Experience a brand-new tale in Dark Ties.
Sega isn’t slowing down any time soon when it comes to the Yakuza series, and with this in mind, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has today announced it’s bringing Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties to the Switch 2 and multiple other platforms next year.
During this year’s RGG Summit livestream, the studio confirmed this particular entry would be arriving on 12th February 2026, with pre-orders now available.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
EA’s official Skate FAQ is very clear about what 2025’s new early access iteration represents for the series as a whole. “This isn’t a sequel, remake, or a remaster,” states the brief explanation. “It’s the evolution of the Skate franchise.” The first part I wholeheartedly agree with. This is not Skate 4, and it certainly isn’t a remake of the originals by any stretch of the imagination. The second part is not entirely untrue either: It is an evolution, of sorts. That is, it’s certainly changed. A lot. Unfortunately, this means this new version of Skate bears little semblance to the late-2000s originals I love – and I’m currently finding it impossible to warm to its sanitised, homogenised, and monetised reinvention. Yes, Skate has evolved dramatically, but it’s done so to blend into its free-to-play, service game-dominated surroundings – like moths in the sooty cities of the British Industrial Revolution. I don’t think I’ve ever compared a game to an insect before, but perhaps it makes sense when I find it this repellant.
Before I get too deep into why it’s offputting, there are a couple of true strengths that I can identify in Skate’s early access launch – the first of which are the sound effects. When it comes to capturing the nuanced array of skateboarding sounds – the hiss of spinning wheels, the friction of plywood on varied surfaces, and the clink of metal on metal – the team has done a terrific job. Ignoring the music and dialogue (which I’ll discuss later), Skate absolutely nails its sounds. This stuff is the symphony of skateboarding and, when you’re in a real flow, there’s an almost meditative rhythm to it. The pops and pings, the scrapes and squeaks – these sounds are just soothing, and I don’t know how else to explain it.
It must also be established that the feel of Skate, when you’re on a board at least, is still supreme. I adore the wild, arcade wackiness of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater – and I respect the punishing, twin-stick precision required by the likes of skate sims like Session – but Skate’s controls are my jam. Just about everything I crave is wrapped up in its approachable yet deceptively deep system. Tricks on the right stick, turning on the left, grabs on the triggers, and grinds on… how good you are at lining them up. There’s a lot of depth to unlock once you get the hang of it.
Now, the new Skate doesn’t quite look and feel identical to the older games. Turning appears a little stiffer, and probably lacks a bit of the more pronounced and organic lean from the early Skate games. The grind assist is also considerably too sticky by default, and there’s definitely jankiness present in the transition skating; I’m experimenting with the pump settings but haven’t quite cracked a consistent solution to always getting the momentum I want and not getting randomly bogged down. Skitching is absent, and there are other missing tricks. Overall, however, it’s entirely familiar enough to be instantly intuitive to me as a returning player. At a minimum, Skate has done a fine job of reconstructing that buttery, legacy street skating feel from the original games. That’s an important thing to bring back if you’re going to use the classic name.
Unfortunately, that’s all it brought back.
Making Skate an exclusively online experience was an immediate and utter mistake. During my first session on the day of its early access launch I was unceremoniously disconnected during a random challenge and kicked out of the map, back to the main menu. The error message here was comically emblematic of my thoughts on the overall situation. Something went wrong? Yes, something certainly went wrong with Skate. But it went wrong long before I started playing.
I am, of course, aware that server problems and queues are typical of day one of a new online game (although I’m still waiting in queues the week after launch). The community has come to accept this compromise as the opposite side of the free-to-play coin. For me, this is uncharted territory. The last time I waited in an online queue I was buying concert tickets, but at least I got seats to Metallica out of it. Skate is giving me no such joy. It does not benefit from being an online-only live service. It has new priorities, like selling $25 clothing ensembles. To pass the downtime I played a bit of the existing Skate trilogy (all of which are parked on my Xbox courtesy of backwards compatibility and will work just fine offline today, tomorrow, and in 10 years time).
