Many of us have just wrapped up our second weekend with Mario Kart World, and by this point you’ve probably seen most of the Grand Prix mode and had your rear end handed to you various times in Knockout Tour (I swear, there’s no middle ground with that one – I either do really well or go out in the first two laps!), and are starting to explore Free Roam mode a little more.
‘Open-world Mario Kart’ sounded like a tasty drive-thru feast and while all of us here at Nintendo Life are love with the world itself and the way the tracks are seamlessly integrated across the regions, we’re up and down like a suspension bridge on whether the open-world experience is as fun as it could be.
Fast, punchy action RPG set in retro-futuristic world.
Fluid combat mechanics with two distinct modes of play.
A scrappy and inquisitive protagonist heavily influenced by 1990s anime.
Robots at Midnight isn’t set in your typical post-apocalyptic, sci-fi future. The luxury planet of Yob, now in ruins, is a hostile wasteland teeming with dangers. Among the crumbling infrastructure of cottage homes and state-of-the-art railway systems, we find our protagonist, Zoe, stranded on a planet built by machines, who must survive as the only human against a tide of sentient robots. Zoe’s journey is more than just a series of encounters; there are hidden paths and secrets to uncover on this forgotten world.
Against the colorful – but broken – setting, a moving personal journey exists for our game’s hero as the story progresses. Will she make it home before midnight?
The developers at Finish Line Games aimed to create a vibrant action game with combat inspired by From Software games. The vision is to provide an accessible experience for a range of players and deliver a rich experience for more seasoned gamers familiar with challenging game titles like Elden Ring. “It had to offer the free movement that players expect, but also a flexible, engaging challenge,” says Creative Director Eric Frech. This led the development team to explore different layers of challenge. The ‘Hero Mode’ offers play-through focused on exploration and discovery, allowing players to delve into the mysteries and lore of Yob. But the harder ‘Master Mode’ caters to players who love the high-stakes challenge of pushing their skills to the limit against more difficult enemies.
Designing combat for Robots at Midnight’s environment also meant embracing a fun, dynamic feel. The MITT, Zoe’s space-gauntlet, is more than just her primary weapon; it’s an extension of her determination. Her encounters with robots demand smart thinking – in addition to quick reflexes. Zoe will encounter useful items easily along her path, while other items require some hunting to be discovered.
Ultimately, Yob is more than just a setting for Zoe to clobber robots at midnight; it’s a world with mysteries to unravel and lore to discover. Zoe’s fight for a brighter dawn in a world of hostile automatons is a journey of discovery, determination, and overcoming the odds. To that end, Frech proudly stated, “We aimed to build a wholly unique experience that lingers long after the last boss fight.”
Using all the resources at your disposal, can you get Zoe home before midnight? Robots at Midnight is available June 19 on Xbox.
Robots at Midnight is a retro-futuristic Action RPG set on the planet Yob, a world left in ruins and haunted by the machines once built to serve it.
After twenty years in cryo-sleep, Zoe wakes to find a world she barely recognizes. To survive and to save what’s left, she must track down her missing father, lost during the cataclysmic event known only as The Blackout. Along the way, she’ll take on gangs of corrupted robots, confront towering bosses, and uncover long-buried truths about Yob.
Just be home before midnight.
[Combat with Fluid Movement]
The MITT is a powerful piece of old-world tech made for Space exploration, now repurposed for survival. Launch off enemies, soar through the air, and smash through bots with momentum-based combat that keeps you constantly moving. Whether in battle or traversal, fast, fluid movement is your greatest weapon. Find your rhythm. Sharpen your skills. Discover what you’re really made of.
[Choose Your Challenge]
Whether you’re new to action RPGs or a seasoned fighter, Robots at Midnight adapts to your playstyle. Hero Mode offers a more forgiving, story-driven experience, while Master Mode pushes your reflexes and tactics to the edge with high-stakes combat.
Whichever path you choose, prepare for a fight.
[Explore and Uncover Hidden Lore]
Waking up on a ruined planet isn’t the hard part, figuring out what happened is. Step into Zoe’s sneakers and investigate the mystery behind Yob’s downfall. Discover lost technologies, unravel the threads of the past, and determine your place in a future that moved on without you.
As players dive deeper into Elden Ring Nightreign‘s endgame, they’ve been unlocking numerous skins FromSoftware has laid out as alternate options and rewards. It’s not too surprising how many of them are references to previous Souls games, but some of the deeper cuts are certainly interesting.
