Category: Video Games

Daily Deals: Nintendo Switch OLED, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and More

The weekend is officially here, and we’ve rounded up the best deals you can find! Discover the best deals for Saturday, October 5, below:

Nintendo Switch OLED for $299.99

Here’s a rare deal that we’d normally only see during Black Friday. Woot! (owned by Amazon) is currently offering a brand new Nintendo Switch OLED gaming console for only $299.99. This is a guaranteed US model (not import) and includes a full one-year Nintendo warranty. Both color variants – white or neon red/blue Joy-Cons – are available. Amazon Prime members get free shipping, otherwise there’s a $5 shipping charge.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for $49.99

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is officially on sale at an all-time low price. This sequel to 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake brings Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, and Red XIII outside of Midgar for the very first time, with Sephiroth looming and moving in on his goals. This experience offers well over 100 hours of content, with 36 sidequests and a main story over 40 hours long. If you haven’t played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, now is the time to score one of the best 2024 titles out there at a discount.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder for $44.99

Super Mario Bros. Wonder was one of the best games of 2023, with a diverse offering of levels and abilities to discover. The Wonder Flower defies all expectations throughout each level, allowing for a Mario experience like no other. In our 9/10 review, we stated that Wonder “looks and plays like the true next step for 2D Mario platformers.”

Meta Quest 3 512GB VR Headset

Hot on the heels of the new Meta Quest 3S announcement, the Quest 3 has officially been marked down by a not insignificant amount. The 512GB model, which previously retailed for $649.99, is now priced at $499.99. The Quest 3 is a superior headset to the new Quest 3S. It has much better optics, with a higher resolution, higher FOV, and a thinner pancake lens design, and it boasts a higher maximum storage capacity.

Demon Slayer -Kimestu no Yaiba- Sweep the Board! for $47.99

Sweep the Board! is the latest game from Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba-, focusing on a fun, party-like title that is extremely similar to Mario Party. You play as Tanjiro, Nezuko, Zenitsu, Inosuke, and the rest of the Demon Slayer cast as they traverse through multiple party boards and complete minigames against each other. We’ve seen the Nintendo Switch version drop to $29.99, but this is the first price drop for PS5.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 for $39.99

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is available this weekend at Woot for only $39.99. This is one of the best games available on Nintendo Switch, filled with charm and all sorts of fun puzzles. With Halloween right around the corner, there’s never been a better time to pick up the game if you haven’t already!

PlayStation 5 Pro Disc Drive Available at Amazon

After having sold out for most of September, the attachable Disc Drive for PS5 Slim / PS5 Pro is back in stock at Amazon. If you plan on purchasing a PS5 Pro this November, you will need one of these to play any of your physical games. The drive will require you to connect to the internet once to register it, but after that you can use it offline.

Opinion: Hyrule Really Needs To Take A Look At Its Prison System

In the c(Link).

My first hour in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom left me with a single, unshakeable thought: God, Hyrule’s prisons are terrible.

Yes, I was besotted with how traditional the whole thing felt and still somewhat in shock that I had a brand new Zelda game in my hands a mere 18 months after its predecessor. But all that went out of my mind the second I saw our titular hero get thrown into a cell. Come on, there’s a flipping massive hole right above that bench that may as well have “Climb me!” etched into it!

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Community: Did We Miss A Switch Game You Love? Send Us Your Recommendations

Slipped through the net.

Oh, hello there. You must be here for our bi-annual Games We Missed callout.

It’s a familiar story. Loads of Switch games — too many, perhaps — and while the majority of the eShop deliveries each week are a load of old AI-generated pap, there’s also a load of great games which, unfortunately, we just aren’t able to cover with a review.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (5th October)

Is there an echo in here? in here..? in here……?

Well folks, another week and come and (almost) gone, and it’s been another fun-filled one in the world of Nintendo.

