Category: Video Games

Beats’ flagship headphone has been marked down to the lowest price we’ve seen all year. Right now Amazon has the Beats Studio Pro wireless noise cancelling headphones for only $179.95. That’s 49% off the $350 MSRP. The Studio Pro is the highest end Beats headphone currently available. It sounds as good as other high-end counterparts from Bose and Sony. We deemed it one of the best over-ear headphones of 2024.

Beats Studio Pro Headphones for $179.95

Beats is owned by Apple, and the Studio Pro is marketed towards people like me who want a quality over-ear wireless noise cancelling headphone but also don’t want to spend $500+ on the AirPods Max. The Studio Pro offers great audio quality, better than any other Beats headphone, and very good active noise cancellation. It carries over a lot of Apple’s trademark features like spatial audio with head tracking, one touch pairing, and “Find My” functionality. It also has a Transparency mode so you can listen to the environment around you without removing your headphones.

The Beats Studio Pro charges via the newer USB Type-C standard and it even has a built-in USB dac so you can listen to lossless audio files over USB. That’s a very rare feature for headphones nowadays. Of course you can also choose to listen to your music wirelessly over Bluetooth or via a 3.5mm audio cable. The Beats Studio Pro travels well because it’s pretty small, it boasts up to 40 hours of battery life, and the earcups fold in for easy transport in its case.

If you’re looking for a smaller earbud alternative, check out the Apple AirPods Pro, which is on sale right now.

The video game industry has reacted with shock and anger after Microsoft shut down several game studios today, May 7, 2024 including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, the developers of Redfall and Hi-Fi Rush respectively.

Both developers and fans have shared their disappointment at the closures, announced to staff via email on the morning of May 7, 2024. Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booy told employees of the studios, which joined Microsoft under Bethesda parent company ZeniMax, the cuts were a result of the “reprioritization of titles and resources.”

“This is absolutely terrible,” wrote Arkane Lyon director Dinga Bakaba on X/Twitter, whose studio survived the closures and will continue working on Marvel’s Blade. “To any executive reading this: friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment and cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists and entertainers and help them create value for you.”

This is absolutely terrible. Permission to be human : to any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you.

— Dinga Bakaba (@DBakaba) May 7, 2024

“Don’t throw us into gold fever gambits, don’t use us as strawmen for miscalculations or blind spots, don’t make our work environments Darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we’ve seen it before.

“For now, great teams are sunsetting before our eyes, again, and it’s a f**king gut stab. Lyon is safe, but please be tactful and discerning about all this, and respect affected folks’ voice and leave it room to be heard, it’s their story to tell, their feelings to express.”

Several other developers weighed in on the closures too, which also affect mobile game developer Alpha Dog Games. It’s unclear how many staff have lost their jobs across the three studios, but Microsoft, currently valued at more than $3 trillion, declined to expand further when contacted by IGN.

“Arkane Austin and Tango being shut down is the biggest let down from the Microsoft acquisitions,” wrote Anthony Panecasio, level design team lead on Splinter Cell Remake at Ubisoft Toronto, on LinkedIn. “They were making exciting new IP, even if they were rough around the edges. I played both Redfall and Ghostwire: Tokyo to completion when they launched and still have fond memories of them.”

Sebastien Mitton, co-creative director at Arkane Lyon, called the closures a “very, very bad wake up call” on X/Twitter. “A thought for our brothers and sisters in Texas, Canada, and Japan who are going through a very difficult time. Our hearts go out to all of you in this terrible ordeal.”

Adam Boyes, co-CEO of Iron Galaxy Studios and former PlayStation executive, didn’t comment on the closures directly on X/Twitter but did share a screenshot of a GeekWire article from April 25, 2024 which showed Microsoft posted a 17% increase in revenue and $21.9 billion in profit in its latest financial earnings report.

pic.twitter.com/qXRkfACAAH

— ᴀᴅᴀᴍ ʙᴏʏᴇs (@amboyes) May 7, 2024

“To everyone whose been pestering me for years about why we didn’t allow Moon Studios to get acquired by a big publisher, that’s why,” wrote Thomas Mahler, boss of the studio behind Ori and the Blind Forest, on X/Twitter. “I’ve lived through the 90s and saw what happened when smaller studios got acquired by EA.”

