Category: Video Games

First Look at Spider-Man’s Magic: The Gathering Crossover Revealed

Did you see our reveal of Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy crossover last week and think to yourself, “video games are all well and good, but where are the superheroes?” Well then do I have great news for you: Today we’ve got a first look at six new cards from Magic’s upcoming Spider-Man set, as well as all the products and packaging that will accompany it.

Click through the image gallery below to see all the Spider-Man cards, booster packs, Welcome Decks, and more, and read on to hear about the set from Wizards of the Coast.

Arriving September 26, Marvel’s Spider-Man will be the second fully draftable, Standard-legal set in Magic’s Universes Beyond line of products after Final Fantasy, and the third overall after 2023’s Modern-legal Lord of the Rings set. It won’t have any preconstructed Commander decks like you might expect, but the cards in the Scene Box shown above won’t be Standard-legal, and are instead designed with Commander in mind.

While a Secret Lair with Wolverine, Captain America, and more was the first step Magic took into the Marvel universe last year, Spider-Man will also be the first full set inspired by the comics so far. Wizards of the Coast Executive Producer Max McCall says that’s because they just wouldn’t have had room for all of the characters and moments they wanted to include from Spider-Man if they had made a smaller product instead.

“Spider-Man needs a full set to do justice to the character…”

“Spider-Man needs a full set to do justice to the character, and incorporate the many villains he’s come across over the years,” McCall explains. “Picking characters from the Spider-Man canon as part of a wider set would leave far too many characters on the cutting room floor. We could probably have found room for Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales in a non-Spider-Man specific set, but there wouldn’t have been room for Aunt May.”

McCall says that designing for a Universes Beyond set “flips the worldbuilding on its head,” in that a typical Magic set needs its cards to lay the groundwork of its location and setting while also being fun to play with in order to get players on board, whereas most people already have some familiarity with a character like Spider-Man. “When we make a card that speaks to great power bearing great responsibility, there’s room to add mechanical complexity because folks understand the story the card is telling. We don’t have to make Universes Beyond cards that are ‘simple’ – we just have to pick moments that are recognizable, and they’ll be easy for fans to understand.”

As for how exactly they translate those moments and the world around them into a Magic set, Head Designer Mark Rosewater tells me Magic’s color pie “is robust enough that we have the ability to show heroism and villainy in all five colors.” As an example, Rosewater says Spider-Man would be white, blue, and green (although the specific version in the Scene Box above is only those first two).

“Spider-Man feeling obligated to use his power to help people is core to him being part of the white color pie. Spider-Man is also the product of science, being bitten by a radioactive spider. This, and Peter’s aptitude for science and invention (like his web-slingers) is very blue. Finally, Spider-Man’s powers are based on an animal, and the comics have shown that there is a certain destiny to his connection to both spiders and the Spider-Man universe, which is all core green.”

“We’re not limiting ourselves to any one [comic] run or series.”

In addition to the Scene Box, the set will have the usual Play Boosters, Collector Boosters, Bundles, and Prerelease Packs, all of which can also be seen in the gallery above with more details. And while there won’t be any preconstructed Commander decks, this will mark the return of Welcome Decks – those are themed introductory decks typically given out by game stores for free so that new players can have a low-pressure way to learn the game.

In addition to this year’s Final Fantasy set, Wizards of the Coast also recently announced a set themed around Avatar: The Last Airbender. There will also be two more in-universe sets before that in Tarkir: Dragontsorm and the space-themed Edge of Eternities.

Read on for the full, unedited interview with Wizards of the Coast’s Max McCall and Mark Rosewater:

IGN: Wizards of the Coast obviously has big long-term plans for Magic: The Gathering’s collaboration with Marvel, but why did you start with Spider-Man when it comes to the first full set in that universe?

Max McCall, Executive Producer: Spider-Man needs a full set to do justice to the character, and incorporate the many villains he’s come across over the years. Picking characters from the Spider-Man canon as part of a wider set would leave far too many characters on the cutting room floor. We could probably have found room for Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales in a non-Spider-Man specific set, but there wouldn’t have been room for Aunt May. We could include Green Goblin, but not the full Sinister Six. Spider-Man has so many iconic moments and characters that we wanted to make sure we got as many as possible onto the cards, and a Spider-Man set was the best way to do that.

You’ve spoken previously about how you see Universes Beyond as a great way to introduce new players to Magic, and Spider-Man seems primed to be an especially good example of that. With that new player experience in mind, did you approach this set differently than you would a Universes Within set in any ways?

