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A.K.I. slithers into Street Fighter 6 on September 27 – full gameplay details revealed

Double, double coil and trouble. A.K.I., the maniacal mistress of poison will slither her way into Fighting Ground, World Tour, and Battle Hub in Street Fighter 6 starting September 27 on PS5 and PS4. Feeding off orders from her master, A.K.I. injects poison into enemies that dare stand within striking distance–all with a smile. You can’t fix her, but she will fix you.

A new character to the Street Fighter series, A.K.I. snakes through life only to please her outstanding and phenomenal master F.A.N.G from Street Fighter V. Under orders to dig into the remnants of Shadaloo, she finds herself infatuated with the powers that be.

In World Tour, help A.K.I. find her herbal medicine in Tian Hong Yuan, a new area where you can increase your bond with her and learn her deadly moves. Put those moves to use in the Battle Hub in the ever popular and always wacky Avatar Battles. Explore how the addition of poison improves your custom combos.

Game Director Takayuki Nakayama spoke on the team’s inspiration on designing a visually striking character like A.K.I.

“The character design we landed on was a pale-skinned disciple with her fighting style being a combination of the Poison Hand and the Fanged Snake Style martial arts. Therefore, we decided to proceed with A.K.I. being a white snake that carries poison.

Her snakeskin Chinese dress has a beautiful sheen like a black mamba with material that looks ominous when it shines and animates. The serpentine pattern you see from her chest to her stomach was meant to resemble the belly of a snake.

Her distinctive hairstyle was an idea that came from outside of the design team, which incorporates the symbol of an assassin: “kasa” (umbrella in Japanese) through her hair. Based on this concept, we tweaked the way her eyes hide behind her hair and the overall silhouette. We took extra care in making the silhouette of the collar and the way her eyes are hidden to look alluring when viewed from the side.”

A.K.I. has learned from her master about the best uses for poison, but her nails offer a twisted reminder that she is a different creature altogether. Excelling at long-range combat and with the ability to poison enemies through her cauldron of tricks, A.K.I. controls the stage waiting for her prey to blink.

Like F.A.N.G, once A.K.I. poisons an enemy, their vitality will slowly deplete as long as the effect remains. If A.K.I. gets hit, the poison will dissipate. From a distance, she can use Serpent Lash, sending her nails flying forward like a chain, poisoning enemies she hits. The OD version of Serpent Lash hooks on to enemies, allowing A.K.I. to hop forward to close the distance. When she strikes an opponent who is already poisoned with moves like Serpent Lash, a Toxic Blossom triggers where the resulting explosion can open enemies up to follow-up attacks.

Her fireball–Nightshade Pulse–sends a bubble forward that also poisons enemies on hit. She can strike the bubble with Nightshade Chaser to pop it in advance, increasing the area of effect. A.K.I. can also use Orchid Spring to place a puddle of poison in front of her, which affects opponents who step in it.

Snakes always lurk where their prey can’t see them. A.K.I. can use Cruel Fate to flip backwards toward enemies, sending her nails to strike from above. Like a contortionist, she can instantly coil to the ground and under enemies with Snake Step.

A.K.I. takes this even further with Sinister Slide, where she can slither from full screen to avoid threats while stalking forward. From Sinister Slide, she can perform three actions: Venomous Fang sees her leaping forward to poison enemies, Heel Strike starts combos on a successful hit, and Entrapment wraps her body around enemies to constrict them.

A.K.I.’s Level 1 Super Deadly Implication launches enemies in the air with a kick and traps them in a gigantic poisonous bubble, leaving them across the stage. Her Level 2 Super Tainted Talons extends multiple talons forward and leaves a large pool of poison in its wake that lasts for a significant amount of time.

During A.K.I.’s Level 3 Super–Claws of Ya Zi–she pierces various pressure points on the enemy’s body and injects a poison that detonates from within. Getting tied up in these chains will see you screaming in agony.

A.K.I. will be unlocked for owners of the Year 1 Character Pass, Deluxe Edition, or Ultimate Edition on September 27. Get a taste of her poison for an hour with a Rental Fighter ticket, which can be obtained in a Fighting Pass. Don A.K.I. in an elegant additional outfit, which is also available when she unlocks.

Speaking of, the A.K.I. Arrives! Fighting Pass will release on September 1 and contains cosmetic items to help prepare for A.K.I.’s incoming concoction.

