Joy-Con drift has been a major talking point throughout the Switch’s lifecycle and if you’re worried about it making an unwanted return next-generation, there might be some good news on the horizon.
The tech experts at iFixit recently did a teardown of Nintendo’s sound clock ‘Alarmo’ and it appears to be using the “more reliable” Hall effect sensors. The teardown reveals a “magnet and Hall effect sensor” located inside the rotary dial button at the top of the device.
One of the most memorable moments in the entire Assassin’s Creed series happens near the start of Assassin’s Creed 3, when Haytham Kenway has finished rounding up his band of assassins in the New World. Or at least, the player is led to believe they’re assassins. Haytham, after all, uses a hidden blade, is just as charismatic as previous series protagonist Ezio Auditore, and has – up until this point in the campaign – played the part of a hero, busting Native Americans out of prison and beating up cocky British redcoats. Only when he utters the familiar phrase, “May the Father of Understanding guide us,” does it become clear we have actually been following our sworn enemies, the Templars.
To me, this surprising setup represents the fullest realization of Assassin’s Creed’s potential. The first game in the series introduced an intriguing concept – find, get to know, and kill your targets – but fell short in the story department, with both protagonist Altaïr and his victims being utterly bereft of personality. Assassin’s Creed 2 took a step in the right direction by replacing Altaïr with the more iconic Ezio, but failed to apply the same treatment to his adversaries, with the big bad of its spinoff Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Cesare Borgia, coming across as particularly underdeveloped. Only in Assassin’s Creed 3, set during the American Revolution, did the developers at Ubisoft devote as much time to fleshing out the hunted as they did the hunter. It lent the game an organic flow from set-up to payoff and, as a result, achieved a delicate balance between gameplay and narrative that as yet hasn’t been replicated since.
While the current RPG era of the series has largely been well received by players and critics, a wealth of articles, YouTube videos, and forum posts agree that Assassin’s Creed is in decline, and has been for some time. What exactly is responsible for this downfall, however, is subject to debate. Some point to the increasingly unrealistic premises of the modern games, which have you face off against gods like Anubis and Fenrir. Others take issue with Ubisoft’s implementation of a varied spectrum of romance options or, in the hotly-disputed case of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, replacing its hitherto fictional protagonists with a real-world historical figure, an African samurai called Yasuke. My personal nostalgia for the Xbox 360/PS3-era games notwithstanding, I’d argue it’s none of these. Instead, such decline is a result of the series’ gradual abandonment of character-driven storytelling, which has by now gotten buried deep inside its sprawling sandbox.
Over the years, Assassin’s Creed has padded its original action-adventure formula with a slew of RPG and live service-ish elements, from dialogue trees and XP-based levelling systems to loot boxes, microtransaction DLC, and gear customization. But the bigger the new installments have become, the emptier they have started to feel, and not just with regard to the countless climb-this-tower, find-that-object side-missions, but also their basic storytelling.
While a game like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey technically has more content than Assassin’s Creed 2, much of it feels wooden and underbaked.
Although allowing you to choose what your character says or does should theoretically make the overall experience more immersive, in practice I’ve found it often has the opposite effect: as scripts get longer and longer to account for multiple possible scenarios, they feel like they lack the same level of polish as a game with a more limited range of interaction. The focused, screenplay-like scripts of the series’ action-adventure era allowed for sharply defined characters that were not pulled thin by a game structure that demands its protagonist be compassionate or brutal on the whim of the player.
Thus, while a game like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey technically has more content than Assassin’s Creed 2, much of it feels wooden and underbaked. This unfortunately breaks the immersion; it’s too often very obvious that you are interacting with computer generated characters rather than complex historical figures. This is in stark contrast to the franchise’s Xbox 360/PS3 era, which in my humble opinion has produced some of the finest writing in all of gaming, from Ezio’s fiery “Do not follow me, or anyone else!” speech after besting Savonarola, to the tragicomic soliloquy Haytham delivers when he is at long last killed by his son, Connor:
“Don’t think I have any intention of caressing your cheek and saying I was wrong. I will not weep and wonder what might have been. I’m sure you understand. Still, I’m proud of you in a way. You have shown great conviction. Strength. Courage. All noble qualities. I should have killed you long ago.”