MM: Designing Universes Beyond sets is an interesting challenge because it flips the worldbuilding on its head. Cards designed for a new world like Bloomburrow have to introduce folks to the world in addition to being fun game pieces. Cards designed for Spider-Man don’t have to introduce people to Spider-Man – everyone’s familiar with Spider-Man at some level – but they do have to pay off folks’ conception of the characters and the big canon moments.

That is a huge opportunity when designing for an acquisition audience – new players are going to recognize the story moments we put on cards. So, when we make a card that speaks to great power bearing great responsibility, there’s room to add mechanical complexity because folks understand the story the card is telling. We don’t have to make Universes Beyond cards that are ‘simple’ – we just have to pick moments that are recognizable, and they’ll be easy for fans to understand.

Can you talk a bit about how you fit Spider-Man’s characters or themes into Magic’s color pie?

Mark Rosewater, Head Designer: In terms of Magic’s color pie, Spider-Man is white, blue and green. Spider-Man feeling obligated to use his power to help people is core to him being part of the white color pie. Spider-Man is also the product of science, being bitten by a radioactive spider. This, and Peter’s aptitude for science and invention (like his web-slingers) is very blue. Finally, Spider-Man’s powers are based on an animal, and the comics have shown that there is a certain destiny to his connection to both spiders and the Spider-Man universe, which is all core green.

Are there any challenges to keeping those colors both interesting and accurate in a Super Hero universe?

MR: The color pie is robust enough that we have the ability to show heroism and villainy in all five colors. Every color has positive and negative qualities allowing us to have a lot of nuances to how we use them.

I imagine “spider typal” Commander decks are about to get some unexpected new toys across this set – do you take any special considerations into account when a common Magic creature type holds a very different meaning in the context of a Universes Beyond setting?

MM: Specifics matter a lot with issues like this. Often, we’re playing in the same trope space as our Universes Beyond partners – things like ‘assassins’ are rarely an issue. Spider-Man will of course contain many Spiders, but a lot of the deckbuilding hooks for those characters will key more into the Hero creature type.

The Final Fantasy set is going to stretch across many different games and stories, but should we expect this set to have a specific Spider-Man story, or are you treating it as a showcase of popular characters, events, and locations from the comics?

MM: Spider-Man features characters and stories from across its history – we’re not limiting ourselves to any one run or series.

Marvel comics are beloved by a huge audience, but there’s no denying that the MCU has dominated the public perception of these characters in recent years. Was it tricky to design around the comic book versions with that in mind, or did you enjoy getting back to some of their roots instead?

MR: The Marvel expansions are based on the comics, but we’re always aware of the movies’ impact, so we find overlap when we can. Luckily, the vast majority of the movie material was based on the comics.

With the Spider-Man scene box, why did you go the route of including four legendary creatures this time rather than building a box around a single character as a little Commander starter pack of sorts like the previous ones were?

MM: Scene boxes tell visual stories. Spider-Man’s storytelling is very character-driven and has a great rogue’s gallery, so we wanted to include as many characters as possible. You’re generally not going to have Spider-Man and villains in the same Commander deck, so once we committed to lots of characters, we knew that meant you wouldn’t be putting them all in the same deck, and so that made for a great opportunity to make each villain more distinct and emphasize their different goals and methods in the card designs.

Spider-Man is going to be included, of course, but how did you land on the other three characters for this debut?

MM: Doc Ock, Venom, and Green Goblin are of course way up there when you’re making a list of iconic Spider-Man villains, but the nature of those characters makes it easier to draw a scene where they all get equal visual weight. Green Goblin on his glider doesn’t get in the way of Doc Ock’s tentacles, and Venom can be lurking anywhere for a chance to strike – they all have their own space in the scene to shine.

Is it freeing to design cards for a product like this since they don’t have to fit into the context of a larger set or preconstructed deck?

MM: Yes – the goal is exciting, appealing cards, preferably light enough on text that the art can really shine throughout the scene. Not having mechanical constraints makes this much easier – they don’t have to pay off the rest of the set’s themes or mechanics, and that gives them room to be made charming and delightful of their own accord.

Tom Marks is IGN’s Executive Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

The New Minecraft Movie LEGO Sets Are Available Now, Including LEGO Jack Black as Steve

LEGO announced earlier this year that we’d be getting new Minecraft Movie sets, and the time has finally come for them to be released into the world. There are four new Minecraft sets that you can now buy, with two of them featuring scenes from the upcoming film. These new sets are added to an ever-growing list of LEGO Minecraft sets that have been accumulating over the years.