Whether it’s from her tongue or the brewing poison, the soft hissing grows ever louder approaching the end of September when A.K.I. is introduced in Street Fighter 6 on PS5 and PS4.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Player One-Shots Act 2’s Final Boss With the Power of Economics

A Baldur’s Gate 3 player has figured out how to one-shot the final boss of Act 2 using nothing more complex than a large pile of gold, a special weapon, and a bit of reverse-thievery.

Reddit’s u/GoldenThane shared their strategy on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit yesterday. Their post does contain spoilers, so first we’ll give you a spoiler-free explanation of what they did. Basically, GoldenThane used a weapon called Twist of Fortune that’s available elsewhere in Act 2.

The morning star has, among other abilities, a Weapon Action called Blood Money that deals an extra 3 piercing damage per 300 gold that the target possesses. So to one-shot the boss, they “reverse pickpocketed” them before the fight to dump 15,000 gold into their pockets, then bapped them with Blood Money and called it a day.

Warning: We go into even more detail below the video, including spoilers for the end of Act 2 of Baldur’s Gate 3. Read on at your own risk!

Specifically, GoldenThane used this ability on what appears to be the second phase of the Ketheric Thorm fight at the end of Act 2. Because the fight includes multiple phases, they had to reverse pickpocket Thorm before it started, then used the Blood Money ability on the second phase, when Thorm becomes an Apostle of Myrkul. Fifteen-thousand gold divided by 300 is 50 ticks of Blood Money, which adds up to 150 bonus damage on top of the base damage of the attack.

That alone would only get GoldenThane up to 167 of the boss’ 225 total HP, but based on comments elsewhere in the thread it looks like GoldenThane had a number of other effects proc, including a bunch of hits of an Illithid power called “Cull the Weak” and possibly other abilities.

The mace in question, Twist of Fortune, is conveniently available right before this section of the game via Gerringothe Thorm, who you can kill or pickpocket or otherwise creatively dispose of to collect this special weapon.

Notably, this strategy seems to be scalable up to even higher health pools. Elsewhere in the thread, users were debating whether this would work on the first fight against Thorm earlier in the chapter, when he’s meant to be unkillable. A stack of 50k gold does the trick to get him to 0 health in this situation, according to u/srsbsnsman, but the game doesn’t let him die – he just sits around with 0 HP and continues to act, effectively softlocking the game. So…maybe do that specific battle as intended.

GoldenThane also detailed another reverse pickpocketing strategy in another thread (warning: spoilers for Act 3 if you click through) that effectively involves dropping a cursed corpse into the inventory of a major Act 3 foe. This strategy is a bit more involved, but pretty funny if you can pull it off, and lets you cheese your way through an extremely difficult fight.

You can try either of these strategies yourself or, if you’re more interested in working through the fights normally, we have a guide to Baldur’s Gate 3’s Act 2 right here. We’ve also covered more Baldur’s Gate 3 community shenanigans here, including someone beating the game with the worst possible ending for everyone, and a speedrunner finishing the game in ten minutes.

Rebekah Valentine is a Senior Reporter at IGN.

Unable to “defeat gravity” and keep old content, Destiny 2 has become the Darkness

The original Destiny storyline opened following the collapse of a vast Terran civilization at the hands of an invading, amorphous Darkness and its various alien accomplices – an advance stymied only by a benevolent Big Dumb Object known as the Traveller. It cast you as an ancient warrior, resurrected by a flying robot to reclaim humankind’s old dominions together with their antique, storied weapons and gear. So much of its appeal for me, back in 2014, was the mystique of that reclamation process, bolstered by alternately zany, obnoxious, fragmentary and/or intriguing writing that expanded upon the viral mythological element in Halo.

Fast-forward nine years, and Destiny 2 has turned the destruction and loss of history wrought by the Darkness into a seasonal – or as it’s shortly to become, “episodic” – content “cadence” (a term that stems from the Latin word for falling) of erosion and restoration, with areas, weapons and quests stripped periodically from the game due to a mixture of technical pressures and commercial priorities. It’s sort of become the very thing you’re fighting, but where the Darkness aims to engulf and extinguish the Guardians of the Light, Destiny wants to keep you engaged.

Put Those Baldur’s Gate 3 Karlach Romance Playthroughs on Hold — She’s About to Get a Better Ending

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian has issued an official ‘Looking to the Future’ blog post that outlines a raft of changes coming to the game with the imminent Patch 2, including an update to the ending for everyone’s favourite Tiefling Barbarian.