The writing has suffered in other ways over the years, too. Where the modern games tend to stick to the easily digestible dichotomy of Assassins = good and Templars = bad, the earlier games went to great lengths to show that the line between the two orders isn’t as clear-cut as it initially appears. In Assassin’s Creed 3, each defeated Templar uses their last breath to make Connor – and, by extension, the player – question their own beliefs. William Johnson, a negotiator, says the Templars could have stopped the Native American genocide. Thomas Hickey, a hedonist, calls the Assassins’ mission unrealistic and promises Connor that he’ll never feel fulfilled. Benjamin Church, who betrays Haytham, declares it’s “all a matter of perspective,” and that the British – from their point of view – see themselves as the victims, not the aggressors.
Haytham, for his part, tries to shake Connor’s faith in George Washington, claiming the country he’ll create will be no less despotic than the monarchy from which the Americans sought to liberate themselves – an assertion which rings all the more true when we discover that the command to burn down Connor’s village wasn’t given by Haytham’s henchman Charles Lee, as previously thought, but Washington. By the end of the game, the player has more questions than answers – and the story is stronger for it.
Looking back on the franchise’s long history, there is a reason why one track from the Jesper Kyd-composed Assassin’s Creed 2 score, “Ezio’s Family,” resonated with players to the point of becoming the series’ official theme. The PS3 games, particularly Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3, were – at their core – character-driven experiences; the melancholic guitar strings of “Ezio’s Family” weren’t meant to evoke the game’s Renaissance setting so much as Ezio’s personal trauma of losing his family. As much as I admire the expansive worldbuilding and graphical fidelity of the current generation of Assassin’s Creed games, my hope is that this out-of-control franchise will someday scale itself down, and once again deliver the kind of focused, tailor-made stories that made me fall in love with it in the first place. Sadly, in a landscape dominated by sprawling sandboxes and single-player games with live service-style ambitions, I fear that’s just not “good business” anymore.
Tim Brinkhof is a freelance writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at NYU, he has gone on to write for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.
V Boxes are an underrated way to get booster packs at retail prices. You get promo cards and an oversized collectible card too. Trying to track down Lost Origin, Astral Radiance, or Brilliant Stars booster packs without paying inflated prices is bloody impossible as Pokémania 2025 rolls on. Single packs from these sets can now cost £5 to £10 each, especially for the more popular expansions. That’s where Pokémon V Boxes come in.
Pokémon TCG: Hisuian Electrode V Box
The Hisuian Electrode V Box is available for £19.53 and includes two Lost Origin packs, one Astral Radiance pack, and one Brilliant Stars pack.
Pokémon TCG: Virizion V Box
The Virizion V Box is available for £19.99 and includes two Lost Origin packs, one Astral Radiance pack, and one Fusion Strike pack.
V Boxes are an underrated way to get booster packs at retail prices . As a bonus, you get promo cards and an oversized collectible card. Trying to track down Lost Origin, Astral Radiance, or Brilliant Stars booster packs without paying inflated prices is bloody impossible as Pokémania 2025 rolls on. Single packs from these sets can now cost £5 to £10 each, especially for the more popular expansions. That’s where Pokémon V Boxes come in.
These boxes contain four booster packs and cost under £20, meaning you’re paying under £5 per pack while also getting a couple of foil promo cards and an oversized card. If you’re still trying to complete your Sword and Shield-era collections, this is one of the best ways to do it at retail price.
Lost Origin boosters are my main target (Giratina V Alt-Art is my dream pull), Hisuian Electrode V Box is the best choice. It includes two Lost Origin packs along with Astral Radiance and Brilliant Stars, two sets loaded with Trainer Gallery hits. Considering individual packs can run you £6 or more on eBay, this is an easy win.