Each of the new Minecraft Movie sets features minifigure mobs, but only two of the sets offer up a tiny Jack Black as Steve. You can currently purchase all of these sets from LEGO directly or any of the other best places to buy LEGO.

New LEGO Minecraft Sets Available Now

Although there are four new LEGO Minecraft sets coming out, the two that are associated with the movie are The Ghast Balloon Village Attack and Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring. Both sets give us an idea of what to expect from the upcoming film. The Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring depicts some sort of gladiator style battle with Jason Momoa fighting a baby zombie on a chicken. Meanwhile the Ghast Balloon Village Attack set reveals a marshamallow-like villain from the Nether.

The other two Minecraft sets that are releasing are The Parrot Houses and The Trial Chamber. For more like these, you can check out more of our favorite LEGO Minecraft sets.

When Does the New Minecraft Movie Come Out?

LEGO tends to release new sets tied to movie releases about a month before the actual release of the film. The new Minecraft sets are following the same timeline by coming out on March 1 seeing as A Minecraft movie is hitting theaters on April 4, 2025.

Will There Be More Minecraft Movie Sets?

So far the two sets we’ve featured above are the only ones set to release alongside the film. It’s possible this could change if the live-action Minecraft movie is a success. Either way, there are new LEGO Minecraft sets released fairly consistently and we can likely expect more to release later this year, even if it isn’t directly tied to the movie.

Don’t Wait For Fable, Play Fable 2 Instead

Buried like some kind of cursed treasure at the bottom of this week’s episode of the official Xbox Podcast was news about Playground Games’ long-awaited Fable. I call it “treasure” because it included a rare glimpse at gameplay, but “cursed” because it came with that dreaded caveat that accompanies so many development updates: a delay. Once planned to launch this year, Fable is now set for a 2026 release.

Delays, of course, are generally not harbingers of doom, despite the agonising wait they inflict. In Fable’s case, hopefully this is the sign of a richly detailed world that just needs more time to bloom. But that extra year of waiting can be put to good use: there’s no better time to play the Fable games. Specifically, I’d urge you to try Fable 2, the series’ highpoint, and (re)discover just what a strange and unique RPG Lionhead Studios’ 2008 classic is.

By today’s role-playing game standards, Fable 2 is really quite unusual. But even compared to its 2008 contemporaries, which includes the likes of Fallout 3 (released just days later) and BioWare’s early 3D games, it is practically singular in its vision. While Fable 2 features a fairly traditional campaign structure, with a linear main story and an esoteric collection of optional side quests, its RPG systems are a far cry from the crunchy stat blocks of Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights. It completely smooths out those aspects to create something incredibly approachable, even for those who find a D&D character sheet indistinguishable from hieroglyphics.

Just six main skills govern the likes of your health pool, strength, and speed. There’s only a single damage stat to consider when it comes to weapons, and nothing of the sort when it comes to armour or buff-providing accessories. Combat, despite being prevalent throughout most quests, is incredibly surface swashbuckling, spiced up only through the use of some genuinely creative spellcasting (including the wonderful Chaos, which forces enemies to dance and scrub the floors.) You’re even imperious to death – losing all your hitpoints is punished with nothing more than a minor XP penalty.

Fable 2 is the RPG for people who have never played RPGs before.

In short, Fable 2 is the RPG for people who have never played RPGs before. Back in 2008, when Oblivion’s open world Cyrodiil may have felt overwhelmingly huge and imposingly freeform for role-playing newbies, Fable 2’s Albion offered a more manageable chain of small, easy-to-navigate maps. You can freely go back and forth between these areas and, with the aid of your faithful canine companion who barks at the merest sign of adventure, you can tread beyond the beaten path to discover secrets like buried treasure, sunken caves, and the puzzle-posing Demon Doors. All this lends the world a sense of scale and opportunity grander than its actual footprint. But Albion’s geography is restrictive, largely forcing you down linear pathways from one landmark to another. This isn’t a world to get lost in, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.

Albion as a physical entity pales in comparison to the incredible worlds of BioWare’s Infinity Engine games and Bethesda’s wonderfully weird Morrowind. But to judge it on both modern and contemporary expectations of RPGs is to do it a disservice. Fable 2’s priorities lie not in climbing far-off mountains or spelunking through dungeons with a myriad of routes, but in a world that is bustling with life. Look at Fable 2 through the lens of a very different game – Maxis’ similarly singular The Sims – and you’ll find a truly remarkable simulation of society.

