Key Preview Takeaways:
Conservation is an excellent addition to the scope of Planet Zoo.
PZ2 immediately drops you into the on-the-ground view, which is an effective way to bring you into the game.
There’s a lot of detailing and decorating to do for players interested in that.
The animal lover in me was immediately delighted by the couple of hours I got to spend with Planet Zoo 2. And not just because the various creatures large and small who inhabit it look the best they ever have in a tycoon game – especially in the animation department – but because of the increased focus on conservation. While it has "zoo" in the title, a huge new component to this sequel is the introduction of free-roaming wildlife preserves that can be...
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Polyarc Games, the developer behind the critically acclaimed Moss games, has announced it is shutting down.
The Seattle studio announced it is ceasing operations starting today, September 11, 2026, with a post on LinkedIn. It's a shock announcement that will see the company close its doors after 12 years.
"After nearly 12 years riding the joyous rollercoaster of emotions that is making video games, our time together has come to an end," Polyarc said. "As we wind down active development, we are saying our farewells to each other.
"Working together over all of these years has been an honor. Bringing surprise and delight to those who played our games has been a privilege. Thank you to everyone at Polyarc, our work is now finished...
We’re back for another installment of our The Long Game series, where we focus on things you can invest in early in games that will pay off in the long run. Today we’re diving into Star Wars Zero Company, the turn-based tactics game from Bit Reactor that drops you into the twilight of the Clone Wars.
Zero Company gives you lots of ways to customize your team, including a variety of specializations (aka character classes), different weapon types, weapon mods, and equippable items that can define each character’s playstyle. You can swap all of these things at the Den at any time, giving you flexibility and allowing you to experiment with different builds for characters and teams.
But regardless of what builds you use, there are some...
Key Preview Takeaways:
A dedication to martial arts is a key differentiating factor for this soulslike.
It’s reminiscent of the wuxia action of the classic film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Boss fights should be fairly memorable based on what I’ve experienced so far.
In the wake of this year’s Gamescom, it's been very clear that a wide assortment of new action titles have been looking to make their mark, especially in the soulslike sub-genre. One game in particular that's aiming high is the upcoming action-RPG A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei, which brings fast wuxia-inspired combat and spectacle-driven set-piece encounters to the historical Ming Dynasty setting.
We recently got some hands-on time with an early build of this...
Over the next few months, I’m going to be taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.
Today it’s time to take these broken wings and learn to fly again in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is emblematic of a long-extinct era. I’m not actually...
Key Preview Takeaways:
My demo focused largely on combat, but it nevertheless impressed me.
Emberville’s pixel-art look quickly won me over.
It remains to be seen if its crafting and city-building systems will integrate nicely into Emberville’s whole package.
Described by many as “Diablo meets Stardew Valley,” Cygnus Cross’ debut title, Emberville, is just a little over a month out from welcoming players to check it out. IGN recently had the chance to get an early look, fighting through some mobs, meeting some of its NPCs, and even testing our mettle against an imposing spider boss. All while getting little teases and tastes of the crafting and character depth that we can look forward to when it enters early access in October.
Most...
It's only been a few months since developer Double Fine's split from Microsoft, but the team behind Psychonauts 2, Kiln, and Keeper is looking ahead. With another successful Kickstarter campaign under its belt, the newly independent studio's second (or should that be third?) life as an indie is off to an optimistic start. With the current Kickstarter focusing on the developer's latest Amenesia Fortnight — a developer-run game jam where new micro games are produced — it's allowing the developers to build up some much-needed runway as they plan for their next major project.
At PAX West 2026, we spoke with Double Fine studio head and president, Tim Schafer, about the developer's current path forward. Along with talking about his return to...
The direct sequel to one of 2019’s best and most original games, Control Resonant once again thrusts players into a desperate struggle against the interdimensional force known as the Hiss. This time, however, control shifts – pun intended – to Dylan Faden, the wayward brother of Jesse Faden, the first game’s protagonist.
More than six years in the making, Remedy’s sequel moves beyond the Oldest House and into the fractured streets of Manhattan. It also trades Control’s third-person gunplay for a greater focus on close-quarters melee combat.
From the release date and story to gameplay details, pre-order bonuses, Deluxe Edition contents, PC specifications and the latest trailer, here’s everything you need to know about Control Resonant...
John Carpenter's Toxic Commando’s launch came in below publisher Focus Entertainment’s expectations, but for Saber Interactive it was successful in commercial terms — and according to development chief Tim Willits, the tech work done for it will go on to benefit the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3.
