Category: Video Games

Warner Bros.’ free-to-play platform fighter MultiVersus has re-emerged with a new release date and a tease for new characters and stages.

Developer Player First Games announced a release date of May 28, 2024 across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, with full cross-play and cross-progression support.

Player First Games said it had rebuilt the game from the ground up to improve online play and, with a move to Unreal Engine 5, improved visuals. There’s a brand new PvE mode that adds additional ways of playing with unique rewards.

Characters are lifted from across Warner Bros. Discovery franchises, with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, and Black Adam from DC; Shaggy and Velma from Scooby-Doo; Bugs Bunny, Tasmanian Devil a.k.a. Taz, and Marvin the Martian from Looney Tunes; Arya Stark from Game of Thrones; Tom & Jerry; Finn the Human and Jake the Dog from Adventure Time; Steven Universe and Garnet from Steven Universe; Iron Giant from The Iron Giant, LeBron James from Space Jam: A New Legacy; Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith from Rick and Morty; Gizmo and Stripe from Gremlins; and an “extraordinary” original creature named Reindog.

MultiVersus officially shut down in June last year after launching with a battle pass, microtransactions, and DLC characters. This release was considered an open beta, but some expressed frustration at MultiVersus going dark after spending real money on it.

In our 8/10 review of the open beta, IGN said: “MultiVersus may not be a must-play at social gatherings, but its refreshing team-based battles make it a great platform fighter online.”

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.

PUBG is set to get several new features throughout 2024 that promise to change the game significantly.

The free-to-play battle royale, which remains one of the most-played games across console and PC via Steam six years after launch, is getting destructible environments, a move to Unreal Engine 5, user generated content, and more over the course of this year.

Developer Krafton also signalled new collaborations (these have become a big part of PUBG recently), improvements to matchmaking, and the promise of increased anti-cheat measures.

Helldivers 2 is an early 2024 smash hit, with critical and commercial acclaim following its explosive launch on PlayStation 5 and PC. But there are some aspects of the co-op shooter that can result in a frustrating experience, and one of them has to do with the behavior of your teammates.

As IGN reported last month, some Helldivers 2 players are kicking their teammates before games even get going because they’re not bringing so-called “meta” builds to the party. (Check out IGN’s best loadouts guide to see what we think). This has been a problem with Helldivers 2 ever since it came out, particularly on higher difficulties, so nothing new there. But now the boss of developer Arrowhead has taken notice publicly, and asked the game’s community for ideas on how to solve what he called a tricky problem.

CEO Johan Pilestedt tweeted a response to one user who said they’d been “removed”, aka kicked, from matches due to using a single Stratagem or weapon the host didn’t like. “This is so shitty,” Pilestedt said. “Also very hard to solve — we have some ideas but no conclusion. You know what, let’s try this: Hive Mind — do you have a design suggestion for how to improve this experience?”

This is so shitty. Also very hard to solve – we have some ideas but no conclusion.

You know what, let’s try this: Hive Mind – do you have a design suggestion for how to improve this experience? https://t.co/HgUlV80fP4

— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) March 9, 2024

What followed was a steady stream of suggestions. One user tweeted to suggest the addition of a ‘kick reason’, which might prompt an explanation. In this case, the user believes they were kicked because they picked up samples dropped by their squadmate, who, they suspect, did not know samples are shared at the end of a successful mission completion.

Another suggestion is that Helldivers 2 highlights the player who just kicked you in the ‘recent teammates’ section, so you can block them and, hopefully, prevent squadding up with them in the future.

Streamer Gothalion suggested the addition of a matchmaking “preferred style”, which would indicate whether you’re after a hardcore or casual game session. Essentially, you would be able to filter matchmaking so you end up playing with like-minded teammates.

