Plankton joins the likes of Squidward Tentacles and Jimmy Neutron as new fighters alongside a slew of characters returning from the 2021 original, including SpongeBob Squarepants, April O’Neil from the Ninja Turtles, and Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Plankton’s reveal trailer features Mr. Krabs’ rival piloting a mech suit before putting a beating on his opponents using ketchup-based attacks, his wife Karen (who also happens to be a computer), and lasers. You can still see — and hear — the aquatic microorganism as he barks threats and steers his mech using its antennae. Plankton’s inclusion in the game lends further cadence to a supposed leak that predicted his inclusion in the game as one of its new combatants.
Set to release sometime later this year, this sequel promises to fix some of the original’s biggest issues, like the game’s lack of voice acting and relatively shallow mechanics compared to other titans of the genre like Super Smash Bros., Rivals of Aether, and Multiversus.
As part of EVO’s Industry Showcase, publisher Game Mill Entertainment and developers Ludosity and Fairplay Labs also teamed up with Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma to break down some of the new mechanics that are being added to the upcoming platform fighter. The breakdown revealed some groundbreaking new mechanics, including overhauls to All-Star Brawl’s shielding and dodging mechanics, as well as the new Slime meter.
Hearkening back to Nickelodeon’s iconic green goo, characters are able to build up their slime meter by attacking their opponents or taking damage before using it to augment any number of moves. Players can use Slime to extend dodges, escape combos, strengthen special attacks, or unleash a super move.
While the game doesn’t currently have a firm release date, we’re likely to hear more about it in the coming weeks, since it’s supposed to come out later this year.
Nearly three years since Hades was released, crowned IGN’s own Game of the Year in 2020, and after thousands of hours played by individual members of its hardcore community, no one had beaten the toughest challenge the game had to offer: a “Max Heat Run.”
Many Hades players are unlikely to ever interact with its Pact of Punishment system at all, which only becomes available after the player’s first successful run. It allows players to self-impose additional difficulty to an already challenging roguelite by selecting things like giving all enemies more health and removing reward choices found at the end of most encounters. And by electing to turn up the system’s “Heat Gauge” in specific ways, additional rewards can be unlocked, extending the longevity for those who are looking for excuses to continue hanging out with Zagreus and friends.
A “Max Heat Run,” with the Heat Gauge turned up as high as it will go, was quite literally never designed to be beaten, and considered unthinkable by even the most seasoned veterans. Unthinkable, that is, until this week, when expert Hades player and content creator AngeL1C decided to give it a try and had unfathomably good luck (combined with some truly unbelievable skills).
“Is It Reasonable? Absolutely Not”
AngeL1C, who’s largely considered one of the best Hades players in the world, explained to IGN exactly why her feat seemed so far fetched until just recently:
“Hades’ pact system allows you to personalize the way you want the game to become harder. Pairing certain ones together can lead to extremely difficult runs even at low difficulty totals, so naturally when you turn everything up you’re asking for a bad time.”
By “turn everything up,” AngeL1C is referring to runs where the player turns on every single one of the Pact of Punishment’s disadvantages to a maximum of 64 Heat. Given that players can earn more than enough rewards to collect everything Hades has to offer without ever approaching anywhere close to maximum Heat, players have no incentive to put themselves through that kind of pain. But that hasn’t stopped the small, but passionate “High Heat” community from sharing tips and swapping war stories in their Discord server.
“The developers never balanced this system past heat 40. You are absolutely not supposed to be able to come close to beating this, EVER,” AngeL1C explained. “Everything from more challenging bosses, there being different forms and new phases entirely, to your entire ability to heal (aside from max health hearts) being removed entirely. Other examples such as the mirror of night being disabled (where you spend darkness points to become stronger) and 100% more damage afflicted to you meant that the window for success is extremely small.”
In fact, that window was so small that many in the community assumed it could never be done. A little over a week ago, a popular Hades content creator called Haelian posted a 15-minute video titled “Why No One Has Beaten the Max Heat in Hades or Probably Ever Will.” In the video, Haelian breaks down in excruciating detail, precisely why that accomplishment is so darn difficult.