Toxic Commando builds upon Saber’s proprietary tech to present a zombie swarm for co-op players to gun down. It’s technology used for Saber’s World War Z, for the Tyranids in Space Marine 2, and will once again be utilized for the upcoming Space Marine 3.
In its recent financial report, Focus owner Pullup issued a somewhat downbeat note on Toxic Commander, which came out in March. But in an interview with IGN at gamescom, Saber’s...
Maggie Robertson has said she would accept any opportunity from Capcom to reprise her breakout role as Lady Dimitrescu in the Resident Evil series, calling the character her “firstborn.”
Lady Dimitrescu, the towering face of Capcom’s phenomenally successful 2021 game, Resident Evil Village, was Robertson’s first video game role, and it changed her life forever.
Speaking to IGN at gamescom while promoting her latest video game gig — the sultry and scheming Tasha in upcoming Dungeons & Dragons game Warlock, Robertson said the last five years had been a surreal experience.
“That game, that character changed my life in every way,” she said. “There's no aspect of my life that has not been touched by that character. That was the very...
Forza Horizon 6 has a new, dedicated drifting mode, dubbed Drift Attack. The mode functions similar to the existing Time Attack mode, and is accessed directly from the open world with no additional loading or lobby system. Just like Time Attacks, all you need to do is drive through the gantry and Drift Attack will begin.
The home of the new mode is the existing Shimanoyama Circuit. While lapping the course, points are earned the same way they are in Horizon Drift and at Drift Zones – but Drift Attack adds a new scoring layer to consider with the addition of “Clipping Zones” around the track. These zones will boost scores for drifts executed within their marked boundaries.
Drift Attack features the same in-world leaderboard...
Need help figuring out what to do next in Mortal Shell 2? Our friends over at MapGenie have a Mortal Shell II interactive map that tracks essential locations across Fallgrim, including chests, Map Fragments, valuable items, and much more.
Mortal Shell II Interactive Map
On MapGenie's map, you can use map markers to check off your exact progress toward completion! You can also filter specific markers in the left-hand sidebar.
The available filters for MapGenie's Mortal Shell 2 interactive map include:
Landmarks, including Dungeons, Beacons, Gates, and Bone Gates.
Items, such as Keys, Map Fragments, Chests, and Ovum.
Permanent Pickups, such as Burnt Effigies, Grisha Remnants, Weltcaps, and Common Moonshine.
Equipment, including...
This article contains spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2.
Red Dead Redemption 2 actor Roger Clark has revealed that Arthur Morgan's gnarly coughing fits were actually recorded when he was sick in real life.
I recently interviewed Roger Clark for a YouTube video about how Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption was crafted. During our lengthy conversation, I was able to ask him something I've always wondered: How taxing is it to pretend to violently cough like Arthur does? According to Clark, it's actually not that bad — and in some cases, he wasn't even pretending.
"It's not as bad as you'd think, because I had five years to spread it out," said Clark. "If ever there was a really bad coughing scene, we'd always save it for the end of...
Cheating in video games has turned into a multi-billon dollar industry, one that has forced franchises like Call of Duty to build entire teams to combat this epidemic. One of the people leading the charge is a man named David Andrews, a former Department of Defense contractor and member of the Air Force who made the leap into the video game industry. He began this career change working at Rockstar Games, helping combat cheating in Grand Theft Auto Online. Last year, he made the jump to Activision to become the Senior Director of Game Security for Call of Duty.
IGN had the opportunity to sit down with Andrews and peel back the layers on Call of Duty's anti-cheat system, Ricochet. Andrews disspelled myths about Call of Duty's anti-cheat...
PlayStation's online heist game, Fairgames, has seemingly re-appeared under a codename with first gameplay and invites to a playtest.
Three years ago, PlayStation announced a new online shooter known as Fairgames. It's a competitive heist game, which is a fairly unique concept on paper, but it has reportedly had all kinds of development troubles, including the departure of studio founder Jade Raymond and the game's creative director Daniel Drapeau. Their departures came after staff inside the studio began to express concerns for the game following negative internal playtests. The game has largely gone unacknowledged by PlayStation since its announcement, but development has marched on.
Now, the game has seemingly quitely reemerged...
Wardogs Surpasses 1 Million Copies Sold on Day One, Blows Past 300k Peak Concurrent Players on Steam
Wardogs has already surpassed a million copies sold and is lighting up Steam's concurrent player charts.
