It’s only been about four months since Magic players last visited the streets of New York City, and in just a short few weeks, swinging through the skies and hotdog carts will be replaced by surfing through the sewers and slices of pizza with the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set of Magic: The Gathering.

Compared to some of the more recent sets like Avatar or Edge of Eternities, from a mechanics standpoint, TMNT is a bit on the light side, opting to bring back keywords—even renaming some—instead of big new systems like how Warp or the bending styles worked. That said, 2026’s debut Universes Beyond set still looks to be bringing some tubular cards and product to the table on March 6.

First up, let’s take a look at the different abilities that will be making up your radical decks with this set, including the likes of “Sneak,” “Alliance,” “Disappear,” and Mutagen Tokens. Both Alliance and Disappear are returning mechanics, originally appearing in Streets of New Capenna and Aether Revolt respectively, though you may recognize “Disappear” under its other name of “Revolt.” Alliance triggers via an ETB effect whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, and Disappear on the flip side triggers when a permanent you control leaves the battlefield (making it great for blink decks).

Sneak, while new, feels like the estranged sibling of Ninjutsu—the Venus de Milo, if you will. Similar to Ninjutsu, whenever a creature isn’t blocked, you are able to swap out that creature with a card by casting its Sneak cost from their hand, with sorceries and other non-creature spells featuring this new keyword this time around. Cards like “Michelangelo, Improviser” take advantage of this to great effect, allowing you to not only bring him out, but also any other creature or land out all for only 2GG, and will be great additions to any decks that rock Whispersilk Cloaks, Rogue’s Passages, or any of the other plethora of cards that make creatures unblockable.

As someone who has built a counter-focused deck running things like Parallel Lives and Doubling Season, the new Mutagen artifact token is particularly exciting. Based on the ooze that turned simple baby turtles and a rat into ninja masters with an unhealthy obsession with pizza, each Mutagen token can be sacrificed to put a +1/+1 counter on a target creature. It’s only appropriate then that “The Ooze” cards allow you to create more of these tokens whenever a creature that has +1/+1 counters on it already leaves the battlefield, or allow you to tap the card to exile a card from a graveyard and create a token too. My counter deck will no doubt be dining on turtle soup with cards like that once the set releases.

As mentioned earlier, this is the second time a set will be set in the real-world New York City location, so I was curious how the team was approaching its depiction here with heroes in the half-shell compared to the webhead and his rogues’ gallery.

Speaking with Crystal, the narrative lead for the set, she explains the approach was “the New York you visit (Spider-Man) versus the New York you are from or live in (TMNT).” Spider-Man showed off the more inspiring and beautiful sides of the city, with its sprawling skylines and towering buildings, while a big focus of TMNT has been showing off the beloved city in a more homey and lived-in state, where spaces are repurposed with a heavy emphasis on really nailing the lighting. Treatments like the Vanish Lands, depicting areas the brothers were just at, or the beautiful full-art rooftop lands showing them leaping from one rooftop to the next in the shadows, are particularly striking. The artists on this set have aced the assignment.

One of my biggest surprises from the preview came from the inspiration behind the lone Commander deck, the five-color “Turtle Power” pre-con. Among the many types of media that the turtles have battled Shredder and the Foot Clan across, my personal favorite has been the video games, and it is this legacy of media that Wizards have used as the main inspiration for the deck. Cards like “Level Up,” “Arcade Cabinet,” “High Score,” and the nightmare-inducing “Electric Seaweed” from the original NES title being featured in the decklist are just some of the new cards that drive home this nostalgic trip to the past from when video rental stores were still commonplace.

This precon also lets players pick from the largest number of possible commanders in potentially the entire product line’s history, with you able to pick from either a single five-color card featuring all four of the turtles, or a combination of Leonard and any of his brothers or his master as a companion. It’s just a bummer that TMNT is only getting a single precon (seriously, where is my Foot Clan / villains deck?!), but there are a good number of new goodies crammed into this deck with 40+ brand-new cards, and at least we are getting one at all, right? (looks at Avatar).