It largely comes down to math. Because a max Heat run throws so much difficulty at you, a very specific loadout is required to even stand a chance at overcoming it, and because several of the Heat disadvantages relate to limited your reward options, you basically have to get extremely lucky.
Haelian provides the exact numbers in his video, saying, “With only some of the factors calculated in, the odds of getting a run that is even plausible is about 0.0147% or 1-in-6,802 attempts. Even if you only use the 45 seconds to reset in chamber one, as an example, that’s one plausible run every 85 hours worth of attempts. Is it possible? Yes. Is it reasonable? Absolutely not.”
For precisely this reason, most of the High Heat community has turned to mods that control against some of the random variables, including AngeL1C.
“The main effort of modding was to remove so-called “toxic RNG” in order to make skill expression more prevalent,” she explained. “First boon blessing and hammer are fixed, minibosses are standardized (the worst options taken out, like the barge of death, Asterius in elysium, and the tiny vermin). You have a visual indication of where the fountain room is on exits, and getting the satyr sack is guaranteed in 2 chambers. With all that, it still took me a huge amount of time to clear even with those.”
Obviously, if skilled players can control against random variables and save themselves countless lost hours hoping the stars will align, there’s little reason to even try to achieve an unmodded, unseeded Max Heat Run, which made the feat seem all the more unlikely. That is, until just eight days after Haelian posted his video, when AngeL1C, who had herself contributed footage and helped gather information for that video, decided to try her hand at it.
More Like Max Beat
After only 20 minutes of trying to get the perfect series of drops, Angel1C’s “God run” came together. Astonishingly, she beat it just 30 minutes later. The video documenting that most unlikely of runs was posted on her YouTube channel, which at the time of this writing is approaching 300K views in the one day since it was published, and contains some insane nail biting moments where it looked like she would fall prey to the many, many ways such a demanding run could fail.
“I had the timer encroaching, no acorn charges (your 5-hit shield for boss fights), low health (essentially anything kills you in one hit). I got hit down to less than 30 health before barely managing to clear,” AngeL1C explained. “My only regret is turning off my microphone in the recording software. You have no idea how hard I popped off.”
Shortly after AngeL1C’s video went live, Haelian posted a reaction to her unbelievable feat in utter shock.
“Of course, it had to be exactly one week after I made a video saying no one would ever do it,” Haelian said with a laugh. “I honestly thought this would never happen, cause I didn’t think you’d have someone out there with the known capability to be able to do it who was going to even bother to attempt it.”
For AngeL1C’s part, she seemed giddy when she told IGN about her future Hades plans. “This feels like completion to me. I have other goals, but they are all far minor and I really doubt I’ll have the motivation to grind them out.”
Instead, it seems like she’ll focus on some of her other speedrunning passions like Metal Gear Rising and Furi, the latter of which she recently snagged the 25th spot on the leaderboard for.
But Hades will always have a place in her heart, especially as she awaits the upcoming sequel that she’s eager to check out. “Honestly, my love for this game knows no bounds. I really just appreciate almost everything about it.”
We’ve known for years that former United States president Barack Obama is the closest thing we’ve had thus far to a gamer in the White House. But recently, we got a critical piece of information about his gamer profile: Obama is a Captain Falcon main in Super Smash Bros.
This news comes thanks to Smash Bros. community organizer Cody Daniels, who met Obama in 2015 through the Make-a-Wish foundation. The two played some friendly rounds of Super Smash Bros. 64, Daniels’ game of choice, and Obama signed a Smash Bros. 64 cartridge for him and took a photo.
For larger context, @CodyDaniels88 had the opportunity to play with Obama at the White House as part of a Make-A-Wish opportunity. Part of his experiences included meeting the former President, playing some friendly 64 matches, and getting a signed copy of a N64 cartridge and a… pic.twitter.com/oo7NVhIkly
Then last week, Daniels appeared on Hustler Casino’s Max Pain Monday poker stream alongside competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee player Daniel ‘Tafokints’ Lee to raise money for Make-a-Wish. The two bantered about Smash several times during the stream, and at one point, Daniels was asked about his rounds of Smash Bros. with the former president. The section where Daniels explains his Smash Bros. bout with the former president starts at the timestamp linked here.
