Category: Video Games

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to dominate entertainment with its interconnected series of films and TV shows that all tie together to form a long-running, cohesive narrative. Marvel video games, however, do not exist in the same universe, telling stories entirely separate and unrelated to each other. Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man games, for example, have nothing to do with Eidos-Montreal’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Similarly, upcoming Marvel games such as Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel’s Wolverine, and Marvel’s Blade, have no connective tissue.

But there was once an idea at Disney to create a Marvel Gaming Universe that would do for Marvel video games what the MCU went on to do for Marvel movies and TV shows. So what happened?

Speaking on The Fourth Curtain podcast, host Alexander Seropian and guest Alex Irvine recalled this MGU idea, which both worked on, and revealed why it fell by the wayside.

Seropian, perhaps best known as one of the founders of Halo and Destiny developer Bungie, went on to run Disney’s video game business before leaving in 2012. Irvine was the long-running writer of Marvel games, most recently working on the world-building, dialogue, and character backstories for smash hit Marvel Rivals.

Discussing his prior work on Marvel games, Irvine discussed the scrapped MGU.

“When I first started working on Marvel games, there was this idea that they were going to create a Marvel gaming universe that was going to exist in the same way that the MCU did,” Irvine said. “It never really happened.”

Seropian then explained that the MGU was his “initiative,” but it never got funded by the higher-ups at Disney.

“When I was at Disney, that was my initiative, ‘Hey, let’s tie these games together.’ It was pre-MCU,” Seropian said. “But it didn’t get funded.”

Irvine, who had worked on the iconic Halo alternate reality game (ARG) I Love Bees while at Bungie, went into some detail on how this MGU would have worked.

“That was so frustrating because we came up with all these great ideas about how to do it,” he said.

“And I was coming out of ARGs at that point and thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had some ARG aspects?’ There would be a place where players could go that all the games touched, and we could move them back and forth from game to game. We could link in comics, we could loop in anything, we could do original stuff. And then, as Alex said, it didn’t get funded. So we made a bunch of games.”

But why did the MGU fail to get the internal buy-in to move forward? Irvine suggested the idea became so complex it ended up putting some people at Disney off.

“Even back then, we were trying to figure out, ‘If there’s going to be this MGU, how is it different from the comics? How is it different from the movies? How are we going to decide if it stays consistent?’ And I think some of those questions got complex enough that there were people at Disney who didn’t really want to deal with them,” Irvine explained.

It’s fun to imagine what might have been had the MGU idea got the funding it needed to become a reality. Perhaps if it had, Insomniac’s Spider-Man games would have existed in the same universe as Square Enix’s ill-fated Marvel’s Avengers and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, with characters from each game making cameo appearances across the titles or the stories all building towards some epic Endgame-style event.

Looking ahead, there are questions over Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine game. Will it be set within the same universe as Marvel’s Spider-Man? Could Spider-Man or any other character from those games end up making a cameo in Wolverine in some way?

Alas, the MGU goes down as yet another scrapped video game idea. Although, perhaps in another universe somewhere, it is a reality…

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.

Palworld has a big new update that adds crossplay across all platforms among many other new features.

Update v0.5.0 also lets players store Pal data in the Global Palbox and transfer Pals between worlds. A new storage system has 10 times the capacity of the regular Palbox. Not only can guild members access it, but it can be used as a personal storage with private settings.

Elsewhere, you can now change your character’s appearance without affecting armor stats (transmog), there’s a photo mode, blueprint upgrading, and dedicated servers for Mac, among other changes detailed in the patch notes below.

Developer Pocketpair said it’s working on adding dedicated servers for the PlayStation 5 version and will release them at some point in the future.

Palworld has had an incredible 32 million players since its early access launch in January 2024. The studio has laid out a content roadmap for Palworld’s 2025 that looks fairly lengthy; alongside crossplay, there is an “ending scenario” and more new content on the way for the hugely popular creature-catching survival game.

Palworld launched on Steam priced $30 and straight into Game Pass on Xbox and PC a year ago, breaking sales and concurrent player number records in the process. Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe has said Palworld’s launch was so big that the developer couldn’t handle the massive profits the game generated. Still, Pocketpair acted swiftly to capitalize on Palworld’s breakout success, signing a deal with Sony to form a new business called Palworld Entertainment that’s tasked with expanding the IP, and launching the game on PS5.