Myriad developers also shared job opportunities and offered advice to their industry peers affected by the closures. “I am absolutely shocked at the closing of Arkane Austin, Tango, and Alpha Dog,” said Epic Games principal engine programmer Emanuel Masciarelli on LinkedIn. “If I worked with you and can help you get a job, either here at Epic or at another company that I have connections with, please, please, reach out. I can help with resume reviews, anything.”

Fans of the affected studios have also taken to social media to express their shock and anger over these unexpected closures too. “My heart just broke,” said BethA69 on a Reddit post discussing Arkane Austin’s closure and the cancellation of Redfall’s downloadable content.

Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.

— Aaron Greenberg 🙅🏼‍♂️💚U (@aarongreenberg) April 21, 2023

“This is honestly pretty painful,” added Shameer2405. “Redfall was one of my most anticipated games last year and even though it disappointed me, I thought it had a lot of potential to be better. It’s a shame that’s not going to happen anymore.”

Those discussing Tango Gameworks and its 2023 hit Hi-Fi Rush shared similar sentiments, with many pointing to an X/Twitter post from Microsoft executive Aaron Greenberg that declared the game “was a breakout hit for [Xbox] and [its] players in all key measurements and expectations.” He said Microsoft “couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered” when it hit two million players after a month and received high praise from critics.

But just over a year later the studio was shut down. “So this is how it ends,” wrote Tango Gameworks creative director and Hi-Fi rush director John Johanas on X/Twitter. “Unfortunately I don’t quite have the words. But at least thank you to everyone who supported us.”

“This whole acquisition thing was great for the industry, right?” asked PimentaGui on ResetEra. “Microsoft’s spending spree continues to have long lasting terrible effects on the industry,” said Baoben. “Tango being shut down after the success of Hi-Fi Rush is bonkers,” added Einbroch.

Microsoft acquired ZeniMax in 2021 for $7.5 billion and with it came Bethesda studios such as Arkane, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog Games. Its acquisition streak reached new heights in 2023 with the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which finally went through in October 2023, just six months before it closed these other studios.

Xbox also announced The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios would absorb Roundhouse Studios, but the other Bethesda teams would be unaffected. Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 developer Bethesda Game Studios, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle developer Machine Games, Doom developer id Software, and the aforementioned Marvel’s Blade developer Arkane Lyon are all unaffected.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Editor’s Note: This review takes a fresh look at Stardew Valley after its 1.6 update on PC, replacing our previous review from 2018. You can read more about our review policies and philosophy here.

Every time I return to Stardew Valley after a new patch drops, I ask myself: why is the pull still so strong? Newer farming games have improved on many of the mechanics its developer, ConcernedApe, introduced way back in 2016, adding interesting twists to the old-school blueprint it repopularized – so in 2024, why is Stardew Valley still my favorite? But that’s just it: Stardew Valley is the model for farming games now. It may not be quite as refined or as streamlined as some of the sims it inspired, but none have managed to capture the raw lightning in a bottle that makes it so enduring, either. That’s partly because Stardew Valley might be a “cozy” pixel art haven, but it’s also tough. Managing your time and juggling dozens of competing priorities is an endless challenge, and it’s in this superbly balanced dance that I find an intense satisfaction that simply cannot be beat. Pair that with a nearly decade-long parade of new quirky details to discover every time I start up a fresh farm, and Stardew Valley becomes truly timeless.

There is no small measure of irony to the fact that the start of Stardew Valley plucks you from a soul-crushing desk job and plops you into a quaint little farming town… where you must then become a tireless, people-pleasing perfectionist. Oh, you thought you were just going to be pleasantly plucking weeds and planting parsnips on your late grandpa’s abandoned farm? No, you aren’t just a farmer after your move to Pelican Town. Like any typical entry-level intern, you are expected to wear many hats. Restoring the Community Center to its former glory may be fulfilling labor, but you’ll also need to level up your skills across the board, from foraging to fishing to mining, and even monster fighting. Don’t forget to smoodge your way into the hearts of the lovable townspeople by showering them with gifts every day. How else are you supposed to find your life partner?

