Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Remake chatter has started reverberating around the decks of the internet again recently, like a mighty sea shanty that Ubisoft won’t say much about.
With folks keener for new info than they are booty, an update to the original Black Flag’s Steam backend is the latest thing to fan the Remake speculation flames, but before you get excited about it, it’s worth bearing in mind that a bunch of other Assassin’s Creed games got similar tweaks yesterday.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered finally has a new update with much-needed performance improvements and tweaks to the difficulty settings.
Bethesda said update 1.2 focuses on fixes for quests, gameplay, and performance, and includes new damage settings. 1.2 won’t roll out to all platforms just yet, Bethesda added, but it will be released today, July 9, on Steam Beta.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
MDK was a 1997 shooter in which you played a pointy headed janitor named Kurt Hectic with a parachute suit and a gun for an arm, the best thing about it being its Giger-ish sniper mode interface. MDK is also Mortality Decomp. Killers – a sour lollipop puke hued Post Void-like with Hotline Miami‘s lethality and a very good spinny knifey move. It’s completely free on Steam, although you can pick up the soundtrack for a few quid if you fancy supporting it. After each level, your score breakdown includes how many doors you’ve “killed”. Not since my beloved Mullet Mad Jack has a game facilitated such reckless hinge hatred.
Going live this week.
Shin’en Multimedia is still hard at work on updating Fast Fusion for the Switch 2, and it’s now on the cusp of releasing a new patch.
Going live on Thursday, 10th July, Version 1.4 will take inspiration from Nintendo’s own Mario Kart World by introducing a new photo mode. You’ll be able to move the camera around the action, tilt for the perfect angle, and even apply unique frames to spice up your photography.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Stalker 2 is set to launch on PlayStation 5 late 2025 a year after it hit PC and Xbox Series X and S.
GSC Game World’s open world horror shooter launches on PS5 with full support for the DualSense controller’s features, including haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Further technical enhancements for the PS5 Pro are also in development, the Ukraine developer said.
Stalker 2 launched in November 2024 to a positive reception on Steam and 1 million sales. It’s a success story for the Ukrainian studio; a miracle, really, considering the harrowing circumstances that followed Russian’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.
But Stalker 2 launched with well-documented bugs and issues, chief among them A-Life 2.0. A-Life was a key feature of the first Stalker game that governed AI behavior across the game world. At a high level, it is a system for simulating life in the Zone that works its magic seemingly independently of the player’s actions or whereabouts. It helps to create convincing AI and the emergent gameplay Stalker is famous for.
GSC had said A-Life 2.0 would make the Zone feel alive as never before, that it would fuel emergent gameplay on a scale previously thought impossible. Indeed for some fans, A-Life 2.0 was Stalker 2’s biggest selling point. But when Stalker 2 actually came out players discovered that A-Life 2.0 didn’t work properly, with some questioning whether it was even in the game at all.
In an interview with IGN, GSC explained what went wrong with Stalker 2’s A-Life 2.0, and vowed to fix the system. They’ve been working on doing that ever since, and the expectation is that the PS5 version will include all the latest updates and fixes the developer has released for the PC and Xbox versions.
Read more on how Stalker 2 has changed everything for the studio here.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Steel Hunters, a free-to-play mech shooter from World of Tanks devs Wargaming, was only revealed last December. An early access release in April this year followed that Keighley Awards cameo, and just three months on, the game’s been given a shutdown date.
It’s not quite a Concord-level speedrun from the live-service cradle to the live-service grave, but it’s still a pretty quick one.
The Last of Us and Intergalatic: The Heretic Prophet development chief, Neil Druckmann, is enjoying his time away from the HBO series by indulging in a LEGO set based on the latter’s spaceship.
Last month, 2Bricks — who specializes in custom (MOC) LEGO builds — released a YouTube video documenting a custom build of “a sleek Porsche-designed red ship” inspired by the next Naughty Dog game franchise, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. And apparently, it caught the eye of one very intrigued fan.
