Category: Video Games

Prepare for Monster Hunter Wilds with a look back at the series’ evolution on PlayStation

Twenty years ago, the original Monster Hunter first introduced players to its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and memorable monsters. Since then, the series has grown in popularity around the world, and been refined into one of the finest multiplayer experiences gaming has to offer. There’s still a special satisfaction that comes from taking down an unfathomably huge creature by the skin of your teeth,  coordinating with your fellow hunters, and using everyone’s weaponry and abilities skillfully to topple the most fearsome foes out there.

To celebrate 20 years of the series – and Monster Hunter Wilds’ upcoming February 28 release – let’s examine how the series evolved alongside PlayStation since its 2004 debut.

Monster Hunter | PS2

The biggest behemoths often emerge from humble beginnings. The game that started it all was released in Japan in March of 2004, with a North American release a few months later in September and a European release in March of 2005. It introduced the core gameplay that would define Monster Hunter in the decades to come: quest-driven progression, resource gathering and management, weapon and armor crafting, and the need to approach and attack ferocious monsters with strategy, planning, and perseverance to succeed.

By the series’ current standards, Monster Hunter looks a bit sparse, with only seven weapon types and thirty monsters (including many now-famous creatures like the Rathalos), but the game offered quite a bit of variety in quest types and difficulty. Also, the game was designed around online multiplayer when that was still somewhat of a novelty, even offering special event quests that could only be played online.

Monster Hunter did very well in Japan, and while Capcom worked on the follow-up, they released Monster Hunter G, an upgrade with improvements, new features, more monsters, and higher-difficulty quests.

Monster Hunter Dos | PS2

The true Monster Hunter sequel would emerge late into the PS2 era–and only in Japan. Monster Hunter Dos released for the PlayStation 2 in February of 2006, with new weapons, the additions of subquests, a unique day/night and season system, and the addition of armor upgrades, among numerous other small tweaks and improvements. Monster Hunter Dos was warmly received in Japan, and was the final Monster Hunter game on the PS2. But for the larger global market–and the future of Monster Hunter–Capcom was looking towards the PlayStation Portable.

Monster Hunter Freedom | PSP

Even before Monster Hunter Dos launched, Capcom wanted players to be able to take the hunt on the go. Monster Hunter Freedom, known as Monster Hunter Portable in Japan, launched in December of 2005 in Japan and in May of 2006 for the rest of the world. It was based heavily on the aforementioned Monster Hunter G, offering up both new monsters (including the debut of Yian Garuga) and high-level “G” rank quests for players to enjoy

In retrospect, it’s easy to see why the PSP felt like a true “home” for Monster Hunter: the PSP’s capability for adhoc local network play, along with its advanced graphical capabilities and analog control, fit the gameplay of Monster Hunter like a vambrace. It was followed up by Monster Hunter Freedom 2, which took cues from Monster Hunter Dos by expanding the weapon repertoire (adding series staples like the Hunting Horn and Gunlance to the armory) and revisiting Dos’s various locales.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite | PSP

“Phenomenon” is exactly the word to describe how huge the follow-up to Monster Hunter Freedom became in Japan. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite released in 2008 in Japan as Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G, expanding on the success of the previous game and transforming Monster Hunter into a household name. Freedom Unite would go on to sell a whopping 3.8 million copies globally, with many of those sales coming from Japan.

Building on Freedom 2, Freedom Unite offered a host of quality-of-life improvements to the core experience while adding more environments, more monsters, additional monster behaviors, and a host of new high-difficulty quests. It introduced the concept of CPU-controlled helper characters by giving solo players use of a Felyne companion to aid in battle–a feature which later games in the series would build upon.

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd | PSP

Hitting the PSP at the end of 2010, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd is another Japan-exclusive Monster Hunter title–though that didn’t stop it from becoming one of Capcom’s fastest-selling games ever. Portable 3rd pushed the PSP to the maximum, showcasing some of the best-looking visuals on the system and setting a standard for high-quality visual designs that the series would continue in later installments. Portable 3rd also marked the first appearance of Zinogre, a fan-favorite monster to this day.

Monster Hunter World | PS4

If there’s a turning point where the fervor for Monster Hunter became global, it’s probably 2018’s Monster Hunter World. Headlined by the fearsome Elder Dragon Nergigante, Monster Hunter World was a tremendous evolution of the series both graphically and gameplay-wise, using the PS4 to create a seamless hunting experience–in more ways than one. 

Not only were the tutorials and early-game experience improved for series novices, but the various “zones” that made up the large hunting environments (and necessitated transitional load times) were streamlined into one big, open space for an epic monster pursuit. And, for the first time ever, a Monster Hunter game was released simultaneously worldwide, allowing players from all over the globe to team up and experience the thrill of devising new hunting strategies together. True to the name of the game’s setting, it felt like a New World had opened up for the Monster Hunter series.