Souls YouTuber BonfireVN put together a side-by-side comparison of Elden Ring Nightreign’s Dark Souls skins with their origins in their respective Souls games. These skins unlock once you’ve cleared the final boss of Elden Ring Nightreign, and offer some big visual shake-ups for the various Nightfarers of the realm.
These “throwback” skins are callbacks to various pieces of Dark Souls history, mostly through NPCs and armor sets seen throughout the games. It’s a nice bit of nostalgia, and also a way to commemorate how Elden Ring carries the Souls torch forward. Some of the choices and details are fairly interesting to dig into, though, as BonfireVN shows.
The Guardian’s Solaire outfit, dubbed the Sunlight Knight Outfit, is a fairly obvious reference to everyone’s favorite Dark Souls 1 NPC. The Catarina Outfit for the Raider is a similarly clear reference, to Siegmeyer of Catarina.
But in sets like the Duchess’ Wraith Outfit, you can see the evolution of the Darkwraith design over the course of Souls, and how the set evolved from its first appearance to Nightreign.
Others, like the Ironeyes’ Sellsword duds, are surprising references to characters like Chancellor Wellager in Dark Souls 2. While it’s not surprising to see firekeeper outfits, or characters like Solaire or Artorias, it’s nice to see some deeper cuts. The Recluse’s Heretic Sorcerer Outfit calling back to Dark Witch Karla may not even be obvious at first glance, but it’s fun to see.
Plus, the detail FromSoftware has put on these armor sets is impressive, especially side-by-side with previous Souls games. A long string of games led FromSoftware from its early days to Elden Ring, and these Nightreign outfits are a solid commemoration.
Massive modding site Nexus Mods have announced a change in ownership, with founder Robin ‘Dark0ne’ Scott set to step back. As to who the new owners are, a couple of first names and modding profiles have been provided, as well as an assertion that these new overlords understand what makes Nexus Mods tick.
Scott – who founded the site as the Elder Scrolls-focused TES Nexus in 2001, and has owned it via his company Black Tree Gaming since 2007 – announced the news via a post on Nexus Mods.
Nintendo Switch 2 owners who say they’ve lost Pokémon save files are strongly recommending other fans make use of the franchise’s Pokémon Home storage app, before booting up their new consoles and initiating a system transfer.
One report on reddit details a fan’s experience transferring their original Switch’s data to their new Switch 2, only to find their Pokémon Scarlet save file had been lost in the process. Other fans responding to the post have reported similar issues, and an IGN staff member has had the same experience happen to them.
The reddit post, by user ThatOtaku26, claims their save file had more than 1,000 hours of gameplay and over two decades of beloved Pokémon, brought over from generations of previous Pokémon titles stretching back to Pokémon Leaf Green and Pokémon Diamond, on the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance.
For Pokémon fans, this is why their save files are so precious — as some players bring over creatures they have already been playing with in multiple previous games, some released years ago. At the same time, Pokémon games on Nintendo Switch are some of just a handful of titles not compatible with the console’s in-built cloud save functionality (available if you subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online). Indeed, Switch games Pokémon: Let’s Go Eevee and Pikachu, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Pokémon Sword and Shield, plus Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are all unsupported.
Of course, the Pokémon franchise does have its own cloud save offering, the Pokémon Home app, which comes with its own subscription plan that kicks in if you want to store more than 30 creatures. And it’s this app that fans are now recommending to anyone wanting to continue their Pokémon save files on Switch 2, just to make sure their virtual creatures survive the move to Nintendo’s new console.
“I just got a switch 2, did the startup and initial data transfer with no issues,” ThatOtaku26 wrote. “My Scarlet save file is gone. It loads straight into the language selection and create a character screens. No data on my OLED. Just all gone.
“THERE WAS NO ERROR IN DATA TRANSFER AT ALL,” they continued. “IT WENT FINE. ALL MY OTHER POKEMON DATA IS STILL THERE, BUT NOT SCARLET. I had mons from my original GBA up to current on there. Literally 20 years worth of data. There’s nothing I can do. I don’t even know if i wanna play anymore.”
Some fans comiserated with the player, and said they had experienced similar issues.
“This same exact thing happened to me when I was transferring from my original Switch to the OLED,” wrote Grouchy-Cress-215. “Tears were shed.”
“The same thing happed to me but literally all my saved data isn’t there anymore like BOTW, TOTK, MK8, Pokémon Sword and Shield, Scarlet and Violet, and so on,” added Existing-Possible550. “I literally have to play everything from the start.”