Looming over all this is a lawsuit from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, who seek “an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages” on the grounds that Palworld has allegedly infringed on “multiple” patent rights. Pocketpair has provided an update, identifying the patents the studio is allegedly infringing, and it has since tweaked how players summon Pals in Palworld, apparently in response. Pocketpair has vowed to take on Nintendo and The Pokémon Company in court, saying: “We will continue to assert our position in this case through future legal proceedings.”

Palworld update 0.5.0 patch notes:

▼New Content
・Crossplay!
⤷ Cross-play is now available across all platforms.

・Global Palbox
⤷ Store Pal data in the Global Palbox and transfer Pals between worlds!

・Dimensional Pal Storage
⤷ A new storage system with 10 times the capacity of a regular Palbox! Guild members can access it, and it can also be used as a personal storage with private settings.

・Cosmetic Armour System!
⤷ You can now equip armour cosmetically in the Antique Dresser. Change your character’s appearance without affecting armour stats!

・Photo Mode
⤷ Accessible from the Pal Command Wheel. Hide the UI and move the camera around to take stunning screenshots.

・Drafting Table
⤷ Combine low-rarity blueprints to create higher-rarity ones!

・Dedicated Servers for Mac
▼Specification Adjustments
・Buildings can now be placed even if they overlap with a Pal
・When connecting foundations or roofs, the connected pieces will now automatically align in the same direction
・Assigning an Ice Pal to the Flea Market will slow down item decay in storage and sales
・Added torches at the entrances of random dungeons for better visibility
・Players can now sit on chairs and cushions
・Some weapons that dealt ultra-high damage to trees will no longer drop items upon destruction
・Added new NPCs and improved NPC behaviour during conversations
▼Balance Adjustments
・Adjusted elemental chest rewards. Dog Coins will always drop from these chests and they also have a small chance of containing work suitability books. (Existing chests in current worlds will retain old drop tables; new ones will follow the updated table.)
・Increased EXP gained from defeating the Attack Chopper
・Increased the DPS of Flamethrowers
・Adjusted the default attack used by Electric and Dark Pals when all active skills are on cooldown, making them more in line with the other elements
・Some human NPCs now have work suitability and work animations when assigned tasks at a base
・Summoned raid bosses can no longer damage other bases
・Added Water attribute to Dumud
・NPC event rewards have been adjusted. To maintain fairness, all NPC conversation logs have been reset, allowing players to claim rewards again!
▼UI
・Favourites have been categorised into Favourite 1, 2, and 3 groups
・Holding the +/- button in the Pal Soul Enhancement UI will now continuously increase/decrease values
・Added a new sorting option for Pal Box: Sort by Work Suitability Level
・Added a “Extra Large” text size option
・Added Fullscreen Mode
▼Achievements
・Added several new achievements
▼ Bug Fixes
・Fixed an issue where players could get launched into space while climbing
・Fixed a bug where getting stunned by an enemy while riding a flying Pal over water would send the player flying into the sky
・Fixed an issue where commanding a summoned Pal to attack would also target the Black Marketeer and Medal Merchant
・Fixed a bug where Bounty Tokens with identical passive effects did not stack properly
・Fixed an issue where players would sometimes get launched upward when dismounting Azurmane
・Fixed an issue on dedicated servers where Pals could get stuck on top of feed boxes
・Fixed an issue where raiding NPCs could attack players through walls if they couldn’t reach them
・Fixed a bug on dedicated servers where Bounty Token effects were not applied upon login
・Fixed an issue where attacking some NPCs did not add to the player’s crime level
・Various many other minor bug fixes

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.

Ubisoft has confirmed the global release times for Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Unlike previous games in the series and indeed Ubisoft games generally, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has a unified, actual release date. You cannot pay more for early access.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ release date on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S is 12am local time on March 20, but it’s worth noting there are separate release times for the game on PC depending on whether you’re getting it on Steam or Ubisoft’s own platform, Ubi Connect.

Pre-load is already available on Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

There is of course enormous pressure on Assassin’s Creed Shadows to do well for Ubisoft after a number of delays and last year’s Star Wars Outlaws failed to sell as well as the company had hoped. Indeed, Ubisoft has suffered a number of high-profile flops, layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations in the run up to Assassin’s Creed shadows’ release.

IGN’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows review returned an 8/10. We said: “By sharpening the edges of its existing systems, Assassin’s Creed Shadows creates one of the best versions of the open-world style it’s been honing for the last decade.”