Albion operates like some kind of strange organic clockwork organism. Every morning, as the sun peeks over the horizon, its people wake and start their daily routines. Town criers bellow updates over the noisy crowds: “Shops are now opening!” and, when the stars begin to twinkle once more, “The time is: very late!” Much like your families in The Sims, every citizen of Albion has an interior life, driven by not just their societal roles, but also their likes and dislikes. Through the use of an ever-expanding library of gestures, you can delight, insult, impress, or even seduce every (non-hostile) person you encounter. A well-executed fart may have the patrons of a pub howling into their beers, while pointing and laughing at small children may send them fleeing for their parents. Through these emotes you can push and pull the people of Albion, charming them with your heroism and eccentricities, or pushing them away with your evil deeds and rudeness. We often talk about reactive NPCs and video game cities that feel alive, but there’s simply nothing out there that achieves those goals in quite the same way as Fable 2.

While your character is a Hero with a capital H, destined to go on grand adventures, bully bandits, and find glittering treasure, Fable 2 is a more interesting game when you fully assimilate yourself into its society. Pretty much every building in Albion is available for purchase, both houses and shops, and you can buy them with the money earned by toiling away at gainful employment (the woodcutting and blacksmithing minigames quickly become monotonous-yet-soothing distractions.) With the keys to a house in hand, you can either become a landlord, renting the property out for fair or extortionate prices, or make the building your home and furnish it to your tastes. Then there’s the next step: wooing the most attractive NPC in town by repeatedly spamming their favourite emote until they fall into your bed and, after a comedic bit of slap and tickle, you end up with a baby. The individual components of all this, as with The Sims, feels incredibly artificial. Yet the overall result produces a genuine, remarkable sense of life.

A well-executed fart may have the patrons of a pub howling into their beers.

Few, if any, RPGs have followed in Fable’s footsteps in this department. Even the towering achievements of Baldur’s Gate 3 don’t include organic romances and the ability to game the property market. But Albion’s authentic sense of life does exist in a more unexpected successor: Red Dead Redemption 2. Rockstar’s digital recreation of the old West is incredibly responsive, filled with incidental characters that believably react to your presence and behaviour. Every single NPC can be spoken to using a system that feels like a slicker, more cinematic version of Fable 2’s gestures, and your demeanor can delight or annoy. While most interactions are simple pleasantries, the lives you touch in more meaningful ways – such as sucking the venom out of a lethal snake bite – may remember you and repay you with kindness many weeks later. If Playground’s new Fable is to stay true to its origins, then its modern touchstone should be Rockstar’s unparalleled living world rather than the tabletop-inspired RPGs that are currently in vogue.

There are other mandatory things Playground will need to foster, too. Fable’s incredibly British sense of humour needs to be maintained, and so we’d best be seeing some dry, witty satire of the class system with a healthy dose of bum jokes on the side. Plus we’ll need a cast of beloved thespians that rival the teaching staff of Hogwarts (something Playground already seems to have under control, with Richard Ayoade and Matt King appearing in trailers.) But perhaps the most important, beyond that bustling world, is Lionhead’s trademark approach to good and evil.

Peter Molyneux, the founder of Lionhead Studios and lead designer of the Fable series, has a fascination with good and evil. Providing players a choice between the two was the basis of the studio’s first project, the god game Black & White, and continued to be a focus throughout the rest of Molyneux’s career, including his upcoming Masters of Albion (which is unrelated to Fable, despite its confusing name.) But Lionhead’s approach to player choice is a far cry from the nuanced, tough decisions featured in The Witcher and the best works of BioWare. In Fable 2, your options are either absolutely angelic or despicably demonic, with no grey space in between. It works in comedic extremes; an early sidequest asks you to either clear the pests out of a trader’s warehouse or destroy all his stock. Later, a ghost who killed himself after being abandoned at the altar asks that you torment his still-living former lover, and your only paths are to make her life a living hell or make her your wife.

The past decade and change of RPG development has placed priority on ultimate player expression, unlocked through choices that explore a spectrum of human behaviour. Moral quandaries, we’ve decided, should be much more complicated than the choice between saving children or burning them alive. Fable, though, thrives on the binary. It relishes the chance for you to play the most heroic hero the land ever saw, or become the most heinous villain in history. This was established in the trilogy’s first game, which saw your character literally grow devil horns if you persistently chose evil options, but really came into its own in Fable 2. The way the sequel’s quests branch to offer good or evil pathways feels richer and more creative, while that reactive world allows both your moment-to-moment and week-to-week activities to shape your reputation and purity alignment. Moral-focused outcomes in RPGs can often feel underwhelming because they place increased resources on the centre rather than the extremes, and so being truly evil ultimately feels like saving the world with a scowl. Fable 2, on the other hand, is happy for you to go full Sith (with the lightning powers to match) and it largely works because it only has two paths to juggle.