“When I released my model based on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, I had no idea that [Neil Druckmann] himself would want one!!!” 2Bricks wrote on Instagram (thanks PushSquare), appending an image of him passing the completed 984 Tempest NDX to Druckmann. “Had a great chat and I got to nerd out showing off all the little details I included.”
If you like the look of it, you too can grab the build instructions for the 1349-part set for $10 on Rebrickable.
Last week, Naughty Dog head Neil Druckmann announced he will not be creatively involved in the upcoming Season 3 of HBO’s The Last of Us, opting instead to focus entirely on game development of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
As for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet? It features a star-studded cast that includes Tati Gabrielle from the Uncharted movie as protagonist Jordan A. Mun, and Kumail Nanjiani of Marvel’s Eternals as a man called Colin Graves. It is not expected to release until 2027 at the earliest. It’s a pretty long wait, but speaking to IGN on the red carpet ahead of The Last of Us Season 2 premiere, Druckmann said that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is not only playable right now, but “really good.”
Druckmann also recently revealed the studio has a secret, unannounced second game in the works although he’s not as involved in the nitty gritty of development on that one. “There’s another game that’s being worked on at Naughty Dog where I am more of a producer role and I get to mentor and watch this other team and give feedback and be like the executive in the room,” he said. “I enjoy all those roles, and the fact I jump between one to the next, it makes my job very exciting and always feeling fresh. I’m never bored.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Dune: Awakening developer Funcom has apologized after “patching out” a layout change in the Deep Desert that briefly transformed PvE territory into PvP, leading to “an unfortunate amount of lost bases and equipment.”
Yesterday, Funcom released another patch for Dune: Awakening, with more tweaks to improve the endgame experience for players who’d prefer to spend time in PvE activities, including the ability to farm Tier 6 resources and a better chance of getting Unique drops in PvE loot in Deep Desert.
It follows on-going efforts from the developer to improve PvP in the Deep Desert after an AMA revealed many players branded the endgame “toxic” due to griefing even after the ability for players to squish each other with their Ornithopter was supposedly patched out. Later, griefers intentionally landed their Ornis on other players’ own thopters to prevent them from farming.
However, the change — which was “intended to only occur with the next Coriolis cycle and not impact the ongoing cycle” — resulted in an “oversight in the development process and internal communications,” resulting in heavy losses for some players.
“We’re incredibly sorry that this happened and we want to acknowledge that this should have been handled better. We’ve changed our internal processes as a result of this and will be better in the future,” the team said in a statement.
“We are working to reimburse vehicles and items (to the best of our ability) to players who were impacted by this. You can expect the reimbursed materials, items, and vehicle components to show up in the in-game ‘Claim Rewards’ tab by the end of this week.”
In the same statement, the team also revealed it was working hard to eliminate cheaters from Arrakis, writing, “our primary focus, which continues over the next weeks and months, will be to remove all identified exploits (third party cheat engines, client hacks, or in-game exploitation of game mechanics). In addition, we will be hard at work improving the game, adding quality of life features, and addressing critical gameplay issues.
“We have zero tolerance for the type of player behavior that has an impact on the experience of other players, and we will continue to focus on ensuring that players can enjoy the game as it is intended,” the statement added. “If you see someone cheating or exploiting, please report them to us using the available reporting channels.”
Funcom said that so far it has taken action on “several hundred” cheats caught using exploits, cheats, and hacks, with “more waves of bans coming as we identify further culprits.”
“We have a team dedicated exclusively to fighting hackers and fixing exploits. Over the next few patches, they will be introducing additional efforts to prevent exploits by increasing security on several client/server communication layer, performing additional penetration testing against common attack vectors, and auditing our item and inventory systems to make sure they are resistant to item duplication,” Funcom stated.
