of the FBC building. The Hiss are spreading, and it’s up to you and your two teammates to work together to beat them back.
Of course, you can get the hell out of there as soon as you can if you like, but if you want to get your hands on currencies that let you upgrade and buy new gear, you have to escape safely with them. And the longer you spend exploring for currency, the harder it is to make it back to HQ in one piece.
Speaking of gear, that’s where FBC: Firebreak starts to set itself apart from other multiplayer shooters. Many of the guns are charmingly unusual, and most have a homebrew feel, like the hand-cranked snowball-launching gun that can put out fires (or your friends who are on fire) and soak the sticky-note monster (uh, more on him in a bit). Or the cobbled-together zapper that, when fitted with the right nozzle, can rain down lightning storms on a room full of bad guys. Or the large wrench that, when a squeaky piggy bank toy is attached, causes a swirl of coins to pelt your opponents. Don’t worry, though; there are still staples like a machinegun and shotgun – the latter of which is the go-to for after you’ve either soaked or zapped one of the sticky-note monsters.
Many of the guns are charmingly unusual, and most have a homebrew feel.
Oh yes, about them: the entire point of this particular Job is to eliminate all of the sticky notes before they overrun the entire brutalist building. Note the number of sticky notes left to destroy in the upper left corner. It will actually go way up as the mission progresses because, by the end of it, you face off against…a gigantic sticky-note monster. Think Sandman from the end of Spider-Man 3, but made out of sticky Post-It notes instead of sand.
But it’s not just about weird weapons. There are also fun in-universe gameplay mechanics, too, like the office supply shelf that refills your ammo, the makeshift turret you build after literally dumping it out of a box onto the floor, the stereo speaker that keeps the Hiss at bay, and the rinse station that washes any aggressive sticky notes off of your face. Unlockable Perks also inject more spice and variety into the gameplay. A couple of examples I saw: a Perk where each missed bullet has a chance to return to your clip, and another that lets you extinguish yourself by jumping up and down. Also, if you get two of the same Perk you get a stronger version of it. If you get three, you can share the Perk’s effect with nearby teammates.
By the way, in case you’re wondering, you don’t have to have three people in order to play. You can play solo or in duos as well. Meanwhile, Remedy is aiming for a lower minimum PC spec than usual, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, FBC will also support DLSS4 with multi-frame generation as well as nVidia Reflex and full ray-tracing. It’ll also be Steam Deck verified, and it’s launching into Xbox and PC Game Pass on day one along with PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium. Finally, there is a post-launch content plan that Remedy isn’t ready to share quite yet, and there will be paid cosmetics, but that’s the extent of the microtransactions.
In fairness, I haven’t actually played FBC: Firebreak yet, so I have to be cautious about my enthusiasm. But so far, it certainly passes the eye test. This is almost certainly not a run-of-the-mill multiplayer shooter, in a very good way. And the fact that it’s a get-in and get-out online game that doesn’t require a massive ongoing time commitment in order to enjoy it is a refreshing throwback to the days when that was the norm.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