In a deeply unfortunate twist, playing the new Skate is regularly just as annoying as not being able to play it. From the get-go it’s evident every shred of the personality of the originals has been ruthlessly and shamelessly cut away in favour of infantilised garbage. Every part of Skate has been corporatised and Disney-fied, from art style to attitude.
Remember the authentic human characters that accompanied your skater as you progressed through the story modes of the old games, who would blurt in sympathy as you tumbled down the dam for the tenth time, breaking every bone in your body? Well, forget anything like that. Your “filmer” in the new Skate is… an AI app, called Vee, who just may be the single worst video game character I’ve ever encountered. Vee’s dialogue is beyond nauseating, and is delivered in a faux-robotic fashion that makes it doubly awful. It’s essentially a simulation of AI slop – like having a friend that only speaks to you like they’re reading the captions on a Tik-Tok video. The low-fi and realistic filmer approach of the old Skate games is greatly missed. In 2025, this could have been emulated easily by just giving us an in-game friend with a phone. Instead, we have an ill-conceived chatbot who regards my successful tricks as, “Algorithmic!”, refuses to stop “edu-skating” me on the fact “footy” means “video footage,” and mines 35-year-old LL Cool J songs for quips even my mum would wince at. “Your female parent said knock those objectives out?” Good grief.
Sadly the “human” cast is no better. They’re saddled with an inauthentic, overwritten script stuffed with cringeworthy sentences no person would ever say aloud, and lines I’m not even sure the voice actors quite understood before reading. Skate’s fascination with the term “skater eyes” (which is inexplicably capitalised in the captions like some kind of proper noun) is simply baffling. It’s referenced with such heavy regularity that it sounds like the name of an in-game function you can personally toggle on and off to highlight particular parts of the environment like Batman’s Detective Vision (like certain things that are automatically covered in a yellow mask during some challenges) but it isn’t. It’s just a hackneyed slang phrase Skate has invented and overuses far beyond the point of parody.
Who says the word “BEEP” instead of cursing, even mildly? Everything that’s even a fraction edgy or mature has been masked under layers of corporate coddling, like those soft, squishy curves that stop toddlers from splitting their heads on the corner of the kitchen bench. You can, I guess, mute the dialogue – but that doesn’t make it immune from criticism. Besides, the dialogue is also just one part of a cavalcade of complaints I have about the current state of Skate.
Why was it so important, for instance, to concoct an in-universe explanation for the fact that nobody in Skate’s new city of San Vansterdam can suffer any injuries? Making skaters invincible thanks to the medical miracle of “ImpervaTEK” doesn’t make Skate better; it just feels like it’s here because some suit was worried about the optics of children playing a game where people tossing themselves off buildings might have to be depicted as being seriously hurt. As a result, Skate’s traditional post-wipeout x-rays and bone-snapping sound effects are totally gone (as are bloody scrapes, grime, and wear on skaters and their boards).
My sons began playing the original Skate games from about the moment each was old enough to hold a controller. I vividly remember them cackling uncontrollably at how many bones they could break as their characters tumbled and fell, their skeletons squelching and shattering. Skate 2025 seems totally toothless in comparison. It treats its audience like babies.
Skate’s art style doesn’t do it any favours, either. The stylised approach may be crisp and colourful, but it’s also vanilla and boring. The doe-eyed, Sims-style character models do absolutely nothing for me, and this cartoony u-turn is a truly unwelcome departure from the realistic approach the series previously took. I don’t like their plastic beards, or their chunky pants, and I certainly don’t like being surrounded by them at all times – particularly when other players have a habit of visibly stuttering, lagging, and even floating as they move by. It’s also a complete eyesore having everyone constantly clipping into each other, all plonked in front of the same shop counter – or teleporting and gathering atop the same ramp. I don’t know where I start and everyone else begins.