Monster Hunter World proved to be so successful globally that an expansion, Iceborne, released the next year, reintroducing some of the cold-weather mechanics seen in previous Monster Hunter titles. Monster Hunter World continues to have an active player base to this day.

Monster Hunter Rise | PS5, PS4

Monster Hunter Rise, alongside its main monster Magnamalo, vaulted onto PS5 and PS4 in early 2023. It brought with it a host of unique gameplay additions: the fast-traveling, aerial-launching Wirebugs, a new type of Canyne companion called a Palamute, and “Rampage” battles where hunters were tasked with protecting the village of Kamura from an onslaught of several monsters all at once–including particularly dangerous Apex monsters. Plus, alongside hunting and capturing monsters, you could actually commandeer the huge beasts for a brief time with the Wyvern Riding feature.

The already massive adventure grew even bigger with the Sunbreak expansion, taking hunters to the far-away Kingdom, adding several new monsters (including new leading beastie Malzeno), additional hunting locales, and numerous new skills for all of the weapons.

Monster Hunter Wilds | PS5

The evolution of Monster Hunter from cult favorite to Japanese sensation to global popularity has been quite a ride, and the anticipation for the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds has already hit a fever pitch. From striking new weather effects to new abilities enabled by a birdlike mount called a Seikret, there’s a mountain of new features for players to consider.

Last year’s closed beta drew plenty of interest from old and new players alike. Fortunately for those of you itching to get that Hunting Horn back out for a trip to the Forbidden Lands, you won’t have to wait too much longer– Monster Hunter Wilds will be releasing on February 28.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Is the Best-Selling Game of 2025 in the U.S.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is the best selling game of both December 2024 and the full year 2024 in the U.S., returning to the No.1 spot after Hogwarts Legacy took the crown in 2023.

This is according to Circana data and analysis by Mat Piscatella shared with IGN. The annual Call of Duty release historically is almost always the No.1. best-selling game in the U.S. each year by dollar sales going back to 2008, with a few exceptions. Both Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption II beat it out in their respective release years, and in 2023, Hogwarts Legacy took the crown. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was back on top this year, though it’s possible that victory is short-lived given Grand Theft Auto VI’s expected release late this year.

This year, Call of Duty was also once again the best-selling franchise in the U.S. for a record 16th year in a row.

EA Sports College Football 25, the No.2 best-selling game of 2024 and the No.3 best-selling game of December, was also the best-selling sports game in U.S. history.

Not a single Nintendo game cracked the top 20 for 2024, though that’s possibly because Nintendo does not share digital sales data with Circana, meaning all Nintendo first-party games on this list are only including physical sales in their rankings. That said, on the Nintendo Switch console, Super Mario Party Jamboree was the best-selling game of the year, followed by Mario Kart 8 at No. 2 and Mario & Luigi: Brothership at No.3.

Most of the rankings for the month of December were releases from earlier in the year or even prior years, given a low number of new releases. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was the only new release ranking in December, at No.14. Because Circana tracks in dollar sales, we don’t see new releases Marvel Rivals (free-to-play) or Path of Exile 2 ($30, as opposed to $60) on the top-selling games list. However, both ranked on Circana’s tracking of the top games in the U.S. by Steam MAUs (No.1 and No.3 for December, respectively) and Marvel Rivals was also No.3 on PS5 and Xbox Series by MAUs.

For the full year, content spending in the U.S. increased by 2% to $50.6 billion, the second highest total for content spending in U.S. history, behind 2021’s $52 billion. There was an 11% drop in console content spending, but it was balanced out by growth in all other content areas. For December by itself, video game content spending was down 5% year over year to $5.8 billion. There was a 21% drop in console content spending in December, but PC content spending grew 13%.

Hardware spending for 2024 dropped 25% from 2023 to $4.9 billion, with PS5 as the best-selling console of both the month and the year. Switch was second place for the year in unit sales, while Xbox Series finished second in dollar sales. Digital editions made up 45% of PS5s sold in the U.S. during 2024, and 44% of Xbox Series.

For the month of December alone, hardware spending was down 29% from 2023 to $1.1 billion in December. All three console makers saw the drop: PS5 hardware spending dropped 18%, and Xbox Series and Switch both dropped by 38%.

For the full year, overall spending on games was down 1.1% to $58.7 billion. For December, total spending dropped 8.9% year over year to $7.5 billion.

