New bosses incoming.
Inti Creates has today released the first major update for the Castlevania-inspired character-swapping adventure Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark.
This one brings the game up to ver. 1.2.1 (a small follow-up accompanied the “major” part of the update) and adds a handful of new features like a fresh ‘Arena’ event, new boss fights, an in-game achievement system for Switch and more.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone have a new premium emote that lets you hide in a cardboard box — and of course players are abusing it.
Call of Duty has seen its fair share of microtransactions dubbed pay-to-win by the community. The infamous Roze skin, which was incredibly hard to see, ended up being changed for battle royale Warzone. The developers of Call of Duty recently ended up changing a Terminator skin for similar reasons. But this cardboard box emote may be the most pay-to-win of them all.
It’s part of the premium 2,400 COD Points Cardboard Commando bundle, which turns your soldier and weapons into cardboard. Fun at first glance, and certainly in-keeping with Call of Duty’s penchant for goofy skins. But it’s the Surprise Gift emote included in the bundle that has raised more than a few eyebrows within the Call of Duty community.
That’s because the emote literally lets you hide in a cardboard box, then after a few seconds jump out for a surprise. You can imagine how this might help you out in the battlefield, like a Prop Hunt on-demand. It boggles the mind how this one was allowed into Call of Duty, especially in Warzone, which can end up being as much about hiding as it is about killing.
One player, Dr.ChubzDPT on X / Twitter, showcased some Call of Duty cardboard box abuse in a video alongside the post: “Abusing the most broken emote in Warzone history.”
Abusing the most broken emote in Warzone history with @Timmy2Cans pic.twitter.com/9gOe8Nhbj8
— Dr.ChubzDPT (@chubzdpt) April 27, 2025
The emote has more than a whiff of Metal Gear Solid about it. In Hideo Kojima’s famous single-player stealth series, Solid Snake can famously move about while inside a cardboard box, flummoxing unsuspecting guards who seem none the wiser.
In the competitive multiplayer Call of Duty series though, it’s a different story, with some saying this cardboard box has no place in the game. It’s worth pointing out that others are saying it’s all a bit of fun, and that the cardboard itself is big enough to stand out.
“Literally nobody should be falling for a giant cardboard box,” said X / Twitter user Part Timer. “But it is hilarious.” “I’m shooting every box from now on,” commented X / Twitter user SteamyTycoon.
Warzone, with its recently launched return to Verdansk, is generally speaking in a good place, with fans loving the nostalgia fuelled return to the map that started it all. Check out IGN’s sweeping interview with the developers behind Verdansk to find out how they went about it.
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.
A former PlayStation narrative director is petitioning the creators of the Until Dawn movie to credit the game’s writers in the film.
As spotted by Eurogamer, Kim MacAskill’s petition is “calling upon Sony, a leader in the gaming world, to set a precedent for change by revising the Until Dawn credits” by “asking for them to revise their approach to IP crediting, particularly in transmedia adaptations.”
“I’ve just left Until Dawn where the film director, writers, etc, were all credited, but instead of [Sony] mentioning the leading game dev(s) who created this ICONIC game you’re clearly proud of, [Sony] just wrapped it as ‘based on the Sony game’,” MacAskill wrote.
“They spent years breaking their brains to make something incredible, and the world DESERVES to know their names… instead… No credit. No thanks. No honor.”
MacAskill went into more detail on a LinkedIn post, asking what the difference was between HBO’s adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us — which credits both the studio itself and Neil Druckmann as both writer and director — and the Until Dawn movie.
The director said Sony execs “firmly told” her that “the IP I personally created would NEVER be credited to me as I was salaried (no royalties, no control, no ownership, no acknowledgement)”, addressing Sony directly with: “I am struggling with the difference between Neil Druckmann’s favor and that of others in your company.”
The creative director said that when she enquired about the rights to the intellectual property she created while working for Sony, a company rep told her the megacorp “understood” her position but “this is not something that [Sony] can do,” and that it was “nothing personal” — “this is not specifically for you, but this is completely firm-wide.”
“All I wanted was to be credited and to potentially have enough ownership for adaptation,” she added.
“I am asking for [Sony] to revise their approach to IP crediting, particularly in transmedia adaptations,” the director wrote on the petition. “Providing an executive producer credit or acknowledgment equivalent would honor those creators whose visions and passion have given birth to these incredible stories and design, proving transformational in the entertainment landscape.
“Let’s advocate not only for the Until Dawn creators but for the integrity of the industry. By ensuring that creative voices are properly recognized, we can continue to inspire future generations of creators who dare to dream beyond current constraints. Sign this petition to urge Sony… and stand with all game creators… demanding well-deserved recognition in transmedia narratives.”