There’s also a real sterility to the city that the simplified visual style can’t shake. Plain walls, impossibly clean surfaces – San Vansterdam just isn’t a place that feels legitimate or lived-in. It feels fake because it looks fake. There’s not enough granular detail or texture. Hell, sometimes there’s no texture at all, like when the roads appear to glitch and turn into a featureless, uniformly black surface. That happens a lot.
San Vansterdam isn’t all that interesting to skate around, either. The map is a largely flat downtown area, broken up into four quadrants that aren’t particularly distinct from each other. You can skate across it in about two minutes. There’s no zany hill descent, or dam drop, or wild spillway – nothing I’m drawn to gravitate towards like I am in Skate 2’s San Vanelona. There was a sense of reward in finding a neat place to skate in the original games, because the maps primarily felt like cities – not skateparks. The DNA of San Vansterdam is that everything is skatepark-adjacent. Top of a building? Skatepark. Inside a church? Skatepark. At this point, designing the city to be an unrestrained skate utopia just feels like too much – like it’s a big, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater level instead of a city you can skate in. It’s weird when the original Skate games were entirely antithetical to that.
Speaking of pro skaters, don’t expect to see any of those old faces in the new Skate. This obviously means no cleverly edited live-action intro montage packed with recognisable skaters in silly situations. Starting with a memorable short film may have become a tradition for the original trilogy, but that idea appears to have been firmly kickflipped to curb. More disappointingly, however, it also means no pro challenges – no real-life skaters to meet and speak to as you progress through what constitutes the campaign at the moment.
Could pros come to the game later in this fashion? As a live service… maybe, I guess. But I’m very pessimistic they’d add the same level of personality they injected into the original Skate games. Those had brief cutscenes with back and forth between the pros and your sarcastic filmer. Is John Rattray going to have a conversation with a disembodied app on a floating video camera? I doubt it.
As it stands right now, the campaign feels weak: part lengthy tutorial, part service game treadmill, where miscellaneous skating tasks are rationed out every 24 hours. Some of these are satisfying enough, and they do reward a certain degree of mastery of Skate’s classic controls. There are stints of Skate where I’m absorbed to some degree, sure, but there’s surprisingly little to it right now – particularly considering how immediately the daily challenges have begun to repeat.
In terms of solo content, there are no competitions, no death races, no games of S.K.A.T.E. No magazine cover shoots, or sponsorship challenges. The campaign missions, or “tours”, here are really just a series of lessons. It’s clumsily paced, too, since the only way to unlock new tours is to complete an extensive amount of goals from the miscellaneous trick challenges that are refreshed on a daily basis. That is, many hours after completing a daily objective that required me to do multiple manuals, I found myself sleepwalking through a separate tutorial mission about how to manual. And this after Skate confirmed with me I’d played Skate 3 before I even set foot on a board.
Skate sure does love its collection missions, though. In these you must skate a certain line while hitting a predetermined amount of floating wheel bearings, or perhaps skate through some basketball-sized bird poo. Either way, it’s mobile game-inspired fluff. I’m not a bored toddler in a restaurant being handed an iPad while his parents peruse the dessert menu, so this is just not my scene.
That only became more evident when I realised the whole progression loop is simply geared around collecting enough in-game currency to open loot boxes. Want to rank up? You need to return to the store to trigger that. Hey, while you’re at the store, why not open some boxes of crap with all your in-game credits? I didn’t bother opening any for the first few days because I wasn’t interested, but I eventually realised the boxes also contain additional reputation points that are important for leveling up your neighbourhood rank and unlocking new fast travel spots – so you basically have to open them. This means sitting through the unskippable “Congratulations!” animation for each individual one – that I assume has been meticulously modelled for maximum poker machine potency – every single time.
Which boxes? These ones, just past all the premium items you need to hand over real money for instead. Wait, why are there bundles of items priced at 1600 Skate-bucks when Skate-bucks are available in increments of 500 and 1050? Oops. Guess you’ll have to buy more than you need. It’s insidious and I hate it. I hate it in other games and I hate it in this one. I am not young and immune to the caveats of free-to-play gaming. It makes it feel like a service and a store first, and a game second.
