Category: Video Games

Earlier on Tuesday, Bungie announced a collaboration with EA for a Destiny 2 Mass Effect crossover event on February 13. The event will let players “join the crew of the Normandy” and deck out their guardians in Mass Effect armor and in-game items.

“The Normandy Crew Bundle will be available at the Eververse store in-game and will include a Commander Shepard-inspired N7 armor set for Titans, a Garrus-inspired Vakarian set for Hunters, and a Liara-inspired Shadow Broker set for Warlocks,” Bungie wrote in a press release. “In celebration of the partnership, all players will be able to claim the Alliance Requisitions Bundle, including the Enhanced Defense Ghost Shell, Alliance Scout Frigate ship, and Alliance Drop Ship Sparrow, which will be available at no cost. Players can also get the Omni Strike finisher and Flux Dance emote for Silver.”

The official Mass Effect Twitter account responded in kind to today’s gaming collaboration event with a GIF of Commander Shepard doing his terrible-yet-iconic dance.

pic.twitter.com/EYTtLNNDsT

— Mass Effect (@masseffect) January 30, 2024

Mass Effect isn’t the only thing coming to the MMO-inspired sci-fi shooter. New weekly quests called Raven’s Wishes will run from January 30 through March 12. Completing these pursuit quests will reward players with tokens they can use to Wish for Strength, Protection, or Beauty to respectively earn Last Wish raid Deepsight weapons, Exotic gear from the Lightfall year, or Ascendant crafting materials. Players will also have the opportunity to purchase a Moments of Triumph t-shirt from the Bungie Store by completing past raids and dungeons in this year’s Lighfall celebration event which runs from January 30 to June 3.

Thieves who stole 35,000 Pokémon cards from a San Jose collectibles store were caught on camera and mocked by staff as a result.

As reported by ABC7 News, Tofu’s Trading was broken into at 2am on January 24, 2024, by a group who were caught on camera crawling across the floor before taking the cash register and tens of thousands of cards.

While the store staff were obviously upset by the theft, they also looked to find the fun in it by sharing an edited video of the break-in that pokes fun at the culprits. “We do have a sense of humor, so it was really silly to see them crawling,” said stream and operations manager Ann Ma. “We also like to take a bad time and find a little humor in it. There’s not much we can do right now, so there’s no point in moping over it so might as well make people laugh.”

STOLEN POKEMON: A collectable trading card store in San Jose is sharing surveillance video of their break-in from Wednesday. More than 35,000 Pokémon cards were taken. @tofustrading edited the video to take this bad time & find a little humor in it. 1/2@abc7newsbayarea pic.twitter.com/OUZyTFuXXp

— LaurenABC7 (@LaurenABC7) January 26, 2024

Tofu’s Trading staff also found the thieves’ lack of Pokémon card knowledge laughable, resulting in them taking thousands of cards worth next to nothing. Though they did take plenty of cards worth a few hundred dollars each, they also missed out a new set full of expensive pieces releasing just a couple of days later.

“A lot of stuff releasing this week and we thought it was funny, we were like, ‘Oh, these people don’t realise that it releases on Friday, not like on Wednesday at 2 a.m.,’ ” store manager Amy Simpson said. “I don’t think they were in for hobby necessarily because they didn’t know what to take.”

Pokémon cards are as popular as ever, evidenced, among other things, by the number of people trying to steal them.

Tokyo police reported an unprecedented number of trading card thefts in the latter half of 2022, while an independent gaming store in Minnesota reportedly had around $250,000 worth of Pokémon merchandise stolen in February 2022. One month later, again in Tokyo, a man was arrested for allegedly launching a literal heist in order to steal the treasured cards.

Also in March, a Georgia man didn’t steal Pokémon cards directly but instead misused money from the government to buy one, using a COVID-19 relief payment to buy a rare, shiny Charizard.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

The long-rumored Switch 2, as we’ll call it for now, is widely expected to launch in late 2024 – but Nintendo fans waiting for an upgrade to their existing console may find the Switch 2 something of a poisoned chalice.

On January 26, Bloomberg reported that the Switch 2 would seemingly ship with an 8-inch LCD screen, citing Omdia analyst and small display expert Hiroshi Hayase. That prediction matches up with previous reports, but this is our best sign yet that the Switch successor will indeed ditch the 2021 model’s OLED panel to help bring down production costs.

That 8-inch LCD panel still marks a noticeable size upgrade over previous iterations of the console – the 5.5-inch Switch Lite, the 6.2-inch original Switch, and the 7-inch Switch OLED. It’s also an upgrade over the biggest Switch competitors out there, like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally, which both feature a 7-inch display. And it’s likely the larger screen will host a higher resolution than any Switch consoles to date. 1080p in handheld, here we come!