I’m a returning fan, so I know what I want to accomplish on each new run, but for those new to this sensation you might find that, at first, Stardew Valley gives you so much freedom and so many options that it can feel kind of aimless. Besides the odd request from your neighbors arriving in the mail, you are given no larger objective – just this broad rags-to-riches goal of fixing up your grandpa’s farm and the town by delivering bundles of goods. It’s only as you start to progress through the seasons that you realize what’s at stake. Sure, you could play at your own leisure and still find plenty of joy in a more relaxed, unoptimized pace. But you’ll soon come to understand that forgetting to gift Jodi that cauliflower she wanted in spring could mean waiting a whole year before you get back to the season where you can grow that crop again, and thus learn to make time for the things that matter most.

This makes Stardew Valley a deceptively tense balancing act of managing your time and multitasking efficiently. There are plenty of things to unlock that will make that easier, be they cooking recipes for meals that increase your stamina so you can accomplish more each day or upgraded tools to help you till the earth and water your crops quicker. But the cost of unlocking those things usually comes in the form of grinding for experience points in the skill you are trying to improve or collecting a certain number of required items. Do you want to unlock the greenhouse before the end of Year 1? Well, then you’d better make sure you grow enough gold-quality melons that summer to complete the Pantry Bundle in the Community Center, otherwise you’ll have to wait until Year 2.

This is why playing Stardew Valley alongside a good game guide can be day and night. Like many “old-school” games, Stardew Valley doesn’t always tell you everything you need to know. Not every quest has hints to follow, and when it comes to finding some seasonal items such as specific fish, you’re going in completely blind. There’s definitely joy to be found in figuring something out for yourself, but I only found myself truly thriving once I realized that there was an endless dirge of strategy guides and community resources to be found online.

While this might sound like an overly rigid slog, it certainly doesn’t feel like one. Seasons are so fleeting and the time you have to accomplish your goals is so limited that you’re always incentivized to explore areas you might not have otherwise in order to accomplish them quicker. For example, if you want to unlock the minecarts (a handy mode of fast travel), you’ll need to push yourself to explore the mines. Each floor is randomly generated, and breaking open rocks to find materials while cutting down slimes and other monsters quickly evolves into a harrowing dungeon crawl. As you delve deeper, you will encounter dangerous and strange new enemies with different attacks and harder hits, and it’s fun to prepare the right weapons and stat-boosting food to survive. Lose all your health (or run out of energy and fail to make it home in time) and you’ll pass out, costing you cash or even your precious treasure depending on which character randomly finds you and brings you back to the surface, making each trip down into the mines feel fresh and potentially nerve-racking.

If combat isn’t your speed, there are so many other things to do that you could easily put off exploring the mines for a bit in favor of farming, foraging, or even socializing – and don’t even get me started on fishing. (Okay, if you insist!) Stardew Valley’s infamous fishing minigame is both the bane of my existence and my greatest obsession. It’s such a simple activity: cast in your line, snag a fish, and then keep a green bar overlapped with a bouncing fish icon until you’ve successfully reeled it in. And yet, nothing is more devastating than carefully tapping my left mouse button for a whole minute to keep a Pufferfish on the line, only to break concentration for a moment and watch my progress crash into the red. On the other hand, nothing is quite as elating as finally catching an elusive Catfish on a rainy day. Every fish has different behaviors and movement patterns that dictate how they wiggle around on the hook, adding an interesting layer of strategy to recognizing them; some are easier to predict and others will have you on the verge of frustrated tears. It is quite literally my favorite activity.

The joy of Stardew Valley isn’t just in making the most of its jam-packed days, it’s in all the little quirks and secrets you discover along the way. From heartwarming cutscenes with villagers to bizarre one-off quests that could have you delivering maple syrup to a strangely cognizant bear, truly, so much character has been injected into this idyllic town. This is the only game where I can build a pond on my farm only to then get absurd demands from the talking fish within it. What is a fish going to do with three Omni Geodes anyway? Time to go mining in the Skull Cavern, I guess.