Aside from the Commander deck, the turtles’ lineup is packed like a Pizza Hut during “Book It” month from the ’90s. Along with the standard fare of Play and Collector boosters and bundles, a special bundle coming in a pizza box will also be released that comes with the special pizza-themed lands, but players will also be able to snag a brand-new sort of product that lets up to four players don the colored bandanas of the brothers to deal with the likes of Krang and Shredder in a cooperative battle.

In the Turtle Team-Up box, each brother has their own unique deck along with the chosen boss, with unique cards that are only compatible in this mode, but cards like “Turtle Tracks” are more selective group hug, which reads “Any number of target players may each search their library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield under their control, then shuffle.” The goal is to provide a new way to introduce new players to the game, allowing experienced players to serve as a sort of Splinter-mentor figure in a more welcoming cooperative sewerscape to learn in. I enjoy playing two-headed giant games with my friends, so I hope this product does well and we get more in the future, allowing me to build a solid deck around this more targeted group-hug style of gameplay.

My older brother and I grew up with our toy boxes full of Ninja Turtles, and I have fond memories of having my friends sleep over and renting the best TMNT game, Turtles in Time (SNES). It’s still wild to me to see the brothers jumping around Magic cards now, but I’m also still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have a kid while I sit and theorycraft my next Magic deck. This new set looks chock-full of fun for fans of any generation of the turtles, and the new Turtle Team-Up game looks to be a great new way to teach hesitant friends what’s so great about this hobby of ours. And isn’t hanging out with our friends what Turtle Power is all about at the end of the day? That and pizza.

Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.

Embark Studios is keeping its promise to take action against players who took advantage of duplication exploits and other glitches in Arc Raiders by issuing warnings and suspensions.

The developer behind the popular survival shooter offered an update for its ongoing cheater crackdown with a blog post on its website. While its efforts to stamp out nefarious Raiders began last month, the message arrives as a sign that it shows no signs of slowing anytime soon.

Embark promised to subject those who utilized exploits to “further review and possible penalties” with the launch of last week’s 1.15.0 update. Today’s message follows up on that promise, offering a detailed explanation as to why it’s taken the team some time to issue a response. Now that reports of exploit usage have been confirmed and their impact on the in-game Arc Raiders economy has been measured, the studio is ready to act.

“We want to act once, with intention, and with confidence that we’re doing the right thing,” Embark said. “This is the first time we’ve handled an incident of this nature at such scale in ARC Raiders. Rather than rushing, we chose to take the time needed to fully understand the situation and make sure our response was consistent with our values and expectations.”

Players who took advantage of glitches such as the dupe exploit to a limited degree could find a warning on their accounts as soon as today and through the next week. At least one Reddit user has already shared such a notification, telling them that “continued use of exploits could lead to a suspension.”

Glitch abusers are now receiving messages from the team in ARC Raiders. https://t.co/c5CnTGRWtq pic.twitter.com/lbU9znPqc2

— Rooster (@TheRooster) February 17, 2026

Embark added that any Coins tied to dupe activity have also been removed. For “severe cases,” or instances where exploit usage had a notable impact on other players’ experiences, players could receive an immediate ban. It’s unclear how many warnings or suspensions Embark plans to deal through the week, or how long suspensions will be. The Arc Raiders team tells players to report new exploits and glitches on its official Discord.

“It’s our hope that this response provides a platform for future action, and we’ve already improved our detection and tracking, internal review tools, and safeguards to limit the impact of similar exploits,” the message continues.

“We take this incident seriously, and we’re approaching it as both a corrective effort and a learning opportunity to strengthen the systems that support fair play.”

While Arc Raiders has continued as one of the most popular games of the year, Embark has found itself facing a stream of technical issues. Some, as the studio admitted today, stem “from a design flaw,” while others, such as a late-January Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, are more difficult to anticipate.

One early exploit saw players sneakily hiding behind walls in Stella Montis, while dupe exploits have seen players finding mountains of ducks in Buried City. After a fix brought an end to duck duplication last week, some players were almost immediately hit by an issue that cleared their inventory.

We spoke to Embark CEO Patrick Söderlund about all things Arc Raiders earlier this month and learned that the studio has already banned “tens of thousands of players so far.” We also found out how the studio’s success will help it make more games while keeping its existing fans happy.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Early copies of Resident Evil Requiem have been glimpsed in the wild — meaning it is now time to take action to avoid spoilers, fans have warned, such as the ultimate fate of Leon S. Kennedy in Capcom’s hugely anticipated game.