Marvel is everywhere these days, so it’s not surprising to see the deluge of heroes and villains represented throughout various media like the X-Men ‘97 show and Marvel Rivals video game. Even on the tabletop front, Marvel has seen its fair share of interesting crossovers with the likes of the team-based word game Codenames, and the long lasting trading card game Magic: The Gathering. Coming this Spring, there is yet another Marvel collab featuring the X-Men and the dice-rolling fighting game, Dice Throne. From what I’ve played so far, it’s very similar to past versions, but the new characters and unique abilities give this new X-Men run an interesting take for fans looking for a different kind of superhero tabletop experience.

The new X-Men iteration of Dice Throne was initially on Kickstarter. So the Kickstarter version and the Battle Chest version that can be ordered on their website will have different contents than the retail versions that I was able to play with. These differences are mainly in the quality of the tokens and game pieces, in addition to better organizational improvements like storage trays for each hero. For the retail versions, there are two boxes to choose from showcasing four different X-Men each. One includes Cyclops, Gambit, Rogue, and Jean Grey while the other has Iceman, Psylocke, Storm, and Wolverine. So when deciding on which box to get into, you get a good blend of some fan favorites no matter what. Each character has a difficulty rank from one to six, which can be seen on the back of the box as well. The box with Wolverine and Storm is best for new players, since neither of the heroes have a difficulty over four. The Gambit and Jean Grey box, on the other hand, has both of these heroes in particular at difficulty six, so it’s best to consider your playgroup before choosing one or the other.

Since this is ultimately Dice Throne, the gameplay is much the same, with each player rolling dice to determine what abilities their character will use on themself or their opponents or allies. Of the eight abilities on a character board, one of them is usually a defensive ability and another is a passive – alongside the other offensive abilities. On the center is the ultimate ability, which is of course very difficult to pull off being a game of chance. WIth each character board comes dice, a deck of cards specific to the character, dials for tracking resources, and associated character sheets with added information. It can take some time to understand a character’s abilities and the synergy between each one, but it all comes down to what you roll to decide what your turn will play out as. The deck of cards can assist you in manipulating your roll, but you can also alter your opponent’s roll if you decide to make an attack weaker or fizzle altogether. You’ll be taking turns rolling dice and bashing your opponents until they’re life hits zero. It’s pretty a straightforward goal, but how you get there is where the strategy comes in.

Since the basic gameplay is quite simple, the replayability really comes from the different characters you can pick from. Wolverine, for instance, has a fairly easy playstyle where he gains rage when taking damage. So the more Wolverine is attacked, the stronger his attacks will be. Then you have characters like Storm that can supercharge her abilities to have extra effects. She even has an ability to borrow dice from other players, so she has a better chance of rolling straights, like in poker, which are the cost of some offensive abilities.

Looking at the very difficult side of the character spectrum, there’s Jean Grey, who swaps back and forth between the Dark Phoenix, altering her passive abilities each turn. This means she’s drawing many cards and gaining resources one turn as Jean Grey, then skipping an entire phase but having higher offensive capabilities the next turn as Dark Phoenix. It can be difficult to balance depending on how your opponents affect your plays. Then there’s Gambit, another difficult character who kinetically charges cards with abilities to set up added effects on future turns. So keeping track of said charged cards and when to use them is another layer of strategy. Each character has their own flavor that matches their comic lore, so it’s just a matter of understanding their playstyle to make gameplay go smoothly.

Dice Throne can be played 1v1, but there are other options that the game suggests, like a free-for-all King of the Hill when there are an odd number of players, or even team matches. Since players take turns one at a time, games can last long if players aren’t quite comfortable enough yet, so playing 1v1 is a good way to get your feet wet before moving on to bigger parties. If you have experience with trading card games like Magic: The Gathering, Dice Throne will actually be pretty easy to pick up. Other than the dice rolls determining which abilities to use, the cards are used very similarly to other TCGs. For instance, there is a specific turn order like upkeep phase, income phase, main phase, and dice roll phases as well as the different timings for when cards can be used during either phase.

I’ve seen Dice Throne before, but I’ve never really thought much of it whenever I find myself at the board game section of a store. Sure, dice-rolling games can be fun and interesting, but people will be drawn to whatever genres or game types they prefer. Being a fan of the Marvel universe and superheroes in general, this iteration of Dice Throne really brought me around to checking it out. If you enjoy Marvel characters and want a fun new board game to add to the library, X-Men Dice Throne really scratches that itch for board game nights – especially when your friends enjoy the characters and world as well.