In the blog post, Larian said Patch 2 adds “better closure” to the story’s final act in the form of a more fleshed-out ending for Karlach, something “many of you have been asking for”.

Karlach is one of the most-popular companions and romance options in Baldur’s Gate 3 (check out IGN’s Karlach Companion Guide for more). But some players expressed dissatisfaction with her ending.

Brief Baldur’s Gate 3 Karlach spoilers ahead.

Karlach is slowly dying from an infernal engine, which is housed in her chest. At the end of the game, she can either return to the hellish realm of Avernus to prevent her from burning to a crisp, turn into a Mind Flayer, or give up the ghost entirely and die. In either case, Karlach is pretty hard done by.

Patch 2 adds a new optional ending with Karlach, Larian said. “It’s fiery, poignant, and gives her the ending she deserves”.

In an interview with IGN in which Larian boss Swen Vincke discussed the restoration of access to Minthara’s content, he also teased this new Karlach epilogue, saying that if you see a cigar you’ll know that you’ve found the new content, and that it will “make a lot of people happy”.

Thinking of all the actors we’re going to call back to the studio https://t.co/3hTBdNl9IJ

— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 30, 2023

In the same blog post, Larian promised improved performance after criticism of Act 3 in particular. “The city of Baldur’s Gate itself is ambitious,” Larian said. “Technically, narratively, and in scope. One of the biggest issues with creating games is that technology is always trying to keep up with your ambition, and here we’ve been hit pretty hard by some setbacks.

“We know that Act 3’s performance isn’t as good as the first two acts, but the good news is that Patch 2 is bringing major performance improvements to the entire game, but more specifically to Act 3 where you’ll feel it the most. We’ll also be working throughout September to improve performance in Act 3 further with new technology that’s been taking a bit longer to release than we expected.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 is set to launch on PlayStation 5 on September 6, with the Xbox Series X|S version due out later this year. You can find our list of the most rewarding romances in Baldur’s Gate 3 right here.

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.

Japan’s Upcoming Live-Action Pokémon Series Is About Falling For The Classic Game Boy Title

Airing on Tokyo TV this October.

The Pokémon Company has today announced that a brand-new live-action series about Pokémon is set to air in Japan from 19th October — however, it may not be the show that you would expect (thanks, Serebii).

Unlike the ace ‘live-action’ animation of the Detective Pikachu film, this upcoming series — titled ‘Pocket Filled with Adventure‘ in English — doesn’t appear to be set in a Pokémon world, but rather it will be about the act of playing Pokémon.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

A new bombshell has entered the Hercule Poirot villa in The London Case

Far bet it from me to complain about Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot: The London Case introducing more incongruous eye candy, after my previous conniptions over Hot Hipster Poirot with his ankle-grazer trousers and his sexy egg-shaped head, but tick tock, it’s himbo Hastings o’clock. Released on Steam this week, The London Case takes young Poirot to, err, London, charged with protecting a famous painting along with a representative of the insurance firm. Naturellement, the painting is stolen from an apparently locked room under everyone’s silly noses, and thus begins Poirot and Hastings’ first puzzle caper together (for who else is our insurance representative?).

Technically, of course, they met in The Mysterious Affair At Styles, when Captain Arthur Hastings was on leave from the front during WW1, but one of the things I like about this series is how it takes what it wants and gently buffs away the rest. If you’re going to adapt, then adapt! Like The First Cases, which came out in 2021, the game itself is largely a process of pointing and clicking through crime scenes to find clues, and then joining them in a big mind map akin to what you’d find in a Frogwares Sherlock Holmes game. But having Hastings along does make it a bit more fun, because his role is to be a bit of an idiot.

It Takes Over Two Hours to Do the Fellowship’s Walk Through Moria in This New Lord of the Rings Game

One of the most memorable scenes from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation is the Fellowship’s brutal journey through the abandoned, once great Dwarven city of Moria.

From Gandalf’s puzzle-solve to open the West Gate to the Fellowship’s dramatic battle against a cave troll in Balin’s Tomb, from Gandalf’s dramatic last stand against the Balrog to the Fellowship’s last-ditch escape through the East Gate, Moria has cemented itself in the hearts and minds of Tolkien fans the world over as an iconic location within Middle-earth.

Upcoming crafting and survival game The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, which is set in the Fourth Age (70 years after the destruction of the ring), revolves around the dwarves themselves and their bid to reclaim their lost home following a call to arms by Gimli himself.