Requiem has been pitched by Capcom as a special title in the series — one that returns to the franchise’s origins to wrap up long-standing plotlines and feature fan-favorite characters — such as Leon, of course, but also what appears to be Sherry — as part of a much-anticipated return to Raccoon City.

As the franchise celebrates its 30th anniversary, Resident Evil Requiem is believed by some fans to likely be the final time we see or play as some of these characters, as Capcom moves its franchise forward. (Also, hot uncle Leon is one thing, but hot grandad Leon seems less believable.)

All of which is to say that there’s a particular level of concern around Resident Evil Requiem plot leaks — with some fans now saying they will be avoiding social media fully for the foreseeable future.

“I can personally verify there is at least one person out there who bought Resident Evil Requiem from a store selling early,” wrote noted Resident Evil leaker Dusk Golem, who repeatedly stated that Leon was in the game months before Capcom made it official. “Funnily enough someone I vaguely know & have talked to a few times, no spoilers out there yet but brace yourselves.”

The account then shared a link to an image of a boxed PlayStation 5 copy of Resident Evil Requiem, seemingly out in the wild.

I can personally verify there is at least one person out there who bought Resident Evil Requiem from a store selling early, funnily enough someone I vaguely know & have talked to a few times, no spoilers out there yet but brave yourselves.https://t.co/xoDURKOWVw

— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) February 17, 2026

As ever, the best advice to avoid spoilers is simply to avoid the internet as much as you can before next week, but particularly to be careful of YouTube and Twitch comments where people spread spoilers in chat. Muting keywords on social media is also recommended.

Resident Evil Requiem’s February 27 release date is now just 10 days away, and we’ll be keeping spoiler free here on IGN as much as possible.

“After getting hands-on with a total of about four hours of Resident Evil 9 Requiem at this point, and sharing that experience with colleagues, I’m more excited for the series than I have been in recent memory,” IGN wrote after going hands-on with Resident Evil Requiem recently. “It’s the old mixed with the new, but all in a modern package with two protagonists I already like a lot.”

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

Screamer doesn’t ease you in. Within seconds of the first race, a car zoomed past me and detonated — parts scattering across a rain-slicked tunnel — because an opponent activated Strike mode and clipped the wall at full speed. That’s the tone of this anime-inspired combat racer, which is kind of like Wipeout meets Mario Kart, but instead of picking up shells to shoot at the competition, every vehicle is equipped with a powerful device called the Echo, which gradually converts defensive energy into offensive firepower. Here, you have to weigh your decisions carefully instead of hoping to drive over a particular item. The satisfyingly complex resource management system underneath gives Screamer a tactical backbone that neither of those games attempted. After a few hours with a pre-release PC build, the arcade racing already has a confident mechanical identity — fast, physical, and surprisingly deep — and while the story mode serves primarily as a tutorial for those systems, the arcade racing is where Screamer’s identity truly shines. What I played suggests that Screamer’s combat racing foundation is strong enough to carry the weight the developer is placing on it.

Sync or Swim

Screamer’s central system is built around two resource meters that sit on opposite sides of the HUD, and the interplay between them sets it apart from the combat racing pack. On the left, Sync — the defensive resource — builds passively over time and actively through skilled play: cornering well, timing gear shifts, maintaining speed through turns. Sync powers your Boost (hold LB for a sustained speed increase) and your Shield (tap RB, which costs one full Sync tank and provides temporary protection against incoming Strikes and Overdrive hits). When you spend Sync on either of those actions, it converts into Entropy, the offensive meter on the right side of the screen.

Entropy is where things get dangerous. Two bars of Entropy activate Strike (press RB), which grants a temporary speed burst during which any opponent you collide with explodes — a full KO that removes them from the race temporarily. Fill all four Entropy tanks and you unlock Overdrive (click both thumbsticks), which turns your car into a flaming battering ram that detonates everything it touches. The catch is lethal: during Overdrive, hitting any track barrier detonates you instead. It’s the most powerful tool in Screamer, and it punishes even a slight misjudgment with the same instant death it dishes out.

