Elden Ring, often considered one of the greatest games of all time, is now available for just $19.99 on PS5, PS4, and Xbox as part of the Black Friday sales (or $49.99 for the Shadow of the Erdtree Edition). This offer delivers a massive $40 discount from its original $59.99 price tag, making it one of the standout gaming deals of the season. With this bargain live ahead of Black Friday proper on November 29, it’s an excellent chance to grab the game at a fraction of its launch price.
For those looking for the ultimate Elden Ring experience, the Shadow of the Erdtree Edition – which includes the base game and the DLC – is also on sale for $49.99 at Best Buy, a $30 discount from its usual $79.99 price. That’s $10 better than Amazon at the time of publication, and the best overall Elden Ring deal for Black Friday as it’s a $10 reduction on the full experience.
If the $20 deal for Elden Ring sells out quickly, this edition also an excellent fallback, bundling everything at an equally as effective price. Whether you want to dive into the definitive version or just pick up the base game at a stellar discount for yourself or as a gift, both deals represent fantastic value.
When Is Black Friday 2024?
The actual date of Black Friday in 2024 falls on November 29 this year, but the deals have already kicked off. Leading up to the big event, retailers have begun to open deals online. Each day leading up to the event will slowly roll out more deals, which ultimately leads to massive discounts on Black Friday. We already know what PlayStation and Xbox are planning, and most general deals will be available well in advance, such as this excellent discount on Elden Ring.
More Black Friday Game Deals We’ve Found So Far
Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.
Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP didn’t arrive in the best state when it was released on the Switch and multiple other platforms in September. Fortunately, Dragami Games has been slowly improving Juliet’s zombie-hunting adventure.
With this in mind, the company’s CEO Yoshima Yasuda has now revealed the team has “finally” completed work on improving the frame rate in the Nintendo iteration. According to a translation, the team “picked out 45 scenes” where the frame rate had extreme drops and worked on reducing “processing load and decentralizing loading processes”.
Get ready for Magikrab’s Gauntlet, where you’ll hop aboard one of the Mer-line’s interdimensional trains and face off against old friends, foes, and bosses from your previous adventures. This thrilling challenge is unlocked after completing the main story—it’s the perfect test for those who believe they’ve truly mastered their adventures in New Wirral! The gauntlet can be tackled alongside a friend in online co-op – so grab your buddy and brace yourselves; this journey is going to be a wild ride!
Enough yapping, let’s explore the specifics of what’s in store when you board the Midnight Train!
The gauntlet train is a randomized series of challenging battle encounters, that increase in difficulty as you progress. Think you’ve mastered beast battle? Think again – these are tough battles that are sure to make even the most seasoned adventurer break a sweat! The train also includes:
Occasional carriages that contain chests instead of battles.
A rest carriage that heals you and saves your progress. You can also spend some of your winnings at Magikrab’s café here!
Boss carriages that will test your mettle – including Archangel fights that you are still able to challenge with a buddy!
The longer your winning streak, the more Fused Material you’ll rack up. But be warned, the Gauntlet is a double-edged sword — the longer you go, the greater your reward, but you also risk losing it all if you fail a battle along the way. Tap out and claim your reward or push it one more encounter, the choice is yours.
You’ll be facing off against many familiar faces as you go (whether as a friend or foe), but all of them have had significant upgrades to their tapes and stickers. Some of the encounters are only present in your gauntlet if you’ve met certain conditions. We’ll let you discover how this affects your run while you play!
This update also introduces the Sticker Fusion feature, newly added to the Harbourtown Town Hall. Sticker Fusion allows players with stickers that have rare and uncommon attributes to transfer those attributes onto other stickers, provided that the attributes are compatible. This gives you the chance to revamp your move stickers like never before using Fused Materials. Be sure to stockpile those Fused Materials, they’re a precious commodity!
We also have a new cosmetic DLC launching today!
The Fashion Pack is priced at $3.99 /€3.99 EU/£3.29 and will come with a ton of new looks for your character as they travel through New Wirral!