It’s not yet clear if Playground Games will get this side of Fable right. While this week’s development update came with 50 seconds of pre-alpha gameplay footage, there was little in there that truly painted the picture of an authentic Fable game. Well, aside from the mandatory chicken kick, of course. But under a minute of contextless footage was never going to tell the whole story, was it?

What we can see in those fleeting seconds is a much more detailed world than Fable has ever enjoyed. The main character’s horse points to an open world with far fewer restrictions than the 360-era games, and an incredibly rendered forest suggests that we genuinely will be able to get lost in this new Albion. But it’s the brief shot of a city, which looks dense and knotty and full of life, that gives me hope that Playground Games have stuck true to the Sims-like simulation of society that makes Fable 2 so unique. I can’t wait to point and laugh at its children, dance on its pubs’ tables, and have a whirlwind romance with a randomer I meet behind the green grocers.

But all of that is a year away. And in that time you can revisit (or experience for the first time) the wonderful world of Fable 2. You’ll easily see why it’s so beloved, and why it’s so important that Playground Games retains all of its oddities. Because what we don’t need from this project is a Fable reimagined as a Witcher clone, or as a Baldur’s Gate-alike, or Dragon Age style RPG. We just need Fable to be Fable, farts and all.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

Nintendo Confirms Removal Of Switch Online SNES Game

Super Soccer will “no longer be available”.

Following yesterday’s update about the removal of Super Formation Soccer from the Switch Online Super Famicom service in Japan, Nintendo has now confirmed the local version of the game will also “no longer be available” later this month.

The official game page for Super Soccer on the Switch Online Super Nintendo service notes how this title will be removed from this digital game library on 27th March 2025 (or 28th March, depending on your location). The title is listed as a Spike Chunsoft release.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Nintendo Confirms Removal Of Switch Online SNES Classic

Super Soccer will “no longer be available”.

Following yesterday’s update about the removal of Super Formation Soccer from the Switch Online Super Famicom service in Japan, Nintendo has now confirmed the local version of the game will also “no longer be available” later this month.

The official game page for Super Soccer on the Switch Online Super Nintendo service notes how this title will be removed from this digital game library on 27th March 2025 (or 28th March, depending on your location). The title is listed as a Spike Chunsoft-licensed release.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Forge Your Legacy: 15 Best Tips and Tricks to Master Spectre Divide

Looking to improve your Spectre Divide gameplay? You’ve come to the right place. The Santai arena is packed with thrilling gunfights, tactical plays, and high-stakes competition. Whether you’re struggling with Duality or looking to optimize your Sponsor kit usage, these strategies will give you the competitive edge you need!

Don’t Sleep on Duality

Spectre Divide screenshot

Duality is one of Spectre Divide’s defining features – the capability to control two bodies with one mind. With Duality, you can defend two sites at once, cover your own cross, or even trade yourself. Mastering Duality is the key to becoming a top-tier competitor in the Santai arena- with these tips, you’ll get a head start on your path to the top.

  • Mind Your Positioning – Be careful not to place your Spectre too close to your active body. It only takes one well-placed grenade or planned rush to take you out of the round!
  • Split Your Presence – Don’t place both bodies on one site, or in one small area. It’s a big risk to concentrate your presence in a single location when you could be gathering intel or controlling multiple areas.
  • The Plant n’ Swap – Use Duality swap during a plant or defuse to cover yourself while completing the action. No need to have your team-mate cover you, leaving you vulnerable to enemy fire.
  • Silent Movement – Plan your approach carefully. Slow walking won’t trigger the sound alert for another player’s inactive Spectre, giving you the element of surprise. Jumping, falling, running, and sprinting will all trigger a “Spectre Warning” if you perform these actions too close to an inactive enemy Spectre.
  • Terrific Transfers – When you use your Puck to reposition your Spectre, enemies will be able to see the Recall line, which leads from your Spectre’s previous location to the new location of your Puck. Make sure to avoid giving the enemy too much information with your Puck throw.

Tactical Teamwork Tips

Spectre Divide gun pov

Gunplay is king in Spectre Divide, but your personal skill will only carry you so far.