Daniels explains that while he “took it easy” on Obama and played as Ness (Daniels typically plays Fox and Pikachu), Obama “wasn’t as bad as you would think” at the game. He invited the others at the table to guess who Obama played as, and eventually revealed that Obama picked F-Zero’s Captain Falcon.
Okay, sure, I buy that. Captain Falcon kind of gives off patriotic, superhero vibes.
We’ve reached out to PR for the former president to ask if he has played Tears of the Kingdom yet, but did not receive a reply in time for publication.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Embracer Group has shut down Campfire Cabal as the company begins closing down some of its development studios after announcing a few months back that a deal worth $2 billion fell through.
The news was first made on LinkedIn (spotted by X user @bogorad222) by Bruno-Christian Belibou, who, according to his LinkedIn account, was an Executive Producer at the studio before its closure.
Embracer Group did not immediately respond to IGN’s request for comment.
Campfire Cabal opened its doors last September and was founded and led by Jonas Wæver, who also served as the studio’s creative director. Wæver was previously at Logic Artists, where he created the tactical RPG series Expeditions. According to THQ Nordic, the studio would focus on “high-quality, narrative-driven RPGs.”
While the studio did not have a chance to ship out its first game before its closure, it was tasked with taking over any future entries in the Expeditions series. Though the studio did not officially reveal what its next project was.
In June, Embracer announced that it was planning to close studios, games, and layoff staff as a result of a failed partnership. However, Embracer Group did not go into specifics as to which studios would be affected at the time. Embracer Group is a media juggernaut, owning companies such as THQ Nordic, Saber Interactive, Dark Horse Media, Deep Silver, and most notably acquiring Crystal Dynamics, Square Enix Montréal, and Eidos-Montréal from Square Enix nearly a year ago.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
Here we are again — the Switch 2 rumour mill is out in full force once again, but it’s a little bit different this time around.
Earlier this week, a report from VGC (which in turn has been corroborated by Eurogamer) stated that dev kits for Nintendo’s next console have been shared with key studios and the console is targeting a late 2024 release. We won’t go into all of the details here, but these feel more concrete than the other rumours that have reared their heads in the past.
Wild Card Football is the latest entry in Saber’s Playground Sports franchise. The game is set to launch on October 10 on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, and today we’re excited to tell you more about the game and kick off our pre-orders by debuting four legacy players taking the field!
Jerry Rice, Dan Marino, Walter Payton and Barry Sanders, all with unique uniforms, will be available in-game to anyone that pre-orders Wild Card Football. We’re thrilled to have these iconic legends join the hundreds of active pro players on our Wild Card Football roster.
Bringing Legends to Life in Wild Card Football
We knew from the beginning we wanted Wild Card Football to celebrate some of the greatest legacy players to ever take the field, and who better to showcase in-game than four icons that revolutionized the sport: Quarterback Dan Marino, Wide Receiver Jerry Rice and Running Backs Walter Payton (RB) and Barry Sanders (RB). Looking back on the most extraordinary seasons in league history, these four champions consistently dominate the charts, and their unwavering dedication both on and off the field has left an unforgettable mark.
As longtime football fans, it was important for us to faithfully recreate these legends in a way that truly showcases their signature talents. Players can throw darts with “Dan the Man” Marino, reel in touchdowns with Jerry “World” Rice, high-step into the end zone as Walter “Sweetness” Payton, and juke past defenders with the electrifying Barry Sanders.
Each legacy player also comes equipped with unique outfits, available on launch day to everyone who pre-orders the game. Recreating their uniforms with a playful twist from different eras has been a fun way of paying homage to the past. There’s a lot of really stylish uniforms in Wild Card Football, but adding some that touch these different time periods with our Playgrounds flare creates an aesthetic that’s both familiar but also distinctly one-of-a-kind to our game. Of course, if these aren’t your style, there are still plenty of outlandish outfits to choose from, alongside some more traditional football uniforms as well.