The top 20 best-selling games in the U.S. for the month of December, based on dollar sales:

  1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
  2. Madden NFL 25
  3. EA Sports College Football 25
  4. EA Sports FC 25
  5. Super Mario Party Jamboree*
  6. Sonic X Shadow Generations
  7. Hogwarts Legacy
  8. Astro Bot
  9. Minecraft*
  10. NBA 2K25*
  11. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero
  12. Elden Ring
  13. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
  14. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
  15. Helldivers II
  16. Mario Kart 8
  17. Mario & Luigi: Brothership*
  18. God of War: Ragnarok
  19. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom*
  20. Just Dance 2025 Edition

The top 20 best-selling games in the U.S. for the full year 2024, based on dollar sales:

  1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
  2. EA Sports College Football 25
  3. Helldivers II
  4. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero
  5. NBA 2K25*
  6. Madden NFL 25
  7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023)
  8. EA Sports FC 25
  9. Elden Ring
  10. EA Sports MVP Bundle
  11. Hogwarts Legacy
  12. Dragon’s Dogma II
  13. WWE 2K24*
  14. MLB: The Show 24*
  15. Grand Theft Auto V*
  16. Minecraft*
  17. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
  18. Tekken 8
  19. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
  20. NBA 2K24*

* Indicates that some or all digital sales are not included in Circana’s data. Some publishers, including Nintendo and Take-Two, do not share certain digital data for this report.

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.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review: the ultimate DLSS 4 billboard

Readers, I have spent two full days in the benchmark pits to tell you what you’ve already guessed: the GeForce RTX 5090 is very fast, too expensive, and laden with more AI tech than Philip K. Dick’s cheese dreams. At least two of those points will, I’m sure, send the average graphics card shopper running, especially at a time when even game developers are growing suspicious of generative AI and its many-thumbed, robot-voiced nostrums.

Yet while there’s not much to be done about the RTX 5090 costing at minimum £1939 / $1999, hundreds more than the infamously spenny RTX 4090, its suite of more purely performance-focused artificial intelligence tools is – dare I say it – quite neat. These range from Multi Frame Generation (MFG), which is basically DLSS 3 frame gen but up to twice as fast, to DLSS 4’s general upscaling enhancements and even the ability to apply newer DLSS versions to older games. All this will come to the rest of the RTX 50 series as well, with some trickling down to the enter RTX range, so maybe the RTX 5090 is best understood not as a practical GPU purchase in itself but as a Picadilly Square-filling advert for its more affordable siblings can do.

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Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 Has a Completed Story at Square Enix

Square Enix has now completed the story of the third and final part of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy.

Speaking to Famitsu and translated by Eurogamer, Final Fantasy series producer Yoshinori Kitase and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi said development on the highly anticipated conclusion is progressing smoothly.

“I’m very satisfied with [the story], so I’m sure fans will be satisfied with the final chapter,” Kitase said, adding that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth creative director Tetsuya Nomura gave him “homework” to ensure this was the case.

The story of Part 3, which currently lacks an official name or release window, was required to have a respect for the original Final Fantasy 7 alongside a new level of satisfaction not felt in that game, Kitase said.

I’m very satisfied with [the story], so I’m sure fans will be satisfied with the final chapter.

Square Enix announced its plans to release Final Fantasy 7 Remake as a trilogy in June 2022, following the release of the first game which had fans questioning if the entire story would need a dozen parts to be told properly. This is because Final Fantasy Remake itself only adapted the opening few hours of the original game, up to the point where the party leaves Midgar.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth expanded the scope significantly, however, introducing the open world and thus covering myriad locations such as Costa del Sol, the Golden Saucer, and many more, including some new ones.

It brought the overall story up to the end of Disc 1 of the original Final Fantasy 7, which closes in both games with what’s arguably the most iconic moment in video game history.

Part 3 will pick up immediately after this, though very little is known about it so far. Development began in June 2022 but Square Enix hasn’t said when it will end, only vaguely noting it hopes to release Part 3 by 2027.

Something it has said, however, is that it “will not cheat” when it comes to the Highwind airship. This allowed the party to quickly move around the map in the original game but, now in the world of fast travel, many fans wondered how the iconic ship could be implemented.

“We will not cheat with the airship system [in Part 3] but take the challenge head on so it can freely fly all over the game map,” Hamaguchi said in November.

In our 9/10 review of the last game, IGN said: “Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth impressively builds off of what Remake set in motion, both as a best-in-class action role playing game full of exciting challenges and an awe inspiring recreation of a world that has meant so much to so many for so long.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Palworld Developer Pocketpair Moves Into Publishing to Release Tales of Kenzera Dev’s Next Game

Palworld developer Pocketpair is moving into the publishing business to release Tales of Kenzera: Zau developer Surgent Studio’s next game.

The newly formed Pocketpair Publishing said on X/Twitter it will support “a brand new horror game” from Surgent Studios, which released Tales of Kenzera: Zau as its debut title in April last year. The horror game published by Pocketpair won’t be a continuation of that universe, however.

“We noticed a pattern in the entertainment industry, and Pocketpair has given us the opportunity to make a horror game about it,” said Surgent Studios CEO Abubakar Salim. “Both Surgent and Pocketpair are well versed in taking risks. This game will be short and weird, and we think players will be interested in what we have to say.