Finally, the team also apologized to players who had lost “vehicles or other resources” due to in-game bugs. Though admitting some issues are hard to replicate and resolve, Funcom said it is now working on tools to “better reimburse players for vehicle losses due to bugs.”
Dune: Awakening has enjoyed a superb launch, with a ‘very positive’ user review rating on Steam. Within hours of going live on June 10, Funcom’s survival MMO had clocked up over 142,000 concurrent players on Valve’s platform, and hit a new high earlier this month of 189,333 players. And it’s already clocked up over 1 million players, too, making it Funcom’s fastest-selling game ever, and securing a Great 8/10 in our review.
If all that’s got you interested but you’re not sure where to start, make sure to check out all the Dune: Awakening classes you can choose from, and our Dune: Awakening walkthrough for a step-by-step guide to the story. We’ve also got Dune: Awakening resource guides that’ll help you find iron, steel, aluminium, and a Dune: Awakening Trainers locations guide to help you survive on Arrakis.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Day 2 deals.
The latest Amazon Prime Day is here and as always, there are plenty of deals on Switch consoles, Switch games, micro SD cards, accessories, and more to be found!
This event lasts for four days, running from 8th – 11th July, and we’ll be updating this page with all the best Nintendo deals throughout to save you from scrolling through page after page of products.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The four-day marathon that is this year’s Prime Day is live now, running from July 8-11. There’s hardly any product category that’s not on sale at Amazon at the moment. But each year Prime Day is one of the best times to stock up on board games, and this year is no different.
It seems like most board games are on sale right now for Prime Day 2025, and the prices are mostly excellent. Below, we’ve highlighted our picks for the best board game deals available now – but you’ll need a Prime membership to get most of them. You can sign up here.
As an added bonus, a bunch of the games are part of another sale that’s also going on right now that saves you $10 when you spend $40 on select items. So if your game(s) are eligible and you spend more than $40, you’ll get an additional $10 off. As a deal-focused commerce editor, I love it when you can stack a deal on top of a deal. It feels like you’re working the system.
So what worthy board games are on sale right now? A whole lot of them. Azul is always one of our top sellers when it goes on sale, and it’s currently on sale for $19.49, which is great considering it usually hovers around the $33 range. Check out our Azul board game review for details.
Gamers may want to pick up Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City while it’s on sale for $69.99. It’s “a surprisingly preem experience,” as our critic put it in his review. A ton more are on sale, whether you’re looking for family-friendly board games like Guess Who? or horror board games like Nemesis.
This brand makes some of the coolest puzzles for adults I’ve come across on Amazon. It’s not as well-known as Ravensburger or some of the big names, but the quality definitely holds up—and the artwork is designed to be framed, not shoved back in the box.
These 1000-piece puzzles are basically ready-to-hang posters by the time you’re done. If you enjoy fandom-inspired art that actually looks good on a wall, this sale is worth a look.
Right now, only four designs are included, each tied to a popular franchise. The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter options are easily my favorites—they have a bookish, collector’s feel that works way better than most licensed puzzle art.
Short answer: yes. If you’re looking to pick up a few new board games or card games, Prime Day is one of the best times of the year to do it, matched only by Black Friday in terms of overall discounts and variety.
Some of the deals available during Prime Day 2025 represent the lowest prices ever tracked on popular games, including modern classics, family favourites, and party staples. It’s unlikely they’ll drop any further later in the year, and by the time Black Friday rolls around, you’ll have missed a solid few months of potential game nights.
If you’re unsure whether a deal is truly worth it, use a site like CamelCamelCamel to check Amazon’s price history. It’s a quick way to confirm whether a discount is as impressive as it looks.
In a world filled with screens, board games offer a refreshingly analog way to spend time with friends and family, or just take a break solo. Whether you’re looking for something light and fast or deep and strategic, there’s something in this year’s sale worth grabbing. Just don’t wait too long, stock will disappear fast, and the best offers rarely hang around past the main Prime Day event.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