Want Lost Origin packs but don’t mind swapping out Brilliant Stars for Fusion Strike? Virizion V Box is another bargain. Fusion Strike has some strong chase cards, including Gengar VMAX and Espeon VMAX Alt-Art, so it’s well worth ripping open. Lost Origin’s Giratina V, Astral Radiance’s Origin Forme Dialga, or Brilliant Stars’ Charizard VSTAR are all solid reasons to grab these V boxes before they sell out or go out of print. Both aren’t far off.
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
Tetsuya Takahashi’s Xenoblade Chronicles series began its journey on the Wii in 2010, but it’s on the Switch where the RPG series has really taken off.
With two sequels, plus huge prequel DLC adventures for both, Monolith Soft’s RPG series has established itself as one of the jewels in Nintendo’s crown. And with the Definitive Edition ports of both the original Xenoblade Chronicles and the underappreciated Xenoblade Chronicles X for Wii U, all the entire series is no playable on a single console.
The GameCube generation ended years ago, but the controller for this system is still a popular choice for many Nintendo enthusiast when it comes to select titles. If you are hoping to see support for this particular gamepad on the Switch 2 in some way or form, you might be in luck.
If you’re interested in unusual or innovative games, then Maps of Misterra should be on your radar, especially since it’s currently selling at a hefty sale discount. It normally runs in the $30 range, but Amazon currently has it on sale for $12.99, which is less than half price. That’s quite a deal on a game that’s worth a look.
Maps of Misterra on Sale for $12.99
In Maps of Misterra, players are cartographers, seeking to chart an unknown island. You’ll start with some end-game goals of what you think the island is supposed to look like, and initially you’ll place terrain tiles on a shared board trying to match that map. But exploration is a tricky business and you can be mistaken: other players can overwrite your placements with their own until someone takes an extra action to confirm that tile, fixing it in place. Terrain effects, such as being able to see further atop mountains, or travel further over steppe, lend extra weight to the strategy and flavor to the theme.
The result of this clever, two-step, discover and confirm mechanic is a fascinating dynamic and interactive puzzle where your goals push and pull against those of other players, and the island takes shape around them. This also provides a real sense of revelation, of venturing into the unknown as every version of the island is different.
If you enjoy getting into the theme of a game, you can also have a great time loudly proclaiming that your suggestions are the absolute truth against the nonsense other players are trying to foist on the map. It’s fun as a solo board game, too, against an automated opponent so you still get the sense of playing against an active player. The slightly messy interaction might put off some players, but at this price it’s worth a look for its sheer oddness.
See more cool board games
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelance writer for IGN, specializing in tabletop games. You can reach him on BlueSky at @mattthr.bsky.social.
With all the trailers, showcases, and dev diaries that can lead up to a game’s launch nowadays, it’s harder than ever for one to be a real surprise – and that’s especially true of a multiplayer first-person shooter when, like me, you are a Certified Old Gamer™ who’s been playing them since the genre began. Yet FragPunk has done just that. What I worried might end up being a Valorant clone with a card gimmick and a big list of other buzzword features has instead impressed me with how fresh it all feels. That said, a messy mishmash of in-game currencies and rewards hurts the fun that can come from leveling up and chasing cosmetics.
In many ways, FragPunk reminds me of a reverse Ship of Theseus. If every component of a game came from somewhere else, does it eventually become something original? It’s hard to say, but the result here is quite amusing regardless. Like Overwatch, it has very distinct characters with big personalities and unique tools to match them. Like Valorant or Counter-Strike, the primary game mode, called Shard Clash, revolves around teams of five competing to plant or defuse a Converter (aka bomb) or eliminate one another across multiple rounds. And like Fortnite, it has a deep bag of cosmetic items like costumes, weapon skins, stickers, and emotes to entice you to spend some money on this otherwise free-to-play shooter.
FragPunk’s playable characters are called Lancers, and they are an entertaining group to choose from. Some are relatively typical archetypes, like a sniper named Hollowpoint and her abilities that help reveal enemies. Others are way out there, like the punk rocker Axon, who shoots lightning from his guitar. Unlike Valorant, where abilities can give you an edge but are rarely what win a fight, Fragpunk places a much bigger emphasis on using them to dominate the map, which I like. When abilities like Broker’s rocket launcher can instantly erase someone, it feels good to use it yourself or devise a counter on the fly as you see it coming, like throwing down a shield wall as Nitro to provide cover and then returning fire from a remote controlled combat drone.