In related news, we reported earlier today that it appears one of the PlayStation Plus games for May 2025 will be Until Dawn Remastered. It could be a means of promoting the new Until Dawn movie, which released just ahead of the weekend. It didn’t particularly impress us; we awarded it 5/10, writing in IGN’s Until Dawn movie review: “Until Dawn is more disappointing than deadly, leaving all the promise of the horror game behind for a jumble of horror-movie re-creations.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Last April, Baldur’s Gate 3 developers Larian announced that they were working on two new games, neither of which is Baldur’s Gate 4. Now, fresh from the labour of pumping BG3 full of bees, Larian boss Swen Vincke has shared a little more about how Belgium’s finest mindflayer-wranglers are organising development of these mystery projects.
It looks like one of the PlayStation Plus games for May 2025 has leaked.
While nothing is confirmed by Sony yet, rumor has it teen slasher horror romp Until Dawn will be a free download for PlayStation players in May. Although the key art certainly suggests it’s the Until Dawn Remastered that’s coming, rather than the 2014 original, it’s not entirely clear; we’ll confirm just as soon as we know for sure.
PlayStation Plus is an online gaming service for PlayStation platforms that includes free monthly games, limited-time trials, online multiplayer, and member-exclusive discounts. It also includes a catalog of hundreds of current and classic games for Extra and Premium members, although the monthly free games are available to all players, regardless of their subscription tier.
As speculated by some members of the PlayStation subreddit (thanks, PushSquare), this could be a means of promoting the new Until Dawn movie, which released just ahead of the weekend. It didn’t particularly impress us; we awarded it 5/10, writing in IGN’s Until Dawn movie review: “Until Dawn is more disappointing than deadly, leaving all the promise of the horror game behind for a jumble of horror-movie re-creations.”
That’s the same score we awarded the 2024 remaster, calling the game an “overpriced and under-featured remake that seems less like a must-have bit of moonlit murder and something closer to daylight robbery” in IGN’s Until Dawn Remastered review. Supermassive’s 2015 original fared much better, getting a 7.5/10 from us.
22 games are set to be pulled from the PlayStation Plus library next month, including Grand Theft Auto 5, Payday 2: Crimewave Edition, and the last playable versions of first-party titles Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2. As a result, Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2 will now completely disappear for modern consoles.
Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
A long time ago in, well, this galaxy, actually, Quantic Dream announced that they were making Star Wars Eclipse, a cinematic adventure from the High Jedi era in which everybody can die. Alice Bee (RPS in peace) poured soothing oil over the flames of hype by saying it was probably going to be rubbish, citing reports of abusive working conditions. NetEase acquired Quantic Dream in 2022. Then, nothing was shown for many years. The world froze in anticipation like Han Solo doing jazz hands through carbonite.
Now, finally, some news, albeit the unofficial kind. Leaked concept artworks and pitching documents have shown off a few of the new game’s races.
Who do SKU think you’re kidding?
An Emmy award-winning audio engineer has taken to social media in order to call out his local GameStop store, which he claims has been attempting to force expensive Switch 2 bundles on its customers in an attempt to cash in on the high demand for the console in the US.
As first reported over at The Shortcut, Elea Tsentzelis, who has worked as an audio engineer on the likes of MTV’s recent Family Legacy, and won an Emmy as part of a sound team on ‘The Daily Mail’, posted that his local GameStop in Astoria, New York, was forcing unwanted screen protectors and other such accessories on customers who had rocked up hoping to secure one of a small amount of units available at the location.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The following article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2, episode 3.
This week’s episode of The Last of Us takes a moment to grieve and breathe after last week’s showstopper. It also takes a little detour from the game; much of this episode depicts the reaction of Jackson’s people to the events they’ve just suffered, and their vote on if they should pursue Abby or not. This is all original material for the show, and so there’s actually very few scenes in this episode that are taken straight from the game.
There are four key sequences from this episode that are recreations of moments from the game, and here we’ve compared them against the original source material, analysing what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. You can see both versions in the video above, or read on below for our written explanations.
Following the harrowing murder of Joel in episode 2, Ellie visits her deceased father-figure’s house to mourn. As in the game, the front yard is covered in flowers left by the residents of Jackson. Unlike the game, though, Ellie enters alone rather than accompanied by Dina.
The show’s version of Joel’s house features many of the same props that decorated this location in the game, including his workshop room full of carved animals. In Joel’s bedroom, the bed linen is the same blue and white sheets. More importantly there’s the same red box on the bed that contains his signature items: the broken watch and his revolver. Ellie takes these and holsters the revolver in the waistband of her jeans, just as she does in the game.