The conversion loop is what makes this more than a standard boost-and-shoot racer. Boosting spends Sync but generates Entropy, which means aggressive drivers who constantly burn speed are also passively building toward their combat abilities. Shielding spends Sync and directly banks one tank of Entropy, so even a defensive play feeds the offensive meter. Every race becomes a rolling calculation: do you burn Sync on a boost to close the gap, or bank a Shield to both protect yourself and charge toward a Strike? Do you spend two Entropy bars on an immediate KO attempt, or hold out for the full Overdrive? The system teaches restraint through its own logic rather than through punishment, and even on balanced difficulty, the races produced a rhythm that felt strategic rather than purely chaotic — I felt like I was making real decisions at 200 miles per hour, not just button mashing.

The right thumbstick handles drifting, and this is the control that makes Screamer’s handling feel distinct. Rather than braking into corners, you pull the right stick to execute a drift that whips the car sideways through turns without losing meaningful speed. Once you internalize the two-stick rhythm — left for steering, right for drifting — the movement stops feeling like you’re fighting the car and starts feeling like you’re commanding it. There’s also an upshift system: over the course of a race, you manually shift gears to increase your top speed, which layers a progression curve onto each race rather than just the meta-game. The cars have weight to them, too. Not the sluggish, input-delay kind — more like the satisfying heft of something that wants you to feel every collision and every wall scrape. Consecutive clean upshifts without collisions also accelerate Sync generation, rewarding precision beyond individual inputs. Meanwhile, hitting a barrier at speed costs you momentum but doesn’t destroy you (unless you’re in Overdrive), which keeps the racing forgiving enough to stay fun while the combat systems layer on the tension.

Built Different

Screamer’s initial boot experience demonstrates surprising care. Players can choose between a Quick Start, which throws them directly into the action, or a Guided Setup that walks them through video, audio, and accessibility options. The accessibility suite is particularly comprehensive, featuring: full one-handed control remapping for either the left or right hand, complete with automatic throttle and the ability to reassign every input to a single side of the controller; deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia colorblindness filters with adjustable intensity on a scale of one to ten; independently scalable subtitle and menu text sizing; and a tinnitus reduction filter with configurable frequency (default ten kilohertz) and gain (default negative twelve decibels). This level of audio accessibility is rare in racing games, and its upfront inclusion, rather than being buried in a submenu, is commendable.

Streamers, meanwhile, will immediately appreciate the licensed audio content toggle. A single switch disables copyrighted music before going live, eliminating the need for third-party workarounds. This small inclusion demonstrates an understanding of how people actually play and broadcast games in 2026.

This preview was played on PC at a 3440×1440 ultrawide resolution, where the visual style looked impressive. The arcade modes ran smoothly on medium settings with DLSS set to balanced, delivering solid visuals: neon-soaked tracks popped with color, car models showed visible collision damage, and the sense of speed remained strong even without maxed-out post-processing. The graphics menu is highly granular, offering individual sliders for anti-aliasing, post-processing, effects, shadows, reflections, global illumination, texture quality, foliage, and shading, as well as upscaling options across Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR 4.0, and TSR, with frame generation support for compatible hardware.

One final note: Screamer offers five AI difficulty tiers, ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard, along with driving aids, including arcade throttle (automatic full acceleration), neural throttle and brake assist, neural steer and drift assist, and neural handling for cornering and wall avoidance. While these are useful options, they are hidden within the custom game settings rather than being presented during the initial setup. For a game that otherwise prioritizes accessibility so effectively, burying the driving aids behind layers of menus feels like an oversight that could unnecessarily challenge less experienced players during their initial races.

Full Roster

Each of the fifteen characters is split across five teams of three — one Leader and two Members per squad — and brings a unique passive ability that meaningfully alters their playstyle. For example, Frederick’s Reaper’s Dance empowers his Strike and grants bonus Sync on KO, but makes him explode on contact with track barriers while Striking — a high-risk, high-reward tradeoff. Hiroshi’s Unstable Boost extends boost duration the longer you hold it, rewarding players who can maintain clean racing lines. Roisin’s One More Freckle reduces Strike’s Entropy cost and allows it to chain continuously, turning her into a relentless close-range threat. Only a handful of characters were accessible in the arcade build, but the differences between them were pronounced enough that swapping rosters changed your approach to the same tracks.