First up, our preview for Super Mario Party Jamboree went live and we think it’s looking absolutely fabulous so far. We also got a look at a rather fetching Zelda Switch Lite which had been modded to include an OLED screen, hall effect joysticks, and a bigger battery.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Video: Here’s A Look At The Latest LEGO Horizon Adventures Switch Trailer

Out this November.

Last month during Sony’s State of Play broadcast, a new trailer was released for LEGO Horizon Adventures alongside the release date.

Nintendo of America has now shared the official Switch version of this trailer ahead of the game’s 14th November 2024 release date. It still looks quite stunning on the Switch, but we don’t know what the performance will be like on the hybrid platform.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Comedy Horror FPS ‘Killing Time: Resurrected’ Launches This Month

Another blast from the past returns.

In June, the talented team at Nightdive Studios announced it would be teaming up with Ziggurat Interactive to release Killing Time: Resurrected – a remaster of the classic comedy horror first-person shooter dating back to the ’90s.

Now, in an official update, it’s been revealed this title will be revived later this month on 17th October 2024 across all platforms including the Nintendo Switch. Just in time for Halloween!

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Halo Infinite Is Officially Getting a Third-Person Mode This November

In some major (and pretty surprising) news for Halo fans, Halo: Infinite is finally getting a third-person mode this November.

343 Industries announced the news on Friday during a Forge panel at the 2024 Halo World Championship. For those who aren’t at the event, the announcement was also posted on X/Twitter, including a bit of work-in-progress footage of third-person mode in action:

As fans will know, this marks the first time a third-person mode has ever been officially offered in a Halo game. Senior community manager John “Unyshek” Junyszek and Skybox Labs senior software engineer Colin Cove offered a bit more information at the Halo World Championship panel, saying they’ll be starting with third-person Firefight mode in a future update, “but we also have the ability to do in PvP and control it in Forge,” per Cove.

They clarified that third-person will be supported at the mode level and that, with Forge controls, modes can switch individual players (or all players) between first- and third-person perspective whenever desired. It’s currently unclear if it will be available in campaign mode or restricted to multiplayer.

While this is the first time third-person mode has been available on an official level, a number of mods have added it to the game over the years and have been largely well-received by the community.

Halo Infinite first launched in 2021, receiving a number of new maps, modes, quality-of-life improvements, and other additions over the years. Some fans, however, had started to note a general lack of developer-made additional content for this year. With the Halo World Championship well underway, we wouldn’t be surprised if more Halo-related announcements were made through the weekend.

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Zelda Fans Are Overlaying the Echoes of Wisdom Map With A Link to the Past, and Making Some Surprising Discoveries

Now that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is out, more and more players are fully exploring its top-down, toy-like, open world. And they’ve gradually been discovering a pretty cool secret about its map: it “links” up almost perfectly with the map from A Link to the Past.

More and more players have been sharing posts on social media comparing the maps of Echoes of Wisdom and A Link to the Past, and have figured out that Echoes of Wisdom basically uses the same map from A Link to the Past… just expanded. A number of major landmarks can still be found in the same spots as in Link to the Past, though they’ve changed or aged seemingly with the passage of time.

What’s more, most of Echoes of Wisdom’s brand new locations exist outside the boundaries where Link to the Past’s map stopped, implying that civilizations like the Goron and Gerudo could have always existed in Link to the Past, they just weren’t accessible in that particular game.

We chatted with our own reviewer, Tom Marks, about this phenomenon, who agreed with the parallels. He pointed out to us that landmarks especially around Hyrule Castle will be familiar to Zelda veterans. The graveyard and church are in the right spots, and the hill where Link’s house was in Link to the Past is still there too, even though the Echoes of Wisdom Link lives in Suthorn Village.

There are other comparison points fans are finding. Eastern Palace, for instance, is still present in the same spot and even includes a sidequest. Where Kakariko Village used to be, Echoes of Wisdom has ruins, implying it was moved at some point. There are also Desert Palace ruins, Swamp Ruins is in the right place, and so much more.