  1. Resource Sharing –While you can’t drop weapons for teammates during the Buy Phase, you can buy for them directly! Plus, if a teammate is upgrading or changing their weapon; you can pick up their gun from the Team Inventory for free.
  1. Weapon Economy – Pick up dropped weapons during the post-round phase to add them to your team inventory for the next round’s buy phase (editor’s note: this doesn’t carry into the second half swap).
  1. Play the Objective – Planning your next move based on planting or defusing the ZEUS is very effective to secure the win. Many players get obsessed with chasing down kills, when playing the objective provides the best chance at winning!
  1. Money Management – During the Buy Phase, don’t handicap your team by failing to coordinate your purchases. Save your cash when appropriate and buy with your team to maintain the economic advantage. More money means better guns and equipment!
  1. Defensive Patience – Staying alive as a defender is crucial. Getting a kill and then falling back to retake a site with more teammates isn’t a bad call when getting overwhelmed. You don’t need a heroic last stand – get a kill, reposition, and wait for your team to regroup.

Sponsor Secrets

Spectre Divide screenshot

In Spectre Divide, you begin each match by selecting your Sponsor of choice. Sponsors provide you with powerful gear and unique abilities that you can use to get the edge over your opponents. You can pick from nine unique Sponsor kits; each with a distinct loadout to best fit your playstyle. Whether you love to throw explosives, set traps, drop smokes, or heal teammates— there’s a sponsor for you!

  1. Alternate Fire – Many Sponsor utility items have an “alt-fire” which allows you to use them in a unique way. Don’t forget to experiment with these alternate capabilities to give you even more options on the battlefield.
  1. Doorway Demolition – There are several destructible doors in Spectre Divide. Is there a pesky foe hiding behind a door? You can shoot the door to make an opening, and then throw Sponsor equipment like the Pinnacle Splinter Grenade through the hole in the door to clear with ease.
  1. Vector Dynamics – Use the Primary abilities passive reactivation to move your other body to the location of your placed beacon. This pairs very well with a fake rush, or mid peek play. Or, perform a more risky movement to give away your position, and then teleport to safety.
  1. Ryker Industries – Place your turret at a location different from where you’re standing. Your enemy will have to choose between you and the turret, giving you an edge either way: a slowed target or a distracted one!
  1. Morrgen United – Did you know that by using the alt-fire of Smoke Shift, you can actually teleport your Spectre into the smoke grenade? With this tip, you can cause mayhem behind enemy lines with ease!

Mastering Maps

  1. Quick Map Placement – During the Buy Phase, you can open the map to quickly place both your Spectre and your Active Body on the map! Then, double tap ‘X’ if you need to swap your bodies’ locations on the map, allowing for faster setup and early positioning.
  1. Rapid Recall Zones – Keep an eye out for bright green areas on the ground in certain maps in Spectre Divide. These areas allow your Spectre to reposition even quicker if you throw your Puck into the area.
  2. Take the High Ground – To reach advantageous high ground in most maps, you need your puck to toss up to that area; swapping to that position. Keeping both bodies alive gives you the most options for getting to hard-to-reach places.
  1. Fences – Certain maps have grated fences that block your movement, but can be shot through. While they will block your active body from passing, you can toss your puck through grated fences, repositioning your Spectre onto the other side.
  1. Window of Opportunity– It’s risky, but you can toss your puck through windows or openings on any map. Execute this maneuver well and you can teleport behind your enemies, or escape from danger when you’re pinned down.
Spectre Divide character art

With these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to dominating your Santai matches and claiming the win. Ready to forge your legacy? You can play Spectre Divide for free on Xbox Series X|S today.


Spectre Divide

Spectre Divide

Mountaintop Studios

☆☆☆☆☆
200
★★★★★

Get it now

Spectre Divide is the genre-evolving 3v3 tactical shooter driven by Duality.

Use Duality to control two bodies in real-time, letting you defend two sites at once, cover your own cross, or even trade yourself.

Master tactical gunplay and an arsenal of future tech to achieve infamy.

DUALITY: ONE MIND, TWO BODIES

Use Duality to freely swap between your second body—called a Spectre—at any moment to outplay the enemy team.

Strategically place your Spectre to cover multiple sites across the map, play two angles at once, and quickly reinforce teammates.

Death can’t stop you. Your Spectre is a second chance at victory, giving you twice the uptime so you can run it back and make sure to hit your shots the second time around.

TENSE, TACTICAL, GUNPLAY

Hold, peek, or push using aim-down-sights (ADS) gunplay. True-to-crosshair accuracy means you can shoot on the move.
Master combinations of 20 different weapons for infinite paths to victory.