Hell, maybe that’s true. After all, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
That’s what my female parent used to say.
Following the release DK Island & Emerald Rush.
Following the recent arrival of DK Island & Emerald Rush, Nintendo has now updated Donkey Kong Bananza to Version 2.0.1.
This follows the major 2.0.0 update earlier this month which added this paid DLC to the game and also included multiple other adjustments. This latest update fixes multiple issues tied to the previous update and also makes several other changes to improve the overall gameplay experience.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The next big expansion in the Pokémon Trading Card Game has been steadily gearing up. Phantasmal Flames lands on 14 November 2025, and collectors are already scrambling to secure their favourite sealed products before the inevitable shortages.
With headliners like Mega Charizard X ex taking centre stage, demand is set to run hot across every major retailer. Whether you’re chasing bulk booster packs, prefer the organisation of an Elite Trainer Box, or just want a quick dip with blister packs, here’s the full breakdown of where you can preorder Phantasmal Flames, and at what price, before current stock vanishes.
The Elite Trainer Box is the marquee product for each set, and Phantasmal Flames is no different. Packed with nine booster packs, a 1 full-art foil promo card featuring Charcadet, themed sleeves, dice, and all the accessories needed for play.
For Phantasmal collectors and Pokémon TCG fans in general, it’s the best way to get started.
For players who want the biggest bang for their buck, Booster Boxes are the classic choice.
Positioned between a blister and an ETB, bundles are great for smaller sessions.
These casual-friendly packs usually come with a promo card and coin, perfect for a stocking stuffer or a starter collection.
Individual boosters are intended to be the cheapest entry point, with an MSRP of around $4.49 MSRP in the US, containing 10 random cards each.
Perfect for prerelease events, these contain four booster packs and a ready-to-play 40-card deck.
At other major retailers who normally sell Pokémon TCG sets, like Amazon, Walmart, and Target, Phantasmal Flames is currently not available to preorder.
This can be for any number of reasons, but it is usually due to these online stores simply not receiving stock allocation from the wholesaler, yet.
There’s also the element of the ongoing Pokémon card shortage happening in the industry right now. Because of the continuous concern over scalpers and bots taking advantage, some stores take longer to prepare contingencies than others — like Amazon UK introducing invitational lotteries for Pokémon TCG ETBs.
If you’re determined to get Phantasmal Flames products at fair pricing, timing is everything. Be ready to refresh Best Buy at odd hours, and don’t sleep on bundle or blister preorders. For those who’d rather lock it in, TCGplayer guarantees stock at a premium.
Ben Williams – IGN freelance contributor with over 10 years of experience covering gaming, tech, film, TV, and anime. Follow him on Twitter/X @BenLevelTen.
Despite many others disagreeing with this stance, I am of the opinion that it’s completely fine that we’ll likely never get a “classic” 3D Zelda game again. By that I mean, the whole Breath of the Wild/ Tears of the Kingdom format is definitely the direction Nintendo will continue to go in, they’ve just been too popular. However, I understand the desire for such an experience all the same, and I think Demi and the Fractured Dream might be able to scratch that itch.
Blizzard has just released Diablo 4 Season 10 — the Season of Infernal Chaos — featuring the new Chaos Armor feature along with adjustments to the endgame loop. Additionally, the Infernal Hordes mechanic has been reworked, and players will face a new ladder boss: Bartuc, Lord of Chaos. To help you come to grips with all the changes and take on Bartuc, check out this massive Season 10 Compendium our friends at Maxroll have put together!
Chaos Armor is a special tier of item above Ancestral. These items can contain effects which are not normally found on the item slot.
This opens up more options for buildcraft as you gain access to effects that were otherwise mutually exclusive. Learn more with Maxroll’s Seasonal Guide.
If you want to get theorcrafting, check out Maxroll’s Diablo 4 Planner (updated for Season 10). You can plan out your equipment, skills, paragon, and mercenary. Plus select the new Chaos Armor and Chaos Perk effects.