Many fans said the situation, however rare, meant that backing up beloved creatures to Pokémon Home was a necessity, just to be on the safe side.
“I’m afraid of this happening to me so everything I have is going in Home before I do the switch,” wrote Mexican_Chef4307.
“If I get Switch 2 in the future, I will first transfer all my Pokémon to Home before data transferring,” added TheJannikku. “I can’t imagine how I would if that happened to me.”
Not all fans were as compassionate, however.
“Ngl the fact that you didn’t transfer all of your important Pokémon to Home first is on you,” wrote IAmTheWire. “We’ve known that this is the only way to preserve your Pokémon for sure in this kind of circumstance or if your old Switch broke, otherwise they’d be gone forever. I’d have done it just to be safe if nothing else since it’s so obvious and easy to transfer them back if something was to go wrong.”
Stellar Blade modders have made a lot of sexual stuff so far. As it turns out, the game’s director is cool with that, though he is hoping that despite the game not having any official tools, modders’ll have a go at creating fresh wrinkles that add to what the Stellar Blade experience offers.
Hyung-tae Kim gave his opinion on where the game’s modding scene is currently at in a recent interview with South Korean site This Is Game, translated by Automaton and Genki.
Borderlands 4 will cost $70, publisher 2K Games has confirmed as preorders go live.
The cost of Gearbox’s next game was thrust into the headlines after development chief Randy Pitchford had sparked a backlash with a series of controversial tweets.
Pitchford had responded to a fan who had expressed concern about the prospect of paying $80 for Borderlands 4, saying: “if you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
Pitchford addressed the negativity surrounding his comments in a series of follow-up tweets, but now we have confirmation that the Borderlands 4 standard edition is $69.99 after all.
Borderlands 4 offers three editions of the game: Standard Edition, Deluxe Edition, and Super Deluxe Edition, detailed below:
All editions are available for preorder today and will release worldwide on September 12, 2025. Players who preorder one of these editions will receive the Gilded Glory Pack, which includes one Vault Hunter Skin, one Weapon Skin, and an ECHO-4 Drone Skin.
The Standard Edition includes the base game and will be available for £59.99 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store.
The Deluxe Edition will feature a variety of bonus items and will be available for £89.99 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store.
This edition includes the Bounty Pack Bundle, featuring four separate post-launch DLC packs, each with distinct areas, new missions, and unique bosses; four Vault Cards with unique challenges and rewards; new gear and weapons; four new vehicles, and Vault Hunter cosmetics; and the Firehawk’s Fury Weapon Skin.
The Super Deluxe Edition will include all bonus digital content from the Deluxe Edition and will be available for £119.99 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store.
This edition also includes the Vault Hunter Pack, featuring two new Story Packs, each featuring a new Vault Hunter, story, and side missions; two new map regions; new gear and weapons; more Vault Hunter cosmetics; and new ECHO-4 cosmetics.
Additionally, it offers the Ornate Order Pack with four Vault Hunter Skins, four Vault Hunter Heads and four Vault Hunter Bodies.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Note. Gex Trilogy isn’t playable on Switch 2 via backwards compatibility at the time of writing, although a patch has been submitted to Nintendo for review, according to Limited Run. We’ll update this note when we hear more.
Dimitris Giannakis’s Carbon Engine is back on behalf of Limited Run Games, and, despite some previously reported bugs, it fairly accurately brings vintage games to new hardware.
New Pinnacle Bosses in Path of Exile: Secrets of the Atlas, and Tips To Take Them On
Mark Roberts, Game Director
Summary
Path of Exile: Secrets of the Atlas is available on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One on June 13.
Secrets of the Atlas sets Path of Exile up for a new series of Endgame Bosses, Crafting Systems, Unique Items and much more as the game also steps into a new storyline to prepare for many future expansions.
The expansion brings back a fan-favourite character and introduces three new Pinnacle Endgame Bosses that will truly put your skills to the test.
The new Path of Exile expansion, Secrets of the Atlas, arrives on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One today. Explore a new additive Atlas storyline, face three new Pinnacle Endgame Bosses, and find a perfect companion in a new Mercenaries of Trarthus challenge league. Here, we’ll also share some tips on how to approach these powerful new foes.
Secrets of The Atlas
With one of Path of Exile’s most iconic characters, Zana, returning after many years from a mysterious disappearance, you will search for her and begin a new saga of the Endgame.