Bringing Back Arcade-Style Football
Football fans are long familiar with great arcade football games, and we thought it was time to bring them back, Playgrounds Sports-style. Those who know our other Playgrounds titles might instantly recognize the look and style of Wild Card Football.
It was important for us to add the kind of fun, fast-paced, over-the-top action to the great game of football that we feel has been missing for a long time. Want to use a power-up and call down some UFOs to abduct your opponent while they’re trying to run free to the end zone? We got that! Want to turn into a human rocket and propel yourself at the running back to help make the tackle? Yep, that’s in there. Want to turn into a giant or freeze the defense with an ice breath? We got that as well! How do you do all of this? Via our all-new wild cards, of course!
About Those Power-Ups!
In Wild Card Football, we introduce a pre-snap, power-up card selection that allows you to modify gameplay in a way never before seen on the gridiron. Increase speed, reduce opponent stamina, even throw up a rock wall to stuff a run. The options are nearly limitless! But remember to be strategic, since every card costs energy. Do you play your biggest card early, or build up energy and unleash a defense-shattering tornado when you might need it most? Choose wisely!
There’s plenty of fun and creative ways to get the best of your opponent and play these cards to your advantage, and the ones I’ve mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg. We’ll be sharing plenty more about power-ups and game modes while showcasing additional gameplay now through launch. We can’t wait to see you on the field on October 10!
Pre-Order Now to get the following digital content and play as famed legacy players such as:
• Barry Sanders
• Walter Payton
• Jerry Rice
• Dan Marino
Includes their unique throwback outfits
Wild Card Football is a fun pick-up-and-play arcade-style football game featuring 7v7 team-focused gameplay with the unique Wild Card system that lets you change the course of the action in an instant with special power-ups and rule-breaking abilities.
With optimized rule sets, customizable teams and outfits, authentic pro players, and bombastic moves, players can show off their skills across single-player and competitive multiplayer modes, while using ‘Wild Cards’ that redefine the football genre and unleash over-the-top action.
KEY FEATURES
Create Your Dream Team – Choose from hundreds of professional players, reimagined Playgrounds-style, and assemble the ultimate 7-on-7 gridiron squad. Advance through different challenges and events to unlock new players and other exciting rewards.
Play Your Wild Cards – Unleash over 150 Wild Cards to turn the tide of the game in your favor in an instant. Bust out special moves like summoning walls or invisibility, boost your team’s stats at a crucial moment, or play a Rule-Breaker and flip the rules of the game completely.
Become a Champion – Prove your skills in single-player Season mode, climb to the top of the leaderboards in competitive online multiplayer with full crossplay, or challenge your friends at home for bragging rights in local multiplayer.
Deep Customization – Personalize your squad’s logo, uniforms and colors, select your home stadium, then build unique playbooks and Wild Card decks to perfect your strategies on the field.
The bargain slurry, Xûr, is now live in Destiny 2 for the weekend until next week’s reset. If you’re looking to get you some shiny new Exotic armor or weapons for your Guardian, look no further.
Each week, Xûr has a random assortment of Exotic armor, one for each Guardian class, as well as a random Exotic Weapon and an Exotic Engram available for purchase. In addition to his Exotic wares, he’s got a random collection of Legendary weapons and armor to deck out your Guardians.
We’ve rounded up all the info on Xûr for the week including where to find Xûr, which Exotic weapons and armor are available, as well as which Legendary weapons you should pick up, either for PvE or PvP.
Where Is Xûr Today?
Xûr’s location today can be found at Watcher’s Grave on Nessus on August 4 through August 8. To reach him, travel to the landing point at Watcher’s Grave. When you arrive, make for the red moss-covered tree straight ahead. Climb up the roots and you’ll find Xûr waiting at the top to sell you exotic items and legendary weapons.
What Is Xûr Selling This Weekend?