But the news will no doubt dampen the hopes of gamers who bought the Switch OLED back in 2021, and are now faced with an impossible choice – jump to a new console to play next-gen Nintendo games, or stick with old hardware for the sake of the visuals.

I was thrilled to trade in my original Switch for an OLED upgrade, and could immediately appreciate my favorite games like never before – the heightened contrast, improved brightness, and rich hues made every visual asset truly pop in ways that weren’t possible on the LCD screen version. I was midway through Dead Cells, my top choice of a punishing roguelite at the time, and the difference was very, very noticeable: whether the colorful pulses of attacks and enemies, or minute visual details like falling leaves or cracked brickwork all grabbing my attention in whole new ways. After all that, the idea of going back to LCD tech for my Switch game library is… not particularly tempting.

The Overwhelming Pros of OLED

OLED is an exceptional panel technology, thanks to its self-emissive pixels, which emit their own light instead of having a backlight wash through the pixel layer. These pixels can even be turned off individually, allowing for sharper contrast between light and dark sections of the screen, and only funneling light to the areas, objects or colors that need it.

Blacks on LCD screens can also have a slightly grayer tint, due to the backlight, and the difference is even more noticeable when you’re playing in a dark room – OLED is certainly a better shout if you’re partial to snuggling up in bed with a handheld console (not a euphemism).

Games particularly benefit from OLED displays because they’re a high contrast medium – often using pure blacks in character design or HUD elements; as well as needing colors and objects to pop against the background to help you distinguish between them. It also helps you better appreciate the design and animation work that goes into the game.

The Switch 2 returning to LCD makes business sense, of course – ditching the premium OLED display to reduce costs amid a host of other, next-gen technical improvements. The main complaint against the Switch OLED is that it enhances visual quality without boosting internal performance, and it looks like the Switch 2 will do the reverse.

One caveat is that while the OLED model was 2023’s most popular Nintendo console, at 4.69 million units sold – on top of 9.22 million units sold the year before – that number is still a fraction of the 132 million Switch consoles sold since 2017. Which means almost every Switch gamer out there has the original LCD console, and for them the move to an LCD Switch 2 shouldn’t register as anything but an improvement.

So, what should a discerning Nintendo gamer – the kind who opts for a mid-cycle OLED upgrade – do? A larger screen is nothing to sniff at, of course, and we should be getting improved resolution in handheld mode, alongside other unknown improvements to the console. 4K in docked mode? An AR camera? Some foldable cardboard? You can never tell with Nintendo.

A bigger, higher resolution screen will be tempting, especially with the other hardware improvements that are also likely to come with the Switch 2 – we heard all sorts of things about resolution and processor upgrades before the Switch OLED, and it’s likely that those rumors were just a little early, waiting in Nintendo’s back pocket until a true successor was unveiled.

But one of the most important things to remember with panel technologies is that more pixels aren’t necessarily better. The quality of the pixels matters too. High-resolution screens can look terrible if the display isn’t competent when it comes to contrast and color, and there’s much more to an image than just the pixel count or screen size.

Prepare for the Mid-Cycle Refresh

This won’t be the final Switch, of course. Just like we saw the 2017 Switch joined by the handheld-only Switch Lite and handheld-first Switch OLED, the Switch 2 will see its own iterations. It’s very possible we’ll get an OLED model down the line – one that marries the premium panel technology with the Switch 2’s technical upgrade.

IGN’s own senior features editor Matt Kim took to X to ponder the potential of a dual-console launch, similar to an iPhone launch. One base model with an LCD display, the other with OLED and increased storage for a raised retail price. Given Nintendo’s hardware history, though, the company will likely want to save an OLED model for when Switch 2 sales start to slow. If Nintendo was content to release an ‘upgraded’ Switch four years after its initial launch, with the same internal specs and processor, there’s no reason it would rush into releasing all its Switch 2 goodies in 2024.

I wonder if it might not be worth it to go an iPhone-style route and offer a Switch 2 and Switch 2 Pro at launch, with the latter having an OLED screen and some better storage? https://t.co/XhV9jLwPpL

— Matt Kim (@LawofTD) January 26, 2024

The main issue here is next-gen games. While all signs point to a Switch 2 featuring backwards compatibility that will allow you to port over your existing game library and enjoy them on the new hardware. But a powered-up Switch will also enable new gameplay experiences and new technical standards. And that means there’ll be new Switch games — very likely first-party Switch games in the Mario, Zelda, and Metroid franchises (Metroid Prime 4, anyone?) that can only run on the Switch 2.

Nintendo has good form for cross-generation releases, helping to bridge the game library between consoles. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild co-launched on Wii U while also becoming the definitive Switch game in the console’s first year. So Switch (2017) and Switch OLED owners shouldn’t be left out in the cold right away, at least as far as software goes.