There are more punishing ideas, too, including tracking how many times a player has kicked a teammate within a certain timeframe, then flagging them and potentially taking action if they exceed the limit. There are some creative suggestions. One user suggested that a kick creates a “fork” of the instance that was being played, and migrates the kicked player to that fork, complete with the gear and loadout they were using. Another user suggested a “conditional kick”, so that Helldivers 2 would only let a player be kicked under certain circumstances, such as a set number of teamkills.

One player said they’d been kicked several times at the end of a mission, even on the score screen after the Pelican took off. “It’s incredibly frustrating that I spend 15-30mins for absolutely nothing,” they said. “So far it seems that they do this because they can because I was not underperforming.” Pilestedt responded to say not allowing a kick “at that point and/or giving rewards anyways would solve that.”

What seems clear is that the host’s ability to kick any teammate is here to stay. “You need to own your experience as host,” Pilestedt replied to one user who stressed that the kick option is important for the host when it comes to booting out players who are griefing. Explaining further, Pilestedt said: “The host is the owner of the game. It’s their operation and they decide. Kinda like coming over to someone’s house.”

After a flood of suggestions, Pilestedt tweeted to thank the community for their help, and said he’d ask the development team to draw inspiration from the thread. “This is a pretty cool thing, the entire community coming together to discuss a hard to solve problem,” Pilestedt said. “Even though vote kick is the easiest, it has some downsides and there is always a better solution.”

Amid the discussion about kicking in Helldivers 2, mechs went live after the game’s first balance patch, which sparked something of a backlash Arrowhead subsequently responded to. Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

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.

Like returning to a beloved amusement park as an adult, Contra: Operation Galuga instantly reconnected me with the 2D run-and-gunners from the quarter-slinging arcade days of my youth. And just like revisiting a childhood fancy, I quickly remembered why I had so much fun with this series, while also feeling a bit underwhelmed by how little things have evolved in all that time. This reimagining of the original Contra offers a perfectly adequate modernization of a bonafide classic that makes for an enjoyable jaunt alongside your friends, but it’s also perhaps overly faithful to its predecessors, allowing for only the slightest tweaks. I don’t regret the handful of hours it took me and my buds to get through all of Operation Galuga, but it’s one of those games that’s likely to fade from my memory just as quickly.

This sidescroller plays it safe with the reliable, if not particularly exciting, formula of fighting through stages filled with enemies before taking on a boss. Despite being framed as a sequel to the original Contra, Operation Galuga is a lot closer to a remake. It features the same macho dudebro protagonists, Bill Rizer and Lance Bean, on the same island going through many of the same stages in the same order. You and a friend will blast your way through familiar levels, like the waterfall stage with a giant alien at the end, the icy train ride stage, and even that part where you end up inside a massive alien’s body to do battle against the big guy’s gross parasites – just like in the original Contra from 1987. That said, Operation Galuga sets itself apart with some substantial additions, including fully voiced characters (complete with cutscenes), new playable characters with their own abilities and playstyles, and most notably, new 2D stages to replace the less interesting pseudo-3D shooting gallery levels from the original. All of these things do help to refresh an experience that plays things extremely close to its roots in almost every other sense.

Operation Galuga doesn’t always succeed with the new stuff it tries, however, and nowhere is that more true than in its story. I certainly appreciate the extra context for why our heroes are doing the things they do, but with stilted writing, one-dimensional characters, and lengthy dialogue sequences in which meaningful developments arrive sluggishly, this added story mostly detracts from an otherwise fast-paced sprint through hellish battlefields. For example, I probably didn’t need to hear extensive monologues about the Lemris, the story’s doomsday macguffin, to grok that we need to kill the bad guy who wants to use it to wipe out humanity. And I definitely didn’t need to stop in the middle of a level to listen to said baddie tell me that I’ve been tearing through his “unstoppable” forces – I know that already, mister evil alien, sir. Could you maybe deliver this lame smack talk while I resume shooting your friends?

