Marvel 1943: Rise Of Hydra might release at Christmas according to Khary Payton, who voices the Black Panther in the upcoming World War 2-set action game. It’s the first morsel of release info we’ve garnered for Rise Of Hydra since its announcement last March, which tantalised with the prospect of playing USO Show-era Steve Rogers and Azzuri, great-grandfather to the current Black Panther.
Gentlemen, please…
As long as Pokémon TCG exists, there will always be scalpers looking to make a quick buck from the game’s rare cards and packs.
Case in point, a new video has surfaced in which two men appear to be fighting it out to take advantage of a kiosk restock. The video comes from TikTok user ‘yoc9official‘, who appears to be one of the men directly involved in the altercation, though he claims to be well-intentioned and is simply purchasing cards for his own collection.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Until Dawn Remake players are still sharing bug reports with UK developer Ballistic Moon, but there’s apparently no one left to respond. “The studio has effectively closed now,” one anonymous source told Insider Gaming.
An undisclosed number of layoffs were publicly announced last September, shortly before the Until Dawn remake’s launch in October. According to IG’s source, these amounted to “roughly 40 employees”. “Around 20” developers were allegedly kept on for post-launch support until they themselves were laid off last December, leaving a handful of employees “at most” alongside studio founders. “There are no employees in public relations, marketing, or development left.”
We don’t score reviews at Rock Paper Shotgun. Some might tell you this is because we view numeric scores as stifling oversimplifications of the wonderful, strange, and personal experiences videogames can offer, but it’s really because the refurbished work keyboards we’re assigned when hired all have their number keys gummed up with Marmite and none of us want to touch them.
Now back to farming.
In case you missed it, Stardew Valley‘s most recent update (Version 1.6.15.1) included an error on the Switch. While the game was “mostly playable, there were some issues like “crashes”, text problems and some other issues.
Fortunately, the game’s creator Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone has been working to resolve this issue and a patch for this patch has now been issued. Here’s what he had to say about this, along with the official website notice:
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The manga series ‘Baki the Grappler’ returns.
The manga series Baki the Grappler will be getting a Super Punch-Out!! style 2D action game for Switch this September.
This particular entry, officially known as Baki Hanma: Blood Arena, is based on the Netflix anime and is published by Purple Play and developed by Purple Tree, who also worked on the Punch-Out!! style game Thunder Ray.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The Big N’s lowest ranking yet.
Metacritic has today revealed its 15th annual game publisher rankings, giving us an updated look at how the biggest publishers of 2024 performed based on critic reviews.
Nintendo wound up in 22nd place out of the 37 publishers in this year’s list which, considering it landed in sixth place last time, is quite the tumble. The Big N took home an average Metascore of 76 on its 13 releases in 2024, with no “Great” games (Metascore of 90 or higher) to its name.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
One of the real achievements of tabletop crowdfunding has been the freedom to experiment with ambitious ideas. Instead of needing to target a mainstream audience with wider appeal, video-game-to-board game adaptations have been able to aim at more niche audiences whose hobby identity overlaps between both mediums. This has allowed a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The Board Game to thrive, offering a full-blown analog experience that is enormously rich and full of life, just as the original franchise fully deserves.
This is a complex and expensive game chock-full of content. In it, up to four players take on the role of STALKERs, cooperating to achieve mission objectives such as rescuing a prisoner, retrieving an artifact, or hunting a massive beast in the irradiated environs of Chernobyl. Setting up the tiles, tokens, overlays, and cards can take a solid 20 minutes. Sneaking or fighting your way through the zone while handling all of the necessary aspects of play is another two or three hours. These estimates are for players who are familiar with the game and its rules as your first session is likely to stretch even longer. This experience is the inverse of the recent Mass Effect board game, instead seeking to offer an entire world to immerse yourself in at the cost of accessibility. Fortunately, all of this effort is absolutely worth it, for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a marvelous experience on the tabletop.
The default mode of play is a story-focused campaign that lasts three scenarios. This is a more modest and reasonable commitment than popular campaign board games such as Gloomhaven or Divinity: Original Sin the Board Game. Crucially, it means players are far more likely to actually finish the game.
It plays like a mashup of a traditional dungeon crawler with adventure game aspects. Each player controls a different STALKER outfitted with a variety of firearms, armor, and supplemental items. You then take turns performing one of several actions, including the expected moving and shooting, but also more unusual options like tossing bolts to distract enemies or interacting with terrain elements on the map.
The environment is dynamic and unpredictable. This is a key quality of the game, as it seeks to capture the danger and mystique of the Zone. You accumulate radiation moving through certain areas, hopefully possessing some kind of suit to offer protection. You also manipulate objects depending on the scenario and your goals. This may mean you have to locate a hidden trapdoor and pry it open, or choose between climbing a shaky ladder and descending into a drainpipe to enter a ruined building cut off from your approach. Often these environmental challenges are displayed on cards that are laid atop the map tiles. After spending an action to trigger or interact with their features, you flip the card over and reveal the outcome. There’s a strong sense of the unknown, particularly on your first playthrough of each scenario.