Earlier today, developer Bulkhead launched its brand new all-out warfare FPS, Wardogs. The game has been one of the more highly anticipated shooters of this year and players are showing up for it in force. According to the developer, the game has already surpassed a million copies sold, and SteamDB shows that the game has over 300,000 concurrent players.
“To cross a million copies sold as we launch into early access is mental,” said Joe Brammer, CEO at Bulkhead. “We've spent the last few months showing people exactly what Wardogs is, what it isn't, and at one point literally gave everyone ten reasons not to buy it. We didn't want...
Dead or Alive 6 Last Round Project Manager Tsuyoshi Iuchi has sparked a debate within the fighting game community after explaining why the team at Koei Tecmo is dialing back on making sexy costumes.
Dead or Alive is a fighting game franchise with a fiercely loyal fanbase and a dedicated competitive scene. Despite these factors, it’s also known as the fighting game series with the most fanservice — a label that’s hard to get away from, given the jiggle physics, dating-sim-heavy spinoff games, and sexy outfits that exist in abundance in almost every DoA title.
While Dead or Alive 7 is in active development, DoA 6 Last Round is still getting content, including a new character that was just announced yesterday. Minato’s addition to the...
I've been hooked on foldables for years now, and I carry the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra on me every day. And while that phone is incredible for most of what I need to do on a day-to-day basis, gaming has never felt amazing on it.
A big part of that comes down to the aspect ratio of the larger inner screen. While there are a lot of games that will adopt the 4:3 aspect ratio, there are plenty that just don't, leading to either an ugly, stretched picture or giant black bars. In Hearthstone, for example, I have the choice of having a third of the screen blocked off, or have it stretch out to fill the screen, only to cut off a good portion of what's supposed to be displayed.
There have been several times where I've tried to...
As the dust settles on PlayStation's bombshell announcement that it has ditched Physint, an ambitious-sounding next-gen project from legendary Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, analysts are now discussing why Sony may have walked away.
Physint will, of course, remain in production — though now backed by PlayStation's archrival Xbox, in a significant and much-needed PR win for Microsoft's gaming division.
Sony, meanwhile, is being seen as backtracking on yet another big public moment — this time, the enthusiastic handshake between PlayStation Studios boss Herman Hulst and Kojima that heralded Physint's announcement — even as fan complaints continue over PlayStation's disc-killing initiative, and disquiet over the shutdown of...
Editor's Note: This article is sponsored by Minecraft.
The release date of Minecraft Dungeons 2 is right around the corner on September 29. But if you don't want to wait until then to buy it, the good news is preorders for it are already live (check it our here at Minecraft.net). Plus, there's even more good news for people who decide to secure a copy early: you'll get to enjoy some fun free items alongside the game.
These preorder bonuses - which we've detailed below - will be available as digital extras when you buy the game ahead of its release. However, this offer only lasts until September 28 (the day before the game is out), so the clock is ticking to make sure you have them.
Below, you can learn a little more about what...
Wardogs, a new all-out warfare FPS game that has been blowing up on Steam, is officially coming to consoles... but it'll be a while.
As part of its launch, the team behind Wardogs, Bulkhead, confirmed that it will bring the massive shooter to consoles. The game is slated to arrive on Xbox and PS5 in 2028, but is available in early access on Steam starting today. The game is launching for $39.99, with plans to increase the price as the game expands. The idea is to reward fans who support the game in its earliest stages and not charge them a full $60–$70 for an unfinished product.
“Wardogs is ambitious, rough around the edges and still has a long way to go, but that is exactly what Early Access should be,” said Joe Brammer, CEO at...
The senior director of Call of Duty's anti-cheat system has explained why Activision shadow bans players instead of outright permanently banning them from the game.
For years, there has been a lot of friction regarding cheating and the implementation of anti-cheat in major games like Call of Duty. Anti-cheat in gaming isn't perfect; it makes mistakes and accidentally bans people who shouldn't be banned, it can create headaches around launching the game with things like Secure Boot, and some players are placed in ambiguous "limited matchmaking" pools, AKA shadow banned.
There has been a lot of mystery over how anti-cheat works, so IGN spoke with Call of Duty's senior director of game security, David Andrews, to learn a bit more about...
This is an IGN opinion piece from Ryan McCaffrey, who worked at Official Xbox Magazine from 2002-2012 during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 era before joining IGN, where he remains “the Xbox guy.” In the run-up to Xbox’s 25th anniversary, he’ll be sharing his memories from the platform’s first quarter-century.