Both the classic levels and the completely new stages at least make for some solid old school action. I always really liked the creepy journey through the inside of a living organism from Contra, so experiencing that in all its gross glory with upgraded graphics and mechanics was a lot of fun, and the completely new level that put my team on hovering motorbikes, then sent gangs of similarly octane-powered goons after us, mixed things up just enough to keep us on our toes. But whether it’s a reimagined legacy level or something wholly fresh, you’re still basically always doing the same stuff these games have been doing for many years: dodging enemies while filling the screen with colorful projectiles of our own as you run, jump, and dash your way to the end. There’s certainly nothing wrong with sticking to the basics, but it’s also one of those rides where you can more-or-less tell exactly how things are going to go just by looking at the title screen, and that doesn’t make for an especially exciting time. I enjoy retro, arcadey run-and-guns as much as the next boomer, but it would have been nice to find more surprises or evolutionary changes here, because it’s not like this genre couldn’t benefit from them.

Operation Galuga keeps the vast majority of the Contra gameplay recipe intact, which means longtime fans are unlikely to be blown away by anything besides the bullets enemies send your way. You’ll use an almost identical arsenal from previous games, from the Laser to the Homing Gun, fight the customary aliens and human commandos, and take on giant bosses who really don’t like to be shot in the eyeball. There are a couple minor tweaks here and there that just barely break the mold though, like how the new characters can do things like hover for a short period, shoot a grapple hook and zip over to distant surfaces, or slide under incoming fire and into enemies for damage, all of which provide a minor hiccup of fresh air.

Many design elements from developer WayForward’s previous Contra game, Contra 4, have been incorporated here as well. This includes the two-weapon system that allows you to keep a backup firearm stowed away so you can switch things up depending on what you’re facing – for instance, I liked to use a Machine Gun for straight DPS, but kept a Spread Gun or Flame Thrower handy for crowd controlling waves of chump minions. As an added twist, you can now upgrade your guns by picking up a second copy of something you’re already carrying, which buffs that weapon until you get hit, at which point you’re demoted back to the basic version. And if you’re feeling frisky, you also have the ability to overload weapons, sacrificing them in exchange for a temporary benefit, like becoming invincible for a while or emitting a shockwave of bullets in every direction. It’s usually not worth losing a cherished weapon for such a short-term effect if you can avoid it, but it’s definitely a nice option to keep in your back pocket if you find yourself in a pickle – especially since, by default, dying causes you to lose your held weapons anyway.

The Arcade and Challenge modes from Contra 4 also make a return, the former which enables four-player co-op and dares you to get as far as you can with a set number of lives, while the latter tests you with special limitations, like trying to get through a level without firing a weapon. There’s definitely some novelty in the challenge and chaos of marathoning each stage with a larger group, though that can get thin fairly quickly since you’re running through the same eight levels as the regular campaign. Similarly, there’s some minor fun to be had in tackling the trials that await in Challenge Mode, but unless you’ve a serious appetite for replaying each stage with some cheeky conditions, that too runs dry pretty fast.

Happy MAR10 Day! Sunday is here, which means it’s time to round up the best deals available this weekend across games, technology, and more! To celebrate the day, Nintendo has all kinds of exciting deals ongoing. The best deals for Saturday, March 10, include Nintendo Switch, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and more.

Get a $25 Gift Card with Any Nintendo Switch

To celebrate MAR10 Day, Best Buy is offering a free $25 Best Buy gift card with the purchase of any Nintendo Switch model. This includes Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and the Nintendo Switch OLED Model. If you’ve yet to pick up a Nintendo Switch, this is a perfect time to do so, as you can spend the $25 gift card on a new game to go alongside it!

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for $39.99

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best-selling Nintendo Switch title to date. There’s never been a better time to pick up the game, especially since the DLC recently wrapped up. A total of 96 tracks are available to race through with this title, which will keep you busy for years to come. New racers, including Diddy Kong, Pauline, and Birdo, are even available with the Booster Course Pass!

