Enhance Games has announced that an update for Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Tetris Effect: Connected will introduce TATE mode to the Switch version, enabling you to flip your console — or your TV if you’re hardcore — on its side and get those blocks falling on a screen that better matches the orientation of the well.
The update is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday 22nd February. Showcasing it in a video clip on Twitter, Enhance demonstrates the new mode with a Switch sitting in a FlipGrip:
Nintendo has shared what changes are coming in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s long awaited February update but still hasn’t revealed an exact release date.
The patch, which includes several bug fixes alongside a handful of quality of life improvements, has been long anticipated by fans after Pokémon Scarlet and Violet launched in a state Nintendo itself was forced to apologise for.
Most of the new quality of life changes, as outlined on Nintendo’s website, revolve around Pokémon Boxes, with Nintendo making aiming to make it a little bit easier to manage the status of Pokémon all in one place.
From the Pokémon summary screen, players will now be able to change the nickname, markings, held item, and mark or Ribbon-related titles, reorder moves, have the Pokémon remember or forget moves, and use TMs.
The patch also makes it easier to swap out held items and move Pokémon around in large quantities, and it will now be easier to tell which Pokémon are in Battle Teams.
A Tera Pokémon’s health not being accurately reflected in the HP bar, connectivity issues, National Dex Pokémon showing up in the Paldea Pokédex, random items appearing unintentionally in the world, and more (viewable in the full notes below) will all be addressed.
Nintendo also confirmed it would continue to update Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and address further issues in the future, but gave no information regarding when the next update would arrive.
The poor performance was also a major factor in our 6/10 review, as IGN said: “The open-world gameplay of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is a brilliant direction for the future of the franchise, but this promising shift is sabotaged by the numerous ways in which Scarlet and Violet feel deeply unfinished.”
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Ver. 1.2.0 Patch Notes
Feature Adjustments
Additional functionality will be added for Pokémon Boxes:
From a Pokémon’s summary, players will be able to change the Pokémon’s nickname, markings, held item, and mark- or Ribbon-related titles, as well as being able to reorder moves, have the Pokémon remember moves, have the Pokémon forget moves and use TMs.
Players will be able to swap out held items by pressing the Y Button when in the Held Items view.
Players will be able to select All Boxes while moving Pokémon or items in the Party and Boxes view and Held Items view.
When in the Battle Team view, Pokémon in your Boxes that are assigned to a Battle Team will now have their icons displayed in a darker hue if those Pokémon are members of the Battle Team that is currently being displayed.
The News screen will be displayed when you connect to the internet from the main menu, just as it is when connecting to the internet from the Poké Portal.
Bug Fixes
Tera Raid Battles
A bug that can prevent an opposing Tera Pokémon’s HP gauge from properly reflecting damage done by certain moves (such as Play Rough) or certain status conditions may occur in Tera Raid Battles, resulting in the Tera Pokémon’s HP gauge fluctuating in an unusual manner. This will be fixed.
A bug that causes all Pokémon on your side to faint at once despite their HP gauges indicating that they still have HP may occur in black crystal Tera Raid Battles against Pokémon with the Mightiest Mark. This will be fixed.
A bug that can temporarily prevent a player from entering any input into the game may occur if a Tera Pokémon takes certain actions while the player is choosing the target of their move. This will be fixed.
A bug that causes a communication error may occur when someone connecting to a Tera Raid Battle sees a different Pokémon displayed on their screen than what the host sees. This will be fixed.
A bug may occur that causes players joining a Tera Raid Battle from the Tera Raid Battles search screen to be brought to a Tera Raid Battle against a Pokémon different from the one they saw displayed. This will be fixed.
A bug that causes Tera Raid Battle crystals to not appear for a set amount of time may occur under certain circumstances. This will be fixed.
Battles
Type matchups against Pokémon that have fainted will no longer appear when selecting a move or target during Double Battles.
A Zoroark that has Terastallized and is disguised as another Pokémon via its Illusion Ability can be identified as a Zoroark by using the Check Target option. This is a bug and will be fixed.
When a Zoroark has Terastallized and is disguised as another Pokémon via its Illusion Ability, the type matchups of moves are displayed based on the type of the Pokémon that Zoroark is disguised as, rather than Zoroark’s Tera Type. This is a bug and will be fixed.
The stats of a Dondozo with a Tatsugiri in its mouth will increase when Dondozo uses Order Up, even when the move should have been negated (for example, by an opponent using Protect). This is a bug and will be fixed.