As the hugely anticipated release of GTA 6 is now just over two months away, it’s worth remembering how it wasn’t so long ago that the Grand Theft Auto games were PlayStation exclusives. GTA 3 and Vice City didn’t see the light of day on the original Xbox until November of 2003 when the pair shipped as the GTA Double Pack, meaning that GTA 3 was exclusive to PS2 for two years and Vice City for one. San Andreas, meanwhile, hit...
One hundred players, three teams and one contested Control Zone: here is how WARDOGS turns combined-arms combat, persistent cash and a destructible battlefield into its own brand of tactical warfare.
Large-scale shooters usually make their pitch with a familiar promise: bigger maps, more vehicles and more players. WARDOGS has all three, but developer Bulkhead is putting a different framework around them. Its 100-player battles are three-way fights for a randomly placed objective, while a persistent cash economy ties one match to the next.
Add tactical gunplay, player-built fortifications, environmental destruction and support roles that pay just as surely as pulling the trigger, and WARDOGS begins to look less like a standard...
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, the latest entry of the long-running flight simulation combat series from Bandai Namco, is hitting PCs and consoles next month. But before players get their hands on the game, IGN can exclusively reveal that a live-action prequel miniseries starring Lost’s Josh Holloway and Superman Returns’ Brandon Routh will be available to stream later this month.
The show, titled Hour Zero, will be released in four 6 to 11-minute installments ahead of Ace Combat 8’s launch on October 2. Episodes will be available first on IGN.com and IGN’s YouTube channel and will debut every few days at 6am PT / 9am ET prior to the game’s launch.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve Hour Zero Episode Schedule:
Tuesday, September 15: Act 1...
Final Fantasy VII Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi has offered an explanation for why the physical disc version of the game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox requires a download to play.
Earlier this month it emerged that the physical version of Final Fantasy VII Revelation on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X comes on a single disc and requires an internet connection to download other parts of the game. The first two games in the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy, Remake and Rebirth, come on two discs: one for installation and one for play. Switch 2 owners get Final Fantasy VII Revelation on a game-key card.
This sparked a backlash among some fans who had hoped for Final Fantasy VII Revelation to be playable without an update, like its...
Key Preview Takeaways:
Cid and Vincent are fantastic additions to an already great party when it comes to the evolved combat system.
Wutai has been recreated and expanded similarly to other locations to give it more importance in the story.
Flying across the open world is neat, but it could be quite bloated with sidequests of checklist objectives and frequent interruptions in gameplay.
It's a little surreal that the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy is about to come to a close; this reimagining of one of the most formative games has had quite the journey from the PS3 tech demo and the long development cycle to its conclusion with the upcoming FF7 Revelation. And so, there's a lot riding on Revelation to tie up all the loose ends...
Final Fantasy VII Revelation is the finale of Square Enix's ambitious project that began with FFVII Remake in 2020 and continued with FFVII Rebirth in 2024. A full trilogy that retells and remixes the story and world of one of the most beloved video games of all time is a crazy idea on paper, but in less than a year, it will be complete. IGN recently went hands-on with Revelation -- you can read Michael Higham's preview coverage for his in-depth thoughts -- and after playing for roughly two hours for myself, I sat down with two of the creators responsible for bringing this saga to a satisfying conclusion: Director Naoki Hamaguchi and Battle Director Teruki Endo.
I asked the pair (through an interpreter) about how they're keeping the...
Project Zeta is a mashup of multiple live-service genres, but for developer Nirvanana, it’s best described as an “espresso MOBA.”
This four-teams-of-three ‘Tactical Hero Arena’ third-person action game is, essentially, a race involving as many teamfights as possible. The game actively encourages teams to fight each other, scrapping over objectives throughout each phase of a session. MOBAs typically focus combat down lanes, but in Project Zeta, around three minutes into each session, the focus becomes fighting over objectives. You have to seek out teamfights to win. This is not a game about hiding in bushes.
Each session is made up of seven phases. The first phase sees players defeat ordinary monsters to level up — all very MOBA. It’s...
The Sun is going to consume the Earth. Before humanity can fly the planet away, it has to get rid of the Moon.
Author Liu Cixin loves big existential catastrophes. The same fine fellow who casually bent the nature of reality in The Three-Body Problem also wrote a novella of roughly 23,000 Chinese characters that became The Wandering Earth. In turn this became a 2019 film credited as the moment Chinese cinema proved it could do hard sci-fi at blockbuster scale.
Beyond selling tickets, the film’s success proved the commercial potential of Chinese science-fiction IP and kicked off a wave of new development and creative exploration across the industry.
What’s interesting about The Wandering Earth: The Last Full Moon, the new game from...