Exotic Engram
Merciless – Exotic Fusion Rifle
Shinobu’s Vow – Exotic Hunter Gauntlets
18 Mobility
3 Resilience
14 Recovery
19 Discipline
2 Intellect
12 Strength
Total: 68
ACD/0 Feedback Fence – Exotic Titan Gauntlets
2 Mobility
20 Resilience
12 Recovery
14 Discipline
12 Intellect
7 Strength
Total: 67
Crown of the Tempests – Exotic Warlock Helmet
17 Mobility
2 Resilience
16 Recovery
2 Discipline
20 Intellect
10 Strength
Total: 67
Some decently high stat totals are offset by somewhat wonky distributions for Hunters and Warlocks, but the Titan gloves are definitely a highlight — lowest Mobility possible and spikey Resilience is really hard to beat. Grab those if you don’t have a good set, for sure!
Exotic Weapons
Hawkmoon – Exotic Hand Cannon
Paracausal Shot
Extended Barrel
Alloy Magazine
Moving Target
Heavy Grip
Dead Man’s Tale – Exotic Scout Rifle
Cranial Spike
Corkscrew Rifling
Accurized Rounds
Subsistence
Short-Action Stock
Pretty bad rolls for these exotics this week. I’d definitely recommend going back to sleep. I’ll wake you when Xur comes to play.
Legendary Weapons
Gnawing Hunger – Auto Rifle
Full Bore/Polygonal Rifling
Steady Rounds/Alloy Magazine
Field Prep
Rampage
Stability Masterwork
Wolftone Draw – Combat Bow
Elastic String/Natural String
Carbon Arrow Shaft/Fiberglass Arrow Shaft
Shoot to Loot
Adagio
Charge Time/Draw Time Masterwork
Explosive Personality – Grenade Launcher
Linear Compensator/Quick Launch
High-Velocity Rounds/Implosion Rounds
Auto-Loading Holster
Turnabout
Land Tank
Blast Radius Masterwork
Threaded Needle – Linear Fusion Rifle
Chambered Compensator/Hammer-Forged Rifling
Accelerated Coils/Projection Fuse
Killing Wind
Multikill Clip
Reload Speed Masterwork
Jian 7 Rifle – Pulse Rifle
SRO-41 Ocular/SRO-52 Ocular
Extended Mag/Flared Magwell
Full Auto Trigger System
Rampage
Range Masterwork
Seventh Seraph CQC-12 – Shotgun
Smallbore/Corkscrew Rifling
Tactical Rounds/Steady Rounds
Quickdraw
Trench Barrel
Reload Speed Masterwork
Seventh Seraph VY-7 – Submachine Gun
Chambere Compensator/Extended Barrel
Appended Mag/Extended Mag
Firmly Planted
Dragonfly
Stability Masterwork
Honestly, it’s pretty slim pickings this week, but Gnawing Hunger and Jian 7 have some potential. I don’t know, man. Weapons this week are coming out about as hot as that State of the Game Bungie just put out.
Warlock Legendary Armor
For Warlocks, Xûr is selling the Praefectus set which include:
Praefectus Gloves
10 Mobility
15 Resilience
7 Recovery
7 Discipline
6 Intellect
14 Strength
Total: 59
Praefectus Chest Armor
10 Mobility
2 Resilience
18 Recovery
2 Discipline
6 Intellect
20 Strength
Total: 58
Praefectus Helmet
22 Mobility
2 Resilience
10 Recovery
7 Discipline
14 Intellect
6 Strength
Total: 61
Praefectus Leg Armor
10 Mobility
12 Resilience
10 Recovery
16 Discipline
6 Intellect
6 Strength
Total: 60
Praefectus Bond
Nothing to see here, unfortunately. Warlocks have another pretty poor showing where legendary armor is concerned.
Titan Legendary Armor
For Titans, Xûr is selling the Praefectus set which include:
Praefectus Gauntlets
10 Mobility
6 Resilience
16 Recovery
7 Discipline
14 Intellect
6 Strength
Total: 59
Praefectus Chest Armor
10 Mobility
7 Resilience
15 Recovery
2 Discipline
6 Intellect
20 Strength
Total: 60
Praefectus Helmet
2 Mobility
2 Resilience
28 Recovery
6 Discipline
6 Intellect
16 Strength
Total: 60
Praefectus Leg Armor
7 Mobility
14 Resilience
12 Recovery
12 Discipline
6 Intellect
10 Strength
Total: 61
Praefectus Mark
Titans must have spit in Xur’s cereal, cause these rolls are amusingly bad! At least the helmet has some ridiculously spikey Recovery, but even that doesn’t salvage them.