Samsung EVO Select 512GB Micro SD Card for $24.99

If you’re in need of more storage, this is one of the best SD cards you can buy for your Nintendo Switch. The Samsung EVO Select Micro SD card is an excellent choice for any Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck owner. Both of these systems will eventually need more storage, especially the Nintendo Switch, since it contains so little. At $24.99, this is an excellent deal on an SD card you cannot go wrong with.

Save $20 Off Luigi’s Mansion 3

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is still one of the best Nintendo Switch titles available. Luigi finds himself, Mario, Peach, and Toad on vacation at the Last Resort hotel. However, upon arriving, things aren’t as they seem. You’re quickly thrust into a wild adventure featuring new abilities, companions, and ghosts. With Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD set to release this June, today is a great opportunity to check out the latest Luigi’s Mansion title in preparation.

Super Mario Maker 2 for $39.99

Super Mario Maker 2 is a great choice if you’re looking for a game that will let your creativity run wild. You can choose between different eras of Mario games and create as many courses as you’d like. With the ability to play others’ courses online, the amount of content Super Mario Maker 2 has to offer is endless! This MAR10 Day, you can save $20 off this exciting title.

Save On Samsung 990 EVO SSDs

Amazon has solid discounts for both the 1TB and 2TB Samsung 990 EVO SSD models. This SSD is compatible with PlayStation 5, so it’s perfect if you’re looking for a new PS5 accessory to pick up. Additionally, it’s great for any gaming PC or other device that supports a full NVME M.2 SSD.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown for $29.99

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a release that went under many people’s radars earlier this year. At $29.99, this 2D platformer is absolutely worth your time and money. We gave the game an 8/10 in our review, stating, “Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown captures not only what made games such as The Sands of Time so good, but it irons out a lot of the little issues that plagued the 3D games.”

PS5 Slim Spider-Man 2 Bundle for $399.99

Amazon has a fantastic deal ongoing for the PlayStation 5 Slim Digital Edition. The console itself is $50 off, and you get Spider-Man 2 for free. In total, that’s $120 worth of savings. This is perfect if you’ve yet to pick up a PS5, as we most likely won’t see a better deal than this for a while.

Save $20 Off Mario Tennis Aces

Mario Tennis Aces marked the first story mode in a Mario Sports title in quite some time. Developer Camelot looked to create an immersive new take on the Mario Tennis formula. Aces has dozens of characters to choose from, each with their own unique abilities and skillsets. The gameplay formula has been revamped with exciting new mechanics such as Zone Shot and Zone Speed, which redefine what a match of Tennis can look like.

Save 43% Off God of War Ragnarok

God of War Ragnarok is still one of the best PS5 games you can pick up. This action game acts as the sequel to 2018’s God of War, following Kratos and Atreus as Fimbulwinter looms. If you’ve yet to play this game, this is a great time to pick up Ragnarok at a discount and see why so many players love this series.

Pick Up the Dead Space Remake for $29.99

Dead Space launched last January, and this is a great time to pick up the game if you haven’t already. This remake features an impressive use of technology and a completely modernized combat system. Special attention has been put on the audio, with 3D Audio technology utilized for an immersive experience. You can expect loads of thrills and horror as you look to escape the stranded ship. The USG Ishimura has never looked better or been scarier.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Up To 38% Off

Amazon has both the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 copies of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk on sale right now. This spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio offers a ton of fun, with all kinds of activities to complete. You play as Red and join the Bomb Rush Crew, where you set off around the city to discover graffiti spots and get REP. All the flashy tricks you know and love are here, so this is a great title to sit back and unwind with.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart for $39.99

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a fantastic title that shows off many of the PlayStation 5 hardware features. From the lightning fast load times to the impressive use of the DualSense controller, Rift Apart takes full advantage of the hardware. Additionally, it’s a blast to play with an exciting story and satisyfing gameplay. Add this to your collection today with a nice $30 discount.