If a Pokémon Terastallizes after using Destiny Bond and then faints, the effects of Destiny Bond will fail to activate. This is a bug and will be fixed.
Other
We will address an issue that can cause the game to forcibly close at certain locations. As a result of this fix, there may be a reduction of Pokémon and people displayed in certain towns or in the wild.
When a Pokémon that is not a part of the Paldea Pokédex is obtained through a Link Trade, it is displayed as being registered to the Paldea Pokédex. This is a bug and will be fixed.
Certain actions can cause the main character’s expressions to not change until the game is closed and reopened. This will be fixed.
A bug occurred for some players after Ranked Battles Season 1, wherein visiting the Ranked Battles screen immediately after the season’s results had been calculated caused a communication error after the players received their rewards. Following this error, players were unable to participate in any further Ranked Battles. This will be fixed.
If a player has created several Battle Teams but does not use the Battle Team in the first slot for their Ranked Battles, they may not receive the Master Rank Ribbon after winning Ranked Battles in the Master Ball Tier. This will be fixed.
When a Pokémon you caught comes back to you from another player through Link Trade, it may not listen to your commands in accordance with what is written in the profile app (“Pokémon caught at Lv. XX or below will listen to your commands”). This will be fixed.
A bug is preventing the Pokédex from displaying additional entries (such as entries for Shiny Pokémon or Pokémon that were received through Surprise Trade from players that play in a different language) for Pokémon species that were already registered in the Pokédex. This will be fixed.
Objects such as Poké Balls may be displayed in certain locations of the field unintentionally. This will be fixed.
Passersby will no longer be displayed during certain battles that take place in towns during the main story.
Other select bug fixes will be implemented.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Kerbal Space Program 2 is crash landing into early access on February 24th, just under a week, and developers Intercept Games are celebrating with a new gameplay trailer. The trailer begins at the Kerbal Space Center, on the planet Kerbin, as the cute little aliens attempt to build a working spaceship and rocket off into the Kerbolar System. Genuine question: does this make the green minions Kerbites, Kerbals, or Kermen?
Cardy’s been lost in other worlds with the PlayStation VR2. He’ll tell you all about his time with Horizon Call of the Mountain before Matt and Alex join in to talk about HBO’s The Last of Us now we’ve passed the halfway point. They then share some of their favourite post-apocalyptic games, movies, TV shows, and books.
Got a game for us to play, or just want to tell us the weirdest thing you’ve eaten for breakfast? Drop us an email: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.
Octopath Traveler 2 in a nutshell, a JRPG that follows so precisely in the footsteps of its predecessor that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was suddenly 2019 again and that the last few pandemic years were nothing but a terrible existential nightmare. But alas, here we are in 2023 with another Octopath Traveler game that is, bar a couple of very light tweaks and additions, exactly the same game as what came before it, for better and for worse.
Eight roads diverged in a wood, and I… well, I took them all!
A year after the Switch released, Team Asano—who made its name on the Bravely Default games on 3DS—released Octopath Traveler for the Switch. The fascinating HD-2D art style immediately grabbed people’s attention, while the clever implementation of classic JRPG gameplay quickly stole the hearts of many. Now that it’s been a few more years and a couple more HD-2D titles have gone through production, the team opted to take another crack at the original formula with Octopath Traveler II. We’re happy to report that this is every bit the worthy sequel you hoped it would be, Octopath Traveler II quickly makes a case for itself as one of the very best JRPGs on Switch.
The narrative of this sequel follows in the footsteps of the original, centering around the personal stories of eight people in largely disconnected narratives. Temenos, for example, is an incredibly condescending and sassy cleric who has to solve the mystery of a string of mysterious murders related to the Church of Sacred Flame. Agnea the Dancer, on the other hand, is a small-town country bumpkin with a heart of gold who sets out on a journey to prove her skills and become a famous dancing star like her mother was. Some of the stories here feature quite heavy themes while others are equally lighthearted, but all of them are compelling in their own way. Importantly, these stories still feature their starring party member in an isolated role; the other party members don’t get involved in the plot because you can technically go through any character’s entire storyline without ever adding anyone else to the party.
Sega took the blue blur in a bold new direction last year with the release of its open-zone adventure Sonic Frontiers.
Parent company Sega Sammy has now spoken about the game’s reception and sales success – revealing the latest entry has “greatly exceeded” the original sales estimation. Frontiers is expected to continue to sell over the long term as well with the assistance of discounts and also updates in the form of DLC.