The need for revenge begins to rise when Ellie talks to Tommy about what happened. While the broad strokes of this scene are the same in both show and game, particularly in tone, the actual setting and words are not recreated one-to-one. In both versions Ellie is angry and frustrated that Tommy wants to be more sensible about their next move, and so tonally the scenes match. However, where in the game this conversation takes place in a quiet, private room between just the two of them, in the show it’s conducted out in the open with Dina present.
In terms of dialogue there are close matches – both versions of Ellie say that Joel “would be halfway to Seattle by now” if the situation was reversed. Both versions of Tommy also note that Jackson would be left vulnerable, although in the show this is a clear reference to the prior episode’s horde attack rather than the game’s more general assessment. In both scenarios Tommy says it’s ultimately up to Maria as to if they get to hunt down Abby, but in the show he says that it will need to go to a full town vote, while the game version says he expects there will be “folks she can spare”.
Ellie and Dina head out to Seattle on horseback in search of Abby and her group. In both versions Dina asks Ellie to recall the first person she killed, and Ellie proceeds to explain how she saved Joel from a bandit in the first game/season. While the show’s dialogue is not an exact match to the game’s script, the details are largely the same – Joel was attacked and Ellie pulled the trigger to save him. The conversation is longer in the game, however, as Dina reciprocates with her own story of her first kill.
Later, the pair discover an overgrown car, which they consider a sign that they’re finally close to Seattle. This is, again, broadly similar to a moment from the game, even if the dialogue line is not a one-to-one match.
Later in the episode we see Ellie and Dina camped out in a tent. Before lights out, Dina asks Ellie a question: how would she rate their kiss at the dance out of 10? This moment is a recreation of a scene from the game, but the timing and content of this conversation is notably different to the original game version.
In the game, Dina asks Ellie to rate the kiss while they are smoking marijuana at Eugene’s weed den. As we know from last week’s episode, this doesn’t happen in the show since it is Jesse, not Dina, who accompanies Ellie to Eugene’s den. It’s not just the time and location of this exchange that is altered, though. In the show, Ellie says that she’d rate the kiss a six, something that Dina is playfully upset about. In the game, it’s flipped – Ellie hesitates to answer, and so Dina says she’d score it a “solid six”. The two interpretations showcase very different dynamics; Dina in the game is much more confident and knows how to pull Ellie’s strings – she enjoys teasing her. Dina in the show, meanwhile, is depicted as more “teenage” in her approach, which emphasises the “young girls in the apocalypse” element of their love story.
For more from The Last of Us, check out our spoiler-free season two review and our spoiler-filled review of the third episode. We’ve also looked at how the changes to Abby have affected the way the show handled Joel’s death, and spoken to Kaitlyn Dever about how her version of Abby is “so much more” than her rage.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.
Hello and good New Week to ye, traveller! And my, my – what a New Week it is. We’re taking the desperate toil of feeding the Maw to strange new places. I’ll spell that out in a separate post to come, once I’ve caught up on emails during my absence last week and in general, remembered how to do my job, but you may already notice certain sinister adjustments to the format. I welcome any feedback and wanton abuse. In the meantime, here are some new PC games.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is set in Cyrodiil, the province in Tamriel home to the Imperial Empire. It is a fantasy setting packed with enough quests to keep even the most dedicated adventurer busy for hundreds of hours. But that hasn’t stopped some from probing the invisible barrier of its border for cracks — and even exploring the regions beyond.
Over the weekend, redditor GnoblinXD recounted their journey through Cyrodiil’s border and into Valenwood, Tamriel’s southwestern province and home to the Bosmer, or Wood Elves, and next door Elsweyr, a region featured in The Elder Scrolls Online. GnoblinXD found they were able to move through the invisible barrier set in place to prevent this sort of thing, and, from there, simply jumped their way across the river and up the cliff face in classic The Elder Scrolls fashion.
“I explored a bit and was surprised to find basically the whole landmass of the map was there, even if not detailed ofc,” GnoblinXD said.
Valenwood itself is a barren area, devoid of life, cities, NPCs, or even trees. There are a number of graphics and environmental issues GnoblinXD ran into while exploring here, which you’d expect given the developers of Oblivion Remastered never intended it to be explored in the first place. GnoblinXD tried to reach what they believe to be the Summerset Isles west of Valenwood, but fell afoul of the void. Reloading from saves set outside the bounds of Cyrodiil do not appear to work, forcing GnoblinXD to restart inside its borders.
If you want details, GnoblinXD uploaded a video, below, showing exactly how to get into Valenwood via this new border-breaking discovery.
Undeterred, GnoblinXD later uploaded images of their journey to Hammerfell, the province in the west of Tamriel rumored to be the setting of the upcoming The Elder Scrolls VI.