The Fashion Pack adds the following cosmetic items to the player’s wardrobe:
• Baseball Cap
• Flat Cap
• Twin Tails
• Bow & Bangs
• Foxy Cut
• Windswept
• Spikes & Goggles
• Swept Mohawk
• Flower & Fringe
• Beret
• Round Specs
• Trenchcoat
• Crop Top
• Tall Boots
Share your gauntlet progress with us by tagging us @ByttenStudio or, better yet, join our Discord where you can chat with other players, find groups to join, and share your biggest and best moments: https://discord.gg/byttenstudio
Welcome to New Wirral, a remote island inhabited by strange creatures you’ve only dreamed of, nightmares you hopefully haven’t, and a cast of brave folks who use cassette tapes to transform for battle. To find a way home you’ll need to explore every inch of the island, and record monsters to your trusty cassette tapes to gain their abilities!
Transform into monsters using… retro cassette tapes? Faced with the constant threat of monster attacks, the residents of Harbourtown, New Wirral choose to fight fire with fire. Record a monster to tape, then play it back to take on its form for battle!
Fuse monster forms. Getting close to your companion has benefits–while transformed you can combine your strengths to gain the upper hand in battle! Any two monster forms can be fused to produce unique, fully-animated new fusion forms.
Explore a rich open world. Certain monster abilities can be used in human form. You’ll need these to help you get around, solve puzzles, and locate dungeons. Glide, fly, swim, climb, dash, go invisible, or turn magnetic!
Travel alongside a diverse cast of human companions. Never fight alone! Form bonds, spend time together, and help your selected partner complete personal goals to become a better team.
Master a deep battle system. Take advantage of elemental chemistry to apply extra buffs or debuffs alongside your attack, or even alter your opponent’s elemental type!
Play with Friends!
Team up in online multiplayer to trade Beasts, Challenge your friend to 1v1 duals, or take on a fearsome raid Beast with up to 8 friends to reap great rewards!
Two theme parks are being planned based on Minecraft. Mojang are partnering with Merlin Entertainments to open the destinations, including rides, hotel rooms and shops, in the UK and US in 2026 and 2027. Merlin are the operator of existing theme parks and attractions including Alton Towers, Legoland, Sea Life, and Madame Tussauds.
Pokemon TCG Pocket continues to be ridiculously popular, but in the early days of the game there are only a limited number of ways to engage with other players. Trading still hasn’t been released yet, and battling only has one regular format that lets you start a match with a friend, or a random player. So in order to spice things up, the community is coming up with its own workarounds, including a brand new battle format that’s been very well-received so far: NOEX.
“NOEX” is a battle format with one simple rule: no EX Pokemon allowed. EX Pokemon, if you’re unfamiliar, are ultra-powerful monsters that are very difficult to defeat, but which award two points upon destruction as opposed to just one. Due to their sheer power, most good meta decks in Pocket are built around at least one EX card, and the end result is that you tend to run into a lot of the same decks over and over when you engage in random battles. For the last month or so, for instance, I’ve been playing a deck that revolves around Pikachu EX, and have been fighting a lot of Mewtwo EX, Charizard EX, and Starmie EX.
But in NOEX, all those cards are banned, which forces players to build decks around other Pokemon for some interesting combos. For this article, I engaged in a couple of NOEX battles myself. In one match I faced a Butterfree/Dugtrio stall deck that I’d never seen before that decimated my army of Nidoran, and in another I barely scraped out a win against a wacky Dragonite/Weezing combo thanks to a lucky final draw. It’s a fun format if you want to shake things up a bit.
Unfortunately, NOEX exists on an honor system. There’s no way to officially create your own battle formats in Pocket just yet, so players have created this by word-of-mouth. If you want to join a NOEX battle, simply select “Private Match” under battles, and use “NOEX” as the password. But you’re essentially on your honor to use a deck with no EX Pokemon, as there’s nothing in the system to stop you. Some players are already complaining about opponents bringing EX Pokemon to a NOEX fight and ruining their fun – an unfortunate hazard of a community-created format.
That said, it sounds like NOEX is otherwise going pretty well. Community members are praising it on Reddit, and while my personal experience is limited, the speed with which I was able to get into matches with others who were respecting the format indicates this might have legs. It also sounds like some players are suggesting other types of formats that can be done in the same way, such as only allowing a single EX card per deck, or no decks considered by the community to be “S-tier.”
Hopefully, it won’t be long before we start to see new features creep in that will hopefully eliminate the need for the community to invent stuff to do. We’ve already learned that there’s a “major update” coming in the near future that will include trading, and new booster packs on the way will hopefully spice up the meta a bit as well. Given how wildly popular TCG Pocket is, the updates can’t come fast enough.