“We’re still in earnest conversation about further projects set in the Tales of Kenzera universe, but this will be a standalone piece: a mile marker between where we’ve come from and where we’re going.”

We’re still in earnest conversation about further projects set in the Tales of Kenzera universe, but this will be a standalone piece.

No release window or even a title was announced, so the project is presumably still a while away from releasing. This is also separate from the Project Uso concept previously shared by Surgent Studios.

Pocketpair Publishing, meanwhile, is now accepting pitches from other developers. “We don’t want to tell you what to do.​ We don’t want to take control from you. We don’t want to change your dream or push you to make a certain type of game,” it said on its website.

Head of Pocketpair Publishing John Buckley added: “At Pocketpair, there is nothing we love more than games, and Pocketpair Publishing is our latest venture to help the world enjoy gaming even more. Game development comes with many challenges, but we want to ease that process as much as possible and provide an environment where creators can pursue their dreams.

“We are pleased to be able to support Surgent Studios’ new title as our first step. We deeply sympathize with their original ideas and passion and are honoured to help them realize their vision. We will respect the autonomy and vision of developers and work together to make great games for people all over the world.”

Salim, who is also an actor having played Assassin’s Creed Origins protagonist Bayek, Alyn of Hull in House of the Dragon, and the titular character in Tales of Kenzera: Zau, said “it’s an incredible honor to be Pocketpair Publishing’s first partner” in a follow up post on X/Twitter.

“This is the energy I want to see driving games in 2025,” he said, “developers lifting each other up, creating together, and pushing the industry forward.”

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a single player Metroidvania game which explores themes of grief and love. It earned a 7/10 in IGN’s review. “Tales of Kenzera: Zau’s action isn’t groundbreaking within the genre, but its elevated by a truly moving tale about how to go on in this world when your loved ones have passed on to the next,” we said.

The positive reception wasn’t enough to drive unbridled success, however, as Surgent Studios announced layoffs in July. Things grew worse as employees were put on notice for redundancy in October amid further funding struggles, meaning the support from Pocketpair Publishing will likely go a long way.

As for Pocketpair, it’s still battling The Pokémon Company and Nintendo’s patent infringement lawsuit, filed following Palworld’s record-breaking sales success.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Nvidia are pretty sure the RTX 50 series GPUs won’t melt like the RTX 4090 did

Some eager beavers who bought the GeForce RTX 4090 at launch were, quite infamously, rewarded for their investment with a defective power adapter, one that that could melt the plastic in their £1679 graphics card like it was Ronald Lacey’s face. Nvidia reckon that won’t be an issue with for the imminent RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, though, even with the former’s drastically increased 575W power limit.

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Review: Star Wars: Episode I: Jedi Power Battles (Switch) – Uncivilised But Not Unenjoyable

“Now I am the (re)master”.

Always two, there are. No more. No less. Master Yoda’s wise words may have rung true for the Sith, but it couldn’t be further from the rate at which Star Wars games were being pumped out in the early 2000s.

Some showed promise (Episode I: Racer, Battle for Naboo) while others were as dull as The Phantom Menace‘s trade agreements (Obi-Wan’s Adventures). The vast majority fell into a vague middle ground, a place neither Dark nor Light, where games passed the time well enough but wouldn’t occupy enough space in the mind to distract from the next cinematic entry.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Mashina is a chill stop-motion adventure with friendly robots from the Judero Team

You’d think Talha and Jack Co would have earned themselves a nice custard cream and a sit down after having just released Judero last September, but they’re back already with a crowdfunder for Mashina – a robo-stuffed adventure where you’ll “Dig, build, discover and mend in a chill, stop-motion world.” Now I think about, you could probably eat quite a lot of custard creams in five months, although less so if you were using your hands to build model robots. Have a trailer. It’s got robots in it.

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Here’s a free 80s-style ninja heist game where you race in splitscreen to loot a daimyo’s castle

Back in December, a bunch of cool games had the extreme impoliteness to sneak onto digital shelves while we were losing our hair, souls and marbles covering various gaming award shows. One of those games was Escape From Castle Matsumoto – which can be excused, admittedly, because it’s a game about ninjas, and we expect ninjas to be sneaky.

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Super Technos World: River City & Technos Arcade Classics Announced For Switch

Update: Worldwide release confirmed.

To kick off the new year, Arc System Works has announced Technos The World: Kunio-kun & Arcade Collection for the Nintendo Switch and multiple other platforms. This information was shared in the latest issue of Weekly Famitsu.

This new collection will launch in Japan on 24th April 2025 and first-print editions will include a bonus soundtrack. There’s no word about a local release, but we’ll let you know if we hear anything. It’s also mentioned how this collection will include “convenient features” like saving and loading to enhance experience, as well as some additional bug fixes.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com