Hunter Legendary Armor
For Hunters, Xûr is selling the Praefectus set which include:
Praefectus Grips
22 Mobility
2 Resilience
10 Recovery
2 Discipline
10 Intellect
16 Strength
Total: 62
Praefectus Chest Armor
14 Mobility
12 Resilience
6 Recovery
2 Discipline
11 Intellect
14 Strength
Total: 59
Praefectus Helmet
10 Mobility
6 Resilience
16 Recovery
7 Discipline
6 Intellect
14 Strength
Total: 59
Praefectus Leg Armor
10 Mobility
2 Resilience
19 Recovery
7 Discipline
14 Intellect
6 Strength
Total: 58
Praefectus Cloak
Hunters also got skunked. Xur, you’re kinda lame sometimes, tbh.
That’s a wrap on Xûr for this week, Guardians! What did you think of Bungie’s recent State of the Game update? Let us know in the comments! You might also want to check out the raid guide we put together to guide guardians through Lightfall’s endgame activity.
Perhaps inspired by this freedom, voice actor Matt Mercer came up with a surprising method of getting to the top of a castle using over 40 wooden crates and an Arrow of Transposition.
During a livestream alongside developer Larian’s Swen Vincke, Mercer stacked crates to form a tower his character was able to climb by using the jump ability. At the top of this makeshift tower, Mercer used an Arrow of Transposition to teleport across to the top of Baldur’s Gate’s Counting House.
Vincke, clearly surprised and impressed, declared Mercer “very smart” for not just coming up with the out-of-the-box strategy, but executing it perfectly. I do wonder about Mercer’s companions, though! Watch the clip in the X video below, from user @AndreSargeant:
Not only is Mercer’s crate-stacking technique an especially silly but effective strategy, it’s in keeping with Baldur’s Gate 3’s Dungeons & Dragons roots. Every now and then you’ll get someone who tries to do something silly, like declaring they spend the next several hours gathering crates from around town and stacking them tall enough to shoot their way across to the top of a tower. In Baldur’s Gate 3, perhaps the best video game representation of Dungeons & Dragons ever made, trying stuff like this and seeing if it works is all part of the fun.
IGN’s Baldur’s Gate 3 review in-progress is full of praise: “I’ve been waiting 14 years for another alignment of the planets like Dragon Age: Origins, when an old-school CRPG got a big enough budget to look like a high quality animated movie – but the design hadn’t been completely steered in the wrong direction in a misguided attempt to reach a different market like the later two Dragon Ages,” reviewer Leana Hafer wrote. “This is the closest anyone has ever come to recapturing that magic.”
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.
Look, I could justify this month’s Reality Bytes in any number of ways. I could say the VR launch cupboard is a little bare at the moment, with Steam’s New Releases list offering up a lot of dour military shooters, dubious Early Access projects, and fantasy dismemberment porn. I could say that The Room VR: A Dark Matter has just received a PSVR2 release, so now seems an opportune moment to revisit this acclaimed spin-off puzzler. I could say that The Room VR is the only entry in the series RPS hasn’t covered yet. But to be perfectly honest, I just fancied playing The Room VR. So there.
Oh all right, there was a slightly more specific reason why I wanted to revisit a game that came out just three days after Half-Life: Alyx. Upon its launch, there wasn’t much else like The Room on VR devices, a dedicated puzzler with high production values that didn’t feel the need to throw in a gun to shoot or a melon to chop. Now, there are bunch of fantastic VR brain-ticklers swimming in the pond, such as the time-travelling epic Wanderer, the perspective-bending A Fisherman’s Tale series, and the ingenious automation extravaganza The Last Clockwinder.