This core element of mystery is most strongly conveyed through anomalies. These swirling elemental entities are a significant detail of the video game’s setting, and they’re fundamental in establishing the character and personality of the post-apocalyptic surroundings. The board game adaptation of these oddities is spectacular. They’re represented by a standee and sit atop a translucent template on the board. The template contains various symbols spread across multiple map spaces, establishing a tense threat for any who would approach.
Any figure that enters such a space must roll a die. If the symbol rolled matches one in the current space, it triggers the anomaly’s reaction. The effects depend on the specific type of anomaly, but often this means substantial damage with occasional detrimental status afflictions. To successfully navigate the area of threat, STALKERs must toss bolts to cover the face-up symbols and find a safe path through the chaos. This system is fantastic, as it captures the tone and atmosphere of the source material in a way that’s not overly cumbersome. It also uses a unique set of components that is unusual in the board game space, which adds an esoteric quality and emphasizes its alien nature.
The enemy AI is also well implemented. After all of the STALKERs have activated, a card is flipped and a menu of actions is performed. Different enemy types, such as mutants and humans, behave somewhat differently, and they also take into consideration whether the protagonists were overly loud or acted with stealth. Players running and gunning like lunatics draw more attention and receive a higher degree of aggressive response. This system provides strong incentives to conduct stealthy operations, and the tools afforded as well as the construction of the scenarios themselves make this a satisfying strategic approach. Much like the anomalies and environment facets, the intersection of enemy behavior and player conduct is a well considered system that is surprisingly satisfying.
The story-focused campaign is interesting, with its own quirks worth exploring, but its lifespan is limited. The narrative offers two branches of missions you can embark on, which means you can replay the game to pursue the pathway you neglected. Each playthrough consists of only a few missions, but you may even find some joy in replaying scenarios you’ve already bested. Some terrain elements are randomized, and most scenarios offer multiple viable solutions to accomplishing the objective.
The campaign also offers some neat between-mission diversions. You can visit scavenger camps, interact with armorers, and unearth forgotten stashes. This is handled through an overland map of the nearby area, with newly discovered location nodes applied to the map via sticker. Two blank maps are included in the game as a fresh sheet is needed for each campaign you embark upon. These small location visits are executed fairly well, as they bring in a more macro view of the setting and help add context to the more zoomed-in missions.
If that’s all S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The Board Game was, it would still be a solid entry into the tabletop gaming space. Fortunately, there’s more: the single best feature in this box is the Zone Survival module. This is a full-fledged scenario generator that combines several randomized components to create a unique procedurally crafted mission. The event deck is constructed from a random allotment of cards, and your objective is either randomized or chosen from a list. You select the map from one of 10 layouts, and various environmental details are created through card draw.
This system is bonkers. Nearly half the cards and tokens in the game are dedicated to this fully developed and robust system. The story-driven campaign could have been removed wholesale, and this mode alone would have established S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as one of the year’s best board games. Yes, the setup here is even more finicky and detailed, but the ensuing one-off scenario is full of surprises and drama. The degree of variability here is wild, and the game looks to support near endless play.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The Board Game is a complete and hefty package, but it’s also one with an enormous amount of future potential. The core game comes with miniatures for the STALKERs, and cardboard standees for all foes and anomalies. Optional miniatures sets can be purchased, alongside several content expansions that add more detailed personal narratives to the characters, factions to interact with, and new narrative campaigns to embark upon. The commitment by the publisher is staggering, and this game looks to have long legs.
Sony has laid off an unknown number of individuals from its San Diego-based Visual Arts studio as well as PS Studios Malaysia, according to a Kotaku report and testimonies from former employees on LinkedIn.
Per Kotaku, staff were informed earlier this week that March 7 would be their last day, and included developers who had contributed to a number of different projects, such as a recent canceled live-service game at Bend Studio. Visual Arts is an art and technical support studio that has worked over the years with PlayStation’s other first-party studios, most notably the recent The Last of Us Part 1 and 2 remasters.
IGN has identified a number of developers on LinkedIn saying they had been laid off from Visual Arts, as well as at least one from PS Studios Malaysia. One former Visual Arts employee noted that the layoffs were “due to multiple project cancellations.”
This is the second round of layoffs at Visual Arts in the last two years, after another wave impacting an unknown number of individuals in 2023. It is unclear how many people remain at Visual Arts or what the studio is working on now. IGN has reached out to PlayStation for comment.
The layoffs contribute to an ongoing trend of games industry layoffs and project cancellations that’s been reported on since 2023, when it was estimated that over 10,000 game developers were laid off. That number rose to over 14,000 in 2024, and in 2025 the trend has continued, albeit with far hazier numbers due to more studios declining to report the exact number impacted.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