Naturally, Fragpunk isn’t all lightning guitars and rockets. Your standard assortment of shotguns, SMGs, assault rifles, and more forms the backbone of combat. I don’t mind that the guns really aren’t the star of the show here, but I do wish there was more variety to choose from. There are two options in each category you can select as your primary weapon, and they all shoot pretty much exactly how you’d expect. But the gunplay is at least smooth and responsive, and the fast time-to-kill does a good job of emphasizing the importance of positioning over raw gun skill.
The real star of the show is the Shard Card system.
The other aspect of shooting that stands out is how little movement affects your aim. Unlike Valorant, where stopping and popping is often essential if you want to be accurate, Fragpunk fully embraces running and gunning. I found myself repeatedly lagging behind my squad in kill count until a teammate pointed out that I’m better off treating gunfights like Call of Duty with powers – advice that put me right at the top of the next match’s leaderboard. That style of shooting isn’t necessarily better or worse than the more deliberate action of other games, but it does stick out as atypical for an objective-based tactical shooter in a way that’s a perfect fit with the general FragPunk vibe.
The real star of the show is the Shard Card system. Before every round, each team has three random cards pulled that players can then put Shard Points into, effectively voting on which ones will be active. The costs of their effects vary, and you earn more Shard Points either by getting kills or picking them up off the ground mid-round. Some Shard Cards are simple, like one that increases your movement speed, while others are extremely powerful, like another that forces the next round to play out as a melee battle – or one called Big Heads, which (as advertised) gives the entire enemy team overgrown, easy-to-hit craniums. A few are even downright weird, like Egg King, which causes everyone to lay an egg after crouching for 10 seconds, which you can then eat to regain health. It’s hilarious, utterly bizarre, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a shooter before.
I’m surprised by how much I enjoy the card-collecting aspect of FragPunk. You start with access to less than a third of the 169 total Shard Cards that are currently available, and you can earn more after completing matches. Getting more matters, as the cards that are randomly selected before each round are based on what each team member has unlocked. It’s pretty exciting getting a new card and reading what weirdness it’s going to introduce. I also appreciate that you can easily see your collection, read the effect, and, in some cases, watch a quick video showing you exactly what it does.
Rounds of Shard Clash go by fast – possibly too fast. In theory, one team is trying to plant the Converter on one of two objective points, which the other team would then need to defuse… but in practice, the overwhelming majority of rounds end when one team wipes out the other, often in just a few minutes. That means that matches rarely have the same sort of strategic back and forth that makes hard-fought games of something like Valorant so engaging. It also means that Lancers with abilities that have more of a nuanced, tactical focus have seemed less viable overall. I’d love to hunker down with Nito’s turrets and drone to hold a point, but so far that’s just a recipe to have all the action happen elsewhere. Hopefully some balance tweaks will arrive to make the objectives a more relevant part of the action.
The cosmetic hunt is too complex without having a lot of enticing options.
A match ends when one team wins four total rounds, but if both teams reach three wins before that happens, it activates one of my favorite twists: Duels. This has each team face off in a series of 1v1 fights in a small arena, and whoever survives sticks around to face the other team’s next champion until every member of one has been eliminated. Health and abilities don’t regenerate round to round, which makes it tough for one great player to run the table. The action is as exciting as it is tense, and spectating while you root on your teammate and wait for your own turn is thrilling, especially when you get the win that clinches the Duel and, by extension, the entire match for your team.
Ranked competition isn’t available until you reach level to 30, which can potentially take up to 10 hours. That’s a little on the long side, and I was pretty done with no-stakes matches well before I was able to start playing for rank. Shard Clash is the same in ranked, apart from the fact that you are now playing to six wins rather than four, but the random element of the Shard Cards might be a little too random in this context. It’s tough to be fighting with actual stakes and feel like bad draws are costing you wins. There’s an advanced version of Shard Clash you get access to once you reach Diamond rank that gives teams some control over selecting and banning cards to mitigate that, but I can’t help but feel like it should be the default for ranked competition across the board.