Bethesda has remained tight-lipped on where the next brand new The Elder Scrolls game will take place. All we have to go on is the game’s 36-second announcement teaser, which presents a towering stretch of mountains and a picturesque coastline overlooking a vast ocean. The prevailing theory is that the sequel will let players loose in Hammerfell – the central setting of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, as well as a visitable location in The Elder Scrolls Online. With tropical forests, harsh mountains and scenic coastal cities, Hammerfell’s depictions in previous Elder Scrolls games seem to align with the teaser, hinting that we may be set to explore the Redguards’ homeland once again.
To get to Hammerfell, GnoblinXD passed the southern Valenwood gap and walked around the port city of Anvil, the westernmost city in Cyrodiil, and up towards Hammerfell.
“After many an hour spent searching, I finally found my way to the other side of Cyrodiil’s northern border!” GnoblinXD said. “The region seems vast. Much bigger than the Valenwood/Elsweyr area. The landmass stretches way beyond render-distance, so who knows how far it goes… Likely there is nothing here, but I’m intrigued nonetheless.”
Now here’s where things get really interesting. GnoblinXD tried to find the coastline from the The Elder Scrolls VI teaser, walking west towards where that area would be in-game, but ended up falling off the edge of the map (“I didn’t die, but now I’m stuck in the backrooms of Oblivion, lol.”).
Perhaps GnoblinXD will eventually be able to find that area, or perhaps another player will manage it. Either way, the challenge is set for a glimpse at what may end up being the setting of one of the most-anticipated video games ever.
“I got here using no mods, glitches or console commands, my game is entirely vanilla,” GnoblinXD insisted. “Oh, and it’s kind of funny that Hammerfell seems thoroughly covered in forests while Valenwood had no trees at all, lol.
“Anyway, time for me to do some exploring, might update more later :)”
And so they did, this time pictures of a journey into the aforementioned Elsweyr. Elsweyr is of course home to the Khajiit, the playable bestial and feline race feature in all the main The Elder Scrolls games so far.
What’s brilliant about this out of bounds area is that from within it you can see what very much looks like The Throat of the World, the highest mountain of Tamriel and perhaps the most iconic location in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It is here that the Dragonborn climbs the Seven Thousand Steps to the ancient monastery of High Hrothgar, where the order of the Greybeards dwells, and learns from them Shouts and speaks with the dragon, Paarthurnax.
That’s right, you can go to Skyrim in Oblivion Remastered, but you can’t actually travel far enough in to get to The Throat of the World or see any sign of life.
This is so cool. If you go to the edge of the map in Oblivion Remastered, you can see Skyrim’s tallest mountain, The Throat of the World, off in the distance. This was not in the original game pic.twitter.com/oilOVpeuXF
— sackchief 🍂 (@sackchief) April 24, 2025
“Much like Valenwood, Elsweyr is quite barren once you leave the border area with Cyrodiil,” GnoblinXD explained. “Unlike Valenwood, however, I suppose the lack of flora and fauna is somewhat more lore-accurate. With that said I found neither cats nor deserts, unfortunately, and most heartbreaking of all, no Moon Sugar 🙁
“I ran around a bit looking for anything of interest, taking some pictures along the way. I decided to see how far south you could go. Well, it turns out you can go quite far. After reaching and going beyond the southern edge of Elsweyr, there seemed only to be endless sea, so I decided to head east towards Black Marsh instead.
“And, oh boy, Black Marsh is definitely… uh… Unique, let’s say. I might make a post about it at some point if people want to see. I didn’t see how far east I could go, but very interestingly there is a HUGE landmass beyond the far eastern edge of the map.”
GnoblinXD is still mid-journey outside Cyrodiil, and may uncover even more areas to explore and famous landmarks looming over the horizon. They managed to find their way to both the Morrowind and Skyrim side of the border, but the walkable area doesn’t extend far. “So no selfies from the Throat of The World, unfortunately :(“ GnoblinXD said. However, after their initial post blew up on reddit (19,000 upvotes and counting), it seems others may make discoveries of their own. And so it has proven. “Went to Hammerfell a game early lol,” said X / Twitter user @Mar_Animation.
Went to Hammerfell a game early lol.#Oblivion #OblivionRemastered pic.twitter.com/EBB9abBGMD
— River (@maranimation.bluesky.social) (@Mar_Animation) April 27, 2025
Me just generally frolicking outside the map. Evidently someone didn’t appreciate me leaving Cyrodill.#Oblivion #OblivionRemastered pic.twitter.com/5N1yZifQD3
— River (@maranimation.bluesky.social) (@Mar_Animation) April 27, 2025
We’ve got a comprehensive guide to everything you’ll find in Oblivion Remastered, including an expansive Interactive Map, complete Walkthroughs for the Main Questline and every Guild Quest, How to Build the Perfect Character, Things to Do First, every PC Cheat Code, and much more.
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.