Bringing back Zana sets Path of Exile up for a new series of Endgame Bosses, Crafting Systems, Unique Items and much more as we also step into a new storyline to prepare for many future expansions.
The Secrets of the Atlas expansion comes with three very unique, very distinct bosses that now act as the Endgame Pinnacle content for this expansion.We wanted to have Zana be integral to these and have her memories be the source of their design. Specifically, very potent memories coming from places of either trauma or even admiration.
We took some concepts of Memories she had and translated them into new bosses.
The first memory sees Zana trying to get her father’s attention while he’s working and accidentally tipping over a candle, burning some of his books.
The books burn, he douses the flames and then angrily retaliates, yelling at her, at this moment she truly felt fear and that acts as a potent memory which has now malformed into her father turning into a boss named The Incarnation of Fear. The boss is strong, scary and physically powerful, depicting how she saw him in this moment.
The Incarnation of Fear is a physically powerful being capable of taking you down just using his fists. On top of that he is infused with intense flames that he can channel into powerful beams and spheres to block your movement and restrict your positioning.
This fight relies on you to intelligently consider where you are standing at all times, and make sure you aren’t restricting your playspace in a way that would result in your demise. All while trying to avoid his powerful physical attacks.
The second and third memories are similar, one is an Incarnation of Neglect, where he was lost in his work and thus ignoring Zana and refusing to give her attention.
The Incarnation of Neglect uses devices and machinery to his advantage. He summons powerful laser beams that will sweep through the arena, causing you to perform almost a dance to avoid dying.
Every so often he uses a number of puzzle boxes to do an advanced version of this skill, testing your reaction times and making sure you’re able to maneuver with precision.
If you’re able to survive these, he will channel powerful explosions and beams from his staff using shocking lightning and arctic ice magic, get hit by these and you will be slowed, or even frozen, and that will surely cause you to be eviscerated by the lasers.
Another is the Incarnation of Dread, a more positive memory, but one where she saw her father getting praise and being idolized by others. She was happy for him, but was afraid she would never achieve his standards and forever be in his shadow.
The Incarnation of Dread is a tactically complicated fight but one that is befitting of its role as a Pinnacle Boss. It uses a combination of all of the Elements and Chaos to try to defeat you.
Using its large limbs to slam you, tear you apart, all the way to using its neck which can literally split in two to create portals to summon magical homing projectiles it will prove formidable. Its most terrifying ability however is its bullet-hells, which will truly test the skill of the player as they must dodge and weave through waves of projectiles in order to stay alive, while trying to kill him and interrupt his abilities.
Each of these requires a well-designed, well-built and thought out endgame character to have the best chance. However, the world is your oyster, either invest heavily in defence to protect yourself from their disastrous abilities, or stack offence to try to burn them down quicker, or take something well-balanced in the middle and get the best of both worlds!
Step into the Memories
In this Endgame storyline, you will meet a mysterious new character named Eagon, who is trying to discover his own origins. Using a gauntlet of his own creation, Eagon is able to link to memory threads and open portals to new areas for you to investigate. These areas are influenced by the same memories which created the pinnacle bosses, who wait for you at the end of each memory thread. Defeating them will grant you new unique items, memory-influenced maps, and new crafting currencies you can use to manipulate the influence these memories have on items.
Path of Exile: Secrets of the Atlas is available today on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.
Earn devastating skills and valuable items as you fight your way through the dark continent of Wraeclast. With unrivaled character customization, Path of Exile is an award-winning online Action RPG created by hardcore gamers, for hardcore gamers.
Don’t let Elden Ring Nightreign’s status as a spin-off fool you. It has plenty of stuff to pick apart for lore fiends. Much like the towering Erdtree, Nightreign is just one branch, one alternate timeline, with roots in the world of Elden Ring. Nightreign brings its own unique ideas and new characters to Elden Ring, even if the events of the game don’t tie directly to the original. You’ll know what we mean when we start exploring the ending of Nightreign below.
This article contains spoilers for the ending of Elden Ring Nightreign.
Is Nightreign Canon?
Nightreign bends the history of The Lands Between in a different direction, forking off from a pivotal moment in the lore to give us a peek at what might’ve happened if things had gone much, much worse. It’s better to think of the events of Nightreign as an alternate timeline rather than a canon storyline. You don’t need to know everything about Elden Ring to enjoy it, but you do need to spend quite a bit of time running expeditions and fighting Nightlords to get the full picture. Once you do, you’ll start to grasp how Nightreign fits (and doesn’t fit) into the story of the Lands Between.