Season 10 brought a big change to the build meta, with a lot of builds gaining significant amounts of power from the Chaos Unique items. As a result Maxroll has updated all of their Diablo 4 Tier Lists.
On the other hand, if you’re dead set on playing a specific class, check out our Class tier lists to find out how each build performs relative to the others available for that class.
If you’re new to Diablo 4, our Game Help Alliance partners at Maxroll have an extensive section catered to beginners, going over many of the game’s mechanics and systems. In addition to the above, Maxroll has tons of Diablo 4 guides and resources freshly updated for Season 10. Their Build Guides section has over 100 builds covering leveling and endgame across all of Diablo 4’s classes. If you want to be up to date on the most efficient farming and pushing strategies, head over to the Meta Section. The Boss Section includes guides on how to take down Diablo 4’s most challenging foes, along with the rewards you can earn for beating them. Learn more with Maxroll’s Season 10 Guide Compendium.
Written by: IGN staff with help from the Maxroll Diablo 4 Team
Did you manage to get some of my hot deals on games and amiibo yesterday? Don’t worry if you’ve missed it, i’ve got them here so you don’t need to shuffle pages. There’s some gems here, with Gamestop bringing the heat with some (very) cheap legacy amiibo figures to fill the holes in your collection and Woot delivering some absolute bargains on first party Nintendo Switch games, Xbox and PS5 game bargains and more peripherals than Tokyo Game Show on offer. But today’s deals are sharply focused on Pokémon TCG sealed product, and there’s plenty of deals to catch today.
The battle against big box retailers overcharging is still very real in what i’m calling Pokémania 2025, and things won’t be slowing down thanks to the new era of Mega Evolution base set and it’s first expansion, Phantasmal Flames. From sleeved boosters to Elite Trainer Boxes, there’s something here for every budget, and even then i’ve found the best prices. Let’s get into it:
There’s some serious price gaps in today’s price watch for Pokémon TCG, so let’s go over some highlights. Destined Rivals Three Booster Blister Pack is cheaper by nearly $7 on TCGplayer vs Amazon, so that’s a nice cheap pickup. Want to rip more packs? How about the White Flare Booster Bundle coming in at $11.99 cheaper on TCGPlayer? That’s a big difference to put towards more boosters instead of lining Amazons deep pockets. Need some more Prismatic Evolutions in your life? Well the Mini Tins are just over $10 cheaper on TCGPlayer too, and these savings all add up when you’re after ripping as many packs as possible.
Who’s your favorite Batman? I’m not going to start an all-out comments war on that one, but every Batman movie worth watching is here, not to mention Batamn: The Animated series and the animated feature of the fan-favourite “Hush” graphic novel. You can even get a 4K film collection for under $35, so if you’re looking to beef up your Bat Cave, now’s the time.
Majority of mainline Pokémong Switch 1 games? Check. Every Mario game you need for your collection? Yes. How about Kirby? Yep, here’s here too. Not only is Woot smashing it when it comes to adding to your Ninty games library, but they’re also bulking up on peripherals, cases and more games for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. It’s worth looking through, did I mention you can get up to 87% off?
Late to the game building an ammibo collection? Gamestop have your back today with a tonne of legacy ammibo at just $5.99 each, down from $19.99. They’ve even thrown in Charizard, Pikachu and their exclusive Mr. Game and Watch amiibo. It would be rude to not pick up atleast four.
Gamestop are even slashing prices on newer amiibo, including the new Donkey Kong and Pauline amiibo from DKs latest outing on Nintendo Switch 2. There’s also Minecraft, Street Fighter 6, LoZ: Tears of the Kindom and Monster Hunter amiibo on sale. Just over $14 off $30 amiibo? Yes please.
