Category: Video Games

At last, Nintendo is bringing two of the Game Boy Advance’s best RPGs to Nintendo Switch Online. Stand up, Golden Sun fans, because we’re finally getting Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age on the service next week, on January 17.

We knew Golden Sun would make its way to the service eventually – it was teased last year, when Nintendo first unveiled its plans for GBA games coming to Switch Online. But with Golden Sun and its sequel effectively being two critical halves of a full story, it makes a lot more sense to drop them both at the same time.

Two epic adventures dawn…

Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age are coming to #NintendoSwitch for #NintendoSwitchOnline + Expansion Pack members on 1/17! pic.twitter.com/d3Y5Lx5RX0

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) January 12, 2024

For those unfamiliar, Golden Sun was a 2001 RPG from developer Camelot, better known now for its work on the Mario Golf and Mario Tennis franchises. It follows a group of four heroes wielding elemental magic on a quest to stop a team of villains from lighting four elemental lighthouses and plunging the world of Weyard into chaos. However, Golden Sun only tells half of the story – its sequel, The Lost Age, was released two years later and follows some of the supposed “villains” from the first game as they work to finish the job they started in Golden Sun, while the first game’s heroes are in hot pursuit.

Both games are still beloved for their interesting and nuanced class systems revolving around elemental spirits called Djinn, the hybrid ways the game’s magic, or Psynergy, could be used both in and out of battle, and their incredible soundtracks by renowned composer Motoi Sakuraba. We reviewed both Golden Sun and The Lost Age very highly back in the early 2000s when they came out. Camelot did eventually release a third Golden Sun game, Dark Dawn, for DS in 2010, but it wasn’t as well-received as its predecessors, and we noted that it felt “somewhat dated.”

The debut of both Golden Sun and The Lost Age on Nintendo Switch Online is great news for fans of the series who were struggling to find ways to play these games in 2023 without digging up ancient handheld gaming devices. Now, if only we can convince Camelot to tackle a fourth Golden Sun game…

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

They say it’s better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Well, “they,” in this case, happens to be a guy who literally calls himself the Prince of Lies, so we may want to take that with a grain of salt. But from the time I’ve spent with Solium Infernum so far, I think he may be right. As a refreshed and reimagined update to a 2009 4X cult classic, it’s sort of like Civilization set in the bowels of Hades – but with a greater emphasis on politics and, of course, betrayal.

Where Civ puts us in the boots of figures like Teddy Roosevelt or Montezuma, Solium Infernum features a devilishly-rendered cast of archfiends, from the straightforwardly malevolent warlord Astaroth to a nightmarish Beelzebub monstrosity. Each of the models shows off a certain wicked imagination, which allows their personalities to really come across when you’re cutting deals or scheming against them. The dialogue lines are even recorded in Enochian, a language created by occultists under the pretense of being the spoken language of angels, which is a neat touch.

Solium Infernum’s version of Hell isn’t the fire and brimstone you may be imagining, though. Heavily inspired by Jonathan Milton’s Paradise Lost, it’s a cold and ashen place run by an intractable bureaucracy that doesn’t so much reflect childhood nightmares, like being attacked by shadow monsters, but more adult ones, like having to deal with the DMV.

Not that it’s lacking at all in dark fantasy imagery, of course. The Places of Power you need to capture to secure victory each represent some kind of creative torment for sinners or equally disturbing point-of-interest. These amazing unit cards for each of the dozens of recruitable legions of Hell provide scintillating tidbits of lore, along with evocative, animated 2D art. The names are just fantastic, too. Sometimes the only solution to a problem is 10,000 Screaming Bastards.

DOWN, DOWN, DOWN…

A game of Solium Infernum starts you off with your citadel and a respawning, personal legion that’s a bit different for each Archfiend. Our boy Lucifer stepped out for some cigarettes and never came back, so the throne of Hell is empty and up to six human or AI players are looking to be the next to sit on it. This starts by maneuvering units around to capture hexes – called Cantons – as the first to touch each one adds it to their territory. More importantly, capturing Places of Power grants passive benefits and increases your Prestige score, which is tallied up at the end to see who gets to become Pandaemonium’s Next Top Devil.