After spending about 10 hours in the comprehensive Enhanced Edition of Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge on a shiny new PlayStation VR2, going back to the old Meta Quest 2 version felt a lot like falling up a flight of stairs backward in slow motion. With the delightful and inarguably essential Last Call DLC in addition to a bevy of improvements that make use of every last one of the new headset’s haptic bells and whistles, plus the movie-like color depth, I’ve found the droids I was looking for. Be warned, though, that you’ll have to stick around beyond the first three hours of the middling original campaign and its genuinely bad writing, but after that it picks up the pace and puts on a real Star Wars show.
Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge begins on a subdued note. Upon waking up in the quarters of a cargo ship, you step into the role of a nameless, voiceless droid mechanic who also happens to smuggle illicit goods as a side hustle. Its early moments have you stumbling aboard the ship while characters talk at you through your transmitter. But at least you get a nice scenic shot of interstellar travel from your ship’s observatory before things go to the dark side.
A crash-landing puts you on the planetary surface of Batuu, a backwater world marked by a podunk settlement you might recognize as the setting of the Star Wars-themed section of Disney’s real-life theme parks. Here you meet Seezelslak, the cantina’s sole proprietor, and Mubo – a droid repair shop owner who’s your main smuggling client. They come across as exasperatingly cheesy at first, with overtly obnoxious dialogue lines that seem like they were pulled directly out of The Phantom Menace – and you can’t skip any of it. The droid shop and the cantina are treated as Galaxy’s Edge’s two central hub areas, though it’s disappointing you can’t explore any more of the settlement itself.
From the opening, there are plenty of chances to live out your Star Wars fantasies with fully modeled blasters, satisfying shotguns, throwable lightsabers, rocket launchers, and obscure weapons that can be comfortably dual-wielded or two-handed if you wish. They all look lifelike up close, almost as if you’re holding authentic Star Wars props. The fleshed-out arsenal feels especially punchy due to the haptic feedback and trigger resistance of the Sense controllers, and each blast can repel your trigger finger with an impressive level of force. The All-kit multi-tool makes otherwise trivial interactions like solving basic puzzles to open a door or a treasure chest feel more like you’re a kid playing with a toy that makes a whirring noise or shoots fire or sparks.
The Last Call DLC content is when characters become enjoyable to spend time with.
If you’re wondering if you ever get to play as a Jedi: you do! But that chapter is more of a side adventure than the main course. Most of your time is spent blasting your way through Batuu’s visually impressive but linear and straightforward levels, the first few of which are true offenders in the category of tutorial-ing you to death. They are all almost entirely made up of a series of hallways with the occasional nook containing a randomly generated treasure chest or audio log – almost like Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s world. It helps make Galaxy’s Edge’s content feel more substantial that you can return to these levels any time you’d like to farm the same respawning enemies for loot, and there’s a quest journal with enough space for a few materially rewarding albeit monotonous side quests.
It’s only when you get to the Last Call DLC content, which seamlessly expands the original three-hour story into a 10-hour arc, that the characters do eventually become enjoyable to spend time with. Seezelslak becomes the star of the show, with a head full of stories told so intricately you’d think you were living them for yourself. In fact, you actually do get to: you play through three short but much more satisfying chapters wherein you step into the shoes of a Jedi and the assassin droid IG-88 from Empire Strikes Back. These new chapters arrive exactly when they need to, clearing the palette and widening the story stakes between quests as you move toward Galaxy’s Edge’s legitimately grand finale mission.
You move around the world by tilting your left thumbstick and teleporting by pushing your right thumbstick inward and pointing at your destination. This is pretty standard fare for anyone who’s used a Quest 2 or other roomscale-style VR headset, but is still a big step up for anyone whose primary VR experience is with the original PSVR’s directionless Move controllers. It’s disappointing that you can’t move around while holding the crouch button, but of course this is VR so you can still just crouch in real life and move. Also, pressing the O button activates your jetpack. It didn’t feel great at first, and needs a mid-game upgrade before you can move around up there instead of just hovering, but after that smoothly gliding around the field of battle is pretty cool when I wasn’t awkwardly running into invisible boundaries.
Regardless, it’s great fun to face off against roving bands of pirates, mercenaries, battle droids, vicious local fauna, and the First Order itself. Their AI isn’t all that smart, but unlike when I originally played on the Quest 2, the PS VR2 is able to render enemies at a distance without obscuring too much detail, making it a lot more fun to pick bad guys off at range. Standoffs are tense because it only takes a few well-placed shots to kill you or anyone else, but combat is balanced enough to remain sufficiently entertaining in the face of danger. It helps that you can summon up to three droid allies to follow you around and fight on your side, making battles feel winnable even when you’re outnumbered and outgunned on all sides – but repairing them with your multitool can be a pain.