If you’re looking for the least expensive brand new PlayStation 5 console you can get your hands on, AliExpress is going to be your best bet. Right now they’re offering an imported Sony PlayStation 5 Slim Digital Edition gaming console for just $369.73 after $80 off coupon code “AEUS80“. Alternatively, the PlayStation 5 Disc Edition is down to $425.16 after an even bigger $100 off coupon code “USDEAL100“. Shipping is free. These are brand new and retail boxed products that are stocked in a US warehouse and qualify for local delivery. This PlayStation console is imported from another country, however all PS5 consoles are region unlocked and so it will play in the US without any modifications. Keep in mind that imported consoles have an overseas warranty that won’t be honored here in the United States.
We called this remaster of Chrono Trigger a masterpiece and slapped a 10/10 on it back in 2011, and we’re standing by it. Serving as the foundation of “New Game +” modes and sporting the late great Akira Toriyama’s artwork, Chrono Trigger is JRPG nostalgia bottled, and still tastes great 30 years later. It’s a great chance to grab one of the best games ever made, complete with new animé cutscenes, for an absolute steal.
Jsaux have been making cases, screen protectors and the like for longer than I can remember, and it’s quality gear. I’ve been personally using this case for my Nintendo Switch 2 when i’m out and about, and it’s great having that extra bit a tough protection for when I inevitably drop it on the pavement. It’s not going to make you get more banannas in DK, but it’s a good carry case for under $18.
I object to anyone not grabbing this bundle, and i’ll never apologise for that Ace Attorney reference either. There’s some brilliant games here:
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
With Marathon having received an indefinite delay back in June, that just leaves one game to test whether extraction shooters can make it mainstream: Arc Raiders. While this one has been cooking for a while now, it actually has a release date, October 30th. There’s been a few tests along the way, and it turns out the devs have one last one in them!
Fancy a kickabout? After launching in the much warmer June (why is it already so cold, it’s only bloody September), Rematch has finally received its first proper season, elevating it into a true, blue live service game. This comes with, as you may have guessed, a season pass, which comes with a pair of themes for your football stadium, one being iceberg oriented, the other providing a volcanic atmosphere, alongside some new cosmetics too.
Marvel’s Spider-Man set for Magic: The Gathering launches this week, and it could be about to kick off a major new theme for the long-running card game.
We’ve seen the One Ring and Final Fantasy’s crystals, but now the infamous Infinity Stones are coming to Magic: The Gathering across multiple sets, including a cosmic foil variant that’s already sold for $10,000.
With the Soul Stone already in the Spidey set, here’s all we currently know about where the other stones could appear, and how to find them.
If you’ve kept up with Marvel comics or even the MCU, you’ll no doubt know all about the Infinity Stones. All six of them contain untold power, but bringing them all together is Thanos’ mission as he looks to wipe out half of all life in the universe.
That means they’re likely to be powerful in cardboard form, too. The Soul Stone has been revealed so far in various designs, and it’s running a high price already because of its ability to exile a creature in return to bring cards back from your graveyard every turn. So, what can we expect from the others?
The Soul Stone is a black legendary artifact, and the other Infinity Stones will almost definitely come in Red, Blue, Green, and White versions. That leaves one missing, so we eventually expect to see a colorless one as well to complete the six: Space, Mind, Reality, Power, Time, and Soul.
Since we’ve only seen one Infinity Stone so far, it’s hard to see if there’s a pattern, but given it comes in Cosmic Foil, we reckon there’s a solid chance that theme continues.
While the Borderless version is up for $4,000 on TCGPlayer right now, the Cosmic Foil variant has already sold for $10,000, with estimates suggesting there are fewer than the serialized Traveling Chocobos from Final Fantasy (as a reminder, those were limited to just 77).
If you’re looking to go chase these rare cards without wanting to pay the big bucks, then unfortunately you might just be out of luck. Collector’s boosters are the best chance at scoring these rare finds, and they’re sold out completely expect for resellers (who are charging upwards of $1000 for just 12 Packs).
For more on the Spidey set, check out the ten cards everyone is after in the build up to release day, September 26, 2025, including the borderless Spectacular Spider-Man, villains aplenty in Electro, Carnage, and Hob Goblin, and a whole lot more.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