Securing cantons early can be crucial because, somewhat unintuitively, this contest isn’t just a bloodsoaked free-for-all. Hell has a lot of rules you have to follow, and part of that means you can’t cross your rivals’ cantons or attack their units and Places of Power without a formal beef being declared. To do so, you have to either demand some tribute from another archfiend or send them an insult, wagering some of your own Prestige in the process. They can back down and give you what you want, or they can rise to the challenge. Feuds can be settled with a limited period of open warfare, in which the initiator must complete an objective like killing a certain number of legions or capturing a Place of Power. Or, both sides can nominate a Praetor – powerful recruitable hero characters – to duel instead.

Combat takes place in three phases: Ranged, Melee, and Infernal, with each unit having a different strength in each. The legion with the highest strength in each phase deals an amount of damage equal to the difference. Astaroth, for instance, excels in melee, but isn’t much good with magic. So I found it’s better to end the battle before the spells even start flying by stacking up melee damage, or else I’d be in for a world of hurt.

SCHEMES UPON SCHEMES

Solium Infernum isn’t a game won by bloodshed alone, though. There are also mechanics for spying on your enemies, changing the rules temporarily with rituals and event cards, framing other archfiends for your misdeeds, and even snatching victory at the last second by offering to become a vassal after choosing a “Power Behind the Throne” objective. Your Archfiend levels up in a variety of powers from Wrath, which benefits straightforward conquest, to Charisma, which allows you to manipulate the politics of Hell to favor you and spurn your enemies. Increasing your infernal Rank costs an increasing amount of Prestige, which runs the risk of falling behind, but is also the main permanent way of improving your economy, since cantons don’t actually pay you taxes or produce food. I mean, look. I don’t think anything is growing down there.

The devs assert that the best way to play is an asynchronous multiplayer mode with a turn timer that can be set from one day up to a full week, potentially creating games that last months. It even has Steam notifications for when your turn is up. The number of things you can do on a turn feel overwhelming at first, but as you have a limited number of orders, you’re really forced to think carefully about how to get the most out of your legions and pre-empt what your rivals are trying to do. An auction mechanic for buying new legions, artifacts, and praetors, along with Hell’s deliberately fiddly currency system that requires combining different tokens and never getting any change if you overpay, speak to the layers upon layers of bluffs and careful counterplay that are possible.

If you want to try your hand at sitting upon the Big Spooky Chair of Satan yourself, you’ll be able to fall from Heaven on February 14th.

Quick Play is Overwatch 2‘s most standard, basic mode — where players log in if they just want to hop into a few matches without worrying about their rank or an unwelcome ruleset. But for one weekend, Blizzard’s team-based shooter is shaking Quick Play up.

For a few days, Quick Play will be “hacked” by Sombra, who is turning it into something called Quick Play: Hacked – Quicker Play. As the name suggests, everything will be faster. By changing things like capture times, Blizzard is hoping that players will experience more team fights and potentially new strategies. Here are the patch notes detailing the changes:

• Respawning times are now 75% of their original time.
• Payloads in Escort and Hybrid maps will move 60% faster.
• Taking control of the Objective Point in Hybrid is 40% faster than normal.
• Taking control of the objective point in Control is 40% faster than normal, and scoring the capture progress percentage is 80% faster.
• Taking control of the objective point in Flashpoint is 20% faster than normal, and scoring the capture progress percentage is 40% faster.
• When you play an Escort, Hybrid, or Push map, the initial match time has been reduced to 70% of the original time, and any time extensions are also reduced to 70% of the total time added.

Quicker Play will be active until January 14, at which point the game will return to normal. But according to Blizzard, this marks the start of a larger shift for Overwatch 2’s core mode.