The game’s version of Moria is enormous, and includes all the landmarks you’d expect and where you’d expect them to be. Procedurally-generated environments fill in the spaces between the likes of the Endless Stair, the Crossroads, the Chamber of Mazarbul, and Durin’s Bridge, allowing for the sheer scale suggested by the books and films to be realised in video game form.

Speaking to IGN in an interview at gamescom 2023, Free Range Games game director Jon-Paul Dumont said internal testing had timed a Fellowship run at over two hours of real time, depending on how things go with those pesky orcs, and how well equipped the player — or players — are.

When you start Return to Moria, you can’t simply walk from the Doors of Durin (West Gate) to the Dimrill Gate (East Gate). A mysterious force blocks the dwarves’ progress. As you play through the story, you learn the nature of this force and how to counteract it, unlocking the ability to break through these progression blockers.

Once you’ve done that, Return to Moria turns into a sandbox, letting the dwarves go anywhere. It’s at this point that the player can decide to run back to the beginning of the game, which takes place at the Doors of Durin and attempt a Fellowship Moria run.

Just like in The Lord of the Rings, in Return to Moria orcs are a constant threat, and are attracted to sound. So any run may be slowed by orc attacks, forcing the player to stand and fight or flee. There’s also the nature of the procedural generation, which adds variance to each playthrough. And the crafting and survival mechanics upon which the game is based means you need to manage your progress carefully.

Dumont teased the possibility of adding a ‘Fellowship Mode’ to Return to Moria, which would challenge players to recreate the journey specifically. As it is, recreating the Fellowship’s adventure in Moria acts as a sort of historical tour. You’ll see where Gandalf was, for example. But to get out you’ll need to rebuild Durin’s Bridge, which Gandalf so spectacularly destroyed in his bid to hold off the Balrog.

Internal tests show around two hours to travel from one gate to the other, but that’s only if “you’ve beaten everything and you’re super powerful and you can just walk”, Dumont said. It will take the majority of players longer.

Return to Moria players will no doubt gather together to try the Fellowship run soon after the game comes out on October 24. Eight-player co-op is possible on PC from launch, while on PlayStation 5 it’s four-player.

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.

Diablo 4 has only made Diablo Immortal more popular, say Blizzard

Before Diablo 4 came out, Blizzard had concerns that their latest ARPG would tank the popularity of their most recent entry in the series, Diablo Immortal, Blizzard’s franchise general manager Rod Fergusson tells RPS. Immortal, which launched last year as a free-to-play MMO game, left quite a bad taste in our mouths when it launched on PC, especially when it came to the prohibitively high cost of its various microtransactions. Despite this, though, the game’s continued to enjoy great success over on mobile, but even Blizzard weren’t sure whether its popularity would last once Diablo 4 arrived.

“One of the things that we were kind of nervous about initially was that when Diablo 4 landed it would sort of cannibalise Immortal, and that everyone was just going to be, ‘Oh we’re just playing Immortal until Diablo 4 comes out’,” Fergusson told me at Gamescom. As it turns out, they needn’t have been so apprehensive. “In fact, it was the opposite,” he says.

When The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was announced a few years back, the general response was “who on Middle-earth would want to play as Gollum”. I’m wondering if Atari and Graphite Lab’s “creative sequel” to Pong, aka Qomp2, will face a similar reception. Released in the 70s, the original Pong was videogame tennis. In this reinvention – which, confusingly, is also a sequel to Stuffed Wombat’s Qomp, with the Pong branding sort of ladled on top – the homely pixel ball has shattered one player’s paddle and escaped into an Axiom Verge-esque labyrinth of spikes, energy beams and floating T-Rex heads. Filing this premise somewhere on the “what if” spectrum between the Edge line about talking to the monsters in DOOM and people demanding to land on gas giants in Starfield. Find a trailer through the jump.

Retro-Inspired Indie Sea Of Stars Sold 100,000 Copies On Its First Day

Critics are raving about this one.

The new retro-inspired RPG Sea of Stars made its debut on the Nintendo Switch and multiple other platforms this week, and it’s already off to an incredibly strong start.

In an update on social media thanking fans for their support, developer Sabotage revealed the game sold 100,000 copies on its first day of availability. That’s quite an impressive feat for an indie game and considering there are many more playing the title on Xbox’s Game Pass service.