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.
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over. Today, how Tim learned to love the lottery…
When I first played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 upon its launch, I was ecstatic to once again bond with memorable characters and explore open expanses teeming with powerful beasts. Then I was faced with a foe more repugnant to me than any other encountered on my Alrestian journey: Core Crystals.
Now through until December 4 Xbox Insiders can join a limited-time Console Playtest .
Build your first mech in three modes, battle on the worlds of the Wild Ten, and unlock a free Daybreak Sparrow Sticker for participating.
New worlds are calling! War Robots: Frontiers, a new entry in the smash-hit War Robots series, is coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One in 2025. To celebrate and welcome new Pilots on Xbox, a limited-time Console Playtest is available to Xbox Insiders from November 20 until December 4.
Get ready to build your very own mech fleet, squad up with friends, and take the fight to the Wild Ten in this online mech shooter. If you’re new to the War Robots universe, let’s brush up before you jump in the cockpit.
Battles Rage on New Worlds
Human advancement sees this future-set War Robots game rocket across the stars. The new setting known as the Wild Ten is a collective of planets that Dominions – mega corporations from Earth – are vying for control over, employing mercenary Pilots and their mechanical War Robots as enforcers.
From your base of operations on Tortuga, you can accept jobs from Dominions, then go out and battle across these new worlds. Storm the fiery refineries of Catalyst, plunge into the towering industry of Fissure, and traverse the city-spanning Spectrum in six-versus-six online battles. You’ll be beset by dynamic weather as well as enemy teams, so be sure to keep that metal in good shape.
Battles can be waged in three modes. Capture points for your team in Warp Rush, go all-out on destruction in Team Deathmatch, and make quick work of the enemy team in Last Robot Standing.
You Are the Pilot and the Engineer
Build a battle-ready War Robot, finetuned with a massive selection of Pilots, weapons, parts, and abilities. New unlockables can be found in a variety of ways to help you stay on top of new strategies and counters. Different War Robots and combinations can be used to experiment with different combat roles, and play to the strengths of your own personal playstyle.
When you’re in the midst of battle, you’ll have to manage the War Robots at your disposal. These mechs don’t come cheap, so respawns are limited. Optimize your fleet and coordinate with friends to give yourself a fighting chance, and adapt to the task at hand and the state of play.
Titanic Power
Pilots of the Wild Ten have made a new discovery: the Titan, a hulking power-up build with maximum damage in mind. These Robots are much larger and more formidable than their more standard counterparts. They’re powerful, but they also make for a large target. If you can build up enough power to unleash it, you might just turn the tide of battle… or go down in flames. Worth a try either way!
Titans come with their own quirks and abilities but have limited use per battle. Deploy wisely, and if you see the enemy team call their own Titan in, take it out with extreme prejudice.
Ready to construct your first mech? War Robots: Frontiersis now available to play on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One for Xbox Insiders, with the full game set to launch in 2025.
How to Participate:
Sign in on your Xbox Series X|S or Xbox One console and launch the Xbox Insider Hub app.
Navigate to Previews > War Robots: Frontiers – Beta.
Select Join.
Wait for the registration to complete, and you should be directed to the Store page to install it.
Battle in the Wild Ten star system in War Robots: Frontiers! Build and customize your mechs, squad up, and unleash the destructive power of your machines in this online multiplayer mech shooter.
MASSIVE MECHA MAYHEM
Shoot and smash your way to victory in 6v6 online battles. Whether you’re an attacker, tank, support, or speed-loving gearhead, there’s a playstyle for you.
GALACTIC BATTLEFIELDS
Storm the worlds of the Wild Ten in battles that rage across a vast, tactically rich map roster. Immerse yourself in this brave new galactic frontier with dynamic weather systems and satisfyingly stompable terrain.
ENGINEERED VICTORY
Construct the perfect mech and customize it with the huge selection of Pilots, weapons, parts, and abilities at your disposal. Switch up your builds with new unlocks to keep up with the competition!
TITANIC DESTRUCTION
Build up enough power to unleash your ultimate secret weapon: the Titan. This hulking power-up is built with maximum damage in mind, and armed with unique specializations and abilities.
I’ve been looking forward to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 since it was announced, but I might wait a while longer before trying to play it. It launched yesterday and currently sits at “overwhelmingly negative” Steam reviews due to long loading times caused by server issues.