FUTURE TECH ARSENAL

Pick from 9 Sponsor kits, each with a distinct loadout to fit your playstyle. Whether you love to set traps, drop smokes, or support teammates—Sponsors let you flex on the opposition. Every Sponsor loadout is integrated with Duality, so grab your guns, grab your gear, and craft new ways to outplay the competition.

CRAFTED FOR COMPETITION
Earn rank as a team or a solo competitor in highly competitive ranked matchmaking. Or get your reps in with casual and custom play.

Every match matters with Crews, a weekly engagement-based competition, where teams of 50-60 players compete to score the most points and move up the seasonal leaderboard.

Custom networking technology and a modern anti-cheat approach means you can focus on the win instead of the playing field.

VISCERAL, ANIME-INSPIRED WORLD

Spectre Divide’s style is rooted in sci-fi comic book art and the classic Japanese cel animation of the ‘90s. The world has a hand-drawn look and feel, capturing the same energy and momentum as the concept sketch.

The style presents clean visual reads, perfect for executing next-level plays.

FORGE YOUR LEGACY

No predetermined characters—this is your climb. Personalize the look of your own pair of competitors and crush the competition in style. Customize faces, hair styles, tattoos, outfits, and weapons, then live your journey to champion.

The post Forge Your Legacy: 15 Best Tips and Tricks to Master Spectre Divide appeared first on Xbox Wire.

The PSVR2 Price Cut Is Now Live at Target, Save $200 on the Horizon Call of the Mountain Bundle

The Sony PSVR2 Headset is the best VR headset for PS5 owners, but it has always been an expensive purchase. Thankfully, Sony announced just yesterday that the company would be dropping the recommended retail price of the headset down to $399.99. This price cut brings it more in line with the Meta Quest 3 line, which is currently $499 for the Quest 3 and $299 for the Quest 3S.

If you’re hoping to pick up the PlayStation VR2 headset for yourself at this new price, now you can! Retailers have already started adopting the price cut and you can purchase the PSVR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain Bundle for just $399.99 at Target. The bundle has already sold out at Amazon.

The Best PlayStation VR2 Deal Today

Along with the headset, this bundle also comes with a copy of Horizon Call of the Mountain which we gave a 7 out of 10 in our review. This game is exclusive to PlayStation, but that doesn’t mean you can only use the headset with your PS5. Sony released a PSVR2 PC adapter just last year that allows you to connect the headset to your PC and play SteamVR games. This has elevated the PlayStation VR2 headset to be one of the best VR headsets for PC gamers. You can check out our guide on how to connect it to PC for more info.

The 10 Best Jigsaw Puzzles for Adults to Piece Together in 2025

Solving puzzles may happen in your daily life from various word puzzle games like Wordle, or through strategy-based games and puzzle books, but piecing together a physical puzzle is a great way to focus your brain, relax and unwind. As a hobby for all ages, there are hundreds of jigsaw puzzles to choose from these days. However, as avid puzzlers ourselves, we put together a list focuses on what we’ve found as the most challenging yet rewarding puzzles with adults in mind, and even included some 3D gems in the mix.

TLDR: These are the Best Puzzles for Adults

What’s even better is they come in a variety of different styles and designs once put together. Whether you want the finished product to reflect your favorite franchise, game, artwork, or a piece of beautiful scenery, there are puzzles for everyone to enjoy. The below list includes a nice range of sizes as well, from 1,000 pieces to a whopping 3,000 pieces, so you’ll still have quite the challenge when putting them together.

The Legend of Zelda Hyrule Map Jigsaw Puzzle

If The Legend of Zelda games are right up your alley, this is an excellent jigsaw puzzle to have in your collection. Coming in at 1,000 pieces, you can piece together a full map of Hyrule to have in your home. It has a fantastic antique style that’ll be great for showing off once it’s all put together. Frame it and keep it, or pass it on to the next puzzler in your life to do next.

If you do purchase this puzzle with the goal of framing it and displaying it on your wall, we recommend purchasing some puzzle glue to help you preserve the finished product. We recommend RoseArt Jigsaw Puzzle Glue, which works great and dries quickly.

The Mystic Maze Jigsaw Puzzle

Puzzles from the Magic Puzzle Company truly are magical, and one of the best puzzle brands. Not only does this puzzle, called The Mystic Maze, feature over 50 easter eggs for you to find, but it even has a surprise ending for after you’ve finished putting it together. It’s an exciting twist on the usual puzzle, and well worth picking up for your puzzle and games collection.

See our guide to the best Magic Puzzle Company puzzles for more.