Elden Ring Nightreign Ending Explained
As the intro cutscene explains: Nightreign takes place in a world where the Tarnished never show up. The war between the gods—known as The Shattering—breaks out after Marika stirs chaos in The Lands Between by smashing the Elden Ring. Thousands of years pass and nobody takes the throne, eventually luring “an abomination” known as the Nightlord to the land. This unnamed being is basically a walking natural disaster. Wherever he goes, the Night follows, and an endless torrent of rain slowly dissolves the world into nothing.
Leave it to FromSoftware to come up with an even bleaker version of the timeline than what we have in the original game. Here, the Elden Throne is just an empty chair sitting in the ruins of a world fading out of existence. There’s nothing to rule or to conquer. And yet a peculiar group of people have been chosen by some unknown master to try and defeat the Nightlord anyway and end the Night.
That’s where we come in. The Nightfarers team up to hunt down lesser Nightlords on their way to the source of the catastrophe. This involves dropping down onto what’s left of Limgrave and battling familiar monsters and bosses from not only Elden Ring, but the Dark Souls series as well. While the game doesn’t explicitly state why the worlds have converged, I like to think of it as the result of ruptures in reality as the universe collapses in on itself.
Once you bring enough of the Nightlords down, the true culprit is revealed to be the husk of a man named Heolstor. He carries what looks like the Moonlight Greatsword from Dark Souls in one of his three arms, and is one of the most spectacular boss fights FromSoftware has ever created. Defeating him rewards you with the Primordial Nightlord’s Rune, which resembles the Great Runes you find in Elden Ring, only with an inky hue.
Usually you return to see your allies hanging out in the Roundtable Hold after defeating a Nightlord, but killing Heolstor leaves you standing in front of a Roundtable Hold that has been long abandoned. A petrified corpse sits inside and when you place the rune before it, it causes your Nightfarer to dissipate into streaks of light that fly into the sky.
A post-credits scene shows the Lands Between as we know it from Elden Ring—Erdtree and all—with golden leaves wafting in the air. One of those leaves lands on a tree branch atop a giant that looks a lot like Heolstor if he were made out of wood. It rises out of the sea, pausing a moment to face the Erdtree, and then steps away.
It’s heavily implied that by defeating Heolstor we’ve retroactively stopped the Night from ever happening in the first place. In other words: We’ve chopped off Nightreign’s branch of the story for good, leaving the events of Elden Ring to play out as we know them from the original game.
Who is Heolstor and what happens in the alternate endings?
We don’t know a lot about Heolstor outside of the relic you get from defeating him. It tells a brief story of a knight who was slain by a hero before mysteriously waking up to curse the world. It’s vague enough to fit into several different interpretations, but the most plausible one seems to be that he is intentionally a nobody, a cosmic inevitability as natural as the sun setting in the evening.
This lines up thematically with the alternate ending the Wylder can get if you finish his remembrance quests. Instead of erasing the timeline, the Wylder takes up the mantle of Nightlord by using a Larval Tear, an item from Elden Ring that is associated with rebirth. You learn earlier in his quest that the Roundtable Hold only exists because the Nightlord exists, and his sister, the Duchess, is locked to the same fate. He sacrifices himself to the Night to keep her alive.
In the Ironeye’s unique ending, he cuts the throat of the petrified corpse in the empty Roundtable Hold and prolongs the Night. His goal is to protect his clan of undying warriors who you might remember from Elden Ring as Those Who Live in Death. In Elden Ring’s timeline, Those Who Live in Death are hunted by the followers of the Erdtree. The Ironeye’s decision saves them from this outcome, but dooms the world as a result.
The Recluse’s ending is the second most hopeful one you can get. Her remembrance reveals that she once had a child who she abandoned, leaving it to succumb to an endless hunger and start to devour everything in sight, including her own sister. After defeating Heolstor, the Recluse can find the Night-touched baby in the Roundtable Hold and embrace it. Her love calms the infant and seemingly prevents a new Nightlord from forming.
The remaining Nightfarers don’t have special endings associated with them. Their stories follow the events of the default ending and they likely disappear along with everything else when it’s erased. But Nightreign’s story isn’t completely over: FromSoftware will eventually release new Nightfarers as DLC and they could provide even more insight into the nature of this sad world— possibly through their own alternate endings.