Speaking of tools at your disposal, there’s also a neat scanner activated by a button on your left wrist that lets you catalog points of interest into a codex, and the convenient drag-and-drop inventory system lets you place loot directly into a pouch for easy management. Healing yourself is as simple as positioning a bacta canister in front of your face and pressing the trigger to spray it, and it feels natural to pull out your pouch, reach into your inventory, and throw floating droids or grenades into the fray of battle.
And it all sounds terrific. Especially if you’re using 3D audio, it’s a treat to hear the iconic Star Wars blaster noises ricochet through the environment in all directions. Mixed with a riveting original soundtrack and bursts of headset vibration simulating blaster bolts whizzing past my face and explosions erupting in my vicinity, I found myself fully transported into the Star Wars universe. The only major cracks in the illusion were during the occasional glitch, like when a weapon fell through the geometry, not to mention: most of the objects you interact with aren’t fully physics-simulated so they don’t respond to all your movements.
Hey everyone, hope you are having a great day and are ready for the upcoming weekend. I know I am. I am here to update you on our current initiatives, community updates, new features, and more that are happening now, or coming up in the near future.
Right now, I’m working on more ways for you, the community, to suggest topics for me to address in the future and potentially offer suggestions for content that you would like to see more of on IGN. That said, here are some updates about things happening right now or very soon at IGN.
Fan Fest 2023!!!
Fan Fest 2023 is almost here, and we have a fun weekend of previews, interviews, and more. It will be a great chance to get advanced looks at Street Fighter 6, Diablo IV, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and more. We also have plenty of interviews answering questions submitted by fans for HBO’s The Last of Us, Cocaine Bear, and Redfall, so if you submitted questions to our prompts on Twitter or the IGN Boards, make sure to tune in to see if your questions were answered. It all begins Friday, February 17th, at 10 AM PT. Check out the schedule and our handy how-to-watch articles for details on the full lineup.
As a first for Fan Fest, I’ve worked with our production team and our partners to give away various game codes throughout IGN Fan Fest. Make sure to check out the IGN Rewards page and the rules throughout the course of the event because we will have plenty of new offerings there too. As for the event itself, make sure to tune in and watch IGN Fan Fest on Youtube, Twitch, or IGN.com, and you will have a chance to snag one of 400 game codes just by watching. I’ve done the math, and we will be giving out, on average, one code every minute over the course of the show on Friday and Saturday. Viewers will have a chance to snag codes for games like Street Fighter V, Valheim, Resident Evil Village, and more! Codes will be on a first-come, first-served basis, so keep your eyes peeled for your chance to score a free game, and, again, be sure to check out all the rules for IGN Fan Fest.
Updated Guidelines
I have one final update. It’s been a while since IGN updated its Community Guidelines, and we figured it was a good time to bring them up to date. The updates are focused on clarifying some of the guidelines to help clarify certain sections that may have been unclear in the past, as well as updating categories and language that is seen more commonly today. Be sure to check out the updated guidelines today, and feel free to ask any questions you have about the updates here.
As stated at the start, I want to hear your suggestions for future updates you’d like to see at IGN, so post them in the comment section below, and I will do my best to address them in future updates. Have a great evening, and I’ll hopefully see you during Fan Fest this weekend when I’m giving away oodles and oodles of game codes.
Jada Griffin is IGN’s Community Lead. If she’s not engaging with users here, chances are she’s developing her own games, maxing the Luck stat in her favorite games, or challenging her D&D players with Intense combat or masterful puzzles. You can follow her on Twitter @Jada_Rina.
Kerbal Space Program 2 is crash landing into early access on February 24th, just under a week, and developers Intercept Games are celebrating with a new gameplay trailer. The trailer begins at the Kerbal Space Center, on the planet Kerbin, as the cute little aliens attempt to build a working spaceship and rocket off into the Kerbolar System. Genuine question: does this make the green minions Kerbites, Kerbals, or Kermen?
Octopath Traveler 2 in a nutshell, a JRPG that follows so precisely in the footsteps of its predecessor that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was suddenly 2019 again and that the last few pandemic years were nothing but a terrible existential nightmare. But alas, here we are in 2023 with another Octopath Traveler game that is, bar a couple of very light tweaks and additions, exactly the same game as what came before it, for better and for worse.