Marvel Mjolnir 3D Puzzle

If you’re looking for another unique puzzle, this 3D puzzle of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, is a great twist on a usual puzzle. This model kit comes with 8 sheets of 87 pieces for you to use in order to put this iconic hammer together. It even comes with a stand so you can set it up and show it off once it’s all done, making it a great addition to any superhero collection.

Marvel Infinity Gauntlet 3D Puzzle

This is another 3D puzzle from the same company listed above and features another memorable Marvel item: The Infinity Gauntlet. This puzzle comes with a few more pieces than Mjolnir – 14 sheets with 142 pieces – but comes with a stand as well so you can set it up for display afterward. If you’re a Marvel fan, this is a great investment to have, especially if you enjoy collectibles. Interested in other models? Check out our roundup of the 10 best LEGO alternatives or see more model kits for adults.

Star Wars: Galactic Child Jigsaw Puzzle

This jigsaw puzzle is absolutely worth picking up if you’re a Star Wars fan. Coming in at 1,000 pieces, it features Grogu front and center in his little pod with a gorgeous cosmic background behind him. It also comes with a full-color bonus poster to help you with piecing together this Grogu puzzle perfectly. Other Star Wars fans in your life will want to borrow this puzzle when you’re done; unless of course, you want to keep it and frame it!

Marvel Spider-Verse Jigsaw Puzzle

Venture into the Spider-Verse with this excellent jigsaw puzzle from Buffalo Games. This 1,000 piece puzzle is a sight to behold, featuring Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Ham, and many more Spideys. It even features some of his greatest enemies lurking around if you take a closer look. This Silver Select puzzle also comes in a giftable box with silver foil accents.

Phoenix Wooden Jigsaw Puzzle

Not only does this wooden puzzle look great once it’s all put together, but the pieces themselves also have unique shapes. You’ll find shapes of animals and nature items which are fun to spot as you admire the final pieced-together product. Our pick for this Phoenix jigsaw puzzle above comes with 200 pieces, but you can also grab a large version (290 pieces) or x-large version (680 pieces).

Stained Glass Flower Puzzle

This is another puzzle that’s well worth displaying after you’ve put it together. With 1,000 pieces in the box, this puzzle features a vibrant stained glass design with flowers blooming at the center. It’s a great one to work at slowly and appreciate the beautiful result once you’re all finished.

’80s Game Room Pop Culture Jigsaw Puzzle

Feeling nostalgic? This puzzle is ready to transport you back to the ’80s and ’90s, thanks to its retro style and assortment of pop culture references that you’ll be just as busy pointing out even after you’ve pieced it all together. It also comes with 1,000 pieces, so you’ll be able to spend plenty of time immersed in it.

Harry Potter Marauder’s Map Puzzle

There are quite a few really cool Harry Potter jigsaw puzzles out there and all of them make for great gifts for Potter fans. Our overall top pick within this franchise is The Marauder’s Map puzzle. From Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, this puzzle looks like the full map from the movies once it’s been assembled. The puzzle itself is from The Noble Collection, which is known for making some of the highest quality officially licensed wand and Harry Potter prop replicas.

How to Choose a Jigsaw Puzzle

As an adult, choosing the right puzzle for you requires a bit more thought than it did as a kid. There’s more to it than just finding a picture you like and making a purchase. If you’re new to the puzzle game, here are some key things to consider before you buy:

How Many Pieces?

The difficulty of a puzzle can almost always be directly attributed to how many pieces there are. For most adults a 100-piece puzzle will likely be too easy, but a 1000-piece puzzle might cause you to get frustrated and lose interest. Because of this, you need to consider how much time you’re willing to dedicate before you choose a piece count. If you want something you can finish in a single afternoon, a 500-piece puzzle is likely enough of a challenge.

How Big Is It?

Another thing to consider when purchasing a jigsaw puzzle is how big it is once its completed. If you purchase a massive 2000-piece puzzle that won’t fit on your table, you may have trouble ever finishing it. Make sure you have enough room available that you’ll be able to slowly piece your puzzle together over multiple days. You can also buy yourself a good puzzle table or board if you need extra space.

Do You Plan on Displaying It?

Perhaps the most important factor in your puzzle purchase is what you plan on doing with your puzzle once you’re done. If you are looking for something that’s just fun to put together, you will want to focus more on the number of pieces and how the colors fit together in the image. However, if you’re looking for something to display when you’re done, you’ll want something that looks more like a work of art. You’ll also likely need to purchase puzzle glue and a frame, depending on what type of puzzle it is.

Need a better table for puzzling? Check out our picks for the best board game tables and board game storage that work great for all of your puzzles as well.

Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.