Echoes of Wisdom is far from the first Zelda game that’s involved clever, if subtle, map tricks. A Link to the Past itself famously included both a Light and Dark variation on the same world. And when Tears of the Kingdom came out, we wrote about how its Depths was essentially an underground mirror of the surface.

What’s most curious for Zelda lore buffs will be whether or not this answers meaningful questions about Echoes of Wisdom’s place on the Zelda timeline. Could this in fact put Echoes of Wisdom in the timeline post-Link to the Past and Link Between Worlds? Or is this some alternate universe situation? We’ll need Zelda scholars to sort this one out.

As you look for these parallels in your own playthrough, check out our wiki guides and our own interactive map whether you’re exploring the similarities yourself, or just looking for more heart containers.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Talking Point: How Would You Fix Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom’s Most Frustrating Feature?

Natural selection.

We’ve been playing The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom pretty consistently over the past week and it’s safe to say we’re really rather fond of it. Sure, the frame rate could be improved (not that it bothers everybody) and the lock-on can be a little fiddly, but overall it’s a jolly good time and a fine return for top-down Zelda.

There is, however, one issue that we’ve come up against time and time again. A single thorn amongst the roses that makes every piece of adventuring feel more like a chore than it really should. We’re talking about that darn Echo selection menu.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Sword Art Online Developer Wants to Take the Series in a More Mature Direction

New entries of both the Sword Art Online anime and the games have consistently been released for more than ten years now. On October 4th, both the newest anime season, Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II, and the newest game, Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream were released.

SAO: FD is already quite different from the previous in the video game series, but we had to ask: What’s next for the Sword Art Online video games? Here’s what SAO: FD producer Shoehei Mogami and SAO game series producer Yosuke Futami had to say about the possibility of a more mature SAO game and the MMORPG-style SAO game they know fans want.

“Sword Art Online itself, the anime and the game, will keep going into the future,” Futami said. “We do want to bring SAO to the next level, maybe even to a higher-performing console.”

Futami also explained that while Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream is more character-based, they maybe also want to try to do something around the concept of SAO that if you die in game, you die in real life. That’s something they want to explore in the future, but Futami clarified they likely wouldn’t implement a permadeath mechanic because “the current SAO game fans might be angry and just might break their keyboard or something.”

“We want to try to have more for those SAO fans who are adults and experience an SAO which is more mature,” Futami explained.

We want to try to have more for those SAO fans who are adults and experience an SAO which is more mature

The future of SAO probably also wouldn’t be something like a Souls-like, and because of the difficulty behind development, neither an MMORPG.

“MMORPGs are very difficult to make,” Futami said, joking that in Japan it’s said to take 70 years to make one. “While we know the IP [Sword Art Online] would be great for it, and many of our fans and player community are interested in it, it’s something we would only pursue once we know we have a strong concept and could do it right. Maybe, if all the stars aligned, we would be able to start making it.”

Though it isn’t an MMORPG, Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream seeks to emulate raids found in MMORPGs with 20-person dungeons and raid bosses, complete with boss-specific, rare loot that not everyone can pick up at the end of the fight. It’s also a standalone title, so anyone familiar with just some of the anime would be able to get into and understand SAO: FD, no previous SAO game knowledge required.

“There’s a barrier to entry after ten years of [SAO] games,” Mogami said. “We want people who haven’t played the games to be able to enjoy SAO games.”

The team also wanted to challenge themselves by implementing cross-play in SAO: FD, so friends aren’t barred from playing with each other, Mogami explained.

There is one more thing we know about the future of SAO games, too: Though the chance is not entirely zero, don’t expect an SAO game without Kirito or Asuna. Having an SAO game without Kirito and Asuna, Futami said, “is like having a Dragon Ball without Son Goku.”

Casey DeFreitas is IGN’s Deputy Guides Editor.