The character and world design leans heavily into an anime aesthetic, which sets the tone for Screamer’s hero shooter-esque vibe. Screamer’s opening cutscene uses fully animated, cel-shaded sequences to introduce its tournament cast — veterans and newcomers assembling for the Screamer Tournament, run by a figure named Gage who installs the Echo device on every vehicle. The voice acting, at least in the brief cinematic that played before the crashes began, is standard English-dubbed anime: serviceable, occasionally cheesy, and tonally consistent with the art style.

The Echo system — which in gameplay terms is the Sync-to-Entropy resource loop — is positioned in the lore as the bridge between narrative and mechanics, justifying why these racers can blow each other up. It’s an ambitious framework. However, the preview build’s story mode, which includes six episodes of anime-driven narrative with special race rules, functions effectively as a tutorial for Screamer’s systems but struggles with pacing and presentation. The dialogue frequently interrupts races mid-action to deliver exposition, and at least from my first impressions during the opening segments, the character writing lacks the personality needed to justify the dramatic framing. It’s functional, but the arcade modes remain the stronger draw.

Rules of the Road

Arcade mode, where I spent most of my time for this preview, offers substantially more customization than the genre typically provides. Three preset race types — Free For All (all fifteen racers on the grid), Leaders (just the five team captains), and Members (the ten sidekicks) — each produce distinct competitive dynamics. Free For All is maximum chaos, with fifteen vehicles jostling for position as Strikes and Overdrives erupt across the pack. Leaders is tighter and more personal: a five-racer sprint where every KO matters. Members sits in the middle, offering ten-racer fields with a different tactical flavor, since sidekick abilities tend toward more specialized functions.

The custom ruleset editor is the real surprise. You can adjust lap counts up to nine, set competitor numbers up to sixteen, and toggle from a long list of modifiers that reshape the racing experience: deactivate Overdrive entirely for a pure racing mode; disable all fighting mechanics to remove Strikes; toggle off individual character skills; force permanent Overdrive for every racer from the opening lap; adjust passive Sync generation rates; activate Power Shift (where Active Shifting unleashes a massive speed surge); enable Volatile Ecosystem mode where all racers are permanently vulnerable to KOs; or turn on Gage’s Finest, which prevents vehicles from losing parts on collision — essentially a no-destruction cosmetic mode. I didn’t test every permutation, but the breadth suggests serious potential for community-driven rulesets and custom competitive formats.

Team Race adds another layer. Duo and Trio variants allow mixed teams across factions, as long as a Leader is present, and scoring combines final placement points with KO tallies. Smashing your own teammates hurts your combined total, which creates an interesting wrinkle when everyone is fighting for position in the same pack. The map selection across the preview’s initial tracks — Port, Downtown Run, Route 1N, Stadium Olympus — offers a strong mix of environments, and I even noticed a fifth map unlock as a reward for playing the mode. Tight urban corridors lined with neon signage give way to wider circuits with sweeping elevation changes, and day versus night settings noticeably affect visibility and atmosphere. Repeated arcade play also unlocked a new character, new music, and cosmetic items, hinting at a progression system that rewards continued engagement — though how deep that progression goes remains an open question.

Waiting for Green

After spending a few hours exploring the arcade modes, what emerged is a combat racer with a genuinely clever resource system, meaningful character differentiation, and a custom ruleset editor that could give Screamer real longevity. The Sync-to-Entropy conversion loop forces players to think two steps ahead, spending defensively to build offensively. This tactical layer elevates Screamer’s racing above the typical grab-a-pickup-and-fire template. Milestone’s expertise in crafting racing games shines through in every drift, boost, and well-timed Strike.

However, some big questions remain. It’s unclear whether the writing of the much broader campaign arc ultimately does justice to the character-driven structure, whether the pacing between cutscenes and races ends up feeling earned, and whether the campaign’s special rules add meaningful variety beyond what exists in the arcade mode. These unanswered questions are central to Screamer’s overall appeal, but for now, Screamer’s strong racing foundation warrants attention, and I look forward to its upcoming March 26 release on PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.