You’re rarely doing the same thing for very long because it takes less than 15 minutes to play through an in-game day, a pace which only further entices me to stick around for “just one more” every session. Because time is so tight, it often feels like you never quite have enough to do everything you might want to – that may sound frustrating initially, but it’s actually so absorbing. It forces you to strategize and plan out your tasks in advance, fueling that obsessive urge to keep playing even more in order to keep from leaving some goal only half finished. In this way, each morning feels like embarking on a new dungeon run. How far will you get today? Will luck be on your side or will it work against you?

Stardew Valley feels endless, which is both thrilling and overwhelming. Yes, technically, there are two ways in which you could see yourself “beating” it. The first is to fully restore the Community Center by gifting the adorable little Junimo spirits specific bundles of local goodies, which you either have to grow or hunt down yourself, and the second is to achieve total “Perfection,” Stardew Valley’s version of 100% completion. Either one will have you planting vegetables, growing fruit trees, and raising animals on your farm, all of which follow suit with Stardew Valley as a whole by being fairly straightforward on the surface, but deviously deep if you want to maximize both the quantity and quality of your produce. It will likely take you more than one in-game year just to complete the Community Center on your first playthrough; with 28 days in each of the four seasons, that means this challenge alone can easily take dozens of hours, and I loved every minute of it.

Hearing about that scale of time commitment could make it seem like an intimidating task, but this is the true appeal of Stardew Valley: It is a collector’s paradise. Just when you think you’re done, you’ll stumble upon another list of tasks to delightfully check off. Complete the Community Center bundles and now the local fisherman, Willy, is asking you to help repair his old boat. Next thing you know, you’re traveling to a totally new island that’s mostly inhabited by voracious parrots. Of course, the only way to explore this entirely separate area and unlock all the cool things introduced there is by feeding the parrots the Golden Walnuts found hidden throughout the island. It gives you another enticing goal to distract you from whatever you may have been doing before, even if just for a few days.

This deluge of options is in no small part thanks to all of the excellent free updates Stardew Valley has sporadically received since its initial launch in 2016, tantalizingly pushing that finish line further and further out of reach for its dedicated players. ConcernedApe has added co-op multiplayer, cool new starting farm layouts, tons of additional crops and seasonal events, expanded post-game activities, and innumerable bug fixes – not to mention plenty of silly things like the recent craze sweeping the valley: drinking mayonnaise. I’ve lost count of how many farms I’ve started over the years, including one on the unique new Meadowlands Farm layout that was introduced in the most recent 1.6 update (only on PC as of this writing) and I still haven’t found those darn raccoons it added! It could quite literally take you over 100 hours to discover everything Stardew Valley has to offer… and by the time you do, there may have been another patch.

And did I mention the lore scattered throughout it all? Because, yes, Stardew Valley is steeped in the stuff. At first, the people of Pelican Town might come off as stand-offish and sometimes even cold. But the more you chat with each villager and give gifts to increase your “friendship” level with them, the more you will unveil just how messy these people are. The kind but strangely vain mayor has a secret lover; we’re all pretty sure that Abigail, our resident video-game loving goth girl, has a mysterious origin story to discover. Heck, you don’t even get to meet one of the villagers until you’ve reached Year 2 because he’s been away fighting in a war against some fantastical evil empire. I love getting to feel like the town snoop, prying into the personal details of everybody’s lives without any of the repercussions. If anything, the messiness of these characters makes them feel more grounded and endearing.

As you get to know this community better, you’ll make headway in one of the biggest aspects of Stardew Valley: Romance. There are 12 eligible villagers residing in Pelican Town, all of whom you can get to know by chatting them up once a day and gifting their favorite things. This is one area where Stardew can, admittedly, fall a bit flat relative to the high points of other games with a focus on dating. While it’s great that you can date any of these villagers regardless of gender, it doesn’t quite make up for the lack of both interesting personalities and diversity amongst your choices for romantic partners.

If there’s romance available in a game, I want to feel torn by the decision of who to pursue. But here, my indecision over who to marry initially has less to do with being too smitten and more to do with the fact that all of the options are similarly… unappealing. That being said, I don’t think all of the villagers of Stardew Valley are necessarily supposed to be immediately “likable” in a traditional sense. Just as it often is in real life, it’s only after taking the time to get to know them through special conversations and unlockable events that some of them start to look more attractive and complex as people. But while their larger stories are generally well written, they don’t necessarily make for the most exciting romantic partners to woo right out of the gate.