A few other modes add some variety, though none stand out. Simple Deathmatch is nice for shooting practice, and Duel Master is a similarly good gametype to train for those one-on-ones, though it not being the finale of a long match takes a lot of the drama out of it. Outbreak is the most interesting option: Like Halo’s Infection playlist, most players start with weapons while a few turn into Zombies, and everyone who is killed turns and starts hunting the survivors. Unfortunately the matches are much too long, and the mix of zombies with too much health and guns that slow them down tends to make fights frustrating for both sides.
Like so many free-to-play games, FragPunk relies on incentivising people to spend money on things like cosmetics as a source of revenue, rather than game sales. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that model, and it can even be a fun motivator if there are cool things to chase. Here, however, the cosmetic hunt suffers from a mixture of being too complex without having a lot of enticing options that make it feel worth investing in.
There are way too many different currencies. There is Gold, which you use to buy items and new Lancers, and there’s Glunite, which also buys items – those are both earned largely through playing matches and progressing along the battle pass. Then you can buy FragPunk Coins, which cost real money and are also used to unlock characters and items. If you buy into the premium version of the battle pass for 900 FragPunk Coins, which will cost you around $10USD, you’ll earn Battle Pass Tokens to spend on a different set of cosmetics. Meanwhile, playing ranked matches will get you Ranking Coins, which let you pick from an exclusive pool of weapon skins. That’s not to be confused with the Membership Pick, obviously, which you cash in for weapon skins from a different pool. And, of course, if you or create an in-game Club, you can get Club Supplies. These are all spent on basically the same types of things, but from separate catalogs, which creates unnecessary confusion with no benefit to you as a player.
It’s a mess, and that’s without including the additional currencies that will presumably rotate in and out for special events. It’s too scattered, and way too much to keep track of. It’s also hard to feel any interest in figuring it all out when most of the prizes aren’t very appealing. None of the additional skins stand out the way the best options in Marvel Rivels do, for example. Many of the things Gold (the currency you earn the most of) gets you are random pulls for small touches like gun stickers. The most valuable thing Gold can buy, the Lancers, are prohibitively expensive, resulting in a far too coercive push towards spending real money to buy new characters outright – when it took me 10 hours to unlock a single Lancer, that $10 price tag starts to look less like a suggestion.
Even the battle pass, a staple of games like this, misses the mark. There are very few rewards on the free tier of the 60-level pass, and they consist primarily of stickers, icons for your profile, and pop cans that give out random rewards. Paying for the premium tier gives you access to many more prizes, including several bland character and weapons skins… but there’s also an Ultimate level on top of that, which adds very little other than doubling a few of the random pull rewards, two weapon skins, and one Lancer skin. That seems absurd given the Ultimate Pass is more than double the cost of the premium version at a whopping 2500 FragPunk Coins, or around $25.
The developer of Bulletstorm and co-developer of Gears of War: E-Day, People Can Fly, has signed a deal with Sony Interactive Entertainment to develop a new game, codenamed Project Delta.
This comes from a report published by People Can Fly describing the agreement, which stipulates Project Delta will be made as a work-for-hire game, but does not provide further description of the project.
Just last December, the studio announced it was suspending work on its in-progress Project Victoria, and scaling down another in-development game, Project Bifrost. Prior to that in April, it announced it would be cancelling Project Dagger, which was supposed to be an action-adventure title in partnership with Take-Two interactive.
That still leaves People Can Fly with eight total projects in the works that we know of, including the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day in partnership with The Coalition. We don’t have a release date on that one yet, though the Square Enix partnership game, Project Gemini, was last known to be due out in 2026.
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.
Zynga has announced that it will be shutting down servers for the free-to-play shooter Star Wars: Hunters on 1st October 2025.
In a blog post shared on the official website, the developer shared that “We understand this news may be disappointing and want to assure you that this decision was not made lightly. Your passion and dedication to the game and its community have meant the world to us…”, confirming what would be coming to the game.