But at some point, whether it’s 2024 or 2025, we’ll start seeing games that only the Switch 2 is powerful enough to run – and I’m already mourning the OLED console I’ll have to trade in to afford it.

Henry St. Leger is a freelance writer for IGN.

2004 was a great year for gaming on the go. The cargo shorts I wore were yet to become the much-maligned fashion no-no that they are today, and the Game Boy Advance SP was small enough to slip into one of my many baggy pants pockets while still leaving plenty of short-legged storage spare to hold my wallet, keys, and chunky flip-phone. As a result a significant amount of my gaming in those days was done on Nintendo handhelds, and one cartridge that traveled with me more than most was Mario vs. Donkey Kong.

Fast forward to 2024 and, while I can’t quite squeeze a Nintendo Switch into one of the front pockets of my pants without walking with a noticeable limp, I can play a modern reimagining of Nintendo’s addictive puzzle-platformer complete with razor-sharp visuals, a bouncy orchestral score, and a number of welcome new quality of life improvements. I’ve only had my hands on the first four worlds of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake so far, but it’s already doing a great job of transporting me back to a time when The Da Vinci Code was on top of the best-seller’s list and everyone still spoke using quotes from Napoleon Dynamite.

If you missed it the first time around, the plot of Mario vs. Donkey Kong sees the tie-wearing gorilla bust into Mario’s toy factory, snatch every last Mini-Mario toy off the assembly line, and then ape-escape from under the noses of the factory worker Toads – leaving Mario in hot pursuit. The brand new and beautifully animated cutscenes in this modern Mario vs. Donkey Kong make the mostly static screens from the original seem like storyboard sequences by comparison, and are only a few Seth Rogen chuckles away from seeming like deleted scenes from The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

In order to see the safe return of his stolen moustachioed mini-mes, Mario must complete eight worlds’ worth of puzzle-heavy platforming levels, which has been increased from the six worlds featured in the original. In each level there are coloured switches to control platforms and other mechanisms used to reach a key and transport it to each level’s locked exit. Each world culminates in a special level that has Mario lead his little party of plumbers to safety like a group of lookalike lemmings, before a boss fight with Donkey Kong who seems as jealous of Mario’s toys as the Joker is of Batman.

While there are no Super Stars or Fire Flowers to assist him, Mario is occasionally able to get his hands on the noggin-knocking hammer from the original Donkey Kong arcade game, and he can also pick up and throw wind-up Shy Guys and other enemies at each other like in Super Mario Bros. 2. In addition, he can perform special handstand flips to reach higher platforms, and even walk on his hands in order to use his feet to protect himself from falling projectiles.

The general level layouts in Mario vs. Donkey Kong’s first few worlds seem fairly similar to those of the original, but I appreciate the new bonus levels that can be harvested for extra lives. The simple ‘pick a box’ bonus mini-games of the original are gone. Instead you must now chase a flying key around a special level in each world that puts your platforming prowess to the test in order to snare the elusive key before the time runs out. It’s a lot more fun than simply trying to stop the cycle of a Wheel of Fortune-style arrow.

This modern version of Mario vs. Donkey Kong also features an additional difficulty mode and, while I spent the bulk of my hands-on time on the Classic setting which more or less matches the challenge of the original, I did briefly switch over to the new Casual setting to see how it compares. From what I could tell, this more relaxed mode does away with the level timer so you don’t have the pressure of puzzling against the clock, and it also gives you five invincibility bubbles per life to shield you from enemies and environmental hazards – making it perhaps better suited to younger players who might find the instant deaths of the Classic setting to be a bit unfair.

In either difficulty mode, this remake simplifies the original’s old-fashioned high score system; instead of a points tally you’re awarded a gold star on each level by grabbing the three optional presents and reaching the Mini-Mario capsule before the time runs out. However, there is apparently a new Time Attack mode that can be unlocked, so if you’re a speedrunner or you want to set some best times to challenge your friends with then there could be a substantial amount of extra fun to be found here. There’s also co-op support for two players through the entire campaign, which I’m looking forward to experiencing with whichever one of my kids I can convince to be Toad.

All that said, the brand new Merry Mini-Land, which is the fourth world in this remake, seems substantially more fun than the first three worlds from the original which precede it, packed with clever uses of environment-destroying Bob-ombs, petal-powered fans and portal blocks that presented some stimulating new challenges. It could be purely because those first few worlds feel too familiar to me as a fan of the original, but it does make me wonder if Nintendo would have been better off making a full ground-up sequel rather than this enhanced remake. I’ll know one way or the other when Mario vs. Donkey Kong is released on February 16. I might even slip on a pair of cargo shorts to celebrate.

Tristan Ogilvie is a Senior Video Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. He’s always